Our domestic birds often manifest symptoms of passions, whims,
and moral aberrations, clearly analogous to those of their biped
proprietors; and in the higher animals those manifestations
become so unmistakable that a student of moral zoology is often
tempted to indorse the view of that schoolgirl who defined
a monkey as “a very small boy with a tail.” According to
Arthur Schopenhauer’s theory of moral evolution, the conscious
prestige of our species first reveals itself in the emotions of
headstrong volition that makes a little baby stamp its feet and
strike down its fist, “commanding violently before it could form
anything like a clear conception of its own wants. Untutored
barbarians,” he adds, “are apt to indulge in similar methods of
self-assertion, and, in settling a controversy, prefer menacing
gestures to rational explanations. That tendency, however, is
not confined to infants and savages. In his controversies with
his cage-mate (a female spaniel), my pet Cutch will lay hold of
the dog’s tail and enforce his theories with a peremptory pull
that never fails to provoke a rough-and-tumble fight; but, long
after the dog has relapsed into sullen silence, her antagonist
will shake the cage with resounding blows, and every now and
then steal a look at the bystanders, to invite their attention
to his ‘best method of dealing with heretics.’”--FELIX
OSWALD, _Popular Science Monthly_.
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