274 THE ETHICAL KINSHIP 



assassinated, eaten, insulted, deceived, imprisoned, 

 robbed, tormented, skinned alive, shot down for 

 pastime, cut to pieces out of curiosity, or com- 

 pelled to undergo any other enormity or victimisa- 

 tion anybody can think of or is disposed to visit 

 upon them. It is enough almost to make knaves 

 shudder, the cold-blooded and business-like man- 

 ner in which we cut their throats, dash out their 

 brains, and discuss their flavour at our cannibal- 

 istic feasts. As Plutarch says, 'Lions, tigers, 

 and serpents we call savage and ferocious, yet 

 we ourselves come behind them in no species of 

 barbarity.' Accustomed from our cradle up to 

 look upon violence and assassination, we have 

 become so habituated and hardened to these things 

 that we perpetrate them and see them perpetrated 

 with the same indifference as that with which we 

 watch waves die on the beach. Human beings 

 are, in fact ('paragons' though they pretend to 

 be), the most predatory and brutal of all animals 

 the great bone - breakers and bone -pickers ot 

 the planet. 



It is scarcely possible, astounding as it is, to 

 commit crimes upon any beings in this world, 

 except men. There are no beings in the universe, 

 according to human beings, except themselves. 

 All others are commodities. They are of conse- 

 sequence only because they have thighs and can 

 fill up the unoccupied places of the human alimen- 

 tary. Human beings are 'persons,' and have 

 souls and gods and places to go to when they die. 

 But the hundreds of thousands of other races of 



