GENERAL HISTORY OF BEES. 
55 
In speaking of the antennas and palpi, I have called 
them sensiferous organs. The organ necessarily implies 
the perception, or whatever it may be, conveyed to the 
sensorium through its means, this being the receptacle 
of the sensation or idea, the external organ communi¬ 
cates. It is thus that activity is given to a power of 
discrimination, and consequently of election or rejection 
by the creature. This sensorium, in the higher animals, 
is the brain; and in the lower, where the nervous system 
is very differently constituted, a ganglion, or knot of 
nervous substance. That this brain, or ganglion, is the 
power exercising the control, may not be admitted, 
although it is there that our research compulsively ter¬ 
minates. The power itself is essentially spiritual, acting 
through a material agent, and may be an efflux of this 
nervous mass. Whether it cease with the death of the 
organ, we have no means of knowing. That it may be 
in some way analogous in nature to the human mind, 
but to a limited extent, there is reason to surmise. This 
power, in its collective capacity, is called Instinct. 
This instinct is a faculty whose clear comprehension and 
lucid definition seem impossible to our understanding. 
Its attributes are very various, and its operations are 
always all but perfect. It is an almost unerring guide 
to the creature exercising it, and is as fully developed 
on its awakening as is, and with it, the imago upon its 
transformation. 
Although observation has thought to have detected 
that experience sometimes uses a selection of means, and 
thus occasionally modifies the rigid exercise of the faculty, 
by adapting itself to the force of circumstances, it, when 
so, evidently assumes a higher character than has been 
willingly accorded to it. This instinct teaches the just 
