Note finally that the majority of animals and of savages, when they have once been deceived, are slow to recover from their error, are for a long time distrustful toward the object which has deceived them. A dog, coming home one evening, perceived an empty cask in an unusual place. He was extremely frightened and barked for a long time; it was only by day that he dared approach near the object of his alarm, and he examined and moved about it, and finally, like the frog in La Fontaine’s fable, recognized that the thing was inoffensive. If the cask in question had disappeared during the night, the dog would evidently have remembered it as a redoubtable being seen the evening before in the yard. A monkey, which I left in the room with a cardboard sheep one entire day, proved unable to the end entirely to satisfy itself that the sheep was inanimate. I believe, however, that this persuasion was ultimately achieved, for the monkey began finally to pluck the sheep’s wool and to treat it something too familiarly. But nature seldom permits us equally extended _tête-à-tête_ with objects that alarm us. Messrs. Spencer and Müller will call our attention to the fact, it is true, that cardboard sheep, no more than hand-organs or watches, exist _in rerum natura_. We reply that nature supplies primitive man with things much more astonishing: with rocks, and forests which can talk (the echo), with springs of hot water, with intermittent fountains. Mr. Fergusson (_Tree and Serpent Worship_) relates that in India he saw with his own eyes a tree which saluted the rising and setting sun, by lifting or lowering its boughs. Temples had formerly been reared in its neighbourhood. People came from all sides to see the marvellous tree. This tree was an old date-palm, half decayed, which hung above the road; in order to pass below it, it had been held back by a rope; but during this operation the fibres which composed the trunk were twisted like the threads in a rope. These fibres contracted toward midday in the heat of the sun; the tree untwisted and rose. It relaxed under the dew at evening and once more bowed down. (See M. Girard de Rialle, _Mythologie comparée_, t. i.) [Sidenote: Conduct generates beliefs that justify it.]