ounced limitations on both sides. We can't learn to understand much
of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand
a very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On the
other hand, they can't learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine
and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.

Y.M. Very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is
still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven't got the Moral Sense; we have
it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.

O.M. What makes you think that?

Y.M. Now look here--let's call a halt. I have stood the other infamies
and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the
other animals put on the same level morally.

O.M. I wasn't going to hoist man up to that.

Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such
things.

O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple
truth--and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from
wrong proves his INTELLECTUAL superiority to the other creatures;
but the fact that he can DO wrong proves his MORAL inferiority to
any creature that CANNOT. It is my belief that this position is not
assailable.

Free Will

Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?

O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the
old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?

Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her
to suffer. Isn't it so?

O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the
one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a
strong appeal, of course--the body would be quite sure to do that; the
spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two
appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice?

Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in
doing it he exercised Free Will.

O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free
Will, and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice
between good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that
in that man's case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his
training, and the daily influences which had molded him and made
him what he was, COMPELLED him to rescue the old woman and thus
save HIMSELF--save himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable
wretchednes