On Getting Acquainted 



ing more skins or skulls, you have unconsciously 

 placed destruction above fulfilment, stark death 

 above the beautiful mystery of life. So must you 

 estrange both the animal and yourself, making it 

 impossible for you to meet on any common ground 

 of understanding. And now for our lessons: 



If I were to formulate rules for a subject which 

 can never be learned by the book, I might say that 

 there are three things you should know, and 

 another you must do, if you expect to gain any 

 intimate knowledge of the wood folk, or even to 

 approach them near enough for fair and leisurely 

 observation. 



The first thing to know is that natural creatures, 

 though instinctively shy or timid, are not wildly 

 governed by fears and terrors, as we have been 

 misinformed from our youth up. The "reign of 

 terror" is another of those pet scientific delusions, 

 like the "struggle for existence," for which there is 

 no basis in nature. Fear in any true sense of the 

 word is an exclusively human possession, or afflic- 

 tion ; it is a physical and moral poison, as artificial 

 as sin, which the animal escapes by virtue of being 

 natural. It is doubtful, indeed, whether anything 

 remotely resembling our fear, a state of mind aris- 

 ing from a highly developed imagination which 

 enables us to picture events before they happen, 



[i77l 



