Translation from Von Hartmann 123 



provision that was left with them. They supply them 

 with more food, and again close the cell. Ants, again, hit 

 always upon exactly the right moment for opening the 

 cocoons in which their larvae are confined and for setting 

 them free, the larva being unable to do this for itself. 

 Yet the life of only a few kinds of insects lasts longer than 

 a single breeding season. What then can they know 

 about the contents of their eggs and the fittest place for 

 their development ? What can they know about the 

 kind of food the larva will want when it leaves the egg — 

 a food so different from their own ? What, again, can 

 they know about the quantity of food that will be necessary ? 

 How much of all this at least can they know consciously ? 

 Yet their actions, the pains they take, and the importance 

 they evidently attach to these matters, prove that they 

 have a foreknowledge of the future : this knowledge 

 therefore can only be an unconscious clairvoyance. For 

 clairvoyance it must certainly be that inspires the will 

 of an animal to open cells and cocoons at the very moment 

 that the larva is either ready for more food or fit for 

 leaving the cocoon. The eggs of the cuckoo do not take 

 only from two to three days to mature in her ovaries, as 

 those of most birds do, but require from eleven to twelve ; 

 the cuckoo, therefore, cannot sit upon her own eggs, 

 for her first egg would be spoiled before the last was laid. 

 She therefore lays in other birds' nests — of course laying 

 each egg in a different nest. But in order that the birds 

 may not perceive her egg to be a stranger and turn it 

 out of the nest, not only does she lay an egg much smaller 

 than might be expected from a bird of her size (for she 

 only finds her opportunity among small birds), but, as 

 already said, she imitates the other eggs in the nest she 

 has selected with surprising accuracy in respect both of 

 colour and marking. As the cuckoo chooses the nest 

 some days beforehand, it may be thought, if the nest is 

 an open one, that the cuckoo looks upon the colour of 

 the eggs within it while her own is in process of maturing 



