WAYS OF NATURE 



trap, but what the motive is, who shall say ? Would 

 the same mice share their last crumb with their fel 

 low if he were starving ? That, of course, would be 

 a much nearer approach to the human code, and 

 is too much to expect. Bees will clear their fellows 

 of honey, but whether it be to help them, or to save 

 the honey, is a question. 



In my youth I saw a parent weasel seize one of its 

 nearly grown young which I had wounded and carry 

 it across an open barway, in spite of my efforts to 

 hinder it. A friend of mine, who is a careful observer, 

 says he once wounded a shrike so that it fell to the 

 ground, but before he got to it, it recovered itself and 

 flew with difficulty toward some near trees, calling 

 to its mate the while ; the mate came and seemed to 

 get beneath the wounded bird and buoy it up, so 

 aiding it that it gained the top of a tall tree, where 

 my friend left it. But in neither instance can we 

 call this helpfulness entirely disinterested, or pure 

 altruism. 



Emerson said that he was an endless experimenter 

 with no past at his back. This is just what Nature is. 

 She experiments endlessly, seeking new ways, new 

 modes, new forms, and is ever intent upon breaking 

 away from the past. In this way, as Darwin showed, 

 she attains to new species. She is blind, she gropes 

 her way, she trusts to luck; all her successes are 

 chance hits. Whenever I look over my right shoul 

 der, as I sit at my desk writing these sentences, I see 

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