the course of their migrations. And, having told a few more instances of like kidney, he triumphantly demands: Where now is your much-vaunted reasoning of the lower animals ?
No schoolboy in a class debate could be guilty of unfairer argument. It is equivalent to replying to the assertion that 2 + 2 = 4, by saying: "No; because 12 / 3 = 3; I have demonstrated my honorable opponent's error." When a man attacks your ability as a foot-racer, promptly prove to him that he was drunk the week before last, and the average man in the crowd of gaping listeners will believe that you have convincingly refuted the slander on your fleetness of foot. On my honor, it will work. Try it sometime. It is done every day. Mr. Burroughs has done it himself, and, I doubt not, pulled the sophistical wool over a great many pairs of eyes. No, no, Mr. Burroughs; you can't disprove that animals reason by proving that they possess instincts. But the worst of it is that you have at the same time pulled the wool over your own eyes. You have set up a straw man and knocked the stuffing out of him in the complacent belief that it was the reasoning of lower animals you were knocking out
