The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-09-13
The Other Animals

Jdch 1onuOH mas come down out Oh
his tree and in the current number of
Golfers says a few things on his own
account about homocentrics, rudimen-
tary reason. and reflex action.
His story begins:
American journalism has it's mo-
ments OF fantastic hysteria, and when
II ison he rampage the only thing for
rational man to do is to climb tree
and let the cataclysm go by. And SO,
some time ago, when the word nature
faker was coined, /, for one, climbed
into my tree and stayed there. l hap
pened to be in Hawaii at the time, and
Honolulu reporter elected the senti-
ment from me that 1 thanked God that
was not. an authority on anything.
This sentiment was promptly cabled to
America in an Associated Press dis
patch, whereupon the American press
POSSIBLY incensed because | had not
climbed down out of my tree) charged
me with paying for advertising by cable
at dollar per word-the very human
way of the American press, which when
a man refuses to come down and be
licked, makes faces at him.
But now that the dreadful storm is
over, let us come and reason together
have been guilty of writing two ami
NAL stories-two books about dogs. The
part, was in truth a protest against
the humantzing of animals, of which
IL seemed to me several animal writ
ers' had been profoundly guilty. Time
and again., and many times, in my mar
rauVes. L wrote. speaking of my dog
heroes: He did not think these things;
he merely did them, ETC. And l did
this repeatedly, to the clogging of my
narrative and in violation of my arts
tic canons: and did 1t in order to ham,
mer into the average human under
standing that these dog-heroes of mine
were not directed by abstract reason
ing. but by instinct, sensation and
emotion, and by simple reasoning. Also,
endeavored to make my stories in line
with the facts of evolution: l 'hewed
them TO the mark set by scientific re-
search. and awoke. one day. to find my
self bundled neck and crop into the
camp of the nature takers.
President Roosevelt was responsible
for this, and he tried and condemned me
on two counts. % l was guilty of hav-
ing big, fighting bulldog whip a,wolf-
dog. ~ / was guilty of allowing a
lynx to kill a wolf dog In a pitched
battle. Regarding the second count.
President Roosevelt was wrong in his
field observations. He must have read
my story hastily. for in my story had
the wolf-dog kill the lynx. Not only
did l have my wolf-dog kill the lynx,
but l made him eat the body of the
lynx as well. Remains only the first
count on which to convict me of nature
taking, and the first count does not
charge me with diverging from ascer-
tanned facts. 1t is merely a statement
of difference of opinion President
Roosevelt does not think a bulldog can
lick wolf-dOg. i think bulldog can
lick wolf-dog. And there we are.
Difference of opinion may make, and
does make. horse-racing. / can under
stand that difference of opinion can
make dog-fighting. But what gets me
is how difference of opinion regarding
the relative fighting merits of bulldog
and a wolf-dog makes me a nature
faker and President Roosevelt a vindi-
Gated and triumphant scientist.
| Then entered John Burroughs to
clinch President Roosevelt's Judgments
In this unholy alliance there is no diff
| ference of opinion. That Roosevelt can
do no wrong is Burroughs opinion; and
that Burroughs is always right is
Roosevelt's opinion. Both are agreed
that animals do not reason They as
sert that all animals below man are au-
| donations and perform actions only OF
two sorts-mechanical and reflex-and
that in such actions no reasoning en-
tiers at all. They believe that man is
the only animal capable of reasoning
and that ever does reason. This is a
view that makes the twentieth century
scientist smile. 1t is not modern at all
1t is distinctly medieval. President
| Roosevelt and John Burroughs, in adj
| vancinS such q view, are homocentric
in the same fashion that the scholas-
tics of earlier and darker centuries We're
| homocentric. Had not the world been
discovered to be round until after the
| births of President Roosevelt and John
Burroughs, they would have been geo.
centric as well in their theories of the
! Cosmos. They could not have believed
otherwise. The stuff of their minds is
so conditioned. They talk the argot OF
evolution while they no more under
stand the essence and the import OF
evolution than does a South Sea ISL
ander or Sir Oliver Lodge understand
|, the nOumena of radioactivity.
Now, President Roosevelt Is an anna
teur. He may know something of state
craft and of big-game shooting; he may
be able to kill a deer when he sees il
and to measure it and weigh ii after he
has shot it: he may be able to OBJ
serve carefully and accurately the ac-
| lions ana antics or tOm-titS and Snipe
and, after he has observed it, to def
nitely and coherently convey the infor-
nation of when the first chipmunk, in
a certain year and a certain latitude
and longitude, came out in the spring
and chartered and gamboled--but that
he should be able, as an individual OBJ
server, to analyze all animal life and to
Synthetic and develop and know al
that is known of the method and sig
nificance of evolution, would require 9
vaster credulity for you or me to be-
lieve than is required for us to believe
the biggest whopper ever told by an un-
mitigated nature-faker. No, President
Roosevelt does not understand evolution
and he does not seem to have made
much of an attempt to understand evo.
| luton.
(From Golfers for Sept So