and a green snake glides over the bank. The breath in the
chest seems to lose its vitality; for an instant the nerves
refuse to transmit the force of life. The gliding yellow-streaked worm is so
utterly opposed to the ever present Idea in the mind. Custom may reduce the
horror, but no long pondering can ever bring that creature within the pale
of the human Idea. These are so distinctly opposite and anti-human that
thousands of years have not sufficed to soften their outline. Various
insects and creeping creatures excite the same sense in lesser degrees.
Animals and birds in general do not. The tiger is dreaded, but causes no
disgust. The exception is in those that feed on offal. Horses and dogs we
love; we not only do not recognise anything opposite in them, we come to
love them.

They are useful to us, they show more or less sympathy with us,
they possess, especially the horse, a certain grace of movement.
A gloss, as it were, is thrown over them by these attributes and
by familiarity. The shape of the horse to the eye has become
conventional: it is accepted. Yet the horse is not in any
sense human. Could we look at it suddenly, without previous
acquaintance, as at strange fishes in a tank, the ultra-human
character of the horse would be apparent. It is the curves of
the neck and body that carry the horse past without adverse
comment. Examine the hind legs in detail, and the curious
backward motion, the shape and anti-human curves become apparent.
Dogs take us by their intelligence, but they have no hand; pass
the hand over the dog's head, and the shape of the skull to the
sense of feeling is almost as repellent as the form of the toad
to the sense of sight. We have gradually gathered around us all
the creatures that are less markedly anti-human, horses and dogs
and birds, but they are still themselves. They originally