CHAPTER II 



FAILURE OF THE CLASSICAL FACTORS TO EXPLAIN THE 

 ORIGIN OF INSTINCTS 



IT is well known that the instincts of animals are as 

 innumerable as they are marvellous. They have in 

 common the characteristic that they allow the creature 

 to act spontaneously, without reasoned thought, without 

 hesitation or groping, and to attain the desired end with a 

 certainty with which neither reason, nor training, nor 

 impulse, can compare. 



Thanks to instinct, an animal of any given species 

 always acts conformably to the genius of its kind, some- 

 times in a very complex manner, for attack, defence, 

 subsistence, reproduction, and so forth. The essential 

 instinct is identical in all the individuals of the same 

 species, and seems as refractory to variation as the 

 species itself. For each species it constitutes a psychical 

 characteristic as well defined as the physical. 



Now the origin of instincts is no more explicable 

 by natural selection or by the influence of the environ- 

 ment than the formation of species. This can be best 

 observed in the insect. Fabre has done imperishable 

 work in this direction, and it is to his writings that we 

 must refer in order to understand the characteristic 

 variety, complexity, and sureness of these instincts, as 

 well as the impossibility of explaining them by the 

 classical notions. 



A few examples will suffice. Take, for instance, the 

 Sitaris, quoted by Bergson as one of the most remark- 

 able. 



* The Sitaris deposits its eggs at the entrance of the 

 holes which a certain species of bee, the Anthophora, 



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