p. 654 | MAN AS AN ANIMAL by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 8, 1901

MAN AS AN ANIMAL.

By L. A. S.

SCIENCE assures us that man is an animal; and history and observation compel us to believe that man is the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth. The thirst for blood seems to be greater with man than with any other living creature. These statements have reference to man as he is by nature.

The earth is full of animals that prey upon other animals for food, but man is the only animal that kills merely to gratify the instinct for killing. The lion and the tiger are types of ferocious beasts, but they kill other animals only to provide themselves with food. They do not materially lessen the number of the animals upon which they prey; but man is the exterminator. Wherever man comes, there all other animals disappear, save such as are kept for domestic pets or can be made to serve the purpose of financial gain. Already a number of the animal species have disappeared from the earth before the merciless march of “civilized” man; and other species are on the point of sharing the same fate.

The desire to kill shows itself in man in the years of childhood. Where is the “small boy” who does not instinctively, at sight of bird or frog or other harmless and inoffensive creature near his pathway, look for a stone to throw at it? And his object is not to scare it, either; he means to hit it and kill it if possible. If he should succeed, it would be of no possible use to him; yet he seeks for the life of the little harmless creature as if it were something indispensable to his happiness. There may be some of the “small boy” genus with whom this disposition is not instinctive, but they are so scarce as merely to constitute the exception which proves the rule.

When the “small boy” is grown up, he finds one of his chief delights in going “gunning.” So great is the mania for killing in every community, that if he has not a gun himself, he has ready access to a gun shop, where he can get fitted out with the latest appliance for taking life by means of powder and shot. He starts out determined to kill something—some fine “game,” if possible; but if not that, then something else, it doesn’t matter very much what. Perhaps he is unsuccessful in his search for “game;” the killing mania within him becomes clamorous for gratification; he must fire off his gun at something. Almost anything that has life in it and can be safely killed will answer the purpose. On a limb of a neighboring tree he spies a robin. He takes aim, fires, and the bird drops dead to the ground. “A good shot,” he comments, and feels better; it would not do to go home without having killed anything. He picks it up, notes where his shot took effect, examines it a moment, and then throws it aside; and that is the end of the matter for him. For the value of life, as the gift of the Creator, and the right of the innocent bird to enjoy it; and for the nest with its tiny occupants that perchance may be awaiting the return of the mother bird, he has not a thought. Every other consideration is subordinated to the gratification of the lust for taking life.

The animal man kills not only because he feels like killing, but also to gratify vanity; and here, sad to say, the “gentler” sex come in for a share in this bloodguiltiness. The ladies must have birds, or parts of birds, to wear in their bonnets. For this high purpose, no doubt, the Creator put forth His infinite power and brought the feathered tribe into existence! Far better is it that the beautiful winged creature of the air should rest motionless and mute upon some piece of feminine headgear, than be roaming free in the heavens, and giving life and voice to what else would be wooded solitudes! Far better that the feathered songster should serve the ends of pride in church or theater than serve to beautify creation upon field and forest! And so the birds are slaughtered by the hundred

thousand; and in proportion as they are slaughtered, injurious insects multiply and plague the farmer and the fruit grower, and do such damage that in some States vast sums are appropriated yearly to combat their ravages. Certainly the brute creation would not be guilty of such folly.

The beast of prey must have other animals for food; it cannot well live upon anything else; but the civilized animal that rules the rest of creation kills other animals, and makes a business of it, simply to furnish one item, and that not a necessary one, in his enormous bill of fare. Man must eat a thing simply because it is eatable; he must eat an animal simply because he does not know what else to do with him. “What would you do with the hog, if you did not eat him?” is his query. And so man eats the scavenger hog; and by his general lust for, and lordly appropriation of, everything in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms that can pander to either natural or perverted appetite, gives striking evidence of the natural hoggishness as well as bloodthirstiness of the human species.

But the animal man feels himself far superior in every respect to the rest of creation, and is always ready to lay the blame for the results of his own depravity upon the animal world beneath him. Here is an illustration taken from a newspaper published on the Pacific Coast (the San Jose Mercury), which will do to conclude our observations upon this subject. It is printed under the heading “Sea Lions Acquitted:” —

“It is a pleasing thing to see the once despised and hunted sea lions and seals defended, and their right to life upheld. A war of extermination has been waged against these animals along the coast from California to Washington, and thousands of them have been slaughtered. State legislatures have aided in the work by giving bounties. All this has been done on the theory that they destroy tons of fish daily, and are therefore responsible for the diminution of the food fishes along the coast. It has been claimed that a sea lion eats four hundred or five hundred pounds of fish every day, and bites many other fish so that they die. The investigation now progressing along the coast by scientists sent out from Washington, aided by other scientists from our universities, appears to be proving that this charge against them is not true. Examination of the stomachs of scores of them reveals the fact that fish constitutes but a small portion of their diet. It is to be hoped that this will prove to be true, and that our legislatures will pass acts protecting them from slaughter instead of dooming them to extinction.

“It has been well said that, regardless of whether they live on an exclusive fish diet or not, the record does not show them to have been the cause of the decrease in food fishes. When this coast was first settled, the lions climbed over the wave-lashed rocks by the thousands. Where there is one now, there was then a hundred, and probably had been for centuries. At the same time the waters swarmed with fish. The fish have only declined since man began his wasteful methods of fishing, catching all he possibly can, and permitting almost none to reach their natural spawning grounds. Man, in his greed and blindness, has been the cause of the great decline in the number of salmon and other food fishes, and now seeks to lay the blame upon the lions and seals, contrary to the evidence and common sense. We ought not to need a scientific report on the subject, in view of the clear logic of the situation, yet a report exonerating them would not come amiss as a basis for legislative action for their protection.”

L. A. S.