XIV
“Are we devils? Are we men?
Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again!
He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers
Sisters, Brothers—and the beasts whose pains are hardly less than ours.”
IF the foregoing studies of dog life make clear the right of a dog to be treated as a being whose powers of mind are nearly akin to our own, how should this affect our behaviour towards him? Not to pamper him, assuredly, and thus check the free exercise of his higher powers and qualities and encourage the selfishness and greed, the germs of which are to be found as well in canine as in human nature. The dog has his own place in the natural order of things, and our aim should be to give to the higher and better part of his nature the fullest development and training our powers enable us to do. When we hear of a lonely woman whose sole friend was her dog taking her own life in despair at her companion being reft from her, and brought to an untimely end, we pity her in that her views of life had been warped and distorted by the dreary loneliness of her lot. But apart from such an extreme example of putting our faithful little friend on a platform to which he has no right, there are many who might take to heart with advantage, both to themselves and to the animals under their care, the quaint indictment of an old writer: “These dogges are ... pretty, proper and fyne, and sought for to satisfie the delicatenesse of daintie dames’ ... wills, instruments of folly for them to play and dally withal, and tryfle away the treasure of time, to withdraw their mindes from more commendable exercises and to content their corrupted concupiscences with vain disport (a selly shift to shunne yrcksome ydlenesse).” As the book from which these words are taken is said to be the earliest one on dogs written in the English language, it shows that it is no new thing with us for women to err on the side of foolish spoiling of the intelligent creatures who are worthy of a better fate.
It is often asserted that animals as a body have no “rights,” properly so called, that must be taken into consideration in our dealings with them. Such a dictum, as it is often understood, I would combat with every means in my power. But here there must be a clear understanding of what we mean by the word “rights.” It cannot, I think, be better expressed than in the following lines, written by a member of that body who has been unjustly accused of not giving its support to the protection of animals from cruel and unfair treatment: “It is true that they [animals] have not human rights; but as there is in them a nature demanding a treatment quite above that accorded to wood or iron, plants and shrubs (as St. Francis says), so it is reasonable to claim for them rights—animal rights.”
And what are the “animal rights” that the dog, as a fellow citizen of the animal world, can claim at our hands? Not the cramping restrictions of excessive and foolish fondness, but a temperate and, above all, humane appreciation of the fact that his span of life is given him from the same source as our own. Whence it comes and whither it goes are questions that all the science of the world, so far, can do no more than speculate upon. As Christians, the faith that is in us is not shaken by the difficulties that confront us, when we think of the beginning and end of our life on the earth; but we know that the gift of life carries with it grave responsibilities and duties, for the due performance of which we are each personally accountable. But our duties and responsibilities towards our fellow men do not limit the ties that bind us. The same laws that govern our intercourse with our fellows govern also, in their degree, our relations with the animal world.
The dog, who is brought nearer to us in the intimate relations of our home than any other animal except the cat, suffers most from any failure of duty on our part. For the ordering of his whole life from puppyhood to old age, and from dawn to dark of each day as it comes, is subject to the influence we bring to bear on it. If we fail to bring an intelligent comprehension of his wants and of his powers of mind and body to act on the surroundings we give him, we lessen his joy in life, or bring untold suffering upon him, in proportion to our own failure in our duties towards him.
What, then, can be said of those who bring wanton cruelty to bear on the sensitive body and delicate mental organisation that make him a trusted friend and companion of the human race? The dog-fights, of which I have spoken in an earlier part of the book, are now happily objects of horror and disgust to all but the hopelessly brutal minded. But much, I fear, still remains to be done in bringing the force of the law to bear on those who offend in secret, and with but a partial recognition of the enormities they perpetrate.
Of the far worse horrors of vivisection I am not happily here called on to deal, with more than a passing notice. Whatever science may have to say to excuse them, the scenes of the vivisecting room are too dark and horror-striking to be reproduced for general reading. We know that some eminent members of the medical profession have pronounced against their value to the spread of scientific knowledge. We may hope, then, that such pronouncement of undoubted authorities may have due and speedy effect in the general recognition of dogs and other animals to the right to be spared all unnecessary suffering.
