" Natural Selection " 67 



theory of instinct. I see in it no more than an in- 

 genious game, in which the observer, the man grappling 

 with reality, fails to find a serious explanation of 

 anything whatsoever that he sees." 



This long extract from the works of the master of 

 instinctive processes was necessary in order to arrest 

 the attention of the reader to the fact that Fabre 

 refuses to be hide-bound by any theory, however 

 great its author may have been or numerous its sup- 

 porters. It is no small matter, indeed, it is of prime 

 importance, that such an observer should pinion the 

 Darwinian fallacy, and hold it up to public view. 

 The belief in natural selection has endured a long 

 time, but the end is in sight. It cannot withstand 

 such onslaughts for a much longer period. The com- 

 plete study of the phenomena of nature is shattering 

 the foundations of the very theory by which the various 

 species of animate life were believed to have their 

 form and being, their instincts and their faculties. 

 We are at last coming to see that the religious concept 

 of the universe rests upon scientific data, while that of 

 the mechanist school is being gradually undermined 

 through the persevering study of those very phenomena 

 on which it was supposed to be established. Strict 

 mechanical sequence of cause and effect no doubt 

 operates in the sphere of inanimate nature, and our 

 mechanist philosophers have endeavoured to extend 

 its sphere over the entire universe. Indeed, Professor 

 Schafer would have us believe that there is no division, 

 that the animate world, even up to the highest 

 intellectual and physical manifestations of humanity, 

 is but a further modification of energy and matter in 

 the inanimate world. Fabre alone, were no other 

 authority to speak, has demonstrated that instinct is 

 something given, which cannot be explained in physico- 

 chemical terms. Similarly, Bergson has shown that 



