INTRODUCTION
In our judgments of the respective intellectual capacities of the animals which lend themselves to human companionship, any approach to scientific accuracy in our comparative psychology demands that we should compare our subjects in their native condition. Heredity plays a part which often overtops Nature, and we have no means of ascertaining the effect of such intellectual progress in the animal as may be due to the influence of the mind of man in the process of domestication. When I was living much with hunters in the American wilderness, I have been struck with the differences between dogs of the same parentage owned by hunters of different temperaments and intellectual capacities, and it is hardly saying too much to say that the greater part of the power which is very like that of reasoning in the domestic animals is the result of human influence. In the range of my own studies of animals in a state of nature, the squirrels have given me the greatest evidence of the capacity for humanisation, and, at the same time, of such intellectual powers as are within the limited range of the creatures we call brute. In the different species of Sciurus which I know, there is a wide difference in the amenability to human influence, the vulgaris being that which wins closest to the heart of the lover of animals, nor do I know another creature of the lower orders capable of exciting so much affection in gentle souls.
The numerous expressions of pleasure at the reading of my history of two pet squirrels, printed in the Century Magazine several years ago, persuaded me that in a more permanent and convenient form it may serve still further the purpose for which it was written, and, in a more distinctly pointed appeal, find its way to a place amongst the teachings of a finer and broader humanity than that which commonly limits our sympathies. The history—for it is the simple record as faithful to the facts as my memory serves—of the little lives it deals with, was written not merely to preserve the evidence of the unsuspected intelligence and moral qualities of a humble creature, but to help in stimulating the interest of my fellow-men in the enjoyment of existence by the fellow-beings over whom we have, or assume, the lordship.
The entirely modern feeling of responsibility for the protection of the lower animals, which has given rise to the noble Associations for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, is to my mind one of the most irrefragable proofs of a definitely higher attainment of our modern civilisation, and I have little respect for the Christianity or humanity of any one who has no thought to spare the lower creatures useless pain. But the early experiences of my own life, gained in a country and under circumstances in which the killing of wild creatures was often the necessary means of obtaining food, and the recognition of the unquestionable utility of field sports as contributing to the greater health, mental and physical, of men, forbid me to join in an undiscriminating crusade against those field sports; but from having for many of my earlier years been an ardent sportsman, I have grown so tender of the suffering of my fellow-creatures of the lower ranks in creation, that nothing could now induce me to take the life of a wild creature, except the necessity of protecting another which needed protection and deserved it. I do not discuss the question; I feel for myself, and conform my own conduct to my feelings, without pretending to prescribe for others. I have derived so much real happiness from the cultivation of my love for the animals I used to kill that my opinion is an interested one, and the little story of one of my experiences is told in the hope that it may show some others the greater delight of loving over killing.
Nor should my history be taken as a plea for keeping animals caged. The cultivation of feelings of tenderness towards their kind might well repay, in the large account of profit and loss, the teaching children to make pets of wild creatures, but I cannot justify keeping any animal in a cage or in a manner which makes a normal activity impossible. The question of responsibility for keeping them in captivity I leave in others’ cases to themselves; in my own, there is more pain than pleasure in their captivity. I apprehend that we know so little about the sources of pain and pleasure in animals that we may sometimes consider that to be pain which is not so—and the animal may be no more capable of choosing its greatest happiness than are children, whom we constantly prevent from doing what they most desire to do. My Hans in his eagerness to escape would probably have gone to a speedy death—with me he had a sure protection, and if, as a result of that protection, he had his life shortened, his chance of life was on the whole increased, and, as the result showed, he found a certain advantage in it. How far the balance lay on the side of liberty or my form of captivity, no one can be entitled to decide; each case and every person may have a different standard. The general rule, it seems to me, should be that the highest apparent good must be permitted to justify the means, and in my own experience, the keeping of tamed animals of any species is for children of almost any growth the means of opening the nature to a higher attainment of human sympathy. In the young the habit of regarding their pets as objects of tenderness and sympathy is an unquestionable good, and in my acquaintance with humanity I have never found a man or woman who really loved animals who was not at heart a good man or woman.
Nor is there force in the objection, raised by a friend who is devoted to certain forms of humanitarian activity, that there is such need of work for the human sufferers that there is no place for keeping pets. The capacity of either human love or human charity is not diminished by the satisfaction of the thirst for something of our own on which to pour out our love. Whatever awakens in the heart a new passion increases its capacity for any and every other worthy object—
“Who loveth one, he loveth all.”
The love of animals is the primary course in the school of humanity, and a child once taught to love its pet, not because it is its personal property, but because it needs and reciprocates the love given it, and the protection our superior power and position enables him to give it, is better prepared to understand any humanitarian work. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is the logical predecessor to that for the Protection of Children; and as the sense of property is the mother of thrift, so the love of our pets is the beginning of the love of all living things. I have always been a lover of animals, but never kept one in close confinement, and perfect intimacy with a creature born in freedom can never be gained from one in a cage. The healthy enjoyment of them can only be full, therefore, when such a liberty is accorded as gives full play to their peculiarities. The squirrel, if taken young, can be made to enjoy his domestication so completely that he makes no attempt to escape, and may be trusted in the open, with due precaution from cats. My desire would be to so treat them in the free state as to educate them to entire familiarity and to breeding in that condition. That this is attainable is my conviction. I think the history of my two squirrels, and of several others I know of, proves the capacity of the species for a measure of devotion and teachableness of which few people have any conception, and should the domestication become practical, the development through heredity suggests the possibility of a race of companions to man of a most fascinating quality.