INTRODUCTION. 15 



our own enjoyment, we become mere capricious tyrants, 

 and, like all other members of that class, feel in return 

 the miseries that we inflict. 



Because, according to our limited notions, certain 

 classes of animals prey upon other classes, we call them 

 cruel ; and, not contenting ourselves with restraining 

 them from injuring us, or that on which we set a value, 

 we, from mere wantonness, wage against them a war 

 of extermination. Now we ought to bear in mind 

 that the same Creator who formed us, formed them 

 also ; and that, therefore, even those which, in our 

 estimation, are the most formidable or the most vile, 

 have a use, and an important use, in His sight ; that 

 only our ignorance prevents us from finding out and 

 admiring that use ; and that the wanton destruction of 

 any one being, is in truth a crime. Before we can 

 have any title to accuse any animal of cruelty, we must 

 first suppose it to be, which it is not, endowed with 

 reason, capable of judging of right and wrong a 

 human being and not an animal. " Do the young lions 

 roar when they have food?" asks the inspired penman; 

 and the same question may be put with regard to every 

 animal in the creation. Certain propensities, which we 

 call instincts, lead each animal to pursue the course 

 that it does, and the lion and the wolf are no more 

 guilty of cruelty than the lamb and the turtle. Ad- 

 mitting that neither of the latter feeds upon animal 

 substances, which in the case of the turtle is not the 

 fact, they cannot subsist without destroying vegetables ; 

 neither can they consume their vegetable food without 

 destroying those myriads of minute animals with which 

 every leaf is peopled. Every kind of life is supported 



