natural history shown by Celsus: his ants are nearly as conscientiously
observed as Lord Avebury’s. Yet a certain suspicion of conscious
exaggeration detracts from the seriousness of his arguments; he strikes
one as more sincere in disbelieving than in believing. A modern writer
has remarked that Celsus in the second half of the second century
forestalled Darwin in the second half of the nineteenth by denying human
ascendancy and contending that man may be a little lower than the brute.
But it scarcely seems certain whether he was convinced by his own
reasoning or was not rather replying by paradoxes to what he considered
the still greater paradoxes of Christian theology.
The shadow of no such doubt falls on the pages of the neoplatonists
Plotinus and Porphyry. To them the destiny of animals was not an
academic problem but an obsession. The questions which Heine’s young man
asked of the waves: “What signifies man? Whence does he come? Whither
does he go?” were asked by them with passionate earnestness in their
application to all sentient things. Plotinus reasoned, with great force,
that intelligent beast-souls must be like the soul of man since in
itself the essence of the soul could not be different. Porphyry (born at
Tyre, A.D. 233), accepting this postulate that animals possess an
intelligent soul like ours, went on to declare that it was therefore
unlawful to kill or feed on them under any circumstances. If justice is
due to rational beings, how is it possible to evade the conclusion that
we are also bound to act justly towards the races below us? He who loves
all animated nature will not single out one tribe of innocent beings for
hatred; if he loves the whole he will love every part, and, above all,
that part which is most closely allied to ourselves. Porphyry was quite
ready to admit that animals in their own way made use of words, and he
mentions Melampus and Apollonius as among the philosophers who
understood their language. He quoted with approval the laws supposed to
have been framed by Triptolemus in the reign of Pandion, fifth king of
Athens: “Honour your parents; make oblations of your fruits to the gods;
hurt not any living creature.”
Neoplatonism penetrated into the early Church, but divested of its views
on animal destiny; even the Catholic neoplatonist Boëthius, though he
was sensitively fond of animals (witness his lines about caged birds),
yet took the extreme view of the hard-and-fast line of separation, as
may be seen by his poem on the “downward head,” which he interpreted to
indicate the earth-bound nature of all flesh save man. Birds, by the by,
and even fishes, not to speak of camel-leopards, can hardly be said to
have a “downward head.” Meanwhile, the other manner of feeling, if not
of thinking, reasserted its power as it always will, for it belongs to
the primal things. Excluded from the broad road, it came in by the
narrow way—the way that leads to heaven. In the wake of the Christian
Guru came a whole troop of charming beasts, little less saintly and
miraculous than their holy protectors, and thus preachers of the
religion of love were spared the reproach of showing an all-unloving
face towards creatures that could return love for love as well as most
and better than many of the human kind. The saint saved the situation,
and the Church wisely left him alone to discourse to his brother fishes
or his sister turtle-doves, without inquiring about the strict orthodoxy
of the proceeding.
Unhappily the more direct inheritors of neoplatonist dreams were not
left alone. A trend of tendency towards Pythagoreanism runs through
their different developments from Philo to the Gnostics, from the
Gnostics, through the Paulicians to the Albigenses. It passes out of our
sight when these were suppressed in the thirteenth century by the most
sanguinary persecution that the world has seen, but before long it was
to reappear in one shape or another, and we may be sure that the thread
was never wholly lost.
[Illustration:
“IL BUON PASTORE.”
(_Mosaic at Ravenna._)]
An effort has been made to prove that the official as well as the
unofficial Church always favoured humanity to animals. The result of
this effort has been wholly good; not only has it produced a delightful
volume,[10] but, indirectly, it was the cause of Pope Pius X.
pronouncing a blessing on every one who is working for the prevention of
cruelty to animals throughout the world. _Roma locuta est._ To me this
appears to be a landmark in ethics of first-class importance.
