232 THE PSYCHICAL KINSHIP 



V. Conclusion. 



It is enough. The ancient gulf scooped by 

 human conceit between man and the other animals 

 has been effectually and forever filled up. The 

 human species constitutes but one branch in the 

 gigantic arbour of life. And all the merit and all 

 the feeling and all the righteousness of the world 

 are not, as we have been accustomed to aver, con- 

 gested into this one branch. And all of the weak- 

 ness and deformity are not, as we have also been 

 anxious to believe, found elsewhere. The reluctance 

 of wrinkles and deformities to appear in the pictures 

 of men, and of strength and beauty to appear in 

 the representations of the other races of the earth, 

 is to be accounted for by the highly elucidative 

 fact that man is the universal portrait-painter. 

 There is no one to tell man what he is and how 

 he strikes others, and hence he is the ' paragon of 

 creation ' — the inter-stellar pet, half clay and half 

 halo — the image and pride of the gods — the flower 

 and gem of the eternal spheres. Man is the only 

 professional linguist in the universe. And it is 

 fortunate for him that he is. For, if he were not, 

 his auditories would be compelled to carry to his 

 perceptive centres a great many sentiments he now 

 never hears. He would be likely to hear a good 

 deal said, and said with a good deal of feeling, 

 about perpendicular brigand — grandiloquent kakis- 

 tocrat swelling with self-righteousness — rhetorical 

 hideful wrapped in pillage and gorged with decom- 

 position — a voluble and sanctimonious squash with 



