UNTAUGHT WISDOM 



pealed to him, and he swallowed it. It was no more 

 an act of reason than was that of the other monkey. 

 If I myself were offered a new viand or a new fruit, 

 my eating of it would not be an act of reason, but 

 the prompting of taste and appetite. I once saw my 

 dog eat a beefsteak mushroom, but I am sure it was 

 not his reason that prompted him to do so, but the 

 good smell of the mushroom. A coon knows how to 

 suck an egg because he comes of a race of egg-suckers, 

 but the tame coon I had in my youth knew instantly 

 what to do with the first pancake it ever saw. When 

 we know not what we do, when we act from an im- 

 pulse or without thinking, then we act as do the ani- 

 mals. When we stop to consider, or act from thought 

 or judgment, then we are rational beings. 



