The
fox is always cunning, the wolf ravenous, the owl wise, and the ass
foolish. The question has been raised whether such traits were at first
actually ascribed to animals, or whether their introduction in story was
intended merely as an agreeable figure of speech for classes of men. We
cannot doubt but that the former was the case. Going back to the dawn of
civilization, we find these relations not as amusing fictions, but as
myths, embodying religious tenets, and the brute heroes held up as the
ancestors of mankind, even as rightful claimants of man's prayers and
praises.
Man, the paragon of animals, praying to the beast, is a spectacle so
humiliating that, for the sake of our common humanity, we may seek the
explanation of it least degrading to the dignity of our race. We must
remember that as a hunter the primitive man was always matched against
the wild creatures of the woods, so superior to him in their dumb
certainty of instinct, their swift motion, their muscular force, their
permanent and sufficient clothing.
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