CHAPTEE II. 



FAULTS AND FANCIES OF TERMINOLOGY. 



MAN has probably from time immemorial been in the habit 

 of using towards his brother man abusive or opprobrious 

 epithets based on the supposed evil qualities and mental 

 inferiority or difference of the lower animals. These terms 

 of contempt or abuse of invidious comparison embody and 

 illustrate many current popular errors and prejudices re- 

 garding the mental endowments of animals, or the absence 

 of such endowments. They libel animal intelligence and 

 virtues, while they do no credit to those of man. Ignorant, 

 selfish, proud, prejudiced man takes very much in vain the 

 names of many estimable animals and animal virtues in 

 such designations as the following : 



1. Brute; 'brutal' or ' brutish,' 'brutality.' In so far 

 as these words have become synonyms for want of feeling 

 or affection, for savageness, for cruelty and the love thereof 

 for its own sake ; or for animals that are stupid, coarse, or 

 unrefined, irrational, impulsive, swayed by the lower pro- 

 pensities, mentally degraded, devoid of moral sense, con- 

 science, the religious sentiment, or even of reason (according 

 to the dictionaries) such terms are much more appro- 

 priate to man himself than to the lower animals ; while, in 

 so far as they are truly applicable to the latter, the pro- 

 pensities which man calls distinctively, but most erroneously, 

 unjustly, and ungenerously, 'brutal' have been, in the 

 majority of instances at least, produced by man's own bad 

 example or training, or both in short, by his own evil 

 influence upon them, designed or unintentional. 



2. Bestial, in so far as it is used synonymously with 



