THE NATURAL 



ever is it possible to find the least logical concordance 

 between the insect's stumps and the need of modelling 

 and turning to which nature condemns it. 



This scarab is a type to which one can relate a great 

 number of other examples: purveyor hymenoptera are 

 wholly deprived of tools adapted to their work as quarry- 

 men and well-diggers: thus, at the end of their labours 

 the greater part of these fragile insects are very much 

 damaged. One knows the beaver's constructions, but 

 who without the certitude we have gained by observation, 

 would have dared to attribute them to these great rats? 



Eighteenth century philosophers set themselves the 

 question: Is man man because he has hands; or has he 

 hands because he is man? One may answer boldly, that 

 man's hands marvellous as they appear to us, add almost 

 nothing to his intelligence. One does not see that they 

 are indispensable for anything save for playing the piano. 

 What constitutes man is his intelligence, his nervous 

 system. The exterior organ is secondary: no matter what 

 exterior organ, beak, prehensile tail, teeth, proboscis, 

 paws would have done the work of the hands. There are 

 birds' nests which no manual cleverness could weave. 



The reproductive organs are no better adapted to their 

 purpose than are the working organs. Doubtless they 

 attain very often their end, but at the cost of efforts 

 which a better disposition would have attenuated or elim- 

 inated altogether. The interior mechanism is, or seems, 

 marvellous; the external mechanism is rudimentary and 

 gives no result, save, as they say, thanks to the ever- 

 renewed ingenuity of the couples. Instinct, in one of 

 its most necessary acts, is often put to difficult proof. 

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