Conclusion. 199 



which describe the sexual impulse of the brute as 

 essentially the same as human conjugal love, and the 

 care of the young among animals as essentially iden- 

 tical with parental love in man. Such men as Alf. 

 Brehm and L. Buechner were not ashamed to come 

 forward as "apostles of free love" and to decry as 

 antiquated and ridiculous the moral bounds estab- 

 lished for man by reason and divine law. With them 

 the humanization of the brute, consciously or uncon- 

 sciously, aims at degrading man so far as to make 

 him cast off his reasonable nature and to follow with- 

 out reserve the sensual inclinations, which he has in 

 common with the unreasonable brute. On this account 

 they deny the difference between sensitive and spirit- 

 ual faculties, between the animal soul and the human 

 spirit. Hence we do not consider it too harsh a judg- 

 ment to say: Those, who humanize the animal, not 

 only trifle with scientific psychology, but they also 

 drag into the mire the dignity of man. Every well- 

 meaning naturalist, therefore, ought resolutely to 

 oppose these unprincipled doirgs of so-called popular 

 psychology. 



Now-a-days, there is, and rightly so, a widespread 

 agitation against the use of alcohol and other drugs 

 injurious to the nervous system, because the bodily 

 and spiritual welfare of humanity is endangered. But 

 to counteract the ravages of spiritual venoms, which 

 under the glittering name of modern science are spread 

 through all classes of society, little or nothing is done. 

 If the moral principles of Brehm and Buechner should 

 later on become the common property of humanity, 

 then the society of the future from the highest to the 



