Wood, J: Animate Creation, Vol. 1

Excerpt from Animate Creation, Vol. 1: Popular Edition of "Our Living World," a Natural History

In the present Volume I have endeavored to present to the reader the outlines of zoologic knowledge in a form that shall be readily comprehended. In accordance with this principle, the technical language of scientific Zoology has been carefully avoided, and English names have been employed wherever practicable in the place of Greek or Latin appellatives.

Owing to the inordinate use of pseudo-classical phraseology, the fascinating study of animal life has been too long considered as a profession or a science restricted to a favored few. 80 deeply rooted is this idea, that the popular notion of a scientific man is of one who possesses a fund of words, and not of one who has gathered a mass of ideas. There is really not the least reason why anyone of ordinary capabilities and moderate memory should not be acquainted with the general outlines of Zoology, when relieved of the cumbersome diction with which it is embarrassed.

The true object of Zoology is not, as some appear to fancy, to arrange, to number and to ticket animals in a formal inventory, but to make the study an inquiry into the Life-nature, and not.on,ly an investigation of the lifeless organism. I must not, however, be understood to disparage the outward form, thing of clay though it be. For what wondrous clay it is, and how marvellous the continuous miracle by which the dust of earth is transmuted into the glowing colors and graceful forms which we most imperfectly endeavor to preserve after the soul has departed therefrom. It is a great thing to be acquainted with the material framework of any creature, but it is a far greater to know something of the principle which gave animation to that structure. The former, indeed, is the consequence of the latter. The lion, for example, does not prey on animals because it possesses fangs, talons, strength and activity; on the contrary, it possesses these qualities because its inmost nature is to prey, and it needs these appliances to enable it to carry out the innate principle of its being; so that the truest description of the lion is that which treats of the animating spirit, and not only of the outward form. In accordance with this principle, it has been my endeavor to make the work rather anecdotal and vital than merely anatomical and scientific.

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