PSYCHIC LIFE OF INSECTS BOUVIER. 455 



become perfected, in order to be handed on to posterity and to assume 

 the character of true instincts. 



Here, then, we are confronted with several classes of instinctive 

 acts, which differ not only in origin but also in intellectual char- 

 acteristics. No doubt they are linked together by many intermediate 

 manifestations, and in the animals with which we are now concerned 

 they often blend the one with the other or even with the reflexes, on 

 account of the profound differentiation of nervous and sensorial cen- 

 ters. It is, nevertheless, very difficult to consider them as manifesta- 

 tions of a special faculty which we would fain place on the level of 

 intelligence by calling it instinct. The name instinct justly applies 

 to certain forms of activity which are innate and automatic, but these 

 forms proceeded in diverse ways from the vital energy which is the 

 source of all organic activity, and the highest of them, which are at 

 the same time the most striking ones in the animals here studied, were 

 originally acts more or less requiring the exercise of true intelligence 

 on the part of species and individuals. Intelligence has no part in 

 the development of the instinct that draws nocturnal Lepidoptera 

 toward the light, nor has it doubtless anything to do with the rhythms 

 through which organic memory manifests itself. But intelligence it 

 is that regulates by appropriate selection all manifestations of race 

 memory ; intelligence again, in the sundry forms of association and 

 individual memory, that puts together the most complicated mech- 

 anisms of instinct. 



Instincts are of various kinds. If, by the word instinct we under- 

 stand not any one special faculty, but the complex of all the in- 

 stincts, namely, the innate automatism regardless of its origin, we 

 can say with Bergson that instinct and intelligence " are not things 

 belonging to one and the same order," that they " diverge in direct 

 ratio of their development," but that " they never become completely 

 separate." They are both " opposites and complements " and they 

 assist one another. " On the one hand, indeed, the most perfect in- 

 stincts of the insects are accompanied by certain gleams of intelli- 

 gence, be it only in the choice of place, time, or material of construc- 

 tion. When, by exception, bees build their nest in the open, they in- 

 vent arrangements which are new and in the true sense intelligent 

 to meet the new conditions. On the other hand, intelligence has still 

 more use for instinct than instinct has for intelligence, since the 

 ability to work up raw material presupposes in the animal a supe- 

 rior grade of organization, to which it could have arisen on the wings 

 of instinct only." Before such evidence as this Fabre was forced 

 to modify his theory of immutable instinct. " By itself, mere in- 

 stinct," says he, "would leave the insect disarmed in the perpetual 

 conflict of circumstances. A guide is needed in the midst of this 

 bewildering melee. That the insect has wh « ©fide is eviuenL to 



