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THE PLACE OF ANIMALS IN HUMAN THOUGHT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
THE EMPEROR AKBAR personally directing the tying up of a wild
Elephant.
Tempera painting by Abu’l Fazl. (1597-98.)
Photographed for this work from the original in the India Museum.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PLACE OF ANIMALS IN HUMAN THOUGHT
by
THE COUNTESS EVELYN MARTINENGO CESARESCO
“On ne connait rien que par bribes.”—M. BERTHELOT
New York
Charles Scribner’S Sons
153-157 Fifth Avenue
1909
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“C’est l’éternel secret qui veut être gardé.”
(_All rights reserved._)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
AT the Congress held at Oxford in September, 1908, those who heard Count
Goblet d’Alviella’s address on the “Method and Scope of the History of
Religions” must have felt the thrill which announces the stirring of new
ideas, when, in a memorable passage, the speaker asked “whether the
psychology of animals has not equally some relation to the science of
religions?” At any rate, these words came to me as a confirmation of the
belief that the study which has engaged my attention for several years,
is rapidly advancing towards recognition as a branch of the inquiry into
what man is himself. The following chapters on the different answers
given to this question when extended from man to animals, were intended,
from the first, to form a whole, not complete, indeed, but perhaps
fairly comprehensive. I offer them now to the public with my warmest
acknowledgments to the scholars whose published works and, in some
cases, private hints have made my task possible. I also wish to thank
the Editor of the _Contemporary Review_ for his kindness in allowing me
to reprint the part of this book which appeared first in that
periodical.
Some chapters refer rather to practice than to psychology, and others to
myths and fancies rather than to conscious speculation, but all these
subjects are so closely connected that it would be difficult to divide
their treatment by a hard-and-fast line.
With regard to the illustrations, I am glad to bear grateful testimony
to the facilities afforded me by the Directors of the British Museum,
the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Hague Gallery, the National Museum
at Copenhagen, the Egypt Exploration Fund, and by the Secretary of State
for India. H.E. Monsieur Camille Barrère, French Ambassador at Rome, has
allowed me to include a photograph of his remarkably fine specimen of a
bronze cat; and I have obtained the sanction of Monsieur Marcel
Dieulafoy for the reproduction of one of Madame Dieulafoy’s photographs
which appeared in his magnificent work on “L’Art Antique de la Perse.”
Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Limited, and Messrs. Chapman and Hall, Limited,
have permitted photographs to be taken of two plates in books published
by them. Finally, Dr. C. Waldstein and Mr. E. B. Havell have been most
kind in helping me to give the correct description of some of the
plates.
SALÒ, LAGO DI GARDA.
_February 15, 1909._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
I
PAGE
SOUL-WANDERING AS IT CONCERNS ANIMALS 11
II
THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF ANIMALS 22
III
ANIMALS AT ROME 44
IV
PLUTARCH THE HUMANE 62
V
MAN AND HIS BROTHER 84
VI
THE FAITH OF IRAN 113
VII
ZOROASTRIAN ZOOLOGY 141
VIII
A RELIGION OF RUTH 166
IX
LINES FROM THE ADI GRANTH 201
X
THE HEBREW CONCEPTION OF ANIMALS 205
XI
“A PEOPLE LIKE UNTO YOU” 221
XII
THE FRIEND OF THE CREATURE 245
XIII
VERSIPELLES 265
XIV
THE HORSE AS HERO 281
XV
ANIMALS IN EASTERN FICTION 306
XVI
THE GROWTH OF MODERN IDEAS ABOUT ANIMALS 336
INDEX 367
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE EMPEROR AKBAR PERSONALLY DIRECTING THE _Frontispiece_
TYING UP OF A WILD ELEPHANT. Tempera painting
in the “Akbar Namah,” by Abu’l Fazl (1597-98).
India Museum. _Photographed for this work._
DEER WORSHIPPING THE WHEEL OF THE LAW. Tope of Sanchi, drawn 11
by Lieut.-Col. Maisey
_From Fergusson’s “Tree and Serpent Worship.” By
permission of the India Office._
THE BUDDHISTIC TIGER 21
_From a painting on silk by Ko-Tō in the British Museum.
Photographed for this work.
In Japanese Buddhism the Tiger is the type of Wisdom._
ORPHEUS 32
_Fresco found at Pompeii._ (_Sommer._)
STELE WITH CAT AND BIRD 40
_Athens Museum._
CAPITOLINE SHE-WOLF 44
(_Bruckmann._) Bronze statue. Early Etruscan style.
The twins are modern.
LION BEING LED FROM THE ARENA BY A SLAVE 47
_From the mosaic pavement of a Roman villa at Nennig._
BACCHUS RIDING ON A PANTHER 74
_Mosaic found at Pompeii._ (_Sommer._)
BRONZE STATUE OF AN EGYPTIAN CAT 82
_From the Collection of H.E. Monsieur Camille Barrère,
French Ambassador at Rome_
REINDEER BROWSING. OLDER STONE AGE 86
_Found in a cave at Thayngen in Switzerland._
HORSE DRAWING DISC OF THE SUN. OLDER BRONZE AGE 86
_National Museum at Copenhagen._
HATHOR COW 102
_Found in 1906 by Dr. Édouard Naville at Deir-el-bahari.
