It would be easy for me, if my argument were not already quite clear, to give a host of similar examples showing plainly that the intelligence of the insect is absolutely deficient in rational discernment, even when the great perfection of the work would seem to allow the artisan a certain perspicacity. [[128]]We will confine ourselves for the moment to the three cases which I have mentioned. The Pelopæus goes on storing Spiders for an egg that has been removed; she perseveres in making hunting-trips that are henceforth useless; she hoards victuals that are destined to nourish nothing; she multiplies her battues to fill with game a larder which is forthwith emptied by my tweezers; lastly, she closes, with every customary care, a cell that no longer contains anything whatever: she sets her seal on emptiness. She does even absurder things: she plasters the site of her vanished nest, covering an imaginary structure and putting a roof to a house which at the moment is tucked away in my pocket. In the case of the Great Peacock, the caterpillar, despite the certain loss of the coming Moth, instead of beginning all over again the mouth of the Eel-pot cut down by my scissors, quietly continues its spinning, without in any way modifying the regular course of the work; and, when the time comes for making the last tiers of defensive filaments, it erects them upon the dangerous breach, but neglects to rebuild the ruined portion of the barricade. Indifferent to the indispensable, it occupies itself with the superfluous. [[129]]
What are we to conclude from these facts? I would fain believe, for the sake of my insects’ reputation, in some distraction on their part, in some individual giddiness which would not taint the general perspicacity; I should like to regard their aberrations merely as isolated and exceptional actions, which would not affect their judgment as a whole. Alas, a long series of glaring facts would impose silence on my attempts at rehabilitation! Any species, no matter which, when subjected to experimental tests, is guilty of similar inconsistencies in the course of its disturbed industry. Constrained by the inexorable logic of the facts, I therefore state the deductions suggested by observation as follows: the insect is neither free nor conscious in its industry, which in its case is an external function with phases regulated almost as strictly as the phases of an internal function, such as digestion. It builds, weaves, hunts, stabs and paralyses, even as it digests, even as it secretes the poison of its sting, the silk of its cocoon or the wax of its combs, always without the least understanding of the means or the end. It is ignorant of its wonderful talents just as the stomach is ignorant of its skilful chemistry. [[130]]It can add nothing essential to them nor subtract anything from them, any more than it is able to increase or diminish the pulsations of its dorsal vessel.
Test it with an accident and you affect it not at all: such as it is in the undisturbed exercise of its calling, such it will remain should circumstances arise demanding some modification in the conduct of its task. Experience does not teach it; time does not awaken a glimmer in the darkness of its unconsciousness. Its art, perfect in its speciality, but inept in the face of the slightest new difficulty, is handed down immutably, as the art of the suction-pump is handed down to the babe at the breast. To expect the insect to alter the essential points of its industry is to hope that the babe will change its manner of sucking. Both equally ignorant of what they are doing, they persevere in the method prescribed for the safeguarding of the species, precisely because their ignorance forbids them to make any sort of essay or attempt.
The insect, then, lacks the aptitude for reflection, the aptitude that harks back and reverts to the antecedent, without which the consequent would lose all its value. In the phases of its industry, each action accomplished [[131]]counts as valid by the mere fact that it has been accomplished; the insect does not go back to it, should some accident demand; the consequent follows without troubling about the missing antecedent. A blind impulse urges it from one act to a second, from this second to a third and so on until the task is completed; but it is impossible for the insect to reascend the current of its activity should accidental conditions arise and call for this, however imperatively. Having passed through the complete cycle, the work is considered to be most logically performed by a worker devoid of all logic.
The stimulus to labour is the bait of pleasure, that chief motive-power in the animal. The mother has no foreknowledge whatever of her future larva; she does not build, does not hunt, does not hoard with the conscious aim of rearing a family. The real object of her work is hidden from her; the accessory but exciting aim, the pleasure experienced, is her only guide. The Pelopæus feels a keen satisfaction when she crams a cell full with Spiders; and she goes on hunting with imperturbable spirit after the removal of the egg from the cell has made provisions useless. She delights in [[132]]plastering the outside of her nest with mud and she continues to putty the site of her nest, after it has been detached from the wall, without suspecting the futility of her stucco. And so with the others. To reproach them for their aberrations we must assume that they possess a tiny glimmer of reason, as Darwin[5] would have us believe; if they have it not, the reproach falls to the ground and their aberrant acts are the inevitable result of an unconsciousness diverted from its normal paths. [[133]]
[1] Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Abbé de Mureaux (1715–1780), the leading exponent of sensual philosophy. His most important work is a Traité des sensations, in which he imagines a statue organized like a man and endows it with the senses one by one, beginning with that of smell. He argues by a process of imaginative reconstruction that all human faculties and all human knowledge are merely transformed sensations, to the exclusion of any other principle; in short, that everything has its source in sensation: man is nothing but what he has acquired.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] The order of insects consisting of the Butterflies and Moths.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[3] Cf. The Life of the Caterpillar, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. xi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[4] Bombyx mori, the Moth of the Silkworm.—Translator’s Note. [↑]