Advanced Theories 



ciple actuating men and animals, was walking 

 one day in his garden when he saw on the 

 path a Sphex who had just possessed herself 

 of a Fly almost as large as herself. He saw 

 her cut off the victim's head and abdomen 

 with her mandibles, keeping only the thorax, 

 to which the wings remained attached, after 

 which she flew away; but a breath of wind, 

 striking the Fly's wings, made the Sphex spin 

 round and prevented her progress; hereupon 

 she alighted again on the path, cut off one of 

 the Fly's wings and then the other and, after 

 thus destroying the cause of her difficulties, 

 resumed her flight with what remained of her 

 prey. This fact carries with it manifest signs 

 of reasoning-power. Instinct might have led 

 this Sphex to cut off her victim's wings before 

 carrying it to her nest, as do some species of 

 the same genus; but here there was a sequence 

 of ideas and results from those ideas, which 

 are quite inexplicable unless we allow the in- 

 tervention of reason." 



This little story, which so lightly grants 

 reason to an insect, lacks I will not say truth, 

 but even mere likelihood, not in the act itself, 

 which I accept without reserve, but in the 

 motives for the act. Darwin saw what he 

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