XIII

It was only a dog.

Perhaps so.

The fact does not forbid the familiar question that rises always at

certain hours to the mind of man, and will continue to do so till time

shall cease, whether his friend take human or only canine form in life:

"But his spirit--where does his spirit rest?

It was God that made him--God knows best."

In truth, there is no answer to this question--"Whither?" And thus it is

that we are compelled to leave it according to our habit when we are at

fault, and much as the poet leaves it here. In the case of the man, we

think we understand. In that of the dog, our difficulty appears to defy

solution: it is no question of argument, assertions are idle, dogma has

no place. On the one hand we have those principles that come to man's

aid, but of which it would be unbecoming now to speak. The vast majority

of Christian men are enabled to ride out the storms of life without

confidence wholly giving way, and with the first of sheet-anchors fixed

in what is felt to be the best of holding ground. When, however, we turn

to the possible future status of the dog, there is no sheet-anchor, and

the holding ground is indifferent. Yet, in considering the case of the

man and the dog, we are not left without a certain measure of support

equally applicable to both. The spirit definable as the immediate

apprehension of the mind without reasoning--the spirit of intuition--aids

us on either hand. "We are endued," as Bishop Butler tells us, "with

capacities of perception"; and these enable us to accept much that lies

outside the actual region of proof, because our inner consciousness tells

us that we are not altogether on a false track, and that truths, if half

hidden, yet, of a certainty, exist in the direction in which we are

making earnest search.

We necessarily suffer here, as always, from the tendency that makes the

wish the father to the thought; or, in other words, we not infrequently

shovel the unpalatable overboard, that we may lighten the ship, and ride

out this or that squall without quite so much strain upon the

sheet-anchor aforesaid. The majority of mankind believe, and will

continue to believe, most staunchly in what they wish to believe. Yet

this tendency on our part--visible as it often is in directions where we

should least expect to find it--does not necessarily prove our beliefs

false, while it also leads us not infrequently direct to truths, however

unorthodox our course may have appeared to lookers-on.

In considering, then, the question of the possible future existence of

our canine friends, the dominant feeling is commonly this: We believe

that a future, in great probability, exists for them, because we feel

that not to believe this would be to turn the whole scheme of the

universe, as we understand it, into one little short of nonsense. We do

not stop to reason: such things are because they must be; they cannot

cease to be without total disfigurement of the plan of our conception.

Intuition points, and almost impulsively perhaps, in one direction. There

is "an intelligent Author of Nature or Natural Governor of the world."

Life is not made up of haphazards. Eventually there will be happiness in

completest form: otherwise there would be injustice, and of this, life,

as we know it, affords little or no evidence. For happiness to be

complete, there can be no question of the songs we are to hear being

indifferently harmonised, there can be no rifts in the lute: in a state

of perfection imperfections must necessarily be imperceptible.

With our narrow, human limitations we are driven to conclusions naturally

circumscribed and coloured by those limitations. We are cognisant of the

narrowness of the field of vision allowed us, and we are perpetually made

aware that we are beating our wings against the bars; but we nevertheless

accept this or that conclusion because it satisfies our souls, or we

refuse to accept it because we cannot honestly confess that it does so.

Yet, once again, behind both acceptance and rejection there is something

further--that intuition and power of perception that enable us to find

satisfaction in inferences that we know lie outside questions of faith,

but which we nevertheless feel to be true. And the very fact that we are

enabled to derive this satisfaction and to feel that our conclusions have

an element of truth in them tends to confirm us, rightly or wrongly, in

our conjectures.

Thus we come deliberately to the opinion that dogs will have a place in

the land over the border. Such an opinion may be a bold one; but there is

reason for believing that it is somewhat widely held. We naturally tend

to materialise when we build up our several pictures; but we sin here, if

at all, in the best of company. The city that lay foursquare, and that is

described to us in the vision in the Island of Patmos, was of pure gold,

with walls of jasper and gates of precious stones, and had within it

trees and birds and many divers animals, and material things of greatest

beauty, besides the figures of innumerable angels. The description could

not have been otherwise drawn if it was to be grasped by the mind of man,

even to a limited extent. So with ourselves. To conceive of a world with

all the attributes of beauty yet without flowers is impossible. To

realise a world full of music and song yet without birds may be possible,

but transcends the powers of most minds. To attempt to believe in the

happiness of a world where companionship is to be looked for and reunion

is promised, yet where the companionship of dogs is denied, is to strain

the belief of some to the uttermost and not improbably to fail.

