Such wicked wolves! And how about those baby bears? It is the same point of view as that of the Spanish bull fighters. "They are not Christians--they have no souls--why consider them?" As I have said before, very probably the decent, well-behaved, kindly Roman citizen of Nero's day, returning with his family from a pleasant afternoon at the gladiatorial shows, gathered his children about the household altar, offered pious libation to the gods, and went peacefully to bed with a clean and untroubled conscience. It was all simply a question of the point of view. A Roman citizen was certainly not going to be disturbed by a sense of wrong-doing in watching the pangs of such creatures as Christians or barbarians. The theory that human beings were each and every one in a spiritual sense, brothers, came later to trouble this fine old crusted indifference, and now after nearly two thousand years the idea has so completely infiltrated human consciousness, that the death agonies of men can no longer anywhere serve as diversion to the gentle and the good. But behind that sweeping assumption that we of all organic nature alone possess that element of immortality, binding us together with spiritual ties, and laying upon all the mutual obligations of justice and mercy, we have been nourishing a towering and brutal egotism, that moves blindly and stupidly about amid unreckonable multitudes of sentient fellow creatures; unaware of their lives, their passions, or their languages. Contracted inside the shell of this foolish prepossession we miss half the interest and wonder of the world we inhabit, and--thinking of ourselves all the while as an honest and merciful fellow--we play an unimaginable devil to our unhappy neighbours. And yet I think even we at our worst would recoil could there be set before us in plain language the immitigable horrors of man's place in nature written from the point of view of even the most philosophic and amiable of the beasts. It makes the skin upon one's flesh crisp to reflect how black would be that long chronicle of poisonings, burnings, slayings, devourings. Those unmentionable tortures upon the vivisector's table; those maimings and clippings of well-loved pets to gratify a cheerful but perverted fancy; the treachery, ingratitude, and fantastic despotism practised every day, and always--throughout the whole indictment set forth by the accusing animals,--would be seen a dark, everflowing stream of innocent blood, spilled purely for man's idle recreation. The fanged Nero of the jungle, the very Heliogabalus of the cobras would seem spotless saints contrasted with this horrid record of the deeds of what are commonly called kindly and upright men. The beasts had never need to invent a devil myth. The model was always to their hand.