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OUR PETS. 



CHAPTER I. 



We were always taught, as already indicated, to regard 

 the lower animals with tender respect and kindly sym- 

 pathy — I had almost said with reverence. We were 

 taught and we learned to love them, and to make 

 friends and companions of them. The head of our 

 house was passionately fond of them, and to watch and 

 study their habits and idiosyncrasies was his delight, 

 and became ours also. Many an animated discussion 

 and argument we had about their faculties, and it was 

 accepted as a general principle amongst us, and stoutly 

 maintained, that their intellectual and moral powers 

 differed from man's not essentially, but only in degree. 

 We held that man had no right or title to claim a 

 monopoly of reason which manifestly he did not possess; 

 and so we repudiated the common practice of slumping, 

 under the convenient term instinct, those faculties in 

 the lower animals which are called intellect or reason 

 in man. As no real difference could be shown or 

 proved, we argued it was most inaccurate and illogical 

 to make or assume such a difference by giving a dis- 