"Nor," writes Bishop Butler in his immortal treatise, "can we find

anything throughout the whole analogy of nature to afford us even the

slightest presumption that animals ever lose their living powers; much

less, if it were possible, that they lose them by death: for we have no

faculties wherewith to trace any beyond or through it, so as to see what

becomes of them. This event removes them from our view. It destroys the

sensible proof, which we had before death, of their being possessed of

living powers, but does not appear to afford the least reason to believe

that they are, then, or by that event, deprived of them. And our knowing

that they were possessed of these powers, up to the very period to which

we have faculties capable of tracing them, is itself a probability of

their retaining them beyond it."

When Robert Southey looked for the last time on his old friend,

Phillis--and there is a bitter difference on such an occasion between

looking upon the young and the old--he tells how often in his earlier

days this dog and he had enjoyed childish sports together, and how, later

on, when hard times overtook him, he found delight in recalling the

faithful fondness of the friend in the distant home, and longed to feel

again the warmth of his dumb welcome. Then, when the old dog is at last

dead, and there has come a severance of these precious associations, he

breaks out with:

"Mine is no narrow creed;

And He who gave thee being did not frame

The mystery of life to be the sport

Of merciless man. There is another world

For all that live and move--a better one!

Where the proud bipeds, who would fain confine

Infinite goodness to the little bounds

Of their own charity, may envy thee!"

When we turn to the first of all books, the dog certainly appears to

receive harsh treatment. The term "dog" is invariably one of reproach.

Goliath cursing David asks, "Am I a dog?" Abner exclaims, "Am I a dog's

head?" St. Paul refers to false prophets as dogs. In the Psalms the dog

is found to be synonymous with the devil; in the Gospels it stands for

unholy men. Evil-workers are dogs; a dog is the equivalent of a fool;

nothing is lower than a dog, and nothing is to be more abhorred. Finally,

there is that hardest sentence of all--"Without are dogs"; as though any

hope for dogs was entirely forbidden. It is the same throughout: the

depraved of mankind are dogs, and the very acme of possible reproach and

contempt is apparently to be found in the use of this one term. Abandon

hope;--without, are you who are dogs!

But is the use of this term "dog" to be taken literally? There seems to

be ample evidence that it should not be. The very extravagance of the

language raises a doubt at once, just as the grotesqueness of the

application of the term shows that the dog itself could never have been

meant. St. Paul speaks of false prophets as dogs because of their

impudence and love of gain--characteristics hardly to be attributed to

the animal itself. The term "dead dog" was the most opprobrious to which

a Jew could lay his tongue; when David endeavoured to convey to the mind

of Saul that the persecution to which he was subjecting him was a

dishonour to himself, he asked him whom he was pursuing; was he pursuing

"after a dead dog"? If, as Horace has it, "death is the utmost boundary

of wealth and power," it is surely no less so of pursuit.

Then again, in the Psalms, David writes, "Deliver my soul from the sword,

my darling from the power of the dog"; in other words, the devil. All

dogs are not good dogs, though all dogs are good dogs to their respective

owners; but no dog can possibly be classed as we find him here, or as the

very image and likeness of the most depraved and debased of mankind as we

find him elsewhere. He is incapable of these sins; he does not fall into

these errors.

What we have to remember is apparently this. The earliest mention of the

dog in Scripture is in connection with the sojourn of the Israelites in

Egypt. The dog was declared by the Jewish law to be unclean; and it is

not improbable that the Jews were so taught to regard him in opposition

to those taskmasters who, they were well aware, held him sacred. Thus the

term dogs appears often as the reflection of a passionate and deep-seated

hatred, apart altogether from the animal's uncleanness, and also from the

animal itself. The word came in this way to be a useful one to hurl at

the head of an enemy at all times, or by which to classify those who

lived outside the pale of common, human decency. For such as these last

there could be no hope, and the term as applied to them was judged to

carry with it the bitterest stigma, just as it continues to do in the

East to the present day. To be a Christian is to be a dog; to be a Jew is

to be a dog; an infidel is a dog; and to be known as "a Jew's dog," or "a

dead dog," is to have sunk to the lowest depths of depravity in the eyes

of all men.

