ADAPTIVENESS AND PURPOSIVENESS 339 



parture (as some would say) which was hereditarily added 

 on to the instinctive patrimony of the race, or arose as a 

 germinal mutation (as we would say) which was intelligently 

 tested and approved of in the individual lifetime, it is not 

 far-fetched to suppose that it was justified to the individual 

 in some measure of satisfaction. The mothers saw their 

 children, which is more than they do now. 



The difficulty is to understand the present-day implicit 

 obedience to the voice of the distant past, to see how an 

 elaborate piece of instinctive routine which does not justify 

 itself to its possessor can retain its imperious inertia through 

 the ages. Probably some sop unknown to us is given to 

 the individual's interests and satisfactions. It may be, for 

 instance, that parental instincts have become in some cases 

 linked on to conjugal instincts, reverberations of which 

 continue to give meaning and interest to parental care whose 

 reward is nowadays never experienced. But the problem 

 of making for an unseen goal is a very difficult one. 



Since this was written our suggestion of an individual 

 * sop ' has been strikingly confirmed by the observations of 

 Roubaud and of Wheeler. For certain tropical wasps 

 Roubaud has shown that the queens and workers receive from 

 the grubs, which they assiduously tend and feed, small quan- 

 tities of a secreted elixir of which they are extraordinarily 

 fond. For certain kinds of ants Wheeler has shown that 

 there is a similar give and take (trophallaxis) between the 

 workers and the grubs. The workers feed the grubs with 

 chewed flesh, but they receive from their charges a douceur of 

 secretion which seems to keep them in good heart. 



But we cannot draw a line at instinctive creatures like 

 ants and bees, where the complexity of the brain gives us 

 some warrant for postulating ideational processes. There 



