Preview
Circa Date
1887
Transcription
19
# How thick a mass of sound serviceable ignorance is comfortably covered up in [by] the stupid word instinct. All the wisdom, all the mental powers of animals by simply pronouncing this one fetich word lose all their natural significance, are at once emptied.
The ill that’s wisely feared in half withstood
# Why should we seek to narrow our sympathy instead of widening it. How can we love God without also loving all his children.
Why not also love the earth itself in its eternal flight, a mass of living crystals humming through space like a flight of swarming bees.
A dreary harborless shore one vast precipice like the wall of a Yosemite Valley plunging cheer into deep hearing [waves]
At first comfortably curious then more & more considerably afraid
First complained in a weak whining [undivided] way as the danger began to dawn on him Then it grew & he recognized its greatness he made a pitiful eager clamor that might be heard a mile
He contained more energy & character than anyone could have guessed
20
# He glanced about & glinted in curious evolutions deftly as a swallow – feet scarce visible
Instinct See White Selborne Pg 306
How little we know of the life & conversation of animals & their manners
No part of Sticks behavior excited my curiosity [so much] more than the pains he took to hide in the brush about the camp when we were loading the canoe to start – as if seeking to escape duty of packing as dogs of the interior do.
I believe nat [Nature] had him dearly at heart as anybody & helped him over the narrow way. How I don’t know, a guard or otherwise
Enhanced the bounty & abundance of Nature
# And in that dreadful [day] how many delightful odors wafted from the sea across the glacier & from rosing woods on the hills
A frosty breeze his only companion
Not apparently wary
Resource Identifier
MuirReel33 Notebook01 Img012.Jpeg
Contributing Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
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