HUMAN TRAITS IN THE ANIMALS 



The sheer agony or terror which an animal is 

 capable of feeling always excites our pity. Roosevelt 

 tells of once coming upon a deer in snow so deep 

 that its efforts to flee were fruitless. As he came 

 alongside of it, of course to pass it by untouched, 

 it fell over on its side and bleated in terror. When 

 John Muir and his dog Stickeen, at the imminent 

 peril of their lives, at last got over that terrible 

 crevasse in the Alaska glacier, the dog's demon- 

 strations of joy were very touching. He raced and 

 bounded and cut capers and barked and felicitated 

 himself and his master as only a dog can. 



The play of animals seems strictly analogous to 

 the play of man, and I have no doubt that the reason 

 of the one, whatever that be, is the reason of the 

 other. Whether play is to be accounted for upon 

 the theory of surplus energy, as Spencer maintains, 

 or upon the theory of instinctive training and de- 

 velopment — a sort of natural, spontaneous school 

 or kindergarten that has reference to the future 

 wants of the animal, as the German psychologist 

 Karl Groos argues — a biological conception of 

 play — its genesis is no doubt the same both in man 

 and beast. The main difference is that the play of 

 one is aimless and haphazard, while that of the 

 other has method and purpose. Animals have no 

 rules or systems, and yet I have often seen two red 

 squirrels engaged in what seemed precisely analo- 

 gous to the boys' game of tag. Up and down and 

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