THE ETHICS OF HUMAN BEINGS 281 



'humanity,' * all men,' 'the whole human family' 

 — these are big conceptions, too big for the poor 

 little nubbins of brains with which most millions 

 make the effort to think. But they are pitifully 

 small compared with that grand conception of 

 kinship which takes in all the races that live and 

 move upon the earth. Smaller yet are these 

 conceptions compared with that sublime and 

 supreme synthesis which embraces not only the 

 present generation of terrestrial inhabitants, but 

 which extends longitudinally as well as laterally, 

 extends in time as well as in space, and embraces 

 the generations which shall grow out of the exist- 

 ing generation and which are yet unborn — that 

 conception which recognises earth-life as a single 

 process, world-wide and immortal, every part related 

 and akin to every other party and each generation 

 linked to an unending posterity. 



Every individual, therefore, emancipated enough 

 to judge of acts of conduct according to their 

 intrinsic natures and consequences rather than 

 according to some local or traditional bias, cannot 

 help knowing that the exploitation of birds and 

 quadrupeds for human whim or convenience is an 

 offence against the laws of morality, not different 

 in kind from the offences denounced in human 

 laws as robbery and murder. The creophagist 

 and the hunter exemplify the same somnambulism, 

 are the authors of the sane kind of conduct, and 

 belong literally in the same category of offenders, 

 as the cannibal and the slave-driver. To take the 

 life of an ox for his muscles, or to kill a sheep for 



