210 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 



booty available. The observer once made, as is 

 well known, a closed circuit of procession-cater- 

 pillars on the rim of a palm-vase in his garden, and 

 round this on a silken trail the creatures continued 

 crawling in futile circumambulation for seven times 

 twenty-four hours, working round and round three 

 hundred and thirty-five times and covering a 

 distance of a good bit over a quarter of a mile. This 

 and a score of similar cases illustrate what Fabre 

 calls " the abysmal stupidity " of insects whenever 

 the least accident occurs. We should rather say 

 the tyranny of instinctive impulse in artificial or 

 quite unusual circumstances. !< The caterpillars 

 in distress, starved, shelterless, chilled with cold at 

 night, cling obstinately to the silk ribbon covered 

 hundreds of times, because they lack the rudi- 

 mentary glimmers of reason which would advise 

 them to abandon it." We should rather say 

 because the hand of the past in the form of a routine 

 of response enregistered in the nervous system was 

 too strong to allow of any initiative in the present. 

 To what theory do these interesting facts point? 

 It seems to us that Bergson was right in insisting 

 that instinctive behavior is on a different evolu- 

 tionary tack from intelligent behavior. The latter 

 is inferential and reflective; the former is impulsive 

 and intuitive. Intelligence implies an appreciation 

 of relations; instinct implies an appreciation of a 

 particular configuration of circumstances. In- 

 telligence is as much made as born; instinctive 

 capacity is much more inborn than made. In the 