By permission of the Egypt Exploration Fund._
WILD GOATS AND YOUNG 108
_Assyrian Relief. British Museum._ (_Mansell._)
ASSYRIAN GOD CARRYING ANTELOPE AND WHEAT-EAR 116
_British Museum._ (_Mansell._)
COUNTING CATTLE 128
_Egyptian Fresco. British Museum._ (_Mansell._)
KING FIGHTING GRIFFIN (“BAD ANIMAL”) 142
_Relief in Palace of Darius at Persepolis. Photographed
by Jane Dieulafoy. From “L’Art Antique de la Perse.” By
permission of M. Marcel Dieulafoy._
THE REAL DOG OF IRAN 152
_Bronze Statuette found at Susa. Louvre. From Perrot’s
“History of Art in Ancient Persia.” By permission of
Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Ltd._
BUDDHA PACIFYING AN INTOXICATED ELEPHANT WHICH HAD BEEN SENT 188
TO DESTROY HIM. THE ELEPHANT STOOPS IN ADORATION
Græco-Buddhist sculpture from a ruined monastery at
Takt-i-Bahi. _India Museum. Photographed for this work._
RECLINING BULL 192
_Ancient Southern Indian sculpture. From a photograph in
the India Museum._
WILD BULLS AND TAMED BULLS 201
_Reliefs on two gold cups found in a tomb at Vapheio near
Amyclae. Fifteenth century B.C. (possibly earlier). From
Schuckhardt’s “Schliemann’s Excavations.” By permission of
Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._
THE GARDEN OF EDEN 208
_By Rubens. Hague Gallery._ (_Bruckmann._)
GENESIS VIII. 212
_Loggie di Raffaello. In the Vatican. Drawn by N.
Consoni._
DANIEL AND THE LIONS 216
_From an early Christian Sarcophagus in S. Vitale,
Ravenna._ (_Alinari._)
“AN INDIAN ORPHEUS” 222
_Inlaid marble work panel originally surmounting a doorway
in the Great Hall of Audience in the Mogul Palace at Delhi
(about 1650). Photographed for this work from a painting
by a native artist in the India Museum. Imitated from a
painting by Raphael._
MOSLEM BEGGAR FEEDING DOGS AT CONSTANTINOPLE 226
_From life._
ST. JEROME EXTRACTING A THORN FROM THE PAW OF A LION 253
_By Hubert van Eyck. Naples Museum._ (_Anderson._)
ST. EUSTACE (OR ST. HUBERT) AND THE STAG 256
_By Vittore Pisano. National Gallery._ (_Hanfstängl._)
“LE MENEUR DES LOUPS” 276
_Designed and drawn by Maurice Sand._
THE ASSYRIAN HORSE 284
_From a relief in the British Museum._ (_Mansell._)
ARABIAN HORSE OF THE SAHARA 288
_From life._
THE BANYAN DEER 328
_From “Stûpa of Bharhut.” By General Cunningham. By
permission of the India Office._ (_Griggs._)
EGYPTIAN OFFICIAL, WITH HIS WIFE, ENGAGED IN FOWLING IN THE 330
PAPYRUS SWAMP. HIS HUNTING CAT HAS SEIZED THREE BIRDS.
_Mural painting in British Museum._ (_Mansell._)
ASSYRIAN LION AND LIONESS IN PARADISE PARK 336
_British Museum._ (_Mansell._) The King’s reservations
for big game were called “paradises.”
LAMBS 338
_Relief on a fifth century tomb at Ravenna._ (_Alinari._)
“IL BUON PASTORE” 346
_Mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia at Ravenna._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
LT COL. MAISEY DEL. W. BRIGGS, LITH.
DEER WORSHIPPING THE WHEEL OF THE LAW.
Tope of Sanchi.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Place of Animals in Human Thought
I
SOUL-WANDERING AS IT CONCERNS ANIMALS
IN one of these enigmatic sayings which launch the mind on boundless
seas, Cardinal Newman remarked that we know less of animals than of
angels. A large part of the human race explains the mystery by what is
called transmigration, metempsychosis, _Samsara_, _Seelenwanderung_; the
last a word so compact and picturesque that it is a pity not to imitate
it in English. The intelligibility of ideas depends much on whether
words touch the spring of the picture-making wheel of the brain;
“Soul-wandering” does this.
Ancient as the theory is, we ought to remember what is commonly
forgotten—that somewhere in the distance we catch sight of a time when
it was unknown, at least in the sense of a procession of the soul from
death to life through animal forms. Traces of it are to be found in the
Sutras and it is thoroughly developed in the Upanishads, but if the
Sutras belong to the thirteenth century and the Upanishads to about the
year 700 before Christ, a long road still remains to the Vedas with
their fabulous antiquity.
