66 " Natural Selection " 



to complete the future couple and ensure offspring. 

 Therefore within a few hours a second sting must be 

 given as successful as the first. The sand- wasp does 

 not know, does not suspect, that she inserted a sting 

 opposite a nerve centre rather than anywhere else. 

 As there was nothing that led her to choose, she acted 

 at random. Nevertheless, if we are to take the theory of 

 instinct seriously, we shall have to admit that this 

 fortuitous action, though a matter of indifference to 

 the animal, left a lasting trace, and made so great an 

 impression that, henceforth, the wily stratagem, 

 which produces paralysis by injuring the nerve centres, 

 is transmissible by heredity. The sand-wasp' s successor, 

 by some prodigious privilege, will inherit what the 

 mother did not possess. 



"If on her side the wasp excels in her art, it is 

 because she is born to follow it, because she is endowed 

 not only with tools, but also with the knack of using 

 them. And this gift is primal, perfect from the outset ; 

 the past has added nothing to it, the future will add- 

 nothing to it. As it was, so it is, and will be. If you 

 see in it naught but an acquired habit, which heredity 

 hands down and improves, then at least explain to us 

 why man, who represents the highest stage in the evolution 

 of your primitive plasms, is deprived of the like privilege. 

 A paltry insect bequeaths its skill to its offspring and 

 man does not. What an immense advantage it would 

 be to humanity if we who belong to it were less liable 

 to see the worker succeeded by the idler, the man of 

 talent by the idiot ! And why has not the protoplasm, 

 evolving by its own energy from one being into another, 

 kept also for us a little of that wonderful power which 

 it has bestowed so lavishly upon the insect ? The answer 

 is that apparently in this world cellular evolution is 

 not everything. 



" For these reasons among others, I reject the modern 



