A book, so simply titled, with haply underneath a gigantic note of
admiration between two humble queries ?!? would positively, my worthy
publisher, make your worship's fortune. For it should concern ghosts,
dreams, omens, coincidences, good-and-bad luck, warnings, and true
vaticinations: no childish collection, however, of unsupported trumpery,
but authenticated cases staidly evidenced, and circumstantially
detailed; no Mother Goose-cap's tales, no Dick the Ploughman's dreams,
no stories from the '_Terrific Register_,' nor fancies of hysterical
females in Adult asylums; even Merlin witch-finders, and Taliesins
should be excluded: and, in lieu of all such common-places, I should
propose an anecdotic treatise in the manner scientifical. Macnish's
'_Philosophy of Sleep_,' Scott's '_Demonology_,' treatises on
Apparitions, and many a rare black-letter alchemical pamphlet, might
lend us here their aid; the British Museum is full of well-attested
ghost-stories, and there are very few old ladies unable to add to the
supply: then, this ghost department might be climaxed by the author's
own experience; forasmuch as he is ready to avouch that a person's fetch
was heard by many, and seen by some, in an old country-house, a hundred
miles away from the place of death, at the instant of its happening.
As to omens, aforesaid witness deposes that the sceptre, ball, and cross
were struck by lightning out of King John's hand, in the Schools
quadrangle at Oxford, immediately on the accession of William the
Reformer; and all the world is cognusant that York Minster, the Royal
Exchange, and the Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire near about
the commencement of open hostility, among ruling powers, to our church,
commerce, and constitution; and I myself can tell a tale of no less than
eight remarkable warnings happening one day to a poor friend, who died
on the next, which none could be expected to believe unless I delivered
it on oath as having been an eye-witness to the facts. Dreams
also--strange, vague, mysterious word; there is a gloomy look in it, a
dreary intonation that makes the very flesh creep: the records of public
justice will show many a murder revealed by them, as instance the Red
Barn; more than one poor client, in the clutch of a "respectable"
attorney, has been helped to his rights by their influence; from
Agamemnon and Pilate, down to Napoleon, the oppressors of mankind have
in those had kindly warning. Dreams--how many millions false and
foolish, for the one proving to be true!--but that one, how clear,
determinate, and lasting, as ministered by far other agency than
imagination taking its sport while reason slumbers! Who has not tales to
tell of dreams? A warning not to go on board such and such a ship--which
founders; a strange unlikely scene fixed upon the mind, concerning
friends and circumstances miles away, exactly in the manner and at the
time of its occurrence; the fore-shown coming of an unexpected guest;
the pourtrayed visage of a secret enemy: these, and others like these,
many can attest, and I not least. And of other marvels, though here left
unconsidered, yet might much be said: truths so strange, that the pages
of romance would not trench on such extravagance; combinations so
unlikely, that thrice twelve cast successively by proper dice, were but
probability to those. Thus, in authorial fashion, has the marvellous
dwelt upon my mind; and thus would I suggest a hand-book thereof to
catering booksellers and the insatiable public.
* * * * *
Against bears in a stage-coach, pointers in a drawing-room, lap dogs in
a _vis-a-vis_, and monkeys in a lady's boudoir, my love of comfort and
propriety enters strong protest; an emancipated parrot attracts my
sympathy far less than bright-eyed children feeding their testy pet, for
I dread the cannibal temptation of those soft fair fingers, when brought
into collision with Polly's hook and eye; gigantic Newfoundlanders
dragging their perpetual chains, larks and linnets trilling the faint
song of liberty behind their prison bars, cold green snakes stewing in a
school-boy's pocket, and dormice nestling in a lady's glove, summon my
antipathies; a cargo of five hundred pigs, with whom I had once the
honour of sailing from Cork to London, were far from pleasant as
_compagnons de voyage_; neither can I sleep with kittens in the room.
