Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result—as I understand it—I am required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?
O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such frontier—there is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine and works in the same way. And neither he nor those others can command the machine—it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works when it pleases, and when it doesn’t please, it can’t be forced.
Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental machinery, and there isn’t any difference of any stupendous magnitude between them, except in quality, not in kind.
O.M. That is about the state of it—intellectuality. There are pronounced limitations on both sides. We can’t learn to understand much of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand a very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On the other hand, they can’t learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.
Y.M. Very well, let them have what they’ve got, and welcome; there is still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven’t got the Moral Sense; we have it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.
O.M. What makes you think that?
Y.M. Now look here—let’s call a halt. I have stood the other infamies and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the other animals put on the same level morally.
O.M. I wasn’t going to hoist man up to that.
Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such things.
O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple truth—and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot. It is my belief that this position is not assailable.