20 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
Our past is as illustrious in its facts as our futuro can ever 
be in its hopes. We should as much venerate that antediluvian 
era in which our giant progenitors wrestled hand to claw 
with their brute antagonists, as this latter one, in which our 
science, through chemistry and mechanics, has so entirely 
quelled and fully restrained them. 
Although fanatics may regard this proposition as crude 
and profane, it is, nevertheless, absolutely true, that begin- 
ning with germination, every stage of development to its 
highest point, is equally honorable and to be honored. Is 
the flower with the sun-light on it more to be regarded than 
the first pale leaf which struggles to the air from out the 
gloomy foldings of the earth? Is the great tree, bending 
beneath the ruddy weight of fruitage, more respectable in 
God’s economy of progress, than the small dark seed from the 
entombment of which its proud show is the resurrection ? 
Struggle, throughout all life, so far as it has been revealed 
to us, is the law of ascension, as well as of fixed grades; and 
hence we justify all those rude antagonisms between man and 
man, which a namby-pamby sentimentalism would convert 
into the “piping times of peace.” War is a legitimate con- 
sequence of the conditions of our race, and all the concomitants 
of war, martial games, hunting, &c., are equally legitimate. 
It is astonishing that the lymphatic “peace” men should leave 
out of view the fact, that when battle and death shall cease, 
the whole animal world must be annihilated. In the first 
place, even the graminivorous animals live upon the destruction 
of some forms of animal life. There is no blade of grass or 
leaf plucked by them, upon which myriads of animalcule and 
hundreds of insects are not destroyed—they cannot move 
upon the surface of the earth without destroying such crea- 
tures—every lifting of a hoof leaves crushed and writhing 
victims in its track, and when the foot comes down, it is like 
Behemoth raging through the thronged cities of men. The 
law is, that animal life must be perpetuated through death 
