ou ought to have done. You have created an
innumerable number of beasts, but they are without a head. You ought
to have made a being endowed with wisdom, to govern, with a little of
my help, the affairs of the world, and to preserve its less important
matters in some kind of order. The animals and creatures you have made
are, many of them, great fools, and none very wise, and, besides, are
without souls competent to receive instruction. There is not one of
them that has understanding enough to direct the feet of his neighbour
in the path he should go--it would be the blind leading the blind, and
together would they fall into the ditch. What more would the bear do,
if he were made ruler, than train his subjects to perform great feats
of strength, or to climb a tree, or to suck their paws through the
long nights of winter?--The panther would teach them savage cruelty
and a speedy step, and the deer would counsel them to fly from the
pursuit of a snail, or a land-tortoise, or the cry of a wren, or the
prate of a jackdaw; the fox might teach them cunning, and the dog
sagacity, and the wild cat nimbleness, and the antelope fleetness, and
the wolf courage, and the owl an insight into my ways. But there must
be a being to repress the insolence, and controul the rage, of the
more savage creatures, and to protect, as far as he can, the weaker
from the oppression of the stronger. Such a being must be created, and
be called MAN. Descend, once more, to the earth, beautiful and
Universal Mother! and give birth to one more being, who shall be the
lord of all the creatures that live, move, or breathe, on the land, in
the air, or in the water."

Upon receiving this command, the Universal Mother again descended to
the earth. She selected for her husband, in order to the production of
the new being, a very subtle owl, who was the half-brother of a bear
and a wolf, the cousin of a dog and a deer, and distantly related to
the panther, the fox, the eagle, and the adder. By him she had, at one
birth, two children. Men take their qualities from the beasts, to whom
they are related, and most from those of whose blood they have most in
their veins. If they have most of their great father's, the owl, they
are wise, and generally become priests; if the wolf predominates, they
are bloody-minded; if the bear, they are dirty and sluggish, great
eaters, and love to lick their fingers; if the deer, they are exceedingly
timorous and feeble; if the fox,