Beast People

“ Human strength was powerless against this monster; the people thought that an angry deity had his abode in this terrible beast, so they bestowed godlike honours on him, sacrificing criminals and prisoners to him. ”

“ For intelligence, sagacity and great endurance, he ranks first in the beast kingdom. He is loving and faithful and we hope he will be protected as he deserves to be and not shot wantonly as has been done by silly people who call themselves sportsmen. ”

“ but what stuck in my mind was this, he said that cruelty was the devil's own trade-mark, and if we saw any one who took pleasure in cruelty we might know who he belonged to, for the devil was a murderer from the beginning, and a tormentor to the end. On the other hand, where we saw people who loved their neighbors, and were kind to man and beast, we might know that was God's mark.” ”

“ I used to look at everyone that way, until I had to get away from humanity. I was living in a world of beasts. Most of them looked like some beast or bird or other. The strong were vicious and criminal ”

“ Men who stood vacantly staring in muttered, "Beast!" women, shrinking from the unsightly spectacle, whispered, "Beast!" and children, gazing in silent horror with the rest, stared "Beast!" out of their wonder-stricken eyes. ”

“ And yet for one I think it true.
The days of wonder have not ceased
If there are beasts in forms of men,
As sure it happens now and then,
Why may not man become a beast,
In way of punishment at least? ”

“ Every great city is breeding in its slums a race which is reverting through the savage to the brute—a brute more dangerous in that degraded humanity has possibilities of evil in it beyond the reach of the mere wild beast. ”

“ It may be frankly acknowledged that man inherits from his brute progenitors various bestial tendencies which are in course of elimination. The wild-beast desire to fight is one of these, and this has been encouraged, not checked, by religion.... Another bestial tendency is the lust of the male for the female apart from love, duty, and loyalty ”

“ It is more in keeping with this statement, as well as with other details, to interpret the beast as a principle rather than a person, as being some spirit of evil which, assuming prominence in some man or organization, is yet shared by many men and organizations. ”

“ As for the rest of him, he was a brute-beast, wholly unmoral, and with all the passion and turgid violence of the brute-beast. What saved him, what made him possible for me, were those corners of his eyes--the humor and laughter and kindliness of the beast when unaroused. ”

“ Lest we forget that we were born divine, Now tangled in red battle's animal net, Murder the work and lust the anodyne, Pains of the beast 'gainst bestial solace set. But this shall never be: to us remains One city that has nothing of the beast, That was not built for gross, material gains, Sharp, wolfish power or empire's glutted feast. ”

“ In the state of original innocence, no doubt, this dominion was more perfect, but even now it exists in a great degree. "Every kind of beast, and of birds, and of serpents, and of the rest, is tamed, and hath been tamed by mankind." ”

“ And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast—whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed—a brute beast to work out for me—for me, a man, fashioned in the image of the High God—so much of insufferable woe! ”

“ If they are capable of merits and demerits and can incur praise and blame, then they are worthy of retribution hereafter and there must be a heaven and a hell prepared for them, so that the pre-eminence of a man over a beast as an object of God’s mercy or wrath is lost. “Beasts, in that case, would be a species of man or men a species of beast, both of which propositions are incompatible with the teachings of religion.” ”

“ By man’s diligent labour the lions have been made tame, the dragons meek, and the bears obedient. But what is this, that worse is than any stepmother, which hath brought us forth this new unreasonable brute beast, the pestilence and mischief of all this world? One beast alone I brought forth wholly dedicate to be benevolent, pleasant, friendly, and wholesome to all other. What hath chanced, that this creature is changed into such a brute beast? I perceive nothing of the creature man, which I myself made. ”

“ At one time the primitive aristocratic man is the freely-roving, splendid beast of prey, the blond beast; at another: ‘these men are rigorously kept within bounds by morality, veneration, custom, gratitude, still more by reciprocal surveillance, by jealousy inter pares; and, on the other hand, in their attitude towards each other, inventive in consideration, self-command, delicacy, fidelity, pride, and friendship.’ Ay, if these be the attributes of ‘blond beasts,’ may someone speedily give us a society of ‘blond beasts’! ”

