252 
PASSIOiSrAL ZOOLOGY. 
But the proud civilizee, wallowing in his ignominy, similar in this 
to all the established powers, has found it easier to calumniate the 
wolves, the demanders of reforms, than to correct himself. 
He has thrown the schism of the wolf upon the bad passions of 
this animal, on his vicious instincts which he has declared incor- 
rigible : he has moved against it all the ignorant scribes, all the 
fable tellers, all the children's nurses ; he has created for its de- 
struction a special institution, and race of wolf-dogs, and concluded 
by the cowardice of placing a price on the head of the factious. 
The Athenian legislators paid a talent for the ears of the wolf- 
cub, and two talents for that of the adult wolf. Those of Albion 
pardoned the sorcerer capital punishment on condition that he 
should employ all the resources of his art to destroy the wolves. 
So that, after a constitutional king of France, I know no creature 
in the world more odiously persecuted and calumniated than the 
wolf. 
The contractors of railroads, the embezzlers of the national 
loans, the stag wolves of the Exchange have reproached his vo- 
racity ; the inventors of destructive engines, his sanguinary hu- 
mor ; the lawyers, his fraud ; the ^eojple, his attacks of madness. 
The moralist has drawn from the name of the wolf the word lu- 
panar, to raise against the wolf the contempt of honest men and of 
delicate hearts. But before pronouncing the anathema against the 
unfortunate quadruped, has man occupied himself in the least with 
the analysis of his qualities and of his vices ? Has he weaned it 
from the tenderest age, to prevent it from sucking bad principles 
with its mother’s milk ? Has he placed it, in short, in a suitable 
sphere, where its natural aptitudes might have developed them- 
selves toward good ? Oh ! not at all ; the idler and unskillful 
moralist does not admit this method of scientific investigation. His 
ignorance is better accommodated by the theory of native per- 
versity, which dispenses him, the moralist, from inventing a system 
of education susceptible of favoring the development of the honor- 
able aptitudes of every individual and of every species ? 
And how could these sycophant moralists have done for the 
wolf what they had not done for man ? 
Po not civilized legislators every day write that man is born 