Nevertheless, historically speaking, it is difficult to resist the
conclusion that the diametrically opposite view expressed by Father
Rickaby in a manual intended for use in the Jesuit College at
Stonyhurst,[11] more correctly gives the measure of what had been the
practical teaching of the Church in all these ages. Even now,
authoritative Catholics, when enjoining humanity to animals, are careful
to add that man has “no duties” towards them, though they may modify
this by saying with Cardinal Manning (the most kind-hearted of men) that
he owes “a sevenfold obligation” to their Creator to treat them well.
Was it surprising that the Neapolitan peasant who heard from his priest
that he had no duties to his ass went home, not to excogitate the
sevenfold obligation but to belabour the poor beast soundly? Though the
distinction is capable of philosophical defence, granted the premises,
to plain people it looks like a juggling with words. When St. Philip
Neri said to a monk who put his foot on a lizard, “What has the poor
creature done to you?” he implied a duty to the animal, the duty of
reciprocity. He spoke with the voice of Nature and forgot, for the
moment, that animals were not “moral persons” nor “endowed with reason,”
and that hence they could have “no rights.”
Footnote 10:
“L’Église et la Pitié envers les animaux,” Paris, 1903. An English
edition has been published by Messrs. Burns and Oates.
Footnote 11:
“Moral Philosophy,” p. 250.
At an early date, in the heart of official Catholicism, an inconsistency
appeared which is less easily explained than homilies composed for
fishes or hymns for birds; namely, the strange business of animal
prosecutions. Without inquiring exactly what an animal is, it is easy to
bestow upon it either blessings or curses. The beautiful rite of the
blessing of the beasts which is still performed once a year in many
places involves no doctrinal crux. In Corsica the priest goes up to the
high mountain _plateaux_ where the animals pasture in the summer, and
after saying Mass in presence of all the four-footed family, he solemnly
blesses them and exhorts them to prosper and multiply. It is a
delightful scene, but it does not affect the conception of the moral
status of animals, nor would that conception be affected by a right-down
malediction or order to quit. What, however, can be thought of a regular
trial of inconvenient or offending animals in which great care is taken,
to keep up the appearance of fair-play to the defendants? Our first
impression is, that it must be an elaborate comedy; but a study of the
facts makes it impossible to accept this theory.
The earliest allusions to such trials that seem to exist belong to the
ninth century, which does not prove that they were the first of the
kind. One trial took place in 824 A.D. The Council of Worms decided in
866 that if a man has been killed by bees they ought to suffer death,
“but,” added the judgment, “it will be permissible to eat their honey.”
A relic of the same order of ideas lingers in the habit some people have
of shooting a horse which has caused a fatal accident, often the direct
consequence of bad riding or bad driving. The earlier beast trials of
which we have knowledge were conducted by laymen, the latter by
ecclesiastics, which suggests their origin in a folk-practice. A good,
characteristic instance began on September 5, 1370. The young son of a
Burgundian swineherd had been killed by three sows which seemed to have
feared an attack on one of their young ones. All members of the herd
were arrested as accomplices, which was a serious matter to their
owners, the inmates of a neighbouring convent, as the animals, if
convicted, would be burnt and their ashes buried. The prior pointed out
that three sows alone were guilty; surely the rest of the pigs ought to
be acquitted. Justice did not move quickly in those times; it was on
September 12, 1379, that the Duke of Burgundy delivered judgment; only
the three guilty sows and one young pig (what had _it_ done?) were to be
executed; the others were set at liberty “notwithstanding that they had
seen the death of the boy without defending him.” Were the original ones
all alive after nine years? If so, would so long a respite have been
granted them had no legal proceedings been instituted?
An important trial took place in Savoy in the year 1587. The accused was
a certain fly. Two suitable advocates were assigned to the insects, who
argued on their behalf that these creatures were created before man, and
had been blessed by God, who gave them the right to feed on grass, and
for all these and other good reasons the flies were in their right when
they occupied the vineyards of the Commune; they simply availed
themselves of a legitimate privilege conformable to Divine and natural
law. The plaintiffs’ advocate retorted that the Bible and common sense
showed animals to be created for the utility of man; hence they could
not have the right to cause him loss, to which the counsel for the
insects replied that man had the right to command animals, no doubt, but
not to persecute, excommunicate and interdict them when they were merely
conforming to natural law “which is eternal and immutable like the
Divine.”
