Note 5 — Chapter V · ABERRATIONS OF INSTINCT

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 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 Darwin5 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.