the horses
were made but to ride and to work. Cows of course gave milk for the
sake of the dairy; cream rose on milk for ease in skimming; when
churned, it turned sour, that the family might have fresh buttermilk.
Hides were for shoes. The skin on sheep, it was put there for Man's
woollens.

Now David declared that these beings were no more made for Man than Man
was made for them. Man might capture them, keep them in captivity,
break, train, use, devour them, occasionally exterminate them by
benevolent assimilation. But this was not the reason of their being
created: what that reason was in the Creator's mind, no one knew or
would ever know.

"Man seizes and uses you," said David, working that day in his barn;
"but you are no more his than he is yours. He calls you dependent
creatures: who has made you dependent? In a state of wild nature, there
is not one of you that Man would dare meet: not the wild stallion, not
the wild bull, not the wild boar, not even an angry ram. The argument
that Man's whole physical constitution--structure and function-shows
that he was intended to live on beef and mutton, is no better than the
argument that the tiger finds man perfectly adapted to his system as a
food, and desires none better. Every man-eating creature thinks the
same: the wolf believes Man to be his prey; the crocodile believes him
to be his; an old lion is probably sure that a man's young wife is
designed for his maw alone. So she is, if he manages to catch her."

As David said this rather unexpectedly to himself, he fell into a novel
revery, forgetting philosophy and brute kind. It was late when David
finished his work that day. Toward nightfall the cloud had parted in
the west; the sun had gone down with dark curtains closing heavily over
it. Later, the cloud had parted in the east, and the moon had arisen
amid white fleeces and floated above banks of pearl. Shining upon all
splendid things else, it illumined one poor scene which must not be
forgotten: the rear of an old barn, a sagging roof of rotting shingles;
a few common sheep passing in, driven by a shepherd dog; and a big
thoughtful boy holding the door open.

He had shifted the stock to make way for these additional pensioners,
putting the horses into the new stalls, the cows where the horses had
been, and the sheep under the shed of the cows. (It is the horse that
always gets the best of everything in a stable.) He reproached himself
that he did least for the