REASONABLE BUT UNREASONING 



There is much in a hasty view of animal life that 

 looks like reason, because instinct is a kind of intel- 

 ligence and it acts in a reasonable manner. But 

 when we get something like an inside view of the 

 mind of the lower orders, we see how fundamentally 

 it differs from the human. And we get this view of 

 it, not in the ordinary course of the animal's life, 

 because the ordinary course of its life is appointed 

 by its inherited instincts, but under exceptional con- 

 ditions, when it encounters a new problem. Now, 

 when a reasoning intelligence is confronted by a 

 new problem, it recognizes it as such, and, having 

 a fund of knowledge and experience to draw upon, 

 it proceeds to deal with it accordingly. Not so the 

 animal ; it does not know the new problem when it 

 sees it, and in its dealings with it acts. much like a 

 machine that was made to do some other work. 



Let me group together here a number of in- 

 stances from animal life, some of which I have 

 given elsewhere in my writings, which show how 

 much nearer the lower orders come to being mere 

 automata than they come to being reasoning 

 intelligences. 



Take the case of the robin or bluebird that may 

 often be seen in the spring, day after day, dashing 

 itself madly against a window-pane, fighting its 

 fancied rival there in its own reflected image, and 

 never discovering that it is being fooled even after 

 it has taken a peep into the empty room inside 

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