118 STUPIDITY. 



way to this means of communication with the outer air and 

 freedom, and suffered itself to be caught by hand and thrown 

 out of the window. Here its inaction, its stupidity, may 

 have been due to the conjoint influences of cold, starvation, 

 and of dazzlement with the new spectacle of the furnishings 

 of a well- warmed room. 



Birds sometimes do not know their own eggs from those 

 of other species or genera, though differing both in size and 

 colour. So that when man experimentally places in a nest 

 one or more eggs of some other species, the sitting bird 

 hatches the whole, or perhaps only the largest and alien 

 ones, which absorb all the necessary heat. This is but one 

 of the many forms of stupidity that are to be found described 

 in the chapters on Error. 



Hitherto we have taken our illustrations of animal stu- 

 pidity from birds. But the same kinds, causes, and results 

 of stupidity occur in other animals both higher and lower 

 including man himself. 



Among the larger quadrupeds the most seriously libelled, 

 in all ages and in many countries, is, and has been, the unfor- 

 tunate ass or donkey. There are few animals that suffer to 

 the same extent from an evil and unmerited reputation a 

 reputation which, where it is deserved, is virtually and gene- 

 rally the fruit of man's own treatment. Conspicuous among 

 the evil qualities which it occasionally possesses, and which 

 it is popularly supposed always and necessarily to possess, is 

 obstinacy, with frequently a spice of maliciousness. But 

 in the majority at least, of cases, this, where it exists 

 for it does not always do so is simply the direct or in- 

 direct result of man's own injudicious or bad usage of the 

 animal. 



There is ample evidence to show that in favourable cir- 

 cumstances that is when kindly treated, or allowed simply 

 to develop and exhibit its own natural gifts of mind and 

 heart the donkey is not only a shrewd or sagacious, but a 

 sensitive and affectionate animal. William Howitt, in the 

 'Animal World,' describes its true or natural qualities 

 moral and intellectual qualities that, as in so many other 

 animals, as well as in man himself, may be brought out into 



