WAYS OF NATURE 
the nails, belongs to a different and to a higher order 
of conduct. 
A complete statement of the factors that shape 
the lives of the lower orders would include three 
terms — instinct, imitation (though, doubtless, this 
is instinctive), and experience. Instinct is, of course, 
the main factor, and by this term we mean that 
which prompts an animal or a man to act spon- 
taneously, without instruction or experience. All 
creatures are imitative, and man himself not the 
least so. I had a visit the other day from a woman 
who had spent the last two years in London, and 
her speech betrayed the fact; she had quite uncon- 
sciously caught certain of the English mannerisms of 
speech. A few years in the South will give the New 
Englander the Southern accent, and vice versa. The 
young are, of course, more imitative than the old. 
Children imitate their parents; the young writer 
imitates his favorite author. 
Animals of different species closely associated 
will imitate each other. A lady writes me that she 
has a rabbit that lives in a cage with a monkey, and 
that it has caught many of the monkey’s ways. I 
can well believe it. Dogs reared with cats have been 
known to acquire the cat habit of licking the paws 
and then washing the ears and face. Wolves reared 
with dogs learn to bark, and who has not seen a dog 
draw its face as if trying to laugh as its master does ? 
When a cat has been taught to sit up for its food, 
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