e point of view of
a wise, loving, human eye, such a record as, say, Gilbert White or
Henry Thoreau might have given us. How interesting White makes his old
turtle, hurrying to shelter when it rains, or seeking the shade of a
cabbage leaf when the sun is too hot, or prancing about the garden on
tiptoe in the spring by five in the morning, when the mating instinct
begins to stir within him! Surely we may see ourselves in the old
tortoise.

In fact, the problem of the essay-naturalist always is to make his
subject interesting, and yet keep strictly within the bounds of truth.

It is always an artist's privilege to heighten or deepen natural
effects. He may paint us a more beautiful woman, or a more beautiful
horse, or a more beautiful landscape, than we ever saw; we are not
deceived even though he outdo nature. We know where we stand and where
he stands; we know that this is the power of art. If he is writing an
animal romance like Kipling's story of the "White Seal," or like his
"Jungle Book," there will be nothing equivocal about it, no mixture
of fact and fiction, nothing to confuse or mislead the reader.

We know that here is the light that never was on sea or land, the
light of the spirit. The facts are not falsified; they are transmuted.
The aim of art is the beautiful, not _over_ but _through_ the true.
The aim of the literary naturalist is the true, not over but through
the beautiful; you shall find the exact facts in his pages, and you
shall find them possessed of some of the allurement and suggestiveness
that they had in the fields and woods. Only thus does his work attain
to the rank of literature.

XII

A BEAVER'S REASON

One of our well-known natural historians thinks that there is no
difference between a man's reason and a beaver's reason because, he
says, when a man builds a dam, he first looks the ground over, and
after due deliberation decides upon his plan, and a beaver, he avers,
does the same. But the difference is obvious. Beavers, under the same
conditions, build the same kind of dams and lodges; and all beavers as
a rule do the same. Instinct is uniform in its workings; it runs in a
groove. Reason varies endlessly and makes endless mistakes. Men build
various kinds of dams and in various kinds of places, with various
kinds of material and for various kinds of uses. They exercise
individual judgment, they invent new ways and