258 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



tecture vary from day to day. The brute, however, never 

 emerges from the rut of instinct, and each generation of a given 

 animal species monotonously reproduces the history of the pre- 

 vious generation. Man, on the contrary, is capable of indefinite 

 progress, as the march of human cultures and civilizations 

 shows. Gregarious animals are restricted by their instincts to 

 determinate types of aggregation, as we see in the case of ants 

 and bees. Hence these insect communities are unacquainted 

 with our sanguinary revolutions which overturn monarchies in 

 favor of republics, or set up dictatorships in place of democ- 

 racies; for, fortunately or unfortunately, as one may choose 

 to regard it, man is not limited to one form of government 

 rather than another. 



Animals, then, notwithstanding their wonderful instincts, 

 are deficient in precisely that quality which is the unique 

 criterion of intelligence, namely, versatility. Each species 

 has but one stereotyped ability, outside of which it is woefully 

 stupid and inefiicient. "So long," says Fabre, "as its circum- 

 stances are normal the insect's actions are calculated most 

 rationally in view of the object to be attained" ("The Mason- 

 Bees," p. 167), but let the circumstances cease to be normal, 

 let them vary never so little from those which ordinarily obtain, 

 and the animal is helpless, while its instinctive predisposition 

 becomes, not merely futile, but often positively detrimental. 

 Thus the instinct, which should, in the normal course of 

 events, guide night-flying moths to the white flowers that 

 contain the life-sustaining nectar of their nocturnal banquets, 

 proves their undoing, when they come into contact with the 

 white lights of artificial illumination. In fact, the fatal fond- 

 ness of the moth for the candle flame has become in all 

 languages a proverb for the folly of courting one's own 

 destruction. 



The animal may employ an exquisitely efiicient method 

 in accomplishing its instinctive work, but is absolutely im- 

 potent to apply this ingenious method to more than one de- 

 terminate purpose. Man, however, is not so restricted. He 