In the Vedas it is stated that the soul may wander, even during sleep,
and that it will surely have a further existence after death, but there
is nothing to show that in this further existence it will take the form
of an animal. Man will be substantially man, able to feel the same
pleasures as his prototype on earth; but if he goes to a good place,
exempt from the same pains. What, then, was the Vedic opinion of
animals? On the whole, it is safe to assume that the authors of the
Vedic chants believed that animals, like men, entered a soul-world in
which they preserved their identity. The idea of funeral sacrifices, as
exemplified in these earliest records, was that of sending some one
before. The horse and the goat that were immolated at a Vedic funeral
were intended to go and announce the coming of the man’s soul. Wherever
victims were sacrificed at funerals, they were originally meant to do
something in the after-life; hence they must have had souls. The origin
of the Suttee was the wish that the wife should accompany her husband,
and among primitive peoples animals were sacrificed because the dead man
might have need of them. Not very long ago an old Irish woman, on being
remonstrated with for having killed her dead husband’s horse, replied
with the words, “Do you think I would let my man go on foot in the next
world?” On visiting that wonderfully emotion-awakening relic, the Viking
ship at Christiania, I was interested to see the bones of the Chief’s
horses and dogs as well as his own. Did the Norsemen, passionately
devoted to the sea as they were, suppose, that not only the animals, but
also the vessel in which they buried their leader, would have a ghostly
second existence? I have no doubt that they did. Apart from what hints
may be gleaned from the Vedas, there is an inherent probability against
the early Aryans, any more than the modern Hindu, believing that the
soul of man or beast comes suddenly to a full stop. To destroy spirit
seems to the Asiatic mind as impossible as to destroy matter seems to
the biologist.
Leaving the Vedas and coming down to the Sutras and Upanishads, we
discover the transmigration of souls at first suggested and then clearly
defined. Whence came it? Was it the belief of those less civilised
nations whom the Aryans conquered, and did they, in accepting it from
them, give it a moral complexion by investing it with the highly ethical
significance of an upward or downward progress occasioned by the merits
or demerits of the soul in a previous state of being?
A large portion of mankind finds it as difficult to conceive a sudden
beginning as a sudden end of spirit. We forget difficulties which we
are not in the habit of facing; those who have tried to face this one
have generally stumbled over it. Even Dante with his subtle
psychophysiological reasoning hardly persuades. The ramifications of a
life before stretched far: “Whosoever believes in the fabled prior
existence of souls, let him be anathema,” thundered the Council of
Constantinople, A.D. 543. Which shows that many Christians shared
Origen’s views on this subject.
From the moment that soul-wandering became, in India, a well-established
doctrine, some three thousand years ago, the conception of the status of
animals was perfectly clear. “Wise people,” says the Bhagavad Gita, “see
the same soul (Atman) in the Brahman, in worms and insects, in the
outcasts, in the dog and the elephant, in beasts, cows, gadflies, and
gnats.” Here we have the doctrine succinctly expounded, and in spite of
subtleties introduced by later philosophers (such as that of the
outstanding self) the exposition holds good to this day as a statement
of the faith of India. It also described the doctrine of Pythagoras,
which ancient traditions asserted that he brought from Egypt, where no
such doctrine ever existed. Pythagoras is still commonly supposed to
have borrowed from Egypt; but it is strange that a single person should
continue to hold an opinion against which so much evidence has been
produced; especially as it is surely very easy to explain the tradition
by interpreting Egypt to have stood for “the East” in common parlance,
exactly as in Europe a tribe of low caste Indians came to be called
gypsies or Egyptians. Pythagoras believed that he had been one of the
Trojan heroes, whose shield he knew at a glance in the Temple of Juno
where it was hung up. After him, Empedocles thought that he had passed
through many forms, amongst others those of a bird and a fish.
Pythagoras and his fire-spent disciple belong to times which seem almost
near if judged by Indian computations: yet they are nebulous figures;
they seem to us, and perhaps they seemed to men who lived soon after
them, more like mysterious, half Divine bearers of a word than men of
flesh and blood. But Plato, who is real to us and who has influenced so
profoundly modern thought, Plato took their theory and displayed it to
the Western world as the most logical explanation of the mystery of
being.
The theory of transmigration did not commend itself to Roman thinkers,
though it was admirably stated by a Roman poet:—
“Omnia mutantur: nihil interit. Errat, et illinc
Huc venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus
Spiritus, eque feris, humana in corpora transit,
Inque feras noster, nec tempore deperit ullo.
Utque novis facilis signatur cera figuris,
Nec manet ut fuerat, nec formas servat easdem,
Sed tamen ipsa eadem est: animam sic semper eandem
Esse.”
This description is as accurate as it is elegant; but it remains a
question whether Ovid had anything deeper than a folk-lorist’s interest
in transmigration joined to a certain sympathy which it often inspires
in those who are fond of animals. The enthusiastic folk-lorist finds
himself believing in all sorts of things at odd times. Lucian’s admirers
at Rome doubtless enjoyed his ridiculous story of a Pythagorean cock
which had been a man, a woman, a prince, a subject, a fish, a horse and
a frog, and which summed up its varied experience in the judgment that
man was the most wretched and deplorable of all creatures, all others
patiently grazing within the enclosures of Nature while man alone breaks
out and strays beyond those safe limits. This story was retold with
great gusto by Erasmus. The Romans were a people with inclusive
prejudices, and they were not likely to welcome a narrowing of the gulf
between themselves and the beasts of the field. Cicero’s dictum that,
while man looks before and after, analysing the past and forecasting the
future, animals have only the perception of the present, does not go to
the excess of those later theorists who, like Descartes, reduced animals
to automata, but it goes farther than scientific writers on the subject
would now allow to be justified.
