WAYS OF NATURE 
acteristic.” It is at this point, I think, that the 
writer referred to goes wrong. The animal has no 
idea at all about what is good to eat and what is not 
good; it is guided entirely by its senses. It reacts 
to the stimuli that reach it through the sight or 
smell, usually the latter. There is no mental process 
at all in the matter, not the most rudimentary ; 
there is simple reaction to stimuli, as strictly so as 
when we sneeze on taking snuff. Man alone has 
ideas of what is good to eat and what is not good. 
When a fox prowls about a farmhouse, he has no 
general idea that there are eatable things there, as 
the essayist above referred to alleges. He is simply 
following his nose; he smells something to which he 
responds. We think for him when we attribute to 
him general ideas of what he is likely to find at the 
farmhouse. But when a man goes to a restaurant, 
he follows an idea and not his nose, he compares the 
different viands in his mind, and often decides be- 
forehand what he will have. There is no agreement 
in the two cases at all. If, when the bird chooses the 
site for its nest, or the chipmunk or the woodchuck 
the place for its hole, or the beaver the spot for its 
dam, we make these animals think, compare, weigh, 
we are simply putting ourselves in their place and 
making them do as we would do under hike condi- 
tions. 
Animal life parallels human life at many points, 
but it is in another plane. Something guides the 
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