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THE PLACE OF ANIMALS IN HUMAN THOUGHT


------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Illustration:

  THE EMPEROR AKBAR personally directing the tying up of a wild
    Elephant.
  Tempera painting by Abu’l Fazl. (1597-98.)
  Photographed for this work from the original in the India Museum.]


------------------------------------------------------------------------




THE PLACE OF ANIMALS IN HUMAN THOUGHT

by

THE COUNTESS EVELYN MARTINENGO CESARESCO


   “On ne connait rien que par bribes.”—M. BERTHELOT






New York
Charles Scribner’S Sons
153-157 Fifth Avenue
1909


------------------------------------------------------------------------




             “C’est l’éternel secret qui veut être gardé.”




                        (_All rights reserved._)




------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                PREFACE


AT the Congress held at Oxford in September, 1908, those who heard Count
Goblet d’Alviella’s address on the “Method and Scope of the History of
Religions” must have felt the thrill which announces the stirring of new
ideas, when, in a memorable passage, the speaker asked “whether the
psychology of animals has not equally some relation to the science of
religions?” At any rate, these words came to me as a confirmation of the
belief that the study which has engaged my attention for several years,
is rapidly advancing towards recognition as a branch of the inquiry into
what man is himself. The following chapters on the different answers
given to this question when extended from man to animals, were intended,
from the first, to form a whole, not complete, indeed, but perhaps
fairly comprehensive. I offer them now to the public with my warmest
acknowledgments to the scholars whose published works and, in some
cases, private hints have made my task possible. I also wish to thank
the Editor of the _Contemporary Review_ for his kindness in allowing me
to reprint the part of this book which appeared first in that
periodical.

Some chapters refer rather to practice than to psychology, and others to
myths and fancies rather than to conscious speculation, but all these
subjects are so closely connected that it would be difficult to divide
their treatment by a hard-and-fast line.

With regard to the illustrations, I am glad to bear grateful testimony
to the facilities afforded me by the Directors of the British Museum,
the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Hague Gallery, the National Museum
at Copenhagen, the Egypt Exploration Fund, and by the Secretary of State
for India. H.E. Monsieur Camille Barrère, French Ambassador at Rome, has
allowed me to include a photograph of his remarkably fine specimen of a
bronze cat; and I have obtained the sanction of Monsieur Marcel
Dieulafoy for the reproduction of one of Madame Dieulafoy’s photographs
which appeared in his magnificent work on “L’Art Antique de la Perse.”
Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Limited, and Messrs. Chapman and Hall, Limited,
have permitted photographs to be taken of two plates in books published
by them. Finally, Dr. C. Waldstein and Mr. E. B. Havell have been most
kind in helping me to give the correct description of some of the
plates.

SALÒ, LAGO DI GARDA.

    _February 15, 1909._


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                CONTENTS


                                   I

                                                       PAGE
            SOUL-WANDERING AS IT CONCERNS ANIMALS        11


                                   II

            THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF ANIMALS              22


                                  III

            ANIMALS AT ROME                              44


                                   IV

            PLUTARCH THE HUMANE                          62


                                   V

            MAN AND HIS BROTHER                          84


                                   VI

            THE FAITH OF IRAN                           113


                                  VII

            ZOROASTRIAN ZOOLOGY                         141


                                  VIII

            A RELIGION OF RUTH                          166


                                   IX

            LINES FROM THE ADI GRANTH                   201


                                   X

            THE HEBREW CONCEPTION OF ANIMALS            205


                                   XI

            “A PEOPLE LIKE UNTO YOU”                    221


                                  XII

            THE FRIEND OF THE CREATURE                  245


                                  XIII

            VERSIPELLES                                 265


                                  XIV

            THE HORSE AS HERO                           281


                                   XV

            ANIMALS IN EASTERN FICTION                  306


                                  XVI

            THE GROWTH OF MODERN IDEAS ABOUT ANIMALS    336

            INDEX                                       367


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                             ILLUSTRATIONS


  THE EMPEROR AKBAR PERSONALLY DIRECTING THE         _Frontispiece_
    TYING UP OF A WILD ELEPHANT. Tempera painting
    in the “Akbar Namah,” by Abu’l Fazl (1597-98).
    India Museum. _Photographed for this work._

  DEER WORSHIPPING THE WHEEL OF THE LAW. Tope of Sanchi, drawn     11
    by Lieut.-Col. Maisey
    _From Fergusson’s “Tree and Serpent Worship.” By
    permission of the India Office._

  THE BUDDHISTIC TIGER                                             21
    _From a painting on silk by Ko-Tō in the British Museum.
    Photographed for this work.
    In Japanese Buddhism the Tiger is the type of Wisdom._

  ORPHEUS                                                          32
    _Fresco found at Pompeii._  (_Sommer._)

  STELE WITH CAT AND BIRD                                          40
    _Athens Museum._

  CAPITOLINE SHE-WOLF                                              44
          (_Bruckmann._)  Bronze statue. Early Etruscan style.
    The twins are modern.

  LION BEING LED FROM THE ARENA BY A SLAVE                         47
    _From the mosaic pavement of a Roman villa at Nennig._

  BACCHUS RIDING ON A PANTHER                                      74
    _Mosaic found at Pompeii._ (_Sommer._)

  BRONZE STATUE OF AN EGYPTIAN CAT                                 82
    _From the Collection of H.E. Monsieur Camille Barrère,
    French Ambassador at Rome_

  REINDEER BROWSING. OLDER STONE AGE                               86
    _Found in a cave at Thayngen in Switzerland._

  HORSE DRAWING DISC OF THE SUN. OLDER BRONZE AGE                  86
    _National Museum at Copenhagen._

  HATHOR COW                                                      102
    _Found in 1906 by Dr. Édouard Naville at Deir-el-bahari.
    By permission of the Egypt Exploration Fund._

  WILD GOATS AND YOUNG                                            108
    _Assyrian Relief. British Museum._ (_Mansell._)

  ASSYRIAN GOD CARRYING ANTELOPE AND WHEAT-EAR                    116
    _British Museum._      (_Mansell._)

  COUNTING CATTLE                                                 128
    _Egyptian Fresco. British Museum._ (_Mansell._)

  KING FIGHTING GRIFFIN (“BAD ANIMAL”)                            142
    _Relief in Palace of Darius at Persepolis.  Photographed
    by Jane Dieulafoy. From “L’Art Antique de la Perse.”  By
    permission of M. Marcel Dieulafoy._

  THE REAL DOG OF IRAN                                            152
    _Bronze Statuette found at Susa. Louvre. From Perrot’s
    “History of Art in Ancient Persia.” By permission of
    Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Ltd._

  BUDDHA PACIFYING AN INTOXICATED ELEPHANT WHICH HAD BEEN SENT    188
    TO DESTROY HIM. THE ELEPHANT STOOPS IN ADORATION
    Græco-Buddhist sculpture from a ruined monastery at
    Takt-i-Bahi.  _India Museum. Photographed for this work._

  RECLINING BULL                                                  192
    _Ancient Southern Indian sculpture. From a photograph in
    the India Museum._

  WILD BULLS AND TAMED BULLS                                      201
    _Reliefs on two gold cups found in a tomb at Vapheio near
    Amyclae. Fifteenth century B.C. (possibly earlier). From
    Schuckhardt’s “Schliemann’s Excavations.” By permission of
    Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._

  THE GARDEN OF EDEN                                              208
    _By Rubens. Hague Gallery._ (_Bruckmann._)

  GENESIS VIII.                                                   212
    _Loggie di Raffaello. In the Vatican. Drawn by N.
    Consoni._

  DANIEL AND THE LIONS                                            216
    _From an early Christian Sarcophagus in S. Vitale,
    Ravenna._ (_Alinari._)

  “AN INDIAN ORPHEUS”                                             222
    _Inlaid marble work panel originally surmounting a doorway
    in the Great Hall of Audience in the Mogul Palace at Delhi
    (about 1650). Photographed for this work from a painting
    by a native artist in the India Museum. Imitated from a
    painting by Raphael._

  MOSLEM BEGGAR FEEDING DOGS AT CONSTANTINOPLE                    226
    _From life._

  ST. JEROME EXTRACTING A THORN FROM THE PAW OF A LION            253
    _By Hubert van Eyck. Naples Museum._   (_Anderson._)

  ST. EUSTACE (OR ST. HUBERT) AND THE STAG                        256
    _By Vittore Pisano. National Gallery._  (_Hanfstängl._)

  “LE MENEUR DES LOUPS”                                           276
    _Designed and drawn by Maurice Sand._

  THE ASSYRIAN HORSE                                              284
    _From a relief in the British Museum._  (_Mansell._)

  ARABIAN HORSE OF THE SAHARA                                     288
    _From life._

  THE BANYAN DEER                                                 328
    _From “Stûpa of Bharhut.” By General Cunningham. By
    permission of the India Office._   (_Griggs._)

  EGYPTIAN OFFICIAL, WITH HIS WIFE, ENGAGED IN FOWLING IN THE     330
    PAPYRUS SWAMP. HIS HUNTING CAT HAS SEIZED THREE BIRDS.
    _Mural painting in British Museum._ (_Mansell._)

  ASSYRIAN LION AND LIONESS IN PARADISE PARK                      336
    _British Museum._ (_Mansell._)  The King’s reservations
    for big game were called “paradises.”

  LAMBS                                                           338
    _Relief on a fifth century tomb at Ravenna._  (_Alinari._)

  “IL BUON PASTORE”                                               346
    _Mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia at Ravenna._


------------------------------------------------------------------------




[Illustration:

  LT COL. MAISEY DEL. W. BRIGGS, LITH.
  DEER WORSHIPPING THE WHEEL OF THE LAW.
  Tope of Sanchi.]




------------------------------------------------------------------------




                 The Place of Animals in Human Thought




                                   I

                 SOUL-WANDERING AS IT CONCERNS ANIMALS


IN one of these enigmatic sayings which launch the mind on boundless
seas, Cardinal Newman remarked that we know less of animals than of
angels. A large part of the human race explains the mystery by what is
called transmigration, metempsychosis, _Samsara_, _Seelenwanderung_; the
last a word so compact and picturesque that it is a pity not to imitate
it in English. The intelligibility of ideas depends much on whether
words touch the spring of the picture-making wheel of the brain;
“Soul-wandering” does this.

Ancient as the theory is, we ought to remember what is commonly
forgotten—that somewhere in the distance we catch sight of a time when
it was unknown, at least in the sense of a procession of the soul from
death to life through animal forms. Traces of it are to be found in the
Sutras and it is thoroughly developed in the Upanishads, but if the
Sutras belong to the thirteenth century and the Upanishads to about the
year 700 before Christ, a long road still remains to the Vedas with
their fabulous antiquity.

In the Vedas it is stated that the soul may wander, even during sleep,
and that it will surely have a further existence after death, but there
is nothing to show that in this further existence it will take the form
of an animal. Man will be substantially man, able to feel the same
pleasures as his prototype on earth; but if he goes to a good place,
exempt from the same pains. What, then, was the Vedic opinion of
animals? On the whole, it is safe to assume that the authors of the
Vedic chants believed that animals, like men, entered a soul-world in
which they preserved their identity. The idea of funeral sacrifices, as
exemplified in these earliest records, was that of sending some one
before. The horse and the goat that were immolated at a Vedic funeral
were intended to go and announce the coming of the man’s soul. Wherever
victims were sacrificed at funerals, they were originally meant to do
something in the after-life; hence they must have had souls. The origin
of the Suttee was the wish that the wife should accompany her husband,
and among primitive peoples animals were sacrificed because the dead man
might have need of them. Not very long ago an old Irish woman, on being
remonstrated with for having killed her dead husband’s horse, replied
with the words, “Do you think I would let my man go on foot in the next
world?” On visiting that wonderfully emotion-awakening relic, the Viking
ship at Christiania, I was interested to see the bones of the Chief’s
horses and dogs as well as his own. Did the Norsemen, passionately
devoted to the sea as they were, suppose, that not only the animals, but
also the vessel in which they buried their leader, would have a ghostly
second existence? I have no doubt that they did. Apart from what hints
may be gleaned from the Vedas, there is an inherent probability against
the early Aryans, any more than the modern Hindu, believing that the
soul of man or beast comes suddenly to a full stop. To destroy spirit
seems to the Asiatic mind as impossible as to destroy matter seems to
the biologist.

Leaving the Vedas and coming down to the Sutras and Upanishads, we
discover the transmigration of souls at first suggested and then clearly
defined. Whence came it? Was it the belief of those less civilised
nations whom the Aryans conquered, and did they, in accepting it from
them, give it a moral complexion by investing it with the highly ethical
significance of an upward or downward progress occasioned by the merits
or demerits of the soul in a previous state of being?

A large portion of mankind finds it as difficult to conceive a sudden
beginning as a sudden end of spirit. We forget difficulties which we
are not in the habit of facing; those who have tried to face this one
have generally stumbled over it. Even Dante with his subtle
psychophysiological reasoning hardly persuades. The ramifications of a
life before stretched far: “Whosoever believes in the fabled prior
existence of souls, let him be anathema,” thundered the Council of
Constantinople, A.D. 543. Which shows that many Christians shared
Origen’s views on this subject.

From the moment that soul-wandering became, in India, a well-established
doctrine, some three thousand years ago, the conception of the status of
animals was perfectly clear. “Wise people,” says the Bhagavad Gita, “see
the same soul (Atman) in the Brahman, in worms and insects, in the
outcasts, in the dog and the elephant, in beasts, cows, gadflies, and
gnats.” Here we have the doctrine succinctly expounded, and in spite of
subtleties introduced by later philosophers (such as that of the
outstanding self) the exposition holds good to this day as a statement
of the faith of India. It also described the doctrine of Pythagoras,
which ancient traditions asserted that he brought from Egypt, where no
such doctrine ever existed. Pythagoras is still commonly supposed to
have borrowed from Egypt; but it is strange that a single person should
continue to hold an opinion against which so much evidence has been
produced; especially as it is surely very easy to explain the tradition
by interpreting Egypt to have stood for “the East” in common parlance,
exactly as in Europe a tribe of low caste Indians came to be called
gypsies or Egyptians. Pythagoras believed that he had been one of the
Trojan heroes, whose shield he knew at a glance in the Temple of Juno
where it was hung up. After him, Empedocles thought that he had passed
through many forms, amongst others those of a bird and a fish.
Pythagoras and his fire-spent disciple belong to times which seem almost
near if judged by Indian computations: yet they are nebulous figures;
they seem to us, and perhaps they seemed to men who lived soon after
them, more like mysterious, half Divine bearers of a word than men of
flesh and blood. But Plato, who is real to us and who has influenced so
profoundly modern thought, Plato took their theory and displayed it to
the Western world as the most logical explanation of the mystery of
being.

The theory of transmigration did not commend itself to Roman thinkers,
though it was admirably stated by a Roman poet:—

           “Omnia mutantur: nihil interit. Errat, et illinc
            Huc venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus
            Spiritus, eque feris, humana in corpora transit,
            Inque feras noster, nec tempore deperit ullo.
            Utque novis facilis signatur cera figuris,
            Nec manet ut fuerat, nec formas servat easdem,
            Sed tamen ipsa eadem est: animam sic semper eandem
            Esse.”

This description is as accurate as it is elegant; but it remains a
question whether Ovid had anything deeper than a folk-lorist’s interest
in transmigration joined to a certain sympathy which it often inspires
in those who are fond of animals. The enthusiastic folk-lorist finds
himself believing in all sorts of things at odd times. Lucian’s admirers
at Rome doubtless enjoyed his ridiculous story of a Pythagorean cock
which had been a man, a woman, a prince, a subject, a fish, a horse and
a frog, and which summed up its varied experience in the judgment that
man was the most wretched and deplorable of all creatures, all others
patiently grazing within the enclosures of Nature while man alone breaks
out and strays beyond those safe limits. This story was retold with
great gusto by Erasmus. The Romans were a people with inclusive
prejudices, and they were not likely to welcome a narrowing of the gulf
between themselves and the beasts of the field. Cicero’s dictum that,
while man looks before and after, analysing the past and forecasting the
future, animals have only the perception of the present, does not go to
the excess of those later theorists who, like Descartes, reduced animals
to automata, but it goes farther than scientific writers on the subject
would now allow to be justified.

It is worth while asking, what was it that so powerfully attracted Plato
in the theory of transmigration? I think that Plato, who made a science
of the moral training of the mind, was attracted by soul-wandering as a
scheme of soul-evolution. Instead of looking at it as a matter of fact
which presupposed an ethical root (which is the Indian view), he looked
upon it as an ethical root which presupposed a matter of fact. He was
influenced a little, no doubt, by the desire to get rid of Hades, “an
unpleasant place,” as he says, “and not true,” for which he felt a
peculiar antipathy, but he was influenced far more by seeing in
soul-wandering a rational theory of the ascent of the soul, a Darwinism
of the spirit. “We are plants,” he said, “not of earth but of heaven,”
but it takes the plants of heaven a long time to grow.

We ought to admire the Indian mind, which first seized the idea of time
in relation to development and soared out of the cage of history
(veritable or imaginary) into liberal æons to account for one perfect
soul, one plant that had accomplished its heavenly destiny. But though
the Indian seer argues with Plato that virtue has its own reward (not so
much an outward reward of improved environment as an inward reward of
approximation to perfection), he disagrees with the Greek philosopher
with regard to the practical result of all this as it affects any of us
personally. Plato found the theory of transmigration entirely consoling;
the Indian finds it entirely the reverse. Can the reason be that Plato
took the theory as a beautiful symbol while the Indian takes it as a
dire reality?

The Hindu is as much convinced that the soul is re-born in different
animals as we are that children are born of women. He is convinced of
it, but he is not consoled by it. Let us reflect a little: does not one
life give us time to get somewhat tired of it; how should we feel after
fifteen hundred lives? The wandering Jew has never been thought an
object of envy, but the wandering soul has a wearier lot; it knows the
sorrows of all creation.

             “How many births are past I cannot tell,
               How many yet may be no man may say,
              But this alone I know and know full well,
               That pain and grief embitter all the way.”[1]

Footnote 1:

  “Folk-Songs of Southern India,” by Charles E. Gover, a fascinating but
  little-known work.

Rather than this—death. How far deeper the gloom revealed by these lines
from the folk-songs of an obscure Dravidian tribe living in the Nilgiri
Hills, than any which cultured Western pessimism can show! Compared with
them, the despairing cry of Baudelaire seems almost a hymn of joy:—

       “’Tis death that cheers and gives us strength to live,
        ’Tis life’s chief aim, sole hope that can abide,
        Our wine, elixir, glad restorative
        Whence we gain heart to walk till eventide.

        Through snow, through frost, through tempests it can give
        Light that pervades th’ horizon dark and wide;
        The inn which makes secure when we arrive
        Our food and sleep, all labour laid aside.

        It is an Angel whose magnetic hand
        Gives quiet sleep and dreams of extasy,
        And strews a bed for naked folk and poor.

        ’Tis the god’s prize, the mystic granary,
        The poor man’s purse and his old native land,
        And of the unknown skies the opening door.”

Folk-songs are more valuable aids than the higher literature of nations
in an inquiry as to what they really believe. The religion of the
Dravidian mountaineers is purely Aryan (though their race is not); their
songs may be taken, therefore, as Aryan documents. They are particularly
characteristic of the dual belief as to a future state which is, to this
day, widely diffused. How firmly these people believe in transmigration
the quatrain quoted above bears witness; yet they also believe that
souls are liable to immediate judgment. This contradiction is explained
by the theory that a long interval may elapse between death and
re-incarnation and that during this interval the soul meets with a
reward or punishment. To say the truth, the explanation sounds a rather
lame one. Is it not more likely that the idea of immediate judgment,
wherever it appears, is a relic of Vedic belief which has to be
reconciled, as best it can, with the later idea of transmigration? The
Dravidian songs are remarkable for their strong inculcation of regard
for animals. In their impressive funeral dirge which is a public
confession of the dead man’s sins, it is owned that he killed a snake, a
lizard and a harmless frog. And that not mere lifetaking was the point
condemned, is clearly proved by the further admission that the
delinquent put the young ox to the plough before it was strong enough to
work. In a Dravidian vision of Heaven and Hell certain of the Blest are
perceived milking their happy kine, and it is explained that these are
they who, when they saw the lost kine of neighbour or stranger in the
hills, drove them home nor left them to perish from tiger or wolf.
Surely in this, as in the Jewish command which it so closely resembles,
we may read mercy to beast as well as to man.

It is sometimes said that there is as much cruelty to animals in India
as anywhere. Some of this cruelty (as it seems to us) is caused directly
by reluctance to take life; of the other sort, caused by callousness, it
can be only said that the human brute grows under every sky. One great
fact is admitted: children are not cruel in India: Victor Hugo could not
have written his terrible poem about the tormented toad in India. I
think it a mistake to attribute the Indian sentiment towards animals
wholly to transmigration; nevertheless, it may be granted that such a
belief fosters such a sentiment. Indeed, if it were allowable to look
upon the religion of the many as the morality of the one, it would seem
natural to suppose that the theory of transmigration was invented by
some creature-loving sage on purpose to give men a fellow-feeling for
their humbler relations. Even so, many a bit of innocent folk-fable has
served as “protective colouration” to beast or bird: the legend of the
robin who covered up the Babes in the Wood; the legend of the swallow
who did some little service to the crucified Saviour, and how many other
such tender fancies. Who invented them, and why?

If Plato had wished simply to find a happy substitute for Hades, he
might have found it—had he looked far enough—in the Vedic kingdom of the
sun, radiant and eternal, where sorrow is not, where the crooked are
made straight, ruled over by Yama the first man to die and the first to
live again, death’s bright angel, lord of the holy departed—how far from
Pluto and the “Tartarean grey.” It would not have provided a solution to
the mystery of being, but it might have made many converts, for after a
happy heaven all antiquity thirsted.

[Illustration:

  THE BUDDHISTIC TIGER.
  British Museum.
  (_From a painting on silk by Ko-Tō._)]

It is not sure if the scheme of existence mapped out in soul-wandering
is really more consoling for beast than for man. It is a poor compliment
to some dogs to say that they have been some men. Then again, it is
recognised as easier for a dog to be good than for a man to be good, but
after a dog has passed his little life in well-doing he dies with the
prospect that his spirit, which by his merits becomes again a man, will
be sent down, by that man’s transgressions, to the society of jackals.
According to the doctrine of soul-wandering, animals are, in brief, the
Purgatory of men. Just as prayers for the dead (which means, prayers for
the remission to them of a merited period of probation) represent an
important branch of Catholic observances, so prayers for the remission
of a part of the time which souls would otherwise spend in animal forms
constitute the most vital and essential feature in Brahmanical worship.

Of course, this is also true of Buddhism, to which many people think
that the theory of soul-wandering belongs exclusively, unmindful that
the older faith has it as well. The following hymn, used in Thibet,
shows how accurately the name of Purgatory applies to the animal
incarnations of the soul:—

          “If we [human beings] have amassed any merit
           In the three states,
           We rejoice in this good fortune when we consider
           The unfortunate lot of the poor [lower] animals,
           Piteously engulphed in the ocean of misery;
           On their behalf, we now turn the Wheel of Religion.”

There are grounds for thinking that the purgatorial view of animals was
part of the religious beliefs of the highly civilised native races of
South America. The Christianised Indians are very gentle in their ways
towards animals, while among the savage tribes in Central Peru (which
are probably degraded off-shoots from the people of the Incas) the
belief still survives that good men become monkeys or jaguars, and bad
men parrots or reptiles. For the rest, soul-wandering has an enduring
fascination for the human mind.

In January, 1907, Leandro Improta, a young man well furnished with
worldly goods, shot himself in a café at Naples. His pocket was found to
contain a letter in which he said that the act was prompted by a desire
to study metempsychosis; much had been written on the subject, but it
pleased him better to discover than to talk: “so I determined to die and
see whether I shall be re-born in the form of some animal. It would be
delightful to return to this world as a lion or a rat.” It might not
prove delightful after all!


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                   II

                    THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF ANIMALS


“THE heralds brought a sacred hecatomb to the gods through the city and
the long-haired Grecians were assembled under the shady grove of
far-darting Apollo, but when they had tasted the upper flesh and had
drawn it out, having divided the shares, they made a delightful feast.”
In this description the poet of the Odyssey not only calls up a
wonderfully vivid picture of an ancient fête-day, but also shows the
habit of mind of the Homeric Greeks in regard to animal food. They were
voracious eaters—although the frequent reference to feasts ought not to
make us suppose that meat was their constant diet; rather the reverse,
for then it would not have been so highly rated. But when they had the
chance, they certainly did eat with unfastidious copiousness and
unashamed enjoyment. It is not pleasant to read about, for it sets one
thinking of things by no means far away or old; for instance, of the
disappearance of half-cooked beef at some Continental _tables d’hôte_.
We find that Homer is painfully near us. But in Homeric times the ghost
of a scruple had to be laid before the feast could be enjoyed. Animal
food was still closely connected with the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice
lends distinction to subject as well as object; it was some atonement to
the animal to dedicate him to the gods. He was covered with garlands and
attended by long-robed priests; his doom was his triumph. The devoted
heifer or firstling of the flock was glorified beyond all its kind. Some
late sceptic of the _Anthology_ asked what possible difference it could
make to the sheep whether it were devoured by a wolf or sacrificed to
Herakles so that he might protect the sheepfold from wolves? But
scepticism is a poor thing. From immolation to apotheosis there is but a
step; how many human victims willingly bowed their heads to the knife!

The sacrificial aspect of the slaughter of domestic animals took a
strong hold of the popular imagination. It is still suggested by the
procession of garlanded beasts which traverses the Italian village on
the approach of Easter: the only time of year when the Italian peasant
touches meat. In the tawdry travesty of the _Bœuf gras_, though the
origin is the same, every shred of the old significance is lost, but
among simple folk south of the Alps, unformed thoughts which know not
whence they come still contribute a sort of religious glamour to that
last pageant. Far back, indeed, stretches the procession of the victims,
human and animal—for wherever there was animal sacrifice, at some remote
epoch, “the goat without horns” was also offered up.

The Homeric Greeks had no butchers; they did the slaying of beasts
themselves or their priests did it for them. Agamemnon kills the boar
sacrificed to Zeus with his own hands, which are first uplifted in
prayer. The commonest meat was the flesh of swine, as may be seen by the
pig of Æsop which replied, on being asked by the sheep why he cried out
when caught, “They take you for your wool or milk, but me for my life.”
In Homer, however, there is much talk of fatted sheep, kids and oxen,
and there is even mention of killing a cow. The Athenians had qualms
about slaughtering the ox, the animal essential to agriculture—though
they did it—but the Homeric Greek was not troubled by such thoughts. He
was not over nice about anything; he was his own cook, and he did not
lose his appetite while he roasted his bit of meat on the spit. A Greek
repast of that age would have shocked the abstemious Indian as much as
the Hindu reformer, Keshub Chunder Sen, confessed to have been shocked
by the huge joints on English sideboards.

Putting aside his meat-eating proclivities, for which we cannot throw
stones at him, the Greek of the Iliad and of the Odyssey is the friend
of his beast. He does not regard it as his long-lost brother, but he
sees in it a devoted servant; sometimes more than human in love if less
than human in wit. His point of view, though detached, was appreciative.
Practically it was the point of view of the twentieth century. Homer
belongs to the Western world, and in a great measure to the modern
Western world. He had no racial fellow-feeling with animals; yet he
could feel for the sparrow that flutters round its murdered young ones
and for the vulture that rends the air with cries when the countryman
takes its fledglings from the nest. He could shed one immortal tear over
the faithful hound that recognises his master and dies. “There lay the
dog Argus, full of vermin.” If it had not been a living creature, what
sight could have more repelled human eyes? But with dog as with man, the
miserable body is as naught beside—what in the man we call the soul. “He
fawned with his tail and laid down both his ears, but he could no more
come nearer his master.” All the sense of disgust is gone and there is
something moist, perhaps, in our eyes too, though it is not the ichor of
immortality.

Giving names to animals is the first instinctive confession that they
are not _things_. What sensible man ever called his table Carlo or his
inkpot Trilby? Homer gives his horses the usual names of horses in his
day; this is shown by the fact that he calls more than one horse by the
same name. Hector’s steeds were Xanthus, Æthon and noble Lampus; often
would Andromache mix wine for them even before she attended to the wants
of her husband, or offer them the sweet barley with her own white hands.
Æthe is the name of Agamemnon’s graceful and fleet-footed mare. Xanthus
and Balius, offspring of Podarges, are the horses which Achilles
received from his father. He bids them bring their charioteer back in
safety to the body of the Greeks—and then follows the impressive
incident of the warning given to him of his impending fate. The horse
Xanthus bends low his head: his long mane, which is collected in a ring,
droops till it touches the ground. Hera gives him power of speech and he
tells how, though the steeds of Achilles will do their part right well,
not all their swiftness, not all their faithful service can save their
master from the doom that even now is drawing near. “The furies restrain
the voice”: the laws which govern the natural order of things must not
be violated. “O Xanthus,” cries Achilles, “O Xanthus, why dost thou
predict my death?... Well do I know myself that it is my fate to perish
here, far away from my dear father and mother!” It is the passionate cry
of the Greek, the lover of life as none has loved it, the lover of the
sweet air gladdened by the sun.

Many a soldier may have spoken to his horse, half in jest, as Achilles
spoke to Xanthus and Balius: “bring me safely out of the fray.” The
supernatural and terrible reply comes with the shock of the unforeseen,
like a clap of thunder on a calm day. This incident is a departure from
the usual Homeric conventionality, for it takes us into the domain of
real magic. The belief that animals know things that we know not, and
see things that we see not, is scattered over all the earth. Are there
not still good people who feel an “eerie” sensation when a cat stares
fixedly into vacancy in the twilight? “Eerie” sensations count for much
in early beliefs, but what counts for more is the observation of actual
facts which are not and, perhaps, cannot be explained. The uneasiness of
animals before an earthquake, or the refusal of some animals to go to
sea on ships which afterwards come to grief—to refer to only two
instances of a class of phenomena the existence of which cannot be
gainsaid—would be sufficient to convince any savage or any primitive man
that animals have foreknowledge. If they know the future on one point,
why should they not know it on others? The primitive man generally
starts from something which he deems _certain_; he deals in
“certainties” far more than in hypotheses, and when he has seized a
“certainty” in his own fashion he draws logical deductions from it.
Savages and children have a ruthless logic of their own.

The prophetic power of animals has important bearings on the subject of
divination. In cases of animal portents the later theory may have been
that the animal was the passive instrument or medium of a superior
power; but it is not likely that this was the earliest theory. The
goddess did not use Xanthus as a mouthpiece: she simply gave him the
faculty of speech so that he could say what he already knew. The second
sight of animals was believed to be communicable to man through their
flesh, and especially through their blood. Porphyry says plainly that
diviners fed on the hearts of crows, vultures, and moles (the heart
being the fountain of the blood), because in this manner they partook of
the souls of these animals, and received the influence of the gods who
accompanied these souls. The blood conveyed the qualities of the spirit.
In my opinion the Hebrew ordinance against partaking of the blood was
connected with this idea; the soul was not to be meddled with. I do not
know if attention has been paid to the remarkable juxtaposition of the
blood prohibition with enchantment in Leviticus xix. 26. The Institutes
of Manu clearly indicate that the blood was not to be swallowed because,
by doing so, could be procured an illicit mixing up of personality: the
most awful of sins, more awful because so much more mysterious than our
mediæval “pact,” or selling the soul to the devil. A knowledge of magic
is essential to the true comprehension of all sacred writings.

That animals formerly talked with human voices was the genuine belief of
most early races, but there are few traces of it in Greek literature. A
hint of a real folk-belief is to be found, perhaps, in the remark of
Clytemnestra, who says of Cassandra, when she will not descend from the
car that has brought her, a prisoner, to Agamemnon’s palace:—

             “I wot—unless like swallows she doth use
              _Some strange barbarian tongue from over sea_,
              My words must bring persuasion to her soul.”

But such hints are not frequent. The stories of “talking beasts” which
enjoyed an immense popularity in Greece were founded on as conscious
“make-believe” as the Beast tales of the Middle Ages. From the “Battle
of the Frogs and Mice” to Æsop’s fables, and from these to the comedies
of Aristophanes, the animals are meant to hold up human follies to
ridicule or human virtues to admiration. The object was to instruct
while amusing when it was not to amuse without instructing. Æsop hardly
asks the most guileless to believe that his stories are of the “all
true” category—which is why children rarely quite take them to their
hearts. At the same time, he shows a close study of the idiosyncrasies
of animals, so close that there is little to alter in his
characterisation. Out of the mass of stories in the collection
attributed to him, one or two only seem to carry us back to a more
ingenuous age. The following beautiful little tale of the “Lion’s
Kingdom” is vaguely reminiscent of the world-tradition of a “Peace in
Nature.”

“The beasts of the field and forest had a lion as their king. He was
neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king
could be. He made during his reign a proclamation for a general assembly
of all the birds and beasts, and drew up conditions for an universal
league in which the Wolf and the Lamb, the Panther and the Kid, the
Tiger and the Stag, the Dog and the Hare, should live together in
perfect peace and amity. The Hare said, ‘Oh, how I have longed to see
this day, in which the weak shall take their place with impunity by the
side of the strong.’”

The temper of a people towards animals can be judged from its sports. It
has been well said, Who could imagine Pericles presiding over a “Roman
holiday”? Wanton cruelty to animals seemed to the Greeks an outrage to
the gods. The Athenians inflicted a fine on a vivisector of the name of
Xenocrates (he called himself a “philosopher”) who had skinned a goat
alive. In Greece, from Homeric times downwards, the most favourite sport
was the chariot-race which, at first, possessed the importance of a
religious event, and always had a dignity above that of a mere pastime.
The horses received their full share of honour and glory; for many
centuries the graves of Cimon’s mares, with which he had thrice
conquered at the Olympian games, were pointed out to the stranger, near
his own tomb.

In the ancient Greek as in the modern world, while the majority held the
views about animals which I have briefly sketched, a small minority held
views of quite a different kind. It may be that no outward agency is
required to cause the periodical appearance of men who are driven from
the common road by the nostalgia of a state in which the human creature
had not learnt to shed blood. The earliest tradition agrees with the
latest science in testifying that man did not always eat flesh. It seems
as if sometimes, in every part of the earth, an irresistible impulse
takes hold of him to resume his primal harmlessness. It is natural,
however, that students should have sought some more definite explanation
for the introduction of the Orphic sect into Greece, where it can be
traced to about the time generally given to Buddha—the sixth century
B.C. Some have conjectured that dark-skinned, white-robed missionaries
from India penetrated into Europe as we know that they penetrated into
China, bringing with them the gospel of the unity of all sentient
things. Others agree with what seems to have been thought by Herodotus:
that wandering pilgrims brought home treasured secrets from the temple
of Ammon or some other of those Egyptian shrines with which the Greeks
constantly kept up certain _rapports_. It may be, now, that these two
theories will be abandoned in favour of a third which would refer the
origin of the Orphists to Ægean times and suppose them to be the last
followers of an earlier faith. When they do come into history, it is as
poor and ignorant people—like the Doukhobors of to-day—whose obscurity
might well account for their having remained long unobserved. But this
is no reason for concluding that their beginnings were obscure.

What is best understood about them is that they abstained rigorously
from flesh except during the rare performance of some rite of
purification, in which they tasted the blood of a bull which was
supposed to procure mystic union with the divine. As happened with the
performers of other cruel or horrid rites, the transcendent significance
they ascribed to the act paralysed their power of recognising its
revolting nature. A diseased spiritualism which ignores matter
altogether is the real key to such phenomena. It is too soon to say
whether any link can be established between the Orphic practices and the
so-called “bull-fights” of which traces have been found in Crete.
Despised and tabooed though they were in historical Greece, the Orphists
are still held to have exercised some sure though undefined influence on
the development of the greatest spiritual fact of Hellenic civilisation,
the Eleusinian Mysteries.

[Illustration:

  (_Photo:_ _Sommer_)
  ORPHEUS.
  (_Fresco at Pompeii._)]

The popular description of Orpheus as founder of the Orphists must be
taken for what it is worth. The sect may have either evolved or borrowed
the legend. Christianity itself appropriated the myth of Orpheus,
pictorially, at least, in those rude tracings in the Roman catacombs
showing the Good Shepherd in that character, which inspired Carlyle to
write one of the most impassioned passages in English prose. The sweet
lute-player who held entranced lion and lamb till the one forgot his
wrath and the other his fear, was the natural symbol of the prototype of
a humane religion.

Out of the nebulous patches of Greek enthusiasts who cherished tender
feelings towards animals, emerges the intellectual sun of the Samian
sage. It is difficult not to connect Pythagoras in some way with the
Orphists, nor would such a connexion make it the less probable that he
journeyed to the sacred East in search of fuller knowledge. Little,
indeed, do we know about this moulder of minds. He passed across the
world’s stage dark “with excess of light”—an influence rather than a
personality. Yet he was as far as possible from being only a dreamer of
dreams; he was the Newton, the Galileo, perhaps the Edison and Marconi
of his epoch. And it was this double character of moral teacher and man
of science which caused the extraordinary reverence with which he was
regarded. Science and religion were not divorced then; the Prophet could
present no credentials so valid as an understanding of the laws which
govern the universe. Mathematics and astronomy were revelations of
divine truth. It was the scientific insight of Pythagoras, the wonderful
range and depth of which is borne out more and more by modern
discoveries, that lent supreme importance to whatever theories he was
known to have held. The doctrine of transmigration had not been treated
seriously while it was only preached by the Orphists, but after it was
adopted by Pythagoras it commanded a wide attention, though it never won
a large acceptance. One expounder it had, who was too remarkable an
original thinker to be called a mere disciple—the greatly-gifted
Empedocles, who denounced the eaters of flesh as no better than
cannibals, which was going further than Pythagoras himself had ever
gone.

Even in antiquity, there were some who suspected that at the bottom of
the Pythagorean propaganda was the wish to make men more humane. Without
taking that view, it may be granted that a strong love of animals
prepares the mind to think of them as not so very different from men. A
thing that tends in the same direction is the unfavourable comparison of
some men with some beasts: the sort of sentiment which made Madame de
Staël say that the more she knew of men the more she liked dogs. Did not
Darwin declare that he would as soon be descended from that heroic
little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy to save the life of his
keeper, or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains,
carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished
dogs, as from various still extant races of mankind? Darwinism is really
the theory of Pythagoras with the supernatural element left out. The
homogeneity of living things is one of the very old beliefs from which
we strayed and to which we are returning.

Among the Greeks, sensitive and meditative minds which did not place
faith in the Pythagorean system of life were attracted, nevertheless, by
its speculative possibilities which they bent to their own purposes.
Thus Socrates borrowed from Pythagoras when he suggested that imperfect
and earth-bound spirits might be re-incorporated in animals whose
conventionally ascribed characteristics corresponded with their own
moral natures. Unjust, tyrannical, and violent men would become wolves,
hawks, and kites, while good commonplace people—virtuous
Philistines—would take better forms, such as ants, bees, and wasps, all
of which live harmoniously in communities. It is pleasant to find that
Socrates did justice to that intelligent insect, the undeservedly
aspersed wasp. Men who are good in all respects save the highest, may
re-assume human forms. Socrates does not explain why it is that humanity
progresses so slowly if it is always being recruited from such good
material? He passes on from these righteous men to the super-excellent
man to whom alone he allots translation into a divine and wholly
immaterial sphere; he it is who departs from this world completely pure
of earthly dross; who cannot be moved by ill-fortune, poverty, disgrace;
who has “overcome the world” in the Pauline sense, who has died while
living, in the Indian sense. Though Socrates does not say so, it is this
super-excellent man who really convinces him of the immortality of the
soul according to the meaning which we attach to these words.

That the more tender and poetic aspects of Pythagorean speculations had
deeply impressed Socrates can be seen by the fact that they recurred to
his mind in the most solemn hour of his life. From these he drew the
lovely parable with which he gently reproved the friends who were come
to take leave of him for their surprise at finding him no wise
depressed. He asks if he appears to them inferior in divination to the
swans, who, when they perceive that they must die, though given to song
before, then sing the most of all, delighted at the prospect of their
departure to the deity whose ministers they are. Mankind has said
falsely of the swans that they sing through dread of death and from
grief. Those who say this do not reflect that no bird sings when it is
hungry or cold or afflicted with any other pain, not even the
nightingale or swallow or hoopoe, which are said to sing a dirge-like
strain, “but neither do they appear to me to sing for grief nor do the
swans, but as pertaining to Apollo they are skilled in the divining art,
and having a foreknowledge of the bliss in Hades, they express their joy
in song on that day rather than at any previous time. But I believe
myself to be a fellow-servant of the swans and consecrated to the same
divinity, and that I am no less gifted by my master in the art of
divination, nor am I departing with less good grace than they.”

Socrates would not have been “the wisest of men” if he had dogmatised
about the unknowable; to insist, he says, that things were just as he
described them, would not become an intelligent being; he only claimed
an approximate approach to the truth. In appearance Plato went nearer to
dogmatic acceptance of the theory of the transmigration of souls, but
probably it was in appearance only. Like his master, he thought it
reasonable to suppose that the human soul ascended if it had done well,
and descended if it had done ill, and of this ascent and descent he took
as symbol its attirement in higher or lower corporeal forms till, freed
from the corruptible, it joined the incorruptible.

The Greeks were the first people to have an insatiable thirst for exact
knowledge; they showed themselves true precursors of the modern world by
their researches into scientific zoology, which were carried on with
zeal long before Aristotle took the subject in hand. We cannot judge of
these early researches because they are nearly all lost; but Aristotle’s
“History of Animals,” even after the revival of learning, was still
consulted as a text-book, and perhaps nothing that he wrote contributed
more to win for him the fame of

                    “... maestro di color che sanno.”

The story goes that this work was written by desire of Alexander the
Great or, as some say, Philip of Macedon, and that the writer was given
a sum which sounds fabulous in order that he might obtain the best
available information. What interest most the modern reader are the
“sayings by the way” on the moral qualities or the intelligence of
animals. “Man and the mule,” says Aristotle, “are always tame”—a
classification not very complimentary to man. The ox is gentle, the wild
boar is violent, crafty the serpent, noble and generous the lion. Except
in the senses of touch and taste, man is far surpassed by the other
animals—a remark that was endorsed by St. Thomas Aquinas, who inferred
from the limitation of man’s senses that he would have made bad use of
them if they had been more acute. Aristotle laid down the axiom that man
alone can reason, though other animals can remember and learn, but he
never pursued this theory as far as it was pushed by Descartes, much
less by Malebranche. He believed that the soul of infants differed in no
respect from that of animals. All animals present traces of their moral
disposition, though these distinctions are more marked in man. Animals
understand signs and sounds, and can be taught. The females are less
ready to help the males in distress than the males are to help the
females. Bears carry off their cubs with them if they are pursued. The
dolphin is remarkable for the love of its young ones; two dolphins were
seen supporting a small dead dolphin on their backs, that was about to
sink, as if in pity for it, to keep it from being devoured by wild
creatures. In herds of horses, if a mare dies, other mares will bring up
the foal, and mares without foals have been known to entice foals to
follow them and to show much affection to them, though they die for want
of their natural sustenance.

Aristotle says that music attracts some animals; for instance, deer can
be captured by singing and playing on the pipe. Animals sometimes show
fore-thought, as the ichneumon, which does not attack the asp till it
has called others to help it—which reminds one of the dog whose master
took him to Exeter, where he was badly treated by the yard-dog of the
inn; on this, he escaped and went to London, whence he returned with a
powerful dog-friend who gave the yard-dog a lesson which he must have
long remembered. Hedgehogs are said by Aristotle and other ancient
authors to change the entrance of their burrows according as the wind
blows from north or south; a man in Byzantium got no small fame as a
weather prophet by observing this habit. He thinks that small animals
are generally cleverer than larger ones. A tame woodpecker placed an
almond in a crevice of wood so as to be able to break it, which it
succeeded in doing with three blows. Aristotle does not mention the
similar ingenuity of the thrush which I have noticed myself; it brings
snails to a good flat stone on which it breaks the shell by knocking it
up and down. He admired the skill of the swallow in making her nest.
Although he knew of the migrations of birds, and declared that cranes go
in winter to the sources of the Nile, “where there is a race of
pigmies—no fable, but a fact,” he was not free from the erroneous idea
(which is to be found in modern folk-lore) that some birds hybernate in
caves, out of which they emerge, almost featherless, in the spring. Of
the nightingale, he says that it sings ceaselessly for fifteen days and
nights when the mountains are thick with leaves.

The spider’s art and graceful movements receive due praise, as do the
cleanly habits of bees, which are said to sting people who use unguents
because they dislike bad smells. “Bright and shiny bees” Aristotle
asserts to be idle, “like women.”

Of all animals his favourites are the lion and the elephant. The lion is
gentle when he is not hungry and he is not jealous or suspicious. He is
fond of playing with animals that are brought up with him, and he gets
to have a real affection for them. If a blow aimed at a lion fails, he
only shakes and frightens his attacker, and then leaves him without
hurting him. He never shows fear or turns his back on a foe. But old
lions that are unable to hunt sometimes enter villages and attack
mankind. This is the first observation of the “man-eating” lion or
tiger, and the reason given for his perverse conduct is still believed
to be the right one.

Aristotle assigned the palm of wisdom to the elephant, a creature
abounding in intellect, tame, gentle, teachable, and one which can even
learn how to “worship the king”—which is what many of us saw the
elephants do at the Delhi Durbar.

[Illustration:

  STELE WITH CAT AND BIRD.
  Athens Museum.]

In a later age, Apollonius of Tyana confirmed from personal observation
all Aristotle’s praise; he watched with admiration the crossing of the
Indus by a herd of thirty elephants which were being pursued by
huntsmen; the light and small ones went first, then the mothers, who
held up their cubs with tusk and trunk, and lastly the old and large
elephants. Pliny gave a similar account of the way in which elephants
cross rivers, and it is, I believe, still noticed as a fact that the old
ones send the young ones before them. The officer whose duty it was to
superintend the embarcation of Indian elephants for Abyssinia during the
campaign of Sir Robert Napier told me how a very fine old elephant, who
perfectly understood the business in hand, drove all the others on
board, but after performing this useful service, when it came to be his
turn, he refused resolutely to move an inch, and had to be left behind.
The sympathy with animals for which Apollonius was remarkable made him
feel for these great beasts brought into subjection; he declares that at
night they mourn over their lost liberty with peculiar piteous sounds
unlike those which they make usually; if a man approaches, however, they
cease their wailing out of respect for him. He speaks of their
attachment to their keeper, how they eat bread from his hand like a dog
and caress him with their trunks. He saw an elephant at Taxila which was
said to have fought against Alexander the Great three hundred and fifty
years before. Alexander named it Ajax, and it bore golden bracelets on
its trunk with the words: “Ajax. To the Sun from Alexander son of Jove.”
The people decked it with garlands and anointed it with precious salves.
Several classical writers bore witness to the pleasure which elephants
took in music; they could be made to dance to the pipe. It was also said
that they could write. Their crowning merit—that of helping away wounded
comrades, which is vouched for by no less an authority than Mr. F. C.
Selous—does not seem to have been observed in ancient times.

In Greek mythology the familiar animals of the gods occupy a place
half-way between legend and natural history. Viewed by one school as
totems, as the earlier god of which the later is only an appendix, to
more conservative students they may appear to be, in the main, the
outgrowth of the same fondness for coupling man and beast and fitting
man with a beast-companion suited to his character, which gave St. Mark
his lion and St. John his eagle. The panther of Bacchus is the most
attractive of the divine _menagerie_, because Bacchus, in this
connexion, is generally shown as a child and the friendships of beasts
and children are always pleasing.

The affection of Bacchus for panthers has been attributed to the fact
that he wore a panther-skin, but there seems no motive for deciding that
the one tradition was earlier than the other; the rationale of a myth is
often evolved long after the myth itself. Perhaps, after all, the
stories of gods and animals often originated in the simple belief that
gods, like men, had a weakness for pets!

In the Pompeian collections at Naples there are several designs of
Bacchus and his panther; one of them shows the panther and the ass of
Silenus lying down together; in another, a very fine mosaic, the winged
genius of Bacchus careers along astride of his favourite beast; in a
third, a chubby little boy, with no signs of godhead about him, clambers
on to the back of a patient panther, which has the long-suffering look
of animals that are accustomed to be teased by children. It may be
noticed that children and animals, both somewhat neglected in the older
art, attained the highest popularity with the artists of the age of
Pompeii. Children were represented in all sorts of attitudes, and all
known animals, from the cat to the octopus and the elephant to the
grasshopper, were drawn not only with general correctness but with a
keen insight into their humours and temperaments.

It is said that a panther was once caught in Pamphylia which had a gold
chain round its neck with the inscription in Armenian letters: “Arsaces
the king to the Nysæan god.” Oriental nations called Bacchus after Nysa,
his supposed birthplace. It was concluded that the king of Armenia had
given its freedom to this splendid specimen to do honour to the god. The
panther became very tame and was fondled by every one, but when the
spring came it ran away, chain and all, to seek a mate in the mountains
and never more came back.


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                  III

                            ANIMALS AT ROME


ROME, the eternal, begins with a Beast-story. However much deeper in the
past the spade may dig than the reputed date of the humanitarian
She-wolf, her descendant will not be expelled from the grotto on the
Capitol, nor will it cease to be the belief of children (the only
trustworthy authorities when legends are concerned) that the grandeur
that was Rome would have never existed but for the opportune
intervention of a friendly beast!

The fame of the She-wolf shows how eagerly mankind seizes on some touch
of nature, fact or fable, that seems to make all creatures kin. Rome was
as proud of her She-wolf as she was of ruling the world. It was the
“luck” of Rome; even now, something of the old sentiment exists, for I
remember that during King Edward’s visit old-fashioned Romans were angry
because this emblem was not to be seen in the decorations.

[Illustration:

  (_Photo: Bruckmann._)
  CAPITOLINE SHE-WOLF.]

The story did not make such large demands on credulity as sceptics
pretend. The wolf is not so much the natural enemy of man as the cat is
of the mouse: yet cats have been known to bring up families of mice or
rats which they treated with affection. In recent times a Russian bear
was stated to have carried away to the woods a little girl whom it fed
with nuts and fruits. The evidence seemed good, though the story did
sound a little as if it were suggested by Victor Hugo’s “Épopée du
Lion.” But in India there are stories of the same sort—stories actually
of She-wolves—which appear to be impossible to set aside. In a paper
read before the Bombay Natural History Society, the well-known Parsi
scholar, Jivanji Jamsedji Modi, described how he had seen one such
“wolf-boy” at the Secundra Orphanage: the boy had remained with wolves
up to six years old when he was discovered and captured, not without
vigorous opposition from his vulpine protectors.

The historical record of Rome as regards animals is not a bright one.
The cruelty of the arena does not stain the first Roman annals; the
earliest certified instance of wild-beast baiting belongs to 186 B.C.,
and after the practice was introduced it did not reach at once the
monstrous proportions of later times. Still, one does not imagine that
the Roman of republican times was very tender-hearted towards animals.
Cato related, as if he took a pride in it, that when he was Consul he
left his war-horse in Spain to spare the public the cost of its
conveyance to Rome. “Whether such things as these,” says Plutarch, who
tells the story, “are instances of greatness or littleness of soul, let
the reader judge for himself!” When the infatuation for the shows in the
arena was at its height, the Romans felt an enormous interest in
animals: indeed, there were moments when they thought of nothing else.
It was an interest which went along with indifference to their
sufferings; it may be said to have been worse than no interest at all,
but it existed and to ignore it, as most writers have done, is to make
the explicable inexplicable. If the only attraction of these shows had
been their cruelty we should have to conclude that the Romans were all
afflicted with a rare though not unknown form of insanity. Much the same
was true of the gladiatorial shows. Up to a certain point, what led
people to them was what leads people to a football match or an
assault-at-arms. Beyond that point—well, beyond it there entered the
element that makes the tiger in man, but for the most part it was
inconscient.

