Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/369

 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. Its look and demeanor alike eloquently bespeak its sense of detection and disgrace. 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. A bitch having once eaten a quantity of shrimps intended for her master's dinner sauce, had only to be asked ever after, "Who stole the shrimps?" to cause her to take to ignominious flight—ears and tail down—going to bed, "refusing to be comforted. . . . the picture of shame and remorse," while we are told "she never stole again" ("Animal World").

A young dog having committed some offense against the established rules of his master's household, "after we had shaken our heads at him and turned away. . . . although he must have been very hungry, would not touch his food, but sat close to the door, whining and crying, till we made it up with him by telling him that he was forgiven and taking his offered paw, when he ate his supper and went quietly to bed." Another dog, "if he has done anything wrong, comes up looking very much ashamed of himself and voluntarily offers his paw" (Wood). Here we have decided efforts sit propitiation of an offended master or mistress, and after the fashion of man's reconciliations by the shaking of hands, as nearly as the dog can imitate this arrangement. There are cases in which regret or remorse leads to the restoration of stolen goods. A dog that had murdered a duck was caught in the act of burying its dead body—that is, of concealing the evidences of his crime. "So deeply was his conscience pricked that when he found himself arrested by a bush he ran the risk of dying of cold and hunger rather than allow himself to be discovered" (Wood). 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. Thus a retriever that would himself touch no food belonging to his master, yet offered no objection to theft of the same food by a cat, nor did he decline to accept a share of her plunder (Wood).

Not only do animals feel their own wrong-doing, but they appreciate evil or evil deeds in their young and in their fellows, including other genera and species, and man himself. They show this, for