THE SPIRIT AND THE LIFE. 29 



he can only be eased therefrom by medicines pre- 

 pared from some wretched animal in modes too 

 horrid to narrate, or even to think of. 



"We are not quite so bad at the present day ; but 

 still no one with moderate feelings of compassion 

 can pass through our streets without being greatly 

 shocked at the wanton cruelties practised by human 

 beings on those creatures that were intended for 

 their use, but not as mere machines. Charitably, 

 we may hope that such persons act from thought- 

 lessness, and not from deliberate cruelty ; for it does 

 really seem a new idea to many people that the 

 inferior animals have any feelings at all. 



When a horse does not go fast enough to please 

 the driver, he flogs it on the same principle that he 

 would turn on steam to a locomotive engine, think- 

 ing about as much of the feelings of one as of the 

 other. 



Much of the present heedlessness respecting 

 animals is caused by the popular idea that they have 

 no souls, and that when they die they entirely 

 perish. Whence came that most preposterous idea? 

 Surely not from the only source where we might 

 expect to learn about souls — not from the Bible ; for 

 there we distinctly read of " the spirit of the sons of 

 man " ; and immediately afterwards of " the spirit 

 of the beast, "one aspiring, and the other not so. 

 And the necessary consequence of the spirit is a life 

 after the death of the body. Let any one wait in a 



