ABSTRACT
The human species has been praised for possessing in the most perfected form all the powers and capabilities of every other species. This is patently untrue. Not only is the assertion incapable of empirical proof; it is also logically insupportable, for It is self-contradictory. Clearly, if it were true, one power would cancel out the other and man would be the most wretched of creatures. For how could man at one and the same time bloom like a flower, feel his way like the spider, build like the bee, suck like the butterfly, and also possess the muscular strength of the lion, the trunk of the elephant and the skill of the beaver? Does he possess, nay does he comprehend, a single one of those powers, with that intensity, with which the animal enjoys and exercises it?…
No creature, that we know of, has departed from its original organization or has developed in opposition to it. It can operate only with the powers inherent in its organization, and nature knew how to devise sufficient means to confine all living beings to the sphere allotted to them.16
