We may even find traces from an early period of a certain measure of legislative protection for animals. By a very natural process, the ox, as a principal agent in agriculture, and therefore a kind of symbol of civilisation, was in many different countries regarded with a peculiar reverence. The sanctity attached to it in Egypt is well known. That tenderness to animals, which is one of the most beautiful features in the Old Testament writings, shows itself, among other ways, in the command not to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, or to yoke together the ox and the ass.[358] Among the early Romans the same feeling was carried so far, that for a long time it was actually a capital offence to slaughter an ox, that animal being pronounced, in a special sense, the [pg 163] fellow-labourer of man.[359] A similar law is said to have in early times existed in Greece.[360] The beautiful passage in which the Psalmist describes how the sparrow could find a shelter and a home in the altar of the temple, was as applicable to Greece as to Jerusalem. The sentiment of Xenocrates who, when a bird pursued by a hawk took refuge in his breast, caressed and finally released it, saying to his disciples, that a good man should never give up a suppliant,[361] was believed to be shared by the gods, and it was regarded as an act of impiety to disturb the birds who had built their nests beneath the porticoes of the temple.[362] A case is related of a child who was even put to death on account of an act of aggravated cruelty to birds.[363]
The general tendency of nations, as they advance from a rude and warlike to a refined and peaceful condition, from the stage in which the realising powers are faint and dull, to that in which they are sensitive and vivid, is undoubtedly to become more gentle and humane in their actions; but this, like all other general tendencies in history, may be counteracted or modified by many special circumstances. The law I [pg 164] have mentioned about oxen was obviously one of those that belong to a very early stage of progress, when legislators are labouring to form agricultural habits among a warlike and nomadic people.[364] The games in which the slaughter of animals bore so large a part, having been introduced but a little before the extinction of the republic, did very much to arrest or retard the natural progress of humane sentiments. In ancient Greece, besides the bull-fights of Thessaly, the combats of quails and cocks[365] were favourite amusements, and were much encouraged by the legislators, as furnishing examples of valour to the soldiers. The colossal dimensions of the Roman games, the circumstances that favoured them, and the overwhelming interest they speedily excited, I have described in a former chapter. We have seen, however, that, notwithstanding the gladiatorial shows, the standard of humanity towards men was considerably raised during the Empire. It is also well worthy of notice that, notwithstanding [pg 165] the passion for the combats of wild beasts, Roman literature and the later literature of the nations subject to Rome abound in delicate touches displaying in a very high degree a sensitiveness to the feelings of the animal world. This tender interest in animal life is one of the most distinctive features of the poetry of Virgil. Lucretius, who rarely struck the chords of pathos, had at a still earlier period drawn a very beautiful picture of the sorrows of the bereaved cow, whose calf had been sacrificed upon the altar.[366] Plutarch mentions, incidentally, that he could never bring himself to sell, in its old age, the ox which had served him faithfully in the time of its strength.[367] Ovid expressed a similar sentiment with an almost equal emphasis.[368] Juvenal speaks of a Roman lady with her eyes filled with tears on account of the death of a sparrow.[369] Apollonius of Tyana, on the ground of humanity, refused, even when invited by a king, to participate in the chase.[370] Arrian, the friend of Epictetus, in his book upon [pg 166] coursing, anticipated the beautiful picture which Addison has drawn of the huntsman refusing to sacrifice the life of the captured hare which had given him so much pleasure in its flight.[371]
These touches of feeling, slight as they may appear, indicate, I think, a vein of sentiment such as we should scarcely have expected to find coexisting with the gigantic slaughter of the amphitheatre. The progress, however, was not only one of sentiment—it was also shown in distinct and definite teaching. Pythagoras and Empedocles were quoted as the founders of this branch of ethics. The moral duty of kindness to animals was in the first instance based upon a dogmatic assertion of the transmigration of souls, and, the doctrine that animals are within the circle of human duty being thus laid down, subsidiary considerations of humanity were alleged. The rapid growth of the Pythagorean school, in the latter days of the Empire, made these considerations familiar to the people.[372] Porphyry elaborately advocated, and even Seneca for a time practised, abstinence from flesh. But the most remarkable figure in this movement is unquestionably Plutarch. Casting aside the dogma of transmigration, or at least speaking of it only as a doubtful conjecture, he places the duty of kindness to animals on the broad ground of the affections, and he urges that duty with an emphasis and a detail to which no adequate parallel can, I believe, be found in the Christian writings for at least seventeen hundred years. He condemns absolutely the games of the amphitheatre, [pg 167] dwells with great force upon the effect of such spectacles in hardening the character, enumerates in detail, and denounces with unqualified energy, the refined cruelties which gastronomic fancies had produced, and asserts in the strongest language that every man has duties to the animal world as truly as to his fellow-men.[373]