But the way in which dogs were regarded did not stop with Jewish edicts

and Jewish opinion. When the ancient Egyptians made way for another type,

and Moslems took their place, the dog, honoured before as has been shown,

fell at once into an inferior position. The Moslem law took its colour

largely from Jewish practice, and the dog was generally looked upon by

the Mahomedan as unclean. He continues, as all the world knows, to be

still so regarded. The dog, in the East, is at once tolerated and

neglected: he may be slightly better than the pig, but, like that wholly

unclean animal, he is a scavenger, living largely on offal and what he is

able to pick up.

He is thus, for the most part, a poor creature, leading a poor life, and

being often much to be pitied. That he should have any future prospects

before him, seeing him as he is, might well be doubted. But this must

also be remembered, that if he is in various stages of development in

these far-off lands, and with little chance of betterment, he does not

differ greatly in these respects from vast multitudes of men among whom

he moves, whether they be white, yellow, brown, or black. The conditions

of his life are little by which to condemn him, just as they would be

insufficient in the case of others. Moreover, all classes certainly do

not so condemn him, or do they look upon him in quite the same light. By

the Parsees, for instance, he is not regarded as wholly unclean. Many of

them keep English-bred dogs, as also do some of the more Europeanised

natives of other classes, treating them much as we do, though this is

still uncommon. Hindus of good class and Mahomedans are found generally

to avoid them; but here again many Hindus, and such a caste as Sweepers,

will touch a dog without considering themselves defiled, just as a

Mahomedan will often hold or take charge of a dog, though he be careful

not to do so by the chain, or leather lead, but by slipping his _jharan_,

or cloth, through the dog's collar, and handling him that way. In many

Mahomedan villages the dog is found in numbers, the inhabitants being

glad of his services in shepherding their goats, though condemning him to

live outside the house, even though there be likelihood of his being

carried off by a prowling leopard.

In certain directions, therefore, the dog is seen to be at least

tolerated. But there remains one other remarkable fact to be noted. No

one can have travelled in the East, especially in Turkey, without

remarking the way in which the dog is generally regarded. Yet, in spite

of this, he is all the while certainly classed as supernatural, and by no

less an authority than the Koran. His uncleanness must be recognised;

but, on the other hand, how are his fidelity and courage to be

overlooked? They cannot be. And so this unclean animal, from whom men

shrink, lest by chance their garments touch him as they pass, is given,

as already related, a position in Mahomed's paradise, and, because of his

character, is deemed worthy a special place in that land of supreme

bliss. There is a chance, then, for the outcast here.

* * * * *

It is time to look at the dog himself a little closer, and see what

characteristics he can bring forward in support of hopes that many human

beings entertain on his behalf.

Here is a dumb animal that, long before the dawn of history, is known to

have been man's close companion. Step by step, we see him advancing with

those to whom he is linked, until he raises himself immeasurably above

all other animals, and takes his place pre-eminently as the friend of

man. No one of those from whom he originally sprang was known to bark,

and no wild species does so. By and through man, the dog was endowed with

this means of expression, and was thus able to act as his more efficient

guard. It is an established fact that the dog barks when in contact with

man, and loses the power when separated from him. Such was the case with

the dogs that were left many years ago on the uninhabited island of Juan

Fernandez. The descendants of these dogs were found thirty years later to

have lost the power of barking, and only subsequently regained it with

difficulty.

The fact that the dog barks is not, however, the chief point. This

peculiar gift has been developed into a language, for it is by those

wonderful inflections of the voice in barking that the dog has learnt to

make man understand his meaning. Thus, as we all know, he is able to

convey, at will, a note of warning, to signal the approach of danger, to

show his anger, his alarm, his joy, the spirit that animates him in the

chase, to make his appeal for help, to declare the need of succour. His

bark has in these ways become his chief means of communication, quite

apart from the howl, the whimper, the whine, or the growl; the "singing"

that is associated with a pack of foxhounds baying at the moon; the

"talk" that the subject of these pages possessed to such an extraordinary

degree.

