ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



«*ted Nature. He is one with the beasts of the field 

 and the fowls of the air only in his purely animal 

 aspects. As a moral and spiritual being with a sense 

 of truth and justice, of mercy and forgiveness, he 

 stands on a higher plane. He cannot justify his con- 

 duct by an appeal to brute nature or to biological 

 laws. His sins are more scarlet and his virtues more 

 divine than those of his unmoral and unreasoning 

 brute neighbors. His consciousness of right and 

 wrong is the touchstone by which all his deeds are 

 to be tried. 



Tennyson's agonizing line "Nature red in tooth 

 and claw" tends, especially in the days of world- 

 wide human carnage, to make one see the whole 

 animal kingdom with blood-dripping claws and 

 jaws. But it is not so. At its worst this "tooth and 

 claw" business applies only to a fraction of wild 

 life. The vast army of the seed-eaters, the plant- 

 eaters, the fruit-eaters, upon which the flesh-eaters 

 subsist, and which they help keep in check, is 

 greatly in the ascendancy. 



The whole truth of this matter of the cruelty of 

 Nature may be put in a nutshell : Nature as seen in 

 animal life is sanguinary, but only man is cruel. 

 Only man deliberately and intentionally inflicts 

 pain; only man tortures his victims, and takes 

 pleasure in their agony. No other creature goes out 

 of its way to inflict suffering; no other creature acts 

 from the motive of cruelty or the will to give pain. 



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