“ Give no truce nor sign of respite at the binding of the Beast.
He is cunning, he is strong, and the war shall yet be long,
Where the seven thunders wake and the walls of heaven shake.
He is cruel, blind and ruthless; he is boastful, sly and truthless;
By his will the Powers of Darkness are increast;
But the shackle and the chain shall avenge the hurt and slain,
Who have broken bread with heroes at the binding of the Beast. ”

“ I would have liked to see the animal defend himself,—the dog bite the one who abused him, the horse, bleeding under the lash, trample on his torturer. But always the dumb beast endures his lot with the resignation of the subdued races. What an object of pity is the beast! ”

“ The Beast, according to this interpretation, is the persecuting world-power in any and every age antagonizing the kingdom of God; the national and political forces of the world in their organized form arraying themselves against our Lord and his Christ; that phase of the world's life which finds expression for its opposition to the children of the kingdom under the forms of law and government, the most sovereign and irresistible of all kinds of persecution. ”

“ But the beast, with all its wild passions, with rage and hate, with covetousness and envy, with thirst for blood and insatiable vanity, is it not derived from father or mother, who have drained the pleasures of life or the woes of life to the dregs, who were corrupted in blood through their own fault, or without their own fault, before they gave life to the germ to which they imparted the curse of their forefathers as a heritage? ”

“ Beasts, whose very lips drop blood; things, all savage, unprincipled in their very courage: ferocious, heartless, senseless; no tie of life can bind them: they know not fear, it is true—but neither know they gratitude, nor charity, nor love; they are made but for their own career, to slaughter without pity, to die without dread! ”

“ Hence, like beasts, they rot in their dung; they are become corrupt and abominable in their ways, and live as though there were no God, and no knowledge in the Most High, — as though man and beast had one end, and the condition of both were the same. ”

“ For what gross Wickedness, I say, was there ever committed in all, or any part of the World, that we have had any Account of, in any History or News-Papers, but this Beast with his Seven Heads, Ten Horns, and Ten Crowns, and his Name of Blasphemy, have not had a share and hand in it, so then all Covetous Men are Beasts, Blasphemers, Lyers, Thieves and Murtherers as well as Idolaters. ”

“ These, as natural brute beasts, the ten-horned beast and two-horned beast, or false Prophet, made to be taken and destroyed, in the lake of fire, blaspheme the things they understand not:—they count it pleasure to riot in the day-time—sporting themselves with their own deceivings, while they feast [26] with you, having eyes full of an [27] Adulteress: for the kingdoms of the beast live deliciously with the great Whore, and the nations are made drunk with the wine of her fornication. ”

“ Thus when the savage gets over his fears, he still keeps up in ironical merriment the reverence which had its origin in trembling sincerity. Even now the Norse hunter will say with horror of a bear that will attack man, that he can be ‘no Christian bear.’
The sense of an absolute psychical distinction between man and beast, so prevalent in the civilized world, is hardly to be found among the lower races. ”

“ Those of them who swaggered—the dare-devil reckless blades—when first we sailed, were now transformed into cowardly, trembling wretches, all half-starved, and some reduced with fevers, with no more spirit left than enabled them still to curse and swear. The feeblest of mortals, the lowest of human wretches, has still left so much strength and will that he can sink his immortal soul lower still—a terrible power, truly! ”

“ But it is when we turn to their treatment of the non-human races that we find the surest evidences of barbarism; yet their savagery, even here, is not wholly “naked and unashamed,” for, strange to say, these curious people delight to mask their rudeness in a cloak of fallacies and sophisms, and to represent themselves as “lovers” of those very creatures whom they habitually torture for “sport,” “science,” and the “table.” ”

