A BEAVER’S REASON 
expert in its own line of work — the work of its 
tribe. Beavers do the work of beavers, they cut 
down trees and build dams, and all beavers do it 
alike and with the same degree of untaught skill. 
This is instinct, or unthinking nature. 
Of a hot day a dog will often dig down to fresh 
earth to get cooler soil to lie on. Or he will go and 
lie in the creek. All dogs do these things. Now if the 
dog were seen to carry stones and sods to dam up the 
creek to make a deeper pool to lie in, then he would 
in a measure be imitating the beavers, and this, in 
the dog, could fairly be called an act of reason, 
because it is not a necessity of the conditions of his 
life; it would be of the nature of an afterthought. 
All animals of a given species are wise in their 
own way, but not in the way of another species. The 
robin could not build the oriole’s nest, nor the oriole 
build the robin’s nor the swallow’s. The cunning of 
the fox is not the cunning of the coon. The squirrel 
knows a good deal more about nuts than the rabbit 
does, but the rabbit would live where the squirrel 
would die. The muskrat and the beaver build 
lodges much alike, that is, with the entrance under 
water and an inner chamber above the water, and 
this because they are both water-animals with 
necessities much the same. 
Now, the mark of reason is that it is endlessly 
adaptive, that it can apply itself to all kinds of prob- 
lems, that it can adapt old means to new ends, or 
Q11 
