LATER ESSAYS 211 



Implicit in that power, and of priceless value to it, was 

 his own complex joy in life, in the exertion of bodily, 

 and mental, and spiritual energies, whether in himself 

 and other men and women, or in bird and beast. That 

 and an eye continually on an object under natural con- 

 ditions raise ' The Hovering of the Kestrel ' and ' Birds 

 Climbing the Air ' to a high place in natural history. 

 The description is so plain and matter of fact — though 

 it is also imaginative enough to bring the thing described 

 before the eyes of all but the most ignorant readers — that 

 it may seem of little account ; and true it is that it is 

 bound to be superseded by something yet more exact and 

 as vivid. But it is a model and a stimulus ; much natural 

 history is born dead through ignoring it ; and the best 

 belongs to the same class, and, whether due in any high 

 degree or not to Jefferies' influence, is beyond almost 

 everything that preceded his work. In this class of 

 his essays occurs his claim, consistently made all through 

 his life, for intelligence instead of hereditary instinct in 

 animals. He makes a genuine, and apparently, in part, a 

 successful attempt, in 'Mind under Water,' to get into the 

 mind of the fish, very much as Maeterlinck has done with 

 the dog, ' Birds,' he declares, ' are lively, intellectual, 

 imaginative, and affectionate creatures, and all their 

 movements are not dictated by mere necessity.' Only 

 through such an anthropomorphism, as we proudly call it, 

 can an understanding of other forms of life begin, and 

 it led Jefferies to a yet further stage — that of perceiving 

 that there may be things which ' weigh with ants ' at 

 present inaccessible to our intelligence, that our range 

 of ideas no more includes theirs than theirs includes ours. 

 He may have thought the more boldly on this subject 

 because he was at the time interested in the forms of 

 mental activity which cannot be classed with reason, as 

 the telepathic explanation of a coincidence in the ' Legend 

 of a Gateway ' shows. He may presently be proved to 

 have been wrong, but that it was a progressive error 

 there can be little doubt. 



14 — 2 