“ Here they enjoy liberty from all social restraint ... and become rejoicing monsters, who perhaps go on their way, after a hideous sequence of murder, conflagration, violation, torture, with as much gaiety and equanimity as if they had merely taken part in some student gambols.... Deep in the nature of all these noble races there lurks unmistakably the beast of prey, the blond beast, lustfully roving in search of booty and victory.—Fr. ”

“ We are all of us great-great-grandchildren of the beasts. We carry the bestial attributes in our blood: some more, some less. Who amongst us is so pure and exalted that he has never been conscious of the bestial taint? Who amongst us has not fought with wild beasts—not at Ephesus, but in his own heart? ”

“ Indeed, it would seem that the cruelties of these wild beasts—for so they deserve to be regarded, and their thirst for blood places them beyond the pale of humanity—are becoming more and more audacious, their deeds of horror rather accumulating than diminishing. ”

“ Thus they let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity, and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man, when possessed with power answerable to his rage. ”

“ The beasts feared man, but they loved their God,
And bent glad heads to the earth He trod,
"Wailings swept over the glassy sea,
The cry of God's beasts came up to Me,
"Truly I know that your stripes be sore —
Have ye forgotten the stripes I bore?
"Yet it is written, ''Twixt birth and death
The whole of Creation travaileth.'
"These men do evil unwittingly. ”

“ I cannot bear to see any one struck; it hurts me so to see the beast in man, unfettered, hot tempered, the man made lower than the beast.
We cannot understand how men, and even women, can go to see an execution, it is worse than heartless. ”

“ Another bestial tendency is greed, the strongest grabbing all he can and trampling down the weak, in the mad struggle for wealth; how and when has religion modified this tendency, sanctified as it is in our present civilisation? All these bestial tendencies will be eradicated only by the recognition of human duty, of the social bond. Religion has not eradicated them, but science, by tracing them to their source in our brute ancestry, has explained them and has shown them in their true light. ”

“ The scene was made for man, not savage man, The cunningest of brutes, the crafty king Of beasts! but Man the Spiritualised, With all the light of knowledge in his brain, With all the light of love within his heart! And yet they were but savages who stood On Moeatoa's hill, above the scene, Mere savages, a step beyond the brute! ”

“ If I want skill or force to restrain the beast that I ride upon, though I bought it, and call it my own, yet in the truth of the matter I am at that time rather his man than he my horse. The voluptuous men (whom we are fallen upon) may be divided, I think, into the lustful and luxurious, who are both servants of the belly; the other whom we spoke of before, the ambitious and the covetous, were κακὰ θηρία, evil wild beasts ”

“ But these men were rebels and freebooters, with the fierce lust of blood upon them, their hands red from the butchery of innocent, helpless women and children; men who laughed aloud at tales of hideous deeds done in cold blood; men mad with hatred to the conquering race, knowing themselves doomed to final defeat, yet resolved to revenge themselves in every possible way upon those of the hated faith ere their own turn came. ”

“ This produces, in the minds of persons of all classes a sort of confusion between beast-fighters and criminals and brings it about that there attaches to those persons of noble-birth or free-birth who, whether from hope of gain, from poverty, or from infatuation with the sport or from mere bravado, abase themselves as beast-fighters, an obloquy far intenser than that which attaches to freemen or nobles who dishonor themselves by becoming gladiators or charioteers. ”

“ XX, 15-19., “And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast. And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death.” ”

“ It may be said that though the wild beast breaks out in Man and casts him back momentarily into barbarism under the excitement of war and crime, yet his normal life is higher than the normal life of his forefathers. ”

“ Nay, a savage's belief that beasts are on his own level is so literal, that he actually makes blood-covenants with the lower animals, as he does with men, mingling his gore with theirs, or smearing both together on a stone ”

“ Who else than he, with an invisible and yet potent hand, has driven from human society like savage beasts that ever noxious and destructive tribe of evil spirits who of old had made all nations their prey, and by the motions of their images had practiced many a delusion among men? ”