What do you mean?
Did you never watch the pigs feeding?
Yes, and how they grudge and quarrel, and shove each other’s noses out of the trough, and even bite each other because they are so jealous which shall get most.
That is it. And how the biggest pig drives the others away, and would starve them while he got fat, if the man did not drive him off in his turn.
Oh, yes; I know.
Then no wiser than those pigs are worldly men who compete, and grudge, and struggle with each other, which shall get most money, most fame, most power over their fellow-men. They will tell you, my child, that that is the true philosophy, and the true wisdom; that competition is the natural law of society, and the source of wealth and prosperity. Do not you listen to them. That is the wisdom of this world, which the flesh teaches the animals; and those who follow it, like the animals, will perish. Such men are not even as wise as Sweep the retriever.
Not as wise as Sweep?
Not they. Sweep will not take away Victor’s bone, though he is ten times as big as Victor, and could kill him in a moment; and when he catches a rabbit, does he eat it himself?
Of course not; he brings it and lays it down at our feet.
Because he likes better to do his duty, and be praised for it, than to eat the rabbit, dearly as he longs to eat it.