“Why impute reason to an animal if its behaviour can be explained on the theory of instinct?” Remember these words, for they will be referred to later.  “A goodly number of persons seem to have persuaded themselves that animals do reason.”  “But instinct suffices for the animals . . . they get along very well without reason.”  “Darwin tried hard to convince himself that animals do at times reason in a rudimentary way; but Darwin was also a much greater naturalist than psychologist.”  The preceding quotation is tantamount, on Mr. Burroughs’s part, to a flat denial that animals reason even in a rudimentary way.  And when Mr. Burrough denies that animals reason even in a rudimentary way, it is equivalent to affirming, in accord with the first quotation in this paragraph, that instinct will explain every animal act that might be confounded with reason by the unskilled or careless observer.

Having bitten off this large mouthful, Mr. Burroughs proceeds with serene and beautiful satisfaction to masticate it in the following fashion.  He cites a large number of instances of purely instinctive actions on the part of animals, and triumphantly demands if they are acts of reason.  He tells of the robin that fought day after day its reflected image in a window-pane; of the birds in South America that were guilty of drilling clear through a mud wall, which they mistook for a solid clay bank:  of the beaver that cut down a tree four times because it was held at the top by the branches of other trees; of the cow that licked the skin of her stuffed calf so affectionately that it came apart, whereupon she proceeded to eat the hay with which it was stuffed.  He tells of the phobe-bird that betrays her nest on the porch by trying to hide it with moss in similar fashion to the way all phobe-birds hide their nests when they are built among rocks.  He tells of the highhole that repeatedly drills through the clap-boards of an empty house in a vain attempt to find a thickness of wood deep enough in which to build its nest.  He tells of the migrating lemmings of Norway that plunge into the sea and drown in vast numbers because of their instinct to swim lakes and rivers in the course of their migrations.  And, having told a few more instances of like kidney, he triumphantly demands:  “Where now is your much-vaunted reasoning of the lower animals?

No schoolboy in a class debate could be guilty of unfairer argument.  It is equivalent to replying to the assertion that 2+2=4, by saying:  “No; because 12/4=3; I have demonstrated my honourable opponent’s error.”  When a man attacks your ability as a foot-racer, promptly prove to him that he was drunk the week before last, and the average man in the crowd of gaping listeners will believe that you have convincingly refuted the slander on your fleetness of foot.  On my honour, it will work.  Try it some time.  It is done every day.  Mr. Burroughs has done it himself, and, I doubt not, pulled