[Illustration:

  LION BEING LED FROM THE ARENA BY A SLAVE.
  (_Nennig Mosaic._)]

When we see Pola or Verona or Nîmes; when we tread the crowded streets
to the Roman Colosseum or traverse the deserted high-road to Spanish
Italica; most of all, when we watch coming nearer and nearer across the
wilderness between Kairouan and El Djem the magnificent pile that stands
outlined against the African sky—we all say the same thing: “What a
wonderful race the Romans were!” It is an exclamation that forces itself
to the lips of the most ignorant as to those of the scholar or
historical student. At such moments, it may be true, that the less we
think of the games of the arena the better; the remembrance of them
forms a disturbing element in the majesty of the scene. But they cannot
be put out of mind entirely, and if we do think of them, it is desirable
that we should think of them correctly. It so happens that it is
possible to reconstruct them into a lifelike picture. There exists one,
though, as far as I know, only one, faithful, vivid, and complete
contemporary representation of the Roman Games. This is the superb
mosaic pavement which was discovered in the middle of the last century
by a peasant striking on the hard surface with his spade, at the village
of Nennig, not far from the Imperial city of Treves. The observer of
this mosaic perceives at once that the games were of the nature of a
“variety” entertainment. There was the music which picturesque-looking
performers played on a large horn and on a sort of organ. (The horn
closely resembles the pre-historic horns which are preserved in the
National Museum at Copenhagen, where they were blown with inspiring
effect before the members of the Congress of Orientalists in 1908.)
There was the bloodless contest between a short and tall athlete, armed
differently with stick and whip. In the central division, because the
most important, is shown the mortal earnest of the gladiatorial fight,
strictly controlled by the Games-master. In the sexagion above this is a
hardly less deadly struggle between a man and a bear: the bear has got
the man under him but is being whipped off so that the “turn” may not
end too quickly, and, perhaps, also to give the more expensive victim
another chance. To the right hand, a gladiator who has run his lance
through the neck of a panther, holds up his hand to boast the victory
and claim applause: the dying panther tries vainly to free itself from
the weapon. To the left is a fight between a leopard and an unfortunate
wild ass, which has already received a terrible wound in its side and is
now having its head drawn down between the fore-paws of the leopard. I
hear that in beast-fights organised by Indian princes, these unequal
combatants are still pitted against each other. Lastly, the Nennig
Mosaic depicts a fat lion that has also conquered a wild ass, of which
the head alone seems to remain: it has been inferred, though I think
rashly, that the lion has eaten up all the rest; at any rate he now
seems at peace with the world and is being led back to his cage by a
slave.

Everything is quiet, orderly, and a model of good management. The
custodian of the little museum told me that the (surprisingly few)
visitors to Nennig were in the habit of remarking of this representation
of the Roman Games that it made them understand for the first time how
the cultivated Romans could endure such sights. Unhappily, conventional
propriety joined to the sanction of authority will make the majority of
mankind endure anything that causes no danger or inconvenience to
themselves.

Except with a few, at whom their generation looks askance, the sense of
cruelty more than any other moral sense is governed by habit, by
convention. It is even subject to latitude and longitude; in Spain I was
surprised to find that almost all the English and American women whom I
met had been to, at least, one bull-fight. Insensibility spreads like a
pestilence; new or revived forms of cruelty should be stopped at once or
no one can say how far they will reach or how difficult it will be to
abolish them. One might have supposed that the sublime self-sacrifice of
the monk who threw himself between two combatants—which brought the
tardy end of gladiatorial exhibitions in Christian Rome—would have saved
the world for ever from that particular barbarity; but in the fourteenth
century we actually find gladiatorial shows come to life again and in
full favour at Naples! This little-known fact is attested in Petrarch’s
letters. Writing to Cardinal Colonna on December 1, 1343, the truly
civilised poet denounces with burning indignation an “infernal
spectacle” of which he had been the involuntary witness. His gay friends
(there has been always a singular identity between fashion and
barbarism) seem to have entrapped him into going to a place called
Carbonaria, where he found the queen, the boy-king, and a large audience
assembled in a sort of amphitheatre. Petrarch imagined that there was to
be some splendid entertainment, but he had hardly got inside when a
tall, handsome young man fell dead just below where he was standing,
while the audience raised a shout of applause. He escaped from the place
as fast as he could, horror-struck by the brutality of spectacle and
spectators, and spurring his horse, he turned his back on the “accursed
spot” with the determination to leave Naples as soon as possible. How
can we wonder, he asks, that there are murders in the streets at night
when in broad daylight, in the presence of the king, wretched parents
see their sons stabbed and killed, and when it is considered
dishonourable to be unwilling to present one’s throat to the knife just
as if it were a struggle for fatherland or for the joys of Heaven?

Very curious was the action of the Vatican in this matter; Pope John
XXII. excommunicated every one who took part in the games as actor or
spectator, but since nobody obeyed the prohibition, it was rescinded by
his successor, Benedict XII., to prevent the scandal of a perpetual
disregard of a Papal ordinance. So they went on cutting each other’s
throats with the tacit permission of the Church until King Charles of
the Peace succeeded in abolishing the “sport.”

The action of the Church in respect to bull-fights has been much the
same; local opinion is generally recognised as too strong for
opposition. The French bishops, however, did their best to prevent their
introduction into the South of France, but they failed completely.

I have strayed rather far from the Roman shows, but the savagery of
Christians in the fourteenth century (and after) should make us wonder
less at Roman callousness. All our admiration is due to the few finer
spirits who were repelled by the slaughter of man or beast to make a
Roman’s holiday. Cicero said that he could never see what there was
pleasurable in the spectacle of a noble beast struck to the heart by its
merciless hunter or pitted against one of our weaker species! For a
single expression of censure such as this which has come down to us,
there must have been many of which we have no record. Of out-spoken
censure there was doubtless little because violent condemnation of the
arena would have savoured of treason to the State which patronised and
supported the games just as Queen Elizabeth’s ministers supported
bull-baiting.

Rome must have been one vast zoological garden, and viewing the strange
animals was the first duty of the tourist. Pausanias was deeply
impressed by the “Ethiopian bulls which they call rhinoceroses” and also
by Indian camels in colour like leopards. He saw an all-white deer, and
very much surprised he was to see it, but, to his subsequent regret, he
forgot to ask where it came from. He was reminded of this white deer
when he saw white blackbirds on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. I remember a
white blackbird which stayed in the garden of my old English home for
more than two years: a wretched “sportsman” lay in wait for it when it
wandered into a neighbouring field and shot it.

The feasibility of the transport of the hosts of animals destined to the
arena will always remain a mystery. At the inauguration of the
Colosseum, five thousand wild beasts and six thousand tame ones were
butchered, nor was this the highest figure on a single occasion.
Probably a great portion of the animals was sent by the Governors of
distant provinces who wished to stand well with the home authorities.
But large numbers were also brought over by speculators who sold them to
the highest or the most influential bidder. One reason why Cassius
murdered Julius Cæsar was that Cæsar had secured some lions which
Cassius wished to present to the public. Every one who aimed at
political power or even simply at being thought one of the “smart set”
(the odious word suits the case) spent king’s ransoms on the public
games. For vulgar ostentation the wealthy Roman world eclipsed the
exploits of the modern millionaire. If any one deem this impossible, let
him read, in the _Satyricon_ of Petronius, the account of the fêtes to
be given by a leader of fashion of the name of Titus. Not merely
gladiators, but a great number of freedmen would take part in them: it
would be no wretched mock combat but a real carnage! Titus was so rich
that he could afford such liberality. Contempt is poured upon the head
of a certain Nobarnus who offered a spectacle of gladiators hired at a
low price and so old and decrepit that a breath threw them over. They
all ended by wounding themselves to stop the contest. You might as well
have witnessed a mere cock-fight!

I should think that not more than one animal in three survived the
voyage. This would vastly increase the total number. The survivors often
arrived in such a pitiable state that they could not be presented in the
arena, or that they had to be presented immediately to prevent them from
dying too soon. Symmachus, last of the great nobles of Rome, who,
blinded by tradition, thought to revive the glories of his beloved city
by reviving its shame, graphically describes the anxieties of the
preparations for one of these colossal shows on which he is said to have
spent what would be about £80,000 of our money. He began a year in
advance: horses, bears, lions, Scotch dogs, crocodiles, chariot-drivers,
hunters, actors, and the best gladiators were recruited from all parts.
But when the time drew near, nothing were ready. Only a few of the
animals had come, and these were half dead of hunger and fatigue. The
bears had not arrived and there was no news of the lions. At the
eleventh hour the crocodiles reached Rome, but they refused to eat and
had to be killed all at once in order that they might not die of hunger.
It was even worse with the gladiators, who were intended to provide, as
in all these beast shows, the crowning entertainment. Twenty-nine of the
Saxon captives whom Symmachus had chosen on account of the well-known
valour of their race, strangled one another in prison rather than fight
to the death for the amusement of their conquerors. And Symmachus, with
all his real elevation of mind, was moved to nothing but disgust by
their sublime choice! Rome in her greatest days had gloried in these
shows: how could a man be a patriot who set his face against customs
which followed the Roman eagles round the world? How many times since
then has patriotism been held to require the extinction of moral sense!

Sometimes the humanity of beasts put to shame the inhumanity of man.
There was a lion, commemorated by Statius, which had “unlearnt murder
and homicide,” and submitted of its own accord to a master “who ought to
have been under its feet.” This lion went in and out of its cage and
gently laid down unhurt the prey which it caught: it even allowed people
to put their hands into its mouth. It was killed by a fugitive slave.
The Senate and people of Rome were in despair, and Imperial Cæsar, who
witnessed impassible the death of thousands of animals sent hither to
perish from Africa, from Scythia, from the banks of the Rhine, had tears
in his eyes for a single lion! In later Roman times a tame lion was a
favourite pet: their masters led them about wherever they went, whether
much to the gratification of the friends on whom they called is not
stated.

Another instance of a gentle beast was that of a tiger into whose cage a
live doe had been placed for him to eat. But the tiger was not feeling
well and, with the wisdom of sick animals, he was observing a diet. So
two or three days elapsed, during which the tiger made great friends
with the doe and when he recovered his health and began to feel very
hungry, instead of devouring his fellow-lodger he beat with his paws
against the bars of the cage in sign that he wanted food. These stories
were, no doubt, true, and there may have been truth also in the
well-known story of the lion which refused to attack a man who had once
succoured him. Animals have good memories.

One pleasanter feature of the circus was the exhibition of performing
beasts. Though the exhibitors of such animals are now sometimes charged
with cruelty, it cannot be denied that the public who goes to look at
them is composed of just the people who are most fond of animals. All
children delight in them because, to their minds, they seem a
confirmation of the strong instinctive though oftenest unexpressed
belief, which lurks in every child’s soul, that between man and animals
there is much less difference than is the correct, “grown-up” opinion;
this is a part of the secret lore of childhood which has its origins in
the childhood of the world. The amiable taste for these exhibitions—in
appearance, at least, so harmless—strikes one as incongruous in the same
persons who revelled in slaughter. Such a taste existed, however, and
when St. James said that there was not a single beast, bird or reptile
which had not been tamed, he may have been thinking of the itinerant
showmen’s “learned” beasts which perambulated the Roman empire.

Horses and oxen were among the animals commonly taught to do tricks. I
find no mention of monkeys as performing in the arena, though Apuleius
says that in the spring fêtes of Isis, the forerunners of the Roman
carnival, he saw a monkey with a straw hat and a Phrygian tunic—we can
hardly keep ourselves from asking: _what had it done with the
grind-organ?_ But in spite of this startlingly modern apparition,
monkeys do not seem to have been popular in Rome; I imagine even, that
there was some fixed prejudice against them. The cleverest of all the
animal performers were, of course, the dogs, and one showman had the
ingenious idea of making a dog act a part in a comedy. The effects of a
drug were tried on him, the plot turning on the suspicion that the drug
was poisonous, while, in fact, it was only a narcotic. The dog took the
piece of bread dipped in the liquid, swallowed it, and began to reel and
stagger till he finally fell flat on the ground. He gave himself a last
stretch and then seemed to expire, making no sign of life when his
apparently dead body was dragged about the stage. At the right moment,
he began to move very slightly as if waking out of a deep sleep; then he
raised his head, looked round, jumped up and ran joyously to the proper
person. The piece was played at the theatre of Marcellus in the reign of
old Vespasian, and Cæsar himself was delighted. I wonder that no manager
of our days has turned the incident to account; I never yet saw an
audience serious enough not to become young again at the sight of
four-footed comedians. Even the high art-loving public at the Prince
Regent’s theatre at Munich cannot resist a murmur of discreet merriment
when the pack of beautiful stag-hounds led upon the stage in the hunting
scene in “Tannhäuser” gravely wag their tails in time with the music!

The pet lions were only one example of the aberrations of pet-lovers in
ancient Rome. Maltese lap-dogs became a scourge: Lucian tells the
lamentable tale of a needy philosopher whom a fashionable lady cajoles
into acting as personal attendant to her incomparable Mirrhina. The
Maltese dog was an old fad; Theophrastus, in the portrait of an
insufferable _élégant_, mentions that, when his pet dog dies, he
inscribes “pure Maltese” on its tombstone.

Many were the birds that fell victims to the desire to keep them in
richly ornamented cages in which they died of hunger, says Epictetus,
sooner than be slaves. The canary which takes more kindly to captivity
was unknown till it was brought to Italy in the sixteenth century.
Parrots there were, but Roman parrots were not long-lived: they shared
the common doom: “To each his sufferings, all are _pets_.” The parrots
of Corinna and of Melior which ought to have lived to a hundred or, at
any rate, to have had the chance of dying of grief at the loss of their
possessors (as a parrot did that I once knew), enjoyed fame and fortune
for as brief a span as Lesbia’s sparrow. Melior’s parrot not only had
brilliant green feathers but also many accomplishments which are
described by its master’s friend, the poet Statius. On one occasion, it
sat up half the night at a banquet, hopping from one guest to another
and talking in a way that excited great admiration; it even shared the
good fare and on the morrow it died—which was less than surprising. I
came across an old-fashioned criticism of this poem in which Statius is
scolded for showing so much genuine feeling about ... a parrot! The
critic was right in one thing—the genuine feeling is there; those who
have known what a companion a bird may be, will appreciate the little
touch: “You never felt alone, dear Melior, with its open cage beside
you!” Now the cage is empty; it is “_la cage sans oiseaux_” which Victor
Hugo prayed to be spared from seeing. Some translator turned this into
“a nest without birds,” because he thought that a cage without birds
sounded unpoetical, but Victor Hugo took care of truth and left poetry
to take of itself. And whatever may be the ethics of keeping cage birds,
true it is that few things are more dismal than the sight of the little
mute, tenantless dwelling which was yesterday alive with fluttering
love.

We owe to Roman poets a good deal of information about dogs, and
especially the knowledge that the British hound was esteemed superior to
all others, even to the famous breed of Epirus. This is certified by
Gratius Faliscus, a contemporary of Ovid. He described these animals as
remarkably ugly, but incomparable for pluck. British bull-dogs were used
in the Colosseum, and in the third century Nemesianus praised the
British greyhound. Most of the valuable dogs were brought from abroad;
it is to be inferred that the race degenerated in the climate of Rome,
as it does now. Concha, whose epitaph was written by Petronius, was born
in Gaul. While Martial’s too elaborate epitaph on “The Trusty Lydia” is
often quoted and translated, the more sympathetic poem of Petronius has
been overlooked. He tells the perfections of Concha in a simple,
affectionate manner; like Lydia, she was a mighty huntress and chased
the wild boar fearlessly through the dense forest. Never did chain
hamper her liberty and never a blow fell on her shapely, snow-white
form. She reposed softly, stretched on the breast of her master or
mistress, and at night a well-made bed refreshed her tired limbs. If she
lacked speech, she could make herself understood better than any of her
kind—yet no one had reason to fear her bark. A hapless mother, she died
when her little ones saw the light, and now a narrow marble slab covers
the earth where she rests.

Cicero’s tribute to canine worth is well known: “Dogs watch for us
faithfully; they love and worship their masters, they hate strangers,
their powers of tracking by scent is extraordinary; great is their
keenness in the chase: what can all this mean but that they were made
for man’s advantage?” It was as natural to the Roman mind to regard man
as the lord of creation as to regard the Roman as the lord of man. For
the rest, his normal conception of animals differed little from that of
Aristotle. Cicero says that the chief distinction between man and
animals, is that animals look only to the present, paying little
attention to the past and future, while man looks before and after,
weighs causes and effects, draws analogies and views the whole path of
life, preparing things needful for passing along it. Expressed in the
key of antique optimism instead of in the key of modern pessimism, the
judgment is the same as that of Burns in his lines to the field-mouse:

                 “Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me!
                  The present only touches thee:
                  But, och! I backward cast my e’e
                  On prospects drear!
                  And forward, tho’ I canna see,
                  I guess and fear.”

And of Leopardi in the song of the Syrian shepherd to his flock:—

               “O flock that liest at rest, O blessed thou
                That knowest not thy fate, however hard,
                How utterly I envy thee!”

Cicero’s more virile mind would have spurned this craving to renounce
the distinguishing human privilege for the bliss of ignorance.

Wherever we fix the limits of animal intelligence, there is no question
of man’s obligation to treat sentient creatures with humanity. This was
recognised by Marcus Aurelius when he wrote the golden precept: “As to
animals which have no reason ... do thou, since thou hast reason, and
they have none, make use of them with a generous and liberal spirit.”
Here we have the broadest application of the narrowest assumption. From
the time, at least, that Rome was full of Greek teachers, there were
always some partisans of a different theory altogether. What Seneca
calls “the illustrious but unpopular school of Pythagoras” had a little
following which made up by its sincere enthusiasm for the fewness of its
members. Seneca’s own master Sotio was of this school, and his teaching
made a deep impression on the most illustrious of his pupils, who sums
up its chief points with his usual lucidity: Pythagoras gave men a
horror of crime and of parricide by telling them that they might
unawares kill or devour their own fathers; all sentient beings are bound
together in a universal kinship and an endless transmutation causes them
to pass from one form to another; no soul perishes or ceases its
activity save in the moment when it changes its envelope. Sotio took for
granted that the youths who attended his classes came to him with minds
unprepared to receive these doctrines, and he aimed more at making them
accept the consequences of the theory than the theory itself. What if
they believed none of it? What if they did not believe that souls passed
through different bodies and that the thing we call death is a
transmigration? That in the animal which crops the grass or which
peoples the sea, a soul resides which once was human? That, like the
heavenly bodies, every soul traverses its appointed circle? That nothing
in this world perishes, but only changes scene and place? Let them
remember, nevertheless, that great men have believed all this: “Suspend
your judgment, and in the meantime, respect whatever has life.” If the
doctrine be true, then to abstain from animal flesh is to spare oneself
the committal of crimes; if it be false, such abstinence is commendable
frugality; “all you lose is the food of lions and vultures.”

Sotio himself was a thorough Pythagorean, but there was another
philosopher of the name of Sestius who was an ardent advocate of
abstinence from animal food without believing in the transmigration of
souls. He founded a sort of brotherhood, the members of which took the
pledge to abide by this rule. He argued that since plenty of other
wholesome food existed, what need was there for man to shed blood?
Cruelty must become habitual when people devour flesh to indulge the
palate: “let us reduce the elements of sensuality.” Health would be also
the gainer by the adoption of a simpler and less various diet. Sotio
used these arguments of one whom he might have called an unbeliever, to
reinforce his own.

Seneca does not say if many of his schoolfellows were as much impressed
as he was by this teaching. For a year he abstained from flesh, and when
he got accustomed to it, he even found the new diet easy and agreeable.
His mind seemed to grow more active. That he was allowed to eat what he
liked without encountering interference or ridicule shows the
considerable freedom in which the youth of Rome was brought up: this
made them men. But at the beginning of the reign of Tiberius there went
forth an edict against foreign cults, and abstinence from flesh was held
to show a leaning towards religious novelties. For this reason the elder
Seneca advised his son to give up vegetarianism. Seneca honestly
confesses that he went back to better fare without much urging; yet he
always remained frugal, and he seems never to have felt quite sure that
his youthful experiment did not agree best with the counsels of
perfection.


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                   IV

                          PLUTARCH THE HUMANE


PLUTARCH was the Happy Philosopher—and there were not many that were
happy. A life of travel, a life of teaching, an honoured old age as the
priest of Apollo in his native village in Bœotia: what kinder fate than
this? He was happy in the very obscurity which seems to have surrounded
his life at Rome, for it saved him from spite and envy. He was happy, if
we may trust the traditional effigies, even in that thing which likewise
is a good gift of the gods, a gracious outward presence exactly
corresponding with the soul within. A painter who wished to draw a type
of illimitable compassionateness would choose the face attributed to
Plutarch. Finally, this gentle sage is happy still after eighteen
hundred years in doing more than any other writer of antiquity to build
up character by diffusing the radiance of noble deeds. Nevertheless,
were he to come back to life he would have one disappointment, and that
would be to find how few people read his essays on kindness to animals:
they would stand a better chance of being read if they were printed
alone, but to arrive at them you must dive in the formidable depths of
the _Moralia_: a very storehouse of interesting things, but hardly
attractive to the general in a hurried age. Some of its treasures have
been revealed by Dr. Oakesmith in his admirable monograph on “The
Religion of Plutarch.” The mine of nobly humane sentiment remains,
however, almost unexplored.

The essays devoted to animals are three in number, with the titles:
“Whether terrestrial or aquatic animals are the more intelligent?” “That
animals have the use of Reason”; “On the habit of eating flesh.” The two
first are in the form of dialogues, and the third is a familiar
discourse, a _conférence_, such as those which now form a popular
feature of the Roman season. Through these studies there runs a vein of
transparent sincerity: we feel that they were composed not to show the
author’s cleverness or to startle by paradoxes, but with the real wish
to make the young men for whom they were intended a little more humane.
Plutarch did not take up the claims of animals because good “copy” could
be made out of them. As his wish is to persuade, he does not ask for the
impossible. It is the voice of the highly civilised Greek addressing the
young barbarians of Rome: for to the Greek’s inmost mind the Roman must
have always remained somewhat of a barbarian. There is great restraint:
though Plutarch must have loathed the games of the arena, he speaks of
them with guarded deprecation. He makes one of his characters say that
the chase (which he did not himself like) was useful in keeping people
from worse things, “such as the combats of gladiators.” He is genuinely
anxious by all means to persuade some, and for this reason he refrains
from scaring away his hearers or readers by extreme demands. Though he
has a strong personal repugnance to flesh-eating, he does not insist on
every one sharing it. Anyhow, he says, Be as humane as you can; cause as
little suffering as is possible; no doubt it is not easy, all at once,
to eradicate a habit which has taken hold of our sensual nature, but, at
least, let us deprive it of its worst features. Let us eat flesh if we
must, but for hunger, not for self-indulgence; let us kill animals but
still be compassionate—not heaping up outrages and tortures “as, alas,
is done every day.” He mentions how swans were blinded and then fattened
with unnatural foods, which is only a little worse than things that are
done now. What is certain is, that extreme and habitual luxury in food
has spelt decadence from the banquets of Babylon downwards.

Plutarch goes on to ask whether it is impossible to amuse ourselves
without all these excesses? Shall we expire on the spot, are the
resources of men totally exhausted, if the table be not supplied with
_pâtés de foies gras_? Is life not worth living without slaughter to
make a feast, slaughter to find a pastime; cannot we exist without
asking of certain animals that they show courage, and fight in spite of
themselves, or that they massacre other animals which have not the
natural energy to defend themselves? Must we for our sport tear the
mother from the little ones which she suckles or hatches? Plutarch
implores us not to imitate the children of whom Bion speaks, who amused
themselves by throwing stones at the frogs, but the frogs were not at
all amused—they simply died. “When we take our recreation, those who
help in the fun ought to share in it and be amused as well.” Thus does
the kind Greek philosopher exhort us

             “Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
              With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”

Did Wordsworth know that his thought had been expressed so long before?
It matters little; the counsels of mercy never grow old.

With good sense and in that spirit of compromise which is really the
basis of morality, Plutarch argued that cruelty to animals does not lie
in the use but in the abuse of them; it is not cruel to kill them if
they are incompatible with our own existence; it is not cruel to tame
and train to our service those made by nature gentle and loving towards
man which become the companions of our toil according to their natural
aptitude. “Horse and ass are given to us,” as Prometheus says, “to be
submissive servants and fellow-workers; dogs to be guardians and
watchers, goats and sheep to give us milk and wool.” (Cow’s milk seems
to have been rarely drunk, as is still the case in the Mediterranean
islands and in Greece.)

“The Stoics,” says Plutarch, “made sensibility towards animals a
preparation to humanity and compassion because the gradually formed
habit of the lesser affections is capable of leading men very far.” In
the “Lives” he insists on the same point: “Kindness and beneficence
should be extended to creatures of every species, and these still flow
from the breast of a well-natured man as streams that issue from the
living fountain. A good man will take care of his horses and dogs not
only when they are young, but when old and past service.... We certainly
ought not to treat living creatures like shoes or household goods,
which, when worn out with use, we throw away, and were it only to learn
benevolence to human kind, we should be merciful to other creatures. For
my own part I would not sell even an old ox.”

Here I may say that Plutarch should have thanked Fate which made him a
philosopher and not a farmer. For how, alas, can the farmer escape from
becoming the accomplice of that which the Italian poet apostrophizes in
the words—

                  “Natura, illaudabil maraviglia,
                   Che per uccider partorisci e nutri!”

How can well-cared-for old age be the lot of more than a very few of the
animals that serve us so faithfully? The exception must console us for
the rule. The beautiful story of one such exception is told by both
Plutarch and Pliny the Elder. When Pericles was building the Parthenon a
great number of mules were employed in drawing the stones up the hill of
the Acropolis. Some of them became too old for the work, and these were
set at liberty to pasture at large. But one old mule gravely walked
every day to the stone-yard and accompanied, or rather led, the
procession of mule-carts to and fro. The Athenians were delighted with
its devotion to duty, and decided that it should be supported at the
expense of the State for the rest of its days. According to Pliny, the
mule of the Parthenon lived till it had attained its eightieth year, a
record that seems startling even having regard to the proverbial
longevity of pensioners. Plutarch does not mention it, perhaps, because
he had some doubts about its accuracy. In other respects the story may
be accepted as literally true; and does it not do us good to think of
it, as we look at the most glorious work of man’s hands bathed in the
golden afterglow? Does it not do us good to think that at the zenith of
her greatness Athens

                                      “... Mother of arts
                And eloquence, native to famous wits”

stooped—nay, rose—to generous appreciation of the willing service of an
old mule?

In dealing with animal psychology Plutarch makes a strong point of the
inherent improbability that, while feeling and imagination are the
common share of all animated beings, reason should be apportioned only
to a single species. “How can you say such things? Is not every one
convinced that no being can feel without also possessing understanding,
that there is not a single animal which has not a sort of thought and
reason just as he comes into the world with senses and instinct?”
Nature, which is said to make all things from one cause and to one end,
has not given sensibility to animals simply in order that they should be
capable of sensations. Since some things are good for them, and others
bad, they would not exist for a single instant if they did not know how
to seek the good and shun the bad. The animal learns by his senses what
things are good and what are bad for him, but when, in consequence of
these indications, of his senses, it is a question of taking and seeking
what is useful and of avoiding and flying from what is harmful, these
same animals would have no means of action if Nature had not made them
up to a certain point capable of reason, of judgment, of memory, and of
attention. Because, if you completely deprived them of the spirit of
conjecture, memory, foresight, preparation, hope, fear, desire, grief,
they would cease to derive the slightest utility from the eyes or ears
which they possess. Plutarch might have added that a mindless animal
would resemble not a child or a savage, but an idiot. He does point out
that they would be better off with no senses at all than with the power
of feeling and no power of acting upon it. But, he adds, could sensation
exist without intelligence? He quotes a line from I do not know what
poet:—

                “The spirit only hears and sees—all else
                 Is deaf and blind.”

If we look with our eyes at a page of writing without seizing the
meaning of a word of it, because our thoughts are preoccupied, is it not
the same as if we had never seen it? But even were we to admit that the
senses suffice to their office, would that explain the phenomena of
memory and foresight? Would the animal fear things, not present, which
harm him, or desire things, not present, which are to his advantage?
Would he prepare his retreat or shelter or devise snares by which to
catch other animals? Only one theory can be applied to mind in man and
mind in animals.

It will be seen from this summary that Plutarch traversed the whole
field of speculation on animal intelligence which has not really
extended its boundaries since the time when he wrote, though it is
possible that we are now on the verge, if not of new discoveries, at
least of the admission of a new point of view. The study of the dual
element in man, the endeavour to establish a line of demarcation between
the conscious and subliminal self, may lead to the inquiry, how far the
conscious self corresponds with what was meant, when speaking of
animals, by “reason,” and the subliminal self with what was meant by
“instinct”? But the use of a new terminology would not alter the
conclusion: call it reason, consciousness, spirit; some of it the
“paragon of animals” shares with his poor relations. The case is put in
a homely way but not without force by the heroine of a forgotten novel
by Lamartine: the speaker is an old servant who is in despair at losing
her goldfinch: “Ah! On dit que les bêtes n’ont pas l’âme,” she says. “Je
ne veux pas offenser le bon Dieu, mais si mon pauvre oiseau n’avait pas
d’âme, avec quoi done n’aurait-il tant aimée? Avec les plumes ou avec
les pattes, peut-être?”

Plutarch reviews—to reject—the “Automata” argument, which had already
some supporters. Certain naturalists, he says, try to prove that animals
feel neither pleasure nor anger nor yet fear; that the nightingale does
not meditate his song, that the bee has no memory, that the swallow
makes no preparations, that the lion never grows angry, nor is the stag
subject to fear. Everything, according to these theorists, is merely
delusive appearance. They might as well assert that animals cannot see
or hear; that they only appear to see or hear; that they have no voice,
only the semblance of a voice; in short, that they are not alive but
only seem to live.

The moral aspects of any problem are those which to a moralist seem the
most important, and Plutarch did not seek to deny the force of the
objection: If virtue be the true aim of reason, how can Nature have
bestowed reason on creatures which cannot direct it to its true object?
But he denied the postulate that animals have no ethical potentialities.
If the love of men for their children is granted to be the corner-stone
of all human society, shall we say that there is no merit in the
affection of animals for their offspring? He sums up the matter by
remarking that the limitation of a faculty does not show that it does
not exist. To pretend that every being not endowed at birth with perfect
reason is, by its nature, incapable of reason of any kind, would be to
ignore the fact that although reason is a natural gift the degree in
which it is possessed by any individual depends on his training and on
his teachers. Perfect reason is possessed by none because none has
perfect rectitude and moral excellence.

Animals exhibit examples of sociability, courage, resource, and again,
of cowardice and viciousness. Why do we not say of one tree that it is
less teachable than another, as we say that a sheep is less teachable
than a dog? It is, of course, because plants cannot think, and where the
faculty of thought is wholly wanting, there cannot be more or less
quickness or slowness, more or less of good qualities or of bad.

Yet it must be allowed that man’s intelligence is amazingly superior to
that of animals. But what does that prove? Do not some animals leave man
far behind in the keenness of their sight and the sharpness of their
hearing? Shall we say, therefore, that man is blind or deaf? We have
some strength in our hands and in our bodies although we are not
elephants or camels. In the same way, we should be careful not to infer
that animals lack all reasoning faculties from the fact that their
intelligence is duller and more defective than man’s. “Boatfuls” of true
stories can be cited to show the docility and special aptitudes of the
different children of creation. And a very amusing occupation it is,
says Plutarch, for young people to collect such stories. In the course
of his work, he sets them a good example, for he brings together a real
“boatful” of anecdotes of clever beasts, but at this point he contents
himself with observing that madness in dogs and other animals would be
alone sufficient to show that they had some mind: otherwise, how could
they go out of it?

The stoics who taught the strictest humanity to animals rejected,
nevertheless, the supposition that animals had reason, for how, they
asked, can such a theory be reconciled with the idea of eternal justice?
Would it not make abstinence from their flesh imperative and entail
consequences which would make our life impracticable? If we were to give
up using animals for our own purposes, we should be reduced ourselves
almost to the condition of brutes. “What works would be left for us to
do by land or sea, what industries to cultivate, what embellishments of
our way of living, if we regarded animals as reasonable beings and our
fellow-creatures, and hence adopted the rule (which, clearly, would be
only proper) to do them no harm and to study their convenience.”

Many a sensitive modern soul has pondered over this crux without finding
a satisfactory solution. Plutarch says that Empedocles and Heraclites
admitted the injustice, and laid it to the door of Nature which permits
or ordains a state of war and necessity, in which nothing is
accomplished without the weaker going to the wall. For himself, he would
propose to those “who, instead of disputing, gently follow and learn”
the better way out of the difficulty—which was introduced by the Sages
of Antiquity, then long lost, and found again by Pythagoras. This better
way is to use animals as our helpers but to refrain from taking life.

Plutarch here evades a stumbling-block which he does not remove. The
dialogue, as it has come down to us, breaks off suddenly after one final
objection: how can beings have reason which have no notion of God? Some
scholars imagine that Plutarch hurried the dialogue to a close because
this query completely baffled him; others (and they are the majority)
attribute the abrupt finish to the loss of the concluding part. Would
Plutarch have contented himself with citing the analogy of young
children who, although not without the elements of reason, know very
little of theology, or would not he rather have contended with Celsus,
that animals _do_ possess religious knowledge? If he took the last
course, it may well be that the disappearance of the end of the dialogue
was not accidental. At Ravenna there is a terrible mosaic, alive with
wrath and energy, which shows a Christ we know not (for He looks like a
grand Inquisitor) thrusting into the flames heretical books. As I looked
at it, I thought how many valuable classical works, vaguely suspected on
the score of faith or morals, must have shared the fate of “unorthodox”
polemics in the merry bonfires which this mosaic holds up for imitation!

The argument “that it sounds unnatural to ascribe reason to creatures
ignorant of God,” suggests familiarity with a passage in Epictetus
(Plutarch’s contemporary), where he says that man alone was made to have
the understanding which recognises God—a recognition which he elsewhere
explains by the hypothesis that every man has in him a small portion of
the divine. Having this intuitive sense, man is bound, without ceasing,
to praise his Creator, and, since others are blind and neglect to do it,
Epictetus will do it on behalf of all: “for what else can I do, a lame
old man, than sing hymns to God? If I was a nightingale, I should do the
part of a nightingale; if I were a swan, I would do like a swan; but now
I am a _rational creature_, and I ought to praise God: this is my work;
I do it, nor will I desert this post so long as I am allowed to keep it,
and I exhort you to join in this song.”

The words are among the sweetest and most solemn that ever issued from
human lips; yet those who care to pursue the subject farther may submit
that there was some one before Epictetus, who called upon the beasts,
the fishes and the fowls to join him in blessing the name of the Lord,
and there was some one after him who commanded the birds of the air to
sing the praises of their Maker and Preserver! It is strange that,
despite the hard-and-fast line which the moulders of the Catholic Faith
were at pains to trace between man and beast, if we would find the most
emphatic assertion of their common privilege of praising God, we must
leave the Pagan world and take up the Bible and the “Fioretti” of St.
Francis!

[Illustration:

  (_Photo: Sommer._)
  BACCHUS RIDING ON A PANTHER.
  Naples Museum.
  (_Mosaic found at Pompeii._)]

Of the anecdotes with which Plutarch enlivens his pages, he says himself
that he puts on one side fable and mythology, and limits his choice to
the “all true” category, and if he appears to be at times a little
credulous, one may well believe that he is always candid. Just as in his
“Lives” he tried to ennoble his readers by making noble deeds
interesting, so in his writings on animals, he tried to make people
humane by making his dumb clients interesting. He did not start with
thinking the task an easy one, for he was convinced that man is more
cruel than the most savage of wild beasts. But he aims at pouring, if
not a full draught of mercy, at least some drops, into the heart that
never felt a pang, the mind that never gave a thought. Many of his
stories are taken straight from the common street life of the Rome of
his day, as that of the elephant which passed every day along a certain
street where the schoolboys teased it by pricking its trunk with their
writing stylets (men may come and go, but the small boy is a fixed
quantity!). At last, the elephant, losing patience, picked up one of his
tormentors and hoisted him in the air; a cry of horror rose from the
spectators, no one doubted that in another moment the child would be
dashed to the ground. But the elephant set the offender down very gently
and walked away, thinking, no doubt, that a good fright had been a
sufficient punishment. The Syrian elephant, of whom Plutarch tells how
he made his master understand that in his absence he had been cheated of
half his rations, was not cleverer than some of his kind on service in
India, who would not begin to eat till all three cakes which formed
their rations were set before each of them—a fact that was told me by
the officer whose duty it was to preside at their dinner. Plutarch
speaks of counting oxen that knew when the number of turns was finished
which constituted their daily task at a saw-mill: they refused to
perform one more turn than the appointed figure. As an instance of the
discrimination of animals, he tells how Alexander’s horse, Bucephalus,
when unsaddled, would allow the grooms to mount him, but when he had on
all his rich caparisons, no one on earth could get on his back except
his royal master. There is no doubt that animals take notice of dress. I
have been told that when crinolines were worn, all the dogs barked at
any woman not provided with one. Plutarch was among the earliest to
observe that animals discover sooner than man when ice will not bear,
which he thinks that they find out by noticing if there is any sound of
running water. He says truly that to draw such an inference presupposes
not only sharp ears, but a real power of weighing cause and effect.
Plutarch mentions foxes as particularly clever in this respect, but dogs
possess the same gift. The French Ambassador at Rome—who, like all
persons of superior intelligence, is very fond of animals—told me the
following story. One winter day, when he was French Minister at Munich,
he went alone with his gun and his dog to the banks of the Isar. Having
shot a snipe, he ordered the dog to go on to the ice to fetch it, but,
to his surprise, the animal, which had never disobeyed him, refused.
Annoyed at its obstinacy, he went himself on to the ice, which
immediately gave way, and had he not been a good swimmer he might not be
now at the Palazzo Farnese.

The two creatures that have been most praised for their wisdom are the
elephant and the ant, but of the ant’s admirers from Solomon to Lord
Avebury, not one was ever so enthusiastic as Plutarch. Horace, indeed,
had discoursed of her foresight: “She carries in her mouth whatever she
is able, and piles up her heap, by no means ignorant or careless of the
future; then, when Aquarius saddens the inverted year, never does she
creep abroad, wisely making use of the stores which were provided
beforehand.” But such a tribute sounds cold beside Plutarch’s praise of
her as the tiny mirror in which the greatest marvels of Nature are
reflected, a drop of the purest water, containing every Virtue, and,
above all, what Homer calls “the sweetness of loving qualities.” Ants,
he declares, show the utmost solicitude for their comrades, alive and
dead. They exhibit their ingenuity by biting off the ends of grains to
prevent them from sprouting and so spoiling the provender. He speaks,
though not from his own observation, of the beautiful interior
arrangements of ant-hills which had been examined by naturalists who
divided the mount into sections, “A thing I cannot approve of!”
Tender-hearted philosopher, who had a scruple about upsetting an
ant-hill! Of other insects, he most admires the skill of spiders and
bees. It is said that the bees of Crete, when rounding a certain
promontory, carried tiny stones as ballast to avoid being blown away by
the wind. I have seen more than once a tiny stone hanging from the
spider-threads which crossed and re-crossed an avenue—it seemed to me
that these were designed to steady the suspension bridge.

Plutarch insists that animals teach themselves even things outside the
order of their natural habits, a fact which will be confirmed by all who
have observed them closely. Just as no two animals have the same
disposition, so does each one, though in greatly varying degree, display
some little arts or accomplishments peculiar to itself. Plutarch
mentions a trained elephant that was seen practising its steps when it
thought that no one was looking. But he allots the palm of self-culture
to an incomparable magpie that belonged to a barber whose shop faced the
temple called the Agora of the Greeks. The bird could imitate to
perfection any sort of sound, cry or tune; it was renowned in the whole
quarter. Now it happened one morning that the funeral of a wealthy
citizen went past, accompanied by a very fine band of trumpeters which
performed an elaborate piece of music. After that day, to every one’s
surprise, the magpie grew mute! Had it become deaf or dumb or both!
Endless were the surmises, and what was not the general amazement when,
at last, it broke its long silence by bursting forth with a flood of
brilliant notes the exact reproduction of the difficult trills and
cadences executed by the funeral band! Evidently it had been practising
it in its head all that while, and only produced it when it had got it
quite perfect. Several Romans and several Greeks witnessed the facts and
could vouch for the truth of the narrative.

The swallow’s nest and the nightingale’s song make Plutarch pause and
wonder; he believes, with Aristotle, that the old nightingales teach the
young ones, remarking that nightingales reared in captivity never sing
so well as those that have profited by the parental lessons. He gives a
word to the dove of Deucalion which returned a first time to the ark
because the deluge continued, but disappeared when it was set free
again, the waters having subsided. Plutarch confesses, however, that
this is “mythical,” and though he admits that birds deserved the name by
which Euripides calls them of “Messengers of the gods,” he is inclined
to attribute their warnings to the direct intervention of an over-ruling
deity of whom they are the inconscient agents.

It is a pleasure to find that Plutarch had a high appreciation of the
hedgehog—the charming “urchin” which represents to many an English child
an epitome of wild nature, friendly yet untamed, familiar yet
mysterious. He does not say that it milks cows—a calumny which is an
article of faith with the British ploughman—but he relates that when the
grapes are ripe, the mother urchin goes under the vines and shakes the
plants till some of the grapes fall off; then, rolling herself over
them, she attaches a number of grapes to her spines and so marches back
to the hole where she keeps her nurslings. “One day,” says Plutarch,
“when we were all together, we had the chance of seeing this with our
own eyes—it looked as if a bunch of grapes was shuffling along the
ground, so thickly covered was the animal with its booty.”

Dogs that threw themselves on their masters’ pyre, dogs that caused the
arrest of assassins or thieves, dogs that remained with and protected
the bodies of their dead masters, clever dogs, devoted dogs, magnanimous
dogs—these will be all found in Plutarch’s gallery. How high-minded, he
says, it is in the dog when, as Homer advises, you lay down your stick,
even an angry dog ceases to attack you. He praises the affectionate
regard which many have shown in giving decent burial to the dogs they
cherished, and recalls how Xantippus of old, whose dog swam by his
galley to Salamis when the Athenians were forced to abandon their city,
buried the faithful creature on a promontory which “to this day” is
known as the Dog’s Grave. Very desolate was the case of the other
animals that ran up and down distraught when their masters embarked,
like the poor cats and dogs which helped the English soldiers in the
block-houses to while away the weary hours, and which, by superior
orders, were left to their fate, though their comrades in khaki were
anxious enough to carry them away. As a proof of the affection of the
Greeks for their dogs Plutarch might have spoken of the not uncommon
representation of them on the _Stelæ_ in the family group which brings
together all the dearest ties between life and death.

One animal is missing from Plutarch’s portrait gallery—the cat, to which
he only concedes the ungracious allusion “that man had not the excuse of
hunger for eating flesh, like the weasel or cat.” Can we make good the
omission from other sources?

There is a general notion that cats “were almost unknown to Greek and
Roman antiquity”—these are the words of so well-informed a writer as M.
S. Reinach. Yet instances exist of paintings of cats on Greek vases of
the fifth century, and I was interested to see in the Museum at Athens a
well-carved cat on a stele. Aristotle, who, like Plutarch, mentions cats
in connexion with weasels (both, he says, catch birds), reckons the time
they live at six years, less than half the life of an average modern
cat; this may indicate that though known, they were not then
acclimatised in Europe. Æsop has four fables of cats: 1. A cat dressed
as a physician offers his services to an aviary of birds; they are
declined. 2. A cat seeks an excuse for eating a cock; he fails to find
the excuse, but eats the cock all the same. 3. A cat pretends to be dead
so that mice may come near her. 4. A cat falls in love with a handsome
young man and induces Venus to change her into a lovely maiden. But on a
mouse coming into the room, she scampers after it. Venus, being
displeased, changes her back into a cat. This belongs to a large circle
of folk-tales, and probably all these fables came from the East.

Herodotus tells as a “very marvellous thing” that cats are apt to rush
back into a burning house, and that the Egyptians try to save them, even
at the risk of their lives, but rarely succeed: hence great lamentation.
Also, that if a cat die in a house all the dwellers in it shave their
eyebrows; “the cats, when they are dead, they carry for burial to the
city of Bubastis.” The Egyptian name for light (and for cat) is _Mau_,
and the inference is irresistible, that the Egyptians supposed the cat
to be constantly apostrophizing the sacred light of which she was the
symbol. Nothing shows the strength of tradition better than the
existence of an endowment at Cairo for the feeding and housing of
homeless cats.

If the cat in Europe had been a rarity so great as most people think, it
would have been more highly prized. It seems nearer the truth to say
that it was not admired. Its incomplete domestication which attracts us,
did not attract the ancient world. Tame only so far as it suits their
own purposes, cats patronize man, looking down upon him from a higher
plane, which, if only the house-top, they make a golden bar.

                                 “Chat mystérieux,
                   Chat séraphique, chat étrange ...
                   Peut-être est-il fée, est-il dieu?”

Greeks and Romans preferred a plain animal to this half-elf, half-god.

The Greek comic writer, Anaxandrides, said to the Egyptians: “You weep
if you see a cat ailing, but I like to kill and skin it.” The fear lest
cats should be profanely treated in Europe led the Egyptians to do all
they could to prevent their exportation; they even sent missions to the
Mediterranean to ransom the cats borne into slavery and carry them back
to Egypt. But these missions could not have reached the cats that had
been taken inland, and as the animal increases rapidly, it may have been
fairly common from early times. There is no doubt, however, that the
number went up with a bound when Egypt became Christian, and every monk
who came to Europe brought shoals of cats, the date corresponding with
that of the first invasion of the rat in the trail of the Huns.

[Illustration:

  BRONZE STATUE OF AN EGYPTIAN CAT.
  (_Collection of H.E. Monsieur Camille Barrère, French Ambassador at
    Rome._)]

Antiquity regarded the cat, before all things, as a little beast of
prey. Nearly every reference to it gives it this character. In the stele
at Athens the cat is supposed to be looking at a bird-cage to which the
man is pointing; the man holds a bird in his left hand, presumably the
pet of the child who stands by him. It seems as if the cat meditated if
it had not performed some fell deed. Seneca observed that young chickens
feel an instinctive fear of the cat but not of the dog. The fine mosaic
at Pompeii shows a tabby kitten in the act of catching a quail.

Only one ancient poet, by a slight magician-like touch, calls up a
different vision: Theorcitus makes the voluble Praxinœ say to her maid:
“Eunœ, pick up your work, and take care, lazy girl, how you leave it
lying about again; the cats find it just the bed they like.” There—at
last—is the cat we know! But after all, it is an Egyptian cat: a cat
sure of her privileges, a cat who relies on her goddess prototype, and
has but a modicum of respect for the chattering little Syracusan woman
in whose house she condescends to reside. Such were not cats of ancient
Greece and Rome, who, from being un-appreciated, fell back to the morals
of the simple ravager.


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                   V

                          MAN AND HIS BROTHER


TRADITIONAL beliefs are like the _coco de mer_ which was found floating,
here and there, on the sea, or washed up on the shore, and which gave
birth to the strangest conjectures; it was supposed to tell of
undiscovered continents or to have dropped from heaven itself. Then, one
day, some one saw this peculiar cocoanut quietly growing on a tall
palm-tree in an obscure islet of the Indian Ocean. All we gather of
primitive traditions is the fruit. Yet the fruit did not grow in the
air, it grew on branches and the branches grew on a trunk and the trunk
had a root. To get to the root of even the slightest of our own
prejudices—let alone those of the savage—we should have to travel back
far into times when history was not.

Lucretius placed at the beginning of the ages of mankind a berry-eating
race, innocent of blood. The second age belonged to the hunter who
killed animals, at first, and possibly for a long time, for their skins,
before he used their flesh as food. In the third age animals were
domesticated; first the sheep, because that was gentle and easily tamed
(which one may see by the moufflons at Monte Carlo), then, by degrees,
the others.

This classification was worthy of the most far-seeing mind of antiquity.
Had not human originally meant humane we should not have been here to
tell the tale. The greater traditions of a bloodless age are enshrined
in sacred books; minor traditions of it abound in the folk-lore of the
world. Man was home-sick of innocence; his conscience, which has gone on
getting more blunted, not more sensitive, revolted at the “daily
murder.” So mankind called upon heaven to provide an excuse for
slaughter.

The Kirghis of Mongolia say that in the beginning only four men and four
animals were made: the camel, the ox, the sheep, and the horse, and all
were told to live on grass. The animals grazed, but the men pulled up
the grass by the roots and stored it. The animals complained to God that
the men were pulling up all the grass, and that soon there would be none
left. God said: “If I forbid men to eat grass, will you allow them to
eat you?” Fearing starvation, the animals consented.

From the first chapter of Genesis to the last of the “Origin of Species”
there is one long testimony to our vegetarian ancestor, but beyond the
fact that he existed, what do we know about him? We may well believe
that he lived in a good climate and on a plenteous earth. Adam and Eve
or their representatives could not have subsisted in Greenland. I think
that the killing of wild animals, and especially the eating of them,
began when man found himself confronted by extremes of cold and length
of winter nights. The skins of animals gave him the only possibility of
keeping warm or even of living at all, if he was to brave the outer air,
while their flesh may have been often the only food he could find. He
was obliged to eat them to keep alive, as Arctic explorers have been
obliged to eat their sledge-dogs. Not preference, but hard necessity,
made him carnivorous.

These speculations are confirmed by the doings of the earliest man of
whom we have any sure knowledge; _not_ the proto-man who must have
developed, as I have said, under very different climatic conditions.
Perhaps he sat under the palm-trees growing on the banks of the Thames,
but though the palm-trees have left us their fruit, man, if he was
there, left nothing to speak of his harmless sojourn. By tens of
thousands of years the earliest man with whom we can claim acquaintance
is the reindeer hunter of Quartenary times. He hunted and fed upon the
reindeer, but he had not tamed them. He wore reindeer skins, but he
could not profit by reindeer milk; no children were brought up by hand,
possibly to the advantage of the children. It is likely, by the by, that
the period of human lactation was very long. The horse also was killed
for food at a time infinitely removed from the date of his first service
to man.

[Illustration:

  REINDEER BROWSING.
  Older Stone Age.]

[Illustration:

  HORSE DRAWING DISC OF THE SUN.
  Older Bronze Age.]

The reindeer hunter was a most intelligent observer of animals. He was
an artist and a very good one. The best of his scratchings on reindeer
horn and bone of horses and reindeer in different attitudes are
admirable for freedom, life, and that intuition of character which makes
the true animal painter. For a time which makes one dizzy to look down
upon, no such draughtsman appeared as the pre-historic cave dweller. The
men of the age of Polished Stone and of the early ages of metals
produced nothing similar in the way of design. They understood beauty of
form and ornament or, rather, perhaps, they still shared in that
Nature’s own unerring touch; it took millenniums of civilisation for man
to make one ugly pot or pan. But these men had not the gift or even the
idea of sitting down to copy a grazing or running animal.

We need not go far, however, to find a man who, living under nearly the
same conditions as the reindeer hunter of Southern France, has developed
the same artistic aptitude. I shall always recall with pleasure my visit
to a Laplander’s hut; it was in the broad daylight of Arctic midnight—no
one slept in the hut, except an extraordinarily small baby in a
canoe-shaped cradle. The floor was spread with handsome furs, and its
aspect was neither untidy nor comfortless. I reflected that this was how
the cave dweller arranged his safe retreat. Much more strongly was he
brought to my mind by the domestic objects of every sort made of
reindeer horn and adorned with drawings. As I write I have one of them
before me, a large horn knife, the sheath of which ends with the
branching points. It is beautifully decorated with _graffiti_, showing
the good and graceful creature without whom the Laplander cannot live.
The school of art is distinctly Troglodite.

A theory has been started that the man of the Quartenary age drew his
horses and his reindeer solely as a magical decoy from the idea that the
pictures “called” the game as whistling (_i.e._, imitating the sound of
the wind) “calls” the wind. I do not know that the Lapps, though
practised in magic, have any such purpose in view. It is said that it
would be absurd to attribute a motive of mere artistic pleasure to the
Troglodite. Why? Some races have as natural a tendency to artistic
effort as the bower-bird has to decorate its nest. Conditions of climate
may have given the hunter periods of enforced idleness, and art, in its
earliest form, was, perhaps, always an escape from _ennui_, a mode of
passing the time. That the early hunter dealt in magic is likely enough;
he is supposed, though not on altogether conclusive grounds, to have
been a fetich-worshipper, and fetich-worship is akin to some kinds of
magic. But it does not follow that _all_ his art had this connexion. How
animals appeared to his eyes we know; what he thought about them he has
not told us. The Eskimo, the modern pre-historic man who is believed to
be a better-preserved type than even the Lapp, may be asked to speak for
him.

The Eskimo can say that he had a friendly feeling towards all living
things, notwithstanding that he fed on flesh, and that wild beasts
sometimes fed on him. Not that he had ever talked of wild beasts, for he
had no tame ones. He had not a vocabulary of rude terms about animals.
He was inclined to credit every species with many potential merits. The
Eskimo is afraid—very much afraid—of bears. Yet he is the first to admit
that the bear is capable of acting like the finest of fine gentlemen. A
woman was in a fright at seeing a bear and so gave him a partridge; that
bear never forgot the trifling service, but brought her newly killed
seals ever after. Another bear saved the life of three men who wished to
reward him. He politely declined their offer, but if, in winter time,
they should see a bald-headed bear, will they induce their companions to
spare him? After so saying, he plunged into the sea. Next winter a bear
was sighted and they were going to hunt him, when these men, remembering
what had happened, begged the hunters to wait till they had had a look
at him. Sure enough it was “their own bear”! They told the others to
prepare a feast for him, and when he had refreshed himself, he lay down
to sleep and _the children played around him_. Presently he awoke and
ate a little more, after which he went down to the sea, leapt in, and
was never seen again.

Even such lovely imaginings, we may believe, without an excessive
stretch of fancy, gilded the mental horizon of the Troglodite. He had
long left behind the stage of primal innocence, but no supernatural
chasm gaped between him and his little brothers.

