The lower animals are even better physicians than we are; for when they
are ill, they will, many of them, seek out some particular herb, which
they do not, use as food, and which possesses a medicinal quality exactly
suited to the complaint; whereas, the whole college of physicians will
dispute for a century about the virtues of a single drug.
6. Man undertakes nothing in which he is not more or less puzzled; and
must try numberless experiments before he can bring his undertakings to
anything like perfection; even the simplest operations of domestic life
are not well performed without some experience; and the term of man's life
is half wasted before he has done with his mistakes and begins to profit
by his lessons.
7. The third distinction is that animals make no improvements; while the
knowledge, and skill, and the success of man are perpetually on the
increase. Animals, in all their operations, follow the first impulse of
nature or that instinct which God has implanted in them. In all they do
undertake, therefore, their works are more perfect and regular than those
of man.
8. But man, having been endowed with the faculty of thinking or reasoning
about what he does, is enabled by patience and industry to correct the
mistakes into which he at first falls, and to go on constantly improving.
A bird's nest is, indeed, a perfect structure; yet the nest of a swallow
of the nineteenth century is not at all more commodious or elegant than
those that were built amid the rafters of Noah's ark.
Pages:
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333