stroke her bristles, before she spoke comfortably of her joy, and
rolled heavily over in what looked like a grateful swoon.

No: his animals had not changed in their feelings toward him; but
how altered he in his understanding of them! He had formerly
believed that these creatures were created for the use of man--that
old conceited notion that the entire earth was a planet of
provisions for human consumption. It had never even occurred to him
to think that the horses were made but to ride and to work. Cows of
course gave milk for the sake of the dairy; cream rose on milk for
ease in skimming; when churned, it turned sour, that the family
might have fresh buttermilk. Hides were for shoes. The skin on
sheep, it was put there for Man's woollens.

Now David declared that these beings were no more made for Man than
Man was made for them. Man might capture them, keep them in
captivity, break, train, use, devour them, occasionally exterminate
them by benevolent assimilation. But this was not the reason of
their being created: what that reason was in the Creator's mind, no
one knew or would ever know.

"Man seizes and uses you," said David, working that day in his
barn; "but you are no more his than he is yours. He calls you
dependent creatures: who has made you dependent? In a state of wild
nature, there is not one of you that Man would dare meet: not the
wild stallion, not the wild bull, not the wild boar, not even an
angry ram. The argument that Man's whole physical constitution--
structure and function-shows that he was intended to live on beef
and mutton, is no better than the argument that the tiger finds man
perfectly adapted to his system as a food, and desires none better.