The reindeer hunters were submerged by what is more inexorable than
man—Nature. The reindeer vanished, and with him the hunter, doomed by
the changed conditions of climate. He vanished as the Lapp is vanishing;
the poignantly tragic scene which was chronicled by two lines in the
newspapers during the early summer of 1906—the suicide of a whole clan
of Lapps whose reindeer were dead and who had nothing to do but to
follow them—may have happened in what we call fair Provence. Thousands
of men paid with their lives for its becoming a rose garden.

The successors of the reindeer hunters, Turanian like them, but far more
progressive, were the lake dwellers, the dolmen-builders, with their
weaving and spinning, their sowing and reaping, their pottery and their
baskets, their polished flints and their domestic animals. Man’s
greatest achievement, the domestication of animals, had been reached in
the unrecorded ages that divide the rough and the polished stone. Man,
“excellent in art,” had mastered the beast whose lair is in the wilds;
“he tames the horse of shaggy mane, he puts the yoke upon its neck; he
tames the tireless mountain bull.” The great mind of Sophocles saw and
saw truly that these were the mighty works of man; the works which made
man, man. We know that when the Neolithic meat-eater of what is now
Denmark threw away the bones after he had done his meal, these bones
were gnawed by house-dogs. A simple thing, but it tells a wondrous tale.
Did these dogs come with their masters from Asia, or had they been tamed
in their Northern home? The answer depends on whether the dog is
descended from jackal or wolf. In either case it is unlikely that the
most tremendous task of domestication was the first.

Not everywhere has man domesticated animals, though we may be sure that
he took them everywhere with him after he had domesticated them. If man
walked on dry land across the Atlantic as some enthusiastic students of
sub-oceanic geography now believe that he did, he led no sheep, no
horses, no dogs. In America, when it was discovered, there was only one
domestic animal, and in Australia there was none. Of native animals, the
American buffalo could have been easily tamed. It may be said that in
Australia there was no suitable animal, but the dog’s ancestor could not
have seemed a suitable animal for a household protector; a jackal is not
a promising pupil, still less a wolf, unless there was some more gentle
kind of wolf than any which now survives. Might not a good deal have
been made out of the kangaroo? Possibly the whole task of domestication
was the work of one patient, intelligent and widely-spread race, kindred
of the Japanese, who in making forest trees into dwarfs show the sort of
qualities that would be needed to make a wild animal not only unafraid
(that is nothing), but also a willing servant.

The Neolithic man’s eschatology of animals and of himself was identical.
He contemplated for both a future life which reproduced this one. “The
belief in the deathlessness of souls,” said Canon Isaac Taylor, “was the
great contribution of the Turanian race to the religious thought of the
world.” This appears to claim almost too much. Would any race have had
the courage to start upon its way had it conceived death as real?

                    “It is a modest creed and yet
                     Pleasant if one considers it,
                     To own that death itself must be
                     Like all the rest, a mockery.”

It is a creed which springs from the very instinct of life. Two pelicans
returning to their nest found their two young ones dead from sunstroke.
The careful observer who was watching them has recorded that they _did
not seem to recognise_ the inert, fluffy heap as what _was_ their
fledglings; they hunted for them for a long while, moving the twigs of
the nest, and at last threw one of the dead birds out of it. So the
primitive man in presence of the dead knows that this is not _he_ and he
begins to ask: where is he?

But if every race in turn has asked that question, it was asked with
more insistence by some peoples than by others, and above all, it was
answered by some with more assurance. The Neolithic Turanians had
nothing misty in their vision of another world. It was full of movement
and variety: the chase, the battle, the feast, sleep and awakening,
night and day—these were there as well as here. Animals were essential
to the picture, and it never struck the Neolithic man that there was any
more difficulty about their living again than about his living again. If
he philosophised at all, it was probably after the fashion of the Eskimo
who holds the soul to be the “owner” of the body: the body, the flesh,
dies and may be devoured, but he who kills the body does not kill its
“owner.”

Vast numbers of bones have been found near the dolmens in Southern
France. The steed of the dead man galloped with him into the Beyond. The
faithful dog trotted by the little child, comrade and guardian. In the
exquisite Hebrew idyll Tobias has his dog as well as the angel to
accompany him on his adventurous earthly journey. The little Neolithic
boy had only the dog and his journey was longer; but to some grieving
fathers would it not be a rare comfort to imagine their lost darlings
guarded by loving four-footed friends along the Path of Souls?

The Celtic conquerors of the dolmen-builders took most of their
religious ideas. When successful aid in mundane matters was what was
chiefly sought in religion, a little thing might determine conversion
_en masse_. If the divinities of one set of people seemed on some
occasion powerless, it was natural to try the divinities of somebody
else. When success crowned the experiment, the new worship was formally
adopted. This is exactly what happened in the historic case of Clovis
and “Clothilde’s God,” and it doubtless happened frequently before the
dawn of history. Druidism is believed to have arisen in this way in a
grafting of the new on the old. The Celts had the same views about the
next world as the dolmen-builders. They are thought to have taken them
from the conquered with the rest of their religious system, but to me it
seems unlikely that they had not already similar views when they arrived
from Asia. In the early Vedas goats and horses were sacrificed to go
before and announce the coming of the dead; Vedic animals kept their
forms, the renewed body was perfect and incorruptible, but it was the
real body. A celebrated racehorse was deified after death. Such beliefs
have a strong affinity to the theory that animals (or slaves) killed at
the man’s funeral will be useful to him in the after-life. However
derived, our European ancestors embraced that theory to the full.

Only a few years ago a second Viking ship was found at Oseberg, in
Norway, in which were the remains of ten horses, four dogs, a young ox,
and the head of an old ox. Three more horses were found outside. The
dogs had on their own collars with long chains. There were also sledges
with elaborately carved animals’ heads. It was a queen’s grave; her
distaff and spinning-wheel told of simple womanly tasks amidst so much
sepulchral splendour. In those late times the law by which religious
forms grow more sumptuous as the faith behind them grows less, may have
come into operation. Lavish but meaningless tributes may have taken the
place of a provision full of meaning for real wants.

So the sacrifices to the gods may have been once intended to stock the
pastures of heaven. It cannot be doubted that the victim was never
_killed_ in the mind of the original sacrificer, it was merely
transferred to another sphere. The worser barbarity comes in when the
true significance of the act is lost and when it is repeated from habit.

After animals were domesticated they were not killed at all for a long
time—still less were they eaten. Of this there can be no shadow of
doubt. The first domestic animals were far too valuable possessions for
any one to think of killing them. As soon would a showman kill a
performing bull which had cost him a great deal of trouble to train.
Besides this, and more than this, the natural man, who is much better
than he is painted, has a natural horror of slaying the creature that
eats out of his hand and gives him milk and wool and willing service.

There are pastoral tribes now in South Africa which live on the milk,
cheese and butter of their sheep, but only kill them as the last
necessity. In East Africa the cow is never killed, and if one falls ill,
it is put into a sort of infirmary and carefully tended. We all know the
divinity which hedges round the Hindu cow. The same compunction once
saved the labouring ox. When I was at Athens for the Archæological
Congress of 1905, Dr. R. C. Bosanquet, at that time head of the British
school, told me that he had observed among the peasants in Crete the
most intense reluctance to kill the ox of labour. In several places in
Ancient Greece all sorts of devices were resorted to in order that the
sacrificial knife might seem to kill the young bull accidentally, and
the knife—the guilty thing—was afterwards thrown into the sea. This last
custom is important; it marks the moment when the slaughter of domestic
animals, _even_ for sacrificial purposes, still caused a scruple. The
case stands thus: at first they were not killed at all; then, for a long
time, they were killed only for sacrifice. Then they were killed for
food, but far and wide relics of the original scruple may be detected as
in the common invocation of divine permission which every Moslem butcher
utters before killing an animal.

Animal and human sacrifices are one phenomenon of early manners, not
two. The people who sacrificed domestic animals to accompany their dead
generally, if not always, also sacrificed slaves for the same purpose,
and the sacrifice of fair maidens at the funerals of heroes was to give
them these as companions in another world.

I am not aware that Gift Sacrifice ever led to cannibalism nor, in its
primitive forms, did it lead to eating the flesh of the animal victim
which was buried or burnt with the body of the person whom it was
intended to honour. This is what was done by the dolmen-builders. The
earlier reindeer hunters had no domestic animals to sacrifice, and it is
unlikely that they sacrificed men. At all events, they were not
cannibals.

On the other hand, cannibalism is closely connected with Pact Sacrifice,
which there is a tendency now to regard as antecedent to Gift Sacrifice,
especially among those scholars who think that the whole human race has
passed through a stage of Totemism. Psychologically the Totemist’s
sacrifice of a reserved animal to which all the sanctity of human life
is ascribed, resembles the sacrifice by some African tribes of a human
victim—as in both cases not only is a pact of brotherhood sealed, but
also those who partake of the flesh are supposed to acquire the
physical, moral, or supersensual qualities attributed to the victim.
Indeed, it would be possible to argue that the Totem was a substitute
for a human victim, and a whole new theory of Totemism might be evolved
from that postulate, but it is wiser to observe such affinities without
trying to derive one thing from another which commonly proves a snare
and a delusion. It is sufficient to note that among fundamental human
ideas is the belief that man grows like what he feeds upon.

The sacrifice of the Totem, though found scattered wherever Totemism
prevails, is not an invariable or even a usual accompaniment of it. When
it does occur, the Totem is not supposed to die, any more than the
victim was supposed to die in the primitive Gift Sacrifice. It changes
houses or goes to live with “our lost others,” or returns to eternal
life in the “lake of the dead.” The death of the soul is the last thing
that is thought of. The majority of Totemists do not kill their Totems
under any circumstances, and when the Totem is a wild beast they believe
that it shows a like respect for the members of its phratry. If one dies
they deplore its loss; in some parts of East Africa where the Totem is a
hyena not even the chief is mourned for with equal ceremony.

Totemism is the adoption of an animal (or plant) as the visible badge of
an invisible bond. The word Totem is an American Indian word for
“badge,” and the word Taboo a Polynesian term meaning an interdiction.
The Totemist generally says that he is descended from his Totem: hence
the men and the beasts of each Totem clan are brothers. But the beast is
something more than a brother, he is the perpetual reincarnation of the
race-spirit. Numerical problems never trouble the natural human mind;
all the cats of Bubastis were equally sacred, and all the crows of
Australia are equally sacred to the clans who have a crow for Totem. To
the mass of country folks every cow is _the_ cow, every mouse is _the_
mouse; the English villager is practically as much convinced of this as
the American Indian or the Australian native is convinced that every
Totem is _the_ Totem.

Men and women of the same Totem are _taboo_: they cannot intermarry. But
I need not speak of Totemism here as a social institution. My business
with it is limited to its place in the history of ideas about animals.

In Totemism we find represented not one idea, but an aggregation of most
of the fundamental ideas of mankind. This is why the attempt to trace it
to one particular root has failed to dispose of the question of its
origin in a final and satisfactory manner. For a time there seemed to be
a general disposition to accept what is called the “Nickname theory” by
which Totemism was attributed to the custom of giving animal nicknames.
We have a peasant called Nedrott (in the Brescian dialect “duck”); I
myself never heard his real name—his wife is “la Nedrott” and his
children are “i Nedrotti.” It is alleged that his father or grandfather
had flat feet. But I never heard of a confusion between the Nedrotti and
their nicknamesakes. It may be said that this would be sure to happen
were they less civilised. How can we be sure that it would be sure to
happen? An eminent scholar who objects to the nickname theory on the
ground that it assigns too much importance to “verbal misunderstanding,”
proposes as an alternative the “impregnation theory.” A woman, on
becoming aware of approaching motherhood, mentally connects the future
offspring with an animal or plant which happens to catch her eye at that
moment. This is conceivable, given the peculiar notions of some savages
on generation, but if all Totemism sprang from such a cause, is it not
strange that in Australia there are only two Totems, the eagle-hawk and
crow?

As a mere outward fact, the Totem is what its name implies, a badge or
sign; just as the wolf was the badge of Rome, or as the lion is taken to
represent the British Empire. The convenience of adopting a common badge
or sign may have appeared to men almost as soon as they settled into
separate clans or communities. Besides public Totems there exist private
and secret Totems, and this suggests that the earliest communities may
have consisted of a sort of freemasonry, a league of mutual help of the
nature of a secret society. Around the outward and so to speak heraldic
fact of Totemism are gathered the impressions and beliefs which make it
a rule of life, a morality and a religion.

The time may come when the desire to give a reason for an emotion will
be recognised as one of the greatest factors in myth-making. The
Totemist thinks that he spares his Totem because it is his Totem. But
man is glad to find an excuse for sparing something. Altruism is as old
as the day when the first bird took a succulent berry to its mate or
young ones instead of eating it. Where men see no difference between
themselves and animals, what more natural than that they should wish to
spare them? When it was found difficult or impossible to spare all, it
was a katharsis of the wider sentiment to spare one, and Totemism gave a
very good excuse. It appealed to a universal instinct. This is not the
same as to say that it had its origin in keeping pets; it would be
nearer the truth to describe the love of pets as a later birth of the
same instinctive tendency which the Totemist follows when he cherishes
and preserves his Totem.

The primitive man is a child in the vast zoological garden of Nature; a
child with a heart full of love, curiosity and respect, anxious to make
friends with the lion which looks so very kind and the white bear who
must want some one to comfort him. The whole folk-lore of the world
bears witness to this temper, even leaving Totemism out of the question.

The Bechuanas make excuses to the lion before killing him, the Malays to
the tiger, the Red Indians to the bear—he says that his children are
hungry and need food—would the bear kindly not object to be killed? Some
writers see Totemism in all this, and so it may be, but there is
something in it deeper than even Totemism—there is human nature.

Take the robin—has any one said it was a Totem? Yet Mrs. Somerville
declared she would as soon eat a child as a robin, a thoroughly Totemist
sentiment. A whole body of protective superstition has crystallised
around certain creatures which, because of their confiding nature, their
charming ways, their welcome appearance at particular seasons, inspired
man with an unusually strong impulse to spare them. I was interested to
find the stork as sacred to the Arabs in Tunis and Algeria as he is to
his German friends in the North. A Frenchman remarked that “sacred birds
are never good to eat,” but he might have remembered the goose and hen
of the ancient Bretons which Cæsar tells us were kept “for pleasure” but
never killed; not to speak of the pigeons of Moscow and of Mecca.

It should be observed how quickly the spared or cherished bird or beast
becomes “lucky.” In Germany and Scandinavia it is lucky to have a
stork’s nest on the roof. The regimental goat is the “luck of his
company.”

M. S. Reinach’s opinion that in Totemism is to be found the secret of
the domestication of animals offers an attractive solution to that great
problem, but it has not been, nor do I think that it will ever be,
generally accepted. It, is however, plain, that where population is
sparse, and dogs and guns undreamt of, wild animals would be far less
wild than in countries with all the advantages of civilisation; the
tameness of birds on lonely islands when the explorer first makes his
descent is a case in point. No doubt, therefore, with the encouragement
they received, the animal Totems acquired a considerable degree of
tameness, but from that to domestication there is a long step. Our
household “Totem,” the robin, is relatively tame; he will even eat
crumbs on the breakfast-table, but he flies away in springtime and we
see him no more.

Besides being a social institution and a friendly bond between man and
beast, Totemism is an attempt to explain the universe. Its spiritual
vitality depends on the widely rooted belief in archetypes; the things
seen are the mirror of the things unseen, the material is unreal, the
immaterial the only reality. We are ourselves but cages of immortal
birds. The real “I” is somewhere else; it may be in a fish, as in the
Indian folk-tale, or it may be in a god. I do not know, by the by, if it
has been remarked that a man can be a Totem: the incarnation of the
indwelling race-spirit. The Emperor of Japan corresponds exactly to this
description. The deified Cæsar was a Totem. A god can be a Totem: among
the Hidery (islanders of the North Pacific whose interesting legends
were published by the Chicago Folk-lore Association) the raven, which is
their Totem, is the manifestation of the god Ne-kilst-lass who created
the world. Here Totemism approaches till it touches Egyptian
zoomorphism. Was this form an earlier or a later development than that
in which the Totem is merely an ancestor? Our inability to reply shows
our real want of certainty as to whether Totemism is a body of belief in
a state of becoming or _in a state of dissolution_.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Egypt Exploration Fund._
  HATHOR COW.
  Cairo Museum.
  (_Found in 1906 by Dr. E. Naville at Deir-el-bahari._)]

We do know that Egyptian zoomorphism is not old, at least in the
exaggerated shape it assumed in the worship of the bull Apis. It is a
cult which owed its success to the animistic tendency of the human mind,
but its particular cause is to be looked for in crystallised figurative
language. The stupendous marble tombs of the sacred bulls that seem to
overpower us in the semi-obscurity of the Serapeum remind one of how
easy it is to draw false conclusions relative to the past if we possess
only half-lights upon it: had Egyptian hieroglyphics never yielded up
their secret we might have judged the faith of Egypt to have been the
most material, instead of one of the most spiritual of religions.

In Egyptian (as in Assyrian) cosmogony the visible universe is the
direct creation of God. “The god who is immanent in all things is the
creator of every animal: under his name of Ram, of the sheep, Bull, of
the cows: he loves the scorpion in his hole, he is the god of the
crocodile who plunges in the water: he is the god of those who rest in
their graves. Amon is an image, Atmee is an image, Ra is an image: HE
alone maketh himself in millions of ways.” Amon Ra is described in
another grand hymn as the maker of the grass for the cattle, of fruitful
trees for men yet unborn; causing the fish to live in the river, the
birds to fill the air, giving breath to those in the egg, giving food to
the bird that perches, to the creeping thing and to the flying thing
alike, providing food for the rats in their holes, feeding the flying
things in every tree. “Hail to thee, say all creatures. Hail to thee for
all these things: the One, Alone with many hands, awake while all men
sleep, to seek out the good of all creatures, “Amon Sustainer of all!”
This is, indeed, a majestic psalm of universal life.

Contrary to what was long the impression, the Wheel of Being was not an
Egyptian doctrine, but the dead, or rather some of them, were believed
to have the power of transforming themselves into animals for limited
periods. It was a valued privilege of the virtuous dead: the form of a
heron, a hawk or a swallow was a convenient travelling dress.
Four-footed beasts were reserved to gods.

There was no prejudice against sport if carried on with due regard to
vested sacred rights. The first hunting-dog whose name we know was
Behkaa, who was buried with his master, his name being inscribed over
his picture on the tomb. The injury of animals sacred to the gods was,
of course, a grave sin. Among the protests of innocence of a departing
soul we read: “I have not clipped the skins of the sacred beasts; I have
not hunted wild animals in their pasturages; I have not netted the
sacred birds; I have not turned away the cattle of the gods; I have not
stood between a god and his manifestation.”

The Egyptian mind, which was essentially religious, saw the “god who is
immanent in all things” yet standing outside these things to sustain
them with a guiding providence; the highly trained Chinese mind, with
its philosophic trend, saw the divine indivisible intelligence without
volition illuminating all that lived: “The mind of man and the mind of
trees, birds and beasts, is just the one mind of heaven and earth, only
brighter or duller by reflection: as light looks brighter when it falls
on a mirror than when it falls on a dark surface, so divine reason is
less bright in cow or sheep than in man.” This fine definition was given
by Choo-Foo-Tsze, the great exponent of Confucianism, who, when he was
four years old, surprised his father by asking, on being told that the
sky was heaven, “What is above it?” Choo-Foo-Tsze in the thirteenth
century anticipated some modern conclusions of geology by remarking that
since sea shells were found on lofty mountains as if generated in the
middle of stones, it was plain “that what was below became lifted up,
what was soft became hard”; it was a deep subject, he said, and ought to
be investigated. Long before the Nolan, Confucius had conceived the idea
of the great Monad: “one God who contains and comprehends the whole
world.” It was an idea entirely incomprehensible to all but a few
educated men in any age. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism left the
Chinese masses what they found them—a people whose folk-lore was their
religion. Were they asked to believe in the Wheel of Being? They made
that folk-lore too. Dr. Giles tells the folk-tale of a certain gentleman
who, having taken a very high degree, enjoyed the privilege (which is
admitted to be uncommon) of recollecting what happened between his last
death and birth. After he died, he was cited before a Judge of Purgatory
and his attention was attracted by a quantity of skins of sheep, dogs,
oxen, horses, which were hanging in a row. These were waiting for the
souls which might be condemned to wear them; when one was wanted, it was
taken down and the man’s own skin was stripped off and the other put on.
This gentleman was condemned to be a sheep; the attendant demons helped
him on with his sheep-skin when the Recording Officer suddenly mentioned
that he had once saved a man’s life. The Judge, after looking at his
books, ruled that such an act balanced all his misdoings: then the
demons set to work to pull off the sheep-skin bit by bit, which gave the
poor gentleman dreadful pain, but at last it was all got off except one
little piece which was still sticking to him when he was born again as a
man.

This story is amusing as showing what a mystical doctrine may come to
when it gets into the hands of the thoroughgoing realist. For the
Chinese peasant the supernatural has no mystery. To him it is a mere
matter of ordinary knowledge that beasts, birds, fishes and insects not
only have ghosts but also ghosts of ghosts—for the first ghost is liable
to die. If any of these creatures do not destroy life in three
existences, they may be born as men—a belief no doubt due to the
Buddhists, who in China seem to have concentrated all their energies on
humanitarian propaganda and let metaphysics alone. Taoism has been
called an “organised animism.” Organised or unorganised, animism is
still the popular faith of China. It is too convenient to lightly
abandon, for it explains everything. For instance, whatever is odd,
unexpected, very lucky, very unlucky, can be made as plain as day by
mentioning the word “fox.” Any one may be a fox without your knowing it:
the fox is a jinnee, an elf who can work good or harm to man; who can
see the future, get possession of things at a distance, and generally
outmatch the best spiritualist medium. In Chinese folk-lore the fox has,
as it were, made a monopoly of the world-wide notion that animals have a
more intimate knowledge of the supernatural than men. Soothsayers are
thought to be foxes because they know what is going to happen.

Man’s speculations about himself and the universe arrange themselves
under three heads: those which have not yet become a system, those which
are a system, those which are the remains of a system. It is impossible
that any set of ideas began by being a system unless it were revealed by
an angel from heaven. But no sooner do ideas become systematic than they
pass into the stage of dogma which is accepted not discussed. Everything
is made to fit in with them. Thus to find the free play of the human
mind one must seek it where there are the fewest formulæ, written or
unwritten, for tradition is as binding as any creed or code. There are
savage races which, if they ever had Totemism, have preserved few if any
traces of it. To take them one by one and inquire into their views on
animals would be well worth doing, but it is beyond my modest scope. I
will say this, however—show me a savage who has not some humane and
friendly ideas about animals! The impulse to confess brotherhood with
man’s poor relations is everywhere the same: the excuses or reasons
given for it vary a little. The animal to be kindly treated is the
sanctuary of a god, the incarnation of a tribe, or simply the shelter of
a poor wandering ghost.

The Amazulu, one of the finest of savage races, believe that _some_
snakes are Amatongo—some, not all. In fact, these snakes which are dead
men are rather rare. One kind is black and another green. An Itongo does
not come into the house by the door, nor does it eat frogs or mice. It
does not run away like other snakes. Some say, “Let it be killed.”
Others interfere, “What, kill a man?” If a man die who had a scar and
you see a snake with a scar, ten to one it is that man. Then, at night,
the village chief _dreams_ and the dead man speaks to him. “Do you now
wish to kill me? Do you already forget me? I thought I would come and
ask you for food, and do you kill me?” Then he tells him his name.

Without any teaching, without any system, the savage thinks that the
appearances which stand before him in sleep are real. If they are not
real, what are they? The savage may not be a reasonable being, but he is
a being who reasons.

In the morning the village chief tells his dream and orders a
sin-offering to the Itongo (ghost) lest he be angry and kill them. A
bullock or a goat is sacrificed and they eat the flesh. Afterwards they
look everywhere for the snake, but it has vanished.

A snake that forces its way rapidly into a house is known to be a liar
and he is a liar still. Do they turn him out of doors with a lecture on
the beauty of veracity? Far from that. “They sacrifice something to such
an Itongo.” A few men turn into poisonous snakes, but this is by no
means common. If offended, the Amatongo cause misfortune, but even if
pleased they do not seem to confer many benefits; perhaps they cannot,
for surely it is easier to do evil than good. Once, however, a snake
which was really the spirit of a chief, placed its mouth on a sore which
a child had; the mother was in a great fright, but happily she did not
interfere and the snake healed the sore and went silently away.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Mansell._
  WILD GOATS AND YOUNG.
  British Museum.
  (_Assyrian Relief._)]

Other animals are sometimes human beings as well as snakes. The lizard
is often the Itongo of an old woman. A boy killed some lizards in a
cattle-pen with stones. Then he went and told his grandmother, who said
he had done very wrong—those lizards were chiefs of the village and
should have been worshipped. I think the grandmother was a humane old
person; I even suspect that she said the lizards were chiefs and not old
women to make the admonition more awful. The man who told this story to
Canon Callaway (from whose valuable work on the Amazulu I take these
notes) added that, looking back to the incident, he doubted if the
lizards were Amatongo after all, because no harm came of their murder.
He thought that they must have been merely wild animals which had become
tame owing to people mistakenly thinking that they were Amatongo.

What can one say to boys who ill-treat lizards? I own that I have
threatened them with ghostly treatment of the same sort. I even tried
the supernatural argument with a little Arab boy, otherwise a nice
intelligent child, who was throwing stones at a lizard which was moving
at the bottom of the deep Roman well at El Djem: I did not know then
that the persecution of lizards in Moslem lands is supposed (I hope
erroneously) to have been ordered by Mohammed “because the lizard mimics
the attitude of the Faithful at prayer.”

The lizard, one of the most winsome of God’s creatures, has suffered
generally from the prejudice which made reptile a word of reproach. It
is the more worthy of remark, therefore, that in a place where one would
hardly expect it, protective superstition has done its work of rescue:
Sicilian children catch lizards, but let them go unhurt to intercede for
them before the Lord, as the lizard is held to be “in the presence of
the Lord in heaven.” One wonders if this is some distant echo of the
text about the angels of the children (their archetypes) who always see
God.

Not always were reptiles scorned, but, possibly, they were always
feared. Man’s first idea is to worship what he fears; his second idea,
which may not come for many thousand years, is to throw a stone at it.
The stone, besides representing physical fear, at a given moment also
represents religious reprobation of what had been an object of worship
in a forsaken faith. Primitive man took the interest of a wondering
child in the great Saurian tribe. How did he know that they _flew_, that
there were “dragons” on the earth? How did he know that the snake once
had legs?—for if the snake of Eden was ordered to go on its belly, the
inference seems to be that he was thought once to have moved in another
way. The snake has lost his legs and the lizard his wings, and how the
ancient popular imagination of the world made such accurate guesses
about them must be left a riddle, unless we admit that it was guided by
the fossil remains of extinct monsters.

The serpent of the Biblical story was, says Dr. H. P. Smith, “simply a
jinnee—a fairy if you will—possessed of more knowledge than the other
animals, but otherwise like them.” Here, again, we meet in the most
venerable form, the belief that animals know more than men. Can we
resist the conclusion that to people constantly inclined towards magic
like the old-world Jews, it must have appeared that Eve was dabbling in
magic—by every rule of ancient religion, the sin of sins?

The cult of the serpent in its many branches is the greatest of animal
cults, and it is the one in which we see most clearly the process by
which man from being an impressionist became a symbolist, and from being
a symbolist became a votary. We have only to read the Indian statistics
of the number of persons annually killed by snake-bite to be persuaded
that fear must have been the original feeling with which man regarded
the snake. Fear is a religious feeling in primitive man, but other
religious feelings were added to it—admiration, for the snake, as all
who have had the good luck to observe it in its wild state must agree,
is a beautiful, graceful, and insinuating creature; a sense of mystery,
a sense of fascination which comes from those keen eyes fixed fearlessly
upon yours, the simple secret, perhaps, of the much discussed power of
snakes to fascinate their prey. What wonder if man under the influence
of these combined impressions, symbolised in the serpent a divine force
which could be made propitious by worship!

In the forming of cults there has always been this unconscious passage
from impressions to symbols, from symbols to “manifestations.” But there
has been also the conscious use of symbols by the priests and sages of
ancient religions, in imparting as much of divine knowledge to the
uninitiated as they thought that the uninitiated could bear. The origin
of serpent worship has a probable relationship with this conscious use
of symbols as well as with their unconscious growth.

Besides the prejudice against reptiles, modern popular superstition has
placed several animals under a ban, and especially the harmless bat and
the useful barn owl. Traditional reasons exist, no doubt, in every case;
but stronger than these are the associations of such creatures with the
dark in which the sane man of a certain temperament becomes a partial
lunatic; a prey to unreal terrors which the flap of a bat’s wing or the
screech of an owl is enough to work up to the point of frenzy. It is a
most unfortunate thing for an animal if it be the innocent cause of a
_frisson_, a feeling of uncanny dread. The little Italian owl,
notwithstanding that it too comes out at dusk, has escaped prejudice.
This was the owl of Pallas Athene and of an earlier cult. As in the case
of the serpent, its wiles to fascinate its prey were the groundwork of
its reputation for wisdom. Of this there cannot be, I think, any doubt,
though the droll bobs and curtesies which excite an irresistible and
fatal curiosity in small birds, have suggested in the mind of the modern
man a thing so exceedingly far from wisdom as _civetteria_, which word
is derived from _civetta_—“the owl of Minerva” as Italian class-books
say. The descent from the goddess of wisdom to the coquette is the
cruellest decadence of all!


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                   VI

                           THE FAITH OF IRAN


THE Zoroastrian theory of animals cannot be severed from the religious
scheme with which it is bound up. It is not a side-issue, but an
integral part of the whole. It would be useless to attempt to treat it
without recalling the main features in the development of the faith out
of which it grew.

In the first place, who were the people, occupying what we call Persia,
to whom the Sage, who was not one of them, brought his interpretation of
the knowledge of good and evil? The early Iranians must have broken off
from the united body of the Aryans at a time when they spoke a common
language, which though not Sanscrit, was very like it. The affinities
between Sanscrit and the dialect called with irremediable inaccuracy
“Zend” are of the strongest. From this we conclude that, on their
establishment in their new home, the Iranians differed little from the
race of whose customs the Rig-Veda gives—not a full picture—but a
faithful outline. Pastoral folk, devoted to their flocks and herds, but
not unlearned in the cultivation of the earth and the sowing of grain,
they had reached what may be called the highest stage of primitive
civilisation. Though milk, butter and cooked corn formed their principal
food, on feast days they also ate meat, chiefly the flesh of oxen and
buffaloes, which they were careful to cook thoroughly. The progressive
Aryans, who called half-raw meat by a term exactly corresponding to the
too familiar “rosbif saignant,” denounced the more savage peoples who
consumed it as “wild men” or “demons.” They kept horses, asses and
mules; horses were sacrificed occasionally; for instance, kings
sacrificed a horse to obtain male issue. The wild boar was hunted, if
not in the earliest, at least in very early times. The dog was prized
for its fidelity as guardian of the house and flocks, but there is no
trace of its having been protected by extraordinary regulations such as
those which later came into force in Iran. On the other hand, the name
of dog had never yet been used in reproach. It seems to have been among
Semitic races that the contempt for man’s best friend arose, but it is
morally certain that it arose nowhere till dogs became scavengers of
cities. It was the homeless pariah cur that gave the dog the bad name
from which have sprung so many ugly words registered in modern
vocabularies. Even now, when Jew or Moslem uses “dog” in a bad sense, he
means “cur”; he knows quite well the other kind of dog—he knows Tobit’s
dog, which, bounding on before the young man and the angel, told the
glad tidings of his master’s return; Tobit’s dog which was one of the
animals admitted by Mohammed into highest heaven. But “pariah dog”
became synonymous of pariah, and notwithstanding the present tendency to
attribute the opprobrium of the pig to original sanctity (and consequent
reservation), I am inclined to think that the pig likewise came to be
scorned because he was a scavenger. In some Indian cities herds of wild
pigs still enter the gates just before they are closed at dusk, to pass
out of them as soon as they are opened in the morning: during the night
they do their work excellently, and by day they take a well-earned sleep
in the jungle. They deserve gratitude, for they keep the cities free
from disease, but, like other public servants, they scarcely get it.

In Vedic times every home had its watch-dog, whose warning bark was as
unwelcome to lovers as it was to robbers. The Rig-Veda preserves the
prayer of a young girl who asks that her father, her mother, her
grandfather, _and the watch-dog_ may sleep soundly while she meets her
expected lover: a charming glimpse of the chaste freedom of early Aryan
manners. The newly-wedded wife enters her husband’s house as mistress,
not as slave; the elders say to the young couple: “You are master and
mistress of this house; though there be father-in-law and mother-in-law,
they are placed under you.” If that was not quite what happened, yet the
principle was granted, and there is much in that. The bride rode to her
new home in a car drawn by four milk-white oxen; when she alighted at
the threshold, these golden words were spoken to her: “Make thyself
loved for the sake of the children that will come to thee; guard this
house, be as one with thy husband; may you grow old here together. Cast
no evil looks, hate not thy spouse, be gentle in thought and deed _even_
_to the animals of this home_.” Bride and bridegroom are exhorted to be
of one heart, of one mind, “to love each other as a cow loves her calf,”
a simple and true metaphor full of the country-side, full of the youth
of the world.

If these were the customs and this was the life which the Iranians may
be supposed to have taken with them, what was the religion? The early
Aryans had a Nature-cult more spiritualised under the form of Varuna and
more materialised under the form of Indra. Some students of the Avesta
have thought that here could be found the elements of the Dualism which
formed the essential doctrine of Mazdaism. But it is almost certain that
no real Dualism existed in oldest Iran. The Avesta once contrasts the
worshippers of God with the worshippers of Daevas, of those who breed
the cow and have the care of it with those who ill-treat it and
slaughter it at their sacrifices. But Indra-worship has no connexion
with devil-worship, nor does this or similar texts prove that
devil-worship, properly so called, ever flourished in Iran. Other
religious reformers than Zoroaster have named the devotees of former
religions “devil-worshippers.” For the rest, there is reason to think
that in the Avesta the term was applied to Turanian raiders, not to true
Iranians.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Mansell._
  ASSYRIAN GOD CARRYING ANTELOPE AND WHEAT-EAR.
  British Museum.]

In an Assyrian inscription, Ahura Mazda is said to have created joy for
_all_ creatures: a belief which Mazdean Dualism impugns. So far as can
be guessed, the earliest Iranian faith was the worship of good
spirits—of a Good Spirit. Less pure extra-beliefs may, or rather must,
have existed contemporaneously, but they remained in the second rank.
The cult of good spirits was the home-cult of shepherd and herdsman
offered to the genii of their flocks and herds. While these genii
answered the purpose of the lares or little saints everywhere dear to
humble hearts, it is probable that in character they already resembled
the Fravashis or archetypes that were to play so great a part in Mazdean
doctrine. The cult of the Good Spirit, the national and kingly cult, was
the worship of one God whose most worthy symbol, before Zoroaster as
after, was the sun and whose sacrament with men was fire. The early
Iranian had no temple, no altar: he went up into a high place and
offered his prayer and sacrifice without priest or pomp. If we wish to
trace his faith back to an Indian source, instead of bringing on the
scene Varuna and Indra, it will be better to inquire whether there were
elements of the same faith underlying the unwieldy fabric of Vedic
religion. The answer is, that there were. The grandest text in the
Rig-Veda, the one text recognised from farthest antiquity as of
incalculable value, is the old Persian religion contained in a formula:
“That Sun’s supremacy—God—let us adore Which may well direct.”

                   “Enable with perpetual light,
                    The dulness of our blinded sight.”

So great a virtue was attributed to the Gayatri that the mind which
thought it was supposed to unite with the object of thought: the eyes of
the soul looked on Truth, of which all else is but the shadow. This is
the spirit in which it is still repeated every day by every Hindu. The
sacrosanct words were “Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva,” or, yet more often,
they are described as “the mother of the Vedas,” which, if it means
anything, means that they are older than the Vedas. The point most to be
noticed about the Gayatri is that its importance cannot be set aside by
saying that this text is to be explained by Henotheism: the habit of
referring to each god immediately addressed as supreme. Nor was the text
selected arbitrarily by Western monotheists: for thousands of years
before any European knew it, the natives of India had singled it out as
the most solemn affirmation of man’s belief in the Unseen.

It is open to argument, though not to proof, that the Gayatri
crystallises a creed which the Iranians took with them in their
migration. Peoples then moved in clans, not in a motley crowd gathered
on an emigrant steamer. The clan or clans to which the Iranians belonged
may have clung to a primordial faith, not yet overlaid by myths which
materialised symbols and mysteries which made truth a secret.

Such speculations are guess-work, but that the primitive religion of
Persia was essentially monotheistic is an opinion which is likely to
survive all attacks upon it. On less sure grounds stands the
identification of that primitive religion with Zoroastrianism. The great
authorities of a former generation, and amongst them my distinguished
old friend, Professor Jules Oppert, believed that Cyrus was a Mazdean.
But there is a good deal to support the view that Zoroastrianism did not
become the State religion till the time of the Sásánians, who, as a new
dynasty, grasped the political importance of having under them a strong
and organised priesthood. Before that time the Magians seem to have been
rather a sort of Salvation Army or Society of Jesus than the directors
of a national Church.

As late as the reign of Darius the Persians frequently buried their
dead, a practice utterly repugnant to the Mazdean. Again, from Greek
sources we know that the Persian kings sacrificed hecatombs of animals;
thousands of oxen, asses, stags, &c., were immolated every day. Darius
ordered one hundred bullocks, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs to be
given to the Jews on the dedication of the new Temple (as well as twelve
he-goats as sin-offerings for the twelve tribes) so that they might
offer “sacrifices of sweet savours unto the God of heaven and pray for
the life of the king and his sons.” Evidently Darius considered profuse
animal sacrifices as a natural part of any great religious ceremony. Can
it be supposed that such slaughter would have pleased a strict
Zoroastrian? The Mazdeans retained the sacrifice of flesh as food: a
small piece of the cooked meat eaten at table was included in the daily
offering with bread, grain, fruits and the Homa juice, which was first
drunk by the officiating priest, then by the worshippers, and finally
thrown on the sacred fire. The small meat-offering was not animal
sacrifice or anything at all like it. The Parsis substitute milk even
for this small piece of meat, perhaps because the meat was usually beef,
which would have caused offence to their Hindu fellow-citizens. I asked
a Parsi High Priest who lunched with me at Basle during the second
Congress for the History of Religions, what viands were eschewed by his
community? He replied that they avoided both beef and the flesh of
swine, but only out of respect for their neighbours’ rules: to them oil
alone was forbidden—probably because of its virtue as a light-giver. In
the Zoroastrian sacrifice it was never lost sight of that the outward
act was but one of piety and obedience; the true sacrifice was of the
heart: “I offer good thoughts, good words, good deeds.” It is hardly
needful to say that the Mithraic taurobolium was in sheer contradiction
to Mazdean law. Heretical sects were the bane of Zoroastrianism, and
with one of these sprang up the strange practices which the Romans
brought into Europe. Possibly its origin should be sought in some
infiltration from the West, for it is more suggestive of Orphic rites
than of any form of Eastern ceremonies. A Christian writer of the name
of Socrates, who lived in the fifth century, said that at Alexandria, in
a cavern consecrated to Mithra, human skulls and bones were found, the
inference being that human sacrifice was the real rite, symbolised by
the slaying of the bull. The source of this information is suspect, but
even if not guilty of such excesses, the Mithra-worshippers of Western
Persia must have been rank corrupters of the faith. In the Avesta,
Mithra is the luminous æther; sometimes he appears as an intercessor;
sometimes he dispenses the mercy or wields the vengeance of God. But in
reality he is an attribute, about the nature of which members of the
faith had less excuse for making mistakes than we have. It is difficult
for the Indian or Japanese not to make analogous mistakes concerning
some forms of worship in Southern Europe.

In Old Iran the Sacred Fire was kept perpetually alight. Sweet perfumes
were spread around the place of prayer, for which a little eminence was
chosen, but there were no images and no temples. Archæologists have
failed to find traces of a building set apart for religious worship
among the splendid ruins of Persepolis: the “forty towers” only tell of
the pleasure-palace of an Eastern king. Was it that the profound
spirituality of this people shrank not only from carving a graven image
of the deity, but also from giving him a house made with hands? What
could the maker of the firmament want with human fanes? Some such
thought may have caused the Iranians to suppress for so long a time the
instinct which impels man to build temples. In any case, it seems as if
Cyrus and after him Darius threw themselves into the scheme for
rebuilding the Hebrew temple with all the more enthusiasm from the fact
that immemorial custom held them back from temple-building at home. The
cuneiform inscriptions bear witness that these kings were monotheists:
they believed in one sole creator of heaven and earth, by whose will
kings reign and govern, and if they invoked the aid of heavenly
hierarchs they never confused the creatures, however powerful, with the
creator. That Creator they called by the name of Ahura Mazda, but they
recognised that he was one, whatever the name might be by which he was
called. “Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia: the Lord God of Heaven hath
given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He hath charged me to build
Him a house at Jerusalem, which is Judah.” In the uncanonical Book of
Esdras, it is said more significantly that King Cyrus “commanded to have
the house of the Lord in Jerusalem built where they should worship with
eternal fire.” The recently deciphered Babylonian inscriptions have been
brought forward to show that the Jews were mistaken in thinking that
Cyrus was a monotheist, because he honoured Merodach in Babylon just as
he had honoured Jehovah at Jerusalem. He was, it is said, a “polytheist
at heart.” If he was, his honouring Merodach does not prove it. To my
mind it proves exactly the reverse. Cyrus understood the monotheism
which was at the bottom of the Babylonian religious system and which
these very tablets have revealed to modern scholarship. He understood
that “however numerous and diversified the nations of the earth may be,
the God who reigns over them all can never be more than one.”[2]

Footnote 2:

  Words written by a Japanese reformer named Okubo about fifty years
  ago.

He was governed by expediency in his respect for the faiths of his
subject peoples, but he was governed also by something higher than
expediency. That Darius Hystaspis, who is allowed to have been a
monotheist, continued his policy, shows that it was not thought to
involve disloyalty to Ahura Mazda since of such disloyalty Darius would
have been incapable.

If we grant that the Iranians were, in the main, monotheistic at a date
when not more than a part of the population professed Zoroastrianism,
the question follows, of what was the difference between the reformed
and the unreformed religion? To answer this satisfactorily, we must
remember that the paramount object of Zoroaster was less change than
conservation. Like Moses whom an attractive if not well-founded theory
makes his contemporary, he saw around a world full of idolatry, and he
feared lest the purer faith of Iran should be swamped by the
encroachments of polytheism and atheism (for, strangely enough, the
Avesta abounds in references to sheer negation). The aim of every
doctrine or practice which he introduced was to revivify, to render more
comprehensible, more consistent, the old monotheistic faith.

With regard to practice, the most remarkable innovation was that which
concerned the disposal of the dead. It cannot be explained as a relic of
barbarism: it was introduced with deliberation and with the knowledge
that it would shock human sensibility then, just as much as it does now.
The avowed reason for giving the dead to vultures or animals is that
burial defiles the earth. It was recognised that this argument was open
to the objection that birds or beasts were likely to drop portions of
dead bodies on the earth. The objection was met with scholastic
resourcefulness not to say casuistry: it was declared that “accidents”
do not count. Though so strongly insisted on in the Avesta, the practice
only became general at a late period: even after Mazdeism had made
headway, bodies were often enveloped in wax to avoid defilement of the
earth while evading the prescribed rite. Cremation, the natural
alternative to burial, would have polluted the sacred fire. It was
observed, no doubt, that the consumption of the dead by living animals
was the means employed by Nature for disposing of the dead. Why do we so
rarely see a dead bird or hare or rabbit or squirrel? The fact is not
mysterious when we come to look into it. It may have been thought that
what Nature does must be well done. The Parsis themselves seem to
suppose that this and other prescriptions of their religious law were
inspired by sanitary considerations, and they attribute to them their
comparative immunity from plague during the recent epidemics at Bombay.
Defilement of water by throwing any impurity into rivers is as severely
forbidden as the defilement of the earth. Possibly another reason
against burial was the desire to prevent anything like the material cult
of the dead and the association of the fortunes of the immortal soul
with those of the mortal body, such as prevailed among the Egyptians,
whose practices doubtless were known to the Magi by whom, rather than by
any one man, the Mazdean law was framed. Finally, the last rites
provided a recurrent object-lesson conducive to the mental habit of
separating the pure from the impure. They reminded the Mazdean that life
is pure because given by Ormuzd; death impure because inflicted by
Ahriman. The rule of every religion is designed largely, if not chiefly,
as a moral discipline.[3]

Footnote 3:

  Among the Buddhists of Thibet the dead are given to dogs and birds of
  prey as a last act of charity—to feed the hungry.

The true originality of Zoroastrianism as a religious system lies in the
dualistic conception of creation which is the nexus that connects all
its parts. This was seen at once, when the Avesta became known in
Europe, but the idea was so entirely misunderstood and even travestied,
that Zoroaster was represented as a believer in two gods whose power was
equal, if, indeed, the power of the evil one were not the greater.
Recently among the manuscripts of Leopardi were found these opening
lines of an unfinished “Hymn to Ahriman”:—

                 “Re delle cose, autor del mondo, arcana
                  Malvagità, sommo potere e somma
                  Intelligenza, eterno
                  Dator de’ mali e regitor del moto....”

They are fine lines, but if Anro-Mainyus might fitly be called “arcana
malvagità” and “dator de’ mali,” nothing could be farther removed from
the Zoroastrian idea than the rest of the description. Ahriman possessed
neither supreme power nor supreme intelligence, nor was he author of the
world, but only of a small portion of it. To this day, however, it has
pleased pessimists to claim Zoroaster, the most optimist of prophets, as
one of their fraternity.

The real Ahriman gains in tremendous force from the vagueness of his
personality. Sometimes he _acts_ as a person: as in the Temptation of
Zoroaster when he offers him the kingdoms of the world if he will but
serve him. But no artist would have dared to give him human form. And
surely no one in Iran would have alluded to him by mild or good-humoured
euphemisms. He shares this, however, with the mediæval devil, that he
works at an eternally pre-destined disadvantage. He is fore-doomed to
failure. Good is stronger than Evil, and Good is lasting, Evil is
passing. In the end, Evil must cease to be.

Though not immortal, Ahriman was primordial. Unlike the fallen star of
the morning, what he is, that he was. He did not choose Evil: he _is_
Evil as Ormuzd _is_ Good. He can create, but only things like himself.
The notion that both Ormuzd and Ahriman proceeded from a prior entity,
Boundless Time, is a late legend. Ormuzd and Ahriman existed always, the
one in eternal light, the other in beginningless darkness. An immense
vacuum divided the light from the darkness and Ahriman knew not Ormuzd,
Evil knew not Good, till Good was externalised in the beneficent
creation.

 “Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods and the echoing
    mountains,
  Wandered bleating in valleys and warbled on blossoming branches.”

The sight of created things gave Ahriman the will to create
corresponding things, evil instead of good. He made sin, disease, death,
the flood, the earthquake, famine, slaughter, noxious animals. So the
pieces were set down on the chess-board of being, and, as in all
religions, man’s soul was the stake.

The difference from other religions lay in the determined effort to
grapple with the problem of the origin of evil. The tribe of divine
students among whom Mazdeism sprang up saw in that unsolved problem the
great cause of unbelief, and they set themselves to solve it by the
theory which J. S. Mill said was the only one which could reconcile
philosophy with religion—the theory of primal forces at war. The Indian
did not attempt to fathom it; the Egyptian and Assyrian set it aside; we
know the offered Hebrew solution: “I form the light and create darkness;
I make peace and create evil, I, the Lord, do all these things.” But
this is a statement, not a solution, because though it may be believed,
it cannot be thought. The attraction of the dualistic conception is
shown by nothing more clearly than by the extraordinary vitality of
Manichæism in the face of every kind of persecution both in the East and
West, although Manichæism, with its ascription of the creation of
mankind to the Evil Principle, its depreciation of woman, its
out-and-out asceticism which included abstinence from animal food (a
rule borrowed by Mani from the Buddhists in his journey in India)
contrasts unfavourably with the faith that did not make a single demand
on human nature except to be good, even as its Creator was good.

The origin of the Magians was Semitic, or, as some think, præ-Semitic
and præ-Aryan. Travellers brought tales of them to the ancient world
which listened with a fascinated interest, while it failed to see the
importance of the mighty religious phenomenon of Israel. The “Wise men
of the East” had a charm for antiquity, as they were to have for the
Infant Church which never tired of depicting them in its earliest art.
Mention of the “Persarum Magos” is frequent from Herodotus to Cicero,
who speaks of them under that name. According to Herodotus the Magi sang
the Theogony, and Pausanias describes them as reading from a book which
was certainly the Avesta, though it must not be overlooked that never
but once does it contain the smallest reference to them. This tribe of
divine students enjoyed a high reputation at the Babylonian Court, which
seems less unexpected by the light of recent research than it did when
the Babylonians and Assyrians were thought to be destitute of any trace
of an esoteric religion tending to monotheism. That the Magians were
monotheists cannot be disputed. Probably they were skilled in astronomy
and in medicine, the two sciences which almost covered what was meant
then by learning in the East. Probably also they were astrologers like
other searchers of the heavens, but they were not magic-workers, a
calling that had a bad name. The Magi in the Gospel story are supposed
to have been guided by astronomical calculations; whatever these may
have been, they could not have been ignorant of the prophecy in their
own Scriptures of a Virgin who should give birth to the Saviour and
Judge of men. The ante-natal soul of this Virgin had been venerated for
centuries in Iran. An infiltration of Messianic prophecies might induce
them to conclude that the Child would be “King of the Jews.” It was not
likely that they would take so long a journey to do homage to any
new-born earthly king, but it was quite possible that they might go in
search of the promised Saviour.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Mansell._
  COUNTING CATTLE.
  British Museum.
  (_Egyptian Fresco._)]

In Media we know that the people lived at one time in tribes, without
kings. In one form or another, the tribal organisation existed and
exists everywhere in the East. What is caste but a petrified tribal
system? The first discovery which a European makes on landing on the
skirts of the East, is that everything is done by tribes. The Algerian
conjurors who swallow fire, drive nails into their heads and do other
gruesome feats are a semi-religious tribe which has thrived from time
immemorial on the exercise of the same profession. The dwarfs of the
late Bey of Tunis, whom I saw at Bardo, belonged to a tribe which does
nothing but furnish dwarfs. Apply to a high or worthy end this corporate
pursuit of a given object and it must produce remarkable results.

The unanimous belief of the Greeks that Zoroaster was founder of the
Magians is held no longer, but he is still thought to have been one of
them. Moslem tradition made him the servant of a Hebrew prophet, and
even serious Western students were inclined to trace Mazdeism to the
Jewish prisoners who were brought into Media by the Assyrians. It is
unnecessary to say that at present the Jews are regarded as the debtors.

There is no figure of a religious teacher so elusive as that of
Zoroaster, and they are all elusive. But in the case of Zoroaster it is
not only the man that eludes us—it is also his environment. Brahmanical
India of to-day reflects as in a glass the society into which Sakya Muni
cast his seed; in fact, we understand the seed-sowing better than the
harvest; Buddhism at its apogee seems of the nature of an interlude in
the history of the changeless East. China still throws light on its
passionless sage, passionless in a sense so far deeper than the Indian
recluses, who, though they knew it not, did but substitute for the
passion of the flesh the more inebriating passion of the spirit. From
the splendid treasury of præ-Islamic poetry, we know that the Arab race
had acquired its specialised type before the Muezzin first called the
faithful to prayer. The moral petrifaction of the many and the religious
and patriotic ferment of the few which formed the _milieu_ of nascent
Christianity, can be realised without any stretch of the imagination.
Buddha, Confucius, and He that was greater than they, came into highly
civilised societies in organised states; Mohammed came into an
unorganised state which lacked political and religious cohesion, but the
unity of race was already developed: the Emirs of the Soudan whose star
set at Omdurman were the living pictures of the Arabs who first rallied
to the Prophet’s banner. Of the society of Old Iran to which Zoroaster
spoke, it is difficult to form a distinct idea and to judge how far it
had moved away from early Aryan simplicity. We gather that it was still
a society in which sheep-raising and dairy-farming played a preponderant
part. Those modern expressions may serve us better than to say
“shepherds” and “herdsmen,” since fixity of dwelling with the possession
of what then was considered wealth seems to have been a very common
case. Nomadic life lasted on, but it was held in disrepute. There
appears to have been nothing like a national or warlike spirit such as
that possessed by the Jews, though occasional Turanian incursions had to
be repelled. There were few towns and many scattered villages and
homesteads. We are conscious that these impressions derived from the
Avesta may be partially erroneous. Teachers of religion only take note
of political or other circumstances so far as it suits their purpose.

Zoroaster (the Greek reading of Zarathustra, which in modern Persian
becomes Zardusht), was born, as far as can be guessed, in Bactria, which
became the stronghold of Avestic religion and the last refuge of the
national monarchy on the Arab invasion. There was a time when his
existence was denied, but no one doubts it now. Eight hundred years
before Christ is the date which most modern scholars assign to him,
though some place him much farther back, while others think they discern
reasons for his having appeared after Buddha. The legend of his life
(not to be found in the Avesta) begins in the invariable way: he was
descended from kings; as a young man he retired to a grotto in the
desert, where he lived an austere life of reflection for seven years.
Zoroaster never taught asceticism, but tradition attributes to him the
season of solitude and self-collection without which perhaps, in fact as
well as in fable, the supreme power over other men’s minds was never
wielded by man.

