Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/60

50 of man's relations, if not relationship, to the animal kingdom.

While many persons are ready to admit that, so far as physical organization is concerned, man and other animals are on the one plane, they either do not believe in any likeness beyond this, or more probably they have never examined the subject.

It is not unlikely that the great majority of persons have not devoted a half hour of their lives, taken altogether, to any thought upon such a subject. It has been taken for granted that man is on <nie plane of intellect and feeling, and all other animals are so much below him that their acts are not commonly regarded as other than the result of instinct, a sort of blind impulse, so that they are not regarded as showing at all those qualities which we term mental, much less moral ones. Even educated persons have but vague conceptions on the subject of animal intelligence. The publications of many of the humane societies bearing on animal intelligence must have done a vast amount of good in dissipating ignorance and prejudice.

We have in Montreal, in connection with the Faculty of Comparative Medicine and Veterinary Science of McGill University, a society for the study of comparative psychology—the only institution of the kind with which I am acquainted. It has been in existence now six years.

A brief account of the proceedings of each meeting is published in the daily press of the city, and I have reason to believe that the association has in this way alone helped considerably the cause of the lower animals. The Montreal Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has received and circulated large numbers of copies of several of the papers read before this society for the study of animal intelligence.

I suggest that if the interest of teachers—especially the heads of schools—can be secured, some steps may be taken in leading the young to entertain correct views and feelings toward the lower animals. The keynote should be: They are our fellow-creatures; in some, but not all respects, our "poor relations"; to be guarded and assisted, but also to be respected; for in not a few directions they are superior to ourselves. Let this spirit get into schools and families, and but little actual formal teaching will be required to accomplish the end in view. Actions on the part of elders in this, as in other cases, speak louder than words.

Of course, now, and for a long time to come, the ignorant, the lowly organized, and the depraved will maltreat animals; and they must be appealed to in a way that is deterrent—that is, by punishment. But the sooner we can establish a strong and correct public feeling on the subject of the rights and relations of animals, the more effectually will cruelty be prevented; and when