Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/235

Rh with regard to the emotional life of animals, so I will pass on at once to the faculty of Conscience. Of course, the moral sense, as it occurs in ourselves, involves ideas of high abstraction, so that in animals we can only expect to meet with a moral sense in a very rudimentary form; and, therefore, even if it is true that no indications of such a sense are to be met with in animals, the fact would not establish any difference in kind between animal intelligence and human. But I am inclined to believe that in highly-intelligent, highly-sympathetic, and tolerably well-treated animals, the germs of a moral sense become apparent. To give two instances: I once shut up a Skye terrier in a room by himself while I went to a friend's house. The dog must have been thrown into a violent passion at being left behind, for when I returned I found that he had torn the window-curtains to shreds. He was in great joy at seeing me; but as soon as I picked up one of the torn shreds of the curtains the animal gave a howl and ran screaming up the staircase. Now, this dog was never chastised in his life, so that I can only explain his conduct as an expression of the remorse which he suffered at having done in a passion what he knew would cause me annoyance. So far as I can interpret the facts, his sympathetic affection for me, coupled with the memory of his misdeeds, created in his mind a genuine feeling of repentance.

The other instance I have to narrate occurred with the same terrier. Only once in his life was he ever known to steal; and on this occasion, when very hungry, he took a cutlet from a table and carried it under a sofa. I saw him perform this act of larceny, but pretended not to have done so, and for a number of minutes he remained under the sofa with his feelings of hunger struggling against his feelings of duty At last the latter triumphed; for he brought the stolen cutlet and laid it at my feet. Immediately after doing so he again ran under the sofa, and from this retreat no coaxing could draw him. Moreover, when I patted his head he turned away his face in a ludicrously conscience-stricken manner. Now, I regard this instance as particularly valuable, from the fact that the terrier in question had never been beaten, and hence that it cannot have been fear of bodily pain which prompted these actions. On the whole, therefore, I can only suppose that we have in these actions evidence of as high a development of the ethical faculty as is attainable by the logic of feelings when unassisted by the logic of signs—that is to say, a grade very nearly, if not quite, as high as that with which we meet in low savages, young children, many idiots, and uneducated deaf-mutes.

This allusion to savages, children, idiots, and deaf-mutes, leads me to the next division of my subject.

Prof. St. George Mivart has said that an interesting book might be written on the stupidity of animals. I am inclined to think that a still more interesting book might be written on the stupidity of savages. For it is a matter of not the least interest how much stupidity any