is claimed for the literary naturalist that he interprets natural
history. The ways and doings of the wild creatures are exaggerated and
misread under the plea of interpretation. Now, if by interpretation we
mean an answer to the question, "What does this mean?" or, "What is
the exact truth about it?" then there is but one interpretation of
nature, and that is the scientific. What is the meaning of the fossils
in the rocks? or of the carving and sculpturing of the landscape? or
of a thousand and one other things in the organic and inorganic world
about us? Science alone can answer. But if we mean by interpretation
an answer to the inquiry, "What does this scene or incident suggest to
you? how do you feel about it?" then we come to what is called the
literary or poetic interpretation of nature, which, strictly speaking,
is no interpretation of nature at all, but an interpretation of the
writer or the poet himself. The poet or the essayist tells what the
bird, or the tree, or the cloud means to him. It is himself,
therefore, that is being interpreted. What do Ruskin's writings upon
nature interpret? They interpret Ruskin--his wealth of moral and
ethical ideas, and his wonderful imagination. Richard Jefferies tells
us how the flower, or the bird, or the cloud is related to his
subjective life and experience. It means this or that to him; it may
mean something entirely different to another, because he may be bound
to it by a different tie of association. The poet fills the lap of
Earth with treasures not her own--the riches of his own spirit;
science reveals the treasures that are her own, and arranges and
appraises them.
Strictly speaking, there is not much in natural history that needs
interpreting. We explain a fact, we interpret an oracle; we explain
the action and relation of physical laws and forces, we interpret, as
well as we can, the geologic record. Darwin sought to explain the
origin of species, and to interpret many palæontological phenomena. We
account for animal behavior on rational grounds of animal psychology,
there is little to interpret. Natural history is not a cryptograph to
be deciphered, it is a series of facts and incidents to be observed
and recorded. If two wild animals, such as the beaver and the otter,
are deadly enemies, there is good reason for it; and when we have
found that reason, we have got hold of a fact in natural history. The
robins are at enmity with the jays and the crow blackbirds and the
cuckoos in the spring, and the reason is, these birds eat the robins'
eggs. When we seek to interpret the actions of the animals, we are, I
must repeat, in danger of running into all kinds of anthropomorphic
absurdities, by reading their lives in terms of our own thinking and
consciousness.
A man sees a flock of crows in a tree in a state of commotion; now
they all caw, then only one master voice is heard, presently two or
three crows fall upon one of their number and fell him to the ground.
The spectator examines the victim and finds him dead, with his eyes
pecked out. He interprets what he has seen as a court of justice; the
crows were trying a criminal, and, having found him guilty, they
proceeded to execute him. The curious instinct which often prompts
animals to fall upon and destroy a member of the flock that is sick,
or hurt, or blind, is difficult of explanation, but we may be quite
sure that, whatever the reason is, the act is not the outcome of a
judicial proceeding in which judge and jury and executioner all play
their proper part. Wild crows will chase and maltreat a tame crow
whenever they get a chance, just why, it would be hard to say. But the
tame crow has evidently lost caste among them. I have what I consider
good proof that a number of skunks that were wintering together in
their den in the ground fell upon and killed and then partly devoured
one of their number that had lost a foot in a trap.
Another man sees a fox lead a hound over a long railroad trestle, when
the hound is caught and killed by a passing train. He interprets the
fact as a cunning trick on the part of the fox to destroy his enemy! A
captive fox, held to his kennel by a long chain, was seen to pick up
an ear of corn that had fallen from a passing load, chew it up,
scattering the kernels about, and then retire into his kennel.
Presently a fat hen, attracted by the corn, approached the hidden fox,
whereupon he rushed out and seized her. This was a shrewd trick on the
part of the fox to capture a hen for his dinner! In this, and in the
foregoing cases, the observer supplies something from his own mind.
That is what he or she would do under like conditions. True, a fox
does not eat corn; but an idle one, tied by a chain, might bite the
kernels from an ear in a mere spirit of mischief and restlessness, as
a dog or puppy might, and drop them upon the ground; a hen would very
likely be attracted by them, when the fox would be quick to see his
chance.
