TO THE LOWER ANIMALS. 131 



no ordinary power of discrimination could distinguish from 

 that of a Dog ? Or is the philanthropist or the saint to 

 give np his endeavours 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 possess 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 degradation, will leave the brooding over specula- 

 tive pollution to the cynics and the righteous ' overmuch ' 

 who, disagreeing in everything else, unite in blind insen- 

 sibility to the nobleness of the visible world, and in ina- 

 bility to appreciate the grandeur of the place Man occu- 

 pies therein. 



iN^ay 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 civilized man 

 with the animal world, one is as the Alpine traveller, who 

 sees the mountains soaring into the sky and can hardly 

 discern where the deep shadowed crags and roseate peaks 

 end, and where the clouds of heaven begin. Surely the 

 awe-struck voyager may be excused if, at first, he refuses 

 to believe the geologist, who tells him that these glorious 

 masses are, after all, the hardened mud of primeval seas, 

 or the cooled slag of subterranean furnaces — of one sub- 

 stance with the dullest clay, but raised by inward forces 

 to that place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory. 



But the geologist is right ; and due reflection on his 



