202 The Bible of Nature 



Among animals we find the same inclined plane 

 of activities as in man, with this difference that 

 there is no convincing evidence of ethical conduct. 

 Instinctive activities — which depend on inborn 

 capacities and require neither education or experi- 

 ence for their performance, though they may be 

 improved thereby — often bulk largely; intelligent 

 behaviour, up to the limits of what can be rede- 

 scribed in terms of perceptual inference — is wide- 

 spread, but in the strict sense there is no evidence 

 of reason or of morals. Animals may be most 

 loving mates, most careful parents, faithful to their 

 friends, brave to the death for their near kin, but 

 — poor creatures — they are not moral agents. 

 As Nietzsche said, *' their virtue is free from any 

 moralic acid." Animal behaviour differs from 

 human conduct for lack of a conceived purpose. 

 Not that animals are automata or wholly instru- 

 ments In Nature's hand, but their purposefulness 

 is at most perceptual. 



It seems, then, that the whole range of activity, 

 which Is non-rational and non-ethical, is in a very 

 real sense common ground for man and beast, al- 

 ways allowing that in man's case the activity may 

 be at any moment rationalized or moralized. A 

 day of routine work, performed without definite 

 pleasure or pain, without definite effort or con- 

 trol, but just "gone through with," is often lived 

 by man, but it Is hardly human, not to speak 