Some of the older entomologists believed that in a colony of ants and
of bees the members recognized one another by means of some secret
sign or password. In all cases a stranger from another colony is
instantly detected, and a home member as instantly known. This sign or
password, says Burmeister, as quoted by Lubbock, "serves to prevent
any strange bee from entering into the same hive without being
immediately detected and killed. It, however, sometimes happens that
several hives have the same signs, when their several members rob each
other with impunity. In these cases the bees whose hives suffer most
alter their signs, and then can immediately detect their enemy." The
same thing was thought to be true of a colony of ants. Others held
that the bees and the ants knew one another individually, as men of
the same town do! Would not any serious student of nature in our day
know in advance of experiment that all this was childish and absurd?
Lubbock showed by numerous experiments that bees and ants did not
recognize their friends or their enemies by either of these methods.
Just how they did do it he could not clearly settle, though it seems
as if they were guided more by the sense of smell than by anything
else. Maeterlinck in his "Life of the Bee" has much to say about the
"spirit of the hive," and it does seem as if there were some
mysterious agent or power at work there that cannot be located or
defined.
This current effort to interpret nature has led one of the well-known
prophets of the art to say that in this act of interpretation one
"must struggle against fact and law to develop or keep his own
individuality." This is certainly a curious notion, and I think an
unsafe one, that the student of nature must struggle against fact and
law, must ignore or override them, in order to give full swing to his
own individuality. Is it himself, then, and not the truth that he is
seeking to exploit? In the field of natural history we have been led
to think the point at issue is not man's individuality, but correct
observation--a true report of the wild life about us. Is one to give
free rein to his fancy or imagination; to see animal life with his
"vision," and not with his corporeal eyesight; to hear with his
transcendental ear, and not through his auditory nerve? This may be
all right in fiction or romance or fable, but why call the outcome
natural history? Why set it down as a record of actual observation?
Why penetrate the wilderness to interview Indians, trappers, guides,
woodsmen, and thus seek to confirm your observations, if you have all
the while been "struggling against fact and law," and do not want or
need confirmation? If nature study is only to exploit your own
individuality, why bother about what other people have or have not
seen or heard? Why, in fact, go to the woods at all? Why not sit in
your study and invent your facts to suit your fancyings?
My sole objection to the nature books that are the outcome of this
proceeding is that they are put forth as veritable natural history,
and thus mislead their readers. They are the result of a successful
"struggle against fact and law" in a field where fact and law should
be supreme. No doubt that, in the practical affairs of life, one often
has a struggle with the fact. If one's bank balance gets on the
negative side of the account, he must struggle to get it back where it
belongs; he may even have the help of the bank's attorney to get it
there. If one has a besetting sin of any kind, he has to struggle
against that. Life is a struggle anyhow, and we are all
strugglers--struggling to put the facts upon our side. But the only
struggle the real nature student has with facts is to see them as they
are, and to read them aright. He is just as zealous for the truth as
is the man of science. In fact, nature study is only science out of
school, happy in the fields and woods, loving the flower and the
animal which it observes, and finding in them something for the
sentiments and the emotions as well as for the understanding.
With the nature student, the human interest in the wild creatures--by
which I mean our interest in them as living, struggling
beings--dominates the scientific interest, or our interest in them
merely as subjects for comparison and classification.
Gilbert White was a rare combination of the nature student and the man
of science, and his book is one of the minor English classics. Richard
Jefferies was a true nature lover, but his interests rarely take a
scientific turn. Our Thoreau was in love with the natural, but still
more in love with the supernatural; yet he prized the fact, and his
books abound in delightful natural history observations. We have a
host of nature students in our own day, bent on plucking out the heart
of every mystery in the fields and woods. Some are dryly scientific,
some are dull and prosy, some are sentimental, some are sensational,
and a few are altogether admirable. Mr. Thompson Seton, as an artist
and _raconteur_, ranks by far the highest in this field, but in
reading his works as natural history, one has to be constantly on
guard against his romantic tendencies.
