ers mentioned undoubtedly read the
instinctive play of animals as an attempt on the part of the parents
to teach their young.

That the examples of the parents in many ways stimulate the imitative
instincts of the young is quite certain, but that the parents in any
sense aim at instruction is an idea no longer held by writers on
animal psychology.

Of course it all depends upon what we mean by teaching. Do we mean the
communication of knowledge, or the communication of emotion? It seems
to me that by teaching we mean the former. Man alone communicates
knowledge; the lower animals communicate feeling or emotion. Hence
their communications always refer to the present, never to the past or
to the future.

That birds and beasts do communicate with each other, who can doubt?
But that they impart knowledge, that they have any knowledge to
impart, in the strict meaning of the word, any store of ideas or
mental concepts--that is quite another matter. Teaching implies such
store of ideas and power to impart them. The subconscious self rules
in the animal; the conscious self rules in man, and the conscious self
alone can teach or communicate knowledge. It seems to me that the
cases of the deer and the antelope, referred to by President Roosevelt
in the letter to me quoted in the last chapter, show the communication
of emotion only.

Teaching implies reflection and judgment; it implies a thought of, and
solicitude for, the future. "The young will need this knowledge," says
the human parent, "and so we will impart it to them now." But the
animal parent has consciously no knowledge to impart, only fear or
suspicion. One may affirm almost anything of trained dogs and of dogs
generally. I can well believe that the setter bitch spoken of by the
President punished her pup when it flushed a bird,--she had been
punished herself for the same offense,--but that the act was
expressive of anything more than her present anger, that she was in
any sense trying to train and instruct her pup, there is no proof.

But with animals that have not been to school to man, all ideas of
teaching must be rudimentary indeed. How could a fox or a wolf
instruct its young in such matters as traps? Only in the presence of
the trap, certainly; and then the fear of the trap would be
communicated to the young through natural instinct. Fear, like joy or
curiosity, is contagious among beasts and birds, as it is among men;
the young fox or wolf would instantly