a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a
dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture."
This was the poet Cowley's opinion. "Of all the animals" scolds Boileau,
"which fly in the air, walk on the ground, or swim in the sea, from
Paris to Peru, from Japan to Rome, the most foolish animal, in my
opinion, is man." People must be very bad, indeed, who get opinions as
low as the two last quoted. That rapacious vulture George Peabody! that
dissembling crocodile William Cowper! that robbing wolf Girard! that
thieving fox Charles Sumner! that fawning dog Napoleon Bonaparte! and
those most foolish animals Louis Agassiz and Isaac Newton! It does not
well become the weakest links in a chain to boast that they gauge that
chain's strength, for the chain can be greatly strengthened, upon this
easy discovery of those weak links, by simply dropping them out of
connection.
And now comes the query: "What is man?" He has always been more or less
at a loss for some striking and succinct statement of his peculiar
characteristics--of the mark that separates him from other animals.
Diogenes Laertius says that Plato having defined man to be a two-legged
animal without feathers, he (Diogenes) plucked a cock, and, bringing him
into the school, said "Here is Plato's man." From this joke there was
added to the definition "With broad flat nails." Even this definition is
just as faulty, as it does not exclude many species of the monkey. Again
it was thought that man was the only being who laughs. Says Addison,
poetically: "Man is the merriest species of the creation; all above and
below him are serious." But scientists refuse to accept this distinction
as accurate. "Man is an animal