Then again, as he responded more readily to education, and acquired by

degrees something of the civilising instincts that were affecting man,

the dog became not only a trusty companion but a humble servant. Nor did

he stop here, for, what was still more remarkable, he certainly came by

degrees to reflect some of man's chief characteristics, as well as nearly

all human passions. By association of ideas he developed memory. By his

dreams and the various sounds he emits in sleep, he is seen to possess

imagination. His wonderful power of scent is found capable of being

turned to other uses than sport, and is even now not utilised in sundry

quarters as it might be. Then, too, he habitually forms his own

judgments, and these are usually exceedingly correct, as when he

recognises an intruder, or arrives at what is right and what is wrong

within the circle of his own domain. On many occasions he certainly gives

evidence of a conscience and the possession of the rudiments of the moral

sense. When he does wrong he frequently exhibits shame as well as

contrition, seeking forgiveness, and being often distinctly unhappy till

this is secured. So far does he occasionally carry this, that when he

knows he has transgressed rules, he will come and make confession, his

own honesty bringing upon him a punishment he would otherwise have

escaped, or serving to declare what was not previously suspected by those

about him.

But it is when we approach the higher qualities that the dog stands out

in his true light. The best of his class naturally possess these in

greatest perfection, but it is a fact that none are altogether without

them. His instinct, his patience and subservience to the will of his

master, his pluck and his courage, his fidelity that nothing seems

capable of undermining, his trustfulness, his power of sympathy with man

and with his own class, and, lastly, the touching and infinite depth of

his love--all these are characteristics that occasionally put man to

shame, but which make man always trust him more and more. In the face of

his marvellous instinct, man is not infrequently struck dumb as he

watches. A dog's patience is a thing to study, as well as one from which

to learn many a fair lesson. His pluck and courage are almost proverbial.

In many a case the odds against him seem not to make the slightest

difference: he will fight on to the end; let his master only lead, he

will follow to the death.

And it is here that his fidelity attains its very pinnacle. Faithful unto

death! Again and again, in innumerable instances, he has shown his

faithfulness long after the one he loved was dead. The dog in the

mediæval legend that dug his master's grave, covered him with moss and

leaves, and then watched there for seven years, until he died himself,

has found many a parallel in real life. A well-known dog in the days of

the Stewarts was still beside his master's tomb three years after the

latter's death; and, in much later times, another dog, at Lisle, refused

to come away from the spot where his master lay, and remained on guard

for nine long years, the villagers recognising his fidelity by building

him a kennel and bringing him his daily food until he died.

And if an instance of the exhibition of grief on the part of a dog is

called for, some will remember the little dog in the far-away Sudan. He

was the property of the only officer that fell at Ginnis, and who had

been in the habit of taking him everywhere. When his master was consigned

to the sand, this dog was seen to be cowering beside the stretcher,

looking even smaller than before; and, when all was over, he had to be

lifted away from the edge of the pit, where he lay with his head hanging

over the edge in an abject state of grief. He was only a dog, and a small

one; but many a man, hardened by the experiences of a campaign, turned

away his head at the sight.

Few can have been much in the company of dogs without becoming aware of

their power of sympathy, the way in which they almost invariably show

this to their own kind, and also especially to man. For a dog to be

injured or ill is for others at least to leave him in peace; but with man

they go much further, as they do in many directions where man is

concerned. When Lazarus lay at the gate of Dives, alone and neglected, it

was the dogs that came and licked his sores. So, too, in the hours of

human adversity, somehow or other, dogs appear to understand, and act

accordingly. How often the expression is heard--"They know!" The reason

of their conduct and their actions on such occasions is entirely hidden

from us, just as is that strange sense that dogs of highly developed

brains undoubtedly possess--awe of the unknown, and that has made some

conclude that they have an inkling of the spirit world.