It is worth while asking, what was it that so powerfully attracted Plato
in the theory of transmigration? I think that Plato, who made a science
of the moral training of the mind, was attracted by soul-wandering as a
scheme of soul-evolution. Instead of looking at it as a matter of fact
which presupposed an ethical root (which is the Indian view), he looked
upon it as an ethical root which presupposed a matter of fact. He was
influenced a little, no doubt, by the desire to get rid of Hades, “an
unpleasant place,” as he says, “and not true,” for which he felt a
peculiar antipathy, but he was influenced far more by seeing in
soul-wandering a rational theory of the ascent of the soul, a Darwinism
of the spirit. “We are plants,” he said, “not of earth but of heaven,”
but it takes the plants of heaven a long time to grow.
We ought to admire the Indian mind, which first seized the idea of time
in relation to development and soared out of the cage of history
(veritable or imaginary) into liberal æons to account for one perfect
soul, one plant that had accomplished its heavenly destiny. But though
the Indian seer argues with Plato that virtue has its own reward (not so
much an outward reward of improved environment as an inward reward of
approximation to perfection), he disagrees with the Greek philosopher
with regard to the practical result of all this as it affects any of us
personally. Plato found the theory of transmigration entirely consoling;
the Indian finds it entirely the reverse. Can the reason be that Plato
took the theory as a beautiful symbol while the Indian takes it as a
dire reality?
The Hindu is as much convinced that the soul is re-born in different
animals as we are that children are born of women. He is convinced of
it, but he is not consoled by it. Let us reflect a little: does not one
life give us time to get somewhat tired of it; how should we feel after
fifteen hundred lives? The wandering Jew has never been thought an
object of envy, but the wandering soul has a wearier lot; it knows the
sorrows of all creation.
“How many births are past I cannot tell,
How many yet may be no man may say,
But this alone I know and know full well,
That pain and grief embitter all the way.”[1]
Footnote 1:
“Folk-Songs of Southern India,” by Charles E. Gover, a fascinating but
little-known work.
Rather than this—death. How far deeper the gloom revealed by these lines
from the folk-songs of an obscure Dravidian tribe living in the Nilgiri
Hills, than any which cultured Western pessimism can show! Compared with
them, the despairing cry of Baudelaire seems almost a hymn of joy:—
“’Tis death that cheers and gives us strength to live,
’Tis life’s chief aim, sole hope that can abide,
Our wine, elixir, glad restorative
Whence we gain heart to walk till eventide.
Through snow, through frost, through tempests it can give
Light that pervades th’ horizon dark and wide;
The inn which makes secure when we arrive
Our food and sleep, all labour laid aside.
It is an Angel whose magnetic hand
Gives quiet sleep and dreams of extasy,
And strews a bed for naked folk and poor.
’Tis the god’s prize, the mystic granary,
The poor man’s purse and his old native land,
And of the unknown skies the opening door.”
Folk-songs are more valuable aids than the higher literature of nations
in an inquiry as to what they really believe. The religion of the
Dravidian mountaineers is purely Aryan (though their race is not); their
songs may be taken, therefore, as Aryan documents. They are particularly
characteristic of the dual belief as to a future state which is, to this
day, widely diffused. How firmly these people believe in transmigration
the quatrain quoted above bears witness; yet they also believe that
souls are liable to immediate judgment. This contradiction is explained
by the theory that a long interval may elapse between death and
re-incarnation and that during this interval the soul meets with a
reward or punishment. To say the truth, the explanation sounds a rather
lame one. Is it not more likely that the idea of immediate judgment,
wherever it appears, is a relic of Vedic belief which has to be
reconciled, as best it can, with the later idea of transmigration? The
Dravidian songs are remarkable for their strong inculcation of regard
for animals. In their impressive funeral dirge which is a public
confession of the dead man’s sins, it is owned that he killed a snake, a
lizard and a harmless frog. And that not mere lifetaking was the point
condemned, is clearly proved by the further admission that the
delinquent put the young ox to the plough before it was strong enough to
work. In a Dravidian vision of Heaven and Hell certain of the Blest are
perceived milking their happy kine, and it is explained that these are
they who, when they saw the lost kine of neighbour or stranger in the
hills, drove them home nor left them to perish from tiger or wolf.
Surely in this, as in the Jewish command which it so closely resembles,
we may read mercy to beast as well as to man.
It is sometimes said that there is as much cruelty to animals in India
as anywhere. Some of this cruelty (as it seems to us) is caused directly
by reluctance to take life; of the other sort, caused by callousness, it
can be only said that the human brute grows under every sky. One great
fact is admitted: children are not cruel in India: Victor Hugo could not
have written his terrible poem about the tormented toad in India. I
think it a mistake to attribute the Indian sentiment towards animals
wholly to transmigration; nevertheless, it may be granted that such a
belief fosters such a sentiment. Indeed, if it were allowable to look
upon the religion of the many as the morality of the one, it would seem
natural to suppose that the theory of transmigration was invented by
some creature-loving sage on purpose to give men a fellow-feeling for
their humbler relations. Even so, many a bit of innocent folk-fable has
served as “protective colouration” to beast or bird: the legend of the
robin who covered up the Babes in the Wood; the legend of the swallow
who did some little service to the crucified Saviour, and how many other
such tender fancies. Who invented them, and why?