The judges were so deeply impressed by this pleading that to cut the
case short, which seemed to be going against him, the Mayor of St.
Julien hastened to propose a compromise; he offered a piece of land
where the flies might find a safe retreat and live out their days in
peace and plenty. The offer was accepted. On June 29, 1587, the citizens
of St. Julien were bidden to the market square by ringing the church
bells, and after a short discussion they ratified the agreement which
handed over a large piece of land to the exclusive use of the insects.
Hope was expressed that they would be entirely satisfied with the
bargain. A right of way across the land was, indeed, reserved to the
public, but no harm whatever was to be done to the flies on their own
territory. It was stated in the formal contract that the reservation was
ceded to the insects in perpetuity.
All was going well, when it transpired that, in the meantime, the flies’
advocates had paid a visit to that much-vaunted piece of land, and when
they returned, they raised the strongest objection to it on the score
that it was arid, sterile, and produced nothing. The mayor’s counsel
disputed this; the land, he said, produced no end of nice small trees
and bushes, the very things for the nutrition of insects. The judges
intervened by ordering a survey to find out the real truth, which survey
cost three florins. There, alas! the story ends, for the winding up of
the affair is not to be found in the archives of St. Julien.
Records of 144 such trials have come to light. Of the two I have
described, it will be remarked that one belongs, as it were, to criminal
and the other to civil law. The last class is the most curious. No doubt
the trial of flies or locusts was resorted to when other means of
getting rid of them had failed; it was hoped, somehow, that the
elaborate appearance of fair-play would bring about a result not to be
obtained by violence. We can hardly resist the inference that they
involved some sort of recognition or intuition of animals’ rights and
even of animal intelligence.
In the dawn of modern literature animals played a large, though
artificial, part which must not be quite ignored on account of its
artificiality, because in the Bestiaries as in the Æsopic and Oriental
fables from which they were mainly derived, there was an inextricable
tangle of observations of the real creature and arbitrary ascription to
him of human qualities and adventures. At last they became a mere method
for attacking political or ecclesiastical abuses, but their great
popularity was as much due to their outer as to their inner sense. There
is not any doubt that at the same time floods of Eastern fairy-tales
were migrating to Europe, and in these the most highly appreciated hero
was always the friendly beast. In a romance of the thirteenth century
called “Guillaume de Palerme” all previous marvels of this kind were
outdone by the story of a Sicilian prince who was befriended by a
were-wolf!
It is not generally remembered that the Indian or Buddhist view of
animals must have been pretty well known in Europe at least as early as
the fourteenth century. The account of the monastery “where many strange
beasts of divers kinds do live upon a hill,” which Fra Odoric, of
Pordenone, dictated in 1330, is a description, both accurate and
charming, of a Buddhist animal refuge, and in the version given of it in
Mandeville’s “Travels,” if not in the original, it must have been read
by nearly every one who could read, for no book ever had so vast a
diffusion as the “Travels” of the elusive Knight of St. Albans.
With the Italian Renaissance came the full modern æsthetic enjoyment of
animals; the admiration of their beauty and perfection which had been
appreciated, of course, long before, but not quite in the same spirit.
The all-round gifted Leo Battista Alberti in the fifteenth century took
the same critical delight in the points of a fine animal that a modern
expert would take. He was a splendid rider, but his interest was not
confined to horses; his love for his dog is shown by his having
pronounced a funeral oration over him. We feel that with such men
humanity towards animals was a part of good manners. “We owe justice to
men,” said the intensely civilised Montaigne, “and grace and benignity
to other creatures that are capable of it; there is a natural commerce
and mutual obligation between them and us.” Sir Arthur Helps, speaking
of this, called it “using courtesy to animals,” and when one comes to
think of it, is not such “courtesy” the particular mark and sign of a
man of good breeding in all ages?
