a child is much less than that of an elephant. Besides, if Nature
had intended that men should sleep outdoors in winter, with the
moose and caribou, we would have been furnished with ruminant
pelage and fat.




VII

KEEN BIRDS AND DULL MEN


If all men could know how greatly the human species varies from
highest to lowest, and how the minds and emotions of the lowest
men parallel and dove-tail with those of the highest quadrupeds
and birds, we might be less obsessed with our own human ego, and
more appreciative of the intelligence of animals.

A thousand times in my life my blood has been brought to the
boiling point by seeing or reading of the cruel practices of
ignorant and vicious men toward animals whom they despised because
of their alleged standing "below man." By his vicious and cruel
nature, many a man is totally unfitted to own, or even to
associate with, dogs, horses and monkeys. Many persons are born
into the belief that every man is necessarily a "lord of
creation," and that all animals per se are man's lawful prey. In
the vicious mind that impression increases with age. Minds of the
better classes can readily learn by precept or by reasoning from
cause to effect the duty of man to observe and defend the God-