One part is observation, which is a simple matter of the eye. Another is sympathy, which belongs to the mind or heart. In dealing with wild creatures, as with civilized folk, one learns to appreciate De Quincey’s rule of criticism, “Not to sympathize is not to understand.” A third part, more rare and variable, may come from that penetrating but indescribable quality which we call a gift. A few men have it; the animals instinctively trust them, and they understand animals without knowing how they understand. The rest, lacking it, must struggle against a handicap to learn, substituting the slow wisdom of experience for the quick insight of the gift. It is for the latter chiefly that I write these wood notes.
One word more by way of preface, to express the conviction that you can learn nothing worth knowing about birds or beasts so long as you seek them with a gun in your hand. On that road you shall find only common dust, and at the end of it a valley of dry bones. Whether you carry the gun frankly for sport, or delude yourself with the notion that you can add to natural history by collecting [[177]]more skins or skulls, you have unconsciously placed destruction above fulfilment, stark death above the beautiful mystery of life. So must you estrange both the animal and yourself, making it impossible for you to meet on any common ground of understanding. And now for our lessons:
If I were to formulate rules for a subject which can never be learned by the book, I might say that there are three things you should know, and another you must do, if you expect to gain any intimate knowledge of the wood folk, or even to approach them near enough for fair and leisurely observation.
The first thing to know is that natural creatures, though instinctively shy or timid, are not wildly governed by fears and terrors, as we have been misinformed from our youth up. The “reign of terror” is another of those pet scientific delusions, like the “struggle for existence,” for which there is no basis in nature. Fear in any true sense of the word is an exclusively human possession, or affliction; it is a physical and moral poison, as artificial as sin, which the animal escapes by virtue of being natural. It is doubtful, indeed, whether anything remotely resembling our fear, a state of mind arising from a highly developed imagination which enables us to picture events before they happen, [[178]]is ever born into a hairy skin or hatched out of an egg. The natural timidity of all wild creatures is a protective and wholesome instinct, radically different from the fear which makes cowards of men who have learned to trace causes and to anticipate consequences.
So much for the mental analysis; and your eyes emphasize the same conclusion when you look frankly upon the natural world. The very attitude or visible expression of birds or beasts when you meet them in their native woods, feeding, playing, resting, seeking their mates, or roving freely with their little ones (all pleasurable matters, constituting nine-tenths or more of animal existence), is enough in itself to refute the absurd notion of a general reign of terror in nature. If you are wise, therefore, you will get rid of that prejudice, or at least hold it in abeyance till the animals themselves teach you how senseless it is. To go out obsessed with the notion of fear is to blind your eyes to the great comedy of the woods.
The second thing to know, and to remember when you go forth to see, is that sensitive creatures dislike to be watched, and become uneasy when they find a pair of eyes intently fixed upon them. You yourself retain something of this ancient animal inheritance, it seems, since there is nothing which more surely excites alarm if you are timid, or [[179]]challenge if you are well balanced, or anger if you have a fighting spirit, than to have a stranger watching your every move while you go about your lawful affairs. The fact that you cannot word a reason for your alarm or challenge or anger makes you all the more certain that you have an unanswerable reason; which is your inborn right to be let alone.
This natural and inalienable right (which society curbs for its own protection, and reform societies trample on for their peculiar pleasure) may help you to understand why the animal becomes alarmed when he finds you watching him closely. He desires above all things else, above his dinner even, to be let alone; and your eye may as surely disturb his peace, his self-possession, his sense of security, as any gun you may shoot at him or any fire you may kindle in his fragrant domain.
You have but to think a moment in order to understand why even your look may be too disturbing. When a beast of prey sees a buck that he wants to catch, what is his invariable mode of procedure? First he hides, then he creeps or skulks or waits, all the while keeping his eyes fastened upon his victim, watching every move with fierce intensity till the moment comes to spring. It follows, naturally enough, that when the same beast of prey finds other eyes fixed upon [[180]]himself, he knows well what the look means, that a rush will swiftly follow; and he anticipates the rush by taking to his heels. Or the buck, having once escaped the charge of a hunting beast, will remember his experience the next time he finds himself an object of scrutiny, and will flee from it as from any other discomfort.
Whether this action is the result of instinctive or deductive knowledge is here of no consequence: let the psychologists pick a bone over it. Since we have in our heads a strong aversion to being observed too closely, we are probably facing an instinct, which is stronger in the brute than in the man; but it is the fact, not the explanation thereof, which is important. The simple fact is, that wild birds and beasts will not endure watching; and you begin to sympathize with their notion when you mark the eyes of a stalking cat, with their terrible fire just before she springs. There is always more or less of that fire in a watchful eye; you may see it glow or blaze under a man’s narrowed lids before he takes quick action; and it is the kindling of that dangerous light which a sensitive creature expects and avoids when he finds you watching him.