4 The Poets and Nature. 



poets, anxious to stigmatise as despicably base, denominate 

 "reptiles." 



Now all this is perfectly fair. We have attached to a 

 certain word a certain metaphorical meaning, which is a 

 very odious one. Bismarck called the Secret Service Vote 

 " the Reptile Fund," and the Man of Iron includes in it 

 all such miserable creatures as venal editors and spies. The 

 self-seeking parasite, the insidious hypocrite, the cringing 

 slave, deserve the worst we can say of them, and as we 

 have decided that there is nothing worse to be said of such 

 than "reptile" reptiles let them be. 



But here we must stop. Even the prerogatives of human 

 beings do not extend further. They cannot outrage the 

 sacred laws of justice even in the case of reptiles. So we 

 have no right whatever to make the name of a particular 

 thing mean what it does not, and then to transfer the arbi- 

 trary character which we have affixed to it back to the thing 

 whose name we borrowed. We have absolutely no right 

 whatever to begin by saying that sycophants, hypocrites, 

 slaves, and assassins are "reptiles," and then to say that 

 reptiles are sycophants, hypocrites, slaves, and assassins. 

 Merely as a logical syllogism it is absurd and untenable. 

 Here are the two premisses : Despicable men are reptiles ; 

 Reptiles are either turtles, crocodiles, lizards, frogs, or 

 snakes. Work as you will with them, your conclusion must 

 either be that no conclusion is possible, or else an absurd 

 statement to the effect that a frog is a despicable man, or 

 that sycophants, &c., are either turtles, crocodiles, &c. 



But, setting logic aside, I contend that it is infinitely 

 unjust to speak ill of an immense number of creatures, 

 nearly all of which are either beautiful, directly useful to 

 man, or harmless, simply because, in our usual high-handed 

 way of dealing with the helpless, we have borrowed their 

 collective names as figures of speech. Yet this is what 

 most poets habitually do. Their toads are loathsome and 



