ANIMAL LIFK IX LITERATTRE. 169 



being. The spirit of the animal race and species becomes 

 a guardian or a hostile spirit, with influence upon the for- 

 tunes of men. In this wonderland of the animal world all 

 things are possible, There is kinship between man and 

 other creatures. There are ways b}- which they may un- 

 derstand each other. The beaver, the crow and manj^ 

 others become totems, mystic ancestors and protectors of 

 certain families and associations of men. This is a strange 

 and wellnigh incomprehensible attitude now, but there 

 was a warmth of feeling, a certain beauty, a kind of fear- 

 less innocence in it, too. The relation between animals 

 and men was simple and hearty. 



Out from these naive and childlike tales of early folk- 

 lore springs the fable. But there is a change. In the 

 fable the animal is, as it were, degraded from his older 

 position as an associate and confidant of man. He be- 

 comes a mouthpiece of human cunning. He is artificial- 

 ized, conventionalized. His living qualities as a real ani- 

 mal disappear. The animal name is a disguise. Behind 

 it hides the keen, mocking, prudent, worldly intellect, in- 

 tent on conveying some stinging rebuke, a sneer, a sar- 

 casm or at best a moral precept that would have small 

 chance of being heard if spoken forthright. In the fable, 

 things are said that otherwise could not be said at all. A 

 vein of shrewdness marks the first development of man 

 away from his animal state. This finds reflection in the 

 fable. The imagination finds pleasure in masquerading 

 and concealing its deeper purposes behind these conven- 

 tional figures inherited from a former age. And with the 

 fable, in Greece, in India, in Europe, the animal practical- 

 ly disappears from literature. The reason seems to be that 

 mankind, on the way to civilization, cuts asunder that older 

 tie of kinship with living creatures. The oppositions and 

 the -differences were emphasized. Intercourse on the old 

 familiar terms was unimaginable. Animals were judged 



