"So long as the nursling has all it requires, the mother permits the male bird to fly to and fro, to go and come, to attend to his occupations. But as soon as it asks for more, the mother, with her sweetest voice, summons the purveyor, who fills his beak, arrives in all haste, and transmits to her the food.
"The fifth day the eyes are less prominent; on the sixth, in the morning, feathers stretch along the wings, and the back grows darker; on the eighth it opens its eyes when called, and begins to stutter: the father ventures to nourish it. The mother takes some relaxation, and frequently absents herself. She often perches on the rim of the nest, and lovingly contemplates her offspring. But the latter stirs, feels the need of movement. Poor mother! in a little while it will escape thee.
"In this first education of the still passive and elementary life, as in the second (and active, that of flight), of which I have already spoken, one fact, evident and clearly discernible at every moment, was, that everything was proportioned with infinite prudence to the condition least foreseen, a condition essentially variable, the nursling's individual strength; the quantity, quality, and mode of preparation of the food, the cares of warmth, friction, cleanliness, were all ordered with a skill and an attention to detail, modified according to circumstance, such as the most delicate and provident woman could hardly have surpassed.
"When I saw her heart throbbing violently, and her eye kindling as she gazed on her precious treasure, I exclaimed: 'Could I do otherwise near the cradle of my son?'"
Ah, if she be a machine, what am I myself? and who will then prove that I am a person? If she has not a soul, who will answer to me for the human soul? To what thereafter shall we trust? And is not all this world a dream, a phantasmagoria, if, in the most individual actions, actions the most plainly reasoned over and calculated upon, I am to conclude there is nothing but a lack of reason, a mechanism, an "automatism," a species of pendulum which sports with life and thought?
Note that our observations were made on a captive, who worked in fatal and predetermined conditions of dwelling-place, nourishment, &c. But how, if her action had been more evidently chosen, willed, and meditated; if all this had transpired in the freedom of the forests, or she had had cause to disquiet herself about many other circumstances which captivity enabled her to ignore? I am thinking especially of the anxiety for security, which, for the bird in savage life, is the foremost of all cares, and which more than anything else exercises and develops her free genius.
This first initiation into life, of which I have just given an example, is followed by what I shall call the professional education; every bird has a vocation.
