THE UNSEEN GOAL 271 
sion of possible intruders; and so on. It is no 
simple performance but a whole bag of tricks. The 
sequence is quite intelligible to us who see the end; 
but has the succession of events—often requiring 
toil and trouble—any significance to the performers? 
If it has no significance, how then did it evolve 
and why is it persisted in? If it has significance, 
how is that gained if the performers do not see the 
result of their labors? 
Some of those who have thought over this prob- 
lem have pointed to men who spend themselves 
in working towards achievements which cannot be 
realized in their day and generation. But the 
analogy does not help us, for the cathedral of 
Burgos, or the great afforestation, or the Chinese 
Encyclopedia is completed as an ideal in the minds 
of the human workers and is built up of elements 
previously actualized in experience. But the digger- 
wasps have had no experience bearing upon off- 
spring. It is said that beavers sometimes dig a 
short-cut canal right through a large island amid- 
stream, thus lessening the distance for transporting 
“logs,” and such a task must engage the energies 
of the workers for a long time before there is any 
reward. For the canal does not justify itself until 
it is open at both ends. But such a case is not 
enigmatical like that of our insects, since making the 
island-canal is but an interesting extension of the 
kind of labor that finds immediate justification 
in the everyday life of the beaver. 
Part of the answer to the riddle is to be found 
