THE VOICE OF THE DESERT 



90 



kind but the reflexes established by chance are what pro- 

 duce the greatest wonders and those "evidences of design" 

 which seem, at first sight, so convincing. 



This makes a strong case against the simple assumption 

 that purpose in the universe at large or intelligent plan- 

 ning in an individual animal species furnishes a sufficient 

 explanation for what has happened in the course of evolu- 

 tion. Probably most of the mechanisms which science has 

 so painstakingly explored really have operated effectively. 

 But does this really demonstrate that something besides 

 mechanism, say merely some very dim awareness and pur- 

 pose, has never, to return to the word chosen a moment 

 ago, "intervened" to tip the balance in one direction or 

 another, to make the successful working out of some such 

 arrangement as that of the moth with the yucca easier to 

 understand than it is on the basis of a purely mechanical 

 process? And are there not, after all, some observable 

 phenomena which hint at powers present in even a modem 

 insect which make such intervention not unthinkable? 



We must grant that the insects as we know them today 

 really do seem to come close to being those mere mecha- 

 nisms which Descartes and the Cartesians insisted that all 

 animals really are. Perhaps nobody — ^not even the most ex- 

 treme mechanist — would today maintain, as Descartes did, 

 that when a dog howls with pain he only seems to be suf- 

 fering because he merely "operates like a watch by springs" 

 and cannot feel anything; or that, as one of Descartes' 

 disciples put it, all animals "eat without pleasure, they cry 

 without pain, they grow without knowing it; they desire 

 nothing, they fear nothing, they know nothing." But much 

 of the time many insects really do seem to be almost purely 

 mechanical. 



