I may be considered as aiming too high in my declaration of what I shall proceed to prove, but it is with a firm belief that I shall be fully able to substantiate my assertion and convince the reader. Such wonderful evidences of the astonishing sagacity of animals have come to the knowledge of every man and woman that, when these instances are remembered, I consider myself well on the road toward demonstrating the assertion that there is a language of communication between animals.
Explain to me, if you can, why, if they do not possess souls, when shrouded in slumber, the horse will neigh and prance, the Cat will cry, the lion will roar, the monkey will chatter and the dog will bark and whine while dreaming, even as a human being will give evidence of a restless mind when the animal senses are dormant.
Some years ago I possessed a dog who learned, without instruction and with little difficulty, to turn the knob and thus gain admission through the outer door of my house to the interior. Last Winter I was in possession of two Skye terriers, to whom I frequently remarked in a quiet tone of voice, in the morning, that I would take them out for a walk in the afternoon, and, at the hour when they had been taken out by me upon previous occasions, they invariably put their noses together and communicated their ideas. As a result of such communication first one and then the other, then both worried me with their paws and called to me unceasingly, until I kept my word with them. These are but two of the countless instances which have come under my observation, as numberless cases have been met with by others, proving, beyond denial, that these and other animals are as fully possessed of memory as is that nobler animal, man.
Call it instinct, if you will, but is that not to be considered as more than instinct which prompts the Cat to distinguish between the friend and the enemy of its master and mistress, and even to protect them from the attacks of an enemy at the risk of the life of the animal? The number of such instances is legion. Surely the faithfulness of our domestic animals cannot be doubted, but we may doubt the humanity of man to the animal kingdom when the evidence of the same senses in what are termed the lower animals is said to be instinct, while in the human it is called soul and mind.
It has frequently been remarked by those who have made a study of the animal kingdom that the intelligence of the lower animals, in many matters, is far superior to that possessed by human beings. For instance, the natural, living, breathing barometer is a Cat, and there are none better. When a Cat washes herself in the ordinary manner, we may be sure of bright, sunshiny weather, but when she licks herself against the grain of her fur or washes herself with her paw over the ear, or sits with her tail to the fire, there will be a storm.
[III.]
LIKE UNTO OURSELVES.
At certain stages in our great journey we sit down and take a retrospect, going over, hand in hand with memory, the old road and carefully treading in the same footsteps, looking upon the same scenes, suffering the old pains and rejoicing in the same joys. At such times we wonder at the misplaced confidences and our unexplainable, as well as our unjust prejudices. We admit our proneness to go with the current when in the swim, and the natural lassitude which prompts us, rather than argue a point or spur ourselves to the task of disproving what may be false, which means work, to take for granted the theory of another. We often excuse ourselves upon the plea that one cannot find time, in this short life, to prove everything, and we must necessarily take for granted many things, perhaps upon the guarantee of those in whom we have confidence, sometimes because it has passed into a proverb and at other times for the reason that we are too tired to go against the current and set ourselves up for oddities or cranks. But we do stop and wonder at our prejudices, more particularly because we have had occasion so many times to completely reverse our opinions, wondering, at the same time, how we ever could have jumped at the conclusion that because a nut has a sour rind it must necessarily have a sour kernel, or that the bristling appearance of the prickly outside denoted that it was prickly all through, and for this reason to be avoided. We hear a man derided by the mob and follow the crowd—we discriminate when a woman is talked about derogatively and avoid her because it is the rule—then, perhaps, it is in after years, when the object has lived down the false assertions, at some certain stage in our journey, we look back, wonderingly, commiserate the sufferings of one and another and say that it was nothing but prejudice, and then what? Then we go on our way and do the selfsame thing over and over again.
How easy it is to do all these things we people of experience can testify. We say, "Give a dog a bad name," and so on, but how singular it would sound if one should say, "Give a Cat a bad name!" Why, the Cat has it, already! Are you sure that the almost universally bad name of the Cat is not pure and unadulterated prejudice, and, considered as a generality, with the least foundation in fact?