Konrad Lorenz describes a young greylag goose he raised by hand, Martina, who developed a peculiar habit while learning to follow him upstairs. Upon entering the unfamiliar hall at the base of the staircase, she suddenly spooked and ran toward the large window opposite the door, as if attempting to flee. Reaching the window, she paused for a moment as if unsure what to do—the window blocking her escape. Her fear then abated, and she was able to turn back, follow Lorenz, and ascend the stairs.
On subsequent evenings, Martina followed him again. The fear no longer appeared, yet her movements remained the same. Each time she entered the hallway, she ran to the window and paused before continuing upward. The detour persisted even after she ceased being afraid.
Over time, Lorenz observed a further change. Martina no longer paused in the same way. The pause shortened, then thinned, until it was reduced to a mere gesture. Entering the hall, she would swiftly detour toward the window, make a brief stop almost without interruption, and proceed upstairs in a single fluid motion.
What had begun as a reaction to fear became a behavior. The pause did not disappear; it changed. The time once spent hesitating condensed into a new set of movements, a way of going up the stairs unique to Martina. The hallway, the window, and the stairs were reorganized into a novel temporal sequence by her behavior.
The pause at the window was not incidental to what followed. It marked a point where the movement could reorganize itself. Passage through the hallway and up the stairs became possible there, not all at once, but through the repeated interruption the window imposed.
What developed was an ability, but not one acquired by instruction or decision. The capacity to enter the hallway and ascend the stairs took shape through the pause itself, through the repeated encounter with attraction and resistance. The behavior did not overcome the window; it incorporated it.
For this reason, running to the window did not fall away when fear disappeared. The detour remained as part of the ascent, almost as an affirmation of a capacity that had been formed there. The movement returned to the window not out of hesitation, but as if passing again through the site where it had learned how to proceed.
Original passage as written by Konrad Lorenz, see F0064 .