The Swarm Spirit 



but when by great ingenuity you do at last 

 make a trap so very simple that it seems any 

 creature with legs must walk out by the open 

 door, perhaps one bee in five will do the trick; 

 while the other four wait patiently until they die 

 for more simplicity. 



Again, while your eye often sees unity of action 

 among the wild creatures, neither your reading nor 

 your own reason will ever reveal a scrap of positive 

 evidence that there is in nature any such con- 

 venient thing (humanly convenient, that is, for 

 explanations) as a swarm or flock instinct ; though, 

 like the mythical struggle for existence, we are 

 forever hearing about it or building theories upon 

 it. So far as we know anything about instinct, 

 it is neither collective nor incorporeal. It is, to 

 use the definition of Mark Hopkins, which is as 

 good as another and beautifully memorable, "a 

 propensity prior to experience and independent 

 of instruction/' And the only needful addition to 

 this high-sounding definition is, that it is a "pro- 

 pensity" lodged in an individual, every time. It 

 is not and cannot be lodged in a swarm or a hive ; 

 you must either put it into each of two bees or else 

 put it between them, leaving them both untouched. 

 In other words, the swarm instinct has logically no 

 abiding-place and no reality; it is a castle in the 

 air with no solid foundation to rest on. 



[121] 



