r
with their wings, will drive the fish into the shallows, where they
easily capture them. Here again the observer thinks for the observed.
The pelicans see the fish and pursue them, without any plan to corner
them in shoal water, but the inevitable result is that they are so
cornered and captured. The fish are foolish, but the pelicans are not
wise. The wisdom here attributed to them is human wisdom and not
animal wisdom.

To observe the actions of the lower animals without reading our own
thoughts into them is not an easy matter. Mr. Beebe thinks that when
in early spring the peacock, in the Zoological Park, timidly erects
its plumes before an unappreciative crow, it is merely practicing the
art of showing off its gay plumes in anticipation of the time when it
shall compete with its rivals before the females; in other words, that
it is rehearsing its part. But I should say that the peacock struts
before the crow or before spectators because it can't help it. The
sexual instinct begins to flame up and master it. The fowl can no more
control it than it can control its appetite for food. To practice
beforehand is human. Animal practice takes the form of spontaneous
play. The mock battles of two dogs or of other animals are not
conscious practice on their part, but are play pure and simple, the
same as human games, though their value as training is obvious enough.

Animals do not have general ideas; they receive impressions through
their various senses, to which they respond. I recently read in
manuscript a very clear and concise paper on the subject of animal
thinking compared with that of man, in which the writer says: "There
is a rudimentary abstraction before language. All the higher animals
have general ideas of 'good-for-eating' and 'not-good-for-eating,'
quite apart from any particular objects of which either of these
qualities happens to be characteristic." 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 t