r
own images reflected in the glass to be rival birds, and are bent upon
demolishing them. They never comprehend the mystery of the glass,
because glass is not found in nature, and neither they nor their
ancestors have had any experience with it.

Contrast these incidents with those which Darwin relates of the
American monkeys. When the monkeys had cut themselves once with any
sharp tool, they would not touch it again, or else would handle it
with the greatest caution. They evinced the simpler forms of reason,
of which monkeys are no doubt capable.

Animals are wise as Nature is wise; they partake, each in its own
measure, of that universal intelligence, or mind-stuff, that is
operative in all things--in the vegetable as well as in the animal
world. Does the body, or the life that fills it, reason when it tries
to get rid of, or to neutralize the effects of, a foreign substance,
like a bullet, by encysting it? or when it thickens the skin on the
hand or on any other part of the body, even forming special pads
called callosities, as a result of the increased wear or friction?
This may be called physiological intelligence.

But how blind this intelligence is at times, or how wanting in
judgment, may be seen when it tries to develop a callosity upon the
foot as a result of the friction of the shoe, and overdoes the matter
and produces the corn. The corn is a physiological blunder. Or see an
unexpected manifestation of this intelligence when we cut off the
central and leading shoot of a spruce or of a pine tree, and
straightway one of the lateral and horizontal branches rises up, takes
the place of the lost leader, and carries the tree upward; or in the
roots of a tree working their way through the ground much like molten
metal, parting and uniting, taking the form of whatever object they
touch, shaping themselves to the rock, flowing into its seams, the
better to get a grip upon the earth and thus maintain an upright
position.

In the animal world this foresight becomes psychic intelligence,
developing in man the highest form of all, reasoned intelligence. When
an animal solves a new problem or meets a new condition as effectually
as the tree or the body does in the cases I have just cited, we are
wont to ascribe to it powers of reason. Reason we may call it, but it
is reason not its own.

This universal or cosmic intelligence makes up by far the greater part
of what animals know. The domestic animals, such as the d