Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the unique ability of humans to think abstractly and with disinterest compared to animals.
In this quote, John Burroughs reflects on the human capacity for self-conscious thought and disinterested intelligence, which distinguishes us from other living beings. He suggests that while animals may think, they lack the awareness of their thinking, and their thoughts are primarily focused on survival. In contrast, humans possess a level of intelligence that allows us to contemplate broader concepts beyond mere self-preservation, enabling us to engage with the world in a more profound and insightful manner.
In practice
In a philosophical discussion about consciousness, this quote can illustrate the differences in thinking between humans and animals.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
I believe it was God's will that we should come back, so that men might know the things that are in the world, since, as we have said in the first chapter of this book, no other man, Christian or Saracen, Mongol or pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice.
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
Our country is slowly but surely moving - and I've seen it over and over again in many instances in government - toward a culture of mediocrity.
Rhianon, he said, hold my hand, Rhianon. She did not hear him, but stood over his bed and fixed him with an unbroken sorrow. Hold my hand, he said, and then: why are your putting the sheet over my face?
Finally, the intercom crackles and Hatmitch's acerbic laugh fills the studio. He contains himself just long enough to say, 'And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies.
To live remains an art which everyone must learn, and which no one can teach.
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