The Mason-Wasps 



used to cause me some anxiety; my plug 

 of cotton-wool left behind it, on the wall 

 against which it rubbed, a smear of honey 

 whose smell might deceive the insect by con- 

 cealing the absence of the victuals. The 

 coarser sense of touch was dumb while the 

 finer sense of smell continued to speak. In 

 the case of the famous statue of which Con- 

 dillac * tells us, the sole stimulant of men- 

 tal activity was the scent of a rose. The 

 insect's intelligence is certainly very dif- 

 ferently equipped; nevertheless we may ask 

 ourselves whether, in a Bee, the scent of the 

 honey would not be so far predominant as 

 to cheat other impressions. This, at all 

 events, would explain the laying of the egg 

 in a cell containing no provisions, but still 

 full of their good smell; it would explain 

 the scrupulous sealing of the cell in which 

 the larva is doomed to die of starvation. 

 To avoid those foolish objections, the 



1 fitienne Bonnot de Condillac, Abbe de Mureaux (1715- 

 1780), the leading exponent of sensual philosophy. His 

 most important work is a Traite des sensations, in which 

 he imagines a statue organized like a man and endows 

 it with the senses one by one, beginning with that of 

 smell. He argues by a process of imaginative recon- 

 struction that all human faculties and all human know- 

 ledge are merely transformed sensations, to the exclusion 

 of any other principle; in short, that everything has its 

 source in sensation: man is nothing but what he has 

 acquired. Translator's Note. 

 112 



