Men are more than merely animals
because they use their languages to think.
Language enables hypotheticals
combining past and future as the link

to form imagination as something new.
Imagining more than he can really see,
a man can see from others' points of view
and with intelligence humanity

achieves its highest moral attribute
in opposition to the selfishness
of evolution. This new moral route
tempers the drive to personal happiness

in favour of the rights of people quite
unknown, not family or even friends.
Of course, the underlying human right,
the means of reaching all the other ends,

is life itself. A murderer denies
his own humanity. With neither Hell
nor Heaven to put things right, justice relies
on execution not a prison cell.