actions without entitling us in the least to attribute these to the
dictates of reason.

What would happen in an emergency? Here we must distinguish carefully
between two classes of emergency, or we shall be liable to grievous
error. First, in accidents occurring in the course of the insect's
occupation at the moment. In these circumstances, the creature is
capable of remedying the accident; it continues, under a similar form,
its actual task; it remains, in short; in the same psychic condition.
In the second case, the accident is connected with a more remote
occupation; it relates to a completed task with which, under normal
conditions, the insect is no longer concerned. To meet this emergency,
the creature would have to retrace its psychic course; it would have
to do all over again what it has just finished, before turning its
attention to anything else. Is the insect capable of this? Will it be
able to leave the present and return to the past? Will it decide to
hark back to a task that is much more pressing than the one on which
it was engaged? If it did all this, then we should really have
evidence of a modicum of reason. The question shall be settled by
experiment.

We will begin by taking a few incidents that come under the first
heading. A Mason-bee has finished the initial layer of the covering of
the cell. She has gone in search of a second pellet of mortar
wherewith to strengthen her work. In her absence, I prick the lid with
a needle and widen the hole thus made, until it is half the size of
the opening. The insect returns and repairs the damage. It was
originally engaged on the lid and is merely continuing its work in
mending that lid.