EVOLUTION AXD THE AFTER-LIFE. 51 



euce ; llie al'ter-pavt of the divided body also moves 011, Lut only in 

 obedience to its own ganglionic centres, and without any guidance 

 from, or relation to, the scnsorium, or the anterior portion of the body. 



Thus we see the ordinary movements of the animal continuing to 

 be repeated v/ith only that part of the nervous system in operation 

 which is capable of producing 7'eflex action. What the entire creature 

 has been accustomed to do, the separate parts continiie to do when cut 

 off from the guiding influence of the sensorium. The same holds good 

 even in some of the more highly-organized, members of the articulate 

 series. A remarkable instance is given by Dr. Carpenter, as shown 

 in the mantis, an insect allied to the crickets, which performs its ac- 

 customed and very peculiar actions not only when the head is re- 

 moved, but the segments of the body j)erform each its accustomed 

 pai't, and no other, when the body itself is divided. So also a cer- 

 tain kind of water-beetle, after the sensorium is removed, remains 

 motionless so long as it rests upon a dry surface ; but, being placed 

 upon the water, its accustomed element and stimulus, performs its 

 accustomed movements of swimming, and with such energy as to 

 strike aside its companions with great violence. These motions, which 

 are repeated, as has been seen, under the influence of the ganglionic 

 system alone, and by the simple process of reflex action, are termed 

 automatic ; and when these actions, though often more complex and 

 varied, are repeated in the same automatic manner imder the guidance 

 of the sensorium, and under the stimulus derived from sensation, they 

 are called instinctive. 



Coming, now, to the higher species of articulates, we find the so- 

 called social insects, and especially bees, furnishing the most wonder- 

 ful examples of instinctive action ; they construct for themselves habi- 

 tations, some of them involving nice principles of geometry; they 

 store up food for futiu'e use, and their whole economy seems, at first 

 glance, to demand the presence and aid of even a rare intelligence ; 

 yet, on examination, it is found that no teaching is required, no 

 thought nor memory is brought into use in these remarkable actions, 

 but each insect 2:ces to work without direction and without individual 

 experience, and does at once, without hesitation, the first time as w^ell 

 as ever, that which is in its nature to do. " It acts according to its 

 nervous ors;anization." 



How the insect comes by this h7i2ndse to do, is one of those seem- 

 ingly simple questions which, in reality, includes the whole ; it is the 

 ever-recurring question regarding each new faculty as it makes its ap- 

 pearance in the series, and demands a few words in reference to the 

 main theories involved. The term instinct is not to be taken, in its 

 popular sense, as referring to all the actions performed by animaJs in 

 distinction from those performed by man, but must be limited to those 

 automatic actions which are performed without teaching or individual 

 experience. Xow this impulse, or instinct, as exemplified in the bee, 



