PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



interesting these osmies, extremely active solitary bees; 

 one sees them having exhausted their ovaries, but not 

 their muscular force, building extra nests, provisioning 

 them with honey, without having laid a single egg in 

 them ; they will even make and close them without honey, 

 if they do not find more flowers, thus showing a real crazi- 

 ness for work, an authentic mania analogous to that 

 which moves man to move pebbles, to smoke, to drink 

 rather than remain immobile. 1 If the osmie lived longer, 

 she might perhaps invent some game which, vain at the 

 start, would end by becoming both a need and a benefit 

 to the whole species. 



The theory which makes instinct a partial crystallization 

 of intelligence is extremely seductive: I dare say we will 

 have to accept it as true. Yet the contemplation of the 

 insect world raises an enormous objection. In the course 

 of his wonderful memoirs Fabre has formulated it ten 

 times and with always fresh ingenuity. Here is the insect, 

 nearly always born adult, and after the death of her 

 parents, she has received from them neither direct educa- 

 tion nor education by example, as do the young of birds 

 or mammals. A hen teaches her chick to scratch for 

 worms (it is true that she does not teach her ducklings 

 to dabble in puddles, and they are her despair, to our 

 amusement), an osmie can teach its young nothing. Yet 

 now osmies do exactly what their ancients have done. 

 The insect opens its shell, brushes its antennae, performs 

 its toilet, opens its wings, flies off for life, moves without 



1 Compare this with the valuable remarks of a gamekeeper, 

 "One must know the habits of animals, even their manias, for 

 they have them, just as we do." Figaro, 31, Aug. 1903. 

 191 



