MAN AN ANIMAL 5 



important respects he is the most highly evolved 

 of animals ; but in origin, disposition, and form he 

 is no more ' divine ' than the dog who laps his 

 sores, the terrapin who waddles over the earth in 

 a carapace, or the unfastidious worm who dines 

 on the dust of his feet. Man is not the pedestalled 

 individual pictured by his imagination — a being 

 glittering with prerogatives, and towering apart 

 from and above all other beings. He is a pain- 

 shunning, pleasure-seeking, death-dreading organ- 

 ism, differing in particulars, but not in kind, from 

 the pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking, death-dread- 

 ing organisms below and around him. Man is 

 neither a rock, a vegetable, nor a deity. He 

 belongs to the same class of existences, and has 

 been brought into existence by the same evolu- 

 tional processes, as the horse, the toad that hops 

 in his garden, the firefly that lights its twilight 

 torch, and the bivalve that reluctantly feeds him. 



Man's body is composed fundamentally of the 

 same materials as the bodies of all other animals. 

 The bodies of all animals are composed of clay. 

 They are formed of the same elements as those 

 that murmur in the waters, gallop in the winds, 

 and constitute the substance of the insensate rocks 

 and soils. More than two-thirds of the weight of 

 the human body is made up of oxygen alone, a 

 gas which forms one-fifth of the weight of the air, 

 more than eight-ninths of that of the sea, and 

 forty-seven per cent, of the superficial solids of 

 the earth. 



Man's body is composed of cells. So are the 



