THE STAG : A BEAST OF THE GOOD GOD. 
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tiny of man ; and the apostles of Satan, the Scribes, who say that 
misery is the fatal lot of the masses, and who sell their pen for 
gold, and their conscience to the stockbrokers. 
Aristotle has known the passion of the stag for tender and meh 
ancholy chants ; he asserts the possibility of capturing it by two 
persons with a flute. While one of the two companions keeps 
the animal charmed by his melodies, the other approaches stealth- 
ily from behind the victim, and strikes a knife into his belly. But 
if the stag loves rustic pipes, like the ox, he dreads as much the 
warlike clarion. 
We have only to consult the historical and religious legends of 
all peoples to recognize that the stag is one of the instruments 
whom God makes use of to impart to mortals His designs for 
them. It was a wounded stag of Mount Ida who gave man the 
first lesson in therapeutics, and furnished him with the recipe for 
using the dictamnus. 
All ancient, and a great number of modern authors, who have 
treated of the stag, have spoken at length of his wars with the 
serpents. 
Analogy says well indeed that there ought to be antipathy be- 
tween the noble quadruped who symbolizes loyalty, and the ven- 
omous reptile which symbolizes perfidy; but that does not prove 
to me that the stag has swallowed all the adders ascribed to him. 
I know dogs, it is true, that kill vipers for the pleasure of killing 
them, and only because they are conscious of rendering service to 
man by destroying evil beasts ; but the dog is man’s police-officer, 
and the stag has not been created to ser\^e as a duplicate to the 
dog. The deer does destroy serpents if they come in his way, 
but the true destroyer of reptiles, among the quadrupeds, is the 
thick-skinned hog with stomach so complacent. Among the birds : 
the kamichi, the secretary, the cariama, the stork, the heron, the 
ibis and the rock-robin, or lizard-eater, which impales its victims 
upon thorns. 
But the stag had from the beginning the reputation of being 
learned in medicine ; the discovery of the dictamnus, native of 
Mount Ida was already due to him, and it was natural to at- 
tribute to him many other marvelous inventions. Thus the stag 