Nevertheless, no one can profess truer compassion, truer friendship (if
you will) for the animal creation: often have I walked on in weariness,
rather than increase the strain upon the Rosinantes of an omnibus; and
my greatest school scrape was occasioned by thrashing the favoured scion
of a noble house for cruelty to a cat. Such and such-like--for we learn
from AEsop (Fable eighty-eight, to wit) that trumpeters deserve to be
unpopular--is my physical zeal in the cause of poor dumb brutes: nor is
my regard for them the less in matters metaphysical. Bishop Butler, we
may all of us remember, in 'THE _Analogy_' argues that the
objector against a man's immortality must show good cause why that
which exists, should ever cease to exist; and, until that good cause be
shown, the weight of probability is in favour of continual being. Now,
for my part, I wish to be informed why this probability should not be
extended to that innocent maltreated class, whom God's mercy made with
equal skill, and sustains with equal care, as in the case of man,
and--dare we add?--of angels. Doth He not feed the ravens? Do the young
lions not gather what He giveth? Doth a sparrow fall to the ground
without Our Father? and is not the unsinning multitude of Nineveh's
young children climaxed with "much cattle?" It is true, there may be
mighty difference between "the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and
the spirit of a beast that goeth downward in the earth:" but mark this,
there _is_ a spirit in the beast; and as man's eternal heaven may lie in
some superior sphere, so that temporarily designed for the lower animals
may be seen in the renovated earth. It is also true, that St. Paul,
arguing for the temporal livelihood of Christian ministers from the type
of "not muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn," asks, "Doth God
care for oxen?"--or, in effect, doth He legislate (I speak soberly,
though the sublime treads on the ridiculous,) for a stable?--and the
implication is, "To thy dutiful husbandry, O man! such lesser cares are
left." Sorry, righteously sorry, would it make any good man's heart to
think that the Creator had ceased to care for the meanest of his
creatures: in a certain sense
"He sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;"
and, assured that carelessness in a just Creator of his poor dependent
creatures must be impossible, I submit that, critically speaking, some
laudable variation might be made in that text by the simple
consideration that [Greek: melei] is not so strictly rendered "care for"
as [Greek: kedetai]. Scripture, then, so far from militating against the
possible truth, that animals have souls, would seem, by a side-long
glance, to countenance the doctrine: and now let us for a passing moment
turn and see what aid is given to us by moral philosophy.
No case can be conceived more hard or more unjust than that of a
sentient creature (on the hypothesis of its having no soul, no
conscience, necessarily quite innocent), thrown into a world of cruelty
and tyranny, without the chance of compensation for sufferings
undeserved. Neither can any good government be so partial, as (limiting
the whole existence of animals to an hour, a day, a year,) to allow one
of a litter to be pampered with continual luxuries, and another to be
tortured for all its little life by blows, famine, disease--and in its
lingering death by the scientific scalpels of a critical Majendie or a
cold-blooded Spallanzani. Remember, that in the so-called parallel case
of partialities among men--the this-world's choice of a Jacob, the
this-world's rejection of an Esau--the answer is obvious: there are two
scales to the balance, there is yet another world. Far be it from us to
think that all things are not then to be cleared up; that the innocent
little ones of Kedar and the exterminated Canaanites will not then be
heard one by one, and no longer be mingled up indiscriminately in an
overwhelming national judgment; that the pleas of evil education and
example, of hereditary taint and common usage, will be then thrown aside
as vain excuse; and that eventual justice will not with facility explain
every riddle in the moral government of God. But in the case of soulless
extinguished animals, there is, there can be no compensation, no
explanation; whether in pain or pleasure, they have lived and they have
died forgotten by their Maker, and left to the casual kindness or
cruelty of, towards them at least, irresponsible masters. How different
the view opened to us by the possibility of soul being apportioned in
various measure among the lower animals: there is a clue given "to
justify the ways of God to"--brutes: we need not then consider, with a
certain French abbe, that they are fallen angels, doing penance for
their sins; we need not, with old Pythagoras and latter Brahmins,
account them stationed lodges, homes of transmigration for the spirits
of men in process of being purged from their offences: we need not
regard them as Avatars of Vishnu, or incarnations of Apis, visible
deities craving the idolatries of India and Egypt. The truth commends
itself by mere simplicity: nakedness betrays its Eve-like innocence of
guile or error: those living creatures whom we call brutes and beasts,
have, in their degree, the breath of God within them, as well as His
handiwork upon them. And, candid theologian, tell me why--in that
Millenium so long looked-for, when, after a fiery purgation, this earth
shall have its sabbath, and when those who for a time were "caught up
into the air," descending again with their Lord and his ten thousand
saints, shall bodily dwell with others risen in the flesh for that happy
season on this renovated globe--tell me why there should not be some
tithe of the animal creation made to rise again to minister in pleasure,
as they once ministered in pain? And for the rest, the other nine, what
hinders them from tenanting a thousand happy fields in other of the
large domains of space? What hinders those poor dumb slaves from
enjoying some emancipate existence--we need not perhaps accord them
more of immortality than justice, demands for compensation--for a
definite time, a millennium let us think, in scores of those million
orbs that twinkle in the galaxy?