Various marvellous particulars are related: he was suckled by two ewes;
wild animals obeyed his voice; when thrown under the feet of oxen and
horses, they avoided hurting him. In his seven years’ retirement he
meditated on idol-worship, on false gods and false prophets. The people
of Iran, substantially monotheist but prone to sliding into degrading
superstition, offered a field for his mission. He took to him a few
disciples and began to preach to as many as would hear, but he met with
great difficulties. At last, he found favour with a king by curing his
favourite horse, and he might have ended his days in peace but the
spirit urged him to continue his apostolate. Not to princes but to
peasants did he chiefly address himself; he did not call them away from
their work but exhorted them to pursue it diligently. “He who cultivates
the earth will never lack, but he who does not, will stand idly at the
doors of others to beg food.” Labour is not an evil, man who earns his
bread by the sweat of his brow is not under a curse: he is the
fellow-worker with God! This was the grandest thing that Zoroaster
taught. It is singular to note the affinity between his teaching and the
Virgilian conception of the husbandman as half a priest. In the Middle
Ages the same thought arose where one would not look for it: among those
religious orders which had the luminous inspiration that in work not in
indolence lay the means of salvation: “_Laborare est orare._”

The care of the God-created animals brought with it a special blessing:
it was actually a way to heaven. If a friend gave us a cherished animal,
should not we treat it well for that friend’s sake as well as for its
own value? Would not it remind us of the giver? Would not we be anxious
that he should find it in good health if by chance he came on a visit?
This is how Zoroaster wished man to feel about the cow, the sheep, the
dog. Auguste Comte considered domestic animals as a part of humanity.
Zoroaster considered them as a trust from God.

Moslem traditions finish the story of the Mazdean prophet by telling
that he was beaten to death by “devil-worshippers,” probably Turanian
raiders. Zoroastrian authorities are silent about his end, which is
thought to bear out the legend that it was unfortunate.

The Parsis hold that the whole Avesta was the work of Zoroaster. Much of
the original material has disappeared, and although Western writers are
disposed to throw all the blame on the Moslem invaders, the steady
Persian tradition which accuses “Alexander the Rûman” of having caused
the destruction of an important part of it, cannot be well answered by
saying that such barbarism was not likely to be committed by the
Macedonian conqueror. When Persepolis was reduced to ruins some of the
sacred books “written with gold ink on prepared cow-skins” may have been
destroyed by accident, but as it was certain that the Zoroastrian
priests would do all they could to foment resistance to the hated
idolater, we cannot be too sure that the deed was not done on purpose.
The way of disposing of the dead set the Greeks against the
Zoroastrians, and they even thought or affected to think that the dying
as well as the dead were given to dogs. The Arabs, no doubt, burnt what
they could lay their hands on of what was left, and it tells much for
the devotion of the faithful few, the persecuted remnant in Persia, and
the band of exiles who found a happier fate in India, that nevertheless
the Avesta has been preserved in a representative though incomplete
form, to take its place in among the sacred literatures of the world.
When the Parsis return, as they hope to do, to a free Persia, they may
carry the Avesta proudly before them as the Sikhs carried the Granth to
the prophet-martyr’s tomb at Delhi: they have done more than keep the
faith, they have _lived it_.

The present Avesta consists of five books. The Gâthâs or hymns alone
really claim to have been composed by Zoroaster himself, and this claim
is admitted by European scholars who disagree with the Parsis in denying
that the other four books are by the same author. They are: the “Yasna,”
a ceremonial liturgy, the “Vispered,” a work resembling the “Yasna,” but
apparently less ancient; the “Vendîdâd,” which contains the Mazdean
religious law, and the “Khordah Avesta,” a household prayer-book for the
laity. The original text was written in an Aryan dialect related to
Sanscrit; after a time, this tongue was understood by no one but the
priests and not much by them; it was decided, therefore, to make a
translation, which was called the “Zend,” or “interpretation,” or, as we
should say, “the authorised version.” At first Europeans thought that
“Zend” meant the original tongue in which the work was written.
Curiously enough, the language into which the Scriptures were rendered
was not Iranian or Old Persian, but Pahlavi, a _lingua franca_ full of
Semitic words, which had been coined for convenience in communicating
with the Assyrians and Syrians when they were under one king. Pahlavi
was also used for official inscriptions, for coinage, for commerce; it
was a sort of Esperanto. The text and the translation enjoyed equal
authority, but the former was called “the Avesta of Heaven” and the
latter “the Avesta of Earth.”

The first fragment of the “Avesta” that reached Europe was a copy of the
“Yasna” brought to Canterbury by an unknown Englishman in 1633. Other
scraps followed, but no real attempt to translate it was made till the
adventurous Anquetil Duperron published in 1771 the version which he had
made with the assistance of Parsi priests and which was rejected in
unwise haste by Sir William Jones as a _supercherie littéraire_, chiefly
on the score that its contents were for the most part pure nonsense, and
hence could not be the work of Zoroaster. Germany at once was more just
than England to the man who, though he had not succeeded in making a
good translation, deserved the highest honour as a pioneer.

Even now that better translations are available, the Avesta is apt to
dishearten the reader on his first acquaintance with it. Many passages
have remained obscure, and the desire to be literal in this as in some
other Oriental works has hindered the translators from writing their own
languages well. It needs a Sir Richard Jebb to produce a translation
which is a classic and is yet microscopically accurate. I once asked
Professor F. C. Burkitt why the Septuagint did not make more impression
on the Hellenic and Roman students of Alexandria by mere force of the
literary power of the Bible? He replied that he thought it was to be
explained by the poor degree of literary skill possessed by the Greek
translators or by most of them. Another reminiscence comes to my mind
here: I recollect that eminent scholar and deeply religious-minded man,
Albert Réville, saying to me: “The Bible is so much more amusing than
the Koran!” I am afraid one must confess that the Koran is so much “more
amusing” than the Avesta. It is a good rule, however, to approach all
religious books with patience and with reverence, for they contain, even
if concealed under a bushel, the finest thoughts of man.

When we have grown accustomed to the outward frame of the Avesta, the
inner sense becomes clearer. It is like a piece of music by
Tschaikowsky: at first the modulations seem bizarre, the themes
incoherent; then, by degrees, a consecutive plan unwinds itself and we
know that what appeared meaningless sound was divine harmony.

The essential teaching of the Avesta is summed up in the text: “Adore
God with a pure mind and a pure body, and honour Him in His works.”
Force, power, energy, waters and stagnant pools, springs, running
brooks, plants that shoot aloft, plants that cover the ground, the
earth, the heavens, stars, sun, moon, the everlasting lights, the
flocks, the kine, the water-tribes, those that are of the sky, the
flying, the wild ones—“We honour all these, Thy holy and pure creatures,
O Ahura Mazda, divine artificer!”

              “The Voice said: Call My works thy friends.”

If the lyric note of great religious expression is rarely reached (only,
perhaps, in a few pieces, such as the noble hymn to the sun-symbol), the
sustained exposition of life is so reasonable and yet so lofty that to
contemplate it after gazing at the extravagances of pillar-saints and
Indian Yogi, signals, as it were, a return to sanity and health after
the _nuit blanche_ of fever.

The “Khordah Avesta” contains this counsel or good wish: “Be cheerful;
live thy life the whole time which thou wilt live.” Man is not asked to
do the impossible or even the difficult: he is asked to _enjoy_. To the
extreme spirituality which shrank from making even a mental image of God
is joined a “this worldliness” which saw in rational enjoyment a
religious duty. Instead of choosing poverty, man was ordered to make
good use of wealth; instead of mortifying the flesh, he was to avoid
calumny, evil-speaking, quarrels, to give clothes to the poor, to pray
not only for himself but for others. If he does wrong, let him repent
honestly in his heart and do some practical good work as a pledge of his
repentance. The soul which grieves for its wrongdoing and sins no more
comes back into the light of “God the giver, Forgiver, rich in Love, who
always is, always was, always will be!” When it was asked, “What is in
the first place most acceptable to this earth?” the answer came: “When a
holy man walks on it, O Zarathustra!” Good men work _with_ God, who,
sure of ultimate triumph, is yet Himself struggling now against the
Power of Darkness. There is no religion without a good life: “All have
not the Faith who do not hear it; all hear it not who are unclean; all
are unclean who are sinners.” God did not send calamities to His
servants, but He compassionates them in their trials: “The voice of him
weeping, however low, mounts up to the star-lights, comes round the
whole world.” It is no sin to desire riches: “Thy kingdom come, O Ahura,
when the virtuous poor shall inherit the earth.” In spite of the
sufferings of good people, even on this fair earth there is more of
pleasantness for the good than for the wicked, and in the next world
there is bliss eternal. I do not think that Robert Browning studied the
Avesta, but to the thoroughly Zoroastrian line quoted above I am tempted
to add this other which is not less so:—

    “Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph.”

For the individual, as for the universe, Right must triumph. If the
prophet of optimism has a harder task than the oracle of despair, it is,
perhaps, a more profitable task.

The Parsi repeats daily, as his ancestors did before him, the so-called
Honover or “Ahuna-Vairya,” or _logos_ which brings God down to man as
the Gayatri lifts man up to God: “One Master and Lord, all holy and
supreme; one teacher of His Law, appointed by God’s almighty will as
shepherd to the weak.” The Mazdean “law” was a thought-out system to
prevent idolatry and atheism, and to make men lead good lives. There is
no racial exclusiveness in it: the Mazdeans had no shibboleth or
peculiar sign; Zoroaster, himself a foreigner, did not appeal to a
chosen people or to a miraculously evolved caste: he only knew of good
men and bad. A really good man, truthful and charitable in all his ways,
had three heavens open to him even though he “offered no prayers and
chanted no Gâthâs”; only the fourth heaven, a little nearer the presence
of God, was reserved for those who had devoted their lives to religion.
Temperance was enjoined, as without temperance there could not be
health. The family was sacred and marriage meritorious: children, the
gift of Ahura Mazda, were recruits for the great Salvation Army of the
future. Immorality was severely censured, but the victims of it were
befriended. Stringent and most humane religious laws protected the
_fille-mère_ from being driven “by her shame” to destroy herself or her
offspring. Girls were married at sixteen: the address to young brides
may be compared with that in the Rig-Veda: “I speak these words to you,
maidens who wed. I say them unto you—imprint them on your hearts. Learn
to know the world of the Holy Spirit according to the Law. Even so, let
one of you take the other as the Law ordains, for it will be to you a
source of perfect joy.”

At the time when Zoroastrianism was the State religion, the Sásánian
period, we find that the kings frequently had harems. It is certain,
however, that if in this as in other things the priests were complacent,
they were untrue to orthodox Zoroastrian doctrine and custom, which only
permitted the taking of a second wife in some rare cases, as when there
was no issue by the first.

Even then, it does not seem to have been encouraged. The blot on Avestic
morality is the strange recommendation of consanguineous marriages,
which the Parsis interpret as far as possible in a figurative sense, but
it must have been intended to be followed, though it is plain that such
unions were never popular. The declared object was the hypothetical
maximum purity of race: exactly the same object as that contemplated in
the union of Siegemund and Siegelind in the Nibelungenlied—a curious
parallel. To my mind, the desire to keep agricultural property together
may have had something to do with it. The present moral ideas of the
Parsis do not differ from those of Europeans, and when they requested to
be placed under the English instead of the Hindu marriage law, their
wish was granted.

In Avesta times the priests both married and toiled like the rest of the
people. When their prosperity under the Sásánians tended to make them a
class apart, they seem to have become less faithful to the ideals of
their master, less stern in opposing evil in high places. It is a common
experience of history. Originally they were true citizen-priests, mixing
with the people as being of them. There was no life better or holier
than the common life of duty and work. Isolation of any kind was
contrary to the central Zoroastrian view of man as a social being. Among
the wicked souls in hell, each one thinks itself utterly alone: it has
no sight or knowledge of the host around it. Nothing could illustrate
more powerfully than this the saying of a great French writer: “_Seul a
un synonyme: mort!_” Solitude is the death of the soul.


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                  VII

                          ZOROASTRIAN ZOOLOGY


NO investigator of early Iran can afford to neglect the _Shahnameh_ of
Firdusi, which was as good history as he could make it; that is to say,
it was founded on extremely old legendary lore collected by him with a
real wish to revive the memory of the past. Firdusi sang the glories of
the “fire-worshippers” with such enthusiasm that one cannot be surprised
if, when he died, the Sheikh of Tús doubted whether he ought receive
orthodox Moslem burial: a doubt removed by an opportune dream in which
the Sheikh saw the poet in Paradise. In Firdusi’s epic we are told that
the earliest Persian king (who seems to have been not very far off the
first man) lived in peace with all creation. Wild animals came round and
knew him for their lord. He had a son who was killed by demons and a
grandson named Húsheng, who, as soon as he was old enough, made war on
the demons (Turanians?) to avenge his father’s murder. Every species of
wild and tame beast obeyed Húsheng:—

             “The savage beasts, and those of gentler kind,
              Alike reposed before him and appeared
              To do him homage.”

In his war on the demon’s brood, Húsheng was helped by wolf, tiger,
lion, and even by the fowls of the air. All this while mankind had lived
on fruit and the leaves of trees. Húsheng taught his people to bake
bread. He was succeeded by his son Taliumen, in whose reign panthers,
hawks, and falcons were tamed. The next king introduced weaving and the
use of armour. His successor was remembered for having kept a herd of
1,000 cows whose milk he gave to the poor. Then came Zorák, who owned
10,000 horses. Zorák was seduced by Iblís, the evil spirit, who, in
order to accomplish it, became his chief cook. Iblís was the real
founder of the culinary art; till then, people lived still almost
entirely on bread and fruit, but the king’s new _chef_ prepared the most
savoury dishes, for which he used the flesh of all kinds of birds and
beasts. Finally, he sent to table a partridge and a pheasant, after
which Zorák promised the devil to grant him any request he might make.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _J. Dieulafoy._
  KING FIGHTING GRIFFIN WITH SCORPION’S TAIL.
  Palace of Darius.
  (_By permission of M. Marcel Dieulafoy._)]

Here there are fugitive reminiscences of parallel legends in the
_Bundehesh_, a Parsi religious book belonging to post-Avestic times. The
first human couple served God faithfully till, for some unexplained
reason, they were induced to ascribe creation and supreme power to the
daevas. This was the “unforgivable sin,” the ascription of the
miraculous power of God to the devil. Ahriman rejoiced at their treason,
though it is not said that he was the cause of it: man could choose
between good and evil. After their defection, the man and the woman
clothed themselves in leaves and took to hunting. Ahriman put it into
their heads to kill a goat and then to light a fire by rubbing two
sticks: they blew on the fire to fan the flame and roasted a piece of
the goat. One bit they threw in the air as a sacrifice to the Nature
spirits, saying, “This for the Yazatas!” A kite flew past and carried
off the sacrifice. Afterwards, the man and woman dressed in skins and
told innumerable lies. Going from bad to worse, they engendered a large
family whence sprang the twenty-five races of mankind.

How this story got into the _Bundehesh_ I do not know, but I am sure
that Zoroaster would have disowned it. He knew of no collective “fall of
man,” whether in connexion with partridges, pheasants, or goat-flesh.

The Avesta, in its sober cosmogony, is content to speak of the
proto-man, Gayo Marathan (mortal life), and the proto-good-animal, Geus
Urva, from whom all human beings and all animals of the good creation
are derived. Nevertheless, Ahura Mazda is described frequently as
_creating_ each animal; the proto-creature was only the _modus operandi_
of the divine power. As in biology, divided sex was a secondary
development. From the bull, Geus Urva, proceeded first his own species,
and then sheep, camels, horses, asses, birds, water-animals.

The distinguishing qualification given him of _good and laborious_ is
the most striking proof of the originality of Magian ideas: instead of
the strong bulls of Basan roaring in their might, the bull we have here
is one with the ploughing ox:—

               “T’amo, o pio bove; e mite un sentimento
                Di vigore e di pace al cor m’infondi....”

—the patient, the long-suffering, the gentle, though strong-limbed
helper of man in his daily toil, good in his vigour, good in his
mildness, but good most of all in his labour, for Zoroaster called
labour a holy thing. The animal which did most to cultivate God’s earth
and make the desert flower like a rose, was the paragon of creatures. It
must not be thought that to the Geus Urva or his kind was ever rendered
the homage due to their Creator. If there was one thing more abhorrent,
to the Zoroastrian mind than idolatry it was zoolatry: when Cambyses
killed a new Apis with many of his followers in Egypt, he had no reason
to fear Mazdean criticism.

The soul of the bull receives _dulia_ not _latria_. “We honour the soul
of the bull ... and also our own souls and our cattle’s souls who help
to preserve our life; the souls by which they exist and which exist for
them.” So runs one of the Gâthâs, one of the hymns of Zoroaster himself.
“We honour the souls of the swift, wild animals; we honour the souls of
just men and women in whatever place they are born, whose pure natures
have overcome evil. We honour saintly men and saintly women, living
immortal, always living, always increasing in glory—all man and woman
souls faithful to the Spirit of God.”

In this song of praise we have brought before us vividly a fundamental
doctrine of the Avesta which pervades every page of it: the belief in
the Fravashi, the soul-partner, the double or angel, which exists before
birth as during life and after death. This belief has a great interest
for us as it would seem that it was only by chance that it did not pass
into the body of Christian dogma. The Jews of the new school had held it
for quite two hundred years before Christ. Besides other allusions, are
the three distinct references to the soul-partner in the New Testament.
Christ Himself speaks of the angels of the children who are always in
the presence of God and who complain to Him if the children are
ill-treated. Secondly, when Peter issued from prison, those who saw him
said, “It is his angel.” Thirdly, it is stated that the Sadducees
believed that there was no resurrection, “neither angel nor Spirit,” but
that the Pharisees, of whom Paul was one, “confessed both.” These three
references become intelligible for the first time after reading the
Gâthâs. True it is that he who knows only one religion, knows none.

Ahriman inflicted every sort of suffering on the primal creature—this
was the beginning of cruelty to animals. At last, he caused its death.
The soul of the Bull dwells in the presence of God, and to it, as
intercessor, all suffering creatures lift their plaints. Why were they
made to suffer wrath, ill-usage, hunger? Will no one lead them to sweet
pastures? The creature-soul carries the cry of the creatures to God.
Ahura Mazda promises the advent of Zoroaster, redresser of all wrongs.
But the Bull-soul weeps and complains: how can the voice of one weak man
avail to help? It invokes stronger and more effectual aid.

The hymn is really a litany of suffering animals, the grandeur of the
thought flashing across obscurities which make it almost impossible to
translate. Very mysterious is the expression of incredulity in the
efficacy of the help of Zoroaster, an expression which stands quite
alone, and in which some have seen a proof that this hymn was not
written by the Prophet. But would any one else have dared to question
his power or to call him “one weak man”? Can it be that Zoroaster was
distressed to find his efforts to prevent cruelty so unavailing, and
that he here covertly invokes the “strong arm of the law” to do what he
had failed in doing?

In the pages of the Avesta everything is tried to enforce humanity:
hopes of reward, threats of punishment, appeals to religious obedience,
common gratitude, self-interest. It cannot but appear singular that
among an Eastern pastoral and agricultural people such reiterated
admonitions should have been needful. The cow and the horse, “animals
manifestly pure which bring with them words of blessing,” inflict
terrible anathemas on their tormentors:—

    The cow curses him who keeps her: “Mayest thou remain without
    posterity, ever continuing of evil report, thou who dost not
    distribute me food, and yet causest me to labour for thy wife,
    thy children and thy own sustenance.”

    The horse curses his owner: “Mayest thou not be he who harnesses
    swift horses, not one of those who sit on swift horses, not one
    who makes swift horses hasten away. Thou dost not wish strength
    to me in the numerous assembly, in the circle of many men.”

The cow which is led astray by robbers calls to Mithra “ever with
unlifted hands, thinking of the stall,” and Mithra, here figuring as the
vengeance of God, destroys the house, the clan, the confederacy, the
region, the rule of him who injured her. She is the type of prosperity:
“O thou who didst create the cow, give us immortal life, safety, power,
plenty.” She is dear to her Creator: “Thou hast given the earth as a
sweet pasture for the cow.” She is praised because she furnishes the
offerings, flesh, milk, and butter.

This reminds us of the differences of point of view between the Persian
and the Indian humanitarian. The Indian, in theory at least, simply
forbade taking animal life. He had the great advantage of the argument
of the straight line. The Zoroastrian was handicapped by his moderation.
It is easier far to teach extraordinary than ordinary well-doing; every
moralist who has set out to improve mankind has found that. Zoroaster
had not the smallest doubt about his contention that man has imperative
duties in regard to what used to be called “the brute creation.” Man
could not live as man at all without it: we who have harnessed steam and
trapped the electric spark might entertain such a possibility, but to
Zoroaster the idea would have seemed absurd. As we owe so much to
animals, the least we can do is to treat them well. Yet, though he
included wanton and useless slaughter in “ill-treatment,” he allows the
killing of animals for food. Herodotus remarked that, unlike the
Egyptians, the Magian priests did not think it pollution to kill animals
with their own hands—except dogs and oxen.

It is to be supposed that the framers of Zoroastrian law believed that
animal food was necessary for man’s health and strength, perfect health
being the state most acceptable to the Creator. Believing this, they
could not forbid the temperate use of it. Gargantuan feasts were not
dreamt of; if they had been, they would have received the condemnation
given to all excesses. We are apt to fall into the way of thinking of
sacred books which is that of their own adepts; we think of them as
written by unpremeditated impulse. But commonly this was not the case.
The Avesta, especially, bears signs of conclusions reached by patient
reasoning. While, however, the Magians permitted the slaughter of
animals, they bowed to the original scruple which has no race-limits, by
ordering that such slaughter should be accompanied by an expiatory rite
without the performance of which it was unlawful. This was the offering
of the head of the animal to Homa: regarded, in this instance, as the
archetype of the “wine of life”—the sacred or sacramental juice of the
plant which has been identified with the Indian Soma. The Homa juice was
much the most sacred thing that could be eaten or drunk; if it is true
that it contained alcohol, the little jet of flame that would start
upwards as it was thrown on the sacrificial fire might seem actually to
bear with it the spirit of the offering. Whatever was the exact idea
implied by the dedication of slaughtered animals to Homa, the fact that
they were killed for food did not, of course, in any way affect their
extra-mortal destiny. The “souls of our cattle”—their archetypes—could
not suffer death.

As a careful observer, which he is now allowed to have been, Herodotus
remarked that not only might the priests take animal life, but that they
thought it highly meritorious to take the life of certain animals such
as ants, serpents, and some kinds of birds. It required no profound
knowledge of the East to notice something unusual in this. Even the
Jews, with their classification of clean and unclean beasts, cast no
moral slur on the forbidden category, and if the serpent of Eden was
cursed, later snakes regained their character and inspired no loathing;
the snake-charmer with his crawling pupils was a well known and popular
entertainer. Farther East, every holy man respected the life of an ant
as much as of an elephant. Zoroaster alone banned the reptile and the
major part of the insect world. No penance was more salutary than to
kill ten thousand scorpions, snakes, mosquitoes, ants that walk in
single file, harvesting ants, wasps, or a kind of fly which was the very
death of cattle. The innocent lizard suffered by reason of his
relationship with the crocodile; the harmless frog and tortoise excited
a wrath which they had done nothing to merit. Among mammals, the mouse
is singled out for destruction: although the wolf is a legionary of
Ahriman, he is more often classed with the “wicked two-legged
one”—perverse man—than with the evil creation properly so called. In one
place Ahriman is said to have created “devouring beasts,” but on closer
examination these devouring beasts proved to be only the harvesting ants
which were reckoned deadly foes of the agriculturist. Any one who has
seen how much newly-sown grass seed these favourites of Solomon will
remove in a shining hour will understand the prejudice, though he will
not, I hope, share it. Roughly speaking, the diligent, old-fashioned
gardener who puzzles his pious mind as to why “those things” were ever
created, is a born Zoroastrian. To tell him with Paul that “every
creature of God is good” does not comfort him much. Zoroaster’s answer
is as philosophically complete as it is scientifically weak. Certain
creatures are noxious to man; a good Creator would not have made
creatures noxious to men, ergo, such creatures were not made by a good
Creator. Besides the scientific objection to any hard-and-fast line of
division between animals, there is another: the pity of it. I wonder
that some velvet-coated field-mouse, approaching softly on tip-toe as
Zoroaster lay in his grotto, did not inquire with its appealing eyes:
“Do you really think that I look as if I were made by the Evil One?” In
spite of the numerous advantages of a theory which, in a literal sense,
makes a virtue of necessity (a sad necessity to some of us), the
theological ban of creatures for no other reason than that they are
inconvenient to man detracts from the ideal beauty of Zoroastrian faith.

Darwin, in a letter to Asa Gray, the American botanist, said that the
sufferings of caterpillars and mice made him doubt the existence of “a
beneficent and omnipotent Creator.” How often does doubt seem more
religious than belief!

The eschatology of the creatures deemed of darkness is not clear, but I
believe there is no mention of their Fravashis: it is permissible to
suppose, therefore, that, all along, they are rather appearances than
realities: things that cannot feel, though Ahriman feels defeat in their
destruction. For the rest, though Zoroaster treated wasps or mice much
as Torquemada treated heretics, he made it no merit to torment them: he
simply desired their extermination as every fruit-grower or farmer
desires it to this day.

Students of Zoroastrianism have been mystified by the seeming detachment
of the dog from the other “good” animals and the separate jurisdiction
designed for it. In my opinion this arose only from the fact that the
dog was not a food-providing animal. Hence it could be made penal (by
religious, not by civil, law, it must be remembered) to kill a dog, and
it was natural that his body should be disposed of in the same way as a
man’s. What else could be done with it? It was natural also that since
his death was inflicted by Ahriman (since it came of itself),
purification ceremonials should be performed to remove the pollution.
The religious scope of such ceremonials was like that of reconsecrating
a church in which suicide or murder has been committed. That the dog was
highly appreciated, that he was valued as an essential helper in the
existing conditions of life, is amply proved, but that he was
“reverenced” more than some other animals—_e.g._, the cow—is open to
doubt. The dog was recognised as more human which made him more liable
to err. It was the celebrated chapter on the dog which convinced Sir W.
Jones that Anquetil Duperron’s translation was a forgery. It should have
struck him that this was not how a European would have made Zoroaster
speak about the favoured animal. In the comparisons of canine qualities
with those of certain human beings, there is more of satire than of
panegyric. The whole Fargard XIII. has been interpreted as purely
mystical: the dog symbolising the “will,” a meaning which, according to
this argument, fits the term “Dog” in all passages of the scriptures of
Iran. This is a hard saying. More reasonable is the supposition that
Fargard XIII. formed part of a treatise on animals and got into the
Vendîdâd by chance. However that may be, the “eight characters” of the
dog show observation though not reverence: he loves darkness like a
thief, and at times has been known to be one; he fawns like a slave, he
is a self-seeker like a courtezan, he eats raw meat like a beast of
prey. The words relative to his “chasing about the well-born cow” have
been interpreted to mean that he chased her back home when she had
strayed, but I seem to have seen dogs chasing about well-born cows from
no such benevolent motive. Some of the comparisons are neither
flattering nor critical but descriptive: the dog loves sheep like a
child, he runs here and there in front, like a child; he dodges in and
out like a child.

[Illustration:

  THE REAL DOG OF IRAN.
  Louvre.
  (_By permission of Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Ltd._)]

The _jeu d’esprit_ of the “eight characters” is followed by what appears
to be a serious statement of how to treat the dog which misconducts
himself. There is no capital punishment, nothing like the stoning of the
ox which gores a man or woman, in the Bible. If a dog attacks man or
cattle he is to lose an ear; if he does it a third time his foot is to
be cut off, or, as Bleeck humanely suggests, he is to be rendered so far
lame that it is easy to escape from him. The “dumb dog” of vicious
disposition is to be tied up. If a dog is no longer sane in his mind and
has become dangerous on that account, you are to try and cure him as you
would a man, but if this fails, you must chain him up and muzzle him,
using a sort of wooden pillory which prevents him from biting. This
passage is curious, because, while it seems to allude plainly to
hydrophobia, it contains no hint of the worser consequences to man than
a simple bite.

We find that there were four if not more breeds of dogs, each of which
was carefully trained for its work. The house-dog, the personal dog
(which may have been a blood-hound), sheep and herd-dogs are all
mentioned, but there is no mention of sporting-dogs or of sport in the
Avesta. The dogs must have been powerful, as they were required to be a
match for the wolf, “the growing, the flattering, the deadly wolf,”
which was the dread of every homestead in Iran. There were also “wolves
with claws” (tigers), but they were comparatively few. The kinship of
wolf and dog was recognised, and there was an impression that the most
murderous wolf was the half-breed of a wolf and a bitch. Perhaps the
wolf of dog-descent came more boldly to the dwelling of man, having no
instinctive fear of him. It is said, too, that the deadliest kind of dog
was the dog that had a wolf-mother. Possibly such cross-breeding was
tried experimentally in the hope of obtaining dogs which could best
resist the wolf.

If the dog is never represented as a creature of faultless perfection,
it yet remains an established truth that “dwellings would not stand fast
on the earth created by Ahura Mazda were there not dogs which pertain to
the cattle and to the village.” It is the Lord of Creation who says:
“The dog I have made, O Zarathustra, with his own clothing and his own
shoes; with keen scent and sharp teeth, faithful to men, as a protector
to the folds. For I have made the dog, I who am Ahura Mazda!” To attack
the dog was like an attack on the police. Slitting the ear of the house
or sheep-dog out of malice, or cutting off his foot, or belabouring him
so that thieves got at the sheep, were not unfrequent crimes and they
are dealt with no more severely than they deserve. Who killed a
house-dog outright, or a sheep-dog or personal dog or well-trained dog,
was warned that in the next world his soul would go howling worse than a
wolf in the depths of the forest; shunned by all other souls, growled at
by the dogs that guard the bridge Chinvat. Eight hundred blows with a
horse-goad are adjudged to the wretch who so injures a dog that it die.
To strike or chase a bitch with young brings a dreadful curse. Much is
said about the proper care of the mother and the puppies. To give a dog
too hot food or too hard bones is as bad as turning apostate. His right
food is milk and fat and lean meat. “Of all known creatures that which
ages soonest is the dog left foodless among people who eat—who seeks
here and there his food and finds it not.”

As a rule unnamed wild animals may be supposed to have been protected.
The fox was considered a powerful daeva-scarer, which shows that not
only in China did the fox seem an “uncanny” beast. In Iran his
supernatural services made him highly esteemed. There seem to have been
no cats though so many mice. The later Iran was destined to be a great
admirer of cats, witness the praise of them by Persian poets, but it is
not easy to fix the date when they were introduced. Monkeys were known
and were attributed by a post-Avestic superstition to the union of human
women and daevas. Vultures were sacred because they devoured good
Mazdeans. On the whole, not much attention was paid to wild nature, with
one striking exception: the extraordinary respect for the water-dog,
beaver or otter. Suddenly the solid utilitarian basis of Zoroastrian
zoology gives way and we behold a fabric of dreams. We might understand
it better could we know the early animistic beliefs of Iran, though the
trend of the Avesta apparently ran _counter_ to old popular credences
far more than with them. It should be remembered that water was only a
little less sacred than fire in the Zoroastrian system; the defilement
of rivers was strictly forbidden. The Udra, or beaver, became the “luck”
of the rivers: to destroy it would provoke a drought. If it was found
roaming on the land, the Mazdean was bound to carry it to the nearest
stream. In later legend, the Udra, even more than the fox, was a
daeva-foe. But by far its most important characteristic is its mythical
connexion with the dog. To the question: “What becomes of the aged dog
when his strength fails him and he dies?” follows the answer: “He goes
to the dwelling in the water, where he is met by two water-dogs.” These
are his conductors to the dogs’ paradise. A fair sward beneath the
waters, cool and fresh in the summer heat, is at least a pleasant idea,
but when the two water-dogs are described as consisting of one thousand
male and one thousand female dogs, the myth seems to lose its balance
which no proper myth ought to do. Myths have the habit of proceeding
rationally enough in their own orbit. Later commentators reject this
fantastic interpretation and suppose the verse to mean that the dog-soul
is received, not by two, but by two thousand water-dogs, which in
Oriental hyperbole would mean merely “a great many.”

Be this as it may, Udra-murder was a frightful sin, and frightful were
the penalties attached to it. Besides undergoing the usual blows with a
horse-goad (to be self inflicted?) the murderer must kill ten thousand
each of some half-dozen insects and reptiles: this, at least, is how it
looks, but as a matter of fact the long lists of penalties in the
Vendîdâd must be taken not as cumulative, but as alternative. This is
evident, though it is never stated, and it explains many things. A large
number of the alternative punishments for beaver-killing take the form
of offerings to the priests. Arms, whips, grindstones, handmills,
house-matting, wine and food, a team of oxen, cattle both small and
large, _a suitable wife_—the young sister of the sinner—these are among
the specified offerings. The culprit may also build a bridge, or breed
fourteen dogs as an act of expiation; in short, he may do any kind of
meritorious deed, but something he must do, or it will be the worse for
him in the world to come.

The Vendîdâd was not a code of criminal law enforced by the civil power,
but an adjugation of penances for the atonement of sin. This was not
understood at first, which caused the selection of punishments to appear
more extravagant than it really is. For the most part the penances were
active good works or things which were reckoned as such. Charity and
alms-giving were always contemplated among the means of grace, and if
they were not dwelt upon more continually, it was because there existed
nothing comparable to modern destitution. Moreover, it was understood
better than in other parts of the East that not every beggar was a
saint: too often he was a lazy fellow who had shirked the common
obligation of labour. The repetition of certain prayers was another
practice recommended to the repentant sinner. But no good work or pious
exercise was of any avail unless accompanied by sincere sorrow for
having done wrong. The Law opened the door of grace, but to obtain it
the heart must have become changed. God forgives those who truly desire
His forgiveness. It is impossible to doubt that the spurious Mazdeism
which got into Europe, distorted though it was, yet took with it the two
great Mazdean doctrines of repentance and the remission of sin. Great
ideas conquer, and it was by these two doctrines that Mithraism so
nearly conquered the Western world—not by its unlovely rites.

On one or two points the human eschatology of Zoroastrianism is
associated with dogs. A dog is brought into the presence of the dying
man. This has been explained by reference to the dogs of Yama, the Vedic
lord of death, and the European superstition about the howling of a dog
being a death-portent is explained in the same way, but in both
instances the immediate cause seems nearer at hand. An Indian officer
once remarked to me that any one who had heard the true “death-howl” of
a dog would never need any recondite reason for the uncomfortable
feeling which it arouses. As regards the Zoroastrian dog, the immediate
cause of the belief that he drives away evil spirits lies in the fact
that he drives away thieves and prowlers in the night. Death being a
pollution as the work of Ahriman, evil spirits beset the dying, but they
flee at the sight of the dog, created by Ahura Mazda to protect man. The
dead wander for three days near the tenantless body: then they go to the
bridge Chinvat, where the division takes place between the good and the
wicked. The bridge is guarded by dogs, who drive away all things evil
from the path of the righteous, but do nothing to prevent bad spirits
from tripping up sinners so that they fall into the pit.

The good go into light, sinners into darkness, where Ahriman, “whose
religion is evil,” mocks them, saying: “Why did you eat the bread of
Ahura Mazda and do my work? and thought not of your own Creator but
practised my will?” Nothing is told of the punishment of Ahriman—the
doom of Evil is to be Evil—but in the end he will be utterly
extinguished. Through time, _but not_ through eternity the wicked remain
in his power. In the Khordah Avesta it is said that God, after purifying
all the obedient, will purify the wicked out of hell. In the words of a
living Parsi writer: “The reign of terror, at the end of the stipulated
time, vanishes into oblivion, and its chief factor, Ahriman, goes to
meet his doom of total extinction, whilst Ahura Mazda, the Omnipotent
Victor, remains the Great All in All.”

The Zoroastrian was as free as Socrates himself from the materialism
which looks upon the body after death as if it were still the being that
tenanted it. Some kind of renewed body the dead will have: meanwhile,
this is not they! The hope of immortality was so firm that it was
thought an actual sin to give way to excessive mourning: the wailing and
keening of the Jews seem to be here condemned, though they are not
mentioned, there being no direct allusion to the religions of other
peoples in the Avesta. There is a river of human tears which hinders
souls on their way to beatitude: the dead would fain that the living
check their tears which swell the river and make it hard to cross over
in safety. The same idea is to be found in one of the most beautiful of
Scandinavian folk-songs.

The small work known as the Book of Ardâ Vîrâf is a document of
priceless worth to the student of Mazdean eschatology, and it is also of
the greatest interest in its relation to ideas about animals. If printed
in a convenient form, every humane person would carry it in his pocket.
Like the vision of the Seer of Patmos this work is purely religious; it
attempts no criticism of life and man such as that embodied in the
“Divina Commedia,” but in spite of this difference in aim, there is an
astonishing resemblance between its general plan and that of the poem of
Dante. Without going into this subject, I may say that I cannot feel
convinced that with the geographical, astronomical, and other knowledge
of the East which is believed to have reached Dante by means of
conversations with merchants, pilgrims and perhaps craftsmen (for that
Italian artists worked in India at an early date the Madonna-like groups
in many a remote Hindu temple bear almost certain testimony), there did
not come to him also some report of the travels of the Persian visitant
to the next world.

The author of the Persian vision was a pious Mazdean whose whole desire
was to revive religious feeling amid growing indifference. He is
supposed to have lived not earlier than 500, and not later than 700 A.D.
The former is the likelier date. Had the assault of Islam begun, the
book must have borne traces of the struggle with invaders who threatened
to annihilate the faith. The author states that the work was intended as
an antidote in the first place to atheism and in the second to “the
religions of many kinds” that were springing up. This probably contains
a reference to Christian sects, but it is not the way that allusion
would have been made to propagandists with a sword in their hands.
Christian sects managed to recover from the first persecution in 344
A.D., after which they were more often than not tolerated, though the
Zoroastrian priesthood feared a Church that possessed an organisation so
much like their own. They were accused, moreover, as at Rome, of being
anti-national: everywhere the sentiment against the Christians took a
form closely resembling the anti-Semiticism of our days. Such
accusations can hardly fail to create, to some extent, the thing they
predicate, and it is no great wonder if in the end the Persian
Christians received the Moslem invaders with favour. Though the essence
of Mazdeism is peace to men of good-will, it is to be feared that the
Zoroastrian priests (like others) were less tolerant than their creed,
and that the harassing of the Christians generally originated with them.
They are known to have counselled this policy to Homizd IV., who gave
them the memorable answer that his royal throne could not stand on its
front legs alone, but needed the support of the Christians and other
sectaries as well as of the faithful. It was one of the wisest sayings
that ever fell from the lips of a king and more Mazdean than all the
bigotry of Zoroastrian clericalism.

The author of Ardâ Vîrâf tried the perfectly legitimate means of
persuasion in rallying his countrymen to their own religion. He tells
the story of how, in an age of doubt, it was agreed that the best thing
would be to send some one into the next world to see if Mazdeism were,
indeed, the true religion. Lots fell on a very virtuous man named Ardâ
Vîrâf, who was commissioned to make the journey in a trance-state
produced by the administration of a narcotic. Even now, in India,
children and others are given narcotics, sometimes of a dangerous sort,
in order to obtain knowledge which is supposed to come to them whilst
insensible. To a Mazdean the ordeal would be particularly terrible,
because sleep, like death, was created by Ahriman. The calm fortitude
with which Ardâ Vîrâf submits, while his family break into loud weeping,
almost reminds one of the bearing of Socrates on the eve of a similar
departure but one with no return. “It is the custom that I should pray
to the departed souls and make a will,” he says; “when I have done that,
give me the narcotic.” His body was treated as though dead, being kept
at the proper distance from fire and other sacred things, but priests
stayed near it night and day, praying and reading the Scriptures, that
the powers of ill might not prevail.

At the end of seven days the wandering spirit of Ardâ Vîrâf re-entered
his inanimate form, and after he had taken food and water and wine he
called for a ready writer, to whom he dictated the tale of what he had
seen. Guided by Srosh the Pious and Ataro the Angel (Virgil and
Beatrice) the traveller visited heaven and hell. At the outset he saw
the meeting of a righteous soul and its Fravashi. This soul crosses the
Chinvat bridge in safety, and on the other side passes into an
atmosphere laden with an ineffably sweet perfume which emanates from the
direction of the presence of God. Here it meets a damsel more wondrously
fair than aught it has beheld in the land of the living. Enraptured at
the sight, it asks her name and receives the answer: “I am thine own
good actions.” Every good deed embellishes the human soul’s archetype,
every evil deed mars and stains it with the hideousness of sin. This
poetic and beautiful conception was not due to the author of Ardâ Vîrâf:
it is taken from the venerable pages of the Avesta itself.

In the abode of Punishment the most impressive penalties are those
undergone by the souls which have tortured helpless infants or dumb
animals. The mother who feeds another’s child from greed and starves her
own, is seen digging into an iron hill with her breasts while the cry of
her child for food comes ever from the other side of the hill, “but the
infant comes not to the mother nor the mother to the infant.” Here the
supreme anguish is mental: it is caused by the awakening of that
maternal instinct which the woman stifled on earth. Has the _Inferno_
any thought so luminously subtle as this? The woman-soul will never
reach her child “till the renewal of the world.” Till the renewal of the
world! Across the hell-fog penetrates the final hope!

The unfaithful wife who destroys the fruit of her illicit love suffers a
horrible punishment. It is strange that if we wish to find an analogy to
these severe judgments on offences against infancy, we must go to a
small tribe of Dravidian mountaineers in the Nilgiri hills, among whose
folk-songs is one which describes a vision of heaven and hell. In this a
woman is shown who is condemned to see her own child continually die,
because she refused help to a stranger’s child, saying: “It is not
mine!”

Those who treated their beasts cruelly, who overworked them, overloaded
them, gave them insufficient food, continued to work them when they
suffered from sores caused by leanness instead of trying to cure the
sores, are seen by Ardâ Vîrâf hung up head downwards while a ceaseless
rain of stones falls on their backs. Those who wantonly killed animals
have a knife driven ceaselessly into their hearts. Those who muzzled the
ox which ploughed the furrows are dashed under the feet of cattle. The
same punishment falls to those who forget to give water to the oxen in
the heat of the day or who worked them when hungry and thirsty. Demons
like dogs constantly tear the man who kept back food from
shepherds’-dogs and house-dogs or who beat or killed them: he offers
bread to the dogs, but they eat it not and only tear the more.

Ardâ Vîrâf tells a story which belongs to the cycle of “Sultan Murad,”
immortalised by Victor Hugo. A certain lazy man named Davânôs, who never
did any other thing of good during all the years when he governed many
provinces, once cast a bundle of grass with his right foot to within the
reach of a ploughing-ox. Hence his right foot is exempted from torment
while the rest of his body is gnawed by noxious creatures.

It is easy to imagine that the realistic picture of heaven and hell by a
poet of no little power produced the deepest effect on the minds of
people, who for the most part took it to be literally true. No Oriental
work ever became more popular or was more widely read and translated.
People still living can remember the time when it was the habit of the
Parsis at Bombay to have public readings of Ardâ Vîrâf, on which
occasions the audience, especially the feminine part of it, broke into
violent sobbing from the excitement caused by the description of the
punishment of the wicked. The Parsis have abandoned now the theory that
the book is other than a work of imagination, but it may be hoped that
they will not cease to regard it as a cherished legacy from their
fathers and a precious bequest to their children.


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                  VIII

                           A RELIGION OF RUTH


AN Englishman who went to see a Hindu saint was deterred from entering
the cave where the holy man lived by the spectacle of numerous rats. The
hermit, observing his hesitation, inquired what was the matter? “Don’t
you see them?” answered his visitor. “Yes,” was the brief reply. “Why
don’t you kill them?” asked the Englishman. “Why should I kill them?”
said the native of the land. Finding the whole onus of the discussion
thrown on his shoulders, the English traveller felt that it would be
difficult with his limited knowledge of the language to express a
European’s ideas about rats. He thought to sum up the case in one
sentence: “We people kill them.” To which the saint answered: “We people
don’t kill them.”

In another country, but still among a race which has inherited the habit
of looking at questions between man and animals not exclusively from the
man’s point of view, a learned professor proposed to an old gardener at
Yezd that they should dig up an ant-hill to ascertain if the local
prejudice were true which insisted that inside each ant-hill there
lodged two scorpions. The old Persian declined to be a party to any such
proceeding. “As long as the scorpions stay inside,” he said with
decision, “we have no right to molest them and to do so would bring
ill-luck.”

These anecdotes show, amusingly and convincingly, the wall of
demarcation between Eastern and Western thought by which the son of the
West is apt to find his passage barred. They serve my purpose in quoting
them the better because they are not connected with the religious sect
whose precepts I am going to sketch. They illustrate what I believe to
be true, namely, that this sect and Buddhism itself would not have made
their way in so wonderful a manner, seemingly almost without effort, had
they not found the ground prepared by a racial tendency to fly to the
doctrine of _Ahimsa_, or “non-killing,” which forms part of their
systems.

No religion prevails unless it appeals to some chord, if not of the
human heart everywhere, at least of the particular human hearts to which
it is directed. In the West a religion based on Vegetarianism would not
have a chance. Not that there exists no trace of the life-preserving
instinct among Western peoples—far from that. All nice children have it
and all saints of the type of him of Assisi. Other people have it who
are neither children, nor saints, nor yet lunatics (“though by your
smiling you seem to say so”). I know an old hero of the Siege of Delhi
who to this day would stoop to lift a worm from his path. But the
sentiment, which in the West is rather a secret thing, forming a sort of
freemasonry among those who feel it, asserts its sway in the East in the
broad light of day. No one there would mind giving the fullest publicity
to his opinion that the scorpion has as good a right to live undisturbed
in his domestic ant-hill as you have in your suburban villa.

Long before the Jainas made _Ahimsa_ a gateway to perfection,
innumerable Asiatics practised and even preached the very same rule. It
was the bond of union between all the religious teachers and ascetics
who constituted a well-defined feature in Indian life from remote if not
from the earliest antiquity. The founders of Jainism and of Buddhism,
too, were Gurus like the rest, only they possessed an intensified
magnetic influence and, at least in Buddha’s case, an unique genius.
Every Eastern religion has been taught by a Guru, not excepting the most
divine of them all.[4]

Footnote 4:

  “It is stated of the Divine Founder of the Christian religion that
  without a parable spoke He not to the people. Christ, in fact, acted
  and taught as an _Oriental Guru_, a character which none of the
  European writers of Christ’s life has invested Him with” (Rev. J.
  Long: v. “Oriental Proverbs” in the Report of the Proceedings of the
  Second Congress of Orientalists).

In the occurrence of a new religious evolution much depends on the
individual, but much also on the fulness of time. When Buddhism and
Jainism arose, the psychological moment was come for a change or
modification in the current faith. To some degree, both were a revolt
against Sacerdotalism. Men were told that they could work out their
salvation without priestly aid or intervention. The new teachers, though
each springing from the class of the feudal nobility, won to their side
the surging wave of the only kind of democratic yearning which, till
now, Asia has known—the yearning for religious equality. Professor
Hermann Jacobi (the foremost authority on Jainism, to whom all who study
the subject owe an unbounded debt) suggests that there was a certain
friction between the highly meritorious of the noble and the priestly
castes because the priests were inclined to look down on the layman
saint. To this category belonged Sakya Muni, who was the younger son of
a prince, or, as we should say, a feudal lord, and who renounced rank
and riches to become a recluse. The same family history is told of
Mahavira, whom the Jainas claim to be their founder. For a long time
Europeans believed the two religions to have but one source, and Jainism
was dismissed as a Buddhist sect. The Jainas, however, always strongly
held that they had a founder of their own, namely, Mahavira, and they
even declared that Buddha was not his master but his disciple. After
much research, Professor Jacobi decided the case in their favour by
assigning to them a separate origin. Both Sakya Muni and Mahavira are
generally believed to have flourished in the sixth century B.C.

The confusion of the Jainas with the Buddhists and even with the
Brahmans has made it difficult to reckon their present numbers: in the
census of 1901 they are estimated at 1,334,138, chiefly living in the
Bombay Presidency, but this does not tell us their real number. Jainas
are to be found almost everywhere in Upper India, in the West and South
and along the Ganges. They inhabit the towns more than the country. In
treating ancient Indian religions the living document is always round
the corner, ready to be called into the witness-box, and the Jainas of
to-day can give a good account of themselves. Every one has a good word
for them; a friend of mine, than whom few know India better, describes
them thus: “A tall, fair, handsome, good and humble lot they are and
terribly bullied they are by their more bellicose fellow-countrymen, who
all look on Jainas as made for them to pilfer, but the Jainas never turn
on their persecutors.” In spite of their meekness, they are good men of
business, which is proved by their remarkable success in commerce.
Perhaps it is not such bad policy to be peaceful, and helpful, and
honest as a cynical century supposes.

The Jainas say of Mahavira that he was one of a long line of holy
ascetics twenty-four of whom are venerated in their temples under the
name of Tirthakaras or Jinas, “Conquerors” in the sense of having
conquered the flesh. Needless to point out that the founders of great
religious systems invariably accept this principle of evolution: they
complete what others began, and in due time a new manifestation will
arrive either in the form of a more perfect revelation of themselves or
in that of a fore-destined successor. The Buddhists now await Matreya,
or “the Buddha of kindness.” The Jainas have not added to their
twenty-four glorified beings, but there is nothing to prevent them from
doing so. To these specimens of perfected humanity they have raised some
of the most glorious temples ever lifted by the hand of man towards
heaven. Tier on tier mount the exquisitely beautiful towers of the Jaina
cathedrals in the most lonely part of the Muklagerri hills. They seem
like the Parsifal music turned into stone: an allegory of the ascent of
the soul from corruption to incorruption, from change to permanency. The
desire to worship something finds a vent in the reverence paid to the
Tirthakaras, but the Jaina religion admits neither relics nor the
iteration of prayers. The building of splendid shrines and of refuges
for man and beast are the particular means of grace open to the Jaina
who cannot comply in all respects with the exacting demands of his
scriptures, which, were they literally fulfilled, would leave no one on
the world but ascetics. The wealthy Jaina is only too glad to avail
himself of the chance of acquiring some merit, however far it must fall
short of the highest. Besides this, in moments of religious fervour
temple-building becomes a frenzy: whole races are swept along by the
blind impulse to incarnate their spiritual cravings in spires or pagodas
or minarets pointing to the sky—the eternal symbol. The greatest of
Jaina temples mark the epoch of some such wave of spiritual emotion.

The Jaina scriptures, which were first collected from aural report and
written down by a learned man in the sixth century A.D., are really a
Rule of Discipline for monks, and not a guide for the mass of mankind.
If we could imagine the only Christian Scripture being the immortal book
of Thomas à Kempis, we should form the idea of a very similar state of
things. It is surprising not how little but how much of this rigid rule
is followed by every Jaina to this day, be he monk or layman. The
vegetarian principle involved in _Ahimsa_ is observed rigorously by
all—clearly with no bad effect on health after a trial of about
twenty-four centuries, for the Jainas’ physique is excellent, and they
are less subject to disease than the other communities. They strain and
boil water before drinking, and whatever may be said of the motive, the
practice must be highly commended. They are also often to be seen
wearing a mouth-cloth to prevent them from swallowing flies, and they
carry little brooms with which they sweep insects out of their path. The
hospitals for sick animals begin to be better managed than formerly,
when they incurred much censure as mere conglomerations of hopeless
suffering to relieve which practical means were not taken. A folly
adopted by the more fanatical Jainas at the time of their origin was
that of going “sky-clad,” which makes it probable that they were the
gymnosophists known to the Greeks. They saw well later to limit this
practice to certain times and occasions or to abandon it for the far
more pleasant one of wearing white garments. Buddha warned his followers
against the “sky-clad” aberration. He disagreed with the Jainas on a
more vital point in the view he took of penance and self-inflicted
torture. It shows the high intellectuality of the man that towards the
end of his life he pronounced penance, though he had gone through much
of it himself, to be vanity of vanities. The Jainas took the opposite
view: “Subdue the body just as fire consumes old wood.” They hold that
merit is bound up with a certain definite and tangible thing: the
Buddhist, more philosophically, makes it consist in intention. This is
the chief doctrinal difference between Jaina and Buddhist, and though
each is bound to charity and the Jaina is particularly enjoined by his
scriptures not to turn other people’s religion into ridicule, it has to
be confessed that in their frequent disputes they spare no pains and
neglect no arts of Socratic reasoning to reduce each other’s theories to
an absurdity. Irony is a weapon always used in Indian religious
discussion.

