THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 263 



In vain, then, do our Darwinian humanizers of the bruto 

 exalt instinct at the expense of intelligence. Their attempt 

 to reduce to a difference of degree the difference of kind that 

 separates the irrational from the rational, fails all along the 

 line. Indeed, far from being able to account for the appear- 

 ance of intelligence in the world, transformistic theories are 

 impotent to account for so much as the development of in- 

 stinct, all forms of the evolutionary theory, the Lamarckian, 

 the Darwinian, the De-Vriesian, etc., being equally inadequate 

 to the task of explaining the origin of animal instincts. 



The complex instinctive behavior of predatory wasps, for 

 example, is absolutely essential for the preservation of their 

 respective races, and yet these indispensable instincts are com- 

 pletely useless in any other than the perfect state. From 

 their very nature, therefore, they do not admit of gradual 

 development. The law of all, or none, holds here. "Instinct 

 developed by degrees," says Fabre, "is flagrantly impossible. 

 The art of preparing the larva's provisions allows none but 

 masters, and suffers no apprentices; the Wasp must excel in 

 it from the outset or leave the thing alone." ("The Hunting 

 Wasps," p. 403.) To be useful at all, the instinctive operation 

 must possess an indivisible perfection, which cannot be parti- 

 tioned into degrees. The Pompilms {Calicurgus) , for instance, 

 must, under penalty of instant death, take the preliminary 

 precaution to sting into inaction the ganglion that controls 

 the poison forceps of her formidable prey, the Black Tarantula 

 (Lycosa), before she proceeds to paralyze it by stabbing its 

 thoracic ganglion. The slightest imperfection or shortcoming 

 in her surgery would be irretrievably disastrous. Such an 

 instinct never existed in an imperfect form. The first wasp to 

 possess it must have been an expert, or she would never have 

 lived to serve the limp body of the huge spider as living 

 provender for her tiny grub. "The first to come to grips with 

 the Tarantula," says Fabre, "had an unerring knowledge of 

 her dangerous surgery. The least hesitation, the slightest 



