between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the
earth.” Evidently, you cannot make a covenant with “things.”
[Illustration:
_N. Consoni._
GENESIS VIII.
(_Loggie di Raffaello._)]
That the Jews supposed the intelligence of animals to be not extremely
different from the intelligence of man is to be deduced from the story
of Balaam, for it is said that God opened the mouth—not the mind—of the
ass. The same story illustrates the ancient belief that animals see
apparitions which are concealed from the eyes of man. The great interest
to us, however, of the Scriptural narrative is its significance as a
lesson in humanity. When the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, what did
the ass say? She asks her master why he had smitten her three times?
Balaam answers, with a frankness which, at least, does him credit,
because he was enraged with the ass for turning aside and not minding
him, and he adds (still enraged, and, strange to say, nowise surprised
at the animal’s power of speech) that he only wishes he had a sword in
his hand, as he would then kill her outright. How like this is to the
voice of modern brutality! The ass, continuing the conversation, rejoins
in words which it would be a shame to disfigure by putting them into the
idiom of the twentieth century: “Am I not thine ass upon which thou hast
ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to do so
unto thee?” Balaam, who has the merit, as I have noticed, of being
candid, replies, “No, you never were.” Then, for the first time, the
Prophet sees the angel standing in the path with a drawn sword in his
hand—an awe-inspiring vision! And what are the angel’s first words to
the terrified prophet who lies prostrate on his face? They are a reproof
for his inhumanity. “Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three
times?” Then the angel tells how the poor beast he has used thus has
saved her master from certain death, for had she not turned from him, he
would have slain Balaam and saved her alive. “And Balaam said unto the
angel of the Lord, I have sinned.”
Balaam was not a Jew; but the nationality of the personages in the Bible
and the origin or authorship of its several parts are not questions
which affect the present inquiry. The point of importance is, that the
Jews believed these Scriptures to contain Divine truth.
With regard to animals having the gift of language, it appears from a
remark made by Josephus that the Jews thought that all animals spoke
before the Fall. In Christian folk-lore there is a superstition that
animals can speak during the Christmas night: an obvious reference to
their return to an unfallen state.
Solomon declares that the righteous man “regardeth the life of his
beast”; a saying which is often misquoted, “merciful” being substituted
for “righteous,” by which the proverb loses half its force. The Hebrew
Scriptures contain two definite injunctions of humanity to animals. One
is the command not to plough with the ox and the ass yoked together—in
Palestine I have seen even the ass and the camel yoked together; their
unequal steps cause inconvenience to both yoke-fellows and especially to
the weakest. The other is the prohibition to muzzle the ox which treads
out the corn: a simple humanitarian rule which it is truly surprising
how any one, even after an early education in casuistry, could have
interpreted as a metaphor. There are three other commands of great
interest because they show how important it was thought to preserve even
the mind of man from growing callous. One is the order not to kill a cow
or she-goat or ewe and her young both on the same day. The second is the
analogous order not to seethe the kid in its mother’s milk. The third
refers to bird-nesting: if by chance you find a bird’s nest on a tree or
on the ground and the mother bird is sitting on the eggs or on the
fledglings, you are on no account to capture her when you take the eggs
or the young birds (one would like bird-nesting to have been forbidden
altogether, but I fear that the human boy in Syria had too much of the
old Adam in him for any such law to have proved effectual!). Let the
mother go, says the sacred writer, and if you must take something, take
only the young ones. This command concludes in a very solemn way, for it
ends with the promise (for what may seem a little act of unimportant
sentiment) of the blessing promised to man for honouring his own father
and mother—that it will be well with him and that his days will be long
in the land.
In the law relative to the observance of the Seventh Day, not only is no
point insisted on more strongly than the repose of the animals of
labour, but in one of the oldest versions of the fourth commandment the
repose of animals is spoken of as if it were the chief object of the
Sabbath: “Six days shalt thou do thy work, and on the seventh day thou
shalt rest: _that_ thine ox and thine ass may rest” (Exodus xxiii. 12).
