The Wasp acts with a precision of which science would be jealous; she knows what man hardly ever knows; she understands the complex nervous system of her victim.... I say, she knows and understands; I ought to say, she acts as though she knew and understood. Her act is all inspiration. The insect, without having any conception of what it is doing, obeys the instinct that impels it. But whence comes this sublime inspiration?... For me and my friend, this was and has remained one of the most eloquent revelations of the ineffable logic that rules the world and guides the unconscious by the laws of its inspiration. Moved to the depths by this flash of truth, we felt, forming upon our eyelids, tears of indefinable emotion. [186] The more he sees, the more he reflects, the more radiantly clear does the meaning of these facts appear to him: Can the insect have acquired its skill gradually, from generation to generation, by a long series of casual experiments, of blind gropings? Can such order be born of chaos; such foresight of hazard; such wisdom of stupidity? Is the world subject to the fatalities of evolution, from the first albuminous atom which coagulated into a cell, or is it ruled by an Intelligence? The more I see and the more I observe, the more does this Intelligence shine behind the mystery of things. I know that I shall not fail to be treated as an abominable “final causer.” Little do I care! A sure sign of being right in the future is to be out of fashion in the present. A long time ago [says a contemporary apologist], I was discussing matters with an astronomer who was possessed of knowledge, a certain penetration and a certain courage. He pushed this penetration and this courage to the length of declaring, before the Academy of Sciences, that the laws of nature form a harmony and reveal a plan. I had an opportunity of congratulating him, and he was good enough to express his satisfaction. I profited by this to suggest that he was doubtless ready to develop his conclusions yet further, and that since he recognised the existence of a plan he admitted, at the origin of things, a Mind: in short, an intelligent Being. Suddenly my astronomer turned up his nose, without offering me any argument capable of any sort of analysis. In vain did I explain that to deduce the existence of an intelligent Being because one has discovered the existence of a plan is, after all, to continue the train of reasoning which deduces the existence of a plan after observing that there is a system of laws. In vain I pointed out that I was merely making use of his own argument. My astronomer refused to go any further along the path upon which he had entered. There he would have met God, and that was what he was unwilling to do. [187]