Mahavira himself “fulfilled the law” by allowing gnats, flies, and other
things to bite him and crawl over him for four months without ever once
losing his equanimity. It is told that he met all sorts of pleasant or
unpleasant events with an even mind whether they arose from divine
powers, men, or animals. The Jainas did not deny that there were divine
powers: there might be any number of them, and the influence they
wielded for good or for ill (I think especially for ill) was not
inconsiderable. Only they were not morally admirable like a man
victorious through suffering. The greater willingness of the Jainas to
admit gods into the wheel of being, and even to allow some homage to be
paid to them, was one reason why they clashed less with the Brahmans.
After the subsidence of Buddhism the Jainas managed to go on existing,
somewhat despised and annoyed, but tolerated.

While both Buddhists and Jainas place the prohibition to take life at
the head of their law, its application is infinitely more thoroughgoing
among the Jainas, who also attach to it ideas which have no place in
Buddhist metaphysics. From the Jaina position, it seems to imply a
tendency to primitive animism, though it is hard to say whether this
comes from a real process of retrogression or simply from the Indo-Aryan
desire for a synthesis—the more easily attained the more you assume. It
is startling to hear that in the last census over eight millions were
returned as animists—it proves that the old credences die hard. The
Jainas took into their soul-world fire, water, wind, shooting plants and
germinating seeds. The disciplinary results must have been inconvenient,
but a religion was never less popular because it put its devotees to
inconvenience. Those who still clung to animistic beliefs were already
prepared to see a soul in the flickering fire, the rushing water, the
growing blade. We all have odds and ends of animism; did not Coventry
Patmore say: “There is something human in a tree?” With more detail the
Jaina observes that trees and plants are born and grow old; they
distinguish the seasons, they turn towards the sun, the seeds grow up:
how, then, shall we deny all knowledge to them? “The asoka buds and
blossoms when touched by a fair girl’s feet.” Can we help recalling the
familiar lines in the “Sensitive Plant?”—

            “I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
             Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;
             I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
             From her glowing fingers thro’ all their frame.”

Now, Science, which is on the way to becoming very kind to man’s early
beliefs, comes forward in the person of Mr. Francis Darwin to tell us
that plants _have_ “mind” and “intelligence,” especially the hop and the
bryony. All fairy-tales will come true if we wait long enough.

Once, and once only, in Jaina writings I have noticed it given as a
distinct reason for sparing plants and trees, that they may contain the
transmigrated soul of a man. Even in the case of animals the doctrine of
transmigration is rarely adduced as the reason for not killing them,
though it is fully accepted by Jainas in common with all the Indian
sects sprung from Brahmanism by which it was started. Coming to the
Indian views of animals from those which antiquity represented as the
preaching of Pythagoras, we expect to see this argument put forward at
every turn, but it is not. In Jaina writings the incentive is humanity:
to do to others as we would be done by. It is true that as an aid to
this incentive, the cruel are threatened with the most awful
punishments. In Indian sacred writings one is wearied by the nice
balance constantly drawn between every deed and its consequences to the
doer for a subsequent millennium. In mediæval monkish legends we find
exactly the same device for keeping the adept in the paths of virtue,
but wherever we find it, we sigh for the spontaneous emotion of pity of
the Good Samaritan who never reflected “If I do not get off my ass and
go to help that Jew, how very bad it will be for my Karman!”

We ought not to forget in this connexion that rewards and punishments
have not the same meaning to the Indian as to us: they are not
extraneous prizes or penalties, but the working out of a mathematical
problem which we both set and solve for ourselves. It is utterly
impossible to escape from the consequences of our evil acts: they are
debts which must be paid, though we may set about performing good acts
which will make our future happiness exceed our future misery in time
and extent. The highest good comes of itself, automatically, to him who
merits it, as is illustrated with great beauty in the Jaina story of the
White Lotus. This flower, the symbol of perfection, bloomed in the
centre of a pool and was descried by many who made violent efforts to
reach it, but they were all set fast in the mud. Then came a holy
ascetic who stood motionless on the bank. “O white Lotus, fly up!” he
said, and the White Lotus flew to his breast. Even among Indian sects
which all abound in this kind of composition the Jainas are remarkable
for their wealth of moral tales and apothegms. As is well known, they
possess a parable called “The Three Merchants,” closely resembling the
parable of the Talents as told by Matthew and Luke, and still more
exactly agreeing with the version given in the so-called “Gospel
according to the Hebrews.”

The theory of Karman suggests several modern scientific speculations
such as the idea that the brain retains an ineffaceable print of every
impression received by it, and again, the extreme view of heredity which
makes the individual the moral and physical slave of former generations.
It is a theory which has the advantage of disposing of many riddles.
Different sects have slightly varying opinions about the nature of the
Karman: the Jainas see in this receptacle of good and evil deeds a
material, though supersensual, reality with a physical basis. Each
individual consists of five parts: the visible body, the vital energy
thought to consist of fire, or, as we might say, of electricity, the
Karman and two subliminal selves which appear to be only latent in most
persons, but by which, when called into activity, the individual can
transform himself, travel to distances and do other unusual things. That
each man is provided with a wraith or double is an old and widely-spread
belief; but in Western lore the double does not seem to be commanded by
its pair: it rather moves like an unconscious, wandering photograph of
him.

The Jainas have the same word for the soul and for life: _gîva_, and
this name they bestow on the whole range of things which they consider
as living: the elements, seeds, plants, animals, men, gods. One would
think that the sense of personal identity would become vague in the
contemplation of voyages over so vast a sea of being, but, on the
contrary, this identity is the one thing about which the individual
seems perfectly sure. We have frequently such utterances as: “My own
self is the doer and the undoer of misery and happiness; my own self is
friend and foe.” A sort of void seems spread round the individual which
even family affection, very strong though it has always been in India,
is powerless to bridge. A lovely testimony to this affection, and at the
same time an avowal of its unavailingness, is to be found in the one
single exception to the Jaina law that the wholly virtuous man must
desire nothing, not even Nirvana must he desire, much less earthly love
or friendship. But he may desire to take upon him the painful illness of
one of his dear kindred. It is added sadly, however, that never has such
a desire been fulfilled, for one man cannot take upon him the pains of
another, neither can he feel what another feels.

“Man is born alone, he dies alone, he falls alone, he rises alone. His
passions, consciousness, intellect, perceptions and impressions belong
to him exclusively. Another cannot save him or help him. He grows old,
his hair turns white, even this dear body he must relinquish—none can
stay the hour.”

Again it is written:—

“Man! thou art thy own friend, why wishest thou for a friend beyond
thyself?”

The isolation of the soul with its paramount importance to its owner
(that is to say, to itself) makes it obligatory to pursue its interests
even at the expense of the most sacred affections. The Pagan, the Jew,
the Moslem could not have been brought to yield assent to this doctrine,
but it meets us continually in Catholic hagiology; for instance, St.
François de Sales told Madame de Chantal that she ought, if needful, to
walk into the cloister over the dead body of her son. So in a Jaina
story, father, mother, wife, child, sister, brother try in vain to wrest
a holy young man from his resolve to leave them. In vain the old people
say: “We will do all the work if you will only come home; come, child!
We will pay your debts; you need not stay longer than you like—only come
home!” The quite admirable young man (who sets one furiously wishing for
a stout birch rod) proceeds on his way unmoved. But it is remarked, “At
such appeals the weak break down like old, worn-out oxen going up hill.”
We prefer the weak.

Who was the first anchorite? Perhaps in very early states of society a
few individuals got lost in the mountain or forest, where they lived on
fruits and nuts, and then, after a long time, some of them were
re-discovered, and, because they seemed so strange and mysterious after
their long seclusion, they were credited with supernatural gifts.
Animals do not go away alone except in the rare case of being seized
with mania, or in the universal case of feeling the approach of death.
The origin of hermits cannot, therefore, be explained by analogy with
animals.

One can conceive that a hermit’s life may have great attractions, but
scarcely that of a Jaina hermit, who is expected to employ his leisure
in the most painful mortification of the flesh. Though other-worldly
advantages form the great object which spurs men to choose such a lot we
must not forget that this sort of life is held to confer powers which
are, by no means, other-worldly. By it the Brahman becomes superior to
caste, being incapable of pollution: if he wished he could drink after
the most miserable Western had touched the cup.

The theory of asceticism is very much alike everywhere, and the
extraordinary faculties claimed by the Jainas for their holy men are the
portion, more or less, of the Indian holy man in general. These
faculties may be briefly described as an abnormal development of the
subliminal self, but that is not an adequate account of the vastness of
their range. One feels often inclined to ask—without granting revelation
or, indeed, the existence of an omniscient being who could give it—_how_
does the Buddhist or Jaina acquire perfect certainty that he knows all
about his own and man’s destiny? The question of authority is of primary
importance in all religions: in what way does Buddhist or Jaina solve
it? It is evident that scepticism based on this very ground does
sometimes harass the soul of the Jaina novice: “The weak,” we are told,
“when bitten by a snarling dog or annoyed by flies and gnats, will begin
to say: ‘_I have not seen the next world, all may end with death._’” It
startles one to hear from the mouth of the devil’s advocate in an
ancient Eastern homily a cry so modern, so Western:—

             “Death means heaven, he longs to receive it,
              But what shall I do if I don’t believe it?”[5]

Footnote 5:

  “Verses written in India,” p. 13.

Sir Alfred Lyall’s questioner found none to answer him, but the Jaina
has an answer which, if accepted, must prove entirely satisfactory. The
superlatively virtuous individual possesses an effortless certainty
about the secrets of life. In a state superinduced by means which,
though arduous, are at the disposal of all, the soul can view itself,
read its history, past, present and to come, know the souls of others,
remember what happened in former births, understand the heavenly bodies
and the universe. Here is nothing miraculous: a veil is lifted, and
hidden things become plain. It is as if a man who had cataract in both
eyes underwent a successful operation—after which he sees.

The supersensual perception of Jaina, or Joghi, or Guru is much akin to
the “infused knowledge” ascribed to the saints of the Thebaid. He
knows—because he knows. By the devout, information derived from these
persons is accepted as readily as we should accept information about
radium from a qualified scientific man. The most confident of all that
the information is true is he who gives it: fraud must be dismissed
finally as the key to any such phenomena.

The Indian mind has grasped a great idea in referring what we call
spirit to fixed laws no less than what we call matter. But in spirit it
sees a force infinitely exceeding the force of matter. “The holy monk,”
say the Jaina scriptures, “might reduce millions to ashes by the fire of
his wrath.” Besides such tremendous powers as these he has all the minor
accomplishments of the spiritualist or hypnotist: thought-reading,
levitation, clairvoyance, &c., and he can always tame wild beasts. He is
under strict obligations to use his powers with discretion. It is not
right to make profit out of them: that man is anathema who lives by
divination from dreams, diagrams, sticks, bodily changes, the cries of
animals. The Jainas denounce magic not less strongly than the other
religious teachers of the East. This is interesting because the reasons
are lacking which are commonly held to explain the world-wide prejudice
against magic: the Jainas do not attribute it to the agency of evil
spirits, nor can their dislike of it be attributed to the professional
jealousy of priests in regard to rival thaumaturgists. For the Jaina the
power of magic-working lies in every one, and those who have developed
their other spiritual powers have also this one at their command, but to
avail themselves of it is an enormous sin. There is a weird story
showing what infamies a magic-working “ascetic” may perpetrate. A monk
carried off, by magical arts, all the women he met, till the king of
that country trapped him in a hollow tree and had him put to death. The
women were set free and returned to their husbands, except one, who
refused to go back because she had fallen desperately in love with her
seducer. A very wise man suggested that the monk’s bones should be
pounded and mixed with milk, and then given to the woman to drink: this
was done and she was cured of her passion.

Over the whole East, the report that some one was working miracles, even
the most beneficent, raised both suspicion and jealousy. This was why
secrecy was recommended about all such acts.

How far the belief in the extraordinary gifts of the ascetic rests on
hallucination, and how far men in an artificially created abnormal
condition can do things of which hypnotic manifestations are but the
outer edge, it is not my purpose to inquire. The Jaina monks are said
sometimes to fast for four days, and no doubt the stimulus of starvation
(especially when the brain has not been weakened by long disease),
produces an ecstatic state which men have everywhere supposed to
indicate religious perfection. This may be observed even in birds, which
from some difficulty in swallowing, die of starvation: I had a canary
that sang for days before it died a sweet incessant song, the like of
which I never heard: it seemed not earthly.

The best side in Eastern religions is not their thaumaturgy but the
steady ethical tendency which pushes itself up out of the jungle of
extravagance and self-delusion. Though we may not have much sympathy
with the profession of a “houseless” saint, it is impossible to deny the
moral elevation of such a picture of him as is drawn in the Jaina
conversion story of “The True Sacrifice.” A holy man, born in the
highest Brahmanical caste, but who had found wisdom in Jaina vows, went
on a long journey and walked and walked till he came to Benares, where
he found a very learned Brahman who was deeply versed in astronomy and
in the Vedas. When the “Houseless” arrived, the priest was about to
offer up sacrifice, and perhaps because he did not wish to be disturbed
at such a moment, he told him rudely to go away—he would have no beggars
there. The holy man was not angry; he had not come to extort food or
water, but from the pure desire to save souls. He quietly told the
priest that he was ignorant of the essence of the Vedas, of the true
meaning of sacrifice, of the government of the heavenly bodies. There
must have been a peculiar effluence of sanctity flowing from the
“Houseless” as the priest took his rebukes with meekness, and merely
asked for enlightenment. Then the seer delivered his message. It is not
the tonsure that makes the priest or repetition of the sacred syllable
_om_ that makes the saint. It is not by dwelling in woods or by wearing
clothes of bark or grass that salvation may be reached. Equanimity,
chastity, knowledge, and penance are the ways to holiness. His actions
alone colour a man’s soul: as his works are, so is he. Persuaded of the
truth, the priest addressed the “Houseless” as the truest of
sacrificers, the most learned of all who know the Vedas, the inspired
exponent of Brahmanhood, and begged him to accept his alms. But the
mendicant refused: he only conjured the priest out of pity for his own
soul to join the order of the “Houseless.” After having been rightly
schooled in Jaina precepts, the Brahman followed his advice, and in due
time he became a very great saint like his instructor.

As the Jaina scriptures are in effect a manual of discipline for monks,
it is natural that they should be severe on womankind. Not that a
woman’s soul is worth less than a man’s or, rather, since spirit is
sexless, the distinction does not exist. A woman may be as good a saint
as a man; a nun may be as meritorious as a monk. The identity of
mysticism independent of creed was never more apparent than in the
beautiful saying of a Jaina nun: “As a bird dislikes the cage, so do I
dislike the world,” which might have been uttered by any of the
self-consumed spirits of the Latin Church from St. Teresa downwards. I
have never come across an allusion to being born again as a woman as a
punishment. But though the fullest potentiality of merit is allowed to
woman in the abstract, the Eternal Feminine is looked upon in the
concrete as man’s worst snare. “Women are the greatest temptation in the
world.” The Jaina books are Counsels of Perfection and not a Decalogue
framed for common humanity: they give one the idea of being intended for
preternaturally good people, and never more so than in the manner in
which they treat the dreadful snares and temptations for which women are
answerable: instead of a Venusberg, we are shown—the domestic hearth!
The story in question might be called “The Woes of the Model Husband!” A
girl who vowed that she would do anything rather than be parted from the
dear object of her affections, has no sooner settled the matter once for
all by marriage than she begins to scold and trample on the poor man’s
head. Her spouse is sent on a thousand errands, not one moment can he
call his own. Countless are the lady’s wants and her commands keep pace
with them: “Do look for the bodkin; go and get some fruit; bring wood to
cook the vegetables; why don’t you come and rub my back instead of
standing there doing nothing? Are my clothes all right? Where is the
scent-bottle? I want the hair-dresser. Where is my basket to put my
things in? And my trinkets? There, I want my shoes and my umbrella.
Bring me my comb and the ribbon to tie up my hair. Get the looking-glass
and a tooth-brush. I must have a needle and thread. You really ought to
look after the stores, the rainy season will be here in no time.” These
and many more are the young wife’s behests, the appalling list of which
might well intimidate those about to marry, but there is worse to come.
When “the joy of their lives, the crown of their wedded bliss” arrives
in the shape of a baby, it is the unfortunate husband who is set to mind
it: he has to get up in the night to sing lullabies to it “just as if he
were a nurserymaid,” and ashamed though he is of such a humiliation, he
is actually put to wash the baby-linen! “All this has been done by many
men who for the sake of pleasure have stooped so low; they become the
equals of slaves, animals, beasts of burden, _mere nobodies_.” Would not
most readers take this for a quotation from one of Ibsen’s plays rather
than from a sacred volume which was composed a considerable time before
the beginning of our era?

The Indian pessimist is withheld from suicide by the dread of a worse
existence beyond the pyre. He is the coward of conscience to a much
greater extent than the weary Occidental, because his sense of the
unseen is so much stronger. In the Jaina system, however, suicide is
permitted under certain circumstances. After twelve years of rigorous
penance a man is allowed the supreme favour of “a religious death”—in
other words, he may commit suicide by starvation. This is called Itvara.
The civilised Indian does not seem to have the power of dying when he
pleases without the assistance of starvation which is possessed by some
of the higher savage races.

The soul may be re-born in any earthly form from the lowest to the
highest, but there are other possibilities before it when it leaves its
mortal coil. Those who are very bad, too bad to disgrace the earth
again—above all, the cruel—are consigned to an _Inferno_ more awful than
Dante’s, though not without points of striking resemblance to it. The
very good who abounded in charity and in truth, but who yet lived in the
world the life of the world, become gods, glorified beings enjoying a
great measure of happiness and power, but not eternal. Far beyond the
joys of this heaven, which are still thinkable, is the unthinkable bliss
of the Perfect, of the Conquerors, of the Changeless. The human mind
could not adjust the idea of evolution more scientifically to the soul’s
destiny.

It is unnecessary to say that the number who become even gods is very
small. A great deal is achieved if a man is simply born again as a man,
for though Jaina and Buddhist thinks that man’s lot is wretched (or, at
least that it ought to be when we consider its inherent evils), yet it
must be distinctly remembered that he thinks the life of beasts far more
wretched. Leopardi’s “Song of the Nomadic Shepherd in Asia,” in which he
makes the world-weary shepherd envy the fate of his sheep, is steeped in
Western not in Eastern pessimism: only in the last lines, which really
contradict the rest, we find the true Eastern note:—

               “Perchance in every form
                  That Nature may on everything bestow
                The day of birth brings everlasting woe.”

The Indian seems never to be struck by what to us seems (perhaps in
error, but I hope not) the inconscient joy of creatures, nor yet that of
children. He is constantly sure that all creation groaneth and
travaileth. Nothing is young in Asia, all is very old. Every one is
tired. In our minds thoughtless joy is connected with innocency, and in
these Indian creeds there is no innocency as there is no effortless
All-Good. Perfection is the result of labour. No other religious teacher
spoke of little children as Christ did—Christ, whose incomprehensible
followers were one day to consign the larger part of them, as a favour,
“to the easiest room in hell.” Ardently as children are desired and
lovingly as they are treated in the East, something essential to the
charm of childhood eludes the Oriental perception of it.

In the sacred books of those Indian communities which concern themselves
most about animals, they are very rarely shown in an attractive light.
The horse, almost alone, is spoken of with genuine admiration; for
instance, there is this simile: “As the trained Kambôga steed whom no
noise frightens, exceeds all other horses in speed, so a very learned
monk is superior to all others.” An elephant is extolled for having
knelt down before a holy recluse though only newly tamed, and we hear
that Mahavira’s words were understood by all animals. Folk-lore tells
much that scriptures do not tell, and if we had a collection of Jaina
folk-lore we should find, no doubt, records of charming friendships
between beasts and saints, but in the Jaina sacred books pity, not love,
is the feeling shown towards animals.

[Illustration:

  BUDDHA PACIFYING AN INTOXICATED ELEPHANT.
  India Museum.]

As a rule, Indian philosophical writers shirk the question of how far
the soul which was and may be again a man’s retains its consciousness
during its residence in lower forms. Probably the answer, were it given,
would be: “Not very far,” but the higher animals are credited with a
fuller share of reflection than in the West. Hence it is preferable to
assume the shape of one of the higher than of one of the lower
organisms, but still it is far better to be re-born as the lowest of men
than as the highest of animals.

If it is something to be re-born as a man at all, it is a great deal to
be re-born as a fortunate man, healthy, wealthy, and surrounded by
troops of friends: at least, to the simple-minded such a prospect must
appear to hold out a very splendid hope. It is remarkable what good care
the framers of the intensely ascetic Jaina faith took of people who
could not pretend to walk in the path of the elect. The mere
“householder” (so called to distinguish him from the more admirable
“Houseless”) has the promise of an ample recompense if he is only
truthful, and humane, and liberal in alms-giving and temple-building. He
may win very great promotion on earth or even a place in the Jaina
heaven, the abode of light, where happy beings live long and enjoy great
power and energy, and never grow old. Such a state agrees with the
logical evolution of a virtuous but still this-worldly man. Could he
aspire sincerely to a more spiritual state, and can the soul outsoar its
own aspirations? The Jaina heaven is not eternal, but does every one
wish for eternity? Most people wish for ten or fifteen years of
tolerable freedom from care on this side of the grave. If they knew for
certain that they were going to enjoy one thousand years of heaven, they
would not think much of what would happen at the end of that time.

There remain the pure and separated spirits who in this present life
have climbed beyond the plane of mortality. They are in the world, not
of it, and they, indeed, “have a glimpse of incomprehensibles and
thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch.” For these, the
Jaina, like the Buddhist, keeps Nirvana.

The extreme reticence of Buddha and even of Buddhist commentators on the
inner significance of this word—meaning literally “liberation”—is not
observed by the Jainas, though it must not be inferred that there was
any doctrinal difference of it in the view taken by the two sects. The
Jainas show a great anxiety to tell what Nirvana is; if they fail it is
because it baffles all description. They repudiate the idea that it
signified annihilation, but admit that the subject oversteps the bounds
of the thinkable. “The liberated soul perceives and knows, but there is
no analogy by which to describe it—without body, re-birth, sex,
dimensions.” We think of the wonderful lines in the _Helena_ of
Euripides:—

               “... the mind
                Of the dead lives not, but immortal sense
                When to immortal ether gone, possesses;”

lines which, like not a few others in Euripides, seem to reflect a light
not cast from Grecian skies.

Like every stage in the history of the life-soul (_giva_) Nirvana is
governed by an immutable law of evolution. When all the dross is
eliminated only pure spirit is left: a distilled essence not only
indestructible, for spirit is always indestructible, but also
changeless. All the rest dies, which means that it changes, that it is
re-born: this part can die no more, and hence can be born no more. It
has gained the liberty of which the soul goes seeking in the Dantesque
sense. It has gained safety, rest, peace.

How familiar the words sound! Here am I in Asia, and I could dream
myself back under the roof of the village church where generations of
simple folk had sought a rest-cure for their minds: where I, too, first
listened to those words _safety_, _rest_, _peace_, with the strange
home-sickness they awaken in young children or in the very old who have
preserved their childhood’s faith. There are words that, by collecting
round them inarticulate longings and indefinite associations, finally
leave the order of language and enter that of music; they evoke an
emotion, not an idea. The emotions which sway the human heart are few,
and they are very much alike. The self-same word-music transports the
English child to the happy land, far, far away, and the Indian mystic to
Nirvana.

Almost everything which the Jainas say of Nirvana might have been said
by any follower of any spiritual religion who attempted to suggest a
place of final beatitude. “There is a safe place in view of all, but
hard to approach, where there is no old age, nor death, nor pain, nor
disease. This place which is in view of all is called Nirvana or freedom
from pain, or it is called perfection; it is the safe, happy, quiet
place. It is the eternal haven which is in view of all, but is difficult
to approach.”

Nirvana is the getting-well of the soul. “He will put away all the
misery which always afflicts mankind; as it were, _recovered from a long
illness_, he becomes infinitely happy and obtains the final aim.”

We are told that the Buddhas that were and the Buddhas that will be,
have peace for their foundation, even as all things have the earth for
their foundation. (The term Buddha, or “Enlightened,” is used by Jainas
as well as by Buddhists for super-excellent beings.)

Nirvana may or rather must be possessed before the death of the visible
body: it must be obtained by the living if it is to be enjoyed by the
dead. Detachment from the world, self-denial, selflessness, help the
soul on its way, but the two moral qualities which are absolutely
essential are kindness and veracity. Ruth and truth are written over the
portals of eternity. “He should cease to injure living things whether
they move or not, on high, below or on earth, for this has been called
Nirvana, which consists in peace.” “A sage setting out for Nirvana
should not speak untruth: this rule comprises Nirvana and the whole of
carefulness.”

If a novice does anything wrong, he should never deny it: if he has not
done it he should say, “I have not done it.” A lie must never be
told—“not even in jest or in anger.” Were there nothing else of good in
Jaina discipline this devotion to truth would place it high on mankind’s
mountain.

[Illustration:

  _Photo in_ _India Museum._
  COLOSSAL RECLINING BULL
  (_Southern India._)]

The law of _Ahimsa_, “non-killing,” which stands at the head of the
precepts of both Buddhist and Jaina, is not only far more rigidly
observed by the Jaina, but also invested by him with a greater positive
as well as relative value. One might say that with the Buddhists it is
more a philosophic deduction, with the Jainas more a moral necessity.
The position of Buddhists in this matter of _Ahimsa_ is one of
compromise. There never was a Buddhist who did not think cruelty to
animals an abominable sin, there is no compromise on that point, but, in
respect to animal food, the usual Buddhist layman is not really more
strict than any very humane person in the West; he abjures sport, he
will not kill animals himself, but he does not refuse to eat meat if it
is set before him. The Buddhists declare that the Lord Buddha was prayed
to forbid animal food absolutely, but he would not. It is argued that in
the flesh itself, when the life is gone from it, there is nothing
particularly sacred: therefore it is permissible to sustain life on it.
Your servants may buy meat ready for sale in the market: it would be
there just the same if you did not send to buy it, but you ought not to
tell them to give an order for some sort of meat which is not on sale;
still less should you incite people to snare or shoot wild animals for
your table. The Buddhists of to-day say with the opponents to
vegetarianism in Europe, that total abstention from the flesh of animals
would lead to the disappearance of the chief part of them; though it
might be answered that sheep would still be wanted for their wool, goats
and cows for their milk, oxen for ploughing. But a harder question is,
What would happen to these animals when they grew old? The Jainas seek
to settle this crux by building hospitals for them, but the result has
been indifferently encouraging.

In Siam even monks are allowed animal food within certain limits, but as
a rule what I have said of the Buddhist view of _Ahimsa_ does not apply
to the religious, who leans to the strictest Jaina principle of having
nothing to do with shedding blood on any pretence. The Buddhist monks in
China teach the virtue of “fang sheng” (“life-saving”) by object-lessons
in the shape of tanks built near the convents to which people bring
tortoises, fishes and snakes to save them from death, and the monks also
keep homes for starving or lost animals. Favoured European visitors are
invited to witness the custom of feeding the wild birds before the
morning meal is served: the brothers sit silently at the refectory-table
with their bowls of rice and vegetables in front of them, but none
begins to eat till one brother rises, after a sort of grace has been
said, and goes to the door with a little rice in his hands which he
places on a low stone pillar. All the birds are waiting on the roofs and
fly down delighted to partake of their breakfast.

Fra Odoric, the Venetian Franciscan who dictated an account of his
travels in 1330, describes a convent scene which was shown to him as a
most interesting thing, so that when he went home he might say that he
had seen “this strange sight or novelty.” To win the consent of the
monks his native friend, who acted as cicerone, informed them that this
Raban Francus, this religious “Frenchman” (Europeans were all
“Frenchmen”) was going to the city of Cambaleth to pray for the life of
the great Can. Thus recommended he was admitted, and the “religious man”
with whom they had spoken “took two great basketsful of broken relics
which remained on the table and led me into a little walled park, the
door whereof he unlocked with his key, and there appeared unto us a
pleasant fair green plot, into the which we entered. In the said green
stands a little mount in form of a steeple, replenished with fragrant
herbs and fine shady trees. And while we stood there, he took a cymbal
or bell and rang therewith, as they use to ring to dinner or bevoir in
cloisters, at the sound thereof many creatures of divers kinds came down
from the mount, some like apes, some like cats, some like monkeys, and
some having faces like men. And while I stood beholding of them, they
gathered themselves together about him, to the number of 4,200 of these
creatures, putting themselves in good order, before whom he set a
platter and gave them the said fragments to eat. And when they had eaten
he rang upon his cymbal a second time and they all returned to their
former places. Then, wondering greatly at the matter, I demanded what
kind of creatures those might be. They are (quoth he) the souls of noble
men which we do here feed for the love of God who governeth the world,
and as a man was honourable or noble in this life, so his soul after
death entereth the body of some excellent beast or other, but the souls
of simple and rustical people do possess the bodies of more vile and
brutish creatures.”

Odoric’s informant was in error if he really said that distinctions of
rank influenced the soul’s destiny, as this is no Buddhist doctrine. The
charming description of the “strange sight or novelty” was imitated by
Mandeville, who adds, with a sympathetic tolerance which is very
characteristic of him, that the monks were “good religious men after
their faith and law.”

That the stricter was also the more primitive Buddhist rule seems
probable, and it may be that Buddha’s alleged defence of meat-eating was
an invention meant to cover later latitudinarianism. Nevertheless,
_Ahimsa_ was, from the first, a more integral part of the Jaina religion
than of the Buddhist. The true keynote of either faith can be detected
in their respective conversion stories. In all outbursts of religious
revivalism (of which nature both Buddhism and Jainism largely partook)
the moment of conversion is the hinge on which everything turns.

In the Buddhist story, a young prince, born on the steps of the throne,
nursed in luxury and happily wedded, sees consecutively a broken-down
old man, a man with a deadly disease, and a decomposing corpse. These
dreadful and common realities were brought home to his mind with
intolerable force. We seem to hear the despairing cry of R. L.
Stevenson: “Who would find heart to begin to live if he dallied with the
consideration of death”? We live because we drug ourselves with the
waters of a new Lethe which make us forget future as well as past. Sakya
Muni could not forget what he had seen or the lesson which it taught:
the rest of his life was devoted to freeing himself and others from
being endlessly subject to a like doom.

Now let us recall the Jaina conversion story. The son of a powerful king
was on his way to marry a beautiful princess. At a certain place he saw
a great many animals in cages and enclosures looking frightened and
miserable. He asked his charioteer why all those animals which desired
to be free and happy were penned up in cages and enclosures? The
charioteer replied that they were not to be pitied, they were “lucky
animals” which were to furnish a feast for a great multitude at His
Highness’s wedding. (This is the very thing that an English poor man
would have said.) Full of compassion, the future “saviour of the world”
reflected: “If for my sake all these living creatures are killed, how
shall I obtain happiness in another world?” Then and there he renounces
the pomps and vanities of human existence, and he means it, too. The
poor little bride, forsaken in this life, and not much comforted by
promised compensation in the next, “not knowing what she could do,” cuts
off her pretty hair and goes to a nunnery. In time she becomes a model
of perfection, and many of her kindred and servants are persuaded by her
to join the order.

In this story the revulsion is caused by pity, not by loathing. The
instant he sees these poor animals, the kind-hearted prince feels sorry
for them; then comes that unlucky word “lucky” which to the man of
ignorance seems to be so particularly appropriate; it jars on Mahavira’s
nerves as it would on the nerves of any sensitive or refined person.
Nothing moves men to tears or laughter so surely as the antithetical
shock of the incongruous. A rush of emotion overpowers Mahavira: he will
not be happy at the cost of so much misery; he would become odious in
his own sight. So he renounces all for the eternity of one moment of
self-approving joy.

The Jainas carefully exclude every excuse for taking animal life: none
is valid. Animals must not be killed for offering up in sacrifice, not
for their skin, flesh, tail feathers, brush, horns, tusks, sinews,
bones. They must not be killed with a purpose or without a purpose. If
we have been wounded by them, or fear to be wounded by them, or if they
eat our flesh or drink our blood, still we should not only bear it, but
also feel no anger. “This is the quintessence of wisdom, not to kill
anything whatever: know this to be the legitimate conclusion from the
principle of reciprocity.”

No one denies that the principle of reciprocity is the basis of all
morality, and by extending it from men to sentient things, the Jainas
have safeguarded their doctrine of _Ahimsa_ with a stronger wall of
defence than any built on the fantastic fear of devouring one’s
ancestors. Nor can it be said of the Jainas that to a superstitious
repugnance to taking life they join indifference to causing suffering:
inflicting suffering is hardly distinguished from inflicting death. “All
breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain nor
treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This
is the pure unchangeable law.” “Indifferent to worldly objects, a man
should wander about treating all the creatures in the world as he
himself would be treated.”

Perhaps the most remarkable of Jaina stories is a real masterpiece of
wit and wisdom in which this theory of reciprocity is enforced. For the
whole of it I must refer the reader to Professor Jacobi’s translation; I
can only give the leading points. Once upon a time three hundred and
sixty-three philosophers, representing a similar number of philosophical
schools, and differing in character, opinions, taste, undertakings and
plans, stood round in a large circle, each one in his place. They
discussed their various views, and at last one man took a vessel full of
red-hot coals which he held at a distance from him with a pair of tongs.
“Now, you philosophers,” said he, “just take this for a moment and hold
it in your hands. No trickery, if you please; you are _not_ to hold it
with the tongs or to put the fire out. Fair and honest!”

With extreme unanimity the three hundred and sixty-two drew back their
hands as fast as they could. Then the speaker continued: “How is this,
philosophers; what _are_ you doing with your hands?” “They will be
burnt,” said the others. “And what does it matter if they are burnt?”
“But it would hurt us dreadfully.” “So you do not want to suffer pain?”
Well, this is the case with all animals. This maxim applies to every
creature, this principle, this religious reflection, holds good of all
living things. Therefore those religious teachers who say that all sorts
of living things may be beaten or ill-treated, or tormented, or deprived
of life will, in time, suffer in the same way themselves, and have to
undergo the whole round of the scale of earthly existence. They will be
whirled round, put in irons, see their mothers, fathers, children die,
have bad luck, poverty, the society of people they detest, separation
from those they love, “they will again wander distraught in the
beginningless and endless wilderness.”

Like a true orator the Jaina member of this early Congress of Religions,
who has drifted from irony to fierce denunciation, does not leave his
hearers with these visions of terror, but with the consoling promise to
the merciful of everlasting beatitude.

[Illustration:

  WILD BULLS AND TAMED BULLS.
  Reliefs on two gold cups found at Vapheio.
  (_From Schuckhardt’s “Schliemann’s Excavations.” By permission of
    Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._)]


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                   IX

                       LINES FROM THE ADI GRANTH


THE Adi Granth, or sacred Book of the Sikhs of the Punjab, was composed
by the founder of their religion and their nationality, Baba Nanak (_b._
1469), who abolished caste and idolatry, and established a pure
monotheism. A striking incident at the Coronation Durbar was the arrival
of the Sikh mission in charge of the Adi Granth, which was brought on a
pilgrimage from its shrine in the exquisitely beautiful golden temple at
Amritsar to the tomb of the disciple of Nanak, who, before suffering
martyrdom at Delhi during the Mogul Empire, prophesied the advent of a
fair race destined to sweep the Mogul power to the winds. I take these
few sentences to show the essential continuity of Indian thought about
animals. In the faith of Nanak none remains of the particular tenets of
Buddhism or Jainism or Hinduism, but the animal is still _inside_, not
_outside_, the pale of what may be called Pan-humanity: the whole family
of earth-born creatures.


                                   I.

           Say not that this or that distasteful is,
           In all the dear Lord dwells,—they all are His

           Grieve not the humblest heart; all hearts that are,
           Are priceless jewels, all are rubies rare.

           Ah! If thou long’st for thy Beloved, restrain
           One angry word that gives thy brother pain.


                                  II.

          All creatures, Lord, are Thine, and Thou art theirs,
          One bond Creator with created shares;

          To whom, O Maker! must they turn and weep
          If not to Thee their Lord, who dost all keep?

          All living creatures, Lord, were made by Thee,
          Where Thou hast fixed their station, there they be.

          For them Thou dost prepare their daily bread,
          Out of Thy loving-kindness they are fed;

          On each the bounties of Thy mercy fall,
          And Thy compassion reaches to them all.


                                  III.

              One understanding to all flesh He gives,
              Without that understanding nothing lives;

              As is their understanding,—they are so;
              The reckoning is the same. They come and go.

              The faithful watch-dog that does all he can,
              Is better far than the unprayerful man.

            Birds in their purse of silver have no store,
            But them the Almighty Father watches o’er.

            They say who kill, they do but what they may,
            Lawful they deem the bleating lamb to slay;

            When God takes down the eternal Book of Fate,
            Oh, tell me what, what then will be their state?

            He who towards every living thing is kind,
            Ah! he, indeed, shall true religion find!


                                  IV.

            Great is the warrior who has killed within
            Self,—Self which still is root and branch of sin.

            “I, I,” still cries the World, and gads about,
            Reft of the Word which Self has driven out.


                                   V.

             Thou, Lord, the cage,—the parrot, see! ’Tis I!
             Yama the cat: he looks and passes by.

             By Yama bound my mind can never be,
             I call on Him who Yama made and me.

             The Lord eternal is: what should I fear?
             However low I fall, He still will hear.

             He tends his creatures as a mother mild
             Tends with untiring love her little child.


                                  VI.

            I do not die: the world within me dies:
            Now, now, the Vivifier vivifies;

            Sweet is the world,—ah! very sweet it is,
            But through its sweets we lose the eternal bliss!

            Perpetual joy, the inviolate mansion, where
            There is no grief, woe, error, sin, nor care;

            Coming and going and death, enter not in;
            The changeless only there an entrance win.

            Whosoe’er dieth, born again must be,
            Die thou whilst living, and thou wilt be free!


                                  VII.

               He, the Supreme, no limit has nor end,
               And what HE is how can _we_ comprehend?

               Once did a wise man say: “He only knows
               God’s nature to whom God His mercy shows.”


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                   X

                    THE HEBREW CONCEPTION OF ANIMALS


                                   I

          ... “About them frisking played
          All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase
          In wood or wilderness, forest or den;
          Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw
          Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards,
          Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant,
          To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed
          His lithe proboscis.”
                                      _Paradise Lost_, Book IV.

THE idea of a condition of existence in which all creatures are happy
and at peace implies a protest against the most patent fact of life as
we see it. Western civilisation inherited from the Roman Empire the
hardness of heart towards animals of which the popularity of
beast-fights in the Arena was the characteristic sign. It was, however,
a Roman poet who first pointed out in philosophical language that the
sufferings of animals stand written in the great indictment against
Nature no less than the sufferings of men. Not only man is born to
sorrow, said Lucretius; look at the cow whose calf bleeds before some
lovely temple, while she wanders disconsolate over all the fields,
lowing piteously, uncomforted by the image of other calves, because her
own is not.

Eighteen hundred years later Schopenhauer said that by taking a very
high standard it was possible to justify the sufferings of man but not
those of animals. Darwin arrived at the same conclusion. “It has been
imagined,” he remarks, “that the sufferings of man tend to his moral
improvement, but the number of men in the world is nothing compared with
the number of other sentient beings which suffer greatly without moral
improvement.” To him, the man of the religious mind whom men lightly
charged with irreligion, it was “_an intolerable thought_” that after
long ages of toil all these sentient beings were doomed to complete
annihilation.

Yes, and to the young conscience of mankind this was also an intolerable
thought. And since it was intolerable the human conscience in the
strength of its youth shook it off, cast it aside, awoke from it as we
awake from a nightmare. Religion has been regarded too exclusively as a
submission to Nature. At times it is a revolt against Nature, a
repudiation of what our senses report to us, an assertion that things
seen are illusions, and that things unseen are real. Religion is born of
Doubt. The incredibility of the Known forced man to seek refuge in the
Unknown. From that far region he brought back solutions good or bad,
sublime or trivial, to the manifold problems which beset man’s soul.

A poet, doomed to early death, who looked into Nature on a summer’s day
and could discern nothing but “an eternal fierce destruction,” wrote, in
his despair—

                             “Things cannot to the will
              Be settled, but they tease us out of thought.
                                    ... It is a flaw
              In happiness to see beyond our bourn;
              It forces us in summer skies to mourn,
              It spoils the singing of the nightingale.”

But when the world was young things _could_ be settled to the will. We
are, of course, constantly regulating our impressions of phenomena by a
standard of higher probability. If we see a ship upside down, we say,
“This is not a ship, it is a mirage.” When the primitive man found
himself face to face with seeming natural laws which offended his sense
of inherent probability, he rejected the hypothesis that they were
actual or permanent, and supposed them to be either untrustworthy
appearances or deviations from a larger plan.

Every basic religion gave a large share of thought to animals. The
merit, from a humane point of view, of the explanation of the mystery
offered by the religious systems of India has been praised even to
excess. In contrast to this, it was often repeated that the Hebrew
religion ignored the claims of animals altogether. I wish to show that
even if this charge were not open to other disproof, no people can be
called indifferent to those claims which believes in a Nature Peace.

Traces of such a belief spread from the Mediterranean to the Pacific,
from the Equator to the Pole. But the Peace is not always complete;
there are reservations. In the glowing prediction of a Peace in Nature
in the Atharva-Veda, vultures and jackals are excluded. Mazdeans would
exclude the “bad” animals. The Hebrew Scriptures, on the other hand,
declare that all species are good in the sight of their Maker. Every
beast enjoyed perfect content according to the original scheme of the
Creator. But man fell, and all creation was involved in the consequences
of his fall.

I remember seeing at the Hague an impressive painting by a little-known
Italian artist[6] which represents Adam about to take the apple from Eve
while at their feet a tiger tenderly licks the wool of a lamb. Adam’s
face shows that he is yielding—yielding for no better reason than that
he cannot say “No”—to the beautiful woman at his side; and there,
unconscious and happy, lie the innocent victims of his act: love to be
turned to wrath, peace to war. The Nature Peace has been painted a
hundred times, but never with such tragic significance.

Footnote 6:

  Cignani. A singular sixteenth-century “Nature War” may be observed in
  a _graffito_ on the pavement of the Chapel of St. Catherine in the
  church of St. Domenico, at Siena. A nude youth, resembling Orpheus,
  sits on a rock in a leafy grove, in the midst of various animals; with
  a disturbed air he looks into a mirror at the back of which is an eye,
  a leopard shows his teeth at him, while a vulture screams at a monkey,
  and another bird snatches a surprised rabbit or squirrel; the other
  creatures, unicorn, wolf, eagle, display signs of uneasiness.
  Endeavours to read this fable have not proved satisfactory.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Bruckmann._
  THE GARDEN OF EDEN.
  (_By Rubens._)
  Hague Gallery.]

The Miltonic Adam sees in the mute signs of Nature the forerunners of
further change:—

            “The bird of Jove, stooped from his airy tour,
             Two birds of gayest plume before him drove;
             Down from a hill the beast that reigns in woods,
             First hunter then, pursued a gentle brace,
             Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind.”

In an uncanonical version of Genesis which was translated from an
Armenian manuscript preserved at Venice, by my dear and sadly missed
friend, Padre Giacomo Issaverdens, a still more dramatic description is
given of the manner in which the Peace ended. When Adam and Eve were
driven from the Garden of Eden they met a lion, which attacked Adam.
“Why,” asked Adam, “do you attack me when God ordered you and all the
animals to obey me?” “You disobeyed God,” replied the lion, “and we are
no longer bound to obey you.” Saying which, the noble beast walked away
without harming Adam. But war was declared.

War was declared, and yet the scheme of the Creator could not be for
ever defeated. Man who had erred might hope—and how much more must there
be hope for those creatures that had done no harm.

When the Prophets spoke of a Peace in Nature in connexion with that
readjustment of the eternal scales which was meant by the coming of the
Messiah, it cannot be doubted that they spoke of what was already a
widely accepted tradition. But without their help we should have known
nothing of it and we are grateful to them. Of all the radiant dreams
with which man has comforted his heart, aching with realities, is there
one to be compared with this? It is of the earth earthly, and that is
the beauty of it. “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard
lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion together; and a
little child shall lead them; the cow and the bear shall feed; and their
young ones lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”

    “For behold I create new heavens and a new earth. They shall not
    hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, saith the Lord.”

Is not this the best of promised lands, the kindest of Elysiums, which
leaves none out in the cold of cruelty and hatred? The importunate
questioner may inquire, How can this primal and ultimate happiness
compensate for the intervening ages of pain? About this, it may be
observed that in religious matters people ought not to want to know too
much. This is true of the faithful and even of the unfaithful.
Scientific researches in the great storehouse which contains the
religions of the world are more aided by a certain reserve, a certain
reverence, than by the insatiable curiosity of the scalpel. Religions
sow abroad _idées mères_; they tell some things, others they leave
untold. They take us up into an Alpine height whence we see the broad
configuration of the country and lose sight of the woods and the
tortuous ravines among which we so often missed the track. Now, from the
Alpine height of faith, the idea of an original and final Nature Peace
makes the intervening discord seem of no account—a false note between
two harmonies.

The Nature Peace as the emblem of perfect moral beauty became nearly the
first Christian idea carried out in art. I remarked a rude but striking
instance of it on one of the funereal monuments which have been found
lately at Carthage, belonging to a date when Christian and pagan
commemorated their dead in the same manner, the former generally only
adding some slight symbolical indication of his faith. In this stele
Christ, carrying the lamb across His shoulders, is attended by a panther
and a lion. All such primitive attempts to represent a Nature Peace are
chiefly interesting (and from this point of view their interest is
great) from the fact that in child-like, stammering efforts they reveal
the intrinsic idiosyncrasy of Christian thought after the Church had
parted from the realities of proximity with its Founder, and had not
reached the realities of a body corporate striving for supremacy. Christ
the Divine Effluence was the faith which made men willing to face the
lions.

Doubtless many of those martyrs clung to the sublime conception of a
final Peace, the complement of the first. That this was accepted as no
allegory by the later spiritualised Jews, and especially by the
Pharisees, seems to be a well-established fact. It is difficult to
interpret in any other way the solemn statement of St. Paul, that the
“whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together _until now_,”
waiting for redemption; or the beatific vision of Josephus: “The whole
Creation also will lift up a perpetual hymn ... and shall praise Him
that made them together with the angels and spirits and men, now freed
from all bondage.” _Homines et jumenta salvabis Domine._


                                  II.

What was the view taken of animals by the Jewish people, apart from the
fundamental ideas implied by a primordial Peace in Nature?

It was the habit of Hebrew writers to leave a good deal to the
imagination; in general, they only cared to throw as much light on
hidden subjects as was needful to regulate conduct. They gave precepts
rather than speculations. There remain obscure points in their
conception of animals, but we know how they did _not_ conceive them:
they did not look upon them as “things”; they did not feel towards them
as towards automata.

After the Deluge, there was established “the everlasting covenant
between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the
earth.” Evidently, you cannot make a covenant with “things.”

[Illustration:

  _N. Consoni._
  GENESIS VIII.
  (_Loggie di Raffaello._)]

That the Jews supposed the intelligence of animals to be not extremely
different from the intelligence of man is to be deduced from the story
of Balaam, for it is said that God opened the mouth—not the mind—of the
ass. The same story illustrates the ancient belief that animals see
apparitions which are concealed from the eyes of man. The great interest
to us, however, of the Scriptural narrative is its significance as a
lesson in humanity. When the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, what did
the ass say? She asks her master why he had smitten her three times?
Balaam answers, with a frankness which, at least, does him credit,
because he was enraged with the ass for turning aside and not minding
him, and he adds (still enraged, and, strange to say, nowise surprised
at the animal’s power of speech) that he only wishes he had a sword in
his hand, as he would then kill her outright. How like this is to the
voice of modern brutality! The ass, continuing the conversation, rejoins
in words which it would be a shame to disfigure by putting them into the
idiom of the twentieth century: “Am I not thine ass upon which thou hast
ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to do so
unto thee?” Balaam, who has the merit, as I have noticed, of being
candid, replies, “No, you never were.” Then, for the first time, the
Prophet sees the angel standing in the path with a drawn sword in his
hand—an awe-inspiring vision! And what are the angel’s first words to
the terrified prophet who lies prostrate on his face? They are a reproof
for his inhumanity. “Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three
times?” Then the angel tells how the poor beast he has used thus has
saved her master from certain death, for had she not turned from him, he
would have slain Balaam and saved her alive. “And Balaam said unto the
angel of the Lord, I have sinned.”

Balaam was not a Jew; but the nationality of the personages in the Bible
and the origin or authorship of its several parts are not questions
which affect the present inquiry. The point of importance is, that the
Jews believed these Scriptures to contain Divine truth.

With regard to animals having the gift of language, it appears from a
remark made by Josephus that the Jews thought that all animals spoke
before the Fall. In Christian folk-lore there is a superstition that
animals can speak during the Christmas night: an obvious reference to
their return to an unfallen state.

Solomon declares that the righteous man “regardeth the life of his
beast”; a saying which is often misquoted, “merciful” being substituted
for “righteous,” by which the proverb loses half its force. The Hebrew
Scriptures contain two definite injunctions of humanity to animals. One
is the command not to plough with the ox and the ass yoked together—in
Palestine I have seen even the ass and the camel yoked together; their
unequal steps cause inconvenience to both yoke-fellows and especially to
the weakest. The other is the prohibition to muzzle the ox which treads
out the corn: a simple humanitarian rule which it is truly surprising
how any one, even after an early education in casuistry, could have
interpreted as a metaphor. There are three other commands of great
interest because they show how important it was thought to preserve even
the mind of man from growing callous. One is the order not to kill a cow
or she-goat or ewe and her young both on the same day. The second is the
analogous order not to seethe the kid in its mother’s milk. The third
refers to bird-nesting: if by chance you find a bird’s nest on a tree or
on the ground and the mother bird is sitting on the eggs or on the
fledglings, you are on no account to capture her when you take the eggs
or the young birds (one would like bird-nesting to have been forbidden
altogether, but I fear that the human boy in Syria had too much of the
old Adam in him for any such law to have proved effectual!). Let the
mother go, says the sacred writer, and if you must take something, take
only the young ones. This command concludes in a very solemn way, for it
ends with the promise (for what may seem a little act of unimportant
sentiment) of the blessing promised to man for honouring his own father
and mother—that it will be well with him and that his days will be long
in the land.

In the law relative to the observance of the Seventh Day, not only is no
point insisted on more strongly than the repose of the animals of
labour, but in one of the oldest versions of the fourth commandment the
repose of animals is spoken of as if it were the chief object of the
Sabbath: “Six days shalt thou do thy work, and on the seventh day thou
shalt rest: _that_ thine ox and thine ass may rest” (Exodus xxiii. 12).
Moreover, it is expressly stated of the Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh
year when no work was to be done, that all which the land produces of
itself is to be left to the enjoyment of the beasts that are in the
land. The dominant idea was to give animals a chance—to leave something
for them—to afford them some shelter, as in the creation of
bird-sanctuaries in the temples.

In promises of love and protection to man, to the Chosen People, animals
are almost always included. “The heavens shall tremble: the sun and moon
shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining” (Joel ii.
10). “Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the
wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig-tree and
the vine do yield their strength. Be glad, ye children of Zion, and
rejoice in the Lord your God” (Joel ii. 22, 23).

The wisdom of animals is continually praised. “Go to the ant, thou
sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: which having no guide,
overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her
food in the harvest.” So said the wisest of the Jews. I am tempted to
quote here a passage from the writings of Giordano Bruno: “With what
understanding the ant gnaws her grain of wheat lest it should sprout in
her underground habitation. The fool says this is instinct, but we say
it is a species of understanding.” If Solomon did not make the same
reflection, it was only because that wonderful word “instinct” had not
yet been invented.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Alinari._
  DANIEL AND THE LIONS.
  (_Early Christian Sarcophagus at Ravenna._)]

We have seen that the Jews supposed animals to be given to men for use
not for abuse, and the whole of Scripture tends to the conclusion that
the Creator—who had called good all the creatures of His hand—regarded
none as unworthy of His providence. This view is plainly endorsed by the
saying of Christ that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the will
of the Father (or “not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God”),
and by the saying of Mohammed, who likewise believed himself the
continuer of Jewish tradition: “There is no beast that walks upon the
earth but its provision is from God.”

But there is something more. Every one knows that the Jews were allowed
to kill and eat animals. The Jewish religion makes studiously few
demands on human nature. “The ways of the Lord were pleasant ways.”
Since men craved for meat or, in Biblical language, since they lusted
after flesh, they were at liberty to eat those animals which, in an
Eastern climate, could be eaten without danger to health. But on one
condition: the body they might devour—what was the body? It was earth.
The soul they might not touch. The mysterious thing called life must be
rendered up to the Giver of it—to God. The man who did not do this, when
he killed a lamb, was a murderer. “The blood shall be imputed to him; he
hath shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people.”

The inclination must be resisted to dispose of this mysterious ordinance
as a mere sanitary measure. It was a sanitary measure, but it was much
besides. The Jews believed that every animal had a soul, a spirit, which
was beyond human jurisdiction, with which they had no right to tamper.
When we ask, however, what this soul, this spirit, was, we find
ourselves groping in the dark. Was it material, as the soul was thought
to be by the Egyptians and by the earliest doctors of the Christian
Church? Was it an immaterial, impersonal, Divine essence? Was its
identity permanent, or temporary? We can give no decisive answer; but we
may assume with considerable certainty that life, spirit, whatever it
was, appeared at least to the majority of the Jews to possess one
nature, whether in men or in animals. When a Jew denied the immortality
of the soul, he denied it both for man and for beast. “I said in my
heart,” wrote the author of Ecclesiastes, “concerning the estate of the
sons of men that God might manifest them, and that they might see that
they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men
befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so the
other dieth; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no
pre-eminence above a beast.”

