380 HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packard. 



help suspecting that at times, even insects know what they 

 are doing while performing extraordinary, superinstinctive 

 acts. 



Locke and Dugald Stewart, says Brodie in his " Mind and 

 Matter," do not allow that " brute animals have the power 

 of abstraction. Now taking it for granted that abstraction 

 can mean nothing more than the power of comparing our 

 conceptions with reference to certain points to the exclusion 

 of others ; as, for example, when we consider color without 

 reference to figure, or figure without reference to color ; then 

 I do not see how we can deny the existence of this faculty 

 in other animals any more than in man himself. In this 

 sense of the word, abstraction is a necessary part of the 

 process of reasoning, which Locke defines as being ' the per- 

 ception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas.'" 

 Brodie then observes that Dugald Stewart does not mean to 

 deny that brute animals are capable of the simpler forms of 

 reasoning. Watson says that Locke " was not unwilling to 

 allow beasts a portion of reason, for though, he says, they 

 have no power of abstraction, or use of language, to increase 

 their ideas, yet, if they are not mere machines, we cannot 

 deny them to have some reason, and for his own part, he 

 adds, ' it seems as evident that they do some of them in 

 certain cases reason, as that they have sense.' " 



Now all that has been said regarding the intelligence of 

 insects, serves simply to pave the way for a consideration of 

 the nature of instinct. While engaged in collecting the 

 material for this chapter and putting it in form, this thought 

 has often recurred ; if insects have sufficient intelligence to 

 meet the extraordinary emergencies of their lives, why may 

 not their every day, their so-called instinctive acts, requiring 

 a minimum of intellectual work, have originated in previous 

 generations, and thus the instincts of the present genera- 

 tion be the sum total of the inherited mental experiences of 

 former generations ? Indeed, can there be any other rational 



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