If Plato had wished simply to find a happy substitute for Hades, he
might have found it—had he looked far enough—in the Vedic kingdom of the
sun, radiant and eternal, where sorrow is not, where the crooked are
made straight, ruled over by Yama the first man to die and the first to
live again, death’s bright angel, lord of the holy departed—how far from
Pluto and the “Tartarean grey.” It would not have provided a solution to
the mystery of being, but it might have made many converts, for after a
happy heaven all antiquity thirsted.
[Illustration:
THE BUDDHISTIC TIGER.
British Museum.
(_From a painting on silk by Ko-Tō._)]
It is not sure if the scheme of existence mapped out in soul-wandering
is really more consoling for beast than for man. It is a poor compliment
to some dogs to say that they have been some men. Then again, it is
recognised as easier for a dog to be good than for a man to be good, but
after a dog has passed his little life in well-doing he dies with the
prospect that his spirit, which by his merits becomes again a man, will
be sent down, by that man’s transgressions, to the society of jackals.
According to the doctrine of soul-wandering, animals are, in brief, the
Purgatory of men. Just as prayers for the dead (which means, prayers for
the remission to them of a merited period of probation) represent an
important branch of Catholic observances, so prayers for the remission
of a part of the time which souls would otherwise spend in animal forms
constitute the most vital and essential feature in Brahmanical worship.
Of course, this is also true of Buddhism, to which many people think
that the theory of soul-wandering belongs exclusively, unmindful that
the older faith has it as well. The following hymn, used in Thibet,
shows how accurately the name of Purgatory applies to the animal
incarnations of the soul:—
“If we [human beings] have amassed any merit
In the three states,
We rejoice in this good fortune when we consider
The unfortunate lot of the poor [lower] animals,
Piteously engulphed in the ocean of misery;
On their behalf, we now turn the Wheel of Religion.”
There are grounds for thinking that the purgatorial view of animals was
part of the religious beliefs of the highly civilised native races of
South America. The Christianised Indians are very gentle in their ways
towards animals, while among the savage tribes in Central Peru (which
are probably degraded off-shoots from the people of the Incas) the
belief still survives that good men become monkeys or jaguars, and bad
men parrots or reptiles. For the rest, soul-wandering has an enduring
fascination for the human mind.
In January, 1907, Leandro Improta, a young man well furnished with
worldly goods, shot himself in a café at Naples. His pocket was found to
contain a letter in which he said that the act was prompted by a desire
to study metempsychosis; much had been written on the subject, but it
pleased him better to discover than to talk: “so I determined to die and
see whether I shall be re-born in the form of some animal. It would be
delightful to return to this world as a lion or a rat.” It might not
prove delightful after all!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF ANIMALS
“THE heralds brought a sacred hecatomb to the gods through the city and
the long-haired Grecians were assembled under the shady grove of
far-darting Apollo, but when they had tasted the upper flesh and had
drawn it out, having divided the shares, they made a delightful feast.”
In this description the poet of the Odyssey not only calls up a
wonderfully vivid picture of an ancient fête-day, but also shows the
habit of mind of the Homeric Greeks in regard to animal food. They were
voracious eaters—although the frequent reference to feasts ought not to
make us suppose that meat was their constant diet; rather the reverse,
for then it would not have been so highly rated. But when they had the
chance, they certainly did eat with unfastidious copiousness and
unashamed enjoyment. It is not pleasant to read about, for it sets one
thinking of things by no means far away or old; for instance, of the
disappearance of half-cooked beef at some Continental _tables d’hôte_.
We find that Homer is painfully near us. But in Homeric times the ghost
of a scruple had to be laid before the feast could be enjoyed. Animal
food was still closely connected with the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice
lends distinction to subject as well as object; it was some atonement to
the animal to dedicate him to the gods. He was covered with garlands and
attended by long-robed priests; his doom was his triumph. The devoted
heifer or firstling of the flock was glorified beyond all its kind. Some
late sceptic of the _Anthology_ asked what possible difference it could
make to the sheep whether it were devoured by a wolf or sacrificed to
Herakles so that he might protect the sheepfold from wolves? But
scepticism is a poor thing. From immolation to apotheosis there is but a
step; how many human victims willingly bowed their heads to the knife!
The sacrificial aspect of the slaughter of domestic animals took a
strong hold of the popular imagination. It is still suggested by the
procession of garlanded beasts which traverses the Italian village on
the approach of Easter: the only time of year when the Italian peasant
touches meat. In the tawdry travesty of the _Bœuf gras_, though the
origin is the same, every shred of the old significance is lost, but
among simple folk south of the Alps, unformed thoughts which know not
whence they come still contribute a sort of religious glamour to that
last pageant. Far back, indeed, stretches the procession of the victims,
human and animal—for wherever there was animal sacrifice, at some remote
epoch, “the goat without horns” was also offered up.
The Homeric Greeks had no butchers; they did the slaying of beasts
themselves or their priests did it for them. Agamemnon kills the boar
sacrificed to Zeus with his own hands, which are first uplifted in
prayer. The commonest meat was the flesh of swine, as may be seen by the
pig of Æsop which replied, on being asked by the sheep why he cried out
when caught, “They take you for your wool or milk, but me for my life.”
