Note 121 — IV. EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.

At the annual meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Mr. Ruskin is reported (Daily News, July 11, 1877) to have said that "as he was somewhat concerned in the studies of the scientific world, it might be thought that he sympathized in the resistance offered, not without some ground of reason, to some of the more enthusiastic and, he feared in some respects, exaggerated and sentimental actions of the society. He pleaded in the name of poor animals that none of them should act too much on the feeling of pity, or without making a thoroughly judicial inquiry. In looking at the report, he found part of the society's admirable evidence mixed up with sentimental tales of fiction and other means of exciting mere emotion, which had caused them to lose power with those who had the greatest influence in the prevention of the abuses which the society desired to check. The true justice of their cause lay in the relations which men had had with animals from the time when both were made. They had endeavored to prevent cruelty to animals; they had not enough endeavored to promote affection for animals. He thought they had had too much to do in the police courts, and not enough in the field and the cottage garden. As one who was especially interested in the education of the poor, he believed that he could not educate them on animals, but that he could educate them by animals. He trusted to the pets of children for their education just as much as to their tutors. He rejoiced in the separate organization of the Ladies' Committee, and looked to it to give full extent and power to action which would supersede all their expensive and painful disputable duties. Without perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use. In concluding, he pleaded for an expansion of the protection extended by the society to wild birds."