6 MAN AND BEAST COMPARED 



not dimmed or rusted or obsolete as in our domestic 

 cattle, which have been guarded by man since Neo- 

 lithic times. But as I have seen on the Argentine 

 pampas, these qualities and instincts, dormant for 

 thousands of years, revive and recover their old power 

 when cattle are allowed to run wild and have to 

 protect themselves from their enemies. 



A life-long intimacy with animals has got me out 

 of the common notion that they are automata with 

 a slight infusion of intelligence in their composition. 

 The mind in beast and bird, as in man, is the main 

 thing. Man has progressed mentally so far that, 

 looking back at the other creatures, they appear 

 practically mindless to him. Their actions, for ex- 

 ample, are instinctive, whereas in the case of man 

 reason has taken the place of instinct. How funny 

 it is to find these hard and fast lines still set down 

 by some modern biologists! Alfred Russel Wallace 

 maintained that there were no instincts in man. The 

 simple truth of the matter is that our instincts have 

 been more modified and obscured, as instincts, in us 

 than in the lower animals. But though the instincts 

 of animals are less modified and obscured, they are 

 also interwoven and shot through or saturated with 

 intelligence. In what do the ordinary occupations 

 of hunting, fishing, shelter-building, rearing and 

 protecting the young, and so on, differ in the 

 animal and the savage or primitive man ? There 

 is mind-stuff, or, let us say, intelligence in 

 both; neither beast nor man could exist without 

 that element, although no doubt the man in a 



