6.  Mother, dear mother, the years have been long
   Since I last listened your lullaby song;
   Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
   Womanhood’s years have been only a dream! 
   Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
   With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
   Never hereafter to wake or to weep:—­
   Rock me to sleep, mother,—­rock me to sleep!

XCV.  MAN AND THE INFERIOR ANIMALS.

1.  The chief difference between man and the other animals consists in this, that the former has reason, whereas the latter have only instinct; but, in order to understand what we mean by the terms reason and instinct, it will be necessary to mention three things in which the difference very distinctly appears.

2.  Let us first, to bring the parties as nearly on a level as possible, consider man in a savage state, wholly occupied, like the beasts of the field, in providing for the wants of his animal nature; and here the first distinction that appears between them is the use of implements.  When the savage provides himself with a hut or a wigwam for shelter, or that he may store up his provisions, he does no more than is done by the rabbit, the beaver, the bee, and birds of every species.

3.  But the man can not make any progress in this work without tools; he must provide himself with an ax even before he can cut down a tree for its timber; whereas these animals form their burrows, their cells, or their nests, with no other tools than those with which nature has provided them.  In cultivating the ground, also, man can do nothing without a spade or a plow; nor can he reap what he has sown till he has shaped an implement with which to cut clown his harvest.  But the inferior animals provide for themselves and their young without any of these things.

4.  Now for the second distinction.  Man, in all his operations, makes mistakes; animals make none.  Did you ever hear of such a thing as a bird sitting on a twig lamenting over her half-finished nest and puzzling her little head to know how to complete it?  Or did you ever see the cells of a beehive in clumsy, irregular shapes, or observe anything like a discussion in the little community, as if there were a difference of opinion among the architects?

5.  The lower animals are even better physicians than we are; for when they are ill, they will, many of them, seek out some particular herb, which they do not, use as food, and which possesses a medicinal quality exactly suited to the complaint; whereas, the whole college of physicians will dispute for a century about the virtues of a single drug.

6.  Man undertakes nothing in which he is not more or less puzzled; and must try numberless experiments before he can bring his undertakings to anything like perfection; even the simplest operations of domestic life are not well performed without some experience; and the term of man’s life is half wasted before he has done with his mistakes and begins to profit by his lessons.