If we now pass to the Christian Church, we shall find that little or no progress was at first made in this sphere. Among the Manicheans, it is true, the mixture of Oriental notions was shown in an absolute prohibition of animal food, and abstinence from this food was also frequently practised upon totally different grounds by the orthodox. One or two of the Fathers have also mentioned with approbation the humane counsels of the Pythagoreans.[374] But, on the other hand, the doctrine of transmigration was emphatically repudiated by the Catholics; the human race was isolated, by the scheme of redemption, more than ever from all other races; and in the range and circle of duties inculcated by the early Fathers those to animals had no place. This is indeed the one form of humanity which appears more prominently in the Old Testament than in the New. The many beautiful traces of it in the former, which indicate a sentiment,[375] even where they do not very strictly define a duty, gave way before an [pg 168] ardent philanthropy which regarded human interests as the one end, and the relations of man to his Creator as the one question, of life, and dismissed somewhat contemptuously, as an idle sentimentalism, notions of duty to animals.[376] A refined and subtle sympathy with animal feeling is indeed rarely found among those who are engaged very actively in the affairs of life, and it was not without a meaning or a reason that Shakespeare placed that exquisitely pathetic analysis of the sufferings of the wounded stag, which is perhaps its most perfect poetical expression, in the midst of the morbid dreamings of the diseased and melancholy Jacques.
But while what are called the rights of animals had no place in the ethics of the Church, a feeling of sympathy with the irrational creation was in some degree inculcated indirectly by the incidents of the hagiology. It was very natural that the hermit, living in the lonely deserts of the East, or in the vast forests of Europe, should come into an intimate connection with the animal world, and it was no less natural that the popular imagination, when depicting the hermit life, should make this connection the centre of many picturesque and sometimes touching legends. The birds, it was said, stooped in their flight at the old man's call; the lion and the hyena crouched submissively at his feet; his heart, which was closed to all human interests, expanded freely at the sight of some suffering animal; and something of his own sanctity descended to the companions of his solitude and the objects of his miracles. The wild beasts attended St. Theon when he walked abroad, and the saint rewarded them by giving them drink out of his well. An Egyptian hermit had made a beautiful garden in the desert, and used to sit beneath the palm-trees while a lion ate fruit from his hand. When [pg 169] St. Pœmen was shivering in a winter night, a lion crouched beside him, and became his covering. Lions buried St. Paul the hermit and St. Mary of Egypt. They appear in the legends of St. Jerome, St. Gerasimus, St. John the Silent, St. Simeon, and many others. When an old and feeble monk, named Zosimas, was on his journey to Cæsarea, with an ass which bore his possessions, a lion seized and devoured the ass, but, at the command of the saint, the lion itself carried the burden to the city gates. St. Helenus called a wild ass from its herd to bear his burden through the wilderness. The same saint, as well as St. Pachomius, crossed the Nile on the back of a crocodile, as St. Scuthinus did the Irish Channel on a sea monster. Stags continually accompanied saints upon their journeys, bore their burdens, ploughed their fields, revealed their relics. The hunted stag was especially the theme of many picturesque legends. A Pagan, named Branchion, was once pursuing an exhausted stag, when it took refuge in a cavern, whose threshold no inducement could persuade the hounds to cross. The astonished hunter entered, and found himself in presence of an old hermit, who at once protected the fugitive and converted the pursuer. In the legends of St. Eustachius and St. Hubert, Christ is represented as having assumed the form of a hunted stag, which turned upon its pursuer, with a crucifix glittering on its brow, and, addressing him with a human voice, converted him to Christianity. In the full frenzy of a chase, hounds and stag stopped and knelt down together to venerate the relics of St. Fingar. On the festival of St. Regulus, the wild stags assembled at the tomb of the saint, as the ravens used to do at that of St. Apollinar of Ravenna. St. Erasmus was the special protector of oxen, and they knelt down voluntarily before his shrine. St. Antony was the protector of hogs, who were usually introduced into his pictures. St. Bridget kept pigs, and a wild boar came from the forest to subject itself to her rule. A horse foreshadowed by its lamentations the death of St. Columba. The [pg 170] three companions of St. Colman were a cock, a mouse, and a fly. The cock announced the hour of devotion, the mouse bit the ear of the drowsy saint till he got up, and if in the course of his studies he was afflicted by any wandering thoughts, or called away to other business, the fly alighted on the line where he had left off, and kept the place. Legends, not without a certain whimsical beauty, described the moral qualities existing in animals. A hermit was accustomed to share his supper with a wolf, which, one evening entering the cell before the return of the master, stole a loaf of bread. Struck with remorse, it was a week before it ventured again to visit the cell, and when it did so, its head hung down, and its whole demeanour manifested the most profound contrition. The hermit “stroked with a gentle hand