REASONABLE BUT UNREASONING 



or comparisons exist in their minds about it. An 

 impulse to migrate, which is like a decree of nature, 

 has taken possession of them, and they obey it 

 blindly, to their own destruction. These incidents, 

 which recur at intervals, afford another illustration 

 of how radically animal instinct differs from human 

 reason. It is a kind of fate. 



Instinct may be thwarted in its efforts, but it 

 cannot be convinced that its effort is wrong, or has 

 failed. One spring, as I have elsewhere related, a 

 pair of English sparrows, in searching for a nesting- 

 place, tried to effect an entrance into the interior 

 of a horizontal timber upon my porch, through a 

 large crack. Not being able to do this, they brought 

 straws and weed stalks and filled up the crack from 

 one end of the porch to the other, working at it day 

 after day notwithstanding their rubbish was repeat- 

 edly swept away. It was nesting-time, the opening 

 in the timber stimulated them, and they kept going 

 as did the birds I have mentioned above. I do not 

 suppose they had any knowledge that their efforts 

 were futile; they only had the impulse to build, and 

 of that impulse they did not know the purpose. 



I have not cited the foregoing incidents to show 

 the stupidity of bird or beast or insect — that were 

 as great an error as to seek to prove their reasoning 

 powers — but simply to illustrate the automatic 

 character of animal behavior; to show that, if the 

 lower orders are not mere automata, as Des Cartes 

 187 



