animal

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly _ but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.

Rabbits (says Mr. Lockley) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now. A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass.

People were animals, and animals were nothing but teeth. You bit first, and you bit often, That was the only way to survive.

I once took a poo in the woods while hunched over like an animal. It was AWESOME.

I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.

Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art.

Oh, how an animal that is hurt looks up at you, John! An animal__ actions can inform you if it is in pain. It don__ hop and jump around as usual. No. You find a sad, crouching, cringing, small bunch of fur or hair, whining, and plainly asking you to aid it. It isn't hard to find out what is wrong, John; any man or woman who would pass by such a sight, just isn't worth knowing. I just can__ withstand it! Why, I think that not only animals, but plants can know pain. I carry a drink to many a poor, thirsty growing thing; or, if it is torn up I put it kindly back, and fix its soil up as comfortably as I can. Anything that is living, John, is worthy of Man__ aid.

Some say we are not like humans but we are more like them than we are different. Man and animals are in the same species as mammals as they have mammary glands that produce the milk to nurse their young. Their lungs breathe air and their blood is warm. They are vertebrates in that their skeletal system and well-designed spines hold their bodies together. Each cell is made of molecules, each molecule is made of atoms, and each atom is made of protons, neutrons and mostly electrons, which are made of waves of fibered light.

I was like you once, long time ago. I believed in the dignity of man. Decency. Humanity. But I was lucky. I found out the truth early, boy.And what is the truth, Stark? It's all very simple. There's no such thing as the dignity of man. Man is a base, pathetic and vulgar animal.

Try repeating __an is an animal" a few times, just to notice how unconvincing it sounds. There seems to be no way to get this idea into our heads, except by long rumination over the facts of evolution or perhaps by exposure to a primitive tribe or by being raised on a farm. Primitives sometimes see little difference between themselves and the animals around them. Karl von den Steinen was told by a Xingu that the only difference between them and the monkey was that they monkeys lacked the bow and arrow. And Jules Henry observed on the Kningang that dogs are not considered pets, like some of the other animals, but are on a level of emotional equality, like a relative. But in our own Western culture we have, for the most part, set a great distance between ourselves and the rest of nature, and language helps us to do this. Thus we say that a sheep __rops" its lamb, but a woman __ives birth"__t__ much more noble. Yet we have the right to make such distinctions because we assign the meaning to the world by naming names of things; we inhabit a different sphere and we capitalize naturally on the privilege.

I was like you once, long time ago. I believed in the dignity of man. Decency. Humanity. But I was lucky. I found out the truth early, boy. And what is the truth, Stark? It's all very simple. There's no such thing as the dignity of man. Man is a base, pathetic and vulgar animal.

If you must give me a label, then label me a human being. I have no pride in being a human, though, because I have nothing to do with my becoming one.But, whereas animals don't have a rational code of ethics, I like to think I do. Which is where I am partisan. Moral partisanship is the reason for my "anger." And if I don't protest what needed to be protested, I might just as well be an animal.

When a man is at peace he is a man, when angry he is an animal.

To most Americans, a dog is a potential mate. To some Chinese, a dog is potential meat.

Contrary to popular belief, some animals would not have each chosen to be a human being, if they were given the choice between being what they are and being human.

Why does it seem easier for us to accept reality when it is within the confinement of the animal kingdom yet so hard for us to face it in our?

If there really is a definable 6th sense, it would be the natural connection and the ability of communication between man and animal