its bowed down head,” and gave it a double portion as a token of forgiveness. A lioness knelt down with lamentations before another saint, and then led him to its cub, which was blind, but which received its sight at the prayer of the saint. Next day the lioness returned, bearing the skin of a wild beast as a mark of its gratitude. Nearly the same thing happened to St. Macarius of Alexandria; a hyena knocked at his door, brought its young, which was blind, and which the saint restored to sight, and repaid the obligation soon afterwards by bringing a fleece of wool. “O hyena!” said the saint, “how did you obtain this fleece? you must have stolen and eaten a sheep.” Full of shame, the hyena hung its head down, but persisted in offering its gift, which, however, the holy man refused to receive till the hyena “had sworn” to cease for the future to rob. The hyena bowed its head in token of its acceptance of the oath, and St. Macarius afterwards gave the fleece to St. Melania. Other legends simply speak of the sympathy between saints and the irrational world. The birds came at the call of St. Cuthbert, and a dead bird was resuscitated by his prayer. When St. Aengussius, in felling wood, had cut his hand, the birds gathered round, [pg 171] and with loud cries lamented his misfortune. A little bird, struck down and mortally wounded by a hawk, fell at the feet of St. Kieranus, who shed tears as he looked upon its torn breast, and offered up a prayer, upon which the bird was instantly healed.[377]
Many hundreds, I should perhaps hardly exaggerate were I to say many thousands, of legends of this kind exist in the lives of the saints. Suggested in the first instance by that desert life which was at once the earliest phase of monachism and one of the earliest sources of Christian mythology, strengthened by the symbolism which represented different virtues and vices under the forms of animals, and by the reminiscences of the rites and the superstitions of Paganism, the connection between men and animals became the keynote of an infinite variety of fantastic tales. In our eyes they may appear extravagantly puerile, yet it will scarcely, I hope, be necessary to apologise for introducing them into what purports to be a grave work, when it is remembered that for many centuries they were universally accepted by mankind, and were so interwoven with all local traditions, and with all the associations of education, that they at once determined and reflected the inmost feelings of the heart. Their tendency to create a certain feeling of sympathy towards animals is manifest, and this is probably the utmost [pg 172] the Catholic Church has done in that direction.[378] A very few authentic instances may, indeed, be cited of saints whose natural gentleness of disposition was displayed in kindness to the animal world. Of St. James of Venice—an obscure saint of the thirteenth century—it is told that he was accustomed to buy and release the birds with which Italian boys used to play by attaching them to strings, saying that “he pitied the little birds of the Lord,” and that his “tender charity recoiled from all cruelty, even to the most diminutive of animals.”[379] St. Francis of Assisi was a more conspicuous example of the same spirit. “If I could only be presented to the emperor,” he used to say, “I would pray him, for the love of God, and of me, to issue an edict prohibiting any one from catching or imprisoning my sisters the larks, and ordering that all who have oxen or asses should at Christmas feed them particularly well.” A crowd of legends turning upon this theme were related of him. A wolf, near Gubbio, being adjured by him, promised to abstain from eating sheep, placed its paw in the hand of the saint to ratify the promise, and was afterwards fed from house to house by the inhabitants of the city. A crowd of birds, on another occasion, came to hear the saint preach, as fish did to hear St. Antony of Padua. A falcon awoke him at his hour of prayer. A grasshopper encouraged him by her melody to sing praises to God. The noisy swallows kept silence when he began to teach.[380]
On the whole, however, Catholicism has done very little to inculcate humanity to animals. The fatal vice of theologians, who have always looked upon others solely through the medium of their own special dogmatic views, has been an obstacle to all advance in this direction. The animal world, being altogether external to the scheme of redemption, was regarded as beyond the range of duty, and the belief that we have any kind of obligation to its members has never been inculcated—has never, I believe, been even admitted—by Catholic theologians. In the popular legends, and in the recorded traits of individual amiability, it is curious to observe how constantly those who have sought to inculcate kindness to animals have done so by endeavouring to associate them with something distinctively Christian. The legends I have noticed glorified them as the companions of the saints. The stag was honoured as especially commissioned to reveal the relics of saints, and as the deadly enemy of the serpent. In the feast of asses, that animal was led with veneration into the churches, and a rude hymn proclaimed its dignity, because it had borne Christ in His flight to Egypt, and in His entry into Jerusalem. St. Francis always treated lambs with a peculiar tenderness, as being symbols of his Master. Luther grew sad and thoughtful at a hare hunt, for it seemed to him to represent the pursuit of souls by the devil. Many popular legends exist, associating some bird or animal with some incident in the evangelical narrative, and securing for them in consequence an unmolested life. But such influences have never extended far. There are two distinct objects which may be considered by moralists in this sphere. They may regard the character of