The mist which surrounds the Hebrew idea of the soul may proceed from
the fact that they did not know themselves what they meant by it, or
from the fact that they once knew what they meant by it so well as to
render elucidation superfluous. If the teraphim represented the Lares or
family dead, then the archaic Jewish idea of the soul was simple and
definite. It is possible that in all later times two diametrically
opposed opinions existed contemporaneously, as was the case with the
Pharisees and Sadducees. The Jewish people did not feel the pressing
need to dogmatise about the soul that other peoples have felt; they had
one living soul which was immortal, and its name was Israel!

Still, through all ages, from the earliest times till now, the Jews have
continued to hold sacred “the blood which is the life.”

In Hindu religious books, where similar ordinances are enforced, there
are hints of a suspicion which, as I have said elsewhere, could not have
been absent from the minds of Hebrew legislators—the haunting suspicion
of a possible mixing-up of personality. Here we tread on the skirts of
magic: a subject which belongs to starless nights.

We come back into the light of day when we glance at the relations
which, according to Jewish tradition, existed between animals and their
Creator. We see a beautiful interchange of gratitude on the one side and
watchful care on the other. As the ass of Balaam recognised the angel,
so do all animals—except man—at all times recognise their God. “But ask
now the beasts and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and
they shall tell thee.... Who knoweth not of all these that the hand of
the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living
thing, and the breath of all mankind.”

I will only add to these words of Job a few verses taken here and there
from the Psalms, which form a true anthem of our fellow-creatures of the
earth and air:—

 “Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl, let them
    praise the name of the Lord.
  He giveth to the beast his food and to the young ravens which cry.
  He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills;
  They give drink to every beast of the field, the wild asses quench
     their thirst.
  By them shall the fowls of heaven have their habitation which sing
     among the branches:
  The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which He
     hath planted,
  Where the birds make their nests; as for the stork, the fir-trees are
     her house.
  The great hills are a refuge for the wild goats and the rocks for the
     conies.
  Thou makest darkness, and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the
     forest do creep forth;
  The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God;
  The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together and lay them down in
     their dens.
  ... Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for
     herself where she may lay her young.
  Even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God!”


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                   XI

                        “A PEOPLE LIKE UNTO YOU”


A FRIEND who was spending the winter at Tunis asked me if it were true
that there was any teaching of kindness to animals in the religion of
Islam? She had seen with pain the little humanity practised by the lower
class of Arabs, and she had difficulty in believing that such conduct
was contrary to the law of the Prophet. I replied, that if men are
sometimes better than their creeds, at other times they are very much
worse. At the head of every chapter of the Koran, it is written: “In the
name of the most merciful God.” If God be merciful, shall man be
unmerciful? Alas, that the answer should have been so often “yes”!

Inhumanity to animals is against the whole spirit of the Koran, and also
against that of Moslem tradition. In the “Words of Mohammed,” of which
one thousand four hundred and sixty-five collections exist, and which
are looked upon as “the Moslem’s dictionary of morals and manners,” the
Apostle is described as saying: “Fear God in these dumb animals, and
ride them when they are fit to be rode, and get off them when they are
tired.” Mohammed was asked by his disciples: “Verily, are there rewards
for our doing good to quadrupeds and giving them water to drink? “He
said: “There are rewards for benefiting every animal having a moist
liver” (every sentient creature). He said again: “There is no Moslem who
planteth a tree or soweth a field, and man, birds or beasts eat from
them, but it is a charity for him.” Like all other religious teachers,
he was made by legend the central figure of a Nature Peace. He had
miraculous authority over beasts as well as over man, and beasts, more
directly than man, knew him to be from God. Once he was standing in the
midst of a crowd when a camel came and prostrated itself before him. His
companions exclaimed, “O Apostle of God! Beasts and trees worship thee,
then it is meet for us to worship thee.” Mohammed replied, “Worship God,
and you may honour your brother—that is, me.”

Those who know nothing else about Mohammed know the story of how he cut
away his sleeve rather than awaken his cat, which was sleeping upon it.
He is reported to have told how a woman was once punished for a cat: she
tied it till it died of hunger—she gave that cat nothing to eat, nor did
she allow it to go free, so that it might have eaten “the reptiles of
the ground.” (Cats do eat lizards and snakes too, even when they have
plenty of food—very bad for them it is.) Mohammed’s fondness of cats has
been suggested as the reason why two or three of them usually go with
the Caravan which takes the Sacred Carpet from Cairo to Mecca, but
perhaps the origin of that custom is far more remote.

[Illustration:

  “AN INDIAN ORPHEUS.”
  Royal Palace at Delhi.
  (_Imitated from a painting by Raphael._)]

In the words of Mohammed there is this beautiful version of the “Sultan
Murad” cycle: an adulteress was passing by a well when she saw a dog
which was holding out its tongue from the thirst which was killing him.
The woman drew off her shoe and tied it to the end of her garment; then
she drew up water and gave the dog to drink. The dog fawned on her and
licked her hands. Now the Sultan was passing that way, and he saw the
woman and the dog and inquired into the matter. When he had heard all,
he told the guards to undo her chain and give her back her veil and lead
her to her own home.

On one occasion the Prophet met a man who had a nest of young doves, and
the mother fluttered after and even down about the head of him that held
it. The Prophet told him to put the nest back where he found it, for
this wondrous love comes from God.

The verse which gives the keynote to Moslem ideas about animals occurs
in the sixth chapter of the Koran, and runs thus: “There is no beast on
earth nor bird which flieth with its wings but the same is a people like
unto you, we have not omitted anything in the Book of our decrees; then
unto their Lord shall they return.” In other texts where the word
“creatures” is used there is a strong presumption that animals, as well
as men, genii and angels, are included; as, for instance, “unto Him do
all creatures which are in heaven and earth make petition,” and again,
“all God’s creatures are His family, and he is the most beloved of God
who trieth to do the most good to God’s creatures”—which is almost word
for word—

                    “He prayeth best, who loveth best
                     All things both great and small;
                     For the dear God who loveth us,
                     He made and loveth all.”

The common grace after eating is “Praise be to the Lord of all
creatures!” Moslem hunters and butchers have the custom, called the
Hallal, of pronouncing a formula of excuse (Bi’sm-illah!) before slaying
any animal. The author of “Malay Magic” mentions, that if a Malay takes
a tiger in a pitfall, the Pawang, or medicine-man, has to explain to the
quarry that it was not he that laid the snare but the Prophet Mohammed.

By orthodox Moslem law hunting was allowed, provided it was for some
definite end or necessity. It was legitimate to hunt for food, or for
clothing, as when the skin was the object. Dangerous wild beasts, the
incompatible neighbours of all but saints, might be hunted to protect
the more precious lives of men. Beyond this, from an orthodox point of
view, hunting was regarded as indefensible. Such was the rule, and there
is no greater mistake than to undervalue the moral standard because
every one does not attain to it. Perhaps few Moslems keep this rule
rigidly, but it is true now as it was when Lane wrote on the subject,
that a good Moslem who hunts for amusement does not seek to prolong the
chase: he tries to take the game as quickly as he can, and if it is not
dead when taken, it is instantly killed by having its throat cut. Such
amusements as shooting pigeons, or the unspeakable abomination of firing
at wild birds from ships, which makes certain tourist steamers a curse
in the Arctic regions, would inspire even the not too orthodox Moslem
with profound disgust.

There were some Moslems who went far beyond the law—for whom taking
life, when the fact of doing so came rudely before them, was a thing
revolting in itself. Such sensibility was manifest in the Persian poets,
and it has been attributed to their inherited Zoroastrian tendencies;
but to think this is to misunderstand the groundwork of Mazdean humane
teaching, which was not based on sensitiveness about taking life. Such
sensitiveness is rarely found, except among Aryan races, and
Zoroastrianism, though it spread among an Aryan people, was not an Aryan
religion. It is more likely to be true that the Persian peculiar
tenderness for animals was an atavistic revival of the old Aryan
temperament. Renan said that Sufism was a racial Aryan reaction against
_l’effroyable simplicité de l’esprit sémitique_. Sensitiveness about
animals was a necessary ingredient, so to speak, of Sufism. Sadi, the
Sufic poet _par excellence_, poured blessings on the departed spirit of
Firdusi for the couplet which Sir William Jones translated so well and
loved so much:—

            “Ah, spare yon emmet, rich in hoarded grain;
             He lives with pleasure, and he dies with pain.”

That birds and many, if not all, animals have a language by which they
can interchange their thoughts is a belief shared by Moslems, both
learned and ignorant. The Koran says that the language of birds was
understood by Solomon, and folk-lore gives many other persons credit for
the same accomplishment. A person believed to have such powers could
turn the belief, if not the powers, to uses both good and bad. An
Arabian tale relates how a pleasure-loving Persian king summoned a
Maubadz, a head Magian, to tell him what two owls were chattering about.
The Maubadz told with considerable detail the plan which the female owl
was unfolding to the male owl, of how each of their future numerous
offspring might be set up in life as sole possessor of a forsaken
village, if only the present “fortunate king” lived long enough. The
monarch understood the rebuke, and resolved to mend his ways, and to
encourage tillage and agriculture, instead of devoting himself to idle
pastimes.

[Illustration:

  MOSLEM BEGGAR FEEDING DOGS AT CONSTANTINOPLE.]

Bird-trills mean sentences or words, chiefly religious. The pigeon cries
continually, “Alláh! Alláh!” The common dove executes this long
sentence: “Assert the unity of your Lord who created you, so will He
forgive you your sin.” There was a parrot who could repeat the whole
Koran by heart and could never be put out so as to make mistakes. I knew
of an old priest who repeated the _Divina Commedia_ from the first line
to the last, and the knowledge of the whole of the _Iliad_ was common in
ancient Athens, where people were laughed at who gave themselves the
airs of scholars on the ground of such feats of memory. But in the
bird-world the Moslem parrot surely stands alone, though we hear of a
pious raven who could say correctly the thirty-second chapter and who
always made the proper prostration when it came to the words: “My body
prostrateth itself before Thee, and my heart confideth in Thee.”

The chapter of the Koran entitled “the Ant” is full of charming zoology.
God bestowed knowledge on David and Solomon, and Solomon, who was
“David’s heir,” said to the people: “O men, we have been taught the
speech of birds, and have had all things bestowed on us: this is
manifest excellence.” The armies of Solomon consisted of men and genii
and birds: they were arrayed in proper order on an immense carpet of
green silk: the men were placed to the right, the genii to the left, and
the birds flew overhead, making a canopy of shade from the burning rays
of the sun. Solomon sat in the middle on his throne, and when it was
desired to move, the wind transported the carpet with all on it from one
place to another. This account, however, is not in the Koran, and need
not be believed. But that the armies were of the three species of beings
we have the highest authority for asserting. They arrived, one day, in
the Valley of Ants. A sentinel ant beheld the approaching host and
called to her companions to hasten into their habitations for fear that
Solomon and his armies should crush them underfoot without perceiving
it. This made Solomon smile, but while he laughed at her words, he yet
remembered to thank the Lord for the favour wherewith He had favoured
him: the privilege of knowing the language of beasts. After blessing
God, and praying that in the end He would take him into paradise among
His righteous servants, the king looked around at his feathered army and
lo! he missed the lapwing. Some say that the reason why he noticed her
absence was because in that place water was lacking for the ablution,
and, as every one knows, the lapwing is the water-finder. Be that as it
may (it is not stated in the Koran), he cried in displeasure: “What is
the reason I do not see the lapwing? Is she absent? Verily I will
chastise her with a severe punishment, or I will put her to death unless
she bring me a just excuse.” Not long did he have to wait before the
lapwing appeared, nor was the just excuse wanting. She had seen a
country which the king had not seen, and she brought hence a remarkable
piece of news. In the land of Saba (Sheba) a woman reigned who received
all the honour due to a great prince. She had a magnificent throne of
gold and silver; she and her people worshipped the Sun besides God.
Satan, added the lapwing, becoming controversial, had turned them away
from the truth lest they should worship the true God, from whom nothing
is hid. And then this little bird of a story like a fairy-tale ends her
discourse with one of those sharp, sudden, antithetical organ-blasts
which again and again lift the mind of the reader of the Koran into the
highest regions of poetry and religion: “God! there is no God but He;
the Lord of the Magnificent Throne!” What wonderful art there is in the
repetition of the words which had been applied just before to earthly
splendour! The effect is the same as that of the words in Arabic which
we see carved at every turn in the splendid halls of the Alhambra: “God
only is conqueror.” What is the splendour or the power of earthly kings?

The story resumes its course. Solomon tells the lapwing that they will
see, by and by, if she has told the truth or is a liar. He writes a
letter (which tradition says was perfumed with musk and sealed with the
king’s signet), and he commands the bird to take it to the land of Saba.
Some say that the lapwing delivered the letter by throwing it into the
queen’s bosom as she sat surrounded by her army; others that she brought
it to her through an open window when she was sitting in her chamber: at
any rate, it reached its destination, and the lapwing’s character was
completely rehabilitated. With regard to Queen Balkis, the Bible, the
Koran, and the Emperor Menelek may be consulted.

One of the beasts most esteemed by Moslems, one of those who, with
Balaam’s ass, Jonah’s whale, Abraham’s ram, Solomon’s ant, and several
other favourite animals, are known to have been admitted into the
highest heaven, is the dog in the Moslem version of the “Seven Sleepers
of Ephesus,” the legend of the seven young men who hid in a cave and
slept safely through a long period of persecution. The dog has a Divine
command to say to the young men, “I love those who are dear to God, and
I will guard you.” He lay stretched across the mouth of the cave during
the whole time that the persecution lasted. Moslems say of a very
avaricious man, “He would not give a bone to the dog of the Seven
Sleepers.” The dog’s name was Katmîr (though some said it was Al Rakîm),
and people wrote it as a talisman on important letters sent to a
distance or oversea, to make sure of their arriving safely: it was like
registration without the fee. He appears to have slept, as did his
masters, while he guarded the entrance to the cave: the protection which
he afforded must be attributed to his supernatural gifts as a
devil-scarer rather than to the watch he kept. Dogs were believed to see
“things invisible to us”—_i.e._, demons. If a dog barks in the night the
Faithful ask God’s aid against Satan. The cock is also a devil-scarer
and sees angels as well as demons: when he crows it is a sign that he
has just seen one.

Sometimes genii take the form of certain animals such as cats, dogs, and
serpents (animals which are not eaten). If a man would kill one of the
animals in which genii often appear, he must first warn the genii to
vacate its form. This means that there is a greater prejudice against
taking the life of such animals than in the case of animals slaughtered
for food, when it is sufficient (though necessary) to say “If it pleases
God.” While non-mystical Moslems did not respect life as such,
nevertheless they realised the great scientific truth that _life_ is the
supreme mystery. “The idols ye invoke besides God,” says the Koran, “can
never create a single fly although they were all assembled for that
purpose, and if the fly snatch anything from them” (such as offerings of
honey) “they cannot recover the same from it.” Moslems are fond of the
legend from the Gospel of the Infancy of how the Child Jesus, when He
and other children were playing at making clay sparrows, breathed on the
birds made by Him and they flew away or hopped on His hands. The parents
of the other children forbade them to play any more with the Holy Child,
whom they thought to be a sorcerer. That the Jews really imagined the
unusual things done by Christ to be magic-working, and that this belief
entered more into their wish to compass His death than is commonly
supposed, a knowledge of Eastern ideas on magic inclines one to think.
Moslems readily admit the truth of the miracle of the sparrows as of the
other miracles of Jesus; they add, however, that life came into the clay
figures “by permission of God.”

Towards the end of the world, animals will speak with human language.
Before this happens will have come to pass the reign of the “Rooh
Allah,” the Spirit of God, as all Moslems call Christ. It is told that
He will descend near the White Tower east of Damascus and will remain on
earth for forty (or for twenty-four) years, during which period malice
and hatred will be laid aside and peace and plenty will rejoice the
hearts of men. While Jesus reigns, lions and camels and bears and sheep
will live in amity and a child will play with serpents unhurt.

A kind of perpetual local Nature Peace prevails at Mecca; no animals are
allowed to be slaughtered within a certain distance of the sacred
precinct. It should be noted also that pilgrims are severely prohibited
from hunting; the wording of the verse in the Koran which establishes
this rule seems to imply the possibility that wild animals themselves
are doing the pilgrimage; hence they must be held sacred.

The law forbidding Moslems to eat the flesh of swine was copied from the
Jewish ordinance, without doubt from the conviction that it was
unwholesome. Those who were driven by extreme hunger to eat of it were
not branded as unclean. There is a curious Indian folk-tale which gives
an account of why swine-flesh was forbidden. At the beginning Allah
restrained man from eating any animals but those which died a natural
death. As they did not die as quickly as they wished, men began to
hasten their deaths by striking them and throwing stones at them. The
animals complained to Allah, who sent Gabriel to order all the men and
all the animals to assemble so that He might decide the case. But the
obstinate pig did not come. So Allah said: “The pigs, the lowest of
animals, are disobedient; let no one eat them or touch them.” There is
no record whatever of the pigs having signed a protest.

It is by no means clear when the prejudice against dogs took hold of the
Moslem mind. At first their presence was even tolerated inside the
Mosque, and the report that the Prophet ordered all the dogs at Medina
to be killed, especially those of a dark colour, is certainly a fable.
The Caliph Abu Djafar al Mausur asked a learned man this very question:
why dogs were treated with scorn? The learned man was so worthy of that
description that he had the courage to say he did not know. “Tradition
said so.” The Caliph suggested that it might be because dogs bark at
guests and at beggars. There is a modern saying that angels never go
into a house where there is a dog or an image. Still, the ordinary
kindness of the Turks to the pariah dogs at Constantinople, where the
beggar shares his last crust with them, shows that the feeling belongs
more to philology than to nature. The pariah dog is the type of the
despised outcast, but when a European throws poisoned bread to him the
act is not admired by the Moslem more than it deserves to be.

Several _savants_ have thought that the dog is scorned by Moslems
because he was revered by Mazdeans; that he suffered indignity at the
hands of the new believers as a protest against the excess of honour he
had received from the old. This theory, though ingenious, does not seem
to be borne out by facts. The comparisons of the qualities of the good
dervish and the dog, which is a sort of vade mecum of dervishes
everywhere, was almost certainly suggested by the “Eight
Characteristics” of the dog in the Avesta. It is singular that the dog
gets far better treatment in the Moslem comparisons than in the Mazdean.
“The dog is always hungry: so is it with the faithful; he sleeps but
little by night: so is it with those plunged in divine Love; if he die,
he leaves no heritage: so is it with ascetics; he forsakes not his
master even if driven away: so is it with adepts; he is content with few
temporal goods: so is it with the pursuers of temperance; if he is
expelled from one place he seeks another: so is it with the humble; if
he is chastised and dismissed and then called back he obeys: so is it
with the modest; if he sees food he remains standing afar: so is it with
those who are consecrated to poverty; if he go on a journey he carries
no refreshment for the way: so is it with those who have renounced the
world.” Some of these “Characteristics” are flung back in irony at the
dervishes by those who bitterly deride them, as the friars in the ages
of Faith were derided in Europe—without its making the least difference
to their popularity—but the homily itself is quite serious and meant for
edification. Hasan Basri, who died in 728 A.D., was the author or
adapter. Its wide diffusion is due to the accuracy with which it depicts
the wandering mystic, whether he be called a dervish or a Fakeer, or, in
the Western translation of Fakeer, a “Poverello” of St. Francis.

A certain rich man apologised to a Dervish because his servants, without
his knowledge, had often driven him away: the holy man showed, he said,
great patience and humility in coming back after such ill-treatment. The
dervish replied that it was no merit but only one of the “traits of the
dog,” which returns however often it is driven off. The worst enemies to
the dervish have ever been the Ulemas, for whom he is a kind of
dangerous lunatic strongly tinged with heresy. Among his unconventional
ideas was sure to penetrate, more or less, the neoplatonist or Sufic
view of animals. Wherever transcendental meditations on the union of the
created with the Creator begin to prevail, men’s minds take the
direction of admitting a more intimate relation of all living things
with God. We might be sure that the dervishes would follow this
psychological law even if we could not prove it. To prove it, however,
we need go no further than the great prayer, one of the noblest of human
prayers, which is used by many of the Dervish orders. There we read:
“Thy science is everlasting and knows even the numbers of the breaths of
Thy creatures: Thou seest and hearest the movements of all Thy
creatures; thou hearest even the footsteps of the ant when in the dark
night she walks on black stones; even the birds of the air praise Thee
in their nests; the wild beasts of the desert adore Thee; the most
secret as well as the most exposed thoughts of Thy servants Thou
knowest....”

In the same way, it was natural that the Dervishes should be supposed to
have the power attributed to all holy (or harmless) men over the kings
of the desert and forest. It could not be otherwise. Bishop Heber heard
of two Indian Yogis who lived in different parts of a jungle infested by
tigers in perfect safety; indeed, it was reported that one of these
ascetics had a nightly visit from a tiger, who licked his hands and was
fondled by him. This is a Hindu jungle story, but it would be just as
credible if it were told of a Dervish. Of the credibility of the first
part of it, and probably of the last also, there is not a single
wandering ascetic of any sort who would entertain a doubt. Some years
ago a Moslem recluse deliberately put his arm into the cage of Moti, the
tiger in the Lahore Zoological Gardens. The tiger lacerated the arm, and
the poor man died in the hospital after some days’ suffering, during
which he showed perfect serenity. He had made a mistake; the tiger,
brought up as a cub by British officers and deprived of his liberty, was
not endowed with the power of discrimination possessed by a king of the
wild. This, I hope, the Fakeer reflected, but it is more likely that he
deemed that cruel clutch a sign of his own unworthiness and accepted
death meekly, hoping not for reward but for pardon.

One would like to know more of a book which Mr. Charles M. Doughty found
a certain reputed saint “poring and half weeping over,” the argument of
which was “God’s creatures the beasts,” while its purpose was to show
that every beast yields life-worship unto God. Even if this Damascus
saint was not very saintly (as the author of “Arabia Deserta” hints),
yet it is interesting to note that this subject should have appeared to
a would-be new Messiah the most important he could choose for his
Gospel.

A Persian poet, Azz’ Eddin Elmocadessi, advises man to learn from the
birds,

                 “Virtues that may gild thy name;
                  And their faults if thou wouldst scan,
                  Know thy failings are the same.”

The recognition in animals of most human qualities in a distinct though
it may be a limited form underlies all Eastern animal-lore and gives it
a force and a reality even when it deals with extravagant fancies. There
is a broad difference between the power of feeling _for_ animals and the
power of feeling _with_ them. The same difference moulds the sentiments
of man to man: nine men in ten can feel for their fellow-humans, but
scarcely one man in ten can feel with them. They even know it, and they
say ungrammatically, “I feel the greatest sympathy _for_ so and so.” An
instance of true _mitempfindung_, of insight into the very soul of a
creature, exists in an Arabian poem by Lebid, who was one of the most
interesting figures of the period in which the destinies of the Arab
race were cast. He was the glory of the Arabs, not only on account of
his faultless verse, but also because of his noble character. It is told
of him that whenever an east wind blew, he provided a feast for the
poor. Himself a pre-Islamic theist, he hailed the Prophet as the
inspired enunciator of the creed he had held imperfectly and in private.
All his poems were composed in the “Ignorance”; on being asked for a
poem after his conversion at ninety years of age, he copied out a
chapter of the Koran, and said, “God has given me this in exchange for
poesy.” I do not think this meant that he despised the poet’s art, but
that now, when he could no longer exercise it, he had what was still
more precious.

The passage in question is one of several which show Lebid’s
surprisingly close acquaintance with the ways and thoughts of wild
animals. It is one of those elaborate similes which were the pride of
Arabian poets, who often preferred to take comparisons already in use
than to invent new ones. Wherever literature became a living
entertainment, something of this kind happened: witness the borrowings
from the Classics by the poets of the Renaissance; people liked to
recognise familiar ideas in a new dress. Lebid’s similes have been
turned and re-turned by other poets, but none approached the art and
truth he infused into them. I am indebted to Sir Charles Lyall for the
following version, which is not included in his volume of splendid
translations of early Arabian poetry. The subject of the passage is the
grief of a wild cow that has lost her calf:—

 “Flat-nosed is she—she has lost her calf and ceases not to roam
     About the marge of the sand meadows and cry
  For her youngling, just weaned, white, whose limbs have been torn
     By the ash-grey hunting wolves who lack not for food.
  They came upon it while she knew not, and dealt her a deadly woe:
     —Verily, Death, when it shoots, misses not the mark!
  The night came upon her, as the dripping rain of the steady shower
     Poured on and its continuous flow soaked the leafage through and
        through.
  She took refuge in the hollow trunk of a tree with lofty branches
     standing apart
     On the skirts of the sandhills where the fine sand sloped her way.
  The steady rain poured down, and the flood reached the ridge of her
     back,
     In a night when thick darkness hid away all the stars;
  And she shone in the face of the mirk with a white, glimmering light
     Like a pearl born in a sea-shell, that has dropped from its string.
  Until, when the darkness was folded away and morning dawned,
     She stood, her legs slipping in the muddy earth.
  She wandered distracted about all the pools of So’âid
     For seven nights twinned with seven whole long days,
  Until she lost all hope, and her udders shrunk—
     The udders that had not failed in all the days of the suckling and
        weaning,
  Then she heard the sound of men and it filled her heart with fear,
     Of men from a hidden place; and men, she knew, were her bane.
  She rushed blindly along, now thinking the chase before,
       And now behind her: each was a place of dread.
  Until, when the archers lost hope, they let loose on her
     Trained hounds with hanging ears, each with a stiff leather collar
        on its neck;
  They beset her and she turned to meet them with her horns
     Like to spears of Semhar in their sharpness and their length.
  To thrust them away: for she knew well, if she drove them not off,
     That the fated day of her death among the fates of beasts had come;
  And among them, Kesâb was thrust through and slain and rolled in blood
     lay there,
  And Sukhâm was left in the place where he made his     onset.”

There the description breaks off. In spite of the haunting cry of the
cow of Lucretius, in spite of the immortal tears of Shakespeare’s “poor
sequester’d stag”—no vision of a desperate animal in all literature
seems to me so charged with every element of pathos and dramatic
intensity as this cow of Lebid. How fine is the altogether unforeseen
close, which leaves us wondering, breathless: Will she escape? Will no
revengeful arrow reach her? Will the archers do as Om Piet did to the
wildebeest?—

    “A wildebeest cow and calf were pursued by Om Piet with three
    hunting-dogs. The Boer hunter tells the tale: ‘The old cow laid
    the first dog low; the calf is now tired. The second dog comes
    up to seize it; the cow strikes him down. Now the third dog
    tries to bite the little one, who can run no more, but the cow
    treats him so that there’s nothing to be done but to shoot him.
    Then Om Piet stands face to face with the wildebeest, who snorts
    but does not fly. Now though I come to shoot a wildebeest yet
    can I not kill a beast that has so bravely fought and will not
    run away; so Om Piet takes off his hat, and says, “Good-day to
    you, old wildebeest. You are a good and strong old wildebeest.”
    And we dine off springbuck that night at the farm.’”[7]

Footnote 7:

  “A Breath from the Veldt,” by Guille Millais, 2nd edition, 1899.

I ought to explain that, like the “cow” of Om Piet, Lebid’s “cow” is an
antelope—the _Antilope defassa_—of which a good specimen may be seen in
the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. The old Boer’s hunting
yarn brings an unexpected confirmation of the Arabian poet’s testimony
to its courage and maternal love.

Since the chase began, down to the blind brutality of the battue (which
wiped it out) chivalry has been a trait of the genuine sportsman. In the
golden legend of hunter’s generosity should be inscribed for ever the
tale—the true tale as I believe it to be—of the Moslem prince
Sebectighin, who rose from slave-birth to the greatest of Persian
thrones—and more honour to him, notwithstanding the slur which Firdusi,
stung by Mahmoud’s want of appreciation, cast, in a foolish moment, on
his father’s origin. Sebectighin was a horseman in the service of the
Sultan and as a preparation for greater things he found a vent for his
pent-up energies in the chase. One day he remarked a deer with her
little fawn peacefully grazing in a glade of the forest. He galloped to
the spot, and in less than a second he had seized the fawn, which, after
binding its legs, he placed across his saddle-bows. Thus he started to
go home, but looking back, he saw the mother following, with every mark
of grief. Sebectighin’s heart was touched; he loosened the fawn and
restored it to its dam. And in the night he had a vision in his dreams
of One who said to him, “The kindness and compassion which thou hast
this day shown to a distressed animal has been approved of in the
presence of God; therefore in the records of Providence the kingdom of
Ghusni is marked as a reward against thy name. Let not greatness destroy
thy virtue, but continue thy benevolence to man.”

Among the Afghan ballads collected by James Darmesteter, of which it has
been aptly said that they give an admirable idea of Homer in a state of
becoming, there is one composed in a gentler mood than the songs of war
and carnage which has a gazelle for heroine and the Prophet as _Deus ex
machina_. As there is no translation of it into English I have attempted
the following version:—

 “The Son of Abu Jail he set a snare for a gazelle,
  Without a thought along she sped, and in the snare she fell.

  ‘O woe is me!’ she weeping cried, ‘that I to look forgot!
  Fain would I live for my dear babes, but hope, alas! is not.’

  Then to the Merciful she made this short and fervent prayer:
  ‘I left two little fawns at home; Lord, keep them in Thy care!’

  The son of Abu Jail he came, in haste and glee he ran,
  ‘Ah, now I’ve got you in my net, and who to save you can?’

  He grasped her by her tender throat, his fearsome sword did draw,
  When lo! the Lord held back his hand! The Prophet’s self he saw!

  ‘The world was saved for love of thee, save for thy pity’s sake!’
  So breathed the trembling doe, and then the holy Prophet spake:

  ‘Abu, my friend, this doe let go, and hark to my appeal;
  She has two tender fawns at home who pangs of hunger feel,

  ‘Let her go back one hour to them, no longer will she stay,
  And when she comes, O heartless man, then mayest thou have thy way!

  But if, by chance, she should not come, then by my faith will I
  Be unto thee a bonded slave until the day I die.’

  Then Abu the gazelle let go; to her dear young she went,
  ‘Quick, children, take my breast,’ she said, ‘my life is almost spent;

  ‘The Master of the Universe for me a pledge I gave,
  But I must swift return and then no man my life can save.’

  Then said the little ones to her, ‘Mother, we dare not eat;
  Go swiftly back, redeem the pledge, fast as can fly thy feet.’

  One hour had scarce run fully out when, panting, she was there;
  Now, Abu, son of Abu, thou mayest take her life or spare!

  Said Abu, ‘In the Prophet’s name, depart, I set you free ...
  But thou, our Helper, at God’s throne, do thou remember me!’

  So have I told, as long ago my father used to tell,
  How Pagan Abu Moslem turned and saved his soul from hell.”

This brief sketch will suffice to show that if the Moslem is not humane
to animals it is his own fault, as I think it is his own fault if he is
not humane to man. Teaching humanity to animals must always imply the
teaching of humanity to men. This was perfectly understood well by all
these Oriental tellers of beast-stories: they would all have endorsed
the saying of one of my Lombard peasant-women (dear, good soul!), “Chi
non è buono per le bestie, non è buono per i Cristiani”; _Cristiano_
meaning, in Italian popular speech, a human being. Under the most varied
forms, in fiction which while the world lasts, can never lose its
freshness, the law of kindness is brought home. Perhaps the most
beautiful of all humane legends is one preserved in a poem by Abu
Mohammed ben Yusuf, Sheikh Nizan-eddin, known to Europeans as Nizami.
This Persian poet, who died sixty-three years before Dante was born, may
have taken the legend from some collection of Christ-lore, some
uncanonical book impossible now to trace; it is unlikely that he
invented it. As Jesus walks with His disciples through the market-place
at evening, He comes upon a crowd which is giving vent to every
expression of abhorrence at the sight of a poor dead dog lying in the
gutter. When they have all had their say, and have pointed in disgust to
his blear eyes, foul ears, bare ribs, torn hide, “which will not even
yield a decent shoe-string,” Jesus says, “How beautifully white his
teeth are!” No story of the Saviour outside the Gospels is so worthy to
have been in them.


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                  XII

                       THE FRIEND OF THE CREATURE


IN Hindu mythology Gunádhya attracts a whole forestful of beasts by
reciting his poems to them. The power of Apollo and of Orpheus in taming
beasts depended on a far less surprising _modus operandi_; like the
greater part of myths, this one was not spun from the thin air of
imagination. Music has a real influence on animals; in spite of theories
to the contrary, it is probable that the sweet flute-playing of the
snake-charmer—his “sweet charming” in Biblical phrase—is no mere piece
of theatrical business, but a veritable aid in obtaining the desired
results. I myself could once attract fieldmice by playing on the violin,
and only lately, on the road near our house at Salò, I noticed that a
goat manifested signs of wishing to stop before a grind-organ; its
master pulled the string by which it was led, but it tugged at it so
persistently that, at last, he stopped, and the goat, turning round its
head, listened with evident attention. Independently of the pleasure
music may give to animals, it excites their curiosity, a faculty which
is extremely alive in them, as may be seen by the way in which small
birds are attracted by the pretty antics of the little Italian owl; they
cannot resist going near to have a better view, and so they rush to
their doom upon the limed sticks.

Legends have an inner and an outer meaning; the allegory of Apollo, Lord
of Harmony, would have been incomplete had it lacked the beautiful
incident of a Nature Peace—partial indeed, but still a fairer triumph to
the god than his Olympian honours. For nine years he watched the sheep
of Admetus, as Euripides described:—

            “Pythean Apollo, master of the lyre,
             Who deigned to be a herdsman and among
             Thy flocks on hills his hymns celestial sung;
             And his delightful melodies to hear
             Would spotted lynx and lions fierce draw near;
             They came from Othry’s immemorial shade,
             By charm of music tame and harmless made;
             And the swift, dappled fawns would there resort,
             From the tall pine-woods and about him sport.”

When Apollo gave Orpheus his lyre, he gave him his gift “to soothe the
savage breast.” In the splendid Pompeian fresco showing a Nature Peace,
the bay-crowned, central figure is said to be Orpheus, though its
god-like proportions suggest the divinity himself. At any rate, nothing
can be finer as the conception of an inspired musician: the whole body
_sings_, not only the mouth. A lion and a tiger sit on either side;
below, a stag and a wild boar listen attentively, and a little hare
capers near the stream. In the upper section there are other wild beasts
sporting round an elephant, while oxen play with a tiger; an
anticipation of the ox and tiger in Rubens’ “Garden of Eden.”

The power of Orpheus to subdue wild beasts was the reason why the early
Christians took him as a type of Christ. Of all the prophecies which
were believed to refer to the Messiah none so captivated the popular
mind as those which could be interpreted as referring to His recognition
by animals. The four Gospels which became the canon of the Church threw
no light on the subject, but the gap was filled up by the uncanonical
books; one might think that they were written principally for the
purpose of dwelling on this theme, so frequently do they return to it.
In the first place, they bring upon the scene those dear objects of our
childhood’s affection, the ass and the ox of the stable of Bethlehem.
Surely many of us cherish the impression that ass and ox rest on most
orthodox testimony: an idea which is certainly general in Catholic
countries, though, the other day, I heard of a French priest who was
heartless enough to declare that they were purely imaginary. “Alas,” as
Voltaire said, “people run after truth!” As a matter of fact, it appears
evident that the ass and the ox were introduced to fulfil the prophecy
of Isaiah: “The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master’s manger,
but Israel knoweth Me not.” But there arose what was thought a
difficulty: the apocryphal Gospels, in harmony with the earliest
traditions, place the birth of Christ, not in a stable, but in the
grotto which is still shown to travellers. To reconcile this with the
legend of the ass and ox and also with the narrative of St. Luke, it was
supposed that the Holy Family moved from the grotto to a stable a few
days after the Child was born. This is a curious case of finding a
difficulty where there was none, for it is very likely that the caves
near the great Khan of Bethlehem were used as stables. In every
primitive country shepherds shelter themselves and their flocks in holes
in rocks; I remember the “uncanny” effect of a light flickering in the
depths of a Phœnician tomb near Cagliari; it was almost disappointing to
hear that it was only a shepherd’s fire.

Thomas, “the Israelite philosopher,” as he called himself, author of the
Pseudo-Thomas which is said to date from the second century, appears to
have been a Jewish convert belonging to one of the innumerable
“heretical” sects of the earliest times. It may be guessed, therefore,
that the Pseudo-Thomas was first written in Syriac, though the text we
possess is in Greek. It is considered the model on which all the other
Gospels of the Infancy were founded, but the Arabic variant contains so
much divergent matter as to make it probable that the writer drew on
some other early source which has not been preserved. Mohammed was
acquainted with this Arabian Gospel, and Mohammedans did not cease to
venerate the sycamore-tree at Matarea under which the Arabian evangelist
states that the Virgin and Child rested, till it died about a year ago.
The Pseudo-Thomas contains some vindictive stories, which were modified
or omitted in the other versions: probably they are all to be traced to
Elisha and his she-bears: a theory which I offer to those who cannot
imagine how they arose. A curious feature in these writings is the
scarcity of anything actually original; the most original story to be
found in them is that of the clay sparrows, which captivated the East
and penetrated into the folk-lore even of remote Iceland.
Notwithstanding the fulminations of Councils, the apocryphal Gospels
were never suppressed; they enjoyed an enormous popularity during the
Middle Ages, and many details derived solely from these condemned books
crept into the _Legenda Aurea_ and other strictly orthodox works.

The “Little Child” of Isaiah’s prophecy was the cause of troops of wild
beasts being convoked to attend the Infant Christ. Lions acted as guides
for the flight into Egypt, and it is mentioned that not only did they
respect the Holy Family, but also the asses and oxen which carried their
baggage. Besides, the lions, leopards, and other creatures “wagged their
tails with great reverence” (though all these animals are not of the dog
species, but of the cat, in which wagging the tail signifies the reverse
of content).

This is the subject of an old English ballad:—

                “And when they came to Egypt’s land,
                  Amongst those fierce wild beasts,
                 Mary, she being weary,
                  Must needs sit down to rest.
                 ‘Come, sit thee down,’ said Jesus,
                  ‘Come, sit thee down by Me,
                 And thou shall see how these wild beasts
                  Do come and worship Me.’”

First to come was the “lovely lion,” king of all wild beasts, and for
our instruction the moral is added: “We’ll choose our virtuous princes
of birth and high degree.” Sad rhymes they are, nor, it will be said, is
the sense much better; yet, hundreds of years ago in English villages,
where, perhaps, only one man knew how to read, this doggerel served the
end of the highest poetry: it transported the mind into an ideal region;
it threw into the English landscape deserts, lions, a Heavenly Child; it
stirred the heart with the romance of the unknown; it whispered to the
soul—

                   “The Now is an atom of sand,
                     And the Near is a perishing clod;
                    But Afar is a Faëry Land,
                     And Beyond is the bosom of God.”

The pseudo-gospel of Matthew relates an incident which refers to a later
period in the Holy Childhood. According to this narrative, when Jesus
was eight years old He went into the den of a lioness which frightened
travellers on the road by the Jordan. The little cubs played round His
feet, while the older lions bowed their heads and fawned on Him. The
Jews, who saw it from a distance, said that Jesus or His parents must
have committed mortal sin for Him to go into the lion’s den. But coming
forth, He told them that these lions were better behaved than they; and
then He led the wild beasts across the Jordan and commanded them to go
their way, hurting no one, neither should any one hurt them till they
had returned to their own country. So they bade Him farewell with gentle
roars and gestures of respect.

These stories are innocent, and they are even pretty, for all stories of
great, strong animals and little children are pretty. But they fail to
reveal the slightest apprehension of the deeper significance of a peace
between all creatures. Turn from them to the wonderful lines of William
Blake:—

                  “And there the lion’s ruddy eyes
                    Shall flow with tears of gold,
                   And pitying the tender cries
                    And walking round the fold
                   Saying: Wrath by His meekness,
                    And by His health sickness,
                   Are driven away
                    From our mortal day.

                   And now beside thee, bleating lamb,
                    I can lie down and sleep,
                   Or think on Him who bore thy name,
                    Graze after thee, and weep;
                   For, washed in life’s river,
                    My bright mane for ever
                   Shall shine like the gold
                    As I guard o’er the fold.”

No one but Blake would have written this, and few things that he wrote
are so characteristic of his genius. The eye of the painter seizes what
the mind of the mystic conceives, and the poet surcharges with emotion
words which, like the Vedic hymns, infuse thought rather than express
it.

A single passage in the New Testament connects Christ with wild animals;
in St. Mark’s Gospel we are told that after His baptism in the Jordan
Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, where “He was with
the wild beasts, and the angels ministered unto Him.” In the East the
idea of the anchorite who leaves the haunts of men for the haunts of
beasts was already fabulously old. In the Western world of the Roman
Empire it was a new idea, and perhaps on that account, while it excited
the horror of those who were faithful to the former order of things, it
awoke an extraordinary enthusiasm among the more ardent votaries of the
new faith. It led to the discovery of the inebriation of solitude, the
powerful stimulus of a life with wild nature. Many tired brain-workers
have recourse to mountain ascents as a restorative, but these can rarely
be performed alone, and high mountains with their immense horizons tend
to overwhelm rather than to collect the mind. But to wander alone in a
forest, day after day, without particular aim, drinking in the pungent
odours of growing things, fording the ice-cold streams, meeting no one
but a bird or a hare—this will leave a memory as of another existence in
some enchanted sphere. We have tasted an ecstasy that cities cannot
give. We have tasted it, and we have come back into the crowded places,
and it may be well for us that we have come back, for not to all is it
given to walk in safety alone with their souls.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Anderson._
  ST. JEROME EXTRACTING A THORN FROM THE PAW OF A LION.
  (_By Hubert van Eyck._)
  Naples Museum.]

Of one of the earliest Christian anchorites in Egypt it is related that
for fifty years he spoke to no one; he roamed in a state of nature,
flying from the monks who attempted to approach him. At last he
consented to answer some questions put by a recluse whose extreme piety
caused him to be better received than the others. To the question of why
he avoided mankind, he replied that those who dwelt with men could not
be visited by angels. After saying this, he vanished again into the
desert. I have observed that the idea of renouncing the world was not a
Western idea, yet, at the point where it touches madness, it had already
penetrated into the West—we know where to find its tragic record:—

             “Ego vitam agam sub altis Phrygiae columinibus,
              Ubi cerva silvicultrix, ubi aper nemorivagus?”

The _point of madness_ would have been reached more often but for the
charity of the stag and the wild boar and the lion and the buffalo, who
felt a sort of compassion for the harmless, weak human creatures that
came among them, and who were ready to give that response which is the
sustaining ichor of life.

The same causes produce the same effects—man may offer surprises but
never men. Wherever there are solitaries there are friendships between
the recluse and the wild beast. All sorts of stories of lions and other
animals that were on friendly terms with the monks of the desert have
come down to us in the legends of the Saints. The well-known legend of
how St. Jerome relieved a lion of a thorn which was giving him great
pain, and how the lion became tame, was really told of another saint,
but Jerome, if he did not figure in a lion story, is the authority for
one: in his life of Paul the Hermit he relates that when that holy man
died, two lions came out of the desert to dig his grave; they uttered a
loud wail over his body and knelt down to crave a blessing from his
surviving companion—none other than the great St. Anthony. He also says
that Paul had subsisted for many years on food brought to him by birds,
and when he had a visitor the birds brought double rations.

As soon as the hermit appears in Europe his four-footed friends appear
with him. For instance, there was the holy Karileff who tamed a buffalo.
Karileff was a man of noble lineage who took up his abode with two
companions in a clearing in the woods on the Marne, where he was soon
surrounded by all sorts of wild things. Amongst these was a buffalo, one
of the most intractable of beasts in its wild state, but this buffalo
became perfectly tame, and it was a charming sight to see the aged saint
stroking it softly between its horns. Now it happened that the king, who
was Childebert, son of Clovis, came to know that there was a buffalo in
the neighbourhood, and forthwith he ordered a grand hunt. The buffalo,
seeing itself lost, fled to the hut of its holy protector, and when the
huntsmen approached they found the monk standing in front of the animal.
The king was furious, and swore that Karileff and his brethren should
leave the place for ever; then he turned to go, but his horse would not
move one step. This filled him with what was more likely panic fear than
compunction; he lost no time in asking the saint for his blessing, and
he presented him with the whole domain, in which an abbey was built and
ultimately a town, the present Saint-Calais. On another occasion the
same Childebert was hunting a hare, which took refuge under the habit of
St. Marculphe; the king’s huntsman rudely expostulated, and the monk
surrendered the hare, but, lo and behold! the dogs would not continue
the pursuit and the huntsman fell off his horse!

A vein of more subtle sensibility runs through the story of St. Columba,
who, not long before his death, ordered a stork to be picked up and
tended when it dropped exhausted on the Western shore of Iona. After
three days, he said, the stork would depart, “for she comes from the
land where I was born and thither would she return.” In fact, on the
third day, the stork, rested and refreshed, spread out its wings and
sailed away straight towards the saint’s beloved Ireland. When Columba
was really dying the old white horse of the convent came and laid its
head on his shoulder with an air of such profound melancholy that it
seemed nigh to weeping. A brother wished to drive it away, but the saint
said No; God had revealed to the horse what was hidden from man, and it
was come to bid him goodbye.

Evidently there is only a slight element of the marvellous in these
legends and none at all in others, such as the story of Walaric, who fed
little birds and told the monks not to approach or frighten his “little
friends” while they picked up the crumbs. To the same order belong
several well-authenticated stories of the Venerable Joseph of Anchieta,
apostle of Brazil. He protected the parrots that alighted on a ship by
which he was travelling from the merciless sailors who would have caught
and killed them. Whilst descending a river he would have saved a monkey
which some fishermen shot at with their arrows, but he was not in time;
the other monkeys gathered round their slain comrade with signs of
mourning: “Come near,” said the holy man, “and weep in peace for that
one of you who is no more.” Presently, fearing not to be able longer to
restrain the cruelty of the men, he bade them depart with God’s
blessing.

Here is no marvel; only sympathy which is sometimes the greatest of
marvels. It needed the mind of a Shakespeare to probe just this secret
recess of feeling for animals:—

         “—— What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?
          —— At that I have killed, my Lord, a fly.
          —— Out on thee, murderer, thou killest my heart;
          Mine eyes are cloyed with view of tyranny;
          A deed of death done on the innocent,
          Becomes not Titus’ brother; get thee gone,
          I see thou art not for my company.
          —— Alas! my Lord, I have but killed a fly.
          —— But how if that fly had a father and mother?
          How would he hang his slender gilded wings
          And buz lamented doings in the air?
          Poor harmless fly!
          That with his pretty buzzing melody
          Came here to make us merry, and thou hast killed him.”

If St. Bernard saw a hare pursued by dogs or birds threatened by a hawk
he could not resist making the sign of the cross, and his benediction
always brought safety. It is to this saint that we owe the exquisite
saying, “If mercy were a sin I think I could not keep myself from
committing it.”

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Hanfslängl._
  ST. EUSTACE AND THE STAG.
  (_By Vittore Pisano._)
  National Gallery.]

Apart from the rest, stands one saint who brought the wild to the
neighbourhood of a bustling, trafficking little Italian town of the
thirteenth century and peopled it with creatures which, whether of fancy
or of fact, will live for ever. How St. Francis tamed the “wolf of
Agobio” is the most famous if not altogether the most credible of the
animal stories related of him. That wolf was a quadruped without morals;
not only had he eaten kids but also men. All attempts to kill him
failed, and the townsfolk were afraid of venturing outside the walls
even in broad daylight. One day St. Francis, against the advice of all,
went out to have a serious talk with the wolf. He soon found him and,
“Brother Wolf,” he said, “you have eaten not only animals but men made
in the image of God, and certainly you deserve the gallows;
nevertheless, I wish to make peace between you and these people, brother
Wolf, so that you may offend them no more, and neither they nor their
dogs shall attack you.” The wolf seemed to agree, but the saint wished
to have a distinct proof of his solemn engagement to fulfil his part in
the peace, whereupon the wolf stood up on his hind legs and laid his paw
on the saint’s hand. Francis then promised that the wolf should be
properly fed for the rest of his days, “for well I know,” he said
kindly, “that all your evil deeds were caused by hunger”—upon which text
several sermons might be preached, for truly many a sinner may be
reformed by a good dinner and by nothing else. The contract was kept on
both sides, and the wolf lived happily for some years—“notricato
cortesemente dalla gente”—at the end of which he died of old age,
sincerely mourned by all the inhabitants.

If any one decline to believe in the wolf of Gubbio, why, he must be
left to his invincible ignorance. But there are other tales in the
_Fioretti_ and in the _Legenda Aurea_ which are nowise hard to believe.
What more likely than that Francis, on meeting a youth who had
wood-doves to sell, looked at the birds “con l’occhio pietoso,” and
begged the youth not to give them into the cruel hands that would kill
them? The young man, “inspired by God,” gave the doves to the saint, who
held them against his breast, saying, “Oh, my sisters, innocent doves,
why did you let yourselves be caught? Now will I save you from death and
make nests for you, so that you may increase and multiply according to
the commandment of our Creator.” Schopenhauer mentions, with emphatic
approval, the Indian merchant at the fair of Astrachan who, when he has
a turn of good luck, goes to the market-place and buys birds, which he
sets at liberty. The holy Francis not only set his doves free, but
thought about their future, a refinement of benevolence which might
“almost have persuaded” the humane though crusty old philosopher to put
on the Franciscan habit.

(At this point I chance to see from my window a kitten in the act of
annoying a rather large snake. It is a coiled-up snake; probably an
Itongo. It requires a good five minutes to induce the kitten to abandon
its quarry and to convey the snake to a safe place under the myrtles.
This being done, I resume my pen.)

I have remarked that in some respects the Saint of Assisi stands apart
from the other saints who took notice of animals. It was a common thing,
for instance, for saints to preach to creatures, but there is an
individual note in the sermon of Francis to the birds which is not found
elsewhere. The reason why St. Anthony preached to the fishes at Rimini
was that the “heretics” would not listen to him, and St. Martin
addressed the water-fowl who were diving after fish in the Loire
because, having compared them to the devil, seeking whom he may devour,
he thought it necessary to order them to depart from those waters—which
they immediately did, no doubt frightened to death by the apparition of
a gesticulating saint and the wild-looking multitude. The motive of
Francis was neither pique at not being listened to nor the temptation to
show miraculous skill as a bird-scarer; he was moved solely by an
effusion of tender sentiment. Birds in great quantities had alighted in
a neighbouring field: a beautiful sight which every dweller in the
country must have sometimes seen and asked himself, was it a parliament,
a garden party, a halt in a journey? “Wait a little for me here upon the
road,” said the saint to his companions; “I am going to preach to my
sisters the birds.” And so, “_having greeted them as creatures endowed
with reason_,” he went on to say: “Birds, my sisters, you ought to give
great praise to your Creator, who dressed you with feathers, who gave
you wings to fly with, who granted you all the domains of the air, whose
solicitude watches over you.” The birds stretched out their necks,
fluttered their wings, opened their beaks, and looked at the preacher
with attention. When he had done, he passed in the midst of them and
touched them with his habit, and not one of them stirred till he gave
them leave to fly away.

The saint lifted worms out of the path lest they should be crushed, and
during the winter frosts, for fear that the bees should die in the hive,
he brought honey to them and the best wines that he could find. Near his
cell at Portionuculo there was a fig-tree, and on the fig-tree lived a
cicada. One day the Servant of God stretched out his hand and said,
“Come to me, my sister Cicada”; and at once the insect flew upon his
hand. And he said to it, “Sing, my sister Cicada, and praise thy Lord.”
And having received his permission she sang her song. The biographies
that were written without the inquisition into facts which we demand,
gave a living idea of the man, not a photograph of his skeleton. What
mattered if romance were mixed with truth when the total was true? We
know St. Francis of Assisi as if he had been our next-door neighbour. It
would have needed unbounded genius to invent such a character, and there
was nothing to be gained by inventing it. The legends which represent
him as one who consistently treated animals as creatures endowed with
reason are in discord with orthodox teaching; they skirt dangerously
near to heresy. Giordano Bruno was accused of having said that men and
animals had the same origin; to hold such an opinion qualified you for
the stake. But the Church that canonised Buddha under the name of St.
Josephat has had accesses of toleration which must have made angels
rejoice.

Some think that Francis was at one time a troubadour, and troubadours
had many links with those Manichæan heretics whom Catholics charged with
believing in the transmigration of souls. This may interest the curious,
but the doctrine of metempsychosis has little to do with the vocation of
the Asiatic recluse as a beast-tamer, and St. Francis of Assisi was true
brother to that recluse. He was the Fakeer or Dervish of the West. When
the inherent mysticism in man’s nature brought the Dervishes into
existence soon after Mohammed’s death, in spite of the Prophet’s
well-known dislike for religious orders, they justified themselves by
quoting the text from the Koran, “Poverty is my pride.” It would serve
the Franciscan equally well. The begging friar was an anachronism in the
religion of Islam as he is an anachronism in modern society, but what
did that matter to him? He thought and he thinks that he will outlive
both.