Moreover, it is expressly stated of the Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh
year when no work was to be done, that all which the land produces of
itself is to be left to the enjoyment of the beasts that are in the
land. The dominant idea was to give animals a chance—to leave something
for them—to afford them some shelter, as in the creation of
bird-sanctuaries in the temples.
In promises of love and protection to man, to the Chosen People, animals
are almost always included. “The heavens shall tremble: the sun and moon
shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining” (Joel ii.
10). “Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the
wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig-tree and
the vine do yield their strength. Be glad, ye children of Zion, and
rejoice in the Lord your God” (Joel ii. 22, 23).
The wisdom of animals is continually praised. “Go to the ant, thou
sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: which having no guide,
overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her
food in the harvest.” So said the wisest of the Jews. I am tempted to
quote here a passage from the writings of Giordano Bruno: “With what
understanding the ant gnaws her grain of wheat lest it should sprout in
her underground habitation. The fool says this is instinct, but we say
it is a species of understanding.” If Solomon did not make the same
reflection, it was only because that wonderful word “instinct” had not
yet been invented.
[Illustration:
_Photo:_ _Alinari._
DANIEL AND THE LIONS.
(_Early Christian Sarcophagus at Ravenna._)]
We have seen that the Jews supposed animals to be given to men for use
not for abuse, and the whole of Scripture tends to the conclusion that
the Creator—who had called good all the creatures of His hand—regarded
none as unworthy of His providence. This view is plainly endorsed by the
saying of Christ that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the will
of the Father (or “not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God”),
and by the saying of Mohammed, who likewise believed himself the
continuer of Jewish tradition: “There is no beast that walks upon the
earth but its provision is from God.”
But there is something more. Every one knows that the Jews were allowed
to kill and eat animals. The Jewish religion makes studiously few
demands on human nature. “The ways of the Lord were pleasant ways.”
Since men craved for meat or, in Biblical language, since they lusted
after flesh, they were at liberty to eat those animals which, in an
Eastern climate, could be eaten without danger to health. But on one
condition: the body they might devour—what was the body? It was earth.
The soul they might not touch. The mysterious thing called life must be
rendered up to the Giver of it—to God. The man who did not do this, when
he killed a lamb, was a murderer. “The blood shall be imputed to him; he
hath shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people.”
The inclination must be resisted to dispose of this mysterious ordinance
as a mere sanitary measure. It was a sanitary measure, but it was much
besides. The Jews believed that every animal had a soul, a spirit, which
was beyond human jurisdiction, with which they had no right to tamper.
When we ask, however, what this soul, this spirit, was, we find
ourselves groping in the dark. Was it material, as the soul was thought
to be by the Egyptians and by the earliest doctors of the Christian
Church? Was it an immaterial, impersonal, Divine essence? Was its
identity permanent, or temporary? We can give no decisive answer; but we
may assume with considerable certainty that life, spirit, whatever it
was, appeared at least to the majority of the Jews to possess one
nature, whether in men or in animals. When a Jew denied the immortality
of the soul, he denied it both for man and for beast. “I said in my
heart,” wrote the author of Ecclesiastes, “concerning the estate of the
sons of men that God might manifest them, and that they might see that
they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men
befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so the
other dieth; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no
pre-eminence above a beast.”
The mist which surrounds the Hebrew idea of the soul may proceed from
the fact that they did not know themselves what they meant by it, or
from the fact that they once knew what they meant by it so well as to
render elucidation superfluous. If the teraphim represented the Lares or
family dead, then the archaic Jewish idea of the soul was simple and
definite. It is possible that in all later times two diametrically
opposed opinions existed contemporaneously, as was the case with the
Pharisees and Sadducees. The Jewish people did not feel the pressing
need to dogmatise about the soul that other peoples have felt; they had
one living soul which was immortal, and its name was Israel!
Still, through all ages, from the earliest times till now, the Jews have
continued to hold sacred “the blood which is the life.”
