But usually the rule of might is the rule of right among the
animals. As to most of the other commandments,--of coveting, of
bearing false witness, of honoring the father and the mother, and so
forth,--how can these apply to the animals or have any biological
value to them? Parental obedience among them is not a very definite
thing. There is neither obedience nor disobedience, because there
are no commands. The alarm-cries of the parents are quickly
understood by the young, and their actions imitated in the presence
of danger, all of which of course has a biological value.
The instances which Mr. Seton cites of animals fleeing to man for
protection from their enemies prove to my mind only how the greater
fear drives out the lesser. The hotly pursued animal sees a possible
cover in a group of men and horses or in an unoccupied house, and
rushes there to hide. What else could the act mean? So a hunted deer
or sheep will leap from a precipice which, under ordinary
circumstances, it would avoid. So would a man. Fear makes bold in
such cases.
I certainly have found "good in everything,"--in all natural
processes and products,--not the "good" of the Sunday-school books,
but the good of natural law and order, the good of that system of
things out of which we came and which is the source of our health
and strength. It is good that fire should burn, even if it consumes
your house; it is good that force should crush, even if it crushes
you; it is good that rain should fall, even if it destroys your
crops or floods your land. Plagues and pestilences attest the
constancy of natural law. They set us to cleaning our streets and
houses and to readjusting our relations to outward nature. Only in a
live universe could disease and death prevail. Death is a phase of
life, a redistributing of the type. Decay is another kind of growth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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