In concluding these notes I leave off as I began,--with the statement that any student of animal psychology who for any reason whatever ignores or undervalues the intelligence of trained animals puts a handicap upon himself. III. THE HIGHER PASSIONS XVIII THE MORALS OF WILD ANIMALS The ethics and morals of men and animals are thoroughly comparative, and it is only by direct comparisons that they can be analyzed and classified. It is quite possible that there are quite a number of intelligent men and women who are not yet aware of the fact that wild animals _have_ moral codes, and that on an average they live up to them better than men do to theirs. It is a painful operation to expose the grinning skeletons in the closets of the human family, but in no other way is it possible to hold a mirror up to nature. With all our brightness and all our talents,--real and imitation,--few men ever stop to ask what our horses, dogs and cats think of our follies and our wickedness. By the end of the year 1921 the annual total of human wickedness had reached staggering proportions. From August 1914 to November 1918 the moral standing of the human race reached the lowest depth it ever sounded since the days of the cave-dwellers. This we know to be true, because of the increase in man's capacity for wickedness, and its crop of results. After what we recently have seen in Europe and Asia, and on the high seas, let no man speak of a monster in human form as "a brute;" for so far as moral standing is concerned, some of the animals allegedly "below man" now are in a position to look down upon him. It is a cold and horrid fact that today, all around us, and sometimes close at hand, men are committing a long list of revolting crimes such as even the most debased and cruel beasts of the field _never_ commit. I refer to wanton wholesale murder, often with torture; assault with violence, robbery in a hundred cruel forms, and a dozen unmentionable crimes invented by degenerate man and widely practiced. If anyone feels that this indictment is too strong, I can cite a few titles that will be quite sufficient for my case. Let us make a few comparisons between the human species (_Homo sapiens_) and the so-called "lower" wild animals; and let it be understood that the author testifies, in courtroom phrase, only "to the best of his information and belief." Only two wild animal species known to me,--wolves and crocodiles, --devour their own kind; but many of the races of men have been cannibals, and some are so today. Among free wild animals, the cruel abuse or murder of children by their parents, or by other adults of the tribe, is unknown; but in all the "civilized" races of men infanticide and child murder are frightfully common crimes. In 1921 a six-year-old Eskimo girl, whose father and mother had been murdered, was strangled by her relatives, because she had no visible means of support.