WAYS OF NATURE 
feeling; and then again it may be so fostered and 
cosseted that it becomes maudlin and unworthy. 
When hospitals are founded for sick or homeless 
cats and dogs, when all forms of vivisection are 
cried down, when the animals are humanized and 
books are written to show that the wild creatures 
have schools and kindergartens, and that their 
young are instructed and disciplined in quite the 
human way by their fond parents; when we want 
to believe that reason and not instinct guides them, 
that they are quite up in some of the simpler arts of 
surgery, mending or amputating their own broken 
limbs and salving their wounds, — when, I say, our 
attitude toward the natural life about us and our 
feeling for it have reached the stage implied by 
these things, then has sentiment degenerated into 
sentimentalism, and our appreciation of nature lost 
its firm edge. 
No doubt there is a considerable number of 
people in any community that are greatly taken 
with this improved anthropomorphic view of wild 
nature now current among us. Such a view tickles 
the fancy and touches the emotions. It makes the 
wild creatures so much more interesting. Shall we 
deny anything to a bird or beast that makes it more 
interesting, and more worthy of our study and ad- 
miration ? 
This sentimental view of animal life has its good 
side and its bad side. Its good side is its result in 
60 
