WAYS OF NATURE 
ledge, or the communication of emotion? It seems 
to me that by teaching we mean the former. Man 
alone communicates knowledge; the lower animals 
communicate feeling or emotion. Hence their com- 
munications always refer to the present, never to the 
past or to the future. 
That birds and beasts do communicate with each 
other, who can doubt ? But that they impart know- 
ledge, that they have any knowledge to impart, in 
the strict meaning of the word, any store of ideas 
or mental concepts — that is quite another matter. 
Teaching implies such store of ideas and power to 
impart them. The subconscious self rules in the 
animal; the conscious self rules in man, and the con- 
scious self alone can teach or communicate know- 
ledge. It seems to me that the cases of the deer and 
the antelope, referred to by President Roosevelt in 
the letter to me quoted in the last chapter, show the 
communication of emotion only. 
Teaching implies reflection and judgment; it 
implies a thought of, and solicitude for, the future. 
“The young will need this knowledge,” says the hu- 
man parent, “and so we will impart it to them now.” 
But the animal parent has consciously no knowledge 
to impart, only fear or suspicion. One may affirm 
almost anything of trained dogs and of dogs gener- 
ally. I can well believe that the setter bitch spoken of 
by the President punished her pup when it flushed a 
bird, — she had been punished herself for the same 
88 
