“Your pride need not suffer from this close resemblance, which you will find in different degrees in a multitude of other animals, especially among the mammals, our next of kin in bodily structure. In the formation of his body man enjoys no monopoly; the dog, the cat, the donkey, the ox—each and all of them—share with us a common stock of organs, modified in details and suited to the kind of life of each species. We recognize in the bat’s wings the fundamental plan of our arms; we see it also no less plainly in the fore legs of the cat, the dog, and many other animals, and we can trace a rude resemblance to our hand even in the donkey’s homely hoof. I tell you these things, my children, not to lessen in your eyes the undeniable superiority of man, but to inspire in you a fellow feeling for animals that are formed like us, suffer as we do, and are far too often the victims of our stupid cruelty. Whoever needlessly causes an animal to suffer commits a barbarous act, an inhuman act, inasmuch as he inflicts torture on flesh like our own; he brutally misuses a body having the same mechanism as our own and the same power of suffering. As to our superiority, it is established preëminently by an exceptional characteristic that places us above all comparison even with creatures that in their physical structure most closely resemble us. This characteristic is reason, the torch that lights us in our search for truth; it is the human soul, which alone knows itself and enjoys the sublime privilege of knowing its divine Author. “In bats four of the five bones similar to those of our palm are greatly elongated, as are also the corresponding fingers, and they together constitute the four ribs on which is stretched the membrane of the wing, just as silk is stretched on the ribs of an umbrella. Thus it is at the sacrifice of what might have been a hand that the wing is formed. Therefore the scientists call all mammals of like structure with the bat ‘chiropters,’ meaning hand-winged creatures, from two Greek words signifying hand and wing.