WAYS OF NATURE 



new means to old ends, and is capable of progressive 

 development. It holds what it gets, and uses that as 

 a fulcrum to get more. But this is not at all the 

 way of animal instinct, which begins and ends as 

 instinct and is non-progressive. 



A large part of our own hves is instinctive and 

 void of thought. We go instinctively toward the 

 warmth and away from the cold. All our affections 

 are instinctive, and do not wait upon the reason. 

 Our affinities are as independent of our reflection 

 as gravity is. Our inherited traits, the ties of race, 

 the spirit of the times in which we live, the impres- 

 sions of youth, of climate, of soil, of our surround- 

 ings, — all influence our acts and often determine 

 them without any conscious exercise of judgment or 

 reason on our part. Then habit is all-potent with 

 us, temperament is potent, health and disease are 

 potent. Indeed, the amount of conscious reason 

 that an ordinary man uses in his life, compared with 

 the great unreason or blind impulse and inborn 

 tendency that impel him, is like his artificial lights 

 compared with the light of day — indispensable on 

 special occasions, but a feeble matter, after all. 

 Reason is an artificial light in the sense that it is not 

 one with the light of nature, and in the sense that 

 men possess it in varying degrees. The lower ani- 

 mals have only a gleam of it now and then. They 

 are wise as the plants and trees are wise, and are 

 guided by their inborn tendencies. 

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