| “Mine is no narrow creed; And He who gave thee being did not frame The mystery of life to be the sport Of merciless man. There is another world For all that live and move—a better one! Where the proud bipeds, who would fain confine Infinite goodness to the little bounds Of their own charity, may envy thee!” |
When we turn to the first of all books, the dog certainly appears to receive harsh treatment. The term “dog” is invariably one of reproach. Goliath cursing David asks, “Am I a dog?” Abner exclaims, “Am I a dog’s head?” St. Paul refers to false prophets as dogs. In the Psalms the dog is found to be synonymous with the devil; in the Gospels it stands for unholy men. Evil-workers are dogs; a dog is the equivalent of a fool; nothing is lower than a dog, and nothing is to be more abhorred. Finally, there is that hardest sentence of all—“Without are dogs”; as though any hope for dogs was entirely forbidden. It is the same throughout: the depraved of mankind are dogs, and the very acme of possible reproach and contempt is apparently to be found in the use of this one term. Abandon hope;—without, are you who are dogs!
But is the use of this term “dog” to be taken literally? There seems to be ample evidence that it should not be. The very extravagance of the language raises a doubt at once, just as the grotesqueness of the application of the term shows that the dog itself could never have been meant. St. Paul speaks of false prophets as dogs because of their impudence and love of gain—characteristics hardly to be attributed to the animal itself. The term “dead dog” was the most opprobrious to which a Jew could lay his tongue; when David endeavoured to convey to the mind of Saul that the persecution to which he was subjecting him was a dishonour to himself, he asked him whom he was pursuing; was he pursuing “after a dead dog”? If, as Horace has it, “death is the utmost boundary of wealth and power,” it is surely no less so of pursuit.
Then again, in the Psalms, David writes, “Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog”; in other words, the devil. All dogs are not good dogs, though all dogs are good dogs to their respective owners; but no dog can possibly be classed as we find him here, or as the very image and likeness of the most depraved and debased of mankind as we find him elsewhere. He is incapable of these sins; he does not fall into these errors.
What we have to remember is apparently this. The earliest mention of the dog in Scripture is in connection with the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt. The dog was declared by the Jewish law to be unclean; and it is not improbable that the Jews were so taught to regard him in opposition to those taskmasters who, they were well aware, held him sacred. Thus the term dogs appears often as the reflection of a passionate and deep-seated hatred, apart altogether from the animal’s uncleanness, and also from the animal itself. The word came in this way to be a useful one to hurl at the head of an enemy at all times, or by which to classify those who lived outside the pale of common, human decency. For such as these last there could be no hope, and the term as applied to them was judged to carry with it the bitterest stigma, just as it continues to do in the East to the present day. To be a Christian is to be a dog; to be a Jew is to be a dog; an infidel is a dog; and to be known as “a Jew’s dog,” or “a dead dog,” is to have sunk to the lowest depths of depravity in the eyes of all men.
But the way in which dogs were regarded did not stop with Jewish edicts and Jewish opinion. When the ancient Egyptians made way for another type, and Moslems took their place, the dog, honoured before as has been shown, fell at once into an inferior position. The Moslem law took its colour largely from Jewish practice, and the dog was generally looked upon by the Mahomedan as unclean. He continues, as all the world knows, to be still so regarded. The dog, in the East, is at once tolerated and neglected: he may be slightly better than the pig, but, like that wholly unclean animal, he is a scavenger, living largely on offal and what he is able to pick up.
He is thus, for the most part, a poor creature, leading a poor life, and being often much to be pitied. That he should have any future prospects before him, seeing him as he is, might well be doubted. But this must also be remembered, that if he is in various stages of development in these far-off lands, and with little chance of betterment, he does not differ greatly in these respects from vast multitudes of men among whom he moves, whether they be white, yellow, brown, or black. The conditions of his life are little by which to condemn him, just as they would be insufficient in the case of others. Moreover, all classes certainly do not so condemn him, or do they look upon him in quite the same light. By the Parsees, for instance, he is not regarded as wholly unclean. Many of them keep English-bred dogs, as also do some of the more Europeanised natives of other classes, treating them much as we do, though this is still uncommon. Hindus of good class and Mahomedans are found generally to avoid them; but here again many Hindus, and such a caste as Sweepers, will touch a dog without considering themselves defiled, just as a Mahomedan will often hold or take charge of a dog, though he be careful not to do so by the chain, or leather lead, but by slipping his jharan, or cloth, through the dog’s collar, and handling him that way. In many Mahomedan villages the dog is found in numbers, the inhabitants being glad of his services in shepherding their goats, though condemning him to live outside the house, even though there be likelihood of his being carried off by a prowling leopard.
In certain directions, therefore, the dog is seen to be at least tolerated. But there remains one other remarkable fact to be noted. No one can have travelled in the East, especially in Turkey, without remarking the way in which the dog is generally regarded. Yet, in spite of this, he is all the while certainly classed as supernatural, and by no less an authority than the Koran. His uncleanness must be recognised; but, on the other hand, how are his fidelity and courage to be overlooked? They cannot be. And so this unclean animal, from whom men shrink, lest by chance their garments touch him as they pass, is given, as already related, a position in Mahomed’s paradise, and, because of his character, is deemed worthy a special place in that land of supreme bliss. There is a chance, then, for the outcast here.
It is time to look at the dog himself a little closer, and see what characteristics he can bring forward in support of hopes that many human beings entertain on his behalf.