We, secure in a conviction of a unique value through the immortality we claim, broadly stigmatize our living fellows as of "the lower orders of life." They are different, it is true, but in what respect lower? Their development is as commensurate with their needs as is ours. The shibboleth of the Socialists--"To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities," has plainly been the rule with nature. Whatever we boast of achieving has been accomplished as well or better by these lower orders when their necessities have demanded it. Even the Japanese create inferior paper to that made by the wasps, who number among the species the most skilled of carpenters and masons. Who can spin or weave as can the _arachnæ_ and their cognate families? The beautiful manufactures of the mollusks--even of the diatoms, invisible save with the microscope--leave us beggared of admiration and envy.
If it be a question of physical qualities let us compare the eye of the eagle, or of a fly, with our own--pit our dull sense of smell with the subtle olfactories of a dog or a wolf--or let one of us test our sense of hearing against that of a mouse or a robin. The albatross loafs in indolent circles about the swiftest of our turbine ships; the porpoise can pass from point to point in his dense element with greater speed than that of our swiftest express engine. The wild goose can do his eighty miles an hour for ten hours without rest. Scare up little Molly Cottontail from your path, and as she flies through the autumn grasses like a light leaf blown before the wind, her delicate and harmonious play of muscular powers leaves our most skilled athletes but clumsy cripples by comparison.
In sight, smell, hearing, speed, strength, grace, and endurance we are immeasurably the inferiors of our dumb brothers. And turning from the material to the spiritual and the ideal, we find that in industry, courage, patriotism, loyalty, fidelity, friendship, chivalry, maternal love, and racial solidity the lower orders have nothing to learn from us. Indeed some races we find advanced in moral progress in certain directions far beyond our most hopeful endeavours.
The needs and laws of their being have developed their morals in differing degree, and the virtues of individuals vary as greatly as among ourselves. Of the characters and ideals of wild creatures we can snatch but brief and tantalizing glimpses; from the larger domestic animals our daily life is too removed to make intimacy possible, but dogs and cats, the free birds, and our caged pets--if considered with a seeing eye--open a door through which we can learn much, though our indolence and stupidity still shut us off from the free community of speech.