151 MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS. n 



the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once 

 an egg, which no ordinary power of discrimination 

 could distinguish from that of a Dog? Or is the 

 philanthropist, or the saint, to give up his en- 

 deavours to lead a noble life, because the simplest 

 study of man's nature reveals, at its foundations, 

 all the selfish passions, and fierce appetites of the 

 merest quadruped? Is mother-love vile because a 

 hen shows it, or fidelity base because dogs pos- 

 sess it? 



The common sense of the mass of mankind 

 will answer these questions without a moment's 

 hesitation. Healthy humanity, finding itself hard 

 pressed to escape from real sin and degrada- 

 tion, will leave the brooding over speculative 

 pollution to the cynics and the " righteous over- 

 much " who, disagreeing in everything else, 

 unite in blind insensibility to the nobleness 

 of the visible world, and in inability to appre- 

 ciate the grandeur of the place Man occupies 

 therein. 



Nay more, thoughtful men, once escaped from 

 the blinding influences of traditional prejudice, 

 will find in the lowly stock whence Man has 

 sprung, the best evidence of the splendour of his 

 capacities; and will discern in his long progress 

 through the Past, a reasonable ground of faith in 

 his attainment of a nobler Future. 



They will remember that in comparing civilised 

 man with the animal world, one is as the Alpine 



