perpetually dispossessing, and who are doomed to extinction under the Juggernath of civilization. Nature builds only upon ruins. The driving-wheel of Progress is Suffering.
Thus, so much the more should we feel tenderly towards the smaller lives about us, the things that the Creator has placed amongst us to enjoy the same earth as ourselves, but whom we compel to serve us so long as they can, and to die out when our end is served. Except in Holy Writ there is nothing so beautiful or so manful as the teaching of Buddha, the evangelist of universal tenderness; and approaching nature we ought to remember that it is the very Temple of temples, and that we may not minister there unless we have on the ephod of pity.
You will think, no doubt, that if I feel so seriously, I ought not to try to make fun out of these animals and birds and fishes and insects. But why not? Ridentem dicere verum, quid vetat? Besides, I know that if it were wrong to laugh over monkeys and cats and giraffes, I should feel that it was — and wouldn’t do it. But, at any rate, if I say anything in this book that either the beasts or their friends think unkind or unjust, I am sorry for it. Attribute it, Reader, to want of knowledge, not to want of Sympathy; and if you would be generous do not think me too much in earnest when I am serious, nor altogether in fun because I jest.
One of the very few positive facts we have about Adam is that he gave names to all the living things in Eden: not of course those by which even antiquity knew them, but names such as Primitive Man, wher-
