And dogs and horses, parrots and monkeys, learn tricks by contact with man, which they never would have learnt in their wild state. And savages are civilised by coming in contact with a culture higher than their own, but for which contact with a higher race they would have remained perennial savages. As man humanises the brute, and civilises his savage brother, so does God divinise man.

Of God and His Creatures: 3.148