William Lauder Lindsay

“ There are such things in the dog, elephant, horse, and other animals as excess of zeal, wrong ideas of duty, mistakes in the mode of discharging it, and morbid conscientiousness. Man's cruel taunts not unfrequently lead the too willing horse or elephant to the attempting of tasks for which their strength, or lack thereof, does not qualify them, and death in or from such attempts is the occasional result; while the dog sometimes carries its honesty or fidelity in the defense of a trust to a ridiculous extent, or displays qualities, noble in themselves, under absurd circumstances. ”

“ In the dog there is sometimes obviously the same kind of conflict and collision between virtue and selfishness, between a sense of what is right—which is too generally also what is painful, what calls for terrible self-denial and suffering, including the physical pangs of hunger and thirst, as well as the moral pangs, say, of unsatisfied revenge—and a sense of what is simply pleasant and profitable. ”

“ The dog, at least, frequently exhibits a knowledge of right and wrong, making a deliberate choice of the one or the other, perfectly aware of and prepared for the consequences of such a selection. The animal has occasionally the moral courage to choose the right and to suffer for it, to bear wrong rather than do it (Elam) , Not only does this frequently noble animal know the right, but it dares to do it, enduring the expected, the inevitable, consequent suffering. ”

“ The dog, horse, mule, elephant, and other animals have frequently a distinct sense, feeling, or knowledge of duty, trust, or task; and this not only as regards their own personal obligations, but in so far as duty of various kinds is attachable to other individuals of the same species, or to those of other genera and species, including man himself—when, for instance, such duty of man's has any immediate reference to, or connection with, themselves. In other words, they have clear conceptions of their own duties and of the duties of others, including man, in relation to them. ”

“ Conscience is frequently as severe a monitor in other animals as in man, its reproaches as stinging and hard to be borne, its torments sometimes intolerable. We may speak quite correctly, for instance, of the conscience-stricken animal thief, the cat or dog caught in the act of pilfering from the larder. The signs of detected and acknowledged guilt are the same in kind as would be exhibited under parallel circumstances by the human child. The animal, like the child, if rendered sensitive by previous moral training, shows unmistakably its consciousness of delinquency. ”

“ One of the many evidences that the dog is sensible of right doing is to be found in the familiar fact that when it performs an action which to it seems meritorious, or which it has reason to believe its master will deem so—when it saves a life, or successfully defends a trust, or resists some great temptation—it looks at once for some sign of the said master's approbation, perhaps for some reward. ”

“ Punishment which they know to be undeserved they resent—sometimes dangerously to man—and in doing so they discriminate and estimate man's injustice.
The bread-buying dog does very much the same thing—detects and protests against man's unfair dealing when, offering its penny for a roll, a baker tries, waggishly or otherwise, to cheat it by giving it something of inferior value or refusing it a quid pro quo at all. ”

“ The choice that is finally made between the right, the expedient, and the wrong is determined by a variety of considerations—by conflicting emotions, by the balancing of probabilities and inclinations, by the degree or kind of temptation, by the presence or absence of witnesses, especially human, by other specialties of an animal's position, by the nature and extent of its moral training, by the character of the rewards and punishments offered on previous occasions. ”

“ These tribunals have, in other words, recognized the power the guilty animals have possessed of selecting between the right and the wrong, and of their having chosen the latter with full knowledge of consequences. And in all these respects human judges have so far formed correct conclusions or decisions, though they have erred in forgetting that the criminality in such cases has been the evil fruit of man's education of his animal accomplices. ”

“ It ought to be not a little humiliating to man's pride that the so-called "lower" animals have so frequently to act as mediators in human quarrels—to defend lordly man against his own species.
In the same sense in which it can be said that the dog and other animals are endowed sometimes with a perception of wrong, it may also be said that they acquire a sense of the illegality of certain not only of their own actions, but also of man's. ”

“ It has to be remarked that the moral virtues are illustrated mainly by or in those animals that have directly or indirectly received their moral training from man—such animals as the dog, elephant, and horse. As a general rule—to which there are exceptions both in man and other animals—the human child and the young animal can equally be educated both to distinguish and do the right. ”

“ When a large, magnanimous, powerful dog—for instance, of the Newfoundland breed—has allowed impulse or passion to hurry it into some rash act, such as killing or too severely punishing some puny pug that has been merely forward, impudent, or annoying, it frequently and eloquently expresses its shame, regret, or remorse.
As in man, conscience or conscientiousness sometimes has its strange or striking vagaries, eccentricities, or inconsistencies in other animals. ”

