444 



EVOLUTION AND ANIMAL LIFE 



action. Indeed, no sharp line can be drawn between uncon- 

 scious and subconscious choice of reaction and ordinary in- 

 tellectual processes. 



Most animals have little self-consciousness, and their reason- 

 ing powers at best are of a low order; but in kind, at least, the 

 powers are not different from reason in man. A horse reaches 



over the fence to be 

 company to another. 

 This is instinct. When 

 it lets down the bars 

 with its teeth, that 

 is reason. When a 

 dog finds its way 

 home at night by the 

 sense of smell, this 

 may be instinct ; when 

 he drags a stranger to 

 his wounded master, 

 that is reason. When 

 a jack rabbit leaps 

 over a bush to escape 

 a dog, or runs in a 

 circle before a coyote, 

 or when it lies flat in 

 the grass as a round 

 ball of gray, indistin- 

 guishable from grass, 

 this is instinct. But 

 the same animal is 

 capable of reason- 

 that is, of a distinct choice among lines of action. Not long 

 ago a rabbit came bounding across the university campus at 

 Palo Alto. As it passed a corner it suddenly faced two hunting 

 dogs running side by side toward it. It had the choice of turning 

 back, its first instinct, but a dangerous one; of leaping over the 

 dogs, or of lying flat on the ground. It chose none of these, and 

 its choice was instantaneous. It ceased leaping, ran low, and 

 went between the dogs just as they were in the act of seizing it, 

 and the surprise of the dogs, as they stopped and tried to hurry 

 around, was the same feeling that a man would have in like 

 circumstances. 



FIG. 277. Tailor bird, Ornithotomus sutorius, and 

 nest. 