The structure of animals, their colors, their ornaments, their
distribution, their migrations, all have a significance that science
may interpret for us if it can, but it is the business of every
observer to report truthfully what he sees, and not to confound his
facts with his theories.
Why does the cowbird lay its egg in another bird's nest? Why are
these parasitical birds found the world over? Who knows? Only there
seems to be a parasitical principle in Nature that runs all through
her works, in the vegetable as well as in the animal kingdom. Why is
the porcupine so tame and stupid? Because it does not have to hunt for
its game, and is self-armed against all comers. The struggle of life
has not developed its wits. Why are robins so abundant? Because they
are so adaptive, both as regards their food and their nesting-habits.
They eat both fruit and insects, and will nest anywhere--in trees,
sheds, walls, and on the ground. Why is the fox so cunning? Because
the discipline of life has made him cunning. Man has probably always
been after his fur; and his subsistence has not been easily obtained.
If you ask me why the crow is so cunning, I shall be put to it for an
adequate answer. It seems as if nobody could ever have wanted his skin
or his carcass, and his diet does not compel him to outwit live game,
as does that of the fox. His jet black plumage exposes him alike
winter and summer. This drawback he has had to meet by added wit, but
I can think of no other way in which he is handicapped. I do not know
that he has any natural enemies; yet he is one of the most suspicious
of the fowls of the air. Why is the Canada jay so much tamer than are
other jays? They belong farther north, where they see less of man;
they are birds of the wilderness; they are often, no doubt, hard put
to it for food; their color does not make them conspicuous,--all these
things, no doubt, tend to make them more familiar than their
congeners. Why, again, the chickadee can be induced to perch upon your
hand, and take food from it, more readily than can the nuthatch or the
woodpecker, is a question not so easily answered. It being a lesser
bird, it probably has fewer enemies than either of the others, and its
fear would be less in proportion.
Why does the dog, the world over, use his nose in covering the bone he
is hiding, and not his paw? Is it because his foot would leave a scent
that would give his secret away, while his nose does not? He uses his
paw in digging the hole for the bone, but its scent in this case would
be obliterated by his subsequent procedure.
The foregoing is one way to interpret or explain natural facts.
Everything has its reason. To hit upon this reason is to interpret it
to the understanding. To interpret it to the emotions, or to the moral
or to the æsthetic sense, that is another matter.
I would not be unjust or unsympathetic toward this current tendency to
exalt the lower animals into the human sphere. I would only help my
reader to see things as they are, and to stimulate him to love the
animals as animals, and not as men. Nothing is gained by
self-deception. The best discipline of life is that which prepares us
to face the facts, no matter what they are. Such sweet companionship
as one may have with a dog, simply because he is a dog, and does not
invade your own exclusive sphere! He is, in a way, like your youth
come back to you, and taking form--all instinct and joy and adventure.
You can ignore him, and he is not offended; you can reprove him, and
he still loves you; you can hail him, and he bounds with joy; you can
camp and tramp and ride with him, and his interest and curiosity and
adventurous spirit give to the days and the nights the true holiday
atmosphere. With him you are alone and not alone; you have both
companionship and solitude. Who would have him more human or less
canine? He divines your thought through his love, and feels your will
in the glance of your eye. He is not a rational being, yet he is a
very susceptible one, and touches us at so many points that we come to
look upon him with a fraternal regard.