the men, or they may regard the sufferings of the animals. The amount of callousness or of conscious cruelty displayed or elicited by amusements or practices that inflict suffering on animals, bears no kind of proportion to the intensity of that suffering. Could we follow with adequate realisation [pg 174] the pangs of the wounded birds that are struck down in our sports, or of the timid hare in the long course of its flight, we should probably conclude that they were not really less than those caused by the Spanish bull-fight, or by the English pastimes of the last century. But the excitement of the chase refracts the imagination, and owing to the diminutive size of the victim, and the undemonstrative character of its suffering, these sports do not exercise that prejudicial influence upon character which they would exercise if the sufferings of the animals were vividly realised, and were at the same time accepted as an element of the enjoyment. The class of amusements of which the ancient combats of wild beasts form the type, have no doubt nearly disappeared from Christendom, and it is possible that the softening power of Christian teaching may have had some indirect influence in abolishing them; but a candid judgment will confess that it has been very little. During the periods, and in the countries, in which theological influence was supreme, they were unchallenged.[381] They disappeared[382] at last, because a luxurious and industrial civilisation involved a refinement of manners; because a fastidious taste recoiled with a sensation of disgust from pleasures that an uncultivated taste would keenly relish; because the drama, at once reflecting [pg 175] and accelerating the change, gave a new form to popular amusements, and because, in consequence of this revolution, the old pastimes, being left to the dregs of society, became the occasions of scandalous disorders.[383] In Protestant [pg 176] countries the clergy have, on the whole, sustained this movement. In Catholic countries it has been much more faithfully represented by the school of Voltaire and Beccaria. A judicious moralist may, however, reasonably question whether amusements which derive their zest from a display of the natural ferocious instincts of animals, and which substitute death endured in the frenzy of combat for death in the remote slaughter-house or by the slow process of decay, have added in any appreciable degree to the sum of animal misery, and in these cases he will dwell less upon the suffering inflicted than upon the injurious influence the spectacle may sometimes exercise on the character of the spectator. But there are forms of cruelty which must be regarded in a different light. The horrors of vivisection, often so wantonly, so needlessly practised,[384] the prolonged and atrocious tortures, [pg 177] sometimes inflicted in order to procure some gastronomic delicacy, are so far removed from the public gaze that they exercise little influence on the character of men. Yet no humane man can reflect upon them without a shudder. To bring these things within the range of ethics, to create the notion of duties towards the animal world, has, so far as Christian countries are concerned, been one of the peculiar merits of the last century, and, for the most part, of Protestant nations. However fully we may recognise the humane spirit transmitted to the world in the form of legends from the saints of the desert, it must not be forgotten that the inculcation of humanity to animals on a wide scale is mainly the work of a recent and a secular age; that the Mohammedans and the Brahmins have in this sphere considerably surpassed the Christians, and that Spain and Southern Italy, in which Catholicism has most deeply planted its roots, are even now, probably beyond all other countries in Europe, those in which inhumanity to animals is most wanton and most unrebuked.
The influence the first form of monachism has exercised upon the world, so far as it has been beneficial, has been chiefly through the imagination, which has been fascinated by its legends. In the great periods of theological controversy, the Eastern monks had furnished some leading theologians; but in general, in Oriental lands, the hermit life predominated, and extreme maceration was the chief merit of the saint. But in the West, monachism assumed very different forms, and exercised far higher functions. At first the Oriental saints were the ideals of Western monks. The Eastern St. Athanasius had been the founder of Italian monachism. St. [pg 178] Martin of Tours excluded labour from the discipline of his monks, and he and they, like the Eastern saints, were accustomed to wander abroad, destroying the idols of the temples.[385] But three great causes conspired to direct the monastic spirit in the West into practical channels. Conditions of race and climate have ever impelled the inhabitants of these lands to active life, and have at the same time rendered them constitutionally incapable of enduring the austerities or enjoying the hallucinations of the sedentary Oriental. There arose, too, in the sixth century, a great legislator, whose form may be dimly traced through a cloud of fantastic legends, and the order of St. Benedict, with that of St. Columba and some others, founded on substantially the same principle, soon ramified through the greater part of Europe, tempered the wild excesses of useless penances, and, making labour an essential part of the monastic system, directed the movement to the purposes of general civilisation. In the last place, the barbarian invasions, and the dissolution of the Western Empire, dislocating the whole system of government and almost resolving society into its primitive elements, naturally threw upon the monastic corporations social, political, and intellectual functions of the deepest importance.