The Abdâl or pre-eminently holy Dervish who lived in the desert with
friendly beasts over whom he exercised an extraordinary power, became
the centre of a legend, almost of a cult, like his Christian
counterpart. There were several Abdâls of high repute during the reigns
of the early Ottoman Sultans. Perhaps there was more confidence in their
sanctity than in their sanity, for while the Catholic historian finds it
inconvenient to admit the hypothesis of madness as accounting for even
the strangest conduct of the saints of the desert or their mediæval
descendants, a devout Oriental sees no irreverence in recognising the
possible affinity between sainthood and mental alienation. In India the
holy recluse who tames wild beasts is as much alive to-day as in any
former time. Whatever is very old is still a part of the everyday life
of the Indian people. Accordingly the native newspapers frequently
report that some prince was attacked by a savage beast while out
hunting, when, at the nick of time, a venerable saint appeared at whose
first word the beast politely relaxed his hold. Those who know India
best by no means think that all such stories are invented. Why should
they be? Cardinal Massaia (who wore, by the by, the habit of Francis)
stated that the lions he met in the desert had very good manners. A few
years ago an old lady met a large, well-grown lioness in the streets of
Chatres; mistaking it for a large dog, she patted it on the head and it
followed her for some time until it was observed by others, when the
whole town was seized with panic and barred doors and windows. Even with
the provocation of such mistrust the lioness behaved well, and allowed
itself to be reconducted to the menagerie from which it had escaped.

Those who try to divest themselves of human nature rarely succeed, and
the reason nearest to the surface why, over all the world, the lonely
recluse made friends with animals was doubtless his loneliness. On their
side, animals have only to be persuaded that men are harmless for them
to meet their advances half-way. If this is not always true of wild
beasts, it is because (as St. Francis apprehended) unfortunately they
are sometimes hungry; but man is not the favourite prey of any wild
beast who is in his right mind. Prisoners who tamed mice or sparrows
followed the same impulse as saints who tamed lions or buffaloes. How
many a prisoner who returned to the fellowship of men must have
regretted his mouse or his sparrow! Animals can be such good company.
Still, it follows that if their society was sought as a substitute, they
were, in a certain sense, vicarious objects of affection. We forget that
even in inter-human affections much is vicarious. The sister of charity
gives mankind the love which she would have given to her children. The
ascetic who will never hear the pattering feet of his boy upon the
stairs loves the gazelle, the bird fallen from its nest, the lion cub
whose mother has been slain by the hunter. And love, far more than
charity (in the modern sense), blesses him that gives as well as him
that takes.

But human phenomena are complex, and this explanation of the sympathy
between saint and beast does not cover the whole ground. Who can doubt
that these men, whose faculties were concentrated on drawing nearer to
the Eternal, vaguely surmised that wild living creatures had unperceived
channels of communication with spirit, hidden _rapports_ with the
Fountain of Life which man has lost or has never possessed? Who can
doubt that in the vast cathedral of Nature they were awed by “the
mystery which is in the face of brutes”?

Beside the need to love and the need to wonder, some of them knew the
need to pity. Here the ground widens, for the heart that feels the pang
of the meanest thing that lives does not beat only in the hermit’s cell
or under the sackcloth of a saint.


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                  XIII

                              VERSIPELLES


THE snake and the tiger are grim realities of Indian life. They mean a
great deal—they mean India with its horror and its splendour; above all,
with its primary attention given to things which for most Europeans are
_nil_ or are kept for Sunday. And Sunday, the day most calm, most
bright, has only a little portion of them, only the light not the
darkness of the Unknown.

To the despair of the English official, the Hindu, like his forefathers
in remotest antiquity, respects the life of tiger and snake. In doing so
he is not governed simply by the feeling that makes him look on serenely
whilst all sorts of winged and fleet-footed creatures eat up his growing
crops—another tolerance which exasperates the Western beholder: in that
instance it is, in the main, the rule of live and let live which
dictates his forbearance, the persuasion that it is wrong to monopolise
the increase of the earth to the uttermost farthing’s-worth. His
sentiment towards tiger and snake is of a more profound nature.

The Hindu will not kill a cobra if he can help it, and if one is killed
he tries to expiate the offence by honouring it with proper funeral
rites. The tiger, like the snake, gives birth to those ancient twins,
fear and admiration. The perception of the beautiful is one of the
oldest as it is one of the most mysterious of psychological phenomena in
man and beast. Why should the sheen of the peacock’s tail attract the
peahen? Why should the bower-bird and the lyre-bird construct a lovely
pleasance where they may dance? Man perceived the beautiful in fire and
wind, in the swift air, the circle of stars, the violent water, the
lights of heaven: “being delighted with the beauty of these things, he
took them to be gods”—as was said by the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon
about two hundred years before Christ. He also perceived the beautiful
in the lithe movements of the snake and in the tiger’s symmetry.

As to the sense of fear, how is it that this fear is unaccompanied by
repulsion? To this question the more general answer would seem to be
that Nature, if regarded as divine, cannot repel. But the snake and
tiger are in some special way divine, so that they become still further
removed from the range of human criticism. They are manifestations of
divinity—a safer description of even the lowest forms of zoolatry than
the commoner one which asserts that they are “gods.” Deity, if
omnipresent, “must be able to occupy the same space as another body at
the same time,” which was said in a different connexion, but it is the
true base of all beliefs involving the union of spirit and matter from
the lowest to the highest.

The animal which is a divine agent, ought to behave like one. If it
causes destruction, such destruction should have the fortuitous
appearance of havoc wrought by natural causes. The snake or tiger should
not wound with malice prepense, but only in a fine, casual way. This is
just what, as a rule, they are observed to do. I have seen many snakes,
but I never saw one run after a man, though I have seen men run after
snakes. Now and then the Italian peasant is bitten by vipers because he
walks in the long grass with naked feet. He treads on the snake or
pushes against it, and it bites him. So it is with the Indian peasant.
It is much the same in the case of the normal tiger; unless he is
disturbed or wounded, he most rarely attacks. But there are abnormal
tigers, abnormal beasts of every sort—there is the criminal class of
beast. What of him? It might be supposed that primitive man would take
such a beast to be an angry or vindictive spirit. By no means. He
detects in him a fellow-human. The Indian forestalled Lombroso; the
man-eating tiger is a degenerate, really not responsible for his
actions, and still less is the god behind him responsible for them.

Little need be said of the natural history of the man-eating tiger; yet
a few words may not be out of place. To his abnormality every one who
has studied wild beasts bears witness. All agree that the loss of life
from tigers is almost exclusively traceable to individuals of tiger-kind
which prey chiefly or only on man. The seven or eight hundred persons
killed annually by tigers in British India are victims of comparatively
few animals. Not many years ago a single man-eating tigress was
certified to have killed forty-eight persons. While the ordinary tiger
has to be sought out with difficulty for the sport of those who wish to
hunt him, the man-eater night after night waylays the rural postman or
comes boldly into the villages in search of his unnatural food. During
great scarcity caused by the destruction or disappearance of small game
in the forests, the carnivora are forced out of their habits as the
wolves in the Vosges are induced to come down to the plains in periods
of intense cold. Such special causes do not affect the question of the
man-eater, which eats man’s flesh from choice, not from necessity. Why
he does so Europeans have tried to explain in various ways. One is, that
the unfamiliar taste of human flesh creates an irresistible craving. In
South America they say that a jaguar after tasting man’s flesh once
becomes an incorrigible man-eater for ever after. Others think
man-eating is a form of madness, a disease, and they point to the fact
that the man-eater is always in bad condition; his skin is useless. But
it is not sure if this be cause or effect, since man’s flesh is said to
be unwholesome. A third and plausible theory would attribute man-eating
to the easy capture of the prey: a tiger that has caught one man will
hunt no other fleeter game. Especially in old age, a creature that has
neither horns nor tusks nor yet swift feet must appear an attractive
prey. This coincides with an observation made by Apollonius of Tyana: he
says that lions caught and ate monkeys for medicine when they were sick,
but that when they were old and unable to hunt the stag and the wild
boar, they caught them for food. Aristotle said that lions were more
disposed to enter towns and attack man when they grew old, as old age
made their teeth defective, which was a hindrance to them in hunting.

Another possible clue may be deduced from a belief which exists in
Abyssinia about the man-eating lion. In that country the people dislike
to have Europeans hunt the lion, not only because they revere him as the
king of beasts (though this is one reason, and it shows how natural to
man is the friendly feeling towards beasts, and how it flourishes along
with any sort of religion, provided the religion has been left Oriental
and not Westernised), but also because they are convinced that a lion
whose mate has been killed becomes ferocious and thirsts for human
blood. This belief is founded on accurate observation of the capacity of
wild beasts for affection. The love of the lion for his mate is no
popular error. That noble hunter, Major Leveson, told a pathetic story
of how he witnessed in South Africa a fight between two lions, while the
lioness, palm and prize, stood looking on. A bullet laid her low, but
the combatants were so hotly engaged that neither of them perceived what
had happened. Then another bullet killed one of them: the survivor,
after the first moment of surprise as to why his foe surrendered, turned
round and for the first time saw the hunters who were quite near. He
seemed about to spring on them, when he caught sight of the dead
lioness: “With a peculiar whine of recognition, utterly regardless of
our presence, he strode towards her, licked her face and neck with his
great rough tongue and patted her gently with his huge paw, as if to
awaken her. Finding that she did not respond to his caresses, he sat
upon his haunches like a dog and howled most piteously....” Finally the
mourning lion fled at the cries of the Kaffirs and the yelping of the
dogs close at hand. He had understood the great, intolerable fact of
death. Would any one blame him if he became an avenger of blood?

Supposing that this line of defence could be transferred to the tiger,
instead of being branded as lazy, decrepit, mad, or bad, he might hope
to appear before the public with a largely rehabilitated character.

The natives of the jungle resort to none of these hypotheses to account
for the man-eater: a different bank of ideas can be drawn on by them to
help them out of puzzling problems. The free force of imagination is far
preferable, if admitted, as a solver of difficulties, to all our patient
and plodding researches. The jungle natives tell many stories of the
man-eater, of which the following is a typical example. It was told to a
British officer, from whom I had it.

Once upon a time there was a man who had the power of changing himself
into a tiger whenever he liked. But for him to change back into the
shape of a man it was necessary that some human being should pronounce a
certain formula. He had a friend who knew the formula, and to him he
went when he wished to resume human shape. But the friend died.

The man was obliged, therefore, to find some one else to pronounce the
formula. At last he decided to confide the secret to his wife; so, one
day, he said to her that he should be absent for a short time and that
when he came back it would be in the form of a tiger; he charged her to
pronounce the proper formula when she should see him appear in
tiger-shape, and he assured her that he would then, forthwith, become a
man again.

In a few days, after he had amused himself by catching a few antelopes,
he trotted up to his wife, hoping all would be well. But the woman, in
spite of all that he had told her, was so dreadfully frightened when she
saw a large tiger running towards her, that she began to scream. The
tiger jumped about and tried to make her understand by dumb-show what
she was to do, but the more he jumped the more she screamed, and at last
he thought in his mind, “This is the most stupid woman I ever knew,” and
he was so angry that he killed her. Directly afterwards he recollected
that no other human being knew the right formula—hence he must remain
for ever a tiger. This so affected his spirits that he acquired a hatred
for the whole human race, and killed men whenever he saw them.

This diverting folk-tale shows a root-belief in the stage of becoming a
branch-belief. In the present case the root is the ease with which men
are thought to be able to transform themselves (or be transformed by
others) into animals. The branch is the presumption that a very wicked
animal must be human. The corresponding inference that a very virtuous
animal must be human, throws its reflection upon innumerable
fairy-tales. I think it was the more primitive of the two. Even the
tiger is not everywhere supposed to be the worse for human influence. In
the Sangor and Nerbrudda territories people say that if a tiger has
killed one man he will never kill another, because the dead man’s spirit
rides on his head and guides him to more lawful prey. Entirely primitive
people do not take an evil view of human nature—which is proved by their
confidence in strangers: the first white man who arrives among them is
well received. Misanthropy is soon learnt, but it is not the earliest
sentiment. The bad view of the man-tiger prevails in the Niger delta,
where the negroes think that “some souls which turn into wild beasts
give people a great deal of trouble.” Other African tribes hold that
tailless tigers are men—tigers which have lost their tails in fighting
or by disease or accident. I do not know if these are credited with good
or bad qualities.

By the rigid Totemist all this is ascribed to Totemism. Men called other
tribesmen by the names of their totems; then the totem was forgotten and
they mistook the tiger-totem-man for a man-tiger _et sic de ceteris_. My
Syrian guide on Mount Carmel told me that the ravens which fed Elijah
were a tribe of Bedouins called “the Ravens,” which still existed. If
this essay in the Higher Criticism was original it said much for his
intelligence. But because such confusions may happen, and no doubt do
happen, are they to be taken as the final explanation of the whole vast
range of man and animal mutations? What have they to do with such a
belief as that vouched for by St. Augustine—to wit, that certain witch
innkeepers gave their guests drugs in cheese which turned them into
animals? These witches had a sharp eye to business, for they utilised
the oxen, asses, and horses thus procured, for draught or burden, or let
them out to their customers, nor were they quite without a conscience,
as when they had done using them they turned them back into men. Magic,
the old rival of religion, lies at the bottom of all this order of
ideas. Magic may be defined as the natural supernatural, since by it man
_unaided_ commands the occult forces of nature. The theory of demoniacal
assistance is of later growth.

A story rather different from the rest is told by Pausanias, who records
that, at the sacrifice of Zeus on Mount Lycæus, a man was always turned
into a wolf, but if for nine years in wolf-shape he abstained from
eating human flesh, he would regain his human form. This suggests a
Buddhist source. The infiltration of Buddhist folk-lore into Europe is a
subject on which we should like to know more. Buddhism was the only
missionary religion before Christianity, and there is every probability
that it sent missionaries West as well as East.

The early Irish took so favourable a view of wolves that they were
accustomed to pray for their salvation, and chose them as godfathers for
their children. In Druidical times the wolf and other animals were
divine manifestations, and the Celts were so attached to their
beast-gods that they did not maledict what they had worshipped, but
found it a refuge somewhere. In the earliest Gallic sculpture the
dispossessed animals are introduced as companions of the new Saints.

It will be noticed that in the Indian folk-tale, though the
identification of the man with the man-eater is clear, a very lenient
view is taken of him: he was not always so; even his excursions in
tiger-skin were, at first, purely innocent; he was a good husband and a
respectable citizen till his wife’s nerves made him lose his temper.

In early Christian times, the man-wolf might be not only innocent but a
victim. He might be a particularly good man turned by a sorcerer into a
wolf, and in such cases he preserves his good tendencies. In the seventh
century such a man-wolf defended the head of St. Edward the Martyr from
other wild beasts.

On the other hand, there are stories of Christian saints who turned
evil-disposed persons into beasts by means of the magical powers which,
at first, _all_ baptized persons were thought to possess potentially if
not actively. St. Thomas Aquinas believed in the possibility of doing
this. In a Russian folk-tale the apostles Peter and Paul turned a bad
husband and wife into bears.

In Europe by degrees the harmless were-wolf entirely disappeared but the
evil one survived. The superstition of lycanthropy concentrated round
one point (as superstitions often do): the self-transformation of a
perverse man or sorcerer into an animal for nefarious purposes. The
object of the transformation might be the opportunity for giving free
range to sanguinary appetites; but there was another object lurking in
the background, and this was the acquirement of second sight, which some
animals (if not all) are supposed to be endowed with. Just as Varro and
Virgil believed in lycanthropy, so the most highly educated Europeans in
the time of Louis XIV. and after, believed in were-wolves. The choice of
the animal was immaterial, but it fell naturally on the most prominent
and feared wild animal which was locally extant. A fancy or exotic
animal would not do, which illustrates the link there is between popular
beliefs and _facts_; distorted facts, it may be, but real and not
imaginary things. If a bear of bad morals appears in Norway, people
declare that it can be “no Christian bear”—it must be a Lapp or a Finn,
both these peoples, who are much addicted to magic, being supposed to
have the power of changing into bears when they choose. Instead of
seeking the wild beast in man, people sought the man in the wild beast.

As in Asia so in Europe, it was noticed and pondered that the normal
wild beast is dangerous, perhaps, but not from a human point of view
perverse. The normal wolf like the normal tiger does not attack or
destroy for the love of destruction. Wolves attack in packs, but the
instinct of the single individual is to keep out of man’s way. He does
not kill even animals indiscriminately. In the last times when there
were wolves in the Italian valleys of the Alps, the news spread that a
wolf had killed a number of sheep. What had really happened was this,
which an old hunter told at Edolo to a relative of mine. The wolf jumped
down into a sheepfold sunk in the ground. He killed a sheep and ate some
of it and then found, to his dismay, that he could not get up the wall
of the sheepfold. Nothing daunted, however, he killed a sufficient
number of sheep to form a mound, up which he climbed and so effected his
escape. No one thought such a clever wolf as this a _lupo manaro_. But
some wolves, like some dogs, are subject to fits of mental alienation,
in which they slay without rhyme or reason. Sheep are found killed all
over the countryside, and men or children may be among the victims. The
question arises of who did it—a wolf, a man, or both in one? The
material fact is there, and it is a fact calculated to excite terror,
surprise, curiosity. That the fact may remain always a mystery recent
experience shows. When the were-wolf mania was rampant in France,
honestly conducted judicial inquiry succeeded in a few cases, in tracing
the outrages to a real wolf or to a real man. At last, in 1603, a French
court of law pronounced the belief in were-wolves to be an insane
delusion, and from that date it slowly declined. Heretics were suspected
of being were-wolves. As late as fifty years ago, a reminiscence of the
_loup garou_ existed in most parts of France, in the shape of the
_meneux des loups_, who were supposed to charm or tame whole packs of
wolves which they led across the waste lands on nights when the moon
shone fitfully through rifts in hurrying clouds. The village recluse,
the poacher, the man who simply “knew more than he should,” fell under
the suspicion of being a “wolf-leader,” and, of course, the usual
“eye-witness” was forthcoming to declare that he had _seen_ the
suspected individual out upon his midnight rambles with his wolves
trotting after him. In some provinces all the fiddlers or bag-pipers
were thought to be “wolf-leaders.”

[Illustration:

  _Maurice Sand._
  “LE MENEUR DES LOUPS.”]

If the wolf turnskin died out sooner in England than in France, it was
because there were no wolves to fasten it upon. Throughout the horrible
witch-mania British sorcerers were supposed to turn into cats, weasels,
or innocent hares! Italian witches still turn into cats. I remember how
graphically C. G. Leland described to me a visit he had paid to a Tuscan
witch; her cottage contained three stools, on one of which sat the
witch, on the second her familiar jet-black cat, and on the third my old
friend, who, I feel sure, had come to believe a good deal in the “old
religion,” and who, in his last years, might have sat for a perfect
portrait of a magician! The connexion of the witch and the cat is a form
of turnskin-belief in which the feature of the acquirement of second
sight is prominent. No witch without a cat! The essential _fact_ in the
superstition is the fondness of poor, old friendless women for
cats—their last friends. A contributing fact lay in the mysterious
disappearances and reappearances of cats and in their half-wild nature.
The cat in Indian folk-lore is the tiger’s aunt.

The mode of effecting transformation into animals is various, but always
connected with fixed magical procedure. A root or food, or still oftener
an ointment, is resorted to: ointments played a great part in
superstition; it was by ointments that the unlucky persons accused of
being wizards were held to have spread the plague of Milan. But the
surest method of transformation was a girdle made of the skin of the
animal whose form it was desired to take. This is regarded as a
makeshift for not being able to put on the whole skin. An old French
record tells of a man who buried a black cat in a box where four roads
met, with enough bread soaked in holy water and holy oil to keep it
alive for three days. The man intended to dig the cat up and, after
killing it, to make a girdle of its skin by which means he expected to
obtain the gift of second sight; but the burial-place of the cat was
discovered by some dogs that were scratching the earth, before the three
days had elapsed. The man, put to the torture, confessed all. In this
case, it will be noticed that the spiritual powers of the cat were to be
obtained without assuming its outward form. The turnskin who wishes to
go back into his human shape, has also to follow fixed rules: a formula
must be pronounced by some one else, as in the jungle tiger story, or
the man-beast must eat some stated food as in Lucian’s skit (if Lucian
wrote it) of the man who, by using the wrong salve, turned himself into
a donkey instead of into a bird as he had wished, and who could only
resume his own form by eating roses, which he did not accomplish until
he had undergone all sorts of adventures.

The belief that beasts were inhabited by depraved men has a certain
affinity with the belief that depraved men were inhabited by demons.
Dante maintains that some persons have actually gone to their account
while their bodies are still above-ground, the lodgings of evil spirits.

The history of the turnskin leads up to several conclusions, of which
the most important is, that superstitions often grow uglier as they grow
older. They descend, they rarely ascend. This experience should make us
pause before we pronounce hideous beliefs to be, in a true sense,
primitive. The idea of transformation is one of the oldest of human
ideas, much older than transmigration, but at the outset, far from
lending itself to such repulsive applications as man-tigers and
demon-men, it gave birth to some of the fairest passages in the poetry
of mankind which he calls his religion. It is impossible to imagine a
more beautiful myth than the Vedic belief in the swan-maidens, the
Apsarases who, by putting on skirts of swan feathers, could become
swans. Their swan-skirts stretch from the hot East to the cold North,
for they are the same that are worn by the Valkyries. All these early
legends of swans bring into particularly clear light the moral identity
of the impressions received from things seen by man at the bottom and at
the top of the ladder of intellectual progress. Natural objects, lovely
or terrible, raise archetypal images of things lovely or terrible which
in our minds remain shapeless but to which the primitive man gives a
local habitation and a name. Swans, sailing on still waters or circling
above our heads, inspire us with indefinite longings which took form in
the myth of the Apsarases and appear again in the Vedic story of the
sage who, by deep knowledge and holiness, became a golden swan and flew
away to the sun. To this day, if the Hindu sees a flight of swans
wending its mysterious way across the sky, he repeats the saying almost
mechanically (as a Catholic crosses himself if he pass a shrine): “The
soul flies away, and none can go with it.”


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                  XIV

                           THE HORSE AS HERO


FIFTY years ago the knell of the horse was rung, with due solemnity, by
the American statesman, Charles Sumner. The age of chivalry, he said,
was gone—an age of humanity had come; “the horse, whose importance more
than human, gave the name to that period of gallantry and war, now
yields his foremost place to man.” As a matter of fact, the horse is
yielding his foremost place to the motor-car, to the machine; and this
is the topsy-turvy way in which most of the millennial hopes of the
mid-nineteenth century are being fulfilled by the twentieth; the big
dream of a diviner day ends in a reality out of which all that is ideal
is fading. But the reason why I quote the passage is the service which
it renders as a reminder of the often forgotten meaning of the word
“chivalry.” The horse was connected with the ideals no less than with
the realities of the phase in human history that was called after him;
the mental consequences of the partnership between man and that noble
beast were not less far reaching than the physical. There are a hundred
types of human character, some of them of the highest, in the making of
which the horse counts for nothing; but this type, this figure of the
very perfect gentle knight, cannot be imagined in a horseless world. We
hear of what man taught animals, but less of what animals taught man. In
the unity of emotion between horse and rider something is exchanged.
Even the epithets which it is natural to apply to the knightly hero, one
and all fit his steed: defiant and gentle, daring and devoted, trusty
and tireless, a scorner of obstacles, of a gay, brave spirit—the list
could be lengthened at will. And the qualities and even the defects they
had in common were not so much the result of accident as the true fruit
of their mutual interdependence.

In the aftermath of chivalry which produced the song-writers and the
splendid adventurers of the Elizabethan age, horsemanship came again to
the fore as a passion rather than as a mere necessary pursuit. We know
that, not satisfied with what England could provide, the fashionable
young men frequented the schools of skilled Italians, generally of noble
birth, such as Corte da Pavia, who was Queen Elizabeth’s riding-master.
The prevailing taste is reflected in Shakespeare, who, though he was for
all time, was yet, essentially of his own; his innumerable allusions to
horses show, in the first place, that he knew all about them, as he did
about most things, and in the second, that he knew that these allusions
would please his audience, which no born dramatist ever treated as a
negligible quantity, and the least of all Shakespeare. Even the
performing or “thinking” horse does not escape his notice; “the dancing
horse will tell you,” in “Love’s Labour Lost,” refers to the “Hans” or
“Trixie” of the period who also attracted the attention of Ben Jonson,
Downe, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir Walter Raleigh, Hall, and John Taylor, the
water-poet. This animal’s name was “Morocco” but he was often called
“Bankes’ horse,” from his master who taught him to tell the number of
pence in silver coins and the number of points in throws of dice, and on
one occasion made him walk to the top of St. Paul’s. Alas, for the fate
of “Morocco” and his master, “Being beyond the sea burnt for one witch,”
as chronicled by Ben Jonson! Like Esmeralda and her goat, they were
accused of magic, and the charge, first started at Orleans, was followed
by condemnation and death in Rome. Greater tragedies of superstition
hardly come with such a shock as this stupid slaughter of a poor showman
and his clever beast.

In Elizabethan society interest in horses was directed chiefly to the
turnings and windings, the “shapes and tricks” of the riding-school, and
this lighter way of looking on them as affording man his most splendid
diversion is, in the main, Shakespeare’s way—though he does not forget
that, at times, a horse may be worth a kingdom. Not to him, however, or
to any modern poet, do we go for the unique, incomparable description of
the truly heroic horse, the uncowed charger of the East, created to awe
rather than to be awed by man, whom no image of servility would fit.
Here is this specimen of the world’s greatest poetry, in case any one be
so unfortunate as not to know it by heart:—

“He paweth in the valley and rejoiceth in his strength; he goeth on to
meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither
turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the
glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with
fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the
trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha! ha! He smelleth the battle
afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting.”

How the portrait leaps out of the page into life as Velasquez’s horse in
the Prado leaps out of his frame! We feel the pulse of a passion which
throbs through every vein from head to hoof. This Triumph of the
War-horse is one of the points of affinity in the Book of Job with Arab
rather than with Hebrew civilisation. The text itself is nearer Arabic
than any other Biblical book, and the life of the protagonist is very
like the life of an ancient Arabian chieftain. The Jews proper cared
little for horses; when they fell into their hands they knew no better
than to destroy them. They were a pastoral people, at no time fond of
sport, which was hardly recognised as lawful by their religious
ordinances. They do not seem to have ridden on horseback. Zechariah,
indeed, speaks of the war-horse, but only to represent him as the
beautiful image of peace, no more mixing in the fray, but bearing on his
bell (which was meant to affright the foe) the inscription: “Holiness
unto the Lord.”

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Mansell._
  THE ASSYRIAN HORSE.
  British Museum.]

On the other hand, the Arab, and, most of all, the Nomadic Arab, has a
dual existence with his horse. He could not live without it; it is a
part of himself—of all that makes him himself and not another. The same
is true of the Todas and their buffaloes, the Lapps and their reindeer.
In summer when the reindeer are in the hills, to save them from what is
there called the heat, a Lapp seems only half a Lapp; but his thoughts
are still of reindeer and his fingers are busy with scratching its
likeness on his spoons, his milk-bowls, his implements of all sorts, all
of which are made of reindeer-horn. His songs are still of reindeer:
“While the reindeer lasts, the Lapp will last; when the reindeer fails,
the Lapp will fail,” as ran the infinitely pathetic ditty I heard sung
by a Lapp woman who was shown to me as the best singer of the tribe.

With all these people the flesh of the beloved animal is esteemed the
greatest delicacy; a fact in which there seems to lie suggestions of
cannibalism in its real psychological aspect—the eating of the hero in
order to acquire his attributes. Sometimes, however, the reason may be
simply that they were for long periods in the impossibility of obtaining
other meat; since the natural man prefers food to which he has grown
familiar.

In what is probably the oldest version of Boccaccio’s Falcon story, the
Emperor of Constantinople sends to ask a very generous præ-Islamic Arab
Chief, by name Hatem Tai (celebrated as the type of chivalry over all
the Moslem world), to give him a horse which Hatem is known to value
beyond all his possessions. The object of the demand was to put his
reputation for generosity to the test. The officer, who is the bearer of
the Emperor’s request, is regaled sumptuously on the evening of his
arrival; and, according to the laws of Oriental courtesy, he puts off
speaking of the business in hand till next day. When he delivers his
message Hatem replies that he would have complied gladly, but that the
officer had eaten the horse last night for supper! The horse was the
most costly and coveted food which the chief could offer his guest, and
the story becomes thus more intelligible than when the victim is an
uneatable bird like a hawk.

In Oriental poetry the camel “who asks but a thorn from the bed of roses
of the world” takes a well-merited share of attention, but the animal
which is before all others the Eastern poets’ beast is, of course, the
horse: he might himself be called the poet as well as the prince among
beasts, for if any living thing incarnates the poetry “of form, of
motion, of glad devotion,” it is surely the high-bred Arab steed.
Innumerable tributes credit him with three parts human qualities:—

    “The courser looks his love as plainly as if he could speak,
     He waves his mane, his paws, he curls his nostrils and his lips;
     He makes half-vocal sounds, uprears or droops his neck and hips,
     His deep and pensive eyes light up with lambent flame, then seem
     As if they swam in the desires of some mysterious dream.”[8]

Footnote 8:

  Translated by W. R. Alger.

Of the true Arab horse it is said that his foot is so light that he
could dance on a woman’s breast without leaving a bruise. Some of the
Arabian ballads of horses are among the very few Oriental poems which
have acquired universal fame, as that which tells of how the peerless
Lahla picked up his captured and bound master and carried him with his
teeth back to the tribe, on reaching which he sinks dead, amidst the
tears and lamentations of all. Horses, the Koran expressly says, were
created for man’s use, but also “to be an ornament unto him”: all the
romance, the valour, the deep-seated aristocratic instinct of the Arab,
proudest of mankind, is bound up with his horse. The splendid Arab chief
who stands aside motionless to let go by an automobile carrying a party
of tourists across the Sahara reflects, as he draws his burnoose closer
over his mouth, “_This_ is the ‘_ornament_’ of Western man!” And,
looking at his horse, which stands motionless as he (for the Arab steed
fears nothing when his master is near), he adds to himself: “These
pass—we remain.” False it may be as a prophecy, but he believes it
_because convinced of his superiority_.

Still by the camp-fires in the desert they tell the old story of a great
chief who, in præ-Gallic times, was taken prisoner by the Emir’s
horsemen. He escaped, but hardly had he reached his tent when in the
desert air, in which sounds are heard afar off, a clattering of hoofs
could be distinguished—the Sultan’s men were coming! The chief sprang on
his mare and fled. When the men came up they knew that only one horse
could overtake the mare, her beautiful sister, not less swift than she.
A soldier leapt from his own horse intending to mount her, but the
chiefs son, yet a child, instantly shot her dead with a pistol. And so
the chief was saved.

The Ulemas of Algeria say that when God wished to create the mare He
spoke to the wind: “I will cause thee to bring forth a creature that
shall bear all My worshippers, that shall be loved by My slaves, and
that will cause the despair of all who will not follow My laws.” And
when He had created her He said: “I have made thee without an equal: the
goods of this world shall be placed between thy eyes; everywhere I will
make thee happy and preferred above all the beasts of the field, for
tenderness shall everywhere be in the heart of thy master; good alike
for the chase and retreat, thou shalt fly though wingless, and I will
only place on thy back the men who know me, who will offer ME prayers
and thanksgivings; men who shall be My worshippers from one generation
to another.”

For the Arab the horse was not only the means of performing great
enterprises but the very object of life, the thing in itself most
precious, the care, the preoccupation, and the prize. The Arab’s horse
is his kingdom.

[Illustration:

  ARABIAN HORSE OF THE SAHARA.]

I suppose that there is no doubt that the knightly type was a flower
transported from the East, though, like many other Eastern flowers, it
grew to its best in European gardens. The Crusaders learnt more than
they taught. Coming down later, the national hero of Spain, for all his
pure Gothic blood, is an Eastern not a Western hero. He will be
understood far better when he is tried by this standard. If we weigh him
in Eastern rather than in Western scales, a more lenient and above all a
juster judgment will be the result, and we shall see how the fine
qualities with which legend credits him were not disproved by some acts
which the modern Western conscience condemns. On the whole it may be
taken for granted, in spite of all that has been said to the contrary,
that tradition which easily errs about facts, is rarely wrong about
character.

Ruy Diaz de Bivar was a hero after the Arab’s own heart:—

                   “Noble y leal, soldado y Caballero,
                    Señor te apellido la gente Mora,”

as the lines run on his coffin in the town-hall at Burgos. Nothing being
sacred to a critic, it has been contested that he was first called “Myo
Cid,” or “My Lord,” by the Moors, but tradition and etymology agree too
well for this to be reasonably doubted. It is certain that both Moors
and Christians called him by his other title of Campeador in Spanish and
Al-kambeyator in the form the Arabic writers gave it. It was derived
from his gallantry in single combats and did not mean, as some have
thought, “Champion of the Christians.”

It is entirely in keeping with the Cid’s Arab affinities that his horse
should have attained a fame almost as great as his own. From Bucephalus
to Copenhagen never was there a European horse equal in renown to
Bavieca. His glory, is it not writ in nearly every one of the hundred
ballads of the Cid? The choosing of Bavieca is one of the most striking
events in the Cid’s youth. The boy asked his godfather, a fat,
good-natured old priest, to give him a colt. The priest took him to a
field where the mares and their colts were being exercised and told him
to take the best. They were driven past him and he let all the
handsomest go by; then a mare came up with an ugly and miserable-looking
colt—“This,” he cried, “is the one for me!” His godfather was angry and
called him a simpleton, but the lad only answered that the horse would
turn out well and that “Simpleton” (“Bavieca”) should be his name.

Horses which begin as ugly ducklings and end as swans are an extensive
breed. Count de Gubernatis, in his valuable work on “Zoological
Mythology,” mentions Hatos, the magical horse of the Hungarians, as
belonging to this class. If as old as the oldest legend, they are, in a
sense, as new as the “outsider” which carries off one of the greatest
prizes of the Turf. The choosing of Bavieca was in the mind of Cervantes
when he described in his inimitable way the choosing of Rozinante
(“ex-jade”), who never became anything but a _rozin_ in the most present
tense, except in the imagination of his master, but who will live for
ever in his company, to bear witness to the indivisible oneness of the
knight and his horse.

Completely Oriental in sentiment is the splendid ballad which relates
how the Cid offered Bavieca to his king because it was not meet that a
subject should have a horse so far more precious than any possessed by
his lord. There is in this not only the act of homage but also the
absorbing pride which made the Arab who was overtaking a horse-stealer,
shout to him the secret sign at which his stolen mare would go her best,
preferring to lose her than to vanquish her.

        “O king, the thing is shameful that any man beside
         The liege lord of Castile himself should Bavieca ride.
         For neither Spain nor Araby could another charger bring
         So good as he, and certes, the best befits the king.”

The gorgeous simplicity of the original is missed by Lockhart in the
succeeding verses, in which the Cid, before giving up the horse, mounts
him to show his worth, his ermine mantle hanging from his shoulders. He
will do, he says, in the presence of the king what he has not done for
long except in battle with the Moor: he will touch Bavieca with his
spurs. Then comes the maddest, wildest, yet most accomplished display of
noble horsemanship that ever witched the world. One rein breaks and the
beholders tremble for his life, but with ease and grace he guides the
foaming and panting horse before the king and prepares to yield him up.
Then Alfonso cries, God forbid that he should take him: he shall be
accounted, indeed, as his, but shameful would it be

         “That peerless Bavieca should ever be bestrid
          By any mortal but Bivar—‘Mount, mount again, my Cid!’”

There is a spot in Spain where we still seem to breathe the very air of
chivalrous romance: the royal armoury at Madrid, in which the mail-clad
knights with their plumes, their housings, their lances, their trophies,
sit their fine horses as gallantly as if they were riding straight into
the lists. There, and there alone, we can invoke the proper _mise en
scène_ for the gestes and jousts described in the Spanish ballads.

Historically, it seems certain that the Cid died at Valencia in July,
1099, an access of grief that his captains—who, owing to his ill-health,
were obliged to replace him—had failed to hold the Moors in check. King
Alfonso came to the assistance of his noble widow, Jimena, but finally
Valencia had to be abandoned; all the Christians left the town and the
Cid’s body was borne to his distant Northern home. Such is the
historical outline, sufficiently pathetic in itself but adorned with
additions, not all of them, perhaps, invented in the sublime legend of
the Last Ride. It is said that the Cid, knowing that his last hour was
near, refrained from any food except certain draughts of rose-water in
which were dissolved the myrrh and balsam sent to him by the great
Sultan of Persia. He gave particular instructions as to how his body was
to be anointed with the myrrh and balsam which remained in the golden
caskets, and how it was to be set upright on Bavieca, fully saddled and
armed, to be still a terror to the Moors, who were to be kept in
complete ignorance of his death. All this was done and a great victory
was won over the Moors, who thought they saw their dreaded enemy once
more commanding in person. Then the victors started on the long journey
to San Pedro de Cardeña, near Burgos, the Cid riding his horse by day,
supported by an artful contrivance, and by night placed on a dummy horse
wrought by Gil Diaz, his devoted servitor. Jimena, with all the Cid’s
men, followed in his train. On the way the procession is joined by the
Cid’s two daughters and by a great mass of people who mourned in their
hearts for Spain’s greatest hero, but they wore rich and gay apparel,
for the Cid had forbidden the wearing of mourning. So Cardeña was
reached, and tenderly and lovingly Ruy Diaz lifted the Cid’s body for
the last time from Bavieca’s back—never more to bear a man. The glorious
war-horse lived for two years, led to water each day by Gil Diaz. On his
death, at more than forty years of age and leaving not unworthy
descendants behind him, he was buried, according to the Cid’s express
desire, in a deep and ample grave, “so that no dog might disturb his
bones,” near the gate of the Convent, and two elms were planted to mark
the spot. When Gil Diaz died, full of years and richly provided for by
the Cid’s daughters, he was laid to rest beside the horse he had loved
and tended so faithfully.

In this narrative, condensed from the Chronicles, the curious particular
will have been noticed of the gift by the “Great Sultan of Persia” to
the Christian warrior of those precious spices and aromatic gums which
seem to have been the secret treasure of old Persia, forming a priceless
offering reserved for the very greatest personages. The strangeness of
bringing in the Sultan of Persia almost suggests that there was truth in
the assertion that he had sent presents to the Cid. Over the sea and
over the fruitful fields the radiance of noble deeds travels, as Pinder
said of old. A little after the march of the Thousand, the Arabs of the
desert were heard discussing round their camp-fires the exploits of
Garibaldi. If the fame of the Cid reached Persia, as it is very likely
that it did, he would have found fervent admirers among a people which
was still electrified by the epic poem of Firdusi, who died within a
year or two of the Cid’s birth. In that epic is told the story of the
Persian Campeador—the Champion Rustem, who not only in his title but in
all we know of his general bearings has so great a resemblance to the
Cid that it is a wonder if no historical “discoverer” has derived one
from the other, the more so since there have not been wanting writers
who denied the Cid’s existence. And if Ruy Diaz de Bivar has his
analogue in Rustem, has not Bavieca a perfect counterpart in Rakush?

It is the horse not his master that leads me into the mazes of the _Shah
Nameh_, but something of Rustem must be told to make Rakush’s story
intelligible. Like Siegfried, Rustem was of extraordinary size and
strength: he looked a year old on the day of his birth. When he was
still a child a white elephant broke loose and began trampling the
people to death: Rustem ran to the rescue and slew it. A little time
after this his father, whose name was Zal, called the boy and showed him
all his horses, desiring him to choose that which pleased him best, but
not one was powerful enough or spirited enough to satisfy him. Unlike
the Cid, Rustem wanted a horse that looked as perfect as he really was.
After examining them all and trying many, he noticed at a little
distance a mare followed by a marvellously beautiful foal. Rustem got
ready his noose to throw about the foal’s neck, and while he did so, a
stable-man whispered to him that this foal was, indeed, worth anything
to secure; the dam, named Abresh, was famous, while the sire had been no
mortal creature but a djinn. The foal’s name was Rakush (“Lightning”), a
name given to a dappled or piebald horse, and his coat, that was as soft
as silk, looked like rose-leaves strewn on a saffron ground. Several
persons who had tried already to capture the foal had been killed by the
mare, who allowed no one to go near it.

In fact, no sooner has Rustem lassoed the foal than its mother rushes
towards him ready to seize him with her white teeth, which glisten in
the sun. Rustem utters a loud cry which so startles the mare that she
pauses for an instant: then, with clenched fist, he rains blow on blow
on her head and neck till she drops down to die. It was done in
self-defence: still, it is a barbaric prelude.

Rustem continued to hold Rakush with his free hand while he conquered
the mare, but now the colt drags him hither and thither like an
inanimate object: the dauntless youth has to strive long for the
mastery, but he does not rest till the end is achieved. The horse is
broken in at one breath, after the fashion of American cow-boys. It
should be noticed that legendary heroes always break in their own
horses—no other influence has been ever brought to bear on the horse but
their own. Rakush has found a master indeed, but a master worthy of him.
He has recognised that there is one—only one—fit to rule him. Like all
true heroes’ horses, he will suffer no other mortal to mount him: if
Barbary really allowed Bolingbroke to ride him it was a sure sign that
his poor royal master was no hero. This same characteristic belonged
also to Julius Cæsar’s horse, which was a remarkable animal in more ways
than one, as he was reported to have feet like a human being. I have no
doubt that Soloman’s white mare, Koureen, followed the same rule as well
as the angel Gabriel’s reputed steed, Haziûm, though I have not found
record of the fact.

When the colt is broken in, he stands before his master perfect and
without flaw. “Now I and my horse are ready to join the fighting-men in
the field,” says Rustem as he places the saddle on his back, to the
boundless joy of Zal, whose old, withered heart becomes as green as
springtide with the thrill of fatherly pride.

So Rakush is richly caparisoned and Rustem rides away on him, beardless
youth though he is, to command great armies, slay fearsome dragons,
defeat the wiles of sorcerers, and do all the other feats with which the
fresh fancy of a young nation embroidered the story of its favourite
hero—for, it must be remembered, Firdusi did not invent Rustem any more
than Tennyson invented Lancelot. I think there is every reason to
believe that there was a real Rustem just as there was a real Cid; and
that the first, like the second, was a combination of the _guerrillero_,
the _condottiere_, the magnificent free-booter, with the knight-errant
or paladin—a stamp which was impressed upon the other _rôle_ by the
personal quality of noble-mindedness possessed by the individual in each
case. For years unnumbered the exploits of Rustem have entertained the
Persian listener from prince to peasant, but the story will ever remain
young because it is of those which reflect that which holds mankind
spell-bound: the magnetic power of human personality.

One hears the clear, crisp clatter of the horse’s hoofs as they gallop
through the epic. Docile as Rakush has become, his spirit is unbent; he
is eager to fight his own battles and his master’s too. Like Baiardo,
the horse in Ariosto, he uses his hoofs with deadly effect, and on one
occasion there is a regular duel between him and another horse while
Rustem is fighting its rider. His rashness inspires Rustem with much
anxiety in their earlier journeys together. Quite at the beginning, when
Rustem is on his way to liberate his captive king—his first “labour”—he
lies down to sleep in a forest, leaving Rakush free to graze, and what
is not his surprise when he wakes to find a large lion extended dead on
the grass close by. Rakush killed the savage beast with teeth and heels
while his master slept tranquilly. Rustem remonstrates with his too
venturesome steed: Why did he fight the lion all alone? Why did he not
neigh loudly and call for assistance? Had he reflected how terribly
unfortunate it would be for Rustem if anything were to happen to him?
Who would carry his heavy battle-axe and all his other accoutrements? He
conjures Rakush to fight no more lions single-handed. Then and at other
times Rustem talks to Rakush, but Rakush does not answer like the horse
of Achilles. The Persians of the eleventh century had reached the stage
of people who take their marvels with discrimination; they accepted
Simurghs, white demons, phantom elks, giants, dragons, but they might
have hesitated about a talking horse. Another of Rustem’s addresses to
his horse was spoken after one of his first victories when the enemy was
in full retreat: “My valued friend,” he said, “put forth thine utmost
speed and bear me after the foe.” The noble animal certainly understood,
for he bounded over the plain snorting as he flew along and tossing up
his mane, and great was the booty which fell into his master’s hands.
Rustem once said that with his arms and his trusty steed he would not
mind fighting thirty thousand men. As a matter of fact, he never lacked
followers, for he was of those captains who have only to stamp on the
ground for there to spring up soldiers.

In the nineteenth century a “legendary hero” wandered with his horse
over the plains of Uruguay much as Rustem wandered with Rakush. “In my
nomad life in America,” writes Garibaldi, “after a long march or a day’s
fighting, I unsaddled my poor tired horse and smoothed and dried his
coat ... rarely could I offer him a handful of oats since those
illimitable fields provide so little grain that oats are not often given
to horses. Then, after leading him to water, I settled him for the night
near my own resting-place. Well, when all this was done, which was no
more than a duty to my faithful companion of toil and peril, I felt
content, and if by chance he neighed, refreshed, or rolled on the green
turf—oh, then I tasted _la gentil voluttà d’esser pio_!” Marvels are out
of date, but feeling remains unchanged, and the “sweets of kindness”
were known, surely, even to the earliest hero who made a friend of his
horse and found him, in the solitude of the wild, no bad substitute for
human friends.

In the story of Sohrab, one of the finest episodes in epic poetry,
Rakush is introduced as the primary cause of it all. Tired with hunting
in the forest, and perhaps inclined to sleep by a meal of roasted wild
ass, which seems to have been his favourite game, Rustem lay down to
rest under a tree, turning Rakush free to graze as was his wont. When he
awoke the horse was nowhere to be seen! Rustem looked for his prints, a
way of recovering stolen animals still practised with astonishing
success in India. He found the prints and guessed that his favourite had
been carried off by robbers, which was what had actually happened: a
band of Tartar marauders lassoed the horse with their kamunds and
dragged him home. Rustem followed the track over the border of the
little state of Samengan, the king of which, warned of the approach of
the hero of the age, went out to meet him on foot with great deference.
The hero, however, was in no mood for compliments; full of wrath, he
told the king that his horse had been stolen and that he had traced his
footprints to Samengan. The king kept his presence of mind better than
might have been expected; he made profuse excuses and declared that no
effort should be spared to recover the horse—meanwhile he prayed Rustem
to become his honoured guest.

Emissaries were sent in all directions in search of Rakush and a grand
entertainment was prepared for his master. Pleased and placated, Rustem,
who had spared little time for luxury in his adventurous life, finally
lay down on a delightful and beautifully adorned bed. How poetic was
sleep when it was associated, not with an erection on four legs, but
with a low couch spread with costly furs and rich Eastern stuffs! So
Rustem reposed, when his eyes opened on a living dream, a maiden
standing by his side, her lovely features illuminated by a lamp which a
slave girl held. “I am the daughter of the king,” says the fair vision;
“no one man has ever seen my face or even heard my voice. I have heard
of thy wondrous valour....” Rustem, still wondering if he slept or woke,
asked her what was her will? She answered that she loved him for his
fame and glory, and that she had vowed to God she would wed no other
man. Behold, God has brought him to her! She desires him to ask her hand
to-morrow of her father and so departs, lighted on her way by the little
slave.

Was ever anything more chaste in its self-abandonment than the avowal of
this love, holy as Desdemona’s and irresistible as Senta’s? Nowhere in
fiction can be found a more convincing illustration of the truth that
the essential spring of woman’s love for man is hero-worship. On which
truth, in spite of the illusions it covers, what is best in human
evolution is largely built.

The king gave glad assent to the marriage, which was celebrated
according to the rites of that country. Rustem tarried but one night
with his bride: in the morning with weeping eyes she watched him
galloping away on the recovered Rakush. Long she grieved, and only when
a son was born was her sad heart comforted. The grandfather gave the boy
the name of Sohrab. Rustem had left an amulet to be placed in the hair
if God gave her a daughter but bound round the arm if a son were born.

In due course Rustem sent a gift of costly jewels to his wife Tahmineh,
with inquiries whether the birth of a child had blessed the marriage?
And now the mother of Sohrab made the fatal mistake of a deception which
led to all the evil that followed; she sent word that a girl had been
born because she was afraid that if Rustem knew that he had a son, he
would take him from her. Rustem, disappointed in his hopes, thought no
more about Samengan.

There is no hint that Tahmineh’s fibbing, which, like very many other
“white lies,” ended in dire disaster, was in the slightest degree the
moral as well as the actual cause of the fatality. Herodotus said that
every Persian child was taught to ride and to speak the truth; by
Firdusi’s time the second part of the instruction seems to have been
neglected, for in the _Shah Nameh_ he makes everybody give full rein to
his powers of invention without the slightest scruple. The bad
consequences are attributed to blind fate, not to seeing Nemesis.

What is so agonising in the doom of Sohrab is precisely the lack of
moral cause such as exists in the Greek tragedies. Though we do not
accept as a reality the Greek theory of retribution, we do accept it as
a point of view, and it helps us, as it helped them, to endure the
unspeakable horror of the Ædipus story.

Sohrab goes forth, with a boy’s enthusiasm, to conquer Persia as a
present to his unknown father. The two meet, and are incited to engage
in single combat, each not knowing the other. After a Titanic contest,
Sohrab falls fatally wounded, and only then does Rustem discover his
identity. Matthew Arnold’s poem has familiarised English readers with
this wonderful scene, and though the “atmosphere” with which he
surrounded it, is rather classical than Eastern, his “Sohrab and Rustum”
remains the finest rendering of an Eastern story in English poetry. Some
blind guide blamed him for “plagiarising” Firdusi: in a few points he
might have done wisely to follow his original still more closely; at
least, it is a pity that he did not enshrine in his own beautiful poem
Sohrab’s touching words of comfort to his distracted father: “None is
immortal—why this grief?” Brave, spotless, kind, Firdusi’s hero-victim
who “came as the lightning and went as the wind” will always rank with
the highest in the House of the Youthful Dead.

Sohrab had a horse as well as Rustem. This sort of repetition or
variation which is often met with in Eastern literature pleases
children, who like an incident much the better if they are already
acquainted with it, but to the mature sense of the West it seems a fault
in art. No doubt for this reason Matthew Arnold does not mention
Sohrab’s horse, while doing full justice to Rakush. But connected with
the young man’s charger there is a scene of the deepest human interest
and pathos, when it is led back to his mourning, sonless mother who had
watched him ride forth on it, rejoicing in its strength and in his own.
It was chosen by him and saddled by him for the first time in his glad
boyhood; now it is led back alone, with his arms and trappings hanging
from the saddle-bows. In an agony of grief Tahmineh presses its hoofs to
her breast and kisses head and face, covering them with her tears.

The mother dies after a year of ceaseless heartbreak; the father and
slayer grieves with a strong man’s mighty grief, but he lives to
struggle and fight. He and his Rakush have many more wondrous
adventures, passing through enchantments and disenchantments and
undergoing wounds and marvellous cures both of men and beast, till their
hour too comes. Rustem had a base-born half-brother, named Shughad, who
was carefully brought up and wedded to a king’s daughter, though the
astrologers had foretold that he would bring ruin to his house. This
evil genius invites his invincible kinsman to a day’s hunting, having
secretly prepared hidden pits bristling with swords. The wise Rakush
stops short at the brink of the first pit, refusing to advance; Rustem
is stirred to anger and strikes his favourite, who, urged thus, falls
into the pit, but with superhuman energy, though cruelly cut about,
emerges from it with his rider safely on his back. It is in vain, for
another and another pit awaits them—seven times they come up, hacked
about with wounds, but on rising out of the seventh pit they both sink
dying at the edge. Faintness clouds Rustem’s brain; then, for a little
space, it grows clear and cool and he utters the accusing cry, “_Thou,
my brother!_” The wretch’s answer is no defence of him—there can exist
none—but strangely, unexpectedly, in spite of the impure lips that speak
it, it gives the justification of God’s ways. “God has willed Rustem’s
end for all the blood he has shed.” From his own stern faith with its
Semitic roots, Firdusi took this great, solemn conception of
blood-guiltiness which allowed no compromise. “Thou hast shed blood
abundantly and hast made great wars.” One thinks, too, of the wail of
one who was of modern men, the most like the old Hebrew type: “All I
have done,” said Bismarck in his old age, “is to cause many tears to
flow.”

The king, who is the father-in-law of Shughad, offers to send for a
magic balm to cure Rustem’s wounds, but the hero will have none of it.
He is now quite collected, though his life-blood is ebbing away. In a
quiet voice he asks Shughad to do him the kindness of stringing his bow
and placing it in his hands, so that when dead he may be a scarecrow to
keep away wolves and wild beasts from devouring his body. With a hateful
smile of triumph Shughad complies; Rustem grasps the bow, and taking
unerring aim lets go the arrow, which nails the traitor to the tree,
whither he rushed to hide himself. So Rustem dies, thanking the Almighty
for giving him the power to avenge his murder.