I suppose we should not care much for natural history, as I have
before said, or for the study of nature generally, if we did not in
some way find ourselves there; that is, something that is akin to our
own feelings, methods, and intelligence. We have traveled that road,
we find tokens of ourselves on every hand; we are "stuccoed with
quadrupeds and birds all over," as Whitman says. The life-history of
the humblest animal, if truly told, is profoundly interesting. If we
could know all that befalls the slow moving turtle in the fields, or
the toad that stumbles and fumbles along the roadside, our sympathies
would be touched, and some spark of real knowledge imparted. We should
not want the lives of those humble creatures "interpreted" after the
manner of our sentimental "School of Nature Study," for that were to
lose fact in fable; that were to give us a stone when we had asked for
bread; we should want only a truthful record from the point of view of
a wise, loving, human eye, such a record as, say, Gilbert White or
Henry Thoreau might have given us. How interesting White makes his old
turtle, hurrying to shelter when it rains, or seeking the shade of a
cabbage leaf when the sun is too hot, or prancing about the garden on
tiptoe in the spring by five in the morning, when the mating instinct
begins to stir within him! Surely we may see ourselves in the old
tortoise.
In fact, the problem of the essay-naturalist always is to make his
subject interesting, and yet keep strictly within the bounds of truth.
It is always an artist's privilege to heighten or deepen natural
effects. He may paint us a more beautiful woman, or a more beautiful
horse, or a more beautiful landscape, than we ever saw; we are not
deceived even though he outdo nature. We know where we stand and where
he stands; we know that this is the power of art. If he is writing an
animal romance like Kipling's story of the "White Seal," or like his
"Jungle Book," there will be nothing equivocal about it, no mixture
of fact and fiction, nothing to confuse or mislead the reader.
We know that here is the light that never was on sea or land, the
light of the spirit. The facts are not falsified; they are transmuted.
The aim of art is the beautiful, not _over_ but _through_ the true.
The aim of the literary naturalist is the true, not over but through
the beautiful; you shall find the exact facts in his pages, and you
shall find them possessed of some of the allurement and suggestiveness
that they had in the fields and woods. Only thus does his work attain
to the rank of literature.
XII
A BEAVER'S REASON
One of our well-known natural historians thinks that there is no
difference between a man's reason and a beaver's reason because, he
says, when a man builds a dam, he first looks the ground over, and
after due deliberation decides upon his plan, and a beaver, he avers,
does the same. But the difference is obvious. Beavers, under the same
conditions, build the same kind of dams and lodges; and all beavers as
a rule do the same. Instinct is uniform in its workings; it runs in a
groove. Reason varies endlessly and makes endless mistakes. Men build
various kinds of dams and in various kinds of places, with various
kinds of material and for various kinds of uses. They exercise
individual judgment, they invent new ways and seek new ends, and of
course often fail.
Every man has his own measure of reason, be it more or less. It is
largely personal and original with him, and frequent failure is the
penalty he pays for this gift.
But the individual beaver has only the inherited intelligence of his
kind, with such slight addition as his experience may have given him.
He learns to avoid traps, but he does not learn to improve upon his
dam or lodge building, because he does not need to; they answer his
purpose. If he had new and growing wants and aspirations like man,
why, then he would no longer be a beaver. He reacts to outward
conditions, where man reflects and takes thought of things. His
reason, if we prefer to call it such, is practically inerrant. It is
blind, inasmuch as it is unconscious, but it is sure, inasmuch as it
is adequate. It is a part of living nature in a sense that man's is
not. If it makes a mistake, it is such a mistake as nature makes when,
for instance, a hen produces an egg within an egg, or an egg without a
yolk, or when more seeds germinate in the soil than can grow into
plants.
A lower animal's intelligence, I say, compared with man's is blind. It
does not grasp the subject perceived as ours does. When instinct
perceives an object, it reacts to it, or not, just as the object is,
or is not, related to its needs of one kind or another. In many ways
an animal is like a child. What comes first in the child is simple
perception and memory and association of memories, and these make up
the main sum of an animal's intelligence. The child goes on developing
till it reaches the power of reflection and of generalization--a stage
of mentality that the animal never attains to.
All animal life is specialized; each animal is an expert in its own
line of work--the work of its tribe. Beavers do the work of beavers,
they cut down trees and build dams, and all beavers do it alike and
with the same degree of untaught skill. This is instinct, or
unthinking nature.
