Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/370

 stance (1), by the punishment of offenders, if not of offenses, as well as (2) by the prevention of threatened wrong-doing or the defense of the wronged, or (3) by the resentment or revenge of injury or injustice of any kind. Thus various animals resent and revenge the wrongs committed by man not only on themselves or their fellows, but even on brother man; and this sense of wrong or injury inflicted upon others leads sometimes to their defense of man against his fellow 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 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. Human tribunals have apparently regarded sheep-stealing dogs as conscious of the illegality of their deeds, as sensible of the nature of their nefarious employment, as aware of the character of their offense or crime, as alive to the chances of detection and of the necessity for secrecy or concealment, for nocturnal operations, for the avoidance of being found associated with any of the evidences of guilt, as feeling that they deserve punishment and that they will receive it on capture or conviction. 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. 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.

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