Differences Nearly Never Converging

Figure 1: Human and animal brains are more similar than the average human knows.

Humans walk on two legs while animals walk on four. Humans have hair while animals have fur. Humans have the capacity to think and acknowledge that they are thinking while animals have the capacity to think and to immediately act on what they are thinking. “Animals are born, are sentient and are mortal. In these things they resemble man. In their superficial anatomy – less in their deep anatomy – in their habits, in their time in they physical capacities, they differ from man. They are both alike and unlike” (795). There are so many ways in which the man can be seen as advantageous over the animal. The man has technology and higher level thinking but the animal has instinct that man has lost most sensitivity to due to these same recent technological advancements that give them the false sense of superiority. As I watch to myself type this paper, I can’t help but notice my lack of commitment to either species. I refer to animal and human with the same term, “them”. I am obviously a human, but what makes a human so human besides physical and mental traits? “Between two men the two abysses are, in principle, bridged by language…language allows men to reckon with each other as with themselves…whereas in animals feat is a response to signal, in men it is endemic” (795). Through extremely in depth studies, experiments and analyses, it has been found that there are many biological similarities between humans and animals. From the eyes of a child, it seems that this strict line separating humans and animals disappears into the realm of invisibility. I would assume that every person found a childhood friend in a dog, cat or fish. It is not until these children grow up and are immersed into the cultural pull so society that they are swayed into believing that the differences that humans and animals do not share separate them into inferior and superior beings. “With their parallel lives, animals offer man a companionship which is different from any offered by human exchange. Different because it is a companionship offered to the loneliness of man as a species”(796). Like children, animals do not differential humans as a species of particular danger or dislike. They understand that we are different, not constituting different with any negative connotation, just as different.

Figure 2: Animals were used by royalty as symbols are higher class. 

   Just as a college roommate shares a space with us, animals share a space with us on this planet. It is a shame that animals are merely seen as a source of food, entertainment or trouble, rather than the beautiful beings that they were created to be. In the early centuries of the world, “…admirers valued these exotic menageries as marvels, not because of any fondness for their inmates…but [most] served mainly as toys or badges of rank, and whatever affection befell on them neither extended to other animals nor was mimicked by the lower orders of society” (801). Since the beginning of time, humans have found themselves to prevail over animals simply because they had the tools to do so. “presumption is our natural and original disease…’Tis by the same vanity of imagination that he equals himself to God, attributes to himself divine qualities, withdraws and separates himself from the crowd of other creatures, cuts out the shares of the animals, his fellows and companions, and distributes to them portions of faculties and force” (835). As humans, we act as if we completely understand the differences between man and animal, that we can fathom the lack of feeling that they have and their lack of intelligence. We will never be able to comprehend the thoughts of animals or appreciate their levels of thinking because on a level of reality, we can never sincerely empathize with them because we are different than them. We are not animals just as they are not humans. There are similarities, of course, but there are also differences that make them distinct from us and visa versa. “Just because of this distinctness, however, an animal’s life =, never to be confused with a man’s can be seen to run parallel to his. Only in death do the two parallel lines converge” and only then might we have the total capacity to understand and empathize with each others differences (796).  

https://files.nyu.edu/ahk291/public/Standard%20Poodles%20%20Famous%20Poodles.html

http://www.solarnavigator.net/human_brain.htm