We shall never know why a feeling of shame attends certain harmless sensations, certain profoundly innocent tastes and distastes. Why, for example, are we abashed when we are cold, and boastful when we are not? There is no merit or distinction in being insensitive to cold, or in wearing thinner clothing than one’s neighbour. And what strange impulse is it which induces otherwise truthful people to say they like music when they do not, and thus expose themselves to hours of boredom? We are not necessarily morons or moral lepers because we have no ear for harmony. It is a significant circumstance that Shakespeare puts his intolerant lines,
“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.
Let no such man be trusted”—
in the mouth of Lorenzo who disdained neither stratagems nor spoils, and who carried off the Jew’s ducats as well as the Jew’s daughter. And Jessica, who sits by his side in the moonlight, and responds with delicate grace
“I am never merry when I hear sweet music,”
is the girl who “gilded” herself with stolen gold, and gave her dead mother’s ring for a monkey.
It is a convenience not to feel cold when the thermometer falls, and it is a pleasure to listen appreciatively to a symphony concert. It is also a convenience to relish the proximity of dogs, inasmuch as we live surrounded by these animals, and it is a pleasure to respond to their charm. But there is no virtue in liking them, any more than there is virtue in liking wintry weather or stringed instruments. An affection for dogs is not, as we have been given to understand, a test of an open and generous disposition. Still less is their affection for us to be accepted as a guarantee of our integrity. The assumption that a dog knows a good from a bad human being when he sees one is unwarranted. It is part of that engulfing wave of sentiment which swept the world in the wake of popular fiction. Dickens is its most unflinching exponent. Henry Gowan’s dog, Lion, springs at the throat of Blandois, alias Lagnier, alias Rigaud, for no other reason than that he recognizes him as a villain, without whom the world would be a safer and better place to live in. Florence Dombey’s dog, Diogenes, looks out of an upper window, observes Mr. Carker peacefully walking the London streets, and tries to jump down and bite him then and there. He sees at once what Mr. Dombey has not found out in years—that Carker is a base wretch, unworthy of the confidence reposed in him.