I oscillated or vacillated between these two lines of thought. The sight
of Commodus dodging the lightning rush of an infuriated ostrich and neatly
despatching him with a single blow on the head from a palm-wood club no
longer and no thicker than his own forearm not only stirred my wonder that
any man could possess such accuracy of eyesight, such power of judging
distances and time, such perfect cooerdination of his faculties of
observation, of his will and of his muscles; but also roused my disgust
that a man capable of ruling the world and with the opportunity to show
his capabilities should degrade himself to wasting time on tricks of
agility and feats of strength and skill.
On the other hand the sight of Commodus using a full-grown male Indian
elephant as a target for his arrows enraged me. Next to a man an Indian
elephant is the most intelligent creature existing on this earth of ours,
as far as we know. An elephant lives far longer than a man. His life of
useful labor is longer than the total life of a long-lived man. And his
labor can be very useful to mankind. An elephant can travel, day after
day, as fast and far as a horse, he can accomplish easily tasks to which
no team of horses, not even of sixteen horses, is adequate, he can outdo
any gang of men at loading or unloading a ship with massive timbers or
with many other kinds of cargo in heavy and bulky units.
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