“Children, guard yourselves against these
“Hairless and misshapen creatures!
“My dear daughters, never marry
“Any monster that wears breeches!”
More than this I’ll not report now,
How the bear in his wild mania
For equality, kept reasoning
All about the human race.
For, to say the truth, I also
Am a man, and never will I
Tell again such foolish libels,
Which are, after all, offensive.
Yes, I am a man, and better
Than the other sucking creatures,
And the interests of the race
Ne’er will I renounce promoting.
In the fight with other creatures
Faithfully I’ll ever struggle
For humanity,—the holy
Rights of man that he is born to.
CAPUT VI.
Yet perchance ’tis beneficial
For us men, who form the higher
Kind of livestock, to discover
How they reason down below us.
Yes, below us, in the gloomy
Mournful spheres of fellowship,
In the beasts’ inferior strata,
Brood resentment, misery, pride.
That which natural hist’ry ever,
Equally with common custom,
Has for centuries admitted
Is denied with impious muzzle.