In Hindu religious books, where similar ordinances are enforced, there
are hints of a suspicion which, as I have said elsewhere, could not have
been absent from the minds of Hebrew legislators—the haunting suspicion
of a possible mixing-up of personality. Here we tread on the skirts of
magic: a subject which belongs to starless nights.
We come back into the light of day when we glance at the relations
which, according to Jewish tradition, existed between animals and their
Creator. We see a beautiful interchange of gratitude on the one side and
watchful care on the other. As the ass of Balaam recognised the angel,
so do all animals—except man—at all times recognise their God. “But ask
now the beasts and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and
they shall tell thee.... Who knoweth not of all these that the hand of
the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living
thing, and the breath of all mankind.”
I will only add to these words of Job a few verses taken here and there
from the Psalms, which form a true anthem of our fellow-creatures of the
earth and air:—
“Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl, let them
praise the name of the Lord.
He giveth to the beast his food and to the young ravens which cry.
He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills;
They give drink to every beast of the field, the wild asses quench
their thirst.
By them shall the fowls of heaven have their habitation which sing
among the branches:
The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which He
hath planted,
Where the birds make their nests; as for the stork, the fir-trees are
her house.
The great hills are a refuge for the wild goats and the rocks for the
conies.
Thou makest darkness, and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the
forest do creep forth;
The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God;
The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together and lay them down in
their dens.
... Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for
herself where she may lay her young.
Even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XI
“A PEOPLE LIKE UNTO YOU”
A FRIEND who was spending the winter at Tunis asked me if it were true
that there was any teaching of kindness to animals in the religion of
Islam? She had seen with pain the little humanity practised by the lower
class of Arabs, and she had difficulty in believing that such conduct
was contrary to the law of the Prophet. I replied, that if men are
sometimes better than their creeds, at other times they are very much
worse. At the head of every chapter of the Koran, it is written: “In the
name of the most merciful God.” If God be merciful, shall man be
unmerciful? Alas, that the answer should have been so often “yes”!
Inhumanity to animals is against the whole spirit of the Koran, and also
against that of Moslem tradition. In the “Words of Mohammed,” of which
one thousand four hundred and sixty-five collections exist, and which
are looked upon as “the Moslem’s dictionary of morals and manners,” the
Apostle is described as saying: “Fear God in these dumb animals, and
ride them when they are fit to be rode, and get off them when they are
tired.” Mohammed was asked by his disciples: “Verily, are there rewards
for our doing good to quadrupeds and giving them water to drink? “He
said: “There are rewards for benefiting every animal having a moist
liver” (every sentient creature). He said again: “There is no Moslem who
planteth a tree or soweth a field, and man, birds or beasts eat from
them, but it is a charity for him.” Like all other religious teachers,
he was made by legend the central figure of a Nature Peace. He had
miraculous authority over beasts as well as over man, and beasts, more
directly than man, knew him to be from God. Once he was standing in the
midst of a crowd when a camel came and prostrated itself before him. His
companions exclaimed, “O Apostle of God! Beasts and trees worship thee,
then it is meet for us to worship thee.” Mohammed replied, “Worship God,
and you may honour your brother—that is, me.”
Those who know nothing else about Mohammed know the story of how he cut
away his sleeve rather than awaken his cat, which was sleeping upon it.
He is reported to have told how a woman was once punished for a cat: she
tied it till it died of hunger—she gave that cat nothing to eat, nor did
she allow it to go free, so that it might have eaten “the reptiles of
the ground.” (Cats do eat lizards and snakes too, even when they have
plenty of food—very bad for them it is.) Mohammed’s fondness of cats has
been suggested as the reason why two or three of them usually go with
the Caravan which takes the Sacred Carpet from Cairo to Mecca, but
perhaps the origin of that custom is far more remote.
[Illustration:
“AN INDIAN ORPHEUS.”
Royal Palace at Delhi.
(_Imitated from a painting by Raphael._)]
In the words of Mohammed there is this beautiful version of the “Sultan
Murad” cycle: an adulteress was passing by a well when she saw a dog
which was holding out its tongue from the thirst which was killing him.
