WAYS OF NATURE 
“Deep in him — so deep that he barely realizes its 
existence — slumbers a desire for freedom and an 
unutterable longing for the blue sky and the free 
air.” When his training is begun, “he meets it with 
a reserved majesty and silent indifference, as though 
he had a dumb realization of his wrongs.” All this 
is a very human way of looking at the matter, and 
is typical of the way we all — most of us — speak of 
the lower animals, defining them to ourselves in terms 
of our own mentality, but it leads to false notions 
about them. We look upon an animal fretting and 
struggling in its cage as longing for freedom, pictur- 
ing to itself the joy of the open air and the free hills 
and sky, when the truth of the matter undoubtedly 
is that the fluttering bird or restless fox or lion sim- 
ply feels discomfort in confinement. Its sufferings 
are physical, and not mental. Its instincts lead it 
to struggle for freedom. It reacts strongly against 
the barriers that hold it, and tries in every way to 
overcome them. Freedom, as an idea, or a concep- 
tion of a condition of life, is, of course, beyond its 
capacity. 
Bostock shows how the animal learns entirely by 
association, and not at all by the exercise of thought 
or reason, and yet a moment later says: “'The ani- 
mal is becoming amenable to the mastery of man, 
and in doing so his own reason is being developed,” 
which is much like saying that when a man is prac- 
ticing on the flying trapeze his wings are being de- 
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