A lifelong intimacy with animals has got me out of the common notion that they are automata with a slight infusion of intelligence in their composition. The mind in beast and bird, as in man, is the main thing.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the depth of consciousness and intelligence in animals, challenging the idea that they are merely instinctive beings.
William Henry Hudson asserts that true understanding of animals reveals their complexity and intelligence, countering the simplistic view of them as mere machines acting on instinct. He highlights the importance of recognizing the minds of animals, suggesting that they possess an inner life and thoughts comparable to humans.
In practice
In a speech about animal rights, one might reference this quote to highlight the complexity of animal minds.
For here the religion that languishes in crowded cities or steals shame-faced to hide itself in dim churches, flourishes greatly, filling the soul with a solemn joy. Face to face with Nature on the vast hills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen?
I urge you to sin. But not against these itty-bitty religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism-or their secular derivatives, Marxism, Maoism, Freudianism and Jungianism-whic h are all derivatives of the big religion of patriarchy. Sin against the infrastructure itself!
[W]e are prone to forget that the planet may be measured by man, but not according to man.
For in the immediate world, everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it, and central and simply, without either dissection into science, or digestion into art, but with the whole of consciousness, seeking to perceive it as it stands: so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can: and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiation of what is.
Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
All the science of the Saints is included in these two things: To do, and to suffer. And whoever had done these two things best, has made himself most saintly.
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