THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



shad run up the rivers when the south wind blows 

 them up; the hibernating animals come out of their 

 retreats when the warmth awakes them. 



The play of will and conscious intelligence inside 

 the limitations of Nature is considerable in man, 

 very little in the lower animals. 



The bird builds a nest, not because it thinks nest, 

 and plans nest, and sees the end from the beginning, 

 as man does when he builds a house, but because the 

 great Mother Nature in which it is embosomed 

 and which is active in the bird thinks nest for it 

 and impels it to the construction. The bird is the 

 instrument of the propagating impulse which per- 

 vades Nature, as is man himself up to the point 

 where his own individual judgment and volition 

 come into play, which, it must be confessed, have 

 only a narrow field to work in. The beaver in build- 

 ing its dam works as blindly, that is as inevitably 

 and unconsciously as free from individual initia- 

 tive as it does in developing its chisel-like teeth 

 or its broad trowel-like tail. This inherent uncon- 

 scious intelligence we call instinct, a faculty which 

 is constant in its operation, and though not inerrant, 

 is free from the vacillations and failures of human 

 reason. It is analogous to that something in the 

 plants which determines their forms, the color of 

 their flowers, and their times and seasons. Instinct 

 is sometimes abortive; so do plants sometimes fail 

 of their colors and fruit. 



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