370 LESSONS FEOM NATUEE. [CHAP. XII. 



If we alone of all animals are endowed with a moral 

 nature, the due exercise of that nature is, of course, the one 

 thing for us. But we have already considered how actions 

 may be materially moral yet formally immoral (as an act of 

 kindness done for a base end), or materially immoral yet 

 formally moral (as when, a false conscience having been 

 formed, an act really wrong is believed by the doer to be a 

 right act). Creatures that have not a moral nature at all can 

 of course do nothing either &quot; moral &quot; or &quot; immoral.&quot; Thus 

 ants that make slaves, or insects which lay their eggs in the 

 bodies of other insects, do nothing wrong. Nor is there any 

 thing really cruel in the bloodthirstiness of a tiger or really 

 impure in the apparent lasciviousness of an ape. It follows 

 therefore that those who believe in the existence of angelic 



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beings may conceive such beings as looking on with perfect 

 complacency at brutes performing actions which in us would 

 be the expression of the last degree of vileness, filthiness, or 

 cruelty, and which naturally cannot be contemplated ly us 

 without disgust because of their unconscious association by 

 us with analogous imaginary human actions. Such actions 

 would be thus complacently contemplated by immaterial in 

 telligences, because such actions in brutes are not and can 

 not be either vile, filthy or cruel, seeing the performers are 

 but sentient automata and the actions themselves blameless 

 apart from rational will. 



Yet, as just said, such actions tend to be regarded by us as 

 really disgusting or wrong in themselves, because we habitually 

 and naturally regard them from the human point of view. 

 It is this which causes a difficulty to exist in some persons 

 minds in believing certain productions to be expressly willed 

 by the First Cause, because such persons unconsciously 

 attribute to that Cause the human point of view. The 

 structure of certain parts of some of the apes, both of the old 

 and the new world, and the forms assumed by certain fungi, 

 may serve as examples. But the feelings which arise in us, 

 the sentiments inspired by the aspect of such parts or forms, 

 are essentially human and human only. In themselves, ob- 



