int
in another chapter. One trait they do show which is the first step
toward knowledge--curiosity. Nearly all the animals show at times
varying degrees of curiosity, but here again an instinctive feeling of
possible danger probably lies back of it. They even seem to show at
times a kind of altruistic feeling. A correspondent writes me that she
possessed a canary which lived to so great an age that it finally
became so feeble it could not crack the seeds she gave it, when the
other birds, its own progeny, it is true, fed it; and Darwin cites
cases of blind birds, in a state of nature, being fed by their
fellows. Probably it would be hasty to conclude that such acts show
anything more than instinct. I should be slow to ascribe to the
animals any notion of the uses of punishment as we practice it, though
the cat will box her kittens when they play too long with her tail,
and the mother hen will separate her chickens when they get into a
fight, and sometimes peck one or both of them on the head, as much as
to say, "There, don't you do that again." The rooster will in the same
way separate two hens when they are fighting. On the surface this
seems like a very human act, but can we say that it is punishment or
discipline in the human sense, as having for its aim a betterment of
the manners of the kittens or of the chickens? The cat aims to get rid
of an annoyance, and the rooster and the mother hen interfere to
prevent an injury to members of their family; they exhibit the
paternal and maternal instinct of protection. More than that would
imply ethical considerations, of which the lower animals are not
capable. The act of the baboon, mentioned by Darwin, I believe, that
examined the paws of the cat that had scratched it, and then
deliberately bit off the nails, belongs to a different and to a
higher order of conduct.

A complete statement of the factors that shape the lives of the lower
orders would include three terms--instinct, imitation (though,
doubtless, this is instinctive), and experience. Instinct is, of
course, the main factor, and by this term we mean that which prompts
an animal or a man to act spontaneously, without instruction or
experience. All creatures are imitative, and man himself not the least
so. I had a visit the other day from a woman who had spent the last
two years in London, and her speech betrayed the fact; she had quite
unconsciously caught certain of the English mannerisms of speech. A
few years