vi INSTINCT 99 



do with Nature's purposes. Her plans are not his. Yet 

 he has plans and purposes of his own, none the less intelli- 

 gent because they do not wholly fit in with what Nature, 

 with the approval of the evolutionist, has planned for him. 

 The relation is rather that our personified Nature has a 

 plan into which she inveigles the youth. He never sees 

 more than the next step, but the plan is so cunningly con- 

 trived that, as he takes that step, the next again comes 

 into view, and he feels himself attracted or, it may be, 

 driven towards it. So it is also with the solitary wasp. 

 We cannot, for reasons given, attribute to her true under- 

 standing of her performances as the evolutionist understands 

 them, but we must think of her as led on by her impulses 

 and the stimulus of outer things, to dig a hole, to catch and 

 sting caterpillars and spiders, to drag them to her hole, to 

 store it, lay her egg, seal it up, depart and begin 

 anew. Each stage, we may think, is to her as attractive 

 or inevitable as the course of courtship and marriage to 

 the youth. 



10. The difference would seem to be this. A well 

 developed instinct determines a long course of action. 

 The more it becomes suffused with intelligence, the 

 greater the proportion of the whole course which may be 

 grasped as a conscious purpose. In " pure " instinct, each 

 stage by passing brings on the next, and the instinct must 

 run through its course by a prescribed series of stages or 

 not at all. 1 It cannot, outside narrow limits, adopt 

 alternatives. Intelligence, on the other hand, grasping the 

 ultimate aim, is indifferent as to the method by which it is 

 reached. Thus as intelligence rises, the fixed processes of 

 instinct dissolve. But intelligence does not spring into/ 

 being fully armed from the head of Zeus. It is born 

 within the sphere of instinct, and at first grasps only a 

 little bit of what instinct prompts. It apprehends, say, 

 the next stage, and, ordinary means failing, guides some 

 special effort to reach that stage, the next stage, not the 

 ultimate end, being the purpose understood and realised by 

 the animal. It is easy to see how from this point it may 

 develop, taking remoter stages or ends into account, until 



1 This is to be read with the qualifications given above as distinguishing 

 pure instinct from the compound reflex. 



H 2 



