We can praise a dog as a dog, because a dog is a completed _ens_, and not an embryo.

But to praise a man as man, forgetting that he is only a germ out of which a form wholly different is ultimately to spring, is equally opposed to Scriptural belief in his present crudity and imperfection, and to psychological or metaphysical examination of a mental construction evidently designed for purposes that he can never fulfil as man.

That my father is an embryo not more incomplete than any present is quite true; but that, you will see on reflection, is saying very little on his behalf.

Even in the boasted physical formation of us men, you are aware that the best-shaped amongst us, according to the last scientific discoveries, is only a development of some hideous hairy animal, such as a gorilla; and the ancestral gorilla itself had its own aboriginal forefather in a small marine animal shaped like a two-necked bottle.

The probability is that, some day or other, we shall be exterminated by a new development of species.
"As for the merits assigned to my father as landlord, I must respectfully dissent from the panegyrics so rashly bestowed on him.