e
and America. In the whole of uncircumcised Asia, such a procedure would
be the most superfluous thing in the world, because animals are there
sufficiently protected by religion, which even makes them objects of
charity. How such charitable feelings bear fruit may be seen, to take an
example, in the great hospital for animals at Surat, whither Christians,
Mohammedans and Jews can send their sick beasts, which, if cured, are
very rightly not restored to their owners. In the same way when a
Brahman or a Buddhist has a slice of good luck, a happy issue in any
affair, instead of mumbling a _Te Deum_, he goes to the market-place and
buys birds and opens their cages at the city gate; a thing which may be
frequently seen in Astrachan, where the adherents of every religion meet
together: and so on in a hundred similar ways. On the other hand, look
at the revolting ruffianism with which our Christian public treats its
animals; killing them for no object at all, and laughing over it, or
mutilating or torturing them: even its horses, who form its most direct
means of livelihood, are strained to the utmost in their old age, and
the last strength worked out of their poor bones until they succumb at
last under the whip. One might say with truth, Mankind are the devils of
the earth, and the animals the souls they torment. But what can you
expect from the masses, when there are men of education, zoologists
even, who, instead of admitting what is so familiar to them, the
essential identity of man and animal, are bigoted and stupid enough to
offer a zealous opposition to their honest and rational colleagues, when
they class man under the proper head as an animal, or demonstrate the
resemblance between him and the chimpanzee or ourang-outang. It is a
revolting thing that a writer who is so pious and Christian in his
sentiments as Jung Stilling should use a simile like this, in his
_Scenen aus dem Geisterreich_. (Bk. II. sc. i., p. 15.) "Suddenly the
skeleton shriveled up into an indescribably hideous and dwarf-like form,
just as when you bring a large spider into the focus of a burning glass,
and watch the purulent blood hiss and bubble in the heat." This man of
God then was guilty of such infamy! or looked on quietly when another
was committing it! in either case it comes to the same thing here. So
little harm did he think of it that he tells us of it in passing, and
without a trace of emotion. Such are the effects of the first chapter of