FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE 



is capacity in varying degrees for these things. The 

 animal does rational things without an exercise of 

 reason. It is inteUigent as nature is intelligent. It 

 does not know that it knows, or how it knows, while 

 man does. Man's knowledge is the Hght of his mind 

 that shines on many and widely different objects, 

 while the knowledge of animals cannot be sym- 

 bolized by the term " light " at all. The animal acts 

 blindly so far as any conscious individual illumi- 

 nation or act of judgment is concerned. It does the 

 thing unwittingly, because it must. Confront it with 

 a new condition, and it has no resources to meet 

 that condition. The animal knows what necessity 

 taught its progenitors, and it knows that only as a 

 spontaneous impulse to do certain things. 



Instinct, I say, is a great matter, and often shames 

 reason. It adapts means to an end, it makes few or 

 no mistakes, it takes note of times and seasons, it 

 delves, it bores, it spins, it weaves, it sews, it builds, 

 it makes paper, it constructs a shelter, it navigates 

 the air and the water, it is provident and thrifty, 

 it knows its enemies, it outwits its foes, it crosses 

 oceans and continents without compass, it foreshad- 

 ows nearly all the arts and trades and occupations 

 of mankind, it is skilled without practice, and wise 

 without experience. How it arose, what its genesis 

 was, who can tell ? Probably natural selection has 

 been the chief agent in its development. If natural 

 selection has developed and sharpened the claws of 

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