The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-09-16
Our Poorest Relations.

Among all the attempts to define that sim
gular animal, man, we do not remember that
any one has ever called him the ''conceited
animal" But self appreciation comes as
near being his characteristic quality as any
that philosophers have named. Observe how
the progress of tina. good cause, the protection
of dumb animals, is retarded by the suspi-
cion that Turks in almost every mind that
sympathy so wide as to embrace the brute
creation must arise from morbid sensbility.
We have been taught so long 10 regard man
as the sole end of creation, and to look upon
even the noblest and most intelligent brutes
not only as aliens to our race, but as stran-
gers to our consciousness and to our immor-
tally, that many very kindly people sum-
marily arrest the outflow of their sympathies
on the human frontier. Assuming the alb
sence of mind and self-consciousness in the
new objects of human protection and care,
they regard the specialization to promote their
security and comfort as sent;mentalism run
mad. They would as soon weep with child
over an uprooted flower or crushed rosebud,
as over the dimly apprehended sufferings Of a
horse. This ego,ism of the human coxcomb
has impressed itself on the very language, so
that although there is an abundance of good
words like Humanity and philanthropy"
TO indicate the kindness of men to each 9TH
er, there is none, sufficiently well established
for use, that is general enough to indicate our
interest in our poor cousins who constitute
the other families of mammals; and the dill
gent search after name suitable to the socie-
ties organized for their protection results in
the forced adoption of an absurd and cum
brous periphrasis, SO long and complicated as
to furnish material for infinite jest. Till
within a very recent period the widest sweep
of humanity only embraced all orders and
conditions of man, who calls himself by the
mouth of Hamlet ''the beauty of the world,
the paragon Of animals" He who said
niltil humanam me aieaum putO-nothing
human is foreign to my sjmpathies--was
supposed to have exhausted the possibilities
of disinterestedness.
And even some of the warmest friends of
ie cause of dumb animals are so haunted by
he idea that they have been overtaken in
sentiment more beftting feminine suscepti-
much inclined to put in shamefaced de-
Tense that compassionate forbearance to-
ward dumb animals is to be cultivated chiefly
by reason of its reflex influence on the hui
man mind. If we are SO superfuously kind
toward brutes we shall be quite sure to be
considerate toward each other. In other
words, they make the prevention of cruel
ty to animals means of insuring benevo-
lence among men by habituating the mind to
feelings of kindness, like those of the Ancient
Mariner toward ''all things both great and
small" This consideration is certainly not
to be overlooked, but it ought not to usurp
the place of that which is paramount, name
ly, that dumb animals are entitled of right,
on their own account, as beings capable of
pain aud pleasure, to humane treatment.
Their claims rest on essentially the same
grounds as those of children and the weak
and dependent of our own race, and they are
to be preferred on the score of justice with
out making any appeal to mans condescen-