remarkable reflection, sagacity, and intelligence in
co-ordinating their actions in the presence of an event to which they
are not accustomed, and in attaining an end which has presented itself
by accident. Such are, for example, the arrangements which they make
to defend their honey against the attacks of a great nocturnal Moth,
the Death's Head. I shall have to revert to these facts.

We must not then regard instinct, as has often been done, as a
rudiment of intelligence, susceptible or not of development; but much
rather as a series of intelligent acts at first reasoned, then by
their frequent repetition become habitual, reflex, and at last, by
heredity, instinctive.

What the individual loses in individuality and in personal initiative,
heredity restores to him in the form of instinct which is, as it were,
the condensed and accumulated intelligence of his ancestors. He
himself no longer needs to take thought either to preserve his life or
to assure the perpetuation of his race. The qualities which he
received at birth render reflection less necessary; thus species
endowed with some powerful instinct seem not to be intelligent when
they live sheltered from unforeseen events.

From one point of view instinct appears to be a degradation rather
than a perfecting of intelligence, because the acts which proceed from
it are neither so spontaneous nor so personal; but from another point
of view they are much better executed, with less hesitation, with a
slighter expenditure of cerebral force and a minimum of muscular
effort. A habitual act costs us much less to execute than a deliberate
and reflective act. It is thus that the constructions of bees are more
perfect than those of ants; the former act by instinct, the latter
reason their acts at each step.

_Instinctive actions originate in reflective actions._--No doubt it
may be said: It is a pure hypothesis thus to consider instinct as
derived from intelligence; why not admit as well that instinctive acts
have been such from the beginning--in other words, that species have
been created such as we see them to-day? The preceding explanation,
however, has the advantage of being in harmony with the general theory
of evolution, which, whether true or not, so well explains the most
complicated facts that for the present it must be accepted. For the
rest, if it is not possible to appraise the psychic faculties
possessed by the ancestors of existing animals we may at least obse