CHAPTER XXIX.

HOW MAN IS SUPERIOR TO ANIMALS.

[Sidenote: Man’s superiority in his mind.]

You see, from what I have told you, that man can do with his hands a great variety of things that animals can not do. It has been said, therefore, by some that the hand is the great thing that makes man superior to animals. But this is not true. Of what use would the hand be if there was not a mind in the head that knew how to use it? Suppose that your cat had a hand instead of a paw, could she write with it? No; the mind in her brain does not know enough for this. And so there are a great many other things that we do with our hands which the cat would not know enough to do with hands, if she had them.

So, then, it is not the hand merely that makes you superior to a cat, but it is the mind that uses the hand. Your mind knows more than her mind does, and wants to do more things than her mind ever dreams of. Your mind, therefore, needs such an instrument as the hand to do these things with, while a paw answers very well for the cat.

[Sidenote: Machinery of animals suited to their minds.]

[Sidenote: Machinery of the oyster, and of the cat and dog.]

God gives to every animal just such machinery as its mind can use. If it knows a great deal, that is, if it has a great deal of mind, he gives it a great deal of machinery; but if it has but little mind, he gives it but little machinery; for if he gave it much, it would not know how to work it. An oyster, as I have told you, knows but little as it lies covered up in its shell. It knows how to do only a few things, and so it has but little machinery. A dog or a cat knows a great deal more than an oyster, and therefore it has paws, claws, teeth, etc., as machinery for its mind to use. And as your mind knows so much more than that of a dog or cat, it has that wonderful machine, the hand, to do what it knows how to do.

The mind of man knows so much that it will contrive, when there are no hands, to use other things in place of them. I once saw a man who had no hands write, and do various other things very well with his toes. You know that we generally use the right hand most, making the left hand rather the helpmeet of the right. But when the right hand is lost in any way, the mind sets the left to work to learn to do as the lost one did. I once had to cut off the right arm of a very bright little girl. But her busy mind did not stop working because it had lost the best part of its machinery. In less than a fortnight I saw her sewing with her left hand, fastening her work with a pin instead of holding it as she used to do.

[Sidenote: Machinery in the face.]

There is some other machinery, besides the hand, that you have which animals have not. It is the machinery that is in the face. I have told you about this before, in the chapter on the muscles. A dog, when he is pleased, looks up at you and wags his tail; but he can not laugh or even smile; neither can he frown. Why? Because there is none of the smiling, and laughing, and frowning machinery there. And so it is with other animals.

[Sidenote: Variety of expression in the face.]

The variety of work that this machinery of expression does in the face of man is very great, as you can see if you watch the varied expressions of countenance in persons engaged in animated conversation. But there is very little variety of expression in the face of an animal. Now why is it that they have not the same muscles of expression that we have? It is for the same reason that they have not hands. The mind of man has a great many more thoughts and feelings than the mind of an animal has. It needs, therefore, more machinery to express these thoughts and feelings. The wagging of the dog’s tail answers very well to express his simple feeling of pleasure; but you have so many different pleasant thoughts and feelings that you need the varied play of the muscles of the face to express them.

[Sidenote: The wolf.]

[Sidenote: Why we have no snarling muscles.]

But some animals have certain muscles of expression in the face that we have not. They are the snarling muscles, as they are called. They draw up the upper lip on each side of the mouth in such a way as to show the long, tearing teeth. In this wolf, about to devour a lamb that he has caught, you see what a fierce and horrid expression these muscles give to the face. Now the reason that we have no such muscles is that we ought never to have snarling feelings. I have seen both men and children look very bad when they were angry; but they would have looked a great deal worse if they had snarling machinery in their faces, as wolves, and cats, and dogs have in theirs.

[Sidenote: Why animals can not talk.]

There is some machinery that animals have just as we do, which they can not use to do as many things as we can, because they do not know how. I will give you an example, and then you will see what I mean. Did you ever think why it is that animals can not talk? It is not because they have not the machinery for talking. Many of them have tongues, teeth, lips, etc. These are the things that we use to talk with, and yet, though they have them, and have a voice that comes out from their throats as ours does, they can not talk. Why is this? It is because they do not know how to use these parts in talking, though they do know how to use them in other things, as eating. The cow knows how to use her teeth, and lips, and tongue in eating; but if she had a mind like yours, she would use them in talking, and would not merely low.

The parrot, you know, does know how to talk, after a fashion. This particular faculty is given to it, though it is rather a stupid bird about other things. And, after all, its talking is a very awkward imitation of the speech of man; it only says what it hears people say, and that in a very bungling manner.

[Sidenote: Some things done better by some animals than by man.]

Though man has more machinery and can do more things than any other animal, there are some things that some animals can do better than he can. Man can climb, but he can not do it as well as a cat or a monkey. He can swim, but not as well as a fish. The frog and the grasshopper are better jumpers. The horse and the dog can run faster than he can. He can not see as far as some birds. He has but two eyes, but the fly has thousands of eyes, so that it can see in almost all directions at once. He can not smell as well as the dog, who can follow the track of his master by the scent left in his footsteps. He can mimic different sounds, but the mocking-bird can beat him at this.

[Sidenote: Some animals can do things which man can not.]

But, besides all this, there are some things done by some animals that man can not do at all. He can not fly like the birds and insects. He can not go to roost like the birds. He can not walk along on the wall over his head, as the fly does with the suckers on its feet.

Each animal is fitted to do just those things that it needs to do. For example, the monkey needs to climb to get his living, and the Creator has therefore made him so that he can climb very easily. For this purpose, instead of having two hands and two feet, as we have, he has four things shaped somewhat like hands, with which he can grasp the limbs of trees. I might give you other examples, but you can find many in the chapters on what animals use for hands, the tools of animals, and their instruments of defense and attack.

_Questions._--What is said about the hand? In what is man superior to animals? What is said about the machinery that God gives to different animals? Tell about the man that had no hands, and about the girl that had her arm cut off. What is said about the machinery in the face? What about the variety of work that this machinery does? Why do not animals have the same muscles of expression that man has? What muscles of expression do some animals have that man has not? Why does not man have them? Why can not animals talk? What is said about the parrot? Mention some things that some animals can do better than man. Mention some things done by animals that he can not do at all. What is every animal fitted to do?