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 snuflF. 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 like condi- 

 tions. 



Animal life parallels human life at many points, 

 but it is in another plane. Something guides the 

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