“Now,” said Jules, “I understand what Jacques was saying. The woodpecker doesn’t run around the tree to see whether or not it has bored through to the other side, but to gobble up the insects that are trying to get away. I thought the woodpecker must be very silly to think it could drill right through the trunk of a tree with one peck of its beak; but now that I know the real reason of what it does, I see that it’s a wonderfully clever bird.” “I assure you once more that animals have more intelligence than they are given credit for. Let us beware of seeing an evil meaning in habits and aptitudes that we do not understand. Is it not said of the buzzard that it is a stupid bird, just because it shows such patience in watching and waiting, perfectly motionless, for the field-mouse it suspects to be lurking under the ground? And here we have the woodpecker accused of being so foolish as to think it can pierce a tree trunk with one blow of its beak, merely because it runs around to capture the insects fleeing to the other side! Bear this in mind: there is in animals no foolishness except what we ascribe to them from our own point of view. Whenever we are able to discover the real motive, we always find their actions perfectly logical. And that is only what might have been expected, for an animal has no choice in its acts, but is made to perform them according to its mode of life as determined from the beginning by Divine Wisdom. Man alone is free: by a sublime privilege he is left to choose between good and evil, between sound reason and blind passion. He seeks and chooses, at his own risk and peril, the true or the false, the just or the unjust, the beautiful or the ugly. But animals, having no spiritual battles to fight as we have, are now what they have always been and always will be; they do to-day what they did yesterday and will do to-morrow; for centuries and centuries they go on doing the same thing without improvement or deterioration, and with an unfailing sense given them by God.