FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE 
is capacity in varying degrees for these things. The 
animal does rational things without an exercise of 
reason. It is intelligent as nature is intelligent. It 
does not know that it knows, or how it knows, while 
man does. Man’s knowledge is the light of his mind 
that shines on many and widely different objects, 
while the knowledge of animals cannot be sym- 
bolized by the term “light” at all. The animal acts 
blindly so far as any conscious individual illumi- 
nation or act of judgment is concerned. It does the 
thing unwittingly, because it must. Confront it with 
a new condition, and it has no resources to meet 
that condition. The animal knows what necessity 
taught its progenitors, and it knows that only as a 
spontaneous impulse to do certain things. 
Instinct, I say, is a great matter, and often shames 
reason. It adapts means to an end, it makes few or 
no mistakes, it takes note of times and seasons, it 
delves, it bores, it spins, it weaves, it sews, it builds, 
it makes paper, it constructs a shelter, it navigates 
the air and the water, it is provident and thrifty, 
it knows its enemies, it outwits its foes, it crosses 
oceans and continents without compass, it foreshad- 
ows nearly all the arts and trades and occupations 
of mankind, it is skilled without practice, and wise 
without experience. How it arose, what its genesis 
was, who can tell? Probably natural selection has 
been the chief agent in its development. If natural 
selection has developed and sharpened the claws of 
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