THE ANIMAL AND THE PUZZLE-BOX 



dent only shows what a hustler and true American 

 the robin is, and that he could have gone West with 

 the farmers on a prairie schooner, and reared a fam- 

 ily, or several of them, on the way. 



I know it is hard for us to grasp the idea of a quali- 

 tative difference in intelligence, yet we seem almost 

 forced to admit such a difference. A plant shows in- 

 telligence in getting on in life, in its many devices 

 for scattering its seed, in securing cross-fertilization, 

 in adapting itself to its environment; yet how this 

 differs from human intelligence ! When the curving 

 canes of the black raspberry bend down to the earth 

 at a certaLn time and take root at the end, do they 

 not act as wisely and apparently as voluntarily as 

 do some animals? Yet this intelligence differs in 

 kind from that of man. The same may be said of the 

 intelligence that pervades all Nature. Man's intelli- 

 geijce has arisen out of this cosmic mind through a 

 process of creative evolution, but it is of a different 

 order, it does not go with Nature as does that of the 

 lower orders, so much as it bends and guides, or 

 thwarts. Nature. An animal on the animal plane is 

 one thing, on the human plane it is quite another. 

 It is reasonable to suppose that it will show more wit 

 in solving its own life-problems than it will show 

 in solving those which man, in the fever of his scien- 

 tific curiosity, sets for it. What could the indoor 

 investigator learn of the cunning of the crow or 

 the fox, of the sagacity of the dog, of the art and 

 181 