Many dogs are subject to fits of nervousness, though for the most part

only in connection with things they do not understand or are unable to

grasp at the moment. At such times the dog invariably seeks the closer

company of his friend, man. On the other hand, the dog often understands

the meaning of sounds when man is at fault and a feeling of uncertainty

has been aroused. A glance at a dog, and the words--"the dog hasn't

moved," are quite sufficient then to reassure the watcher, possibly out

of doors on a dark night. Thus the one looks to the other for support and

confidence, and a mutual spirit of reliance exists between both.

There is little need to say much here of the dog's power of love, for

every one is aware of it, or may have been made richer by it in his life.

The old saying of centuries ago still holds good, and "the dog is the

only animal in creation that luvs you more than he luvs himself." There

are those who assert that all love is divine in origin. If this be so,

and the dog could be considered to have a religion, then undoubtedly his

religion is the love of man. We are brought face to face here with a

passion that, in the dog, knows no limits, and that is apparently

incapable of alienation. Faith, truth, love! What is to be said;--whence

come these amazing powers; for what object could they have been created

here? Perhaps the matter were better left where that other was just now.

We can only seek the shelter that is common to us in such circumstances.

"He knows, who gave that love sublime;

And gave that strength of feeling, great

Above all human estimate."

Once again, for ourselves, there is no definite answer. The whole

question forms but one more problem added to an interminable sequence,

and in the face of which the man and the dog are both dumb.

Yet when we look back, and ask ourselves, "Are all these for naught?" is

it still man's province to be mute? Many further questions crowd up to

the mind here, as they ever do in yet graver issues. In our weakness and

our anxiety we cannot suffer our case to go by default, even though we

confess our inability to answer the questions one by one as they appear.

We can only turn away our heads and say, "Such things can _not_ be." This

close relationship cannot be cut off and cease for ever. This touching

interdependence cannot be brought to a sudden and a final end. The

sparrows cannot be cared for and the dogs cast out. In other words,

living things among animals, not directly associated with human beings in

their lives, cannot, surely, be singly preserved and those which have won

our love and loved us in return be lost to us for ever and condemned.

Is it possible that all these marvellous qualities and characteristics,

gathered together into one dumb animal, are to pass away and to have no

place in the larger circuit of life? Are all these consolations that this

animal, and this animal alone among the so-called dumb, is capable of

bringing--are all the influences for good that he is granted the power of

exercising upon the mind, the spirit, and the very soul of man--to be

accounted of no worth; to be merely so many items to be used up in the

furtherance of a great scheme and plan; to be dissipated even as the

mists of the dawn when the day shall at last break? Surely,--can such

things be? Human judgment and human justice are for ever fallible, and

rough expedients at best. But that other judgment for which we look, and

that other justice upon which we are wont mentally to lean, cannot

possibly be either one or the other.

Something, then, of our case may assuredly be left there. We cannot

answer the questions; but, as we confront them, we yet cannot cut

ourselves free from that spirit of intuition spoken of above, or cease to

draw our several inferences. Continuity in Nature faces us at every turn.

All things work together for the final perfection of the whole--for the

final transcendent beauty and completeness of the whole. There is unity

in all. Of that most are certain; and men walk therefore in good hope.

There is mystery at every turn. There is no escape from it. There is ever

the demand for the making of a good fight in the face of it. And there is

promise of victory in the end on the part of One

"Who by low creatures leads to heights of love."

We are not all willing to accept such things. We do not all, in our march

in life, require the same tools to win our way. Neither do we all look in

the same direction--not for help, merely, but for those common daily aids

that we gather, or that are gatherable, from the simple and the great,

from the animate and the inanimate, from the stained as from the

beautiful and the pure.

In writing of the death of an animal second only to the dog,

Whyte-Melville asks this:

"There are men both good and wise who hold that, in a future state,

Dumb creatures we have cherished here below

Will give us joyous greeting as we pass the golden gate.

Is it folly if I hope it may be so?"

It may be folly. Yet the writer of these pages does not doubt it. And

therefore, in the quiet corner of the beautiful home, when Murphy was

laid to rest close by Dan, these words were cut upon his headstone, in

faith and in good hope:

MURPHY

DEAR BOY

1906-1911

"Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast."