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" Natural Selection 



and the moral world, everything derives from the 

 original cell by means of its own energies. Instinct, 

 roused by a chance action that has proved favourable 

 to the animal, is an acquired habit ; and on this basis 

 they argue, invoking atavism, the struggle for life, the 

 survival of the fittest. / see plenty of big words, but I 

 should prefer a few small facts. These little facts I have 

 been collecting and catechising for nearly forty years, 

 and their replies are not exactly in favour of current 

 theories. You tell me that instinct is an acquired 

 habit, that a casual circumstance (chance), propitious 

 to the animals' offspring, was the first to prompt it. 

 Well, I avow in all sincerity that this is asking a little 

 too much of chance. When the difficulty becomes too 

 pressing, you take refuge behind the mist of the ages, 

 you retreat into the shadows of the past as far as 

 fancy can carry you. You call upon Time, the factor 

 of which we have so little at our disposal, and which 

 for that very reason is so well suited to hide our 

 whimsey. Then how did the series of nine stings (the 

 sand-wasp's) at nine selected points emerge from the 

 urn of chance ? When I am driven to appeals to 

 infinity in time, I am very much afraid of running up 

 against absurdity. But, you say, there was a weeding- 

 out through natural selection, and instinct, as we 

 know it, developed gradually, thanks to the accumula- 

 tion of individual capacities added to those handed 

 down by heredity. The argument is erroneous ; 

 instinct handed down by degrees is flagrantly impos- 

 sible — the wasp must excel in it from the start or leave 

 the thing alone. Two conditions are, in fact, absolutely 

 essential : that it should be possible for the insect to 

 drag home and store a quarry which greatly exceeds 

 itself in size and strength ; and that it should be 

 possible for the newly hatched grub to gnaw peacefully 

 in its narrow cell a live and comparatively enormous 



