INTEODUCTION 17 



Another evil of professionalism is that it exploits its 

 material to its own ends. That utilitarian attitude has 

 largely governed our relations with animal life. Animals, 

 as the Catholic teaches and the commercialist acts, were 

 created for our use ; the splendour of the King Bird of 

 Paradise was evolved through a myriad ages for the per- 

 sonal adornment of a revue actress ; seals came into the 

 world to be skinned alive for women's coats ; and nature 

 is the fore-ordained prey and booty of bandit man. The 

 universe is our capital, or private estate, and we must get 

 what we can out of it. 



Many men of science justify themselves for turning 

 zoology into necrology in the same way they sacrifice life 

 to Knowledge (always with a capital K). Knowledge to 

 them is not relative, but absolute, a malignant idol, an 

 inhuman and unnatural abstraction which entitles them 

 to play real politik with the world , regardless of any respect 

 for the spirit of life or any service to their fellows. Such 

 knowledge is nothing but a moral trump card of the devil, 

 and is on a lower level because it is more sanctimonious 

 than the self-justification of the plumage trader, who 

 calls his victims " waste products " until they are 

 massacred and productively employed in women's hats. 

 The necrologist and the plume-trader merely exploit the 

 world to different heathen gods, the one called Knowledge, 

 the other Gain. The real answer to this philosophy is 

 that it does not pay ; it recoils often with fearful effect 

 upon the heads of innocent and guilty alike. The utili- 

 tarian kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. But if 

 we see objects in and for themselves, we see the divine 

 and immortal vision of all beauty behind them and gain a 

 truer knowledge and a bodily and spiritual sanity into the 

 bargain. There is nothing which brings with it so solid 

 a well-being as a reverence for life. " If the mystery of 

 life daily deepens, it is because we view it more closely and 

 with clearer vision." Everywhere, as Mr. Glutton Brock 

 puts it, the library of the universe is defaced with our 



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