Human Physiology. 5 



invented luxuries of food for gluttony, drinks that intoxicate, 

 narcotics that excite, deprave, stupefy, destroy health, and 

 shorten life. 



Every animal lives simply and honestly, according to the law 

 of his life, and we call no beast immoral, or hold him to any 

 responsibility for his conduct Men we love and hate, praise 

 or blame, honour or despise, as they are good or bad as 

 they obey or transgress what we feel to be the true law of 

 humanity. 



Man is thus a distinct being, widely and radically different 

 from all others on our planet a moral being, knowing right 

 and wrong, good and evil; an intellectual being, measuring 

 the stars, calculating the eclipses of the sun for thousands of 

 years to the fraction of a second ; writing poems and com- 

 posing operas ; painting pictures ; modelling statues and 

 building cathedrals a religious being, believing in God and 

 immortality. 



In his knowledge and his ignorance, his virtues and his 

 vices, his benevolence and his cruelty, his heroic deeds and 

 his base and shameful misdeeds and crimes, man is widely 

 separated from the whole animal creation. We cannot con- 

 ceive of a dog or an elephant becoming a Homer or a Plato, 

 a Shakespeare or a Newton ; yet we see that every animal has 

 the knowledge it requires. Every bird knows how to obtain 

 its food, build its nest, and rear its young. It can find its way 

 from England to the shores of the Mediterranean in the 

 autumn, and in the spring come back to the tree on which it 

 first broke through its shell. The salmon, without chart or 

 compass, after its wanderings through many seas, comes back 

 to its native river. The bee does not go to school to learn 

 how to gather wax and honey, construct its cells, and order 

 its government, economies, and sanitary regulations. Man 

 must learn everything he requires to know, and often perishes 

 for lack of knowledge. He eats food that shortens his life, 



