Architecture in the Animal Kingdom. 91 



the change. The female of the leaf-rolling beetle 

 (Rhynchites betulae} becomes an artist, only when, the 

 time of depositing her eggs having arrived, she is 

 forced to cut and to roll up a birch-leaf in the shape of 

 a graceful funnel. The male of this beetle is no more 

 endowed with this wonderful, technical skill, than the 

 emperor moth in the state of imago is able to spin a 

 cocoon; for the artistic talents of animals depend on 

 their organico-psychic constitution. Their application 

 affords no trace of reflecting reason or free choice, 

 because their mode of action is predetermined to the 

 most minute detail by the laws of vegetative and sen- 

 sitive life. Again, animals by their very organic con- 

 stitution possess all the tools necessary for exercising 

 their natural talents. Bees have their honey-bags to 

 gather in the pollen and daggers to ward off their 

 enemies ; silkworms have their spinning glands, 

 beavers use their tails as trowels, and their sharp 

 gnawing teeth serve them as axe and chisel in work- 

 ing the wood. There is no need therefore, to invent or 

 manufacture implements. Moreover, directions for 

 using their natural instruments are furnished to ani- 

 mals by the innervation of their bodily organs and by 

 the corresponding constitution of their sensitive powers 

 of cognition and appetite. Reason and free choice, 

 therefore, are utterly superfluous in the exercise of 

 these animal talents. Since by their organico-sensi- 

 tive constitution animals are provided sufficiently with 

 all the necessaries of life, they are denied the higher, 

 spiritual faculties. Hence, they, who attribute reason 

 f o animals, show that they have but a superficial 

 knowledge of animal life. 



