CHAPTER XIII 

 TAILORING ANIMALS 



CARLYLE in his Sartor Resartus reduced the philos- 

 ophy of human civihzation to a question of clothes. 

 One must admit that the art of putting together various 

 fabrics to protect the person is a chief concern of life. 

 Even architecture owes somewhat of its development to 

 the tailoring habit, using the phrase in its larger sense. 

 For primitive man sheltered himself and his household, 

 as is still the wont with ruder peoples, in shacks of 

 wattled limbs thatched with leaves or grass. In a higher 

 stage of civilization he dwelled in tents, which are tailor- 

 made houses. The nomadic man, the soldier, the pioneer, 

 the man of science, the camp-meeting devotee still make 

 large demands upon thread and needle for shelter. 



This is a development of the instinctive gift which 

 led the original man to clothe himself with aprons of 

 fig-leaves. But this art is not the exclusive possession 

 of man. At the outset of his career some of the lower 

 orders shared it with him. Man has advanced; the 

 animals remain stationary at the fig-leaf period. This 

 difference is of immeasurable value, and marks an im- 

 passable gulf between the two. Yet a glance back- 

 ward at "the rock whence we were hewn" — if it so be 

 that we rvere hewn from the vast, primitive mass of life- 

 stuff — should stir within us a kindlier interest in and 



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