WAYS OF NATURE 



his experience may have given him. He learns 

 to avoid traps, but he does not learn to improve 

 upon his dam or lodge building, because he does not 

 need to; they answer his purpose. If he had new 

 and growing wants and aspirations like man, why, 

 then he would no longer be a beaver. He reacts to 

 outward conditions, where man reflects and takes 

 thought of things. His reason, if we prefer to call it 

 such, is practically inerrant. It is blind, inasmuch 

 as it is unconscious, but it is sure, inasmuch as it 

 is adequate. It is a part of living nature in a sense 

 that man's is not. If it makes a mistake, it is such 

 a mistake as nature makes when, for instance, a 

 hen produces an egg within an egg, or an egg with- 

 out a yolk, or when more seeds germinate in the soil 

 than can grow into plants. 



A lower animal's intelligence, I say, compared 

 with man's is blind. It does not grasp the subject 

 perceived as ours does. When instinct perceives an 

 object, it reacts to it, or not, just as the object is, or 

 is not, related to its needs of one kind or another. 

 In many ways an animal is like a child. What comes 

 first in the child is simple perception and memory 

 and association of memories, and these make up 

 the main sum of an animal's intelligence. The child 

 goes on developing till it reaches the power of reflec- 

 tion and of generalization — a stage of mentality 

 that the animal never attains to. 



All animal life is specialized; each animal is an 

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