“As a matter of fact, then, we do not own the world.  And now let me say, that, as a matter of right, we ought not:  man was the last created of creatures.  When our race appeared on the earth, it had been for millions of years in quiet, exclusive, undisputed possession of the birds, beasts, fishes, and insects:  it was their world then, and we were intruders and trespassers upon their domain....

“If, then, the other races have a right to exist on the planet as much as we, what follows?  Surely, that they have a right to their share and proportion of the ground and its fruits, and the blessings of Heaven by which life here is sustained:  man has no right to expect a monopoly of them.  If we get a week of sunshine which supplies our wants, we have no reason to complain of the succeeding week of rain which supplies the wants of other races.  If we raise a crop of wheat, and the insect foragers take tithes of it, we have no right to find fault:  a share of it belongs to them.  If you plant a field with corn, and the weeds spring up also along with it, why do you complain?  Have not the weeds as much right there as the corn?  If you encamp in one of the numberless swamps which surround this settlement, and get assailed by countless millions of robust mosquitoes, why do you rave and swear (as I know most of you would do under such circumstances) and want to know ’what in the ——­ mosquitoes were made for’?  Why, to puncture the skin of blockheads and blasphemers like you, and suck the last drop of blood from their veins.  Why, let me ask you, did you go out there?  That place belonged to the mosquitoes, not to you; and you knew you were trespassing upon their land.  The mosquitoes exist for themselves, and were created for the enjoyment of their own mosquito-life.  Why was man created?  The Bible does not answer the question directly; the divines in the Catechism say, ‘To glorify God.’  Now I should like to know if a Westminster Catechism of the mosquitoes would’nt make as good an answer for them?

“And here I am just in the act of annihilating with a logical stroke a multitude of grumblers and croakers.  If this world does not belong exclusively to man, and the other races have as much right here as he, and, consequently, a claim to their proportion of land, water, and sky, and their share of food for the sustenance of life, what follows?

“A great many men, taking northeast storms, bleak winds, thunder-showers, flies, mosquitoes, Canada thistles, hot sunshine, cold snows, weeds, briers, thorns, wild beasts, snakes, alligators, and such like things, which they don’t happen to like, and putting them all together, attempt to persuade you that this green earth is a complete failure, a wreck and blasted ruin.  Don’t you believe that, for it’s wicked infidelity.  I tell you the world is not all so bad as Indiana, and especially that part of the State which you, unfortunately, inhabit.  I have seen, my friends, a large portion of the planet,