Chap. XV.J IMAGINATION AND VOLITION. 237 



diversified by other promptings. Intluenced by an * im- 

 pulse,' or 'desire' for food, impressions of Smell and 

 Sight doubtless guide the animal to the plants on which it 

 is accustomed to feed, and whose leaves it devours with 

 that accompaniment of Feeling, definite or indefinite, 

 which may pertain to its rudimentary nervous actions. 



(2.) We might expect to find that, — The lower the de- 

 velopment of the Brain in those organisms which perform 

 any of the more Complex Instinctive Actions, the less fre- 

 quently would anything like Reason appear to intervene in 

 their accidental relations with unfamiliar phenomena out- 

 side the range of their ordinary instinctive experiences. 



In order to test the correctness of this inference, it 

 seems desirable to study pretty closely some of the recorded 

 acts of those Social Insects of which we know most, and 

 whose instincts are so remarkable — such as Bees, Wasps, 

 and Ants. We may thus be able to arrive at some con- 

 clusion as to the extent to which, what is ordinarily 

 termed * Reason,' seems to influence tiieir actions. For- 

 tunately, we have available the records of numerous ex- 

 perimental observations recently made by Sir John Lub- 

 bock,* and conducted with all the care that could be 

 desired, in regard to the reputed high intelligence of these 

 very animals. They, or, at all events. Bees and Ants, have 

 long been the special favourites of naturalists, many of 

 whom have not hesitated to put the most liberal construc- 

 tions upon the acts and demeanour of their insect friends. 

 There has been, unquestionably, a tendency to look at 

 these acts from a much too exclusively human point of 

 view. 



This being so, it was all the more necessary that some 



* " Journ. of Linn. Soc. (Zool,)," vols, xii., xiii., and xiv. 



