Page:La Fontaine - The Original Fables Of, 1913.djvu/98

84 Nevertheless, we must allow to the beasts a higher plane than that of plants, notwithstanding the fact that plants breathe.

Is there any explanation to what I shall now relate? Two rats who were seeking their living had the good fortune to find an egg. Such a dinner was amply sufficient for folks of their species, they had no need to look for an ox. With keen delight and an appetite to match they were just about to eat up the egg between them, when an unbidden guest appeared in the shape of Master Reynard the fox. This was a most awkward and vexatious visitation. How was the egg to be saved from the jaws of him? To wrap it up carefully and carry it away by the fore paws, or to roll it, or to drag it, were methods as impossible as they were hazardous. But Necessity, that ingenious mother, furnished the never-failing invention. The sponger being as yet far enough away to give the rats time to reach their home, one of them lay upon his back and took the egg safely between his arms whilst the other, in spite of sundry shocks and a few slips, dragged him home by the tail.

After this recital, let any one who dare maintain that animals have no powers of reason.

For my part if I had the portioning of these faculties I would allow as much reasoning power in animals as in infants, who evidently think from their earliest years, from which fact we may conclude that one can think without knowing oneself. I would, similarly,