overburdened horse till the strained tendons are ready to snap, is not less criminal because he is strategic, and his crimes are not less infernal because they have no penalty but his conscience and no judge but himself. Whether we realize it or not the doctrine that on mankind’s account all the rest of the animal world came into being and that all non-human beings are mere hunks devoid of all psychic qualities found in man, is a doctrine not one whit more sagacious than the old geocentric theory of the universe. Man has defined himself as the “paragon of the universe.” I do not say that he is not. I simply say that if he is, the universe has no cause for dry eyes. Man’s treatment of his own kind and especially his conduct toward the forms of life differing from him have been such as to brand him as a most ill-mannered and immodel organism. Human beings have been sufficiently clever and sufficiently devoted to each other to evolve into the masters of the earth, but instead of converting themselves into preceptors for the conquered races, they have become the butchers of the universe. Instead of becoming the models and school-masters of the world in which they have outstripped, and striving to repair the clumsy natures and regulate the straying feet of those by means of whom they have been hoisted into distinction, they have become colossal pedants and assassins, proclaiming themselves the pets and gods of creation and teaching each other that other races are mere fixtures to furnish food and amusement for themselves. They inculcate as a rule of conduct—and they preach it valiantly—that each should act upon others as he himself would choose to be acted upon. This ideal of social rectitude has been promulgated by the sages of the species for more than 2,000 years. But with miserable pusillanimity they confine its application to the members of their own species. No non-human is too innocent or too interesting or too wonderful to escape the most frightful humiliations, if by those humiliations human comfort or human amusement or human whim is in any way whatever garnished.