Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/28

26 This would account for an almost universal characteristic of instincts, their character of achieving ends without being conscious of the most important consequences of these ends, and ends, too, which must usually be regarded as superior to the wisdom of the lesser realities that live the instinctive interests. Because of his constant discovery of this character in his study of ants, the zoologist Wheeler was led to postulate the presence of the influence of higher spiritual realities upon the lives of these ants, where, he says, they "direct and coordinate their instinctive actions in their adaptive course."

The work of the pronuba moth also, for its comprehension by us, requires us to postulate this character. The pronuba moth, according to the botanist Coulter, instinctively deposits its eggs in a hole which it makes in the ovary of the yucca flower. It then carries pollen and thrusts it into the stigma of the same flower. Without knowing anything about the nature of the food of its young, or of the process of fertilization that goes on in plants, it seems to make use of such knowledge, and in doing so it makes possible the continued existence of both pronuba moths and yucca plants, a result of which it knows nothing and could not seek to achieve on its own initiative. Of countless other examples of similar import we select the case of the pitcher plant. The pitcher plant grows in the forests of India. It has no roots and so cannot assimilate nitrogen from the soil. To secure the nitrogen its continued existence requires certain of its leaves are extended into wonderful pitchers. In these pitchers a liquid which attracts and digests insects is secreted. About its upper edge a number of sharp bristles grow and extend downward from the mouth of the pitcher. Over the top of the pitcher a cover is loosely extended. The bristles, the cover, and the poisonous liquid serve to entrap the insects that are drawn into the pitcher. Thus the plant secures the nitrogen necessary to its existence and achieves thereby an end of which it could of course know nothing. And instinctive acts, generally. while they achieve the interests of the spiritual realities which they constitute, at the same time and in a seemingly arbitrary manner work out the interests of the higher spiritual reality.

REFERENCES.

Bergson, Creative Evolution, pp. 139-40. Coulter, Plant Life and Plant Uses, p. 315. Von Hartmann, The Philosophy of the Unconscious, p. 92, 100fl. Wheeler, Ants, p. 521.