The Renaissance brought with it something deeper than a wonderful
quickening of the æsthetic sense in all directions; it also brought that
spiritual quickening which is the co-efficient of every really upward
movement of the human mind. Leonardo da Vinci, greatest of
artist-humanists, inveighed against cruelty in words that might have
been written by Plutarch or Porphyry. His sympathies were with the
vegetarian. Meanwhile, Northern Churchmen who went to Rome were
scandalised to hear it said in high ecclesiastical society that there
was no difference between the souls of men and beasts. An attempt was
made to convert Erasmus to this doctrine by means of certain extracts
from Pliny. Roman society, at that time, was so little serious that one
cannot believe it to have been serious even in its heterodoxy. But
speculations more or less of the same sort were taken up by men of a
very different stamp; it was to be foreseen that animals would have
their portion of attention in the ponderings of the god-intoxicated
musers who have been called the Sceptics of the Renaissance. For the
proof that they did receive it we have only to turn to the pages of
Giordano Bruno. “Every part of creation has its share in being and
cognition.” “There is a difference, not in quality, but in quantity,
between the soul of man, the animal and the plant.” “Among horses,
elephants and dogs there are single individuals which appear to have
almost the understanding of men.”
Bruno’s prophetic guess that instinct is inherited habit might have
saved Descartes (who was much indebted to the Nolan) from giving his
name an unenviable immortality in connexion with the theory which is
nearly all that the ignorant know now of Cartesian philosophy. This was
the theory that animals are automata, a sophism that may be said to have
swept Europe, though it was not long before it provoked a reaction.
Descartes got this idea from the very place where it was likely to
originate, from Spain. A certain Gomez Pereira advanced it before
Descartes made it his own, which even led to a charge of plagiarism.
“Because a clock marks time and a bee makes honey, we are to consider
the clock and the bee to be machines. Because they do one thing better
than man and no other thing so well as man, we are to conclude that they
have no mind, but that Nature acts within them, holding their organs at
her disposal.” “Nor are we to think, as the ancients do, that animals
speak, though we do not know their language, for, if that were so, they,
having several organs related to ours, might as easily communicate with
us as with each other.”
About this, Huxley showed that an almost imperceptible imperfection of
the vocal chord may prevent articulated sounds. Moreover, the click of
the bushmen, which is almost their only language, is exceedingly like
the sounds made by monkeys.
Language, as defined by an eminent Italian man of science, Professor
Broca, is the faculty of making things known, or expressing them by
signs or sounds. Much the same definition was given by Mivart, and if
there be a better one, we have still to wait for it. Human language is
evolved; at one time man had it not. The babe in the cradle is without
it; the deaf mute, in his untaught state, is without it; _ergo_ the babe
and the deaf mute cannot feel. Poor babes and poor deaf mutes should the
scientific Loyolas of the future adopt this view!
I do not know if any one has remarked that rural and primitive folk can
never bring themselves to believe of any foreign tongue that it is real
human language like their own. To them it seems a jargon of meaningless
and uncouth sounds.
Chanet, a follower of Descartes, said that he would believe that beasts
thought when a beast told him so. By what cries of pain, by what looks
of love, have not beasts told men that they thought! Man himself does
not think in words in moments of profound emotion, whether of grief or
joy. _He cries out_ or he _acts_. Thought in its absolutely elementary
form is _action_. The mother thinks in the kiss she gives her child. The
musician thinks in music. Perhaps God thinks in constellations. I asked
a man who had saved many lives by jumping into the sea, “What did you
think of at the moment of doing it?” He replied: “You do not think, or
you might not do it.”
The whole trend of philosophic speculation worthy of the name lies
towards unity, but the Cartesian theory would arbitrarily divide even
man’s physical and sensational nature from that of the other animals. To
remedy this, Descartes admitted that man was just as much an automatic
machine as other creatures. By what right, then, does he complain when
he happens to have a toothache? Because, says Descartes triumphantly,
man has an immortal soul! The child thinks in his mother’s womb, but the
dog, which after scenting two roads takes the third without demur, sure
that his master must have gone that way, this dog is acting “by springs”
and neither thinks nor feels at all.
The misuse of the ill-treated word “Nature” cannot hide the fact that
the beginning, middle, and end of Descartes’ argument rests on a
perpetually recurrent miracle. Descartes confessed as much when he said
that God _could_ make animals as machines, so why should it be
impossible that He _had_ made them as machines? Voltaire’s clear reason
revolted at this logic; he declared it to be absurd to imagine that God
had given animals organs of feeling in order that they might _not_ feel.