The highest claim a dog possesses to the full recognition of his rights—animal rights—to consideration at our hands, is, from my point of view at least, his possession of the dawning of a moral sense. Such a power of discrimination between right and wrong, and the consequent results of a feeling of satisfaction and elation, or of shame and regret, as he gives way to behaviour that contravenes his sense of moral rectitude, or in spite of temptation refuses to listen to the suggestion of passion or appetite, is, or so it appears to me, proved abundantly by a sympathetic study of the dog’s actions. A striking instance of such conscious choice was shown by the little Bosky[12] when she first fell from the paths of honesty in the presence of a tempting dainty, then fled from the scene of her lapse from virtue and from her beloved mistress’s presence; and still more when she refused to allow herself to be put in the way of temptation a second time. The Skye[13] showed unmistakable shame and sorrow when he brought to light the kitten’s dead body. The fox-terrier pups[14] in their Indian home had an appreciation more or less clear of their infant enormities in the matter of destroying their guardian’s property, and every dog-lover from his own experience can recall some instance of the same nature.
We have seen that in the primitive tribal conditions of the dog’s ancestors, the sympathy, that is the foundation on which all community life rests, must have been present in those members of the old-world packs, or the very existence of the tribes, as such, would have been imperilled. Sympathy with their fellows gave to each member of the tribe an appreciation of the needs of his fellow members as well as of his own. Such needs must be respected and cared for, and in the simple give and take of the rough life of the wandering packs, we find, I think, the first faint foreshadowing of the moral sense that reaches its highest expression in the animal world, in our dog friend as he is to-day. In saying this I do not for a moment claim for our dog more than the very simplest ideas of duty, as they appear to him in his relations to his owner and to his fellow dogs, or other animals, for of the conception of ethics in the abstract he is clearly incapable. To make such a claim for him would be to place him on our own level in the possession of mental and moral gifts.
The simplest expression of the knowledge of right and wrong presupposes no inconsiderable power of memory and of reflection. Of both these I believe the dog to show himself capable. If he is not, no faintest adumbration of the moral sense can be his. For before any ethical appreciation can be shown there must be not merely the memory of a past event, but a power of reflection on the many converging lines of presentment to his mind, not only as these affect some person or thing outside himself, but as they impress his own consciousness. Such an effort of mind, aided by his affections and other powers that may be brought into play by the circumstances of the case, give to the dog the sense of right or wrong-doing that he displays in his consequent actions. In such simple manifestations of the moral sense, shame and the fear of detection, or on the other hand self-gratulation and elation, may be expected to play their part, though without obscuring the true ethical consciousness that lies at the root of the expression of feeling. As the dog’s mind knows no higher form of devotion than that excited by his faulty owner, why should we quarrel with the crude evidences of a moral feeling our presence excites in him? Before we played the part of deity to him, he recognised his duties to his fellows, and in his own manner and degree lived up to the responsibilities the circumstances of his life demanded. The fuller blossoming of the possibilities of life for him came with the companionship of man, and with us it lies to bring these to a full fruition, or to starve them into a premature blight.
From the earliest times men who have taken a view of their responsibilities that is not limited to their own kind, have lifted their voice with no uncertain sound to plead with their fellow men for a more humane regard for animal life. In the dangerous exhibitions of the Roman Circus it was men who risked their lives for the passing gratification of their fellows. These games were followed in a later age by the bull fights that still linger to the disgrace of the civilised nations who enjoy them. In the old times St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom, and others were eloquent in their denunciation of the gladiatorial combats, and soon after the middle of the sixteenth century Pope Pius V forbade the faithful in any land to take part in or attend the bull baiting that was then a favourite form of amusement. The Pope declared such exhibitions to be “contrary to Christian duty and charity,” and if any in defiance of his command should lose their lives in contending with “bulls or other beasts,” they were to be “deprived of Christian burial.”
We may be thankful that in later times such teaching has been given by the authorities of the Church in England, in America, and in every Christian country in the world. Among the Catholic dignitaries, who in our own country have taken a leading part in inculcating a due respect for animal rights, Cardinal Manning came prominently forward. In one of his many addresses on the subject, he says:—
“It is perfectly true that ... the lower animals are not susceptible to those moral obligations which we owe to one another; but we owe a seven-fold obligation to the Creator of those animals. Our obligation and moral duty is to Him who made them, and if we wish to know the limit of the broad outline of our obligation, I say at once it is His nature and His perfections, and among those perfections one is most profoundly that of eternal mercy.... And, in giving a dominion over His creatures to man, He gave it subject to the condition that it should be used in conformity to His own perfections, which is His own law, and, therefore, our law.”
