THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 625 



organization put to use in the facile accomplishments 

 of difficult and delicate tasks, we begin to think it not 

 unnatural to rank so full a life above that of the plainer 

 vertebrate. . . Such an advocate would, moreover^ point 

 to the fact that the bee's life is as short as it is bright ; 

 that it has little time to learn, little opportunity of 

 accumulating experience either for itself or for its off- 

 spring; that it is, so to speak, a baby-bee, and one of 

 a long line of baby-bees : and would argue that were 

 a bee long-lived, and the race to continue long-lived 

 through many generations, there would be no longer 

 any disputes about the reason and instinct of bees/ 

 Thus, from the point of view of the functions performed 

 rather than of structural possibilities, we should un- 

 doubtedly be led to regard the bee as a much higher 

 animal than the fish. And as the same writer continues : 

 — ^ If we were to put ourselves entirely on one side, and 

 try to look at animal life as a thing in which we had 

 neither part nor lot, we should of course, in attempting 

 to fix the rank of any being, be guided almost exclu- 

 sively by the range and complexity of the duties the 

 creature was enabled to fulfil. We should use function 

 almost by itself as a test of worth, and should look 

 upon structure as simply the means to an end. . . . Dig- 

 nity of function, springing as it does out of intricate 

 and finished machinery, must, when we look at animals 

 apart from ourselves, form the standard by which rank 

 in life can be judged.' 



We do not, however, usually put ourselves on one 



VOL. II. s s 



