262 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



for, when he excavated a hole in the sand of the nest 

 and filled it with water, the ants, stimulated by what 

 to them was the disagreeable dampness of the marginal sand, 

 were impelled to perform the reflex act of kicking about in 

 the sand. This impulse persisted until all traces of the hole, 

 the dampness and the water had been buried under a carpet 

 of drier sand. Then, and then only, was the aforesaid impulse 

 inhibited. Applying these results to the interpretation of 

 the first experiment, we see that the "building of a bridge" in 

 the first experiment was not intentional, but merely an acci- 

 dental result of a kicking-reflex, with damp sand acting as a 

 stimulator. Once the moat was bridged, however, the ants hap- 

 pened to find the larvae, and were then impelled by instinct 

 to carry the larvae to their proper place in the nest. To see 

 in such an incident a planned and premeditated rescue of the 

 marooned larvae would be grossly anthropomorphic. Never- 

 theless, had only the first experiment been performed, such an 

 anthropomorphic interpretation would have seemed fully justi- 

 fied, and it was only by an appropriate variation of the 

 conditions of the original experiment that this false interpreta- 

 tion could be definitively excluded. 



Consciously telic behavior is distinguishable from uncon- 

 sciously telic conduct only to the extent that it implies an 

 agent endowed with the power of abstraction. Unless an agent 

 can vary radically the specificity of the procedure, whereby it 

 attains a given end, the purposiveness of its behavior is no 

 evidence of its intelligence. "Among animals," says Bergson, 

 "invention is never more than a variation on the theme of 

 routine. Locked up as it is within the habits of its species, 

 the animal succeeds no doubt in broadening these by indi- 

 vidual initiative; but its escape from automatism is momen- 

 tary only, just long enough to create a new automatism; the 

 gates of its prison close as soon as they are opened ; dragging the 

 chain merely lengthens it. Only with man does consciousness 

 break the chain." (Cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1918, p. 457.) 



