McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson XCV · Part 9: Soldiers, birds, seeds and society
101. Man and the Inferior Animals (Jane Taylor)
Goal: Your child explains the differences Jane Taylor finds between people and animals: reason, tools, mistakes and improvement.
You'll need
- The book, open to this lesson
- A notebook or lined paper and a pencil
What's in the book
An essay by Jane Taylor comparing people and animals. People have reason, animals instinct; people need tools; animals make no mistakes but also no improvements, while people err, learn and improve. It ends with a short poem saying man alone shall survive "the wreck of worlds." Definitions follow.
The lesson, step by step
About the author
This essay is by Jane Taylor. There is no note about her with this lesson; if she appeared earlier in the book, ask your child what they remember.
Words and meanings
The words and meanings are printed at the end of the lesson. Read a few together before the reading, so they don't trip your child up:
Distinction, a point of difference.
Implements, utensils, tools.
Faculty, ability to act or perform.
Rectified, corrected.
Your child reads each meaning aloud, then uses the word in a sentence of their own.
Read aloud
Your child reads the essay aloud. It begins:
The chief difference between man and the other animals consists in this, that the former has reason,
Later she says:
Man undertakes nothing in which he is not more or less puzzled;
Talk about it
SayThe bee and the beaver build without tools. Why does a person need an ax or a plow?
SayAnimals don't make mistakes, she says. Why is that not entirely a good thing?
SayShe sets the nests of swallows and a wigwam beside the temples and palaces of Greece and Rome. What point is she making?
Tell it back
Close the book.
SayExplain to me the three or four differences between people and animals that Jane Taylor describes.
Your child can make a two-column chart: Animals / People.
Copywork
Your child copies the poem's opening couplet:
When the vast sun shall veil his golden light
Deep in the gloom of everlasting night;