Of a hot day a dog will often dig down to fresh earth to get cooler
soil to lie on. Or he will go and lie in the creek. All dogs do these
things. Now if the dog were seen to carry stones and sods to dam up
the creek to make a deeper pool to lie in, then he would in a measure
be imitating the beavers, and this, in the dog, could fairly be called
an act of reason, because it is not a necessity of the conditions of
his life; it would be of the nature of an afterthought.
All animals of a given species are wise in their own way, but not in
the way of another species. The robin could not build the oriole's
nest, nor the oriole build the robin's nor the swallow's. The cunning
of the fox is not the cunning of the coon. The squirrel knows a good
deal more about nuts than the rabbit does, but the rabbit would live
where the squirrel would die. The muskrat and the beaver build lodges
much alike, that is, with the entrance under water and an inner
chamber above the water, and this because they are both water-animals
with necessities much the same.
Now, the mark of reason is that it is endlessly adaptive, that it can
apply itself to all kinds of problems, that it can adapt old means to
new ends, or new means to old ends, and is capable of progressive
development. It holds what it gets, and uses that as a fulcrum to get
more. But this is not at all the way of animal instinct, which begins
and ends as instinct and is non-progressive.
A large part of our own lives is instinctive and void of thought. We
go instinctively toward the warmth and away from the cold. All our
affections are instinctive, and do not wait upon the reason. Our
affinities are as independent of our reflection as gravity is. Our
inherited traits, the ties of race, the spirit of the times in which
we live, the impressions of youth, of climate, of soil, of our
surroundings,--all influence our acts and often determine them without
any conscious exercise of judgment or reason on our part. Then habit
is all-potent with us, temperament is potent, health and disease are
potent. Indeed, the amount of conscious reason that an ordinary man
uses in his life, compared with the great unreason or blind impulse
and inborn tendency that impel him, is like his artificial lights,
compared with the light of day--indispensable on special occasions,
but a feeble matter, after all. Reason is an artificial light in the
sense that it is not one with the light of nature, and in the sense
that men possess it in varying degrees. The lower animals have only a
gleam of it now and then. They are wise as the plants and trees are
wise, and are guided by their inborn tendencies.
Is instinct resourceful? Can it meet new conditions? Can it solve a
new problem? If so, how does it differ from free intelligence or
judgment? I am inclined to think that up to a certain point instinct
is resourceful. Thus a Western correspondent writes: "At three
different times I have pursued the common jack-rabbit from a level
field, when the rabbit, coming to a furrow that ran at right angles to
his course, jumped into it, and crouching down, slowly crept away to
the end of the furrow, when it jumped out and ran at full speed
again." This is a good example of the resourcefulness of instinct--the
instinct to escape from an enemy--an old problem met by taking
advantage of an unusual opportunity. To run, to double, to crouch, to
hide, are probably all reflex acts with certain animals when hunted.
The bird when pursued by a hawk rushes to cover in a tree or a bush,
or beneath some object. Last summer I saw a bald eagle pursuing a fish
hawk that held a fish in its talons. The hawk had a long start of the
eagle, and began mounting upward, screaming in protest or defiance as
it mounted. The pirate circled far beneath it for a few minutes, and
then, seeing how he was distanced, turned back toward the ocean, so
that I did not witness the little drama in the air that I had so long
wished to see.
A wounded wild duck suddenly develops much cunning in escaping from
the gunner--swimming under water, hiding by the shore with only the
end of the bill in the air, or diving and seizing upon some object at
the bottom, where it sometimes remains till life is extinct.
I once saw some farm-hands try to capture a fatted calf that had run
all summer in a partly wooded field, till it had become rather wild.
As the calf refused to be cornered, the farmer shot it with his rifle,
but only inflicted a severe wound in the head. The calf then became as
wild as a deer, and scaled fences in much the manner of the deer. When
cornered, it turned and broke through the line in sheer desperation,
and showed wonderful resources in eluding its pursuers. It coursed
over the hills and gained the mountain, where it baffled its pursuers
for two days before it was run down and caught. All such cases show
the resources of instinct, the instinct of fear.