foothold. The cooperation was inevitable, and not the
result of design.

The power to see straight is the rarest of gifts; to see no more and
no less than is actually before you; to be able to detach yourself and
see the thing as it actually is, uncolored or unmodified by your own
sentiments or prepossessions. In short, to see with your reason as
well as with your perceptions, that is to be an observer and to read
the book of nature aright.

XIV

GATHERED BY THE WAY

I. THE TRAINING OF WILD ANIMALS

I was reminded afresh of how prone we all are to regard the actions of
the lower animals in the light of our own psychology on reading "The
Training of Wild Animals," by Bostock, a well-known animal-trainer.
Bostock evidently knows well the art of training animals, but of the
science of it he seems to know very little. That is, while he is a
successful trainer, his notions of animal psychology are very crude.
For instance, on one page he speaks of the lion as if it were endowed
with a fair measure of human intelligence, and had notions, feelings,
and thoughts like our own; on the next page, when he gets down to real
business, he lays bare its utter want of these things. He says a lion
born and bred in captivity is more difficult to train than one caught
from the jungle. Then he gives rein to his fancy. "Such a lion does
not fear man; he knows his own power. He regards man as an inferior,
with an attitude of disdain and silent hauteur." "He accepts his food
as tribute, and his care as homage due." "He is aristocratic in his
independence." "Deep in him--so deep that he barely realizes its
existence--slumbers a desire for freedom and an unutterable longing
for the blue sky and the free air." When his training is begun, "he
meets it with a reserved majesty and silent indifference, as though he
had a dumb realization of his wrongs." All this is a very human way of
looking at the matter, and is typical of the way we all--most of
us--speak of the lower animals, defining them to ourselves in terms of
our own mentality, but it leads to false notions about them. We look
upon an animal fretting and struggling in its cage as longing for
freedom, picturing to itself the joy of the open air and the free
hills and sky, when the truth of the matter undoubtedly is that the
fluttering bird or restless fox or lion simply feels discomfort in
confinemen