PERSONALITY IN BIRDS 229 



work with a contradiction, as it seems to our way of 

 interpretation. No human mind, having planned 

 the Robin bold, hardy, independent, would have 

 thought to add a song that should be the opposite 

 of all these. Yet the song of the Robin is of a 

 wistful tenderness beyond the singing of any bird ; 

 a voice of undemonstrative regret, as it were, for 

 things long past and over. Among other songs 

 only that of the Willow-wren has a touch of this 

 quality. After that, it is heard again, but as in a 

 greater distance, in the melancholy cries of some of 

 the Waders ; for in these there is something wilder, 

 more detached, and seemingly of universal, rather 

 than of human, application. 



I know how easily it may be objected that the 

 reading of the song of a bird (as of many other 

 things) is founded but on seeming ; having, likely 

 enough, no substantial basis in the song itself, or in 

 the mood prompting it. The reproach, however, is 

 double-edged, cutting on the one hand against the 

 exclusive of science, and on the other against the 

 exclusive of art. The one claims as his province the 

 knowledge of the world as it is ; the other the use of 

 the world whether as it is or as it seems to be. The 

 progress of science being slow, the imagination, not 

 less the servant of man's emotions than of his reason, 

 casts about to express and satisfy the present demand 

 of the former. For, quantitatively, a man's life is 

 incomparably more of the emotions than of the 

 intellect, He may \\vefor the latter, but he lives in 

 the former. And the way of the intellect is a long 

 way, and its one goal truth, hard of attainment. 

 But the life of a man is short, and the emotion of 



