190 THE BEAUTIFUL LADDER. 
may assert rights which human beings shall be 
bound to respect?’ 
A late writer in the Popular Science Monthly 
says: 
“ ‘ Let us suppose that, having no previous 
acquaintance with the subject, we were sud¬ 
denly informed, on good authority, that there 
existed in some part of the globe a race of be¬ 
ings who lived in domed habitations, aggre¬ 
gated together so as to form vast and populous 
cities; that they exercised jurisdiction over the 
adjoining territory, laid out regular roads, ex¬ 
cavated tunnels underneath the beds of rivers, 
stationed guards at the entrances of their towns, 
carefully removed any offensive matter, main¬ 
tained a rural police, organized extensive hunt¬ 
ing-expeditions, at times even waged war upon 
neighboring communities, took prisoners and 
reduced them to a state of slavery; that they 
not merely stored up provisions with due care, 
to avoid their decomposition by damp and fer¬ 
mentation, but that they kept cattle, and in 
some cases even cultivated the soil and gath¬ 
ered in the harvest. We should unquestion¬ 
ably regard these creatures as human beings 
who had made no small progress in civiliza- 
