GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 367 



gous effects to that which man has found with his plastic 

 judgment. . . . The most intelligent insects are generally, 

 but not always, those which have the most varied instincts. 

 In my opinidn, there is no necessary relation. . . . Instinct 

 is reasoning, organized, systematized, automatized. It 

 seems to require much less nervous substance for fixed or 

 instinctive reasoning, than for reasoning actual, individual, 

 new and combinative; these two factors occur in all ani- 

 mals which possess a nervous system, but in the insect, 

 plastic reasoning is only a spark which serves as a base for 

 each new complement of its so highly developed instincts." 

 Again, 4 "It must be admitted, therefore, that insects are 

 capable of perceiving, of learning, of recollecting, of asso- 

 ciating their recollections and of utilizing them to accom- 

 plish their ends. They have various emotions, and their 

 will is not purely instinctive, but offers individual plastic 

 modifications adapted to circumstances." 



Forel's words apply aptly to the behavior of these crea- 

 tures as we viewed them in sunny fields for four years. 

 Hence, why should we apologize for the use of terms which 

 seem anthropomorphic? Why spend the sunny summer 

 days in green fields where Nature places no boundaries to 

 her wonders, unless it be the limits of her other creatures 

 already existing, and then withdraw to some far-away 

 study to coin a new terminology with which to try to com- 

 pass the actions of these organisms, branding them as au- 

 tomata, reflex machines and what not? We surely cannot 

 see the manifestations of the inner nature of these creatures 

 and think of them as automatic machines any more than we 

 can look at the statue of The Thinker and characterize 

 Rodin with Bethe terminology. 5 With Clifford, Huxley and 



4 Loc. cit, p. 274. 



5 "To be consistent, one must recognize that, since each man has only 

 his subjective knowledge of himself one must- disallow every 'anthro- 



