Brute Instinct

Natural laws pertain to all things, and certain laws govern the conduct of brute society. But that the actions of the lower animáis are ever prompted by a sense of duty is not only extremely hypothetical, but altogether doubtful. The hen has strong maternal affection, but that she has the least idea of the virtue of that affection any more than of the virtue of doing good for evil is in the extreme conjectural. It is often hard and even impossible to account for the likes and dislikes of animáis. The hen will sometimes destroy certain of her brood and the sow devour her own offspring. Much of the cruelty is practiced upon the brutes for the lack of thought that they are not morally responsible. They are treated as if they are conscious of wickedly selfish acts. I once saw some men looking at a drowning mouse in a pail of water. I rebuked them, and one of them - a man perhaps 40 years old - turned to me and said, "The mouse deserves it. " Why deserved it? Pray teil us. Shall we say it was conscious of the sin of thieving? Others may try to view it in that way. I do not. I knew another man who would hold rats with a tongs and roast them alive in the flre. If he could not prove that they deserved their torture, he certainly wished to believe they did. If we recognize a Creator, is it not most rational to suppose that he has created the brutes morally irresponsible and would have us thus regard them, that our inclination to torture them would be held in restraint? -