WAYS OF NATURE 



self-preservation, or to the continuance of its species, 

 it probably does not think about it as a person would, 

 any more than the plant or tree thinks about the 

 light when it bends toward it, or about the moisture 

 when it sends down its tap-root. Touch the tail of 

 a porcupine ever so lightly, and it springs up like a 

 trap and your hand is stuck with quills. I do not 

 suppose there is any more thinking about the act, or 

 any more conscious exercise of will-power, than there 

 is in a trap. An outward stimulus is applied and the 

 reaction is quick. Does not man wink, and dodge, 

 and sneeze, and laugh, and cry, and blush, and fall in 

 love, and do many other things without thought or 

 will ? I do not suppose the birds think about migrat 

 ing, as man does when he migrates ; they simply obey 

 an inborn impulse to move south or north, as the 

 case may be. They do not think about the great 

 lights upon the coast that blaze out with a fatal fas 

 cination in their midnight paths. If they had inde 

 pendent powers of thought, they would avoid them. 

 But the lighthouse is comparatively a new thing in 

 the life of birds, and instinct has not yet taught them 

 to avoid it. To adapt means to an end is an act of 

 intelligence, but that intelligence may be inborn and 

 instinctive as in the animals, or it may be acquired 

 and therefore rational as in man. 



&quot; Surely,&quot; said a woman to me, &quot; when a cat sits 

 watching at a mouse-hole, she has some image in her 

 mind of the mouse in its hole ? &quot; Not in any such 

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