The Inner Life, v. I/Third Section/XII

OUR DUTY TO ANIMALS While you are trying to do your best for all those around you, do not forget that you also have a duty towards forms of life lower than the human. In order that you may be able to do that, try to understand your lower brothers, try to understand the animals, just as you try to understand on a higher level the children with whom you have to deal. Just as you learn, if you want to help a child, to look at things from the child's point of view, so, if you want to help the animal evolution, try to see what is the animal's point of view. In all cases and with all forms of life our business is to love and to help, and to try to bring nearer the golden age when all shall understand one another and all shall co-operate in the glorious work that is to come. There is no reason why our domestic animals should not be trained to help man, and to work in his service, so long as the work is not painful or excessive. But all the creatures around us should be trained in the way best for themselves; that is to say, we should always remember that their evolution is the object of the divine Will. So that while we should surely teach our animals all that we can, because that developes their intelligence, we must take care that we instil into them good qualities and not evil. We have various creatures brought among us. We have the dog, the cat, the horse and other originally wild animals given into our care — brought to us for affection and help. Why? That we may train them out of their ferocity, and into a higher and more intelligent state of life — that we may evoke in them devotion, affection and intellect. But we must take good care that we help, not hinder; we must see that we do not increase in our animal the ferocious qualities which it is the business of is evolution to get rid of. For example, a man who trains a dog to hunt and kill is intensifying within him the very instincts which must be eliminated if the animal is to evolve, and in this way he is degrading a creature given into his charge instead of helping him on his way, even though at the same time he may be developing the animal's intelligence; and thus, though he may do a little good, he is at the same time doing a great deal of harm which far more than counterbalances it. The sane thing is true of a man who trains his dog to be ferocious in order that he may be an efficient protector of his property. A man who treats an animal harshly or cruelly may possibly be evolving his intellect, since the animal may learn to think more keenly in order to see how to avoid the cruelty. But along with whatever evolution may be gained in this way, there is also the development of the exceedingly undesirable qualities of fear and hatred. Thus when, later on, that animal wave of life goes up into humanity, we shall have a humanity starting terribly handicapped — starting with these awful qualities of fear and hatred ingrained in it, instead of a humanity all aspiring, devotional, loving and gentle, such as we might have had if the men to whom the animal part of that evolution was committed had done their duty. We have also our duty towards other and even lower forms of life than that. There is the elemental essence, which is surrounding us everywhere; that elemental essence progresses by means of our thought, and of the action which we produce upon it by our thoughts, passions, emotions and feelings. We need not trouble ourselves especially about that, because if we carry out our higher ideals, if we try to see to it that all our thought and all our emotion shall be of the highest possible type, then that also will, at the same time and without further difficulty, be the discharging of our duty towards the elemental essences which are influenced by our thought; they will be raised and not depressed; the higher qualities which we alone can reach will be set in motion, vivified and helped at their respective levels. All through evolution the assistance of the higher is expected in the development of the lower, and it is not only by individualizing them that man has helped the members of the animal kingdom. In Atlantean days the very formation of their species was largely given over into his hands, and it is because he failed to do his duty properly that many things turned out rather differently from what was originally intended. His mistakes are largely responsible for the existence of carnivorous creatures which live only to destroy one another. Not that he was responsible for all carnivorous creatures; there were such among the gigantic reptiles of the Lemurian period, and man was not in any way directly engaged in their evolution; but it was in part his work to assist in the development from those reptile forms of the mammalia which play so prominent a part in the world now. Here was his opportunity to improve the breeds and to curb the undesirable qualities of the creatures that came under his hands; and it is because he failed to do all that he night have done in this direction that he is to some extent responsible for much that has since gone wrong in the world. If he had done all his duty it is quite conceivable that we might have had no carnivorous mammals. Mankind has for so long treated animals cruelly that the whole animal world has a general feeling of fear and enmity towards men. Men have generated in this way an awful karma, which comes back upon them in terrible suffering, in various forms of disease and of insanity. Yet, even after all this bad behaviour on the part of man, few animals will harm him if left alone. A serpent, for example, will not usually do any injury to a human being, unless he is first hurt or frightened; and the same thing is true of nearly all wild animals, except the very few who may regard man as food, and even they usually will not touch man if they can get anything else. Except when it is absolutely necessary in self-defence or in defence of another the destruction of any form of life ought always to be avoided, as it tends to retard nature's work. That is one of the reasons why all consistent Theosophists refuse to share the sin of slaughter by eating meat or fish, or by wearing such things as are obtained only by the slaughter of animals, like sealskin or the feathers of birds. Silk used to be obtained by the wholesale slaughter of silk-worms, but I hear that there is now a new way of obtaining it without destroying the worm.