He would have endorsed Professor Romanes’ saying that “the theory of
animal automatism which is usually attributed to Descartes can never be
accepted by common sense.”
On the other hand, while Descartes was being persecuted by the Church
for opinions which he did _not_ hold, this particular opinion of his was
seized upon by Catholic divines as a vindication of creation. Pascal so
regarded it. The miraculous element in it did not disturb him.
Malebranche said though opposed by reason it was approved by faith.
Descartes said that the idea that animals think and feel is a relic of
childhood. The idea that they do _not_ think and feel might be more
truly called a relic of that darkest side of perverse childhood, the
existence of which we are all fain to forget. Whoever has seen a little
child throwing stones at a toad on the highway—and sad because his hands
are too small to take up the bigger stones to throw—will understand what
I mean. I do not wish to allude more than slightly to a point which is
of too much importance to pass over in silence. Descartes was a
vivisector: so were the pious people at Port Royal who embraced his
teaching with enthusiasm, and liked to hear the howls of the dogs they
vivisected. M. Émile Ferrière, in his work “L’âme est la fonction du
cerveau,” sees in the “souls” of beasts exactly the same nature as in
the “soul” of man; the difference, he maintains, is one of degree;
though generally inferior, it is sometimes superior to “souls” of
certain human groups. Here is a candid materialist who deserves respect.
But there is a school of physiologists nowadays which carries on an
unflagging campaign in favour of belief in unconscious animal machines
which work by springs, while denying that there is a God to wind up the
springs, and in conscious human machines, while denying that there is a
soul, independent of matter, which might account for the difference.
“The wish is father to the thought.” _Non ragionam di lor ma guarda e
passa._
The strongest of all reasons for dismissing the machine theory of
animals is their variety of idiosyncrasy. It is said that to the
shepherd no two sheep look alike; it is certain that no two animals of
any kind have the same characters. Some are selfish, some are unselfish,
some are gentle, some irretrievably ill-tempered both to each other and
to man. Some animals do not show much regret at the loss of their
offspring, with others it is manifestly the reverse. Édouard Quinet
described how on one occasion, when visiting the lions’ cage in the
Jardin des Plantes, he observed the lion gently place his large paw on
the forehead of the lioness, and so they remained, grave and still, all
the time he was there. He asked Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who was with
him, what it meant. “Their lion cub,” was the answer, “died this
morning.” “Pity, benevolence, sympathy, could be read on those rugged
faces.” That these qualities are often absent in sentient beings what
man can doubt? But they are not to be found in the best mechanical
animals in all Nuremberg!
Nor do machines commonly act as did the dog in the following true story
which relates to something that happened during the earthquake of Ash
Wednesday, 1887. At a place called Ceriana on the Italian Riviera a poor
man who earned his living as a milk-carrier was supposed to have gone on
his ordinary rounds, on which he was used to start at four o’clock in
the morning. No one, therefore, thought of inquiring about him, but the
fact was, that having taken a glass or two of wine in honour of the last
night of the Carnival, he had overslept himself, and was still asleep
when his cottage fell down upon him. He had a large dog which drew the
little cart bearing the milk up the mountain paths, and the dog by
chance was outside and safe. He found out where his master lay and
succeeded in clearing the masonry so as to uncover his head, which was
bleeding. He then set to work to lick the wounds; but, seeing that they
went on bleeding, and also that he could not liberate the rest of the
body, he started in search of help, running up and down among the
surrounding ruins till he met some one, whom he caught hold of by the
clothes. The man, however, thought that the dog was mad and fled for his
life. Luckily, another man guessed the truth and allowed himself to be
guided to the spot. History repeats itself, at least the history of
devoted dogs. The same thing happened after the greater earthquake at
Messina, when a man, one of the last to be saved, was discovered through
the insistence of his little dog, who approached a group of searchers
and whined piteously till he persuaded them to follow him to the ruins
which concealed his master.