WAYS OF NATURE 
new means to old ends, and is capable of progressive 
development. It holds what it gets, and uses that as 
a fulcrum to get more. But this is not at all the 
way of animal instinct, which begins and ends as 
instinct and is non-progressive. 
A large part of our own lives is instinctive and 
void of thought. We go instinctively toward the 
warmth and away from the cold. All our affections 
are instinctive, and do not wait upon the reason. 
Our affinities are as independent of our reflection 
as gravity is. Our inherited traits, the ties of race, 
the spirit of the times in which we live, the impres- 
sions of youth, of climate, of soil, of our surround- 
ings, — all influence our acts and often determine 
them without any conscious exercise of judgment or 
reason on our part. Then habit is all-potent with 
us, temperament is potent, health and disease are 
potent. Indeed, the amount of conscious reason 
that an ordinary man uses in his life, compared with 
the great unreason or blind impulse and inborn 
tendency that impel him, is like his artificial lights 
compared with the light of day — indispensable on 
special occasions, but a feeble matter, after all. 
Reason is an artificial light in the sense that it is not 
one with the light of nature, and in the sense that 
men possess it in varying degrees. The lower ani- 
mals have only a gleam of it now and then. They 
are wise as the plants and trees are wise, and are 
guided by their inborn tendencies. 
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