At Home with Wild Nature 



disgust. I mention this not to the Frenchman's dis- 

 credit or my own glorification, but just to show that if 

 it is possible for two men, both keen lovers of Nature 

 and lifelong students of the habits and activities of all 

 the living things around them, to be so widely 

 separated in mental attitude, through different kinds of 

 training, towards the same simple fact, what a mighty 

 gulf there must of necessity be fixed between intelligence 

 and intelligence in both man and beast. 



Fabre, although a vehement anti-evolutionist setting 

 his face like flint against even the most elementary 

 powers of reasoning in the animal kingdom, makes a 

 curious and much more extravagant claim for moral 

 perception in an insect. He writes : " While a mason 

 bee is absent it is not unusual for some homeless vaga- 

 bond to visit the nest, take a liking to it, and set to 

 work sometimes at the same cell. When the first 

 occupant returns she does not fail to drive away the 

 intruder, who always ends by getting the worst of it, so 

 lively and invincible is the real owner's sense of 

 property. Reversing the savage Prussian maxim, 

 6 strength before right,' here right comes before 

 might; otherwise the constant retreat of the intruder 

 would be quite inexplicable, since the latter's strength 

 is in no way inferior to that of the real owner. If she 

 has less audacity it must come from not feeling braced 

 by the sovereign strength of being right, which decides 

 among equals even in the brute creation." 



Applying this doctrine of physical invincibility 

 gained from moral rights to higher forms of life reminds 



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