The woman drew off her shoe and tied it to the end of her garment; then
she drew up water and gave the dog to drink. The dog fawned on her and
licked her hands. Now the Sultan was passing that way, and he saw the
woman and the dog and inquired into the matter. When he had heard all,
he told the guards to undo her chain and give her back her veil and lead
her to her own home.
On one occasion the Prophet met a man who had a nest of young doves, and
the mother fluttered after and even down about the head of him that held
it. The Prophet told him to put the nest back where he found it, for
this wondrous love comes from God.
The verse which gives the keynote to Moslem ideas about animals occurs
in the sixth chapter of the Koran, and runs thus: “There is no beast on
earth nor bird which flieth with its wings but the same is a people like
unto you, we have not omitted anything in the Book of our decrees; then
unto their Lord shall they return.” In other texts where the word
“creatures” is used there is a strong presumption that animals, as well
as men, genii and angels, are included; as, for instance, “unto Him do
all creatures which are in heaven and earth make petition,” and again,
“all God’s creatures are His family, and he is the most beloved of God
who trieth to do the most good to God’s creatures”—which is almost word
for word—
“He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
The common grace after eating is “Praise be to the Lord of all
creatures!” Moslem hunters and butchers have the custom, called the
Hallal, of pronouncing a formula of excuse (Bi’sm-illah!) before slaying
any animal. The author of “Malay Magic” mentions, that if a Malay takes
a tiger in a pitfall, the Pawang, or medicine-man, has to explain to the
quarry that it was not he that laid the snare but the Prophet Mohammed.
By orthodox Moslem law hunting was allowed, provided it was for some
definite end or necessity. It was legitimate to hunt for food, or for
clothing, as when the skin was the object. Dangerous wild beasts, the
incompatible neighbours of all but saints, might be hunted to protect
the more precious lives of men. Beyond this, from an orthodox point of
view, hunting was regarded as indefensible. Such was the rule, and there
is no greater mistake than to undervalue the moral standard because
every one does not attain to it. Perhaps few Moslems keep this rule
rigidly, but it is true now as it was when Lane wrote on the subject,
that a good Moslem who hunts for amusement does not seek to prolong the
chase: he tries to take the game as quickly as he can, and if it is not
dead when taken, it is instantly killed by having its throat cut. Such
amusements as shooting pigeons, or the unspeakable abomination of firing
at wild birds from ships, which makes certain tourist steamers a curse
in the Arctic regions, would inspire even the not too orthodox Moslem
with profound disgust.
There were some Moslems who went far beyond the law—for whom taking
life, when the fact of doing so came rudely before them, was a thing
revolting in itself. Such sensibility was manifest in the Persian poets,
and it has been attributed to their inherited Zoroastrian tendencies;
but to think this is to misunderstand the groundwork of Mazdean humane
teaching, which was not based on sensitiveness about taking life. Such
sensitiveness is rarely found, except among Aryan races, and
Zoroastrianism, though it spread among an Aryan people, was not an Aryan
religion. It is more likely to be true that the Persian peculiar
tenderness for animals was an atavistic revival of the old Aryan
temperament. Renan said that Sufism was a racial Aryan reaction against
_l’effroyable simplicité de l’esprit sémitique_. Sensitiveness about
animals was a necessary ingredient, so to speak, of Sufism. Sadi, the
Sufic poet _par excellence_, poured blessings on the departed spirit of
Firdusi for the couplet which Sir William Jones translated so well and
loved so much:—
“Ah, spare yon emmet, rich in hoarded grain;
He lives with pleasure, and he dies with pain.”
That birds and many, if not all, animals have a language by which they
can interchange their thoughts is a belief shared by Moslems, both
learned and ignorant. The Koran says that the language of birds was
understood by Solomon, and folk-lore gives many other persons credit for
the same accomplishment. A person believed to have such powers could
turn the belief, if not the powers, to uses both good and bad. An
Arabian tale relates how a pleasure-loving Persian king summoned a
Maubadz, a head Magian, to tell him what two owls were chattering about.