Archbishop Bagshawe in speaking on the subject, said: “We have the duty to imitate the Creator; but the Creator is infinite Mercy, and to cultivate in ourselves habits of cruelty, when He is infinite Mercy, is assuredly not fulfilling that duty.” In another land, an eminent Cardinal has asserted, that “Peccatum est crudelitas etiam in bestias ponit actionem dissonam a fine et ordine Creatoris.” (Cruelty to animals is a mortal sin, because it is contrary to the purpose and rule of the Creator.) From another Catholic theologian come the words “... in animals there is a something—call it right or call it claim—which is an intrinsic bar to cruelty, and renders that cruelty a sin. In other words, there is a real objective counterpart to the acknowledged sin of cruelty to animals and that is to be found in the animal’s nature.... That animals are meant, in the Providential order of things, to educate both the thought and affection of man, is proved by the fact that they have that influence. The wrong treatment of them must produce a distorted character, as experience shows. No one will deny that great and habitual cruelty in a child towards animals is rightly looked on everywhere as a very bad augury, and is a proof of a depraved disposition.”
From the pen of one whose historical studies have brought him a world-wide reputation—the Right Rev. Abbot Gasquet—we learn that early in the fifteenth century, when the art of printing was still in its infancy, a book was brought out that, among other duties, inculcated that of kindness to animals. The book was called “Dives et Pauper,” and was announced as being “a compendious treatise ... fructuously treating upon the Ten Commandments.” To quote from the modernised form in which the Abbot gives the passages, we find the following: “For God that made all, hath care of it all, and he will take vengeance upon all that misuse His creatures.” And again, “... so men should have thought for birds and beasts, and not harm them without cause, in taking regard that they are God’s creatures.”
And since those far-off days Englishmen and Americans, of all ranks and various professions, have been ready to urge the rights of our dumb friends to consideration and humane treatment at the hands of all. The eloquent words of Canon Wilberforce, from the pulpit in Westminster Abbey and elsewhere, have in stirring tones brought these duties home to large bodies of attentive listeners. The terrors of vivisection have been the theme of his pen in articles contributed to our monthly press; and in one of them, that appeared in the New Review in the year 1893, he asks the stern question, “What victory over diseases known to be fatal can scientific experts point to as the result of vivisection?” “Meanwhile,” the writer adds, “evidence accumulates that untold sufferings have been inflicted upon the human race from the erroneous conclusions adduced from experiments on animals.” Could any darker picture be drawn of suffering on the part of those who are powerless in the hands of man, and its hideous reflection on the members of the race who are responsible for it?
But it is vain to attempt to give complete instances of those who have done their best to bring the fuller light of a more perfect understanding on the true relationship of man towards the lower animals. Their name is legion, even without going beyond the bounds of our English-speaking land. Poets, churchmen, men of science and of literature, have all contributed to the noble work of rousing their fellow men to a fuller realisation of their duties towards their dumb friends. From France, from Spain, from Italy, and from Austria and other countries, earnest voices have been raised in the same cause.
Few Englishmen have done more good work in the study of the habits, dispositions, and nature of animals, than Dr. Lauder Lindsay. In his most interesting work on “Mind in the Lower Animals” we find the following passage, which it would be well if the young of the rising generation were taught to appreciate.
“At least those animals with whom we have most to do, think and feel as we do; are effected by the same influences, moral or physical; succumb to the same diseases, mental or bodily; are elevated or degraded in the social scale, according to our treatment; may become virtuous and useful, or vicious and dangerous, just as we are appreciative, sympathetic, kindly disposed towards them.”
If such teaching were given to those who are starting on their way through life, we might look for a rich harvest of appreciative and kindly treatment for our dog friend and his companions, in the years that are to come.
That loving heart, that patient soul,
Had they indeed no longer span
To run their course and reach their goal
And teach their homily to man?
That liquid, melancholy eye
From whose pathetic soul-fed springs
Seemed surging the Virgilian cry,
The sense of tears in mortal things.
That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled
By spirits gloriously gay,
And temper of heroic mould—
What!—was four years their whole short day?