Twenty-fib ST Annual Meeting. 53 



duced a being totally different from, and vastly superior to, all the forms through 

 which he has passed in development. While retaining much that betokens the ani- 

 mal in mental constitution, and as regards mere nervous actions, yet the superim- 

 posed qualities — the soul if you please — mark him, and set him apart as a distinct 

 being — an animal with the touch of divinity. 



But yet in the earliest history of his species his mental powers and emotions were 

 but little different, either in quantity or quality, from the other animals around him, 

 and he waged a warfare for mere existence on the same level with them. But from 

 this he passed on to a higher plane, and became a different order of being. It is not 

 possible for us to carry ourselves back in imagination over the path of our wonder- 

 ful mental development to the time in the infancy of our species when the mind of 

 man was wholly undifferentiated from that of other mammals. Yet that would be 

 necessary to place ourselves en rapport with the animal mind, for at that stage man 

 thought and acted like the animal that he was. We are, therefore, forced to make 

 our study objective, rather than subjective, and to investigate the animal mind through 

 its phenomena. This places us at a disadvantage at once. But not so much as would 

 appear at first thought, when we consider that science is but the study of phenomena 

 and their classification; and from the constancy of phenomena, theories, principles 

 and laws are elaborated. From this, the scientific standpoint, we will endeavor to 

 make a brief study of animal ethics, which will be suggestive rather than exhaustive. 



In the first place we notice that the animal mind, and through the mind, the 

 emotions and impulses, is controlled and moulded by two great dominating instincts: 

 the first is the instinct of self-preservation; the second is that of the propagation of 

 the species. Around these absolute and all-powerful faculties cluster all the minor 

 mental and emotional actions and manifestations that we are pleased to call the in- 

 dications of reason or affection. 



The first, the instinct of self-preservation, is essentially and purely selfish. It is 

 prompted by the instinctive and perhaps somewhat reasoned desire to live and avoid 

 suffering, and escape death. The desire for life is inherited and unconscious. The 

 fear of pain is instinctive; but, in addition, as the animal lives, this is accelerated 

 by experience and observation. The fear of death — the understanding of death, as 

 observed in other animals dying or dead, must be an inherited instinct, mounting 

 to the plane of conscious reasoning, for an object in fighting is to produce death, 

 which, they must reason, renders an adversary harmless, or an edible animal fit for 

 food. So, too, it must become, in their minds, a condition which they fear and dread, 

 much, indeed, as man does, and with much the same indefinite understanding of it. 

 If they could grasp the idea of immortality, self-preservation would prompt them 

 to yearn for such a condition also, as man does. 



One of the worst features of this strong instinct is, that in the procuring of food, 

 in warfare, defensive and offensive, etc., it is the cause of much destruction of life, 

 and too often develops into wantonness, merely for the love of killing. Unavoid- 

 able cruelty is bad enough, from our moral standpoint — barely allowable, in fact, 

 seeing that we practice it. But there is a difference in the fact that we do, or should, 

 regret the necessity of destroying life that we may live; but animals do not seem to 

 possess any such feeling; on the contrary, throughout the whole carnivorous king- 

 dom, at least, the great prey upon the less, the strong upon the weak, the weak upon 

 the still weaker, and so on down to microscopical infinity. Nature is one vast slaugh- 

 ter-house — cruelty, death, destruction are everywhere. This destruction is often 

 causeless, and is always selfish and heartless. It is devoid even of the chivalrous ele- 

 ment of combat, of challenge, and equal chance, for it is usually a cowardly assault 

 of the strong upon the weak. However, man can claim little moral superiority in 

 that respect, for in the commercial world the strong continually prey upon the weak, 