In Homer, however, there is much talk of fatted sheep, kids and oxen,
and there is even mention of killing a cow. The Athenians had qualms
about slaughtering the ox, the animal essential to agriculture—though
they did it—but the Homeric Greek was not troubled by such thoughts. He
was not over nice about anything; he was his own cook, and he did not
lose his appetite while he roasted his bit of meat on the spit. A Greek
repast of that age would have shocked the abstemious Indian as much as
the Hindu reformer, Keshub Chunder Sen, confessed to have been shocked
by the huge joints on English sideboards.
Putting aside his meat-eating proclivities, for which we cannot throw
stones at him, the Greek of the Iliad and of the Odyssey is the friend
of his beast. He does not regard it as his long-lost brother, but he
sees in it a devoted servant; sometimes more than human in love if less
than human in wit. His point of view, though detached, was appreciative.
Practically it was the point of view of the twentieth century. Homer
belongs to the Western world, and in a great measure to the modern
Western world. He had no racial fellow-feeling with animals; yet he
could feel for the sparrow that flutters round its murdered young ones
and for the vulture that rends the air with cries when the countryman
takes its fledglings from the nest. He could shed one immortal tear over
the faithful hound that recognises his master and dies. “There lay the
dog Argus, full of vermin.” If it had not been a living creature, what
sight could have more repelled human eyes? But with dog as with man, the
miserable body is as naught beside—what in the man we call the soul. “He
fawned with his tail and laid down both his ears, but he could no more
come nearer his master.” All the sense of disgust is gone and there is
something moist, perhaps, in our eyes too, though it is not the ichor of
immortality.
Giving names to animals is the first instinctive confession that they
are not _things_. What sensible man ever called his table Carlo or his
inkpot Trilby? Homer gives his horses the usual names of horses in his
day; this is shown by the fact that he calls more than one horse by the
same name. Hector’s steeds were Xanthus, Æthon and noble Lampus; often
would Andromache mix wine for them even before she attended to the wants
of her husband, or offer them the sweet barley with her own white hands.
Æthe is the name of Agamemnon’s graceful and fleet-footed mare. Xanthus
and Balius, offspring of Podarges, are the horses which Achilles
received from his father. He bids them bring their charioteer back in
safety to the body of the Greeks—and then follows the impressive
incident of the warning given to him of his impending fate. The horse
Xanthus bends low his head: his long mane, which is collected in a ring,
droops till it touches the ground. Hera gives him power of speech and he
tells how, though the steeds of Achilles will do their part right well,
not all their swiftness, not all their faithful service can save their
master from the doom that even now is drawing near. “The furies restrain
the voice”: the laws which govern the natural order of things must not
be violated. “O Xanthus,” cries Achilles, “O Xanthus, why dost thou
predict my death?... Well do I know myself that it is my fate to perish
here, far away from my dear father and mother!” It is the passionate cry
of the Greek, the lover of life as none has loved it, the lover of the
sweet air gladdened by the sun.
Many a soldier may have spoken to his horse, half in jest, as Achilles
spoke to Xanthus and Balius: “bring me safely out of the fray.” The
supernatural and terrible reply comes with the shock of the unforeseen,
like a clap of thunder on a calm day. This incident is a departure from
the usual Homeric conventionality, for it takes us into the domain of
real magic. The belief that animals know things that we know not, and
see things that we see not, is scattered over all the earth. Are there
not still good people who feel an “eerie” sensation when a cat stares
fixedly into vacancy in the twilight? “Eerie” sensations count for much
in early beliefs, but what counts for more is the observation of actual
facts which are not and, perhaps, cannot be explained. The uneasiness of
animals before an earthquake, or the refusal of some animals to go to
sea on ships which afterwards come to grief—to refer to only two
instances of a class of phenomena the existence of which cannot be
gainsaid—would be sufficient to convince any savage or any primitive man
that animals have foreknowledge. If they know the future on one point,
why should they not know it on others? The primitive man generally
starts from something which he deems _certain_; he deals in
“certainties” far more than in hypotheses, and when he has seized a
“certainty” in his own fashion he draws logical deductions from it.
Savages and children have a ruthless logic of their own.
The prophetic power of animals has important bearings on the subject of
divination. In cases of animal portents the later theory may have been
that the animal was the passive instrument or medium of a superior
power; but it is not likely that this was the earliest theory. The
goddess did not use Xanthus as a mouthpiece: she simply gave him the
faculty of speech so that he could say what he already knew. The second
sight of animals was believed to be communicable to man through their
flesh, and especially through their blood. Porphyry says plainly that
diviners fed on the hearts of crows, vultures, and moles (the heart
being the fountain of the blood), because in this manner they partook of
the souls of these animals, and received the influence of the gods who
accompanied these souls. The blood conveyed the qualities of the spirit.
In my opinion the Hebrew ordinance against partaking of the blood was
connected with this idea; the soul was not to be meddled with. I do not
know if attention has been paid to the remarkable juxtaposition of the
blood prohibition with enchantment in Leviticus xix. 26. The Institutes
of Manu clearly indicate that the blood was not to be swallowed because,
by doing so, could be procured an illicit mixing up of personality: the
most awful of sins, more awful because so much more mysterious than our
mediæval “pact,” or selling the soul to the devil. A knowledge of magic
is essential to the true comprehension of all sacred writings.
