

REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 



den upon on the pavement so that the upper part 

 was squashed flat and had dried to a mere scale 

 on the stone, but its tail continued busily to lay 

 eggs. 



The reason of these things, which could be 

 multiplied indefinitely, is that there is no effective 

 connection between the separate knots of nerves 

 in insects; and, of course, it follows that there 

 can be no sense of personal individuality in crea- 

 tures whose several parts are thus separately 

 sensitive. 



Yet the actions of the bee and the wasp and the 

 ant are constantly quoted as giving evidence of 

 an intelligence almost equal to our own, and Lord 

 Avebury says that the reason of ants differs only 

 in degree and not in kind from ours. 



Thus we are naturally tempted in our admira- 

 tion of the insects' " cleverness " to lift them al- 

 most up to the human level : whereas what we ought 

 to do is to recognize that most of our own emo- 

 tions and clever actions are as automatic in them- 

 selves as those of these animals, and that it is 

 only our human consciousness which invests them 

 in our own case with a halo of dignity. 



Look at a bird's feather, a fish's scale, or a 



mammal's hair under the microscope. Each is an 



object of wonderfully-beautiful elaboration in 



its minute adaptation to the needs and interests 



[35] 



