THE RELIGION OF NATURE 



ligion of the future in its relation toward animal 

 life: 



" Kill not, for pity's sake : and lest ye slay 

 The meanest thing upon its upward way." 



I quote these lines elsewhere: but they are lines 

 which cannot be quoted too often. 



In Darwin's " Descent of Man " (second edi- 

 tion), page 69 and the following 14 or 15 pages, 

 the question of the mental similarity of other ani- 

 mals to man is fully discussed. In these pages 

 Darwin, with his inimitable genius for taking 

 pains, piles up evidence to show that other animals 

 exhibit anger, fear, memory, affection, etc., in the 

 same way as man does. No one questions this now- 

 adays; but Darwin was undertaking a Herculean 

 task in proving it, a generation ago. 



Exactly thirty years have passed since I read 

 the book ; and I admit that I was pleased, on tak- 

 ing it down from the shelf again, to find that 

 Darwin stopped his argument, that man and other 

 animals are alike, exactly at the point where I say 

 that men and other animals become different. 



After fourteen or fifteen pages crammed with 

 facts arrayed to prove that the mental qualities 

 of other animals are not different from ours, Dar- 

 win says : " It may be freely admitted that no 

 animal is self-conscious." 



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