192 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
blow of a cane. The bear is the most punctilious of all beasts on 
the point of honor, and we know the cause of this honorable sus- 
ceptibility. The bear does not choose to be reminded of his mis- 
fortunes, and does not accept pity. The Bear had reigned awhile 
on earth before the advent of Man, 
Of all the serious accusations against the bear, that which it 
will be hardest to wash his hands of, is his passion for honey. 
Why this inveteracy in plundering the treasures produced by at- 
tractive labor? For this very simple reason, that the bear is the 
emblem of savage life — because the savage is an idle fellow, a 
non- producer, and an enemy of work — because the right of external 
robbery is one of the seven natural rights of the savage, or if you 
prefer, one of the seven articles of his charter — because, finally, 
in every society of purgatory, such as the savage or the civilized, 
the fruit of the labor of the industrious is destined to become the 
prey of the idle and non-producing. The bear is not given as a 
model to be followed, but there can hardly be a more perfect type 
of the savage. A savage who sets fire to a field of sugar-cane, 
a parasite who dispossesses poor industrious bees of the fruits of 
their labors, a non-producing stock-jobber, monopolist, usurer, or 
landlord, who raises a tariff of fifty per cent, on the incomes of 
all laborers by the right of capital ; are none of them little saints. 
None has my absolute sympathies. But I discriminate among the 
different degrees of culpability. The bear defends and avenges 
himself, and his stomach is easily satisfied, while the purse of the 
usurer is one of the three things which, according to Solomon, are 
never full enough. 
Some authors besides have asserted, and I do not contest this, 
that it is not , only the passion for honey which urges the bear to 
seek the society of bees, as a proof of which he has been seen to 
attack a swarm not yet provided with hive or hole. What cause 
then excited the bear to seek a quarrel with this vagabond re- 
public? It is this. The bear is subject to a heaviness of the 
head and comatose affections, against which the sting of the bee 
is an infallible specific. He suffers, he goes to seek his relief from 
the operator whom nature has advised him. ... If in place of 
having his head heavy, the bear feels his stomach too much loaded, 