That animals formerly talked with human voices was the genuine belief of
most early races, but there are few traces of it in Greek literature. A
hint of a real folk-belief is to be found, perhaps, in the remark of
Clytemnestra, who says of Cassandra, when she will not descend from the
car that has brought her, a prisoner, to Agamemnon’s palace:—
“I wot—unless like swallows she doth use
_Some strange barbarian tongue from over sea_,
My words must bring persuasion to her soul.”
But such hints are not frequent. The stories of “talking beasts” which
enjoyed an immense popularity in Greece were founded on as conscious
“make-believe” as the Beast tales of the Middle Ages. From the “Battle
of the Frogs and Mice” to Æsop’s fables, and from these to the comedies
of Aristophanes, the animals are meant to hold up human follies to
ridicule or human virtues to admiration. The object was to instruct
while amusing when it was not to amuse without instructing. Æsop hardly
asks the most guileless to believe that his stories are of the “all
true” category—which is why children rarely quite take them to their
hearts. At the same time, he shows a close study of the idiosyncrasies
of animals, so close that there is little to alter in his
characterisation. Out of the mass of stories in the collection
attributed to him, one or two only seem to carry us back to a more
ingenuous age. The following beautiful little tale of the “Lion’s
Kingdom” is vaguely reminiscent of the world-tradition of a “Peace in
Nature.”
“The beasts of the field and forest had a lion as their king. He was
neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king
could be. He made during his reign a proclamation for a general assembly
of all the birds and beasts, and drew up conditions for an universal
league in which the Wolf and the Lamb, the Panther and the Kid, the
Tiger and the Stag, the Dog and the Hare, should live together in
perfect peace and amity. The Hare said, ‘Oh, how I have longed to see
this day, in which the weak shall take their place with impunity by the
side of the strong.’”
The temper of a people towards animals can be judged from its sports. It
has been well said, Who could imagine Pericles presiding over a “Roman
holiday”? Wanton cruelty to animals seemed to the Greeks an outrage to
the gods. The Athenians inflicted a fine on a vivisector of the name of
Xenocrates (he called himself a “philosopher”) who had skinned a goat
alive. In Greece, from Homeric times downwards, the most favourite sport
was the chariot-race which, at first, possessed the importance of a
religious event, and always had a dignity above that of a mere pastime.
The horses received their full share of honour and glory; for many
centuries the graves of Cimon’s mares, with which he had thrice
conquered at the Olympian games, were pointed out to the stranger, near
his own tomb.
In the ancient Greek as in the modern world, while the majority held the
views about animals which I have briefly sketched, a small minority held
views of quite a different kind. It may be that no outward agency is
required to cause the periodical appearance of men who are driven from
the common road by the nostalgia of a state in which the human creature
had not learnt to shed blood. The earliest tradition agrees with the
latest science in testifying that man did not always eat flesh. It seems
as if sometimes, in every part of the earth, an irresistible impulse
takes hold of him to resume his primal harmlessness. It is natural,
however, that students should have sought some more definite explanation
for the introduction of the Orphic sect into Greece, where it can be
traced to about the time generally given to Buddha—the sixth century
B.C. Some have conjectured that dark-skinned, white-robed missionaries
from India penetrated into Europe as we know that they penetrated into
China, bringing with them the gospel of the unity of all sentient
things. Others agree with what seems to have been thought by Herodotus:
that wandering pilgrims brought home treasured secrets from the temple
of Ammon or some other of those Egyptian shrines with which the Greeks
constantly kept up certain _rapports_. It may be, now, that these two
theories will be abandoned in favour of a third which would refer the
origin of the Orphists to Ægean times and suppose them to be the last
followers of an earlier faith. When they do come into history, it is as
poor and ignorant people—like the Doukhobors of to-day—whose obscurity
might well account for their having remained long unobserved. But this
is no reason for concluding that their beginnings were obscure.
What is best understood about them is that they abstained rigorously
from flesh except during the rare performance of some rite of
purification, in which they tasted the blood of a bull which was
supposed to procure mystic union with the divine. As happened with the
performers of other cruel or horrid rites, the transcendent significance
they ascribed to the act paralysed their power of recognising its
revolting nature. A diseased spiritualism which ignores matter
altogether is the real key to such phenomena. It is too soon to say
whether any link can be established between the Orphic practices and the
so-called “bull-fights” of which traces have been found in Crete.
Despised and tabooed though they were in historical Greece, the Orphists
are still held to have exercised some sure though undefined influence on
the development of the greatest spiritual fact of Hellenic civilisation,
the Eleusinian Mysteries.
[Illustration:
(_Photo:_ _Sommer_)
ORPHEUS.
(_Fresco at Pompeii._)]
The popular description of Orpheus as founder of the Orphists must be
taken for what it is worth. The sect may have either evolved or borrowed
the legend. Christianity itself appropriated the myth of Orpheus,
pictorially, at least, in those rude tracings in the Roman catacombs
showing the Good Shepherd in that character, which inspired Carlyle to
write one of the most impassioned passages in English prose. The sweet
lute-player who held entranced lion and lamb till the one forgot his
wrath and the other his fear, was the natural symbol of the prototype of
a humane religion.
