Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/57

Rh feelings, in regard to some of our domestic animals. A certain animal regarded as a fit subject for contempt by some peoples has been an object of worship, or something akin to it, by others; hence it is not surprising that the lot of such animals has been very different in some parts of the world as compared with others. To illustrate this we need go no further than the universally distributed dog and cat. In the East the dog is rarely other than a homeless, despised outcast. In Europe generally he is a member of the family. But it is to Great Britain especially that we look to find all our domestic animals in the highest perfection, and cherished with feelings of peculiar regard. In Britain it is contrary to law to hitch a dog, however large and strong, to a cart to draw even a small child, while in Germany dogs may be seen used as beasts of burden in all the large cities. In no part of the world are the good qualities of dogs so appreciated and valued as in Great Britain; hence it is not at all inexplicable that cruelty to the dog and other animals is there comparatively rare.

It may safely be said that never before in civilized countries were animals—and especially our domestic animals—treated so well, because never before were they so thoroughly understood. To what is this to be attributed? Not alone to the spread of kindlier feelings and better principles generally, but largely to the advance of science. There was a time, well within the recollection of persons not yet old, when man, we were told by those to whom we looked for light and guidance, stood utterly apart from all else in the universe as the one being in whom the Creator specially, and we might say solely, delighted, and for whose benefit every other object, animate and inanimate, existed. How natural, then, for man to believe that animals, as such, had few if any rights!

The one test to which many persons naturally enough brought every animal was just this: Is the creature of any use whatever to man? If not, then it was held that it simply cumbered the ground. People, it is true, admitted that man was an animal; but they did not realize what this expression meant, or did not accept it in its full significance. To them man was an "animal," but not like the others. He was too exalted to have any more than the common principle of life. Men could not realize then as now that mind and body are so closely related that for every mental process there must be a corresponding physical correlative. But this once being admitted it became possible to understand that animals below man may have minds whose processes are akin to ours. The question then became, not have animals minds, but what sort of minds. Wherein does animal intelligence in the widest sense differ from human intelligence? As soon as man himself became better understood it was plain that his feelings were, on certain