protected by religion, which even makes them objects of charity.  How such charitable feelings bear fruit may be seen, to take an example, in the great hospital for animals at Surat, whither Christians, Mohammedans and Jews can send their sick beasts, which, if cured, are very rightly not restored to their owners.  In the same way when a Brahman or a Buddhist has a slice of good luck, a happy issue in any affair, instead of mumbling a Te Deum, he goes to the market-place and buys birds and opens their cages at the city gate; a thing which may be frequently seen in Astrachan, where the adherents of every religion meet together:  and so on in a hundred similar ways.  On the other hand, look at the revolting ruffianism with which our Christian public treats its animals; killing them for no object at all, and laughing over it, or mutilating or torturing them:  even its horses, who form its most direct means of livelihood, are strained to the utmost in their old age, and the last strength worked out of their poor bones until they succumb at last under the whip.  One might say with truth, Mankind are the devils of the earth, and the animals the souls they torment.  But what can you expect from the masses, when there are men of education, zoologists even, who, instead of admitting what is so familiar to them, the essential identity of man and animal, are bigoted and stupid enough to offer a zealous opposition to their honest and rational colleagues, when they class man under the proper head as an animal, or demonstrate the resemblance between him and the chimpanzee or ourang-outang.  It is a revolting thing that a writer who is so pious and Christian in his sentiments as Jung Stilling should use a simile like this, in his Scenen aus dem Geisterreich. (Bk.  II. sc. i., p. 15.) “Suddenly the skeleton shriveled up into an indescribably hideous and dwarf-like form, just as when you bring a large spider into the focus of a burning glass, and watch the purulent blood hiss and bubble in the heat.”  This man of God then was guilty of such infamy! or looked on quietly when another was committing it! in either case it comes to the same thing here.  So little harm did he think of it that he tells us of it in passing, and without a trace of emotion.  Such are the effects of the first chapter of Genesis, and, in fact, of the whole of the Jewish conception of nature.  The standard recognized by the Hindus and Buddhists is the Mahavakya (the great word),—­“tat-twam-asi” (this is thyself), which may always be spoken of every animal, to keep us in mind of the identity of his inmost being with ours.  Perfection of morality, indeed!  Nonsense.