ETHICS BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST. 635 



pie about the middle of the fifth century remarks in his commen- 

 tary on the first chapter of Genesis, that God created the beasts of 

 the earth and the cattle after their kind on the same day on which 

 he created man, in order that these creatures might be there ready 

 to serve him. 



But it would be superfluous to multiply examples of the influ- 

 ence of this anthropocentric idea as it has worked itself out in the 

 history of mankind. Every science has had to encounter its op- 

 position, and it has been a stumbling-block in the way of every 

 effort to enlarge human knowledge and to promote human happi- 

 ness. It has tended to check the progress of hygienic research 

 and sanitary reform; for if man is of such exceptional impor- 

 tance that his conduct or misconduct can bring down epidemics 

 upon whole communities and vast continents as visitations of 

 divine wrath, whoever seeks to ward off or to stay these punish- 

 ments is guilty of a sacrilegious attempt to parry the blow aimed 

 at the wicked by the arm of the Almighty, and, by thus setting 

 himself in antagonism to God, becomes in fact an ally and adver- 

 sary of the devil. Thus vaccination was denounced, not on the 

 ground taken by its present opponents, that it is useless as a pre- 

 ventive of smallpox and a prolific source of other diseases, but on 

 account of its real or supposed prophylactic effectiveness, since it 

 impiously wrenched from the hand of the Deity one of his most 

 fatal weapons of retribution. 



To what absurdities of presumption the anthropocentric con- 

 ception has paved the way is evident from the belief, once uni- 

 versally entertained, that the sun, moon, and stars were placed in 

 the firmament with express reference to man, and exerted a benign 

 or baleful influence upon his destiny from the cradle to the grave. 

 Owen Glendower's bombastic boast 



"... At my nativity 



The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, 

 Of burning cressets ; and at my birth 

 The frame and huge foundation of the earth 

 Shaked like a coward " 



was well answered by Hotspur : " Why, so it would have done at 

 the same season if your mother's cat had but kittened, though 

 yourself had ne'er been born." And yet this fulsome brag of the 

 Welsh swashbuckler was only an extravagant statement of what 

 the captious Henry Percy and his contemporaries all held to be 

 virtually true. Poe embodies the same sentiment in his youthful 

 poem, Al Aaraaf, and would fain preserve this brighter world of 

 his fancy from the contagion of human evil 



" Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man." 



