here 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 beforehand 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 conditions.

Animal life parallels human life at many points, but it is in another
plane. Something guides the lower animals, but it is not thought;
something restrains them, but it is not judgment; they are provident
without prudence; they are active without industry; they are skillful
without practice; they are wise without knowledge; they are rational
without reason; they are deceptive without guile. They cross seas
without a compass, they return home without guidance, they communicate
without language, their flocks act as a unit without signals or
leaders. When they are joyful, they sing or they play; when they are
distressed, they moan or they cry; when they are jealous, they bite or
they claw, or they strike or they gore,--and yet I do not suppose they
experience the emotions of joy or sorrow, or anger or love, as we do,
because these feelings in them do not involve reflection, memory, and
what we call the higher nature, as with us.

The animals do not have to consult the almanac to know when to migrate
or to go into winter quarters. At a certain time in the fall, I see
the newts all making for the marshes; at a certain time in the spring,
I see them all returning to the woods again. At one place where I
walk, I see them on the railroad track wandering up and down between
the rails, trying to get across. I often lend them a hand. They know
when and in what direction to go, but not in the way I should know
under the same circumstances. I should have to learn or be told; they
know instinctively.

We marvel at what we call the wisdom of Nature, but how unlike our
own! How blind, and yet in the end how sure! How wasteful, and yet how
conserving! How helter-skelter she sows her seed,