THE RELIGION OF NATURE 



prevent the bird hearing and seeing it in time to 

 move its wings and so spoil the plate. 



If you are sitting quietly by the fire when a 

 mouse creeps out on the hearth and some sudden 

 noise frightens it, you will, if you analyze your 

 sensations at the moment, find that the flight of 

 the mouse and your conscious hearing of the noise 

 were simultaneous. In fact, you would be inclined 

 to say rather that you saw the mouse bolt before 

 you heard the noise. 



In the same way if when you are feeding tame 

 pigeons a gun is fired off somewhere near, you are 

 almost certain that the birds crouched in readi- 

 ness to fly before you heard the sound. 



In the case of a horse, too, you will frequently 

 notice that its ears are laid back before you are 

 conscious of the sound which frightened it, and 

 your hand instinctively tightens on the reins be- 

 fore your reason has told you whether there is 

 danger or not. After this, it is a contest between 

 your human reason and the horse's unthinking 

 instinct to flee. 



Many times in India, where it was my custom 

 to drive back to office after breakfast at exactly 

 twelve o'clock, I had noticed that the mid-day gun 

 which was fired near the office compound seemed 

 to make my horse start before I heard it. So I 

 used to try the experiment of driving up exactly 

 [24] 



