638 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



regards the lower animals : " The fear of you and the dread of you 

 shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of the 

 air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes 

 of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving 

 thing that liveth shall be meat for you ; even as the green herb 

 have I given you all things." 



This tyrannical mandate is not mitigated by any intimation of 

 the merciful manner in which the human autocrat should treat 

 the creatures thus subjected to his capricious will. On the con- 

 trary, the only thing that he is positively commanded to do with 

 reference to them is to eat them. They are to be regarded by him 

 simply as food, having no more rights and deserving no more 

 consideration as means of sating his appetite than a grain of corn 

 or a blade of grass. 



The practical working of this decree has been summed up by 

 Shelley, with his wonted force and succinctness, when he says, 

 " The supremacy of man is, like Satan's, a supremacy of pain." 

 Burns regrets the fatal effect of the sovereignty thus conferred 

 upon the human race in destroying the mutual sympathy and 

 confidence which should exist between the lord of creation and 

 the lower animals in the lines addressed To a Mouse, on turning 

 her up in her Nest with the Plow, November, 1785 : 



" I'm truly sorry man's dominion 

 Has broken Nature's social union, 

 An' justifies that ill opinion 



Which makes thee startle 

 At me, thy poor earth-born companion, 

 An' fellow-mortal." 



In the subsequent annals of the world we have ample com- 

 mentaries on this primitive code written in the blood of helpless, 

 innocent, and confiding creatures, which, although called dumb 

 and incapable of recording their sufferings, yet 



"... have long tradition and swift speech, 

 Can tell with touches and sharp-darting cries 

 Whole histories of timid races taught 

 To breathe in terror by red-handed man." 



Indeed, ever since Abel's firstlings of the flock were more 

 acceptable than Cain's bloodless offerings of the fruits of the 

 fields, priests have performed the functions of butchers, convert- 

 ing sacred shrines into shambles in their endeavors to pander to 

 the gross appetites of cruel and carnivorous gods. Cain's offer- 

 ing was rejected, says Dr. Kitto, because "he declined to enter 

 into the sacrificial institution." In other words, he would not 

 shed the blood of beasts to gratify the Lord a refusal which we 