Out of the nebulous patches of Greek enthusiasts who cherished tender
feelings towards animals, emerges the intellectual sun of the Samian
sage. It is difficult not to connect Pythagoras in some way with the
Orphists, nor would such a connexion make it the less probable that he
journeyed to the sacred East in search of fuller knowledge. Little,
indeed, do we know about this moulder of minds. He passed across the
world’s stage dark “with excess of light”—an influence rather than a
personality. Yet he was as far as possible from being only a dreamer of
dreams; he was the Newton, the Galileo, perhaps the Edison and Marconi
of his epoch. And it was this double character of moral teacher and man
of science which caused the extraordinary reverence with which he was
regarded. Science and religion were not divorced then; the Prophet could
present no credentials so valid as an understanding of the laws which
govern the universe. Mathematics and astronomy were revelations of
divine truth. It was the scientific insight of Pythagoras, the wonderful
range and depth of which is borne out more and more by modern
discoveries, that lent supreme importance to whatever theories he was
known to have held. The doctrine of transmigration had not been treated
seriously while it was only preached by the Orphists, but after it was
adopted by Pythagoras it commanded a wide attention, though it never won
a large acceptance. One expounder it had, who was too remarkable an
original thinker to be called a mere disciple—the greatly-gifted
Empedocles, who denounced the eaters of flesh as no better than
cannibals, which was going further than Pythagoras himself had ever
gone.
Even in antiquity, there were some who suspected that at the bottom of
the Pythagorean propaganda was the wish to make men more humane. Without
taking that view, it may be granted that a strong love of animals
prepares the mind to think of them as not so very different from men. A
thing that tends in the same direction is the unfavourable comparison of
some men with some beasts: the sort of sentiment which made Madame de
Staël say that the more she knew of men the more she liked dogs. Did not
Darwin declare that he would as soon be descended from that heroic
little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy to save the life of his
keeper, or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains,
carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished
dogs, as from various still extant races of mankind? Darwinism is really
the theory of Pythagoras with the supernatural element left out. The
homogeneity of living things is one of the very old beliefs from which
we strayed and to which we are returning.
Among the Greeks, sensitive and meditative minds which did not place
faith in the Pythagorean system of life were attracted, nevertheless, by
its speculative possibilities which they bent to their own purposes.
Thus Socrates borrowed from Pythagoras when he suggested that imperfect
and earth-bound spirits might be re-incorporated in animals whose
conventionally ascribed characteristics corresponded with their own
moral natures. Unjust, tyrannical, and violent men would become wolves,
hawks, and kites, while good commonplace people—virtuous
Philistines—would take better forms, such as ants, bees, and wasps, all
of which live harmoniously in communities. It is pleasant to find that
Socrates did justice to that intelligent insect, the undeservedly
aspersed wasp. Men who are good in all respects save the highest, may
re-assume human forms. Socrates does not explain why it is that humanity
progresses so slowly if it is always being recruited from such good
material? He passes on from these righteous men to the super-excellent
man to whom alone he allots translation into a divine and wholly
immaterial sphere; he it is who departs from this world completely pure
of earthly dross; who cannot be moved by ill-fortune, poverty, disgrace;
who has “overcome the world” in the Pauline sense, who has died while
living, in the Indian sense. Though Socrates does not say so, it is this
super-excellent man who really convinces him of the immortality of the
soul according to the meaning which we attach to these words.
That the more tender and poetic aspects of Pythagorean speculations had
deeply impressed Socrates can be seen by the fact that they recurred to
his mind in the most solemn hour of his life. From these he drew the
lovely parable with which he gently reproved the friends who were come
to take leave of him for their surprise at finding him no wise
depressed. He asks if he appears to them inferior in divination to the
swans, who, when they perceive that they must die, though given to song
before, then sing the most of all, delighted at the prospect of their
departure to the deity whose ministers they are. Mankind has said
falsely of the swans that they sing through dread of death and from
grief. Those who say this do not reflect that no bird sings when it is
hungry or cold or afflicted with any other pain, not even the
nightingale or swallow or hoopoe, which are said to sing a dirge-like
strain, “but neither do they appear to me to sing for grief nor do the
swans, but as pertaining to Apollo they are skilled in the divining art,
and having a foreknowledge of the bliss in Hades, they express their joy
in song on that day rather than at any previous time. But I believe
myself to be a fellow-servant of the swans and consecrated to the same
divinity, and that I am no less gifted by my master in the art of
divination, nor am I departing with less good grace than they.”
Socrates would not have been “the wisest of men” if he had dogmatised
about the unknowable; to insist, he says, that things were just as he
described them, would not become an intelligent being; he only claimed
an approximate approach to the truth. In appearance Plato went nearer to
dogmatic acceptance of the theory of the transmigration of souls, but
probably it was in appearance only. Like his master, he thought it
reasonable to suppose that the human soul ascended if it had done well,
and descended if it had done ill, and of this ascent and descent he took
as symbol its attirement in higher or lower corporeal forms till, freed
from the corruptible, it joined the incorruptible.