This only we found, that if we sinned in our regard for the
unworthy animal, we shared our sin with the largest number of our own
sex; comforted with the sense of good fellowship, we went boldly to work
upon our consciousness; and the imperfect analysis which we succeeded in
accomplishing, we here lay before you, whoever you may be, who have
felt, as we have felt, a regard which was a moral disturbance to you,
and which you will be pleased if we enable you to justify--

Si quid novisti rectius istis,
Candidus imperti; si non, his uttere mecum.

Following the clue which was thrust into our hand by the marked
difference of the feelings of men upon the subject, from those of women,
we were at once satisfied that Reineke's goodness, if he had any, must
lay rather in the active than the passive department of life. The
negative obedience to prohibitory precepts, under which women are bound
as well as men, as was already too clear, we were obliged to surrender
as hopeless. But it seemed as if, with respect to men whose business is
to do, and to labour, and to accomplish, this negative test was a
seriously imperfect one; and it was quite as possible that a man who
unhappily had broken many prohibitions might yet exhibit positive
excellences, as that he might walk through life picking his way with the
utmost assiduity, risking nothing and doing nothing, not committing a
single sin, but keeping his talent carefully wrapt up in a napkin, and
get sent, in the end, to outer darkness for his pains, as an
unprofitable servant. And this appeared the more important to us, as it
was very little dwelt upon by religions or moral teachers: at the end of
six thousand years, the popular notion of virtue, as far as it could get
itself expressed, had not risen beyond the mere abstinence from certain
specific bad actions.

The king of the beasts forgives Reineke on account of the substantial
services which at various times he has rendered. His counsel was always
the wisest, his hand the promptest in cases of difficulty; and all that
dexterity, and politeness, and courtesy, and exquisite culture had not
been learnt without an effort, or without conquering many undesirable
tendencies in himself. Men are not born with any art in its perfection,
and Reineke had made himself valuable by his own sagacity and exertion.
Now, on the human stage, a man who has made himself valuable is certain
to be valued. However we may pretend to estim