Space stretches wide enough for every grain
Of the broad sands that curb our swelling seas,
Each separate in its sphere, to stand apart
As far as sun from sun.
Shall I then say what hinders?--the littleness of man's mind, refusing
possibility of room for those countless quadrillions; and the
selfishness of his pride, scorning the more generous savage, whose
doctrine (certainly too lax in liberality) raises the beast to a level
with mankind, and
"Who thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company."
Truly, the Creator's justice, and mercy, and the majesty of his kingdom,
give hope of after-life to all creation: Saint Antony of Padua did waste
time in homilizing birds, beasts, and fishes; but may they not find
blessings, though ignorant of priests?--And now, suffer me, in my
current fashion, to glance at a few other considerations affecting this
topic. It will be admitted, I suppose, that the lower animals possess,
in their degree, similar cerebral or at least nervous mechanism with
ourselves; in their degree, I say; for a zooephyte and a caterpillar have
brains, though not in the head; and to this day Waterton does not know
whether he shot a man or a monkey, so closely is his nondescript linked
with either hand to the grovelling Australian and the erect orang
outang. Brutes are nerved as we are, and uncivilized man possesses
instincts like them: all we can with any show of reason deny them is
moral sense, and in our arbitrary refusal of this, and our summary
disposal of what we are pleased to term instinct, we take credit to
ourselves for exclusive participation in that immaterial essence which
is called Soul. But is it, in candour, true that brutes have no moral
sense? Obviously, since moral sense is a growing thing, and ascending in
the scale of being, and since man is its chief receptacle on earth, we
ought to be able to take the best instances of animal morals from those
creatures which have come most within the influence of human example; as
pets of every kind, but mainly dogs. Does not a puppy, that has stolen a
sweet morsel from some butcher's stall, fly, though none pursue him? Is
a fox-hound not conscience-stricken for his harry of the sheep-fold? and
who will deny some sense of duty, and no little strength of affection,
in a shepherd's dog? Have not Cowper's now historic hares displayed an
educated and unnatural confidence; and many a gray parrot, though
limited in speech, said many a witty thing?--Again, read some common
collection of canine anecdotes: What essential difference is there
between the affectionate watch kept by man over his brother's bed of
sickness, and that which has been known of more than one poor cur, whose
solicitude has extended even to dying on his master's grave? The
soldier's faithful poodle licks his wounds upon the stormy battle-field;
and Landseer's colley-dog tears up the turf, and howls the shepherd's
requiem. What real distinction can we make between a high sense of duty
in the captain who is the last to leave his sinking ship, and that in
the watchful terrier, whom neither tempting morsels nor menaced blows
can induce to desert the ploughman's smock committed to his care? Once
more: Who does not recognise individuality of character in animals? A
dog, or a horse, or a tame deer, or, in fact, any domesticated creature,
will act throughout life, in a certain course of disposition, at least
as consistently as most masters: it will also have its whims and ways,
likings and dislikings, habits, fears, joys, and sorrows; and, verily,
in patience, courage, gratitude, and obedience, will put its monarch to
the blush.
But upon this theme--meagre as the sketch may be, fanciful,
illogical--my cursory notions have too long detained you. I had intended
barely to have introduced a black-looking Greek composite, serving for
name to an unwritten essay which we will imagine in existence as