THE EDUCATIONAL lll'M.WK SOCIETY 



35 1 



A Chapter of the Agassiz Association. (Incorporated! 892.) "The Law of 



Not the Love of Law.' : 



The Purpose for which the corporation is constituted is the promotion of 

 scientific education. — From Charter of the Agassis Association. 



Scientific investigation in our day should be inspired by a purpose as animat- 

 ing to the general sympathy, as was the religious zeal which built the Cathedral 

 of Cologne or the Basilica of St. Peter's. — From a Report by Louis Agassis. 



We speak for those that can speak 

 for themselves, if we will only take the 

 trouble to learn their language and 

 listen to what they say, and also to 

 put ourselves in such relation to them 

 that they will desire to speak to us. 



Our "dumb" animals are not so 

 much dumb as we are deaf or negli- 

 gent of listening to what they say. 



Science and Sympathy. 



It is real knowledge, not compulsion, 

 that puts one in tune with Omnis- 

 cience. To know nature is to love 

 her. Therefore it has been the work of 

 The Agassiz Association for more than 

 a third of a century to augment human 

 virtues by education, not by law. 



The Educational Humane Society of 

 the AA stands for intelligence, liberty 

 and love, not only to four-footed ani- 

 mals, birds and the lowest creatures 

 in the scale of life, but to man him- 

 self. Thrashing a man legally may be 

 as bad as illegally thrashing a horse. 

 It is not the action that counts, nor 

 the absence of action, so much as it 

 is the spirit of the action. A mani- 

 festation of the right spirit should in- 

 clude not only the man and his horse, 

 the won. an and the dead bud on her 

 bonnet, the boy and his dog, but also 

 the ruthless plucking and destroying 

 of flowers by the girl. 



A company of children who attend 

 a Band of Mercy meeting, sing the 

 songs, repeat the pledges, read eulo- 

 gies of the horse, dog or cat, have not 

 been taught to feel nor to exhibit the 

 right spirit, if, on the way home, they 

 wdiip down a beautiful flower, crush-, 

 the head of a garter snake or stamp> 

 on a big spider in the path. 



Not even if they see a man pound- 

 ing an overloaded horse, are these 

 Merciful ones wholly right if their sym- 

 pathy is solely for the horse. The horse 

 is afflicted by the club and the burden; 

 the man by ignorance and wrong point 

 of view. T.o relieve not only the 

 cruelty, but the ignorance, wdiich is 

 the greater affliction, has always been 

 the first essential in the work of the 

 Educational Humane Society. Its 

 higher and better object is ever what 

 Agassiz called, "A purpose as animat- 

 ing to the general sympathy, as was 

 the religious zeal." 



"Humane"-ness and the Worm. 

 A w r ell-known periodical, the official 

 organ of several humane societies, has 

 for many years carried on its first page, 

 as a motto, the following quotation 

 credited to Cowper : 



"I would not enter on my list of friends, 

 Though graced with polished manners and 



fine sense, 

 Yet wanting sensibility, the man 

 Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 



