IN HIGHER PEOPLES 119 



This tendency was born with them. It is a part 

 of their nature. The mother bird and the mother 

 cow and the mother human being are not taught 

 to love their young. It is an instinct, one of the 

 most beautiful in all the gray world of animal life. 



I wonder if you have ever come upon the wild 

 partridge with her young ones out in the forest 

 and seen those little balls of down scatter like 

 chaff at the warning cry of the mother. When 

 they are no more than a day old and scarcely able 

 to toddle, these little apologies of living beings 

 will disperse at the distress signal of the mother 

 as promptly and expertly as if they had practiced 

 it for years, creeping under leaves and squatting 

 in little hollows of the ground and lying there as 

 still as stones, and looking so much like the dead 

 leaves that it is almost impossible to find them, 

 even tho one knows in a general way just where 

 they are. These little souls were not taught to do 

 this. They brought the instinct with them when 

 they came out of the egg — along with their back- 

 bone, their downy covering, and their craving for 

 food. 



Instincts are useful. They take the place of 

 reason and experience. Different species have 

 different sets of instincts, but the members of the 

 same species commonly have the same instincts. 

 The nature of any species of animal is made up 

 largely of the instincts or tendencies which it 

 possesses and which urge it to put forth its ener- 

 gies in certain definite directions. The nature of 



