There is a principle which I will call the individualism of species. Each specie is an individual which profits as best it may, for its useful ends, by the instruments which have devolved to it. A specie of hymenoptera feels itself obliged to protect its eggs from new enemies, by digging holes in the ground; it makes use of the tools which it has, without taking count of the fact that these tools have not been made for excavation; it acts thus at pressure of necessity, as man climbs trees in a flood, or gets onto the roof in case of fire. The need is independent of the organ; it precedes it, and does not always create it. In the sexual act, need commands the gesture: the animal adapts itself to positions which are strange to it, and very difficult. Coupling is nearly always a grimace. One would say that nature has set the male organ here, and the female there, and left to specific ingenuity the care of effecting the junction. It is, I think, permitted us to conclude from the mediocre fitness of animals to milieu, and of organs to acts, that it is not the milieu which absolutely fashions, or the organs which absolutely govern, the acts. One then feels oneself inclined to reaccept Bonald's definition of man, and even to find it admirable, just, and strict: An intelligence served by organs. Not "obeyed," not always, but served, service implying imperfection, a discord between the order and its fulfillment. But the phrase applies not to man only, and its spiritualistic origin in no way diminishes its aphoristic value; it qualifies every animal. The animal is a nervous centre, served by the different tools in which its branches terminate. It commands, and the tools, good or bad ones, obey. If they were incapable of performing their work, at least the essential parts of it, the animal would perish. There are forms of parasitism which seem to be the consequence of a general renunciation of organs; impotent to enter into direct relations with the outer world, unmanned by the softness of the muscles, the nervous system brings the skiff it was piloting into some harbour or other, and beaches it.