HUMANITY IN THE ANIMALS. 309 



tion of man in his social universe — to give his life away to beast, 

 plant and stone, and raise them into company for his mind : a func- 

 tion like the Creator's, who makes all quasi-ihmgs into substances, 

 mere substances into minds, and unites the world and men to him- 

 self by nothing peculiar to them, but by the golden links of his 

 own merciful attributions. Imputing the higher to the lower is 

 therefore hearty truth running Godwards, or the process by which 

 universes are made and kept. Hence it is our duty to give the 

 stones a tongue, and to cover it with all the runes of our own elo- 

 quence and wisdom. . . . Furthermore, there is common companion- 

 ship of men with animals, and duties from him to them, which 

 duties have the significant name of humanity, as though the humane 

 man recognized his species wherever life was seen. And according 

 to the materialist, this is true to the very mire ; for they deem that 

 there is no difference between men and beasts but the want of speech 

 in the latter, and the absence of tails in the former; which shows 

 a strong dirty perception on their part of the oneness of principle 

 prevading life : a principle which if sought at the head — for in the 

 matter of the tail they admit unlikeness — resolves itself into the 

 prevalence of man. Again, man never falls below himself, but 

 animality receives him with open arms : " nemo unquam repente fuit 

 turpissimus :" on the road to moral death, before the descender is 

 as dead as a stone, he runs through the beast properties, transmut- 

 ing form and feature right down the devil's ark, and at last crawls, 

 serpentwise and toadwise, into his chasm and block of a thousand 

 years. And lastly the animals, to conclude their manly participa- 

 tions, are many of them direct and even domestic servants of man- 

 kind: they share our lot, of poverty and riches, good and evil, 

 civilization and savagery: they become honest, or sly, according to 

 the rule of their master's house; showing that they are willing 

 fellows. And as the domestication decreases by degrees, and 

 embraces main generic heads, the whole animal kingdom may be 

 grouped about us from this principle, either in the way of friends 

 or foes; and thus approve a human reference of this close kind, co- 

 extensive with natural history. 



The science of plants falls under humanity for similar but lower 

 reasons to that of the animals. For their natural history is di- 