The Maubadz told with considerable detail the plan which the female owl
was unfolding to the male owl, of how each of their future numerous
offspring might be set up in life as sole possessor of a forsaken
village, if only the present “fortunate king” lived long enough. The
monarch understood the rebuke, and resolved to mend his ways, and to
encourage tillage and agriculture, instead of devoting himself to idle
pastimes.
[Illustration:
MOSLEM BEGGAR FEEDING DOGS AT CONSTANTINOPLE.]
Bird-trills mean sentences or words, chiefly religious. The pigeon cries
continually, “Alláh! Alláh!” The common dove executes this long
sentence: “Assert the unity of your Lord who created you, so will He
forgive you your sin.” There was a parrot who could repeat the whole
Koran by heart and could never be put out so as to make mistakes. I knew
of an old priest who repeated the _Divina Commedia_ from the first line
to the last, and the knowledge of the whole of the _Iliad_ was common in
ancient Athens, where people were laughed at who gave themselves the
airs of scholars on the ground of such feats of memory. But in the
bird-world the Moslem parrot surely stands alone, though we hear of a
pious raven who could say correctly the thirty-second chapter and who
always made the proper prostration when it came to the words: “My body
prostrateth itself before Thee, and my heart confideth in Thee.”
The chapter of the Koran entitled “the Ant” is full of charming zoology.
God bestowed knowledge on David and Solomon, and Solomon, who was
“David’s heir,” said to the people: “O men, we have been taught the
speech of birds, and have had all things bestowed on us: this is
manifest excellence.” The armies of Solomon consisted of men and genii
and birds: they were arrayed in proper order on an immense carpet of
green silk: the men were placed to the right, the genii to the left, and
the birds flew overhead, making a canopy of shade from the burning rays
of the sun. Solomon sat in the middle on his throne, and when it was
desired to move, the wind transported the carpet with all on it from one
place to another. This account, however, is not in the Koran, and need
not be believed. But that the armies were of the three species of beings
we have the highest authority for asserting. They arrived, one day, in
the Valley of Ants. A sentinel ant beheld the approaching host and
called to her companions to hasten into their habitations for fear that
Solomon and his armies should crush them underfoot without perceiving
it. This made Solomon smile, but while he laughed at her words, he yet
remembered to thank the Lord for the favour wherewith He had favoured
him: the privilege of knowing the language of beasts. After blessing
God, and praying that in the end He would take him into paradise among
His righteous servants, the king looked around at his feathered army and
lo! he missed the lapwing. Some say that the reason why he noticed her
absence was because in that place water was lacking for the ablution,
and, as every one knows, the lapwing is the water-finder. Be that as it
may (it is not stated in the Koran), he cried in displeasure: “What is
the reason I do not see the lapwing? Is she absent? Verily I will
chastise her with a severe punishment, or I will put her to death unless
she bring me a just excuse.” Not long did he have to wait before the
lapwing appeared, nor was the just excuse wanting. She had seen a
country which the king had not seen, and she brought hence a remarkable
piece of news. In the land of Saba (Sheba) a woman reigned who received
all the honour due to a great prince. She had a magnificent throne of
gold and silver; she and her people worshipped the Sun besides God.
Satan, added the lapwing, becoming controversial, had turned them away
from the truth lest they should worship the true God, from whom nothing
is hid. And then this little bird of a story like a fairy-tale ends her
discourse with one of those sharp, sudden, antithetical organ-blasts
which again and again lift the mind of the reader of the Koran into the
highest regions of poetry and religion: “God! there is no God but He;
the Lord of the Magnificent Throne!” What wonderful art there is in the
repetition of the words which had been applied just before to earthly
splendour! The effect is the same as that of the words in Arabic which
we see carved at every turn in the splendid halls of the Alhambra: “God
only is conqueror.” What is the splendour or the power of earthly kings?