When he is young and only learning to walk, his toes being turned in so as to suit his arboreal movements, the bear trips on his own paws and at times rolls over in a ludicrous way, as if turning an unwilling somersault. After such a collapse, his next impulse naturally is to move backwards, as the safer way. But then, his eyes being set in his head like our own, he soon finds that the universe is too complex to allow indefinite blind retrogression; and so he tries again, and makes another cautious step or two forward, with a continuous effort to avoid tripping on his own toes. At last, though not without many a sad catastrophe, he does learn to go forward and follow his nose like other people. This is natural history, an account of how a little bear learns to walk, and it is not an allegory of the Russian empire, as readers might suppose. That was how these two little ones learned, while growing in size and in favour with man and woman. They were in their native climate, and too young as yet to see any difference between humanity and themselves.
It was pleasant to watch them and share their feelings, and escape for a moment from the narrow limitations of humanity.--
At home in the world, wheresoever I be, There's nothing alive that is foreign to me.
I have another friend, who has also been foster-father to bears, and who is fond of illustrating the distinction between instinct and reason by their infantile habits. However small the cub, he never needs to be taught how to bend and arrange the twigs, so as to give himself a convenient resting-place upon a branch. That, I am told, is instinct; and so, I suppose, is licking his paws, which comes as easy as breathing. But once two baby bears were attracted by the smell of honey to a wild bees' nest up a tree. The bees came out with angry buzz and stings. The assailants were young, and had neither bee-hats nor aprons, and they retired, discomfited. Their kind master gave them, as consolation prize, some spoonfuls of honey on a plate. They licked it all up, and then looked at each other with surprise and animation, as men do who are realising something strange, as if saying to each other, and each to himself, "So that was the meaning of the smell we went to investigate."