THE BEETLE'S VIEW OF LIFE. 241 



same, the product is as unlike as the letters of the 

 alphabet are to the " Iliad " or " Paradise Lost." The 

 elements of human thought are there, but the organ- 

 ising and co-ordinating power is wanting. 



If you were to cut open the beetle's head, you 

 would find in it a small knot or lump of nervous 

 matter, roughly answering to our own brains. To 

 this lump the various sense-organs send up bundles 

 of nerves ; and in it the impressions derived from the 

 different senses are compared and arranged, so as to 

 produce the common impulse upon which the beetle 

 acts. But the size of this nervous knot is vastly 

 smaller in proportion to the insect than the human 

 brain is to the body of a man. Our brain consists of 

 numberless cells, arranged and united in definite 

 subordination to one another, and so disposed that 

 every parfc of our nervous mechanism can be brought 

 into relation with every other ; while in many cases 

 we are not concerned in our mental operations with 

 actual sense-impressions at all, or even with memories 

 of such impressions combined into the shape of ideal 

 objects, but with wholly abstract conceptions, elabo- 

 rated out of them by the action of the brain itself in 

 its higher parts. The beetle, however, can do nothing 

 analogous to this. Its mental life is wholly made up 

 of direct impressions and actions immediately depen- 

 dent upon them. Memories it doubtless possesses in 

 a slight degree, especially in the form of mere 

 recognitions; but it is not probable that it can 

 think of an object in its absence, or 'voluntarily 



K- 



