ETHICS BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST. 639 



can not but regard as exceedingly commendable in Adam's first- 

 born. 



" I do not remember/' observed Mrs. Jameson, " ever to have 

 heard the kind and just treatment of animals enforced on Chris- 

 tian principles or made the subject of a sermon." George Herbert 

 was a man of gentle spirit and ready hand for the relief of all 

 forms of human distress, and in his book entitled A Priest to the 

 Temple, or the Country Parson, lays down rules and precepts for 

 the guidance of the clergyman in all relations of life, even to the 

 minutest circumstances and remotest contingencies incident to 

 parochial care. But this tender-hearted man does not deem it 

 necessary for the parson to take the slightest interest in animals, 

 and does not utter a word of counsel as to the manner in which 

 his parishioners should be taught their duties toward the creatures 

 so wholly dependent upon them. Indeed, no treatise on pastoral 

 theology ever touches this topic, nor is it ever made the theme of 

 a discourse from the pulpit, or of systematic instruction in the 

 Sunday school. 



Neither the synagogue nor the church, neither sanhedrin nor 

 ecclesiastical council, has ever regarded this subject as fall- 

 ing within its scope, and sought to inculcate as a dogma or to 

 enforce by decree a proper consideration for the rights of the 

 lower animals. One of the chief objections urged by Celsus more 

 than seventeen centuries ago against Christianity was that it 

 "considers everything as having been created solely for man." 

 This stricture is indorsed by Dr. Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, who 

 also animadverts on the evils growing out of the anthropocentric 

 character of Christianity as a scheme of redemption and a system 

 of theodicy. " It would seem," he says, " as if the primitive Chris- 

 tian, by laying so much stress upon a future life in contradistinc- 

 tion to this life, and placing the lower creatures out of the pale of 

 hope, placed them at the same time out of the pale of sympathy, 

 and thus laid the foundation for this utter disregard of animals 

 in the light of our fellow-creatures. The definition of virtue 

 among the early Christians was the same as Paley's that it was 

 good performed for the sake of insuring eternal happiness which 

 of course excluded all the so-called brute creatures. Kind, lov- 

 ing, submissive, conscientious, much-enduring, we know them to 

 be ; but because we deprive them of all stake in the future, 

 because they have no selfish, calculated aim, these are not vir- 

 tues; yet if we say 'a vicious horse/ why not say 'a virtuous 

 horse'?" 



We are ready enough, adds Dr. Arnold, to endow animals with 

 our bad moral qualities, but grudge them the possession of our 

 good ones. The Germans, whose natural and hereditary sympathy 

 with the brute creation is stronger than that of any other West- 



