THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



vices for getting on in the world. And what the vege- 

 table does not hold, the aninial does. 



These devices all imply intelligence and foresight 

 in adapting means to an end, but it differs from hu- 

 man intelligence as does that of the lower animals 

 in not yet having come to a knowledge of itself. 

 Their wisdom, their prudence, their reason, is that 

 of the whole of nature. The acquired, the individual, 

 the experimental wisdom of man is quite another 

 thing. The plants profit by experience also, but they 

 profit slowly, through race-discipline. Neither the 

 plant nor the animal can set the environment at 

 naught — turn winter into summer, wet into dry, the 

 adverse into the favorable — as can man. 



The animals do not know what they do any more 

 than we know what we are doing when we do a thing 

 from habit, or, as we say, in an absent frame of mind, 

 or than the sleep-walker knows what he is doing. 

 Indeed, animal behavior is, for the most part, a kind 

 of sleep-walking, an unconscious performance of 

 what are often diflBcult feats. 



Yesterday I saw a cat stalking a chipmunk on the 

 top of the stonework ; while the chipmunk had his eye 

 on her, she crouched low and kept perfectly still; 

 then, as the chipmunk disappeared beneath the 

 stones, the cat, after a little delay, rushed to the 

 place, and looked quickly right and left and up and 

 down to make sure not to miss him if he were still 

 in view, or should suddenly emerge from his hiding. 