“ No doubt what is popularly spoken of as a sense of right or wrong, of legality or illegality, in the lower animals may, or will if strictly analyzed, be reduced to a distinction between what forbidden and what is permitted by man, who is recognized as a sufficient lawgiver and administrator—what will bring punishment on the one hand and reward on the other. ”

“ But this is just the kind of feeling as to right and wrong, legality and illegality, that exists in the savage adult, that is generated at first in the civilized child, that is exhibited (if at all) in the criminal, the lunatic, or the idiot. It can not be truthfully affirmed that abstract or refined ideas of moral good and evil are common to all ranks of men, or are innate even in civilized man. ”

“ Quite as frequently, perhaps, parental or maternal duties of a natural and important character are delegated or left to any other animal possessed of a sufficiently powerful charity or compassion, a sufficiently strong maternal or parental "instinct." The duties of parentage or otherwise may be simply left undischarged without the slightest regard to the results of such neglect; every opportunity may be taken of shirking work that is disagreeable, or a task of whatever nature is executed in a very perfunctory, perhaps merely nominal way. ”

“ It very quickly and readily comprehends what it is that man wishes and expects it to do, and it very soon learns to execute its task without supervision, bringing to the discharge of its duty so much zeal or heartiness, so much conscientiousness, that it frequently displays an obvious dread of failure in, or of inability for, the due fulfillment of its trust, even when the causes of such failure or incompetency, where they exist, scarcely come within, or are altogether beyond, the animal's control. ”

“ In our brother man, and with all the help that spoken and written language can give us, there can be no doubt of the difficulty, frequently the utter impossibility, of knowing whether any and what conceptions exist as to right or wrong, good or evil, justice or injustice, honesty or dishonesty. ”

“ Practically, however, as has been seen, as practically as in whole races of man, the dog and other animals give unquestionable evidence that they know what, according to man's law to them, is right and wrong, and they prefer to do the one or the other according to their individuality and the character of their previous moral training. ”

“ ALL the ordinary definitions of what is variously called in man the moral sense—sentiment, feeling, faculty, or instinct—apply, though not necessarily equally, in the same degree, with quite the same sense or force, to an equivalent mental attribute or series of psychical qualities in other animals, and which attribute or qualities in other animals there is no good reason for distinguishing by any other name, simply because they are to be found in animals zoölogically lower than man. ”

“ There is not one of these moral qualities that is not possessed, sometimes in a high degree, by certain of the lower animals, and more especially the dog; and there are many authors, who have been desirous of drawing marked psychical distinctions between man and other animals, who have nevertheless felt themselves compelled by the evidence of facts to concede to these other animals, or certain of them, the possession of morality akin to that of man. ”

“ The dogs of the brigand, smuggler, or poacher, like those of the sheep-stealer, display a knowledge of the illegality of the operations in which they are habitually engaged. They take all means of avoiding custom-house officers or gamekeepers, deliberately making use of all kinds of deception; but to all this they are trained by man. ”

“ Moral perfectibility may be aimed at, though it can not be attained; but the degree of moral excellence attainable is such in other animals, as in the child, that it should stimulate man to put forth all efforts in the moral training of both. ”

“ It understands its master's accusation as conveyed by eye, tone, word, gesture, and it either makes instant effort to escape the punishment which it knows it has incurred and deserved, or, if escape be hopeless, it, as calmly as may be, awaits the said punishment, and does not resent it, as it would did it feel it to be unmerited. ”

“ Duties that are voluntarily assumed, that are frequently of an irksome and even of an unnatural kind, are sometimes discharged in the most admirable way—for instance, by self-constituted foster-parents that have adopted orphaned or deserted young, often belonging to other genera and species, and even to natural enemies. ”

“ On the other hand, one of the occasionally base or bad purposes to which the same bird applies its wonderful gift of speech is mendacity: so that it is capable at once of "telling lies" itself and of detecting and reprimanding falsehood in man. ”

“ A case happened recently in Ireland of a pet cow that defended its mistress against the ill usage of its master, its mistress's husband; and many instances have been recorded of the dog, elephant, and horse doing similar kindnesses to their human favorites. ”

“ It must also distinguish between the right and the expedient—what would be most for its own interest to do. In other words, it is just as apt as man is, and not more so, to take a selfish view of all affairs—to consider how they are likely to affect its own personal interests. ”

“ It need, therefore, be no matter of surprise if we can not ascertain or demonstrate the presence or absence of any sort of definite conceptions on such subjects in the dogs, fowls, or other domestic animals that are so constantly under man's observation. ”