THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ALTRUISM 307 



grass in the middle of the field, the whole family, 

 great and small, insultingly abuse me. I am left 

 to eat any species of herbs among the hills, but 

 you, my master, yourself receive the grain that is 

 sown in the field. Of the chen paddy you make 

 rice ; of the no paddy you make wine. You have 

 cotton, wheat, and herbs of a thousand different 

 kinds. Your garden is full of vegetables. When 

 your men and women marry, amid all your 

 felicity, if there be a want of money, you let 

 me out to others. When pressed for the payment 

 of duties, you devise no plans, but take and sell 

 the ox that ploughs your field. When you see that 

 I am old and weak, you sell me to the butcher to 

 be killed. The butcher conducts me to his home 

 and soon strikes me in the forehead with the head 

 of an iron hatchet, after which I am left to die in 

 the utmost distress. My skin is peeled off, my 

 bones are scraped, and my skin is taken to cover 

 the drum by which the country is alarmed.' 



1 Witness the patient ox, with stripes and yells 

 Driven to the slaughter, goaded as he runs 

 To madness, while the savage at his heels 

 Laughs at the frantic sufferer's fury.' 



The angler brags about his ' haul ' and the 

 hunter about his ' bag ' and his ' big game ' with 

 as little realisation of what these things mean as 

 the slave-master boasts of his ' niggers.' Men 

 talk of ' chops ' and ' steaks ' and ' roasts ' with 

 the same somnambulism, the same profound un- 

 consciousness of what these things really signify 

 in the psychic economies of the world, as the 



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