CHAPTER SIX. 
Instinct. 
How the various instincts of animals, the homing 
instinct of birds and insects, the building instincts, the 
migrating instinct, etc., could have been developed 
though forces working by natural selection or any other 
law, is a question which has called forth much dis- 
cussion. It cannot be said that the explanations con- 
‘tained in the pages of Darwin, Romanes, and Spencer are 
satisfying. The difficulty that remains unsolved is sim- 
ilar to that (already considered) of rudimentary struc- 
tures. On instinct depends the existence of most animals. 
According to the theory these instincts have been devel- 
oped by slow degrees. Hence there must have been a 
time when these instincts, because not yet completely 
developed, were useless to the animal. But if useless, 
the animal must have perished. The strength of this 
objection to the evolutionary hypothesis will become clear 
from a brief study of the manner in which animal life is 
bound up with the proper functioning of instinct. 
Consider, for instance, the dependence of the honey 
bee and her hive on the functions, every one instinctive, 
of queen, workers, and drones. There is the queen, 
whose sole work is to lay eggs; the drones, or males, 
whose function it is to fertilize the queen; and the 
workers, which are females undeveloped sexually. In 
these three kinds of individuals we see a combination of 
many most remarkable instincts and peculiarities of 
structure which look to the good of the community. 
