CHAP. i.J LIMITED POWERS OF MAN. 231 



men of deservedly great name and reputation, down to 

 the ranks of the humblest and most parrot-like of their 

 plagiarists. We are constantly meeting with such 

 phrases as the following " The triumphs of human art 

 and reason over the natural instincts of the inferior 

 animals;" " The reduction, not only of their physical 

 force, hut of their mental powers, to human authority ;" 

 " It was easy to domesticate the heavy and inactive 

 birds, [in what country do farmers' wives bring fat young 

 Bustards to market ?] but those that possessed rapidity 

 of flight required more time and care to subjugate;" 

 &c. &c. &c. It is needless to multiply examples ; they 

 will occur to every reader: almost the sole dissentient 

 we remember who hesitates to drift quite so rapidly down 

 this popular current is Colonel Hamilton Smith, in the 

 views he has so temperately and judiciously set forth 

 in his two excellent volumes on the Dog, in the " Na- 

 turalist's Library." 



We might urge that the power assumed by Man to 

 rule so completely the destinies of his fellow-creatures 

 (though spiritually inferior, yet formed of the same ele- 

 mentary materials and animated by similar mysterious 

 vital forces) is improbable, from the unlikelihood that 

 one creature should exert so vast an influence on the 

 position in creation of other creatures differing so little 

 (except, as we have remarked, spiritually) from him- 

 self*; that it is irreligious to boast that we have done 



* " "What call'st thou solitude? Is not the earth 

 With various living creatures, and the air 

 Replenished, and all these at thy command 

 To come and play before thee 1 Knowest thou not 

 Their language and their ways 1 They also know, 

 And reason not contemptibly. With these 

 Find pastime, and bear rule ; thy realm is large." 



Paradise Lost, book viii., line 369. 