It has been observed that the capture of Rome by Alaric, involving as it did the destruction of the grandest religious monuments of Paganism, in fact established in that city the supreme authority of Christianity.[386] A similar remark may be extended to the general downfall of the Western civilisation. In that civilisation Christianity had indeed been legally enthroned; but the philosophies and traditions of Paganism, and the ingrained habits of an ancient, and at the same time an effete society, continually paralysed its energies. What Europe would have been without the barbarian invasions, we may partly divine from the history of [pg 179] the Lower Empire, which represented, in fact, the old Roman civilisation prolonged and Christianised. The barbarian conquests, breaking up the old organisation, provided the Church with a virgin soil, and made it, for a long period, the supreme and indeed sole centre of civilisation.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the skill and courage displayed by the ecclesiastics in this most trying period. We have already seen the noble daring with which they interfered between the conqueror and the vanquished, and the unwearied charity with which they sought to alleviate the unparalleled sufferings of Italy, when the colonial supplies of corn were cut off, and when the fairest plains were desolated by the barbarians. Still more wonderful is the rapid conversion of the barbarian tribes. Unfortunately this, which is one of the most important, is also one of the most obscure pages in the history of the Church. Of whole tribes or nations it may be truly said that we are absolutely ignorant of the cause of their change. The Goths had already been converted by Ulphilas, before the downfall of the Empire, and the conversion of the Germans and of several northern nations was long posterior to it; but the great work of Christianising the barbarian world was accomplished almost in the hour when that world became supreme. Rude tribes, accustomed in their own lands to pay absolute obedience to their priests, found themselves in a foreign country, confronted by a priesthood far more civilised and imposing than that which they had left, by gorgeous ceremonies, well fitted to entice, and by threats of coming judgment, well fitted to scare their imaginations. Disconnected from all their old associations, they bowed before the majesty of civilisation, and the Latin religion, like the Latin language, though with many adulterations, reigned over the new society. The doctrine of exclusive salvation, and the doctrine of dæmons, had an admirable missionary power. The first produced an ardour of proselytising which the [pg 180] polytheist could never rival; while the Pagan, who was easily led to recognise the Christian God, was menaced with eternal fire if he did not take the further step of breaking off from his old divinities. The second dispensed the convert from the perhaps impossible task of disbelieving his former religion, for it was only necessary for him to degrade it, attributing its prodigies to infernal beings. The priests, in addition to their noble devotion, carried into their missionary efforts the most masterly judgment. The barbarian tribes usually followed without enquiry the religion of their sovereign; and it was to the conversion of the king, and still more to the conversion of the queen, that the Christians devoted all their energies. Clotilda, the wife of Clovis, Bertha, the wife of Ethelbert, and Theodolinda, the wife of Lothaire, were the chief instruments in converting their husbands and their nations. Nothing that could affect the imagination was neglected. It is related of Clotilda, that she was careful to attract her husband by the rich draperies of the ecclesiastical ceremonies.[387] In another case, the first work of proselytising was confided to an artist, who painted before the terrified Pagans the last judgment and the torments of hell.[388] But especially the belief, which was sincerely held, and sedulously inculcated, that temporal success followed in the train of Christianity, and that every pestilence, famine, or military disaster was the penalty of idolatry, heresy, sacrilege, or vice, assisted the movement. The theory was so wide, that it met every variety of fortune, and being taught with consummate skill, to barbarians who were totally destitute of all critical power, and strongly predisposed to accept it, it proved extremely efficacious; and hope, fear, gratitude, and remorse drew multitudes into the Church. [pg 181] The transition was softened by the substitution of Christian ceremonies and saints for the festivals and the divinities of the Pagans.[389] Besides the professed missionaries, the Christian captives zealously diffused their faith among their Pagan masters. When the chieftain had been converted, and the army had followed his profession, an elaborate monastic and ecclesiastical organisation grew up to consolidate the conquest, and repressive laws soon crushed all opposition to the faith.