|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: repeated in the case of each grain, would make the action of the
spinnerets too irksome. She also refuses to do so when, for
reasons which I have not fathomed, the site chosen is some way up
in the tuft of rosemary. But, when the nest touches the ground,
the clay rampart is never missing.
Are we to see in this fact proof of an instinct capable of
modification, either making for decadence and gradually neglecting
what was the ancestors' safeguard, or making for progress and
advancing, hesitatingly, towards perfection in the mason's art? No
inference is permissible in either direction. The Labyrinth Spider
has simply taught us that instinct possesses resources which are
The Life of the Spider |
