Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/372

 the animal's control. 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. The dog's anxiety to learn his duty has been pointed out by the Ettrick Shepherd, who thus writes of his celebrated Sirrah: "As soon as he discovered that it was his duty [to turn sheep], and that it obliged me, I can never forget with what anxiety and eagerness he learned his different evolutions."

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.

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. There is, in other words, in some cases just as decided an insensibility to the claims of duty, just as marked a cold indifference to its discharge, as in other cases there are conscientiousness and kindliness. It is only fair, however, to bear in mind that such apathy, frequently of an obviously unnatural character, is one of the common results of mental defect or disorder, just as it is too frequently in man himself.

The dog frequently makes duty and its discharge paramount to all other considerations. To it are sacrificed even revenge on the one hand, or temptations to the pursuit of game, or to access to food, on the other. Death itself is sometimes preferred to the desertion of a trust or charge (Watson). Many a dog restrains all its natural propensities under a sense of duty and responsibility. When on "duty," intrusted with a message from a master, it very literally places "business before pleasure"; its self-control may even prevent desirable or necessary self-defense.

Whether it be from a sense of justice, of duty, or of conscientiousness, it is a fact that certain working dogs and other animals not only attend faithfully to their own duties, but see that their companions give equal attention to theirs. They exact duty or work from, or enforce it in, their colleagues (Watson).