120. MORE AND LESS PERFECT TYPES.--So much for perfection as synonymous with the ideal human nature of which ancient and modern moralists have treated. It appears, however, possible to use the word "perfection" in a somewhat different sense. Man is not merely man; he is a living being, and there are living beings of many orders. The plants, the simpler forms of animal life, the brutes which we recognize as standing nearer to us, and man may, from this point of view, be referred to the one series. Some members of this series we characterize as lower, and others we speak of as higher in the scale. Now, such designations as higher and lower cannot be applied indiscriminately. There is little sense in the assertion that a bit of string is higher than a straight line, or a hat than a handkerchief. Some significant basis of comparison must be present. Things must be recognized as approximating to or diverging from an accepted standard in varying degrees. Such a basis of comparison is present when some objects possess the same qualities in a more marked degree than do others. But this is not the only possible basis of comparison. We may assume that the possession of certain qualities marks a creature as higher, and that the creature which has them not, or has them imperfectly developed, thereby stamps itself as being of a lower order. Something like this appears to determine our judgments when we assign to various creatures their place in the scale of living beings. We do not mean that the higher possess to a greater degree all the capacities possessed by the lower. Many things which the plant does man cannot do at all; and, among the animals, those which we recognize as higher may be lacking in many capacities present in a marked degree in the lower. In ranking one living creature as higher, and, thus, as more perfect, than another, we assume that the "nature" of the one, with its various capacities and lacks of capacity, is, on the whole, of more _worth_ than the "nature" of another. It might be maintained that, in his estimate of the worth of different kinds of beings man is influenced by his partiality for the distinctively human, rating creatures as lower or higher in proportion to their divergence from or approximation to his own type. Undoubtedly this plays a part in men's judgments. We are partial to ourselves. And yet judgments of perfection and imperfection cannot wholly be explained on this principle.