THE RELIGION OF NATUEE 



did we not now and then get an insight into their 

 purely automatic character. 



There is a solitary wasp, for instance, the fer- 

 tile female of which excavates a gallery leading 

 to a chamber in a sand-bank; in the chamber she 

 lays an egg, and thereafter keeps the maggot 

 which has emerged from the egg supplied with 

 fresh food. Throughout her proceedings there is 

 every evidence of tense maternal solicitude and re- 

 markable intelligence. 



But that the whole business is automatic is 

 shown by the fact that the wasp does not know 

 her own maggot-child by sight or scent, nor cares 

 whether the nursery be empty. 



If, during her absence, you extract the child, 

 and lay it, naked and hungry, at the entrance to 

 the gallery, the bustling mother hurries past it, 

 pops down the food, and departs, after carefully 

 concealing the entrance with her baby lying out- 

 side the door. 



Instances like this show that the marvelous 

 maternal instinct in nature which we, human 

 beings, have acquired the power of admiring and 

 valuing for its moral beauty and importance to 

 us is really an automatic process of nature, ac- 

 quired and exhibited in different ways by most 

 higher creatures in the struggle for existence. 

 We see the beauty and the use and the joy of it; 

 [42] 



