Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1881 — Animal Lire Here and Hereafter. [ARTICLE]

Animal Lire Here and Hereafter.

A lively writer propounds and answers a question thus: “Who says animals do not have a future existence? Look at the chicken, for instance, who dies and is cooked, but his feathers on a lady’s hat become a bird of paradise, ” Aside from the humor of the foregoing, there comi s a question: Why should man arrogate to himself the sole right to live hereafter, while all the animal kingdom is to be utterly blotted out of existence? Animals have mind of a certain order, and many human ways, such as exhibiting their love, hate, belligerency, fear, disgust, and tendencies to fun. That delicate and exquisitely organized little songster who sprung from tlie warm clime of the Canaries, evinces intelligence of no mean order, and it is one of the certainties that its fair owner, with her sympathetic nature, does not believe in the annihilation of her pet Human beings kill and devour animals and generally think no more of them. Yet these animals have the same fear of death and the same love of life as man, and upon that very fear and' love in man is based his hope of another life. It is now generally agreed that what has been called instinct in animals is mind, for many of them seem to reason from cause to effect in providing for themselves and their young, and protecting the lives of each from assault. Naturalists are beginning to have some new ideas of criminal existence, and some of them think that when the Creator endows anything with active animal life He does not mean that it shall be utterly dostrojed..—