ANIMAL PETS IN SCHOOL. 



A WISE old man down in Boston 

 says animal pets should be kept 

 in public schools to teach chil 

 dren kindness to the weak. The 

 jokesters are already at work deriding 

 one of the best thoughts anybody has 

 had about education for a long time be 

 cause it seems, and possibly is, imprac 

 ticable. They call it a reversal of the 

 Mary's lamb doctrine, and suggest the 

 propriety of letting the children throw 

 paper wads to teach them accuracy 

 and precision. 



Despite both its doubtful practica 

 bility and the jester's little fling, Dr. 

 Edward Everett Hale's proposition is 

 not only founded on a right theory, but 

 reflects the very way in which nature, 

 says the Chicago Journal, first taught 

 the great lesson of altruism and love. 



Most of our scientists and some of 

 our religious teachers nowadays believe 

 that man ascended from the beasts. If 

 he did, the first kindness, the first un 

 selfishness, the first compassion for the 

 helpless, and gentleness toward the 

 weak, that were ever in the world, the 

 first things that ever differentiated man 

 from brute, were taught to the parents 

 of the race in exactly the way Dr. Hale 

 would have them taught to its children. 



There never was any human love un 

 til there was human helplessness. There 

 never was any mother-love or father- 

 love until children began to be born 

 that were feeble. 



In some of the lower orders of life 

 the young can take care of themselves 

 as soon as they are born. There is no 

 reason why anything should "care for" 

 them, so nothing does. There is no 

 affection for them nor from them nor 

 among them. 



Love was first excited by something 

 thatneeded care andkindness. Acouple 

 of shaggy savages, animals that didn't 

 know enough to love each other yet, 

 felt something "akin to pity" for an 

 ugly baby with a gorilla chin and no 

 forehead, and resolved to do something 

 not for themselves, but for the hideous 

 infant, and not because they were proud 



of its prettiness and wanted to keep it 

 for a plaything, but because it so obvi 

 ously needed to have something done 

 for it. 



That, the scientists tell us, was the 

 beginning of unselfishness, the begin 

 ning of care for others, the origin of 

 affection and altruism, the genesis of 

 humanity, the promise of the destiny of 

 man. The baby was the animal pet 

 that got into the schoolhouse with the 

 children of the early world and taught 

 the first lesson of love. On its mighty 

 weakness hung most of those powerful 

 and wonderful forces that have lifted 

 brutehood into manhood. 



Heredity does a great deal, but most 

 of the lesson has to be taught over to 

 every individual, and it is a more im 

 portant one than geography or gram 

 mar. Humanity's happiness and fur 

 ther progress depend on the thorough 

 ness with which it learns the lesson, not 

 of arithmetic or spelling, but of altru 

 ism. 



Children are cruel. But they have 

 hereditary instincts of kindness for the 

 weak that would develop the sooner 

 into love for their fellows if they had 

 something helpless to exercise them 

 on. When a big, hulking, selfish boy 

 begins to take a protecting interest in 

 a little yellow dog he is unconsciously 

 teaching himself the greatest lesson he 

 can ever learn. Trotting around in 

 that woolly hide, dodging stones, flee 

 ing to him for protection from the 

 poundman, getting lost, and kicked, 

 starved, and hurt, is the beginning of 

 the boy's unselfishness and the man's 

 altruism, and it is not funny, but sad, 

 that the schoolhouse door must shut it 

 out so that the reluctant master may 

 the better give his attention to the mys 

 teries of commercial arithmetic and the 

 art of skinning his fellow-man by means 

 of "brokerage," "discount," and "com 

 pound interest." 



Dr. Hale may never see animal pets 

 in the schools, but he has been in the 

 world a long time, and knows what hu 

 manity needs. 



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