WAYS OF NATURE 
call instinct, innate tendency, habit of growth, as 
are the plants and trees. Their lives revolve around 
three wants or needs — the want of food, of safety, 
and of offspring. It is in securing these ends that 
all their wit is developed. They have no wants out- - 
side of these spheres, as man has. Their social wants 
and their love of beauty, as in some of the birds, are 
secondary. It is quite certain that the animals that 
store up food for the winter do not take any thought 
of the future. Nature takes thought for them and 
gives them their provident instinct. The jay, by his 
propensity to carry away and hide things, plants 
many of our oak and chestnut trees, but who dares 
say that he does this on purpose, any more than that 
the insects cross-fertilize the flowers on purpose? 
Sheep do not take thought of the wool upon their 
backs that is to protect them from the cold of win- 
ter, nor does the fox of his fur. In the tropics sheep 
cease to grow wool in three or four years. 
All the lower animals, so far as I know, swim 
the first time they find themselves in the water. 
They do not have to be taught: it is a matter of 
instinct. It is what we should expect from our 
knowledge of their lives. Not so with man; he must 
learn to swim as he learns so many other things. 
The stimulus of the water does not at once set in 
motion his legs and arms in the right way, as it does 
the animal’s legs; his powers of reason and re- 
flection paralyze him — his brain carries him down. 
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