INSTINCT AND CONSCIOUSNESS OF FINALITY. 35 



in its second stage honey and only honey is to be taken 

 as nourishment, though precisely this same honey 

 would have caused its death in the first stage? Does 

 it know it perhaps from experience? But only once 

 in its life does our larva undertake this journey 

 through the air, only once does it feed on the bee's 

 egg, only once on the honey of the cell. Moreover 

 any attempt at experiments would have resulted in 

 death. Therefore, Sitaris does not know from its own 

 experience, how and where it has to provide for its 

 development. Nor is it less ridiculous to assume that 

 a very good memory aided our larva in finding its 

 proper food. That would indeed be a unique memory 

 which remembers facts that have never been exper- 

 ienced. But somebody else, perhaps a careful mother, 

 might have given her darling definite instructions as 

 to the future before it departed from home. Indeed, an 

 idyllic idea! It is too bad that professor Sitaris had to 

 die before even one of her disciples could leave the egg. 

 Therefore, we must either suspect with the elder Ag- 

 assiz that instinct is a faculty of a much higher kind 

 that the intellect of man, or take refuge in the ridicu- 

 lous caricatures of Brehm's intelligent dolls, which pre- 

 vious to any experience excogitate by aprioristic reason- 

 ing the actions most appropiate for their future life. 

 But as these suppositions are evidently absurd, we must 

 necessarily assume that Sitaris performs these instinct- 

 ive actions without any knowledge or consciousness 

 of their purpose; for a purpose which cannot be appre- 

 hended is not apprehended de facto. The same con- 

 clusion is forced upon us by the action of the Rhyn- 

 chites betulae in cutting a curve into the leaf of a 



