LEAF AND TENDRIL 



long ago taught and as Huxley came to believe, 

 adding only the qualifying adjective " conscious," 

 making them " conscious automata," — then they 

 come so near to it that it is difficult without exag- 

 geration to credit them with any higher powers. 

 At any rate, they reveal an order of mind that dif- 

 fers fundamentally from our own. Unless we are 

 to abandon that comparison and classification 

 which is the basis of all our knowledge, we must 

 call it by another name — we must call it blind in- 

 stinct. It does not see the why of anything which 



it does. 



II 



My dog and I are boon companions. I can live 

 with him almost as with a brother, and yet I see 

 him across a gulf. I catch a glimpse of that gulf, 

 for example, when I see by his manner that he 

 wants to lie down before the open fire, but, the 

 poker or a stick of wood being in the way, instead 

 of removing or pushing it to one side, as he could 

 so easily do, he sits or half reclines there, and looks 

 helplessly at the obstacle in his way. I get up and 

 remove it and he lies down. The removal of that 

 poker on his part would require a certain detach- 

 ment and viewing of himself in relation to other 

 things, of which he is not capable; and yet I 

 know, had the obstacle barred the way to the 

 retreat of a mouse or a chipmunk, he would have 

 removed it in a hurry, because the scent of the 

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