pull one of their
fellows out of a trap, but what the motive is, who shall say? Would
the same mice share their last crumb with their fellow if he were
starving? That, of course, would be a much nearer approach to the
human code, and is too much to expect. Bees will clear their fellows
of honey, but whether it be to help them, or to save the honey, is a
question.

In my youth I saw a parent weasel seize one of its nearly grown young
which I had wounded and carry it across an open barway, in spite of my
efforts to hinder it. A friend of mine, who is a careful observer,
says he once wounded a shrike so that it fell to the ground, but
before he got to it, it recovered itself and flew with difficulty
toward some near trees, calling to its mate the while; the mate came
and seemed to get beneath the wounded bird and buoy it up, so aiding
it that it gained the top of a tall tree, where my friend left it. But
in neither instance can we call this helpfulness entirely
disinterested, or pure altruism.

Emerson said that he was an endless experimenter with no past at his
back. This is just what Nature is. She experiments endlessly, seeking
new ways, new modes, new forms, and is ever intent upon breaking away
from the past. In this way, as Darwin showed, she attains to new
species. She is blind, she gropes her way, she trusts to luck; all her
successes are chance hits. Whenever I look over my right shoulder, as
I sit at my desk writing these sentences, I see a long shoot of a
honeysuckle that came in through a crack of my imperfectly closed
window last summer. It came in looking, or rather feeling, for
something to cling to. It first dropped down upon a pile of books,
then reached off till it struck the window-sill of another large
window; along this it crept, its regular leaves standing up like so
many pairs of green ears, looking very pretty. Coming to the end of
the open way there, it turned to the left and reached out into
vacancy, till it struck another window-sill running at right angles to
the former; along this it traveled nearly half an inch a day, till it
came to the end of that road. Then it ventured out into vacant space
again, and pointed straight toward me at my desk, ten feet distant.
Day by day it kept its seat upon the window-sill, and stretched out
farther and farther, almost beckoning me to give it a lift or to bring
it support. I could hardly resist its patient daily appeal. Late in
October it had bridged abo