338 ADAPTIVENESS AND PURPOSIVENESS 



but this we do know, that they are going back to their nests. 

 The nesting impulse remains strong for two or three weeks, 

 and this gives an illuminating significance to the homing 

 of these sea-swallows. They are returning to activities in 

 which their life reaches its climax, to the continuance of 

 which they are urged by a deep organic impulse, by an 

 irresistible will which is not readily baulked. 



But difficulties increase when we pass to the field of purely 

 or predominantly instinctive behaviour among animals ' of 

 the little brain type ', such as ants and bees. We see numer- 

 ous acts dovetailed in a series, correlated in a definite se- 

 quence which leads to a useful result. We cannot make the 

 behaviour intelligible without saying: "Somehow or other 

 these several acts have been concatenated in relation to an 

 end." But in what sense can we say that a bee on its 

 first honey-collecting expedition is actuated by a purpose? 

 We dare not suppose a conceived purpose and we cannot 

 clearly think in this case of a perceived purpose, for the bee 

 is operating effectively in a world previously unknown to it. 

 What kind of purpose can there be ? We shall speak of 

 instinctive purposiveness, differing from perceptual purpose- 

 fulness in the probable absence of any clear vision of the 

 end. 



.Here we have to include the extraordinary cases where the 

 individual works resolutely towards a goal which it never 

 experiences. Many Digger-wasps, for instance, make elab- 

 orate preparations for offspring which they never survive to 

 see. Since social wasps are geologically ancient it is reason- 

 able to suppose that their behaviour originated in the distant 

 past when the ancestors of our present-day species did survive 

 to see their progeny. Originally, on this supposition, whether 

 the primitive behaviour arose as an intelligent new de- 



