420 * Ammal Depravity. [October, 
differences of character are found as decided as occur 
among a similar number of men. Any breeder or trainer of 
horses, cattle, dogs, or poultry, would greet with laughter,— 
loud, if not Olympian,—the theorist who should assert that 
these animals display anything like identity of disposition. 
There are the obstinate and the docile, the timid and bold, 
the open and thetreacherous, the placableand the revengeful. 
In fact, to find two horses or two dogs precisely alike in every 
point of character that man can distinguish would be as 
difficult as to find two human beings similarly identical. How 
much greater, then, would be the range of chara¢ter visible 
if we could see them with the eyes of their own species! 
Perhaps the usual evasion may be attempted that such 
various development of temper and disposition is to be found 
among tame animals alone. The objection is baseless. 
Capture a number of wild elephants, hawks, ravens, parrots, 
and try totame them. You will find still the same variety 
as you would among animals born in a state of tameness. 
The differences are found by man, not created. 
We will next endeavour to show—what indeed, follows as 
a corollary from the foregoing considerations—that animals 
are capable of vice, hoping that this circumstance may lead 
man to recognise them as brothers. 
To eat more than hunger demands merely for the sake of 
the sensuous enjoyment thus obtainable, has been always, in 
man, branded as a serious vice, and has indeed been classed 
among the “seven deadly sins” of medizval tradition.* 
This transgression has been found to impair human health, 
and to blunt mental action. How is it in this respect with 
brutes? Do they never eat more than they can digest and 
assimilate? Do they never suffer consequently in their 
health? Most assuredly. Cows have been known to gorge 
themselves with clover till they have died from repletion. 
Ducks often suffer from their own greediness. Similar cases 
of gluttony are, of course, more rare among wild animals, 
who neither find food in such abundance nor are so undis- 
turbed in its enjoyment. Yet even they, in homely phrase, 
at times eat more than does them good. Here, then, we see 
that brutes have a certain liberty of action. They can be 
either temperate or gluttonous. In the former case they 
preserve their health; in the latter case they bring upon 
* It is a remarkable faé that the discharge of any voluntary physical function 
to which no pleasure is attached was never pronounced a vice, even if exercised 
in excess. But those whose importance the Creator has indicated by rendering 
them pleasant were branded as sinful not merely when discharged in excess, 
but even when kept within the bounds of moderation,—and this in the exact 
ratio of their pleasurableness. 
