COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



he might assist in relieving the miseries of far 

 inferior men, whose direct claim upon his per- 

 sonal sympathies could never be other than 

 slight, on the other hand the Australian has 

 no words In his language to express the ideas 

 of justice and benevolence, and no amount of 

 teaching can make him comprehend these Ideas. 

 For although, like some brute animals, he is 

 not wholly destitute of the primary feelings 

 which underlie them, yet these feelings have 

 been so seldom repeated in his own experience, 

 and that of his ancestors, that he is unable to 

 generalize from them. The lofty soul, which is 

 too sweepingly attributed to man in distinction 

 from other animals, is here as difficult to dis- 

 cover as the godlike intellect or the keen aes- 

 thetic sense. 



In similar wise is made to disappear the sharp 

 contrast between human and brute animals in 

 capability of progress. Hardly any fact Is more 

 imposing to the imagination than the fact that 

 each generation of civilized, men is perceptibly 

 more enlightened than the preceding one, while 

 each generation of brutes exactly resembles 

 those which have come before it. But the con- 

 trast is obtained only by comparing the civi- 

 lized European of to-day directly with the brute 

 animals known to us through the short period 

 of recorded human history. The capability of 

 progress, however, is by no means shared alike 



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