There are few better instances of the long survival of a traditional
sentiment than the fact of the king’s (or the chief’s) stable being
regarded in modern Persia as an inviolable sanctuary. This must have
originated in the veneration once felt for the horse. The misfortunes
which befell the grandson of Nadir Shah were attributed to his having
put to death a man who took refuge in his stable. No horse will carry to
victory a master who profanes his stable with bloodshed. Even political
offenders or pretenders to the throne were safe if they could reach the
stable for as long as they remained in it.


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                   XV

                       ANIMALS IN EASTERN FICTION


I WAS looking idly at the motley Damascus crowd behind whose outward
strangeness to my eyes I knew there lay a deeper strangeness of ideas,
when in the middle of a clearing I saw a monkey in a red fez which began
to go through its familiar tricks. I thought to myself, “How very near
that monkey seems to me!” It was like the well-known figure of an old
friend. So it is with the animal-lore of Eastern fiction; it seems very
near to us; its heroes are our familiar friends. Perhaps we would lose
everything in the treasure-house of Oriental tales sooner than the
stories of beasts. If those stories had a hidden meaning which escapes
us we are not troubled by their hidden meaning. In their obvious sense
they appeal to us directly, without any effort to call up conditions of
life and mind far removed from our own. We take them to our hearts and
keep them there.

Indeed, the West liked the Eastern stories of beasts so well that it
borrowed not a few without any acknowledgment. We all know that the
Welsh dog, Gellert, whose grave is shown to this day, had a near
relative in the mungoose of a Chinese Buddhist story which exists in a
collection dating from the fifth century. The same motive reappears in
the _Panchatantra_, a Sanscrit collection to which is assigned a
slightly later date. These are the earliest traces of it that have come
to light, but its subsequent wanderings are endless. The theme does not
vary much; a faithful animal saves a child from imminent peril: it is
seen with marks of blood or signs of a struggle upon it, and on the
supposition that it has killed or hurt the child, it is killed before
the truth is discovered. The animal varies according to the locality,
and amongst the other points of interest in this world-legend is that of
reminding us of the universal diffusion of pet animals. We learn, too,
which was the characteristically household animal with the people who
re-tell the story: in Syria, Greece, Spain, as in Wales, and also
(rather to our surprise) among the Jews, we hear of a dog. The weasel
tribe prevails in India and China, the cat in Persia. Probably in India
and in China dogs were not often admitted inside the houses; in a
Chinese analogous tale, of which I shall speak presently, there is a
dog, but the incidents take place on the highway. The mungoose was the
traditional pet of India because its enmity to snakes must have gained
for it admittance into dwelling-places from very early times, and
wherever man lives in domesticity with any animal that he does not look
upon as food, he cannot save himself from becoming attached to it only a
little less than he is attached to the human members of his household.
To this rule there are no exceptions.

In the matter of folk-tales, even when we seem to have a clue to their
origin, it is rash to be dogmatic. It has been remarked that the origin
of this story was probably Buddhist, because it is unquestionable that
Buddhist monks purposely taught humanity to animals. Supposing that the
story was diffused with a fixed purpose over the vast area covered at
one time or another by Buddhism, it would have started with a wide base
whence to spread. Moreover, as I mentioned, we find it first in a
Buddhist collection of stories. But I am far from sure that the story
did not exist—nay, that the fact may not have happened—long before
Gautama preached his humane morality. Why should not the fact have
happened over and over again? It is one of those stories that are more
true than truth. I can tell a perfectly true tale which, though not
quite the same as “Gellert’s hound,” deserves no less to go round the
world. A few years ago a man went out in a boat on a French river to
drown his dog. In mid stream he threw the dog into the water and began
to row away. The dog followed and tried to clamber up into the boat. The
man gave it some severe blows about the head with the oar, but the dog
still followed the boat. Then the man lost his temper and lost his
balance: just as he aimed what he thought would be the final blow he
tumbled into the water, and as he did not know how to swim he was on the
point of being drowned. Then the dog played his part: he grasped the
man’s clothes with his teeth and held him up till assistance came. That
dog was never drowned!

Things are soon forgotten now, but if this had only happened on a
Chinese canal three thousand years ago we might still have been hearing
about it. More folk-tales arose in such a way than an unbelieving world
suspects.

In the Chinese Buddhist version of Gellert we are told that a very poor
Brahman who had to beg his bread possessed a pet mungoose, which, as he
had no children, became as fondly loved as if it had been his son. How
true is this touch which shows the love of animals as the _katharsis_ of
the heart-ache or heartbreak of the childless! But, by and by, to the
great joy of the Brahman, his wife bore him a son; after this happy
event he cherished the mungoose even more than ever, for he said to
himself that it was the fact of his having treated it as if it had been
his child which had brought him the unhoped-for good luck of having a
real child of his own. One day the Brahman went out to beg, but before
he went out he told his wife to be sure and take good care of the child
and carry it with her if she left the house even for a minute. The woman
fed the child with cream and then remembered that she had to grind some
rice; she went into the garden to grind it and forgot to take the little
boy with her. After she was gone, a snake, attracted by the smell of the
cream, crept quite close to where the child lay and was going to bite
it, when the mungoose perceived what was going on and reflected: “My
father has gone out and my mother too and now this poisonous snake
wishes to kill my little brother.” So the mungoose attacked the
poisonous snake and tore it into seven pieces. Then it thought that,
since it had killed the snake and saved the child, it ought to acquaint
its father and mother of what had happened and rejoice their hearts.
Therefore it went to the door and waited for them to return, its mouth
still covered with blood. Just then the Brahman came home and he was not
pleased to see his wife without the child in the out-house, where the
mill was. Thus, though this is left for the hearer to infer, he was
already vexed and anxious, when he met the mungoose waiting by the door
with blood on its mouth. The thought rushed into his mind, “This
creature, being hungry, has slain and eaten the child! “He took up a
stick and beat the mungoose to death. (Such a little thing, it is so
easily killed!) After that he went into the house, where he found the
baby sitting up in his cradle playing merrily with his fingers, while
the seven pieces of the dead snake lay beside him! Sorrow filled the
Brahman now; alas, for his folly! The faithful creature had saved his
child and he, thoughtless wretch that he was, had killed it!

Only in this version are we informed of just what the devoted animal
thought; which may be a sign of its Buddhist origin. In the modern
Indian variant, the mungoose, tied by a string, does not succeed in
getting free till after the child has been bitten by the snake with
which he had been playing, thinking it a new toy. The cobra took the
play in good part till the child accidentally hurt it; then, angry with
the pain, it bit him in the neck. When the mungoose got loose the deed
was done and the cobra had slunk back into its hole. Off ran the
mungoose into the jungle to find the antidote which the Indian natives
believe that this creature always uses when it is itself bitten by
snakes. The mother comes in at the moment when the mungoose is returning
with the antidote: she sees the child lying motionless, and thinking
that the mungoose has killed it she seizes it and dashes it to the
ground. It quivers for a few seconds, then it dies. Only when it is
dead, does the mother notice the snake-root which it still holds tightly
in its mouth. She guesses the whole truth and quickly administers the
antidote to the child, who recovers consciousness. The mungoose “had
been a great pet with all the children and was greatly mourned for.”

In the Sanscrit version preserved in the _Panchatantra_ collection the
mother has brought up an ichneumon with her only child, as if it had
been his brother; nevertheless, a sort of fear has always haunted her
that the animal might hurt the child sooner or later. I must interrupt
the story to remark how often the inglorious Shakespeare of these poor
little folk-tales traces with no mean art the psychological process
which leads up to the tragic crisis. What more true to life than the
observation of the two opposing feelings balancing each other in the
same mind till some accident causes one of them to gain uncontrollable
mastery?

When the woman has killed her innocent little favourite she is bitterly
unhappy, but instead of blaming her own hastiness, she says it was all
her husband’s fault: what business had he to go out begging, “through a
greedy desire of profit,” instead of minding the baby as she had told
him to do, while she went to the well to fetch water? And now the
reprobate has caused the death of the ichneumon, the darling of the
house!

The touching trait of the creature, which runs to its master or mistress
after saving the child, with the charming confidence and pride which any
animal shows when it knows that it deserves praise, appears in nearly
all the versions. Prince Llewellyn’s greyhound goes out to meet him “all
bloody and _wagging his tail_.” The ichneumon ran joyously to meet its
mistress, and the cat, in the Persian version, came up to its master
“rubbing against his legs.” In the Persian tale the child’s mother dies
at its birth, and it is stated that she was very fond of the cat, which
made the man even more grieved that he had killed it.

In German folk-lore the story of the dog “Sultan” sounds as if it were
invented by some happy-souled humorist who had the Llewellyn motive in
his mind, but who wanted to tell a merry tale instead of a sad one.
“Sultan” is so old that his master wishes to kill him, though much
against the advice of his wife. So “Sultan” consults a wolf of his
acquaintance, who proposes the stratagem of pretending that he is going
to eat the good people’s child, while “Sultan” pretends to come up just
at the nick of time to save it. The plan is carried out with complete
success, and “Sultan” lives out his days surrounded by respect and
gratitude.

There are several Eastern tales which are of the same family as
Llewellyn’s hound, but in which the animal, instead of saving a child,
confers some other benefit on its possessor. In a Persian fable a king
kills his falcon because it spilled a cup of water which he is about to
drink: of course, the water was really poisoned. A current folk-tale of
Bengal makes a horse the victim of its devotion in preventing its master
from drinking poisonous water.

Rather different is the following Chinese tale, which is to be found,
told at more length, in Dr. Herbert H. Giles’s delightful book, “Strange
Stories from a Chinese Studio”:—

There was a man of Lu-ngan who had scraped together enough money to
release his father from prison, where he was like to die of all the
untold miseries of Chinese durance. He got on a mule and set out for the
town where his father was languishing, taking the silver with him. When
he was well on his way, he was much annoyed to see that a black dog
which belonged to the family was following him; he tried in vain to make
it go back. After riding on for some time, he got off the mule to rest
and he took the opportunity for throwing a large stone at the dog, which
ran away, but as soon as he was on the road again the dog trotted up and
took hold of the mule’s tail, as if trying to stop it. The man beat it
off with the whip, but it only ran round in front of the mule, and
barked frantically so as to impede its progress. The man now reflected,
“This is a very bad omen,” and he got fairly into a rage and beat the
dog off with such violence that it did not come back. So he continued
his journey without further incidents, but when he reached the city in
the dark of the evening, what was not his despair on finding about half
his money gone! He did not doubt that he must have dropped it on the
way, and after passing a night of terrible distress he remembered,
towards dawn, the strange way in which the dog behaved, and he began to
think that there might be some connexion between this and the loss of
his money. Directly the gates were open he retraced his steps along the
road, though he hardly hoped to find any clue to his loss, as the route
was traversed by many travellers. But at the spot where, on the previous
day he dismounted from his mule to rest, he saw the dog stretched dead
on the ground, its hair still moist with perspiration, and when he
lifted up the body by one of its ears, he found his lost silver safely
concealed underneath it! His gratitude was great, and he bought a
coffin, in which he placed the dog and then buried it. The place is
known as “the Grave of the Faithful Dog.”

It is not true that every one in China eats dogs, but some do, and the
trade in such animals is a recognised business. There are several cat
and dog restaurants at Canton. This unenviable habit gives rise to the
story of a merchant who had made a good stroke of business at Wu-hu and
was going home in a canal boat, when he noticed on the bank a butcher
who was tying up a dog previous to killing it. It is not stated if the
merchant had always a tender heart or if his good fortune in the town
made him wish to do a good turn to some living thing; anyhow, he
proposed to buy the dog. The butcher was no fool; he guessed that the
trader would never leave the dog to its fate after thinking about
rescuing it—what dreadful sleepless nights such a proceeding would cost
any of us! So he boldly asked a great deal more than the dog was worth,
which was paid down, and the animal was untied and put on the boat with
his new master. Now it so happened that the boatman had been a brigand,
and, though partially reformed, the feeling that he had on board a
traveller with a large sum of money was too strong a temptation for him.
So he stopped the boat by running it among the rushes and drew out a
long knife, with which he prepared to murder his passenger. The merchant
begged the brigand not to mutilate him or cut off his head, because such
treatment causes the victim to appear in the next world as no one would
like to. Brigands are generally religious, and this one was no
exception; he was willing to oblige the merchant and tied him up, quite
whole, in a carpet, which he threw into the river. The dog, which had
been looking on, was in the water in a moment, hugging and tugging at
the bundle till he got it to a shallow place. Then he barked and barked
till people came to see what was the matter, and they undid the carpet
and found the trader still alive. The first thought of the rescued man
was to track the thief, for which purpose he started at once to go back
to Wu-hu. At the time of starting, much to his distress, he missed the
dog. On arriving at Wu-hu he hunted among the endless boats and shipping
for the boat by which he had travelled, but unfortunately he could see
nothing of it, and at last he gave up the search and was going home with
a friend when what should he see but his lost dog, which barked in a
curious way as if to invite him to follow it. The merchant did so, and
the dog led him to a boat that was lying close to the quay. Into this
boat the dog jumped and seized hold of one of the boatmen by the leg. In
spite of blows the animal would not let go, and then the merchant, on
looking hard at the boatman, recognised him as the very man who tried to
murder him, though he had a nice new suit of clothes and a new boat. The
thief was arrested and the money found at the bottom of the boat. “To
think,” says the story-teller, “that a dog could show gratitude like
that!” To which Dr. Giles adds that dogs in China are usually “ill-fed,
barking curs” which, if valued as guardians of house and chattels, are
still despised. But beautiful moral qualities have the power to conquer
loathing, and even in those countries where the dog is regarded
generally with aversion it is still the chosen type of sublime fidelity
and love.

I can never think of Chinese dogs without remembering a story told by my
cousin, Lord Napier of Magdala, of an incident which, he said, gave him
more pain than anything that had ever happened to him in his life. When
he was in China he chanced to admire a dog, which was immediately
offered to him as a gift. He could not accept the offer, and next day he
heard that the owner of the dog with all his family, five persons, had
drowned himself in a well. Probably they imagined that he was offended
by their offering him a mere dog.

In India, to return to that home of legend, the two most sublime Beast
Stories are to be found in the Great Epic of the Hindu race, the
_Mahabharata_. They are both stories of the faithfulness of man to
beast, and they afford consolation for the sorry figure presented by the
human actor in the martyred mungoose tale. The first of these stories is
the legend of the Hawk and the Pigeon. A pigeon pursued by a hawk flies
for protection to the precinct of sacrifice, where a very pious king is
about to make his offering. It clings to the king’s breast, motionless
with fright. Then up comes the hawk, which, perching on a near
vantage-ground, begins to argue the case. All the princes of the earth
declare the king to be a magnanimous chief; why, therefore, should he
fly in the face of natural laws? Why keep its destined food from the
hawk, which feels very hungry? The king answers that the pigeon came
flying to him, overcome by fear and seeking to save its life. How can he
possibly give it up? A trembling bird which enters his presence begging
for its life? How ignoble it would be to abandon it! Surely it would be
a mortal sin! In fact, that is exactly what the Law calls it!

The hawk retorts that all creatures must eat to live. You can sustain
life on very little, but how are you going to live on nothing at all? If
the hawk has nothing to eat, his vital breath will depart this very day
“on the road where nothing more affrights.” If he dies, his wife and
children will die too for want of their protector. Such an eventuality
cannot be contemplated by the Law: a law which contradicts itself is a
very bad law and cannot be in accordance with eternal truth. In
theological difficulties one has to consider what seems just and
reasonable and interpret the point in that sense.

“There is a great deal to be said for what you say, best of fowls,”
replies the king, who is impressed by the hawk’s forensic skill and
begins to think him a person not to be trifled with; “you are very well
informed; in fact, I am inclined to think that you know everything. How
_can_ you suppose, then, that it would be a decent thing to give up a
creature that seeks refuge? Of course, I understand that with you it is
a question of a dinner, but something much more substantial than this
pigeon can be prepared for you immediately; for instance, a wild boar,
or a gazelle or a buffalo—anything that you like.”

The hawk answers that he never, by any chance, touches meat of that
sort: why does the king talk to him about such unsuitable diet? By an
immutable rule hawks feed on pigeons, and this pigeon is the very thing
he wants and to which he has a perfect right. In a delicate metaphor he
hints that the king had better leave off talking nonsense.

The king, who sees that arguments are no good, now declares that
anything and everything he will give the hawk by way of compensation,
but that as to the pigeon, he will not give it up, so it is no good
going on discussing the matter.

The hawk says, in return, that if the king is so tenderly solicitous on
the pigeon’s account, the best thing he can do is to cut out a piece of
his own flesh and weigh it in the scales with the pigeon—when the
balance is equal, then and then only will the hawk be satisfied. “As you
ask that as a favour,” says the king, “you shall have what you wish”—a
consent which seems to contain a polite hint that the hawk might have
been a little less arrogant, for in the hawk’s demand there was no
mention of favours.

The king himself cuts out the piece of his flesh (no one else would have
dared do it). But, alas! when it is weighed with the pigeon, the pigeon
weighs the most! The king went on cutting pieces of his flesh and
throwing them into the scales, but the pigeon was still the heaviest. At
last, all lacerated as he was, he threw himself into the scales. Then,
with a blast of revelation, the esoteric sense of the story is made
plain. There is something grand in the sudden antithesis.

The hawk said: “I am Indra, O prince, thou that knowest the Law! And
this pigeon is Agni! Since thou hast torn thy flesh from thy limbs, O
thou Prince of Men, thy glory shall shine throughout all worlds. As long
as there be men on earth they will remember thee, O king. As long as the
eternal realms endure thy fame shall not grow dim.”

So the gods returned to heaven, to which the pious Wusinara likewise
ascended with his renovated body, luminously bright. He needs not to
complete his sacrifice—himself has he offered up.

The listeners (Eastern stories are for listeners, not for readers) are
exhorted to raise their eyes and behold with the mind’s vision that pure
and holy abode where the righteous dwell with the gods in glory
ineffable.

This beautiful fable belongs to the general class of the ancient stories
of Divine visitants, but it has a more direct affinity with the lovely
legends of the Middle Ages, in which pious people who give their beds to
lepers or others suffering from loathsome disease find that it was
Christ they harboured. Though the story of the Hawk and the Pigeon may
be used simply as a fairy tale, the moral of it is what forms the
essential kernel of other-worldly religions. Through the mazes of Indian
thought emerges the constant conviction—like a Divine sign-post—that
martyrdom is redemption. The gods themselves are less than the man who
resigns everything for what his conscience tells him to be right. Indra
bows before Wusinara and seeks to learn the Law from him. India’s gods
are Nature-gods, and Nature teaches no such lesson:—

                 “There is no effort on _my_ brow—
                  I do not strive, I do not weep,
                  I rush with the swift spheres and glow
                  For joy, and when I will, I sleep.”

Higher religions are a criticism of Nature: they “occupy the sphere that
rational interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the more
the more it seeks,” and if they change with the change of moral
aspirations they are still the passionate endeavour of the soul to
satisfy them.

The Buddhists took the story of the Hawk and the Pigeon and adapted it
to their own teaching. Indra, chief of the gods, feels that his god-life
is waning—for the gods of India labour, too, under the sense of that
mysterious fatality of doom which haunted Olympus and Walhalla. Indra,
knowing his twilight to be near, desired to consult a Buddha, but there
was not one at that time upon the earth. There was, however, a virtuous
king of the name of Sivi, and Indra decides to put him to the ordeal,
which forms the subject of the other story, because, if he comes out
scathless, he will be qualified to become a full Buddha. King Sivi had a
severe struggle with himself, but he conquered his weakness, and when he
feels the scale sink under him he is filled with indescribable joy and
heaven and earth shake, which always happens when a Buddha is coming
into existence. A crowd of gods descended and rested on the air: the
sight of Sivi’s endurance caused them to weep tears that fell like rain
mingled with divine flowers, which the gods threw down on the voluntary
victim.

Indra puts off the form of a dove and resumes his god-like shape. What,
he asks, does the king desire? Would he be universal monarch? Would he
be king of the Genii? _Would he be Indra?_ There is a fine touch in this
offer from the god of his godship to the heroic man, and, like most
Buddhist amplifications of older legends, it might be justified from
Brahmanical sources, as by incredible self-denial it was always held to
be possible to dethrone a god and put oneself in his place. But Sivi
replies that the only state he craves is that of a Buddha. Indra
inquires if no shade of regret crosses the king’s mind when he feels the
anguish reaching to his bones? The king replies, “I regret nothing.”
“How can I believe it,” says Indra, “when thy body trembles and shivers
so that thou canst hardly speak?” Sivi repeats that from beginning to
end he has felt no shadow of regret; all has happened as he wished. In
proof that he speaks truth, may his body be as whole as before! He had
scarcely spoken when the miracle was effected, and in the same instant
King Sivi became a Buddha.

There is a Russian folk-tale which seems to belong to this cycle. A
horse which was ill-treated and half-starved saves the child of one of
his masters from a bear. He has a friend, a cat, who is also
half-starved. After he has saved the child he is better fed and he gives
the cat part of his food. The masters notice this and again ill-treat
him. He resolves to kill himself so that the cat may eat him, but the
cat will not eat her friend and resolves to die likewise.

The second great story of man and beast contained in the _Mahabharata_
is that of Yudishtira and his dog. Accompanied by his wife and by his
brethren, the saintly king started upon a pilgrimage of unheard-of
difficulty which he alone was able to complete, as, on account of some
slight imperfections that rendered them insufficiently meritorious to
reach the goal, the others died upon the way. Only a dog, which followed
Yudishtira from his house, remains with him still. At the final stage he
is met by Indra, who invites him to mount his car and ascend to heaven
in the flesh. The king asks if his brethren and the “tender king’s
daughter,” his wife, are to be left lying miserably upon the road? Indra
points out that the souls of these have already left their mortal coil
and are even now in heaven, where Yudishtira will find them when he
reaches it in his corporeal form. Then the king says, “And the dog, O
lord of what Is and Is to be—the dog which has been faithful to the end,
may I bring him? It is not my nature to be hard.” Indra says that since
the king has this day obtained the rank of a god together with
immortality and unbounded happiness, he had better not waste thoughts on
a dog. Yudishtira answers that it would be an abominably unworthy act to
forsake a faithful servant in order to obtain felicity and fortune.
Indra objects that no dogs are allowed in heaven; what is a dog? A
rough, ill-mannered brute which often runs away with the sacrifices
offered in the temples. Let Yudishtira only reflect what wretched
creatures dogs are, and he will give up all idea of taking his dog to
heaven. Yudishtira still asserts that the abandonment of a servant is an
enormous sin; it is as bad as murdering a Brahman. He is not going to
forsake his dog whatever the god may say. Besides, it is not violent at
all, but a gentle and devoted creature, and now that it is so weak and
thin from all it has undergone on the journey and yet so eager to live,
he would not leave it, even if it cost him his life. That is his final
resolve.

Arguing in rather a feminine way, Indra returns to the charge that dogs
are rough, rude brutes and quite ignores the good personal character
given to this dog by its master. He goes on to twit Yudishtira with
having abandoned his beloved Draupadi and his brothers on the road down
there, while he makes all this stand about a dog. He winds up with
saying, “You must be quite mad to-day.”

Repelling the disingenuous charge of abandoning his wife and brethren,
Yudishtira remarks with dignity that he left not them but their dead
bodies on the road: he could not bring them to life again. He might have
said that Indra himself had pointed out to him this very fact. The
refusal of asylum, the murder of a woman, the act of kidnapping a
sleeping Brahman, the act of deceiving a friend—there is nothing, says
Yudishtira, to choose between these four things and the abandonment of a
faithful servant.

The trial is over and the god admits his defeat. “Since thou hast
refused the divine chariot with the words, ‘This dog is devoted,’ it is
clear, O Prince of Men, that there is no one in heaven equal to thee.”
Yudishtira, alone among mortals, ascends to bliss in his own body. And
the dog—what of the dog? One is sorry to hear that the dog vanished and
in his place stood Yama, King of Death.

To us, far away from the glamour of Eastern skies, the
god-out-of-the-machine or out of the beast-skin is not always a welcome
apparition. We cannot help being glad when, sometimes, the animals just
remain what they are, as in the charming Indian fable of the Lion and
the Vulture. A lion who lived in a forest became great friends with a
monkey. One day the monkey asked the lion to look after its two little
ones while it was away. But the lion happened to go to sleep and a
vulture that was hovering overhead seized both the young monkeys and
took them up into a tree. When the lion awoke he saw that his charges
were gone, and gazing about he perceived the vulture holding them tight
on the top branches of the nearest tree. In great distress of mind the
lion said, “The monkey placed its two children under my care, but I was
not watchful enough and now you have carried them off. In this way I
have missed keeping my word. I do beg you to give them back; I am the
king of beasts, you are the chief of birds: our nobility and our power
are equal. It would be only fair to let me have them.” Alas!
compliments, though they will go very far, do little to persuade an
empty stomach. “You are totally unacquainted with the circumstances of
the case,” replied the vulture; “I am simply dying of hunger: what is
the equality or difference of rank to me?” Then the lion with his claws
tore out some of his own flesh to satisfy the vulture’s appetite and so
ransomed the little monkeys.

In this fable we have the Hawk and the Pigeon motive with the miraculous
kept in but the mythological left out.

Like a great part of the Buddhist stories of which the Lion and the
Vulture is one, we owe its preservation to the industrious Chinese
translator. In the same work that contains it, the _Tatchi-lou-lun_, we
are told how, when a bird laid her eggs on the head of the first Buddha
which she mistook for the branch of a tree, he plunged himself into a
trance so as not to move till the eggs were hatched and the young birds
had flown. The Buddha’s humanity is yet again shown by the story of how
he saved the forest animals that were fleeing from a conflagration. The
jungle caught fire and the flames spread to the forest, which burnt
fiercely on three sides; one side was safe, but it was bounded by a
great river. The Buddha saw the animals huddling in terror by the
water’s edge. Full of pity, he took the form of a gigantic stag and
placing his fore-feet on the further bank and his hind-feet on the
other, he made a bridge over which the creatures could pass. His skin
and flesh were cruelly wounded by their feet, but love helped him to
bear the pain. When all the other animals had passed over, and when the
stag’s powers were all but gone, up came a panting hare. The stag made
one more supreme effort; the hare was saved, but hardly had it crossed,
when the stag’s backbone broke and it fell into the water and died. The
author of the fable may not have known that hares swim very well, so
that the sacrifice was not necessary, unless, indeed, this hare was too
exhausted to take to the water.

We can picture the first Buddhist missionaries telling such stories over
the vast Chinese empire to a race which had not instinctively that
tender feeling for animals which existed from the most remote times in
the Indian peninsula. A good authority attributes the present Chinese
sensitiveness about animals wholly to those early teachers.

A Sanscrit story akin to the preceding ones tells how a saint in the
first stage of Buddhahood was walking in the mountains with his disciple
when he saw in a cavern in the rock a tigress and her newly-born little
ones. She was thin and starving and exhausted by suffering, and she cast
unnatural glances on her children as they pressed close to her,
confident in her love and heedless of her cruel growls. Notwithstanding
his usual self-control, the saint trembled with emotion at the sight.
Turning to his disciple, he cried, “My son, my son, here is a tigress,
which, in spite of maternal instinct, is being driven by hunger to
devour her little ones. Oh! dreadful cruelty of self-love, which makes a
mother feed upon her children!”

He bids the young man fly in search of food, but while he is gone he
reflects that it may be too late when he returns, and to save the mother
from the dreadful crime of killing her children, and the little ones
from the teeth of their famished mother, he flings himself down the
precipice. Hearing the noise, and curious as to what it might mean, the
tigress is turned from the thought of killing her young ones, and on
looking round she sees the body of the saint and devours it.

The most remarkable of all the many Buddhist animal stories is that of
the Banyan Deer, which is in the rich collection of old-world lore known
as the _Jātaka Book_. The collection is not so much an original Buddhist
work as the Buddhist redaction of much older tales. It was made in about
the third century B.C. The Banyan Deer story had the additional interest
that illustrations of it were discovered among the bas-reliefs of the
stupa of Bharhut. I condense the story from the version of it given in
Professor T. W. Rhys Davids’ “Buddhist India.”

In the king’s park there were two herds of deer, and every day either
the king or his cook hunted them for venison. So every day a great many
were harassed and wounded for one that was killed. Then the golden-hued
Banyan Deer, who was the monarch of one herd, went to the Branch Deer,
who was king of the other herd, and proposed an arrangement by which
lots were to be cast daily, and one deer on whom the lot fell should go
and offer himself to the cook, voluntarily laying his head on the block.
In this way there would be no unnecessary suffering and slaughter.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Griggs._
  THE BANYAN DEER.
  (_From “Stûpa of Bharhut,” by General Cunningham._)]

The somewhat lugubrious proposition met with assent, and all seems to
have gone well till one day the lot fell to a doe of the Branch king’s
herd, who was expecting soon to become a mother. She begged her king to
relieve her of the duty, as it would mean that two at once should
suffer, which could never have been intended. But with harsh words the
Branch king bade her be off to the block. Then the little doe went
piteously to the Banyan king as a last hope. No sooner had he heard her
tale than he said he would look to the matter, and what he did was to go
straight to the block himself and lay his royal head upon it. But as the
king of the country had ordered that the monarchs of both herds should
be spared, the cook was astonished to see King Banyan with his head on
the block, and went off in a hurry to tell his lord. Mounted in a
chariot with all his men around him, the sovereign rode straight to the
place. Then he asked his friend, the king of the deer, why had he come
there? Had he not granted him his life? The Banyan Deer told him all.
The heart of the king of men was touched, and he commanded the deer to
rise up and go on his way, for he gave him his life and hers also to the
doe. But the Banyan Deer asked how it would be with all the others: were
two to be saved and the rest left to their peril? The king of men said
that they too should be respected. Even then the Banyan Deer had more to
ask: he pleaded for the safety of all living, feeling things, and the
king of men granted his prayer. (What will not a man grant when his
heart is touched by some act of pure abnegation?)

There is a curious epilogue to the story. The doe gave birth to a most
beautiful fawn, which went playing with the herd of the Branch Deer. To
it the mother said:—

                 “Follow rather the Banyan Deer,
                  Cultivate not the Branch!
                  Death with the Banyan were better far
                  Than with the Branch long life.”

The verse is haunting in its vagueness, as a music which reaches us from
far away. “Follow rather the Banyan Deer!” ... follow the ideal, follow
the merciful, he who loses his life shall find it.

The Indian hermit of whatsoever sect has always been, and is still, good
friends with animals, and when he can, he gives asylum to as many as he
is able, around his hermitage. This fact, which is familiar to all,
becomes the groundwork of many stories. One of the best is the elaborate
Chinese Buddhist tale of Sama, an incarnation of Buddha, who chose to be
born as a son to two old, blind, childless folks, in order to take care
of their forlornness. When the child was ten years old he begged his
parents respectfully to go with him into the solitary mountains where
they might practise the life of religious persons who have forsaken the
world. His parents agreed; they had been thinking about becoming hermits
before his birth, but that happy event made them put the thought away.
Now they were quite willing to go with him. So they gave their worldly
goods to the poor and followed where he led.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Mansell._
  EGYPTIAN FOWLING SCENE.
  British Museum.
  (_Mural painting._)]

There is a beautiful description of the life in the mountains. Sama made
a shelter of leaves and branches, and brought his old parents sweet
fruits and cool water—all that they needed. The birds and beasts of the
forest, showing no fear, delighted the blind couple with their song and
friendship, and all the creatures came at Sama’s call and followed him
about. Herds of deer and feathered fowl drank by the river’s bank while
he drew water. Unhappily one day the king of Kasi was out hunting in
those wilds and he saw the birds and the deer, but Sama he did not see
and an arrow he aimed at the herd pierced the boy’s body. The wounded
boy said to the king, “They kill an elephant for its ivory teeth, a
rhinoceros for its horn, a kingfisher for its feathers, a deer for its
skin, but why should I be killed?”

The king dismounted, and asked him who he was—consorting with the wild
herds of the forest. Sama told him that he was only a hermit boy, living
an innocent life with his blind parents. No tiger or wolf had harmed
them, and now the arrow of his king laid him low.

The forest wailed; the wild beasts and birds, the lions, tigers, and
wolves uttered dismal cries. “Hark, how the beasts of the forest cry!”
Said the old couple to one another, “Never before have we heard it so.
How long our son has been gone!”

Meanwhile, the king, overcome by sorrow and remorse, tried in vain to
draw the arrow from the boy’s breast. The birds flew round and round
screaming wildly; the king trembled with fear. Sama said, “Your Majesty
is not to blame; I must have done ill in a former life, and now suffer
justly for it: I do not grieve for myself but for my blind parents ...
what will they do? May heavenly guardians protect them!”

Then the king said, “May I undergo the torments of hell for a hundred
æons, but O! may this youth live!” It was not to be; Sama expired, while
all the wood birds flocking together tried tenderly to staunch the blood
flowing from his breast.

I cannot tell the whole story, which has a strong suggestion of some
poetic fancy of Maeterlinck. In the end Sama is brought back to life,
and the eyes of his parents are opened. The king is admonished to return
to his dominions and no longer take life in the chase.

In a Jaina hermit story a king goes hunting with a great attendance of
horses, elephants, chariots, and men on foot. He pursues the deer on
horseback, and, keen on his sport, he does not notice, as he aims the
arrow, that the frightened creature is fleeing to a holy ascetic who is
wise in the study of sacred things. Of a sudden, he beholds the dead
deer and the holy man standing by it. A dreadful fear seizes the king:
he might have killed the monk! He gets off his horse, bows low, and
prays to be forgiven. The venerable saint was plunged in thought and
made no answer; the king grew more and more alarmed at his silence.
“Answer me, I pray, Reverend Sir,” he said. “Be without fear, O king,”
replied the monk, “but grant safety to others also. In this transient
world of living things, why are you prone to cruelty?” Why should the
king cling to kingly power, since one day he must part with everything?
Life and beauty pass, wife and children, friends and kindred—they will
follow no man in death: what do follow him are his deeds, good or evil.
When he heard that, the king renounced his kingdom and became an
ascetic. “A certain nobleman who had turned monk said to him, ‘As you
look so happy, you must have peace of mind.’”

It may be a wrong conception of life that makes men seek rest on this
side of the grave, but one can well believe that the finding of it
brings a happiness beyond our common ken. For one thing, he who lives
with Nature surely never knows _ennui_. The most marvellous of dramatic
poems unfolds its pages before his eyes. Nor does he know loneliness;
even one little creature in a prisoner’s cell gives a sense of
companionship, and the recluse in the wild has the society of all the
furred and feathered hosts. The greatest poet of the later literature of
India, Kálidása, draws an exquisite picture of the surroundings of an
Indian heritage:—

“See under yon trees the hallowed grains which have been scattered on
the ground, while the tender female parrots were feeding their unfledged
young ones in their pendant nests.... Look at the young fawns, which,
having acquired confidence in man, and accustomed themselves to the
sound of his voice, frisk at pleasure, without varying their course.
See, too, where the young roes graze, without apprehension from our
approach, on the lawn before yonder garden, where the tops of the
sacrificial grass, cut for some religious rite, are sprinkled round.”[9]

Footnote 9:

  Sir William Jones’s translation.

In the play of _Sacontala_—which filled Goethe with a delight
crystallised in his immortal quatrain—no scene is so impressed by
genuine feeling and none so artistic in its admirable simplicity as that
in which the heroine takes leave of her childhood’s pet.

The hermit, who has been the foster-father of Sacontala, is dismissing
her upon her journey to the exalted bridegroom who awaits her. At the
last moment she says to him: “My father, see you there my pet deer,
grazing close to the hermitage? She expects soon to fawn, and even now
the weight of the little ones she carries hinders her movements. Do not
forget to send me word when she becomes a mother.”

The hermit, Canna, promises that it shall be done; then as Sacontala
moves away, she feels herself drawn back, and turning round, she says,
“What can this be fastened to my dress?”

Canna answers:—

           “My daughter,
            It is the little fawn, thy foster child.
            Poor helpless orphan! It remembers well
            How with a mother’s tenderness and love
            Thou didst protect it, and with grains of rice
            From thine own hand didst daily nourish it,
            And ever and anon when some sharp thorn
            Had pierced its mouth, how gently thou didst tend
            The bleeding wound and pour in healing balm.
            The grateful nursling clings to its protectress,
            Mutely imploring leave to follow her.”

Sacontala replies, weeping, “My poor little fawn, dost thou ask to
follow an unhappy wretch who hesitates not to desert her companions?
When thy mother died, soon after thy birth, I supplied her place and
reared thee with my own hands, and now that thy second mother is about
to leave thee, who will care for thee? My father, be thou a mother to
her. My child, go back and be a daughter to my father!”

                  *       *       *       *       *

It is the fatality of the dramatist that he cannot stamp with truth
sentiments which are not sure of a response from his audience: he must
strike the keyboard of his race. We can imagine how thoroughly an Indian
audience would enter into the sentiment of this charming scene. To the
little Indian girl, who was still only a child of thirteen or fourteen,
the favourite animal did not appear as a toy, or even as a simple
playmate. It was the object of grave and thoughtful care, and it
received the first outpouring of what would one day be maternal love.


------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                  XVI

                 THE GROWTH OF MODERN IDEAS ON ANIMALS


THE last age of antiquity was an age of yeast. Ideas were in
fermentation; religious questions came to be regarded as
“interesting”—just as they are now. The spirit of inquiry took the place
of placid acceptance on the one hand, and placid indifference on the
other. It was natural that there should be a rebound from the effort of
Augustus to re-order religion on an Imperial, conventional, and
unemotional basis. Then, too, Rome, which had never been really Italian
except in the sublime previsions of Virgil, grew every day more
cosmopolitan: the denizens of the discovered world found their way
thither on business, for pleasure, as slaves—the influence of these last
not being the least important factor, though its extent and character
are not easy to define. Everything tended to foment a religious unrest
which took the form of one of those “returns to the East” that are ever
destined to recur: the spiritual sense of the Western world became
Orientalised. The worship of Isis and Serapis and much more of Mithra
proved to be more exciting than the worship of the Greek and Roman gods
which represented Nature and law, while the new cults proposed to raise
the veil on what transcends natural perception. No doubt the atmosphere
of the East itself favoured their rapid development; the traveller in
North Africa must be struck by the extraordinary frequency with which
the symbols of Mithraism recur in the sculpture and mosaics of that once
great Roman dependency. Evidently the birthland of St. Augustine bred in
the matter-of-fact Roman colonist the same nostalgia for the Unknowable
which even now a lonely night under the stars of the Sahara awakes in
the dullest European soul. Personal immortality as a paramount doctrine;
a further life more real than this one; ritual purification, redemption
by sacrifice, mystical union with deity; these were among the un-Roman
and even anti-Roman conceptions which lay behind the new, strange
propaganda, and prepared the way for the diffusion of Christianity. With
the Italian peasants who clung to the unmixed older faith no progress
was made till persecution could be called in as an auxiliary.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Mansell._
  ASSYRIAN LION AND LIONESS IN PARADISE PARK.
  British Museum.]

In such a time it was a psychological certainty that among the other
Eastern ideas which were coming to the fore, would be those ideas about
animals which are roughly classed under the head of Pythagoreanism. The
apostles of Christ in their journeys East or West might have met a
singular individual who was carrying on an apostolate of his own, the
one clear and unyielding point of which was the abolition of animal
sacrifices. This was Apollonius, of Tyana, our knowledge of whom is
derived from the biography, in part perhaps fanciful, written by
Philostratus in the third century to please the Empress Julia Domna, who
was interested in occult matters. Apollonius worked wonders as well
attested as those, for instance, of the Russian Father John, but he
seems to have considered his power the naturally produced result of an
austere life and abstinence from flesh and wine which is a thoroughly
Buddhist or Jaina theory. He was a theosophist who refrained from
attacking the outward forms and observances of established religion when
they did not seem to him either to be cruel or else incongruous to the
degree of preventing a reverential spirit. He did not entirely
understand that this degree is movable, any more than do those persons
who want to substitute Gregorian chants for opera airs in rural Italian
churches. He did not mind the Greek statues which appealed to the
imagination by suggestions of beauty, but he blamed the Egyptians for
representing deity as a dog or an ibis; if they disliked images of stone
why not have a temple where there were no images of any kind—where all
was left to the inner vision of the worshipper? In which question,
almost accidentally, Apollonius throws out a hint of the highest form of
spiritual worship.

[Illustration:

  _Photo:_ _Alinari._
  LAMBS.
  (_Relief on fifth century tomb at Ravenna._)]

The keenly intellectual thinkers whom we call the Fathers of the Church
saw that the majority of the ideas then agitating men’s minds might find
a quietus in Christian dogma which suited them a great deal better than
the vague and often grotesque shape they had worn hitherto. But there
was a residuum of which they felt an instinctive fear, and peculiar
notions about animals had the ill-luck of being placed at the head of
these. It could not have been a fortunate coincidence that two of the
most prominent men who held them in the early centuries were declared
foes of the new faith—Celsus and Porphyry.

When the Church triumphed, the treatise written by Celsus would have
been no doubt entirely destroyed like other works of the same sort, had
not Origen made a great number of quotations from it for the purpose of
confutation. Celsus was no _borné_ disputant after the fashion of the
Octavius of Minucius, but a man of almost encyclopædic learning; if he
was a less fair critic than he held himself to be, it was less from want
of information than from want of that sympathy which is needful for true
comprehension. The inner feeling of such a man towards the Christian
Sectaries was not near so much that of a Torquemada in regard to
heretics as that of an old-fashioned Tory upholder of throne and altar
towards dissent fifty years ago. It was a feeling of social aloofness.

Yet Celsus wished to be fair, and he had studied religions to enough
purpose not to condemn as delusion or untruth everything that a
superficial adversary would have rejected at once; for instance, he was
ready to allow that the appearances of Christ to His disciples after the
Crucifixion might be explained as psychical phenomena. Possibly he
believed that truth, not falsehood, was the ultimate basis of all
religions as was the belief of Apollonius before him. In some respects
Celsus was more unprejudiced than Apollonius; this can be observed in
his remarks on Egyptian zoomorphism; it causes surprise, he says, when
you go inside one of the splendid Egyptian temples to find for divinity
a cat, a monkey or a crocodile, but to the initiated they are symbols
which under an allegorical veil turn people to honour imperishable
ideas, not perishable animals as the vulgar suppose.

It may have been his recondite researches which led Celsus to take up
the question of the intelligence of animals and the conclusions to be
drawn from it. He only touches lightly on the subject of their origin;
he seems to lean towards the theory that the soul, life, mind, only, is
made by God, the corruptible and passing body being a natural growth or
perhaps the handiwork of inferior spirits. He denied that reason
belonged to man alone, and still more strongly that God created the
universe for man rather than for the other animals. Only absurd pride,
he says, can engender such a thought. He knew very well that this, far
from being a new idea, was the normal view of the ancient world from
Aristotle to Cicero; the distinguished men who disagreed with it had
never won more than a small minority over to their opinion. Celsus takes
Euripides to task for saying—

              “The sun and moon are made to serve mankind.”

Why mankind? he asks; why not ants and flies? Night serves them also for
rest and day for seeing and working. If it be said that we are the king
of animals because we hunt and catch them or because we eat them, why
not say that we are made for them because they hunt and catch us?
Indeed, they are better provided than we, for while we need arms and
nets to take them and the help of several men and dogs, Nature furnishes
them with the arms they require, and we are, as it were, made dependent
on them. You want to make out that God gave you the power to take and
kill wild animals, but at the time when there were no towns or
civilisation or society or arms or nets, animals probably caught and
devoured men while men never caught animals. In this way, it looks more
as if God subjected man to animals than _vice versâ_. If men seem
different from animals because they build cities, make laws, obey
magistrates and rulers, you ought to note that this amounts to nothing
at all, since ants and bees do just the same. Bees have their “kings”;
some command, others obey; they make war, win battles, take prisoner the
vanquished; they have their towns and quarters; their work is regulated
by fixed periods, they punish the lazy and cowardly—at least they expel
the drones. As to ants, they practise the science of social economy just
as well as we do; they have granaries which they fill with provisions
for the winter; they help their comrades if they see them bending under
the weight of a burden; they carry their dead to places which become
family tombs; they address each other when they meet: whence it follows
that they never lose their way. We must conclude, therefore, that they
have complete reasoning powers and common notions of certain general
truths, and that they have a language and know how to express fortuitous
events. If some one, then, looked down from the height of heaven on to
the earth, what difference would he see between our actions and those of
ants and bees? If man is proud of knowing magical secrets, serpents and
eagles know a great deal more, for they use many preservatives against
poisons and diseases, and are acquainted with the virtues of certain
stones with which they cure the ailments of their young ones, while if
men find out such a cure they think they have hit on the greatest wonder
in the world. Finally, if man imagines that he is superior to animals
because he possesses notion of God, let him know that it is the same
with many of them; what is there more divine, in fact, than to foresee
and to foretell the future? Now for that purpose men have recourse to
animals, especially to birds, and all our soothsayers do is to
understand the indications given by these. If, therefore, birds and
other prophetic animals show us by signs the future as it is revealed to
them by God, it proves that they have closer relations with the deity
than we; that they are wiser and more loved by God. Very enlightened men
have thought that they understood the language of certain animals, and
in proof of this they have been known to predict that birds would do
something or go somewhere, and this was observed to come true. No one
keeps an oath more religiously or is more faithful to God than the
elephant, which shows that he knows Him.

Hence, concludes Celsus, the universe has _not_ been made for man any
more than for the eagle or the dolphin. Everything was created not in
the interest of something else, but to contribute to the harmony of the
whole in order that the world might be absolutely perfect. God takes
care of the universe; it is that which His providence never forsakes,
that which never falls into disorder. God no more gets angry with men
than with rats or monkeys: everything keeps its appointed place.

In this passage Celsus rises to a higher level than in any other of the
excerpts preserved for us by Origen. The tone of irony which usually
characterises him disappears in this dignified affirmation of supreme
wisdom justified of itself not by the little standards of men—or ants.
It must be recognised as a lofty conception, commanding the respect of
those who differ from it, and reconciling all apparent difficulties and
contradictions forced upon us by the contemplation of men and Nature.
But it brings no water from the cool spring to souls dying of thirst; it
expounds in the clearest way and even in the noblest way the very
thought which drove men into the Christian fold far more surely than the
learned apologies of controversialists like Origen; the thought of the
crushing unimportance of the individual.

The least attentive reader must be struck by the real knowledge of
natural history shown by Celsus: his ants are nearly as conscientiously
observed as Lord Avebury’s. Yet a certain suspicion of conscious
exaggeration detracts from the seriousness of his arguments; he strikes
one as more sincere in disbelieving than in believing. A modern writer
has remarked that Celsus in the second half of the second century
forestalled Darwin in the second half of the nineteenth by denying human
ascendancy and contending that man may be a little lower than the brute.
But it scarcely seems certain whether he was convinced by his own
reasoning or was not rather replying by paradoxes to what he considered
the still greater paradoxes of Christian theology.

The shadow of no such doubt falls on the pages of the neoplatonists
Plotinus and Porphyry. To them the destiny of animals was not an
academic problem but an obsession. The questions which Heine’s young man
asked of the waves: “What signifies man? Whence does he come? Whither
does he go?” were asked by them with passionate earnestness in their
application to all sentient things. Plotinus reasoned, with great force,
that intelligent beast-souls must be like the soul of man since in
itself the essence of the soul could not be different. Porphyry (born at
Tyre, A.D. 233), accepting this postulate that animals possess an
intelligent soul like ours, went on to declare that it was therefore
unlawful to kill or feed on them under any circumstances. If justice is
due to rational beings, how is it possible to evade the conclusion that
we are also bound to act justly towards the races below us? He who loves
all animated nature will not single out one tribe of innocent beings for
hatred; if he loves the whole he will love every part, and, above all,
that part which is most closely allied to ourselves. Porphyry was quite
ready to admit that animals in their own way made use of words, and he
mentions Melampus and Apollonius as among the philosophers who
understood their language. He quoted with approval the laws supposed to
have been framed by Triptolemus in the reign of Pandion, fifth king of
Athens: “Honour your parents; make oblations of your fruits to the gods;
hurt not any living creature.”

Neoplatonism penetrated into the early Church, but divested of its views
on animal destiny; even the Catholic neoplatonist Boëthius, though he
was sensitively fond of animals (witness his lines about caged birds),
yet took the extreme view of the hard-and-fast line of separation, as
may be seen by his poem on the “downward head,” which he interpreted to
indicate the earth-bound nature of all flesh save man. Birds, by the by,
and even fishes, not to speak of camel-leopards, can hardly be said to
have a “downward head.” Meanwhile, the other manner of feeling, if not
of thinking, reasserted its power as it always will, for it belongs to
the primal things. Excluded from the broad road, it came in by the
narrow way—the way that leads to heaven. In the wake of the Christian
Guru came a whole troop of charming beasts, little less saintly and
miraculous than their holy protectors, and thus preachers of the
religion of love were spared the reproach of showing an all-unloving
face towards creatures that could return love for love as well as most
and better than many of the human kind. The saint saved the situation,
and the Church wisely left him alone to discourse to his brother fishes
or his sister turtle-doves, without inquiring about the strict orthodoxy
of the proceeding.

Unhappily the more direct inheritors of neoplatonist dreams were not
left alone. A trend of tendency towards Pythagoreanism runs through
their different developments from Philo to the Gnostics, from the
Gnostics, through the Paulicians to the Albigenses. It passes out of our
sight when these were suppressed in the thirteenth century by the most
sanguinary persecution that the world has seen, but before long it was
to reappear in one shape or another, and we may be sure that the thread
was never wholly lost.

[Illustration:

  “IL BUON PASTORE.”
  (_Mosaic at Ravenna._)]

An effort has been made to prove that the official as well as the
unofficial Church always favoured humanity to animals. The result of
this effort has been wholly good; not only has it produced a delightful
volume,[10] but, indirectly, it was the cause of Pope Pius X.
pronouncing a blessing on every one who is working for the prevention of
cruelty to animals throughout the world. _Roma locuta est._ To me this
appears to be a landmark in ethics of first-class importance.
Nevertheless, historically speaking, it is difficult to resist the
conclusion that the diametrically opposite view expressed by Father
Rickaby in a manual intended for use in the Jesuit College at
Stonyhurst,[11] more correctly gives the measure of what had been the
practical teaching of the Church in all these ages. Even now,
authoritative Catholics, when enjoining humanity to animals, are careful
to add that man has “no duties” towards them, though they may modify
this by saying with Cardinal Manning (the most kind-hearted of men) that
he owes “a sevenfold obligation” to their Creator to treat them well.
Was it surprising that the Neapolitan peasant who heard from his priest
that he had no duties to his ass went home, not to excogitate the
sevenfold obligation but to belabour the poor beast soundly? Though the
distinction is capable of philosophical defence, granted the premises,
to plain people it looks like a juggling with words. When St. Philip
Neri said to a monk who put his foot on a lizard, “What has the poor
creature done to you?” he implied a duty to the animal, the duty of
reciprocity. He spoke with the voice of Nature and forgot, for the
moment, that animals were not “moral persons” nor “endowed with reason,”
and that hence they could have “no rights.”

Footnote 10:

  “L’Église et la Pitié envers les animaux,” Paris, 1903. An English
  edition has been published by Messrs. Burns and Oates.

Footnote 11:

  “Moral Philosophy,” p. 250.

At an early date, in the heart of official Catholicism, an inconsistency
appeared which is less easily explained than homilies composed for
fishes or hymns for birds; namely, the strange business of animal
prosecutions. Without inquiring exactly what an animal is, it is easy to
bestow upon it either blessings or curses. The beautiful rite of the
blessing of the beasts which is still performed once a year in many
places involves no doctrinal crux. In Corsica the priest goes up to the
high mountain _plateaux_ where the animals pasture in the summer, and
after saying Mass in presence of all the four-footed family, he solemnly
blesses them and exhorts them to prosper and multiply. It is a
delightful scene, but it does not affect the conception of the moral
status of animals, nor would that conception be affected by a right-down
malediction or order to quit. What, however, can be thought of a regular
trial of inconvenient or offending animals in which great care is taken,
to keep up the appearance of fair-play to the defendants? Our first
impression is, that it must be an elaborate comedy; but a study of the
facts makes it impossible to accept this theory.

The earliest allusions to such trials that seem to exist belong to the
ninth century, which does not prove that they were the first of the
kind. One trial took place in 824 A.D. The Council of Worms decided in
866 that if a man has been killed by bees they ought to suffer death,
“but,” added the judgment, “it will be permissible to eat their honey.”
A relic of the same order of ideas lingers in the habit some people have
of shooting a horse which has caused a fatal accident, often the direct
consequence of bad riding or bad driving. The earlier beast trials of
which we have knowledge were conducted by laymen, the latter by
ecclesiastics, which suggests their origin in a folk-practice. A good,
characteristic instance began on September 5, 1370. The young son of a
Burgundian swineherd had been killed by three sows which seemed to have
feared an attack on one of their young ones. All members of the herd
were arrested as accomplices, which was a serious matter to their
owners, the inmates of a neighbouring convent, as the animals, if
convicted, would be burnt and their ashes buried. The prior pointed out
that three sows alone were guilty; surely the rest of the pigs ought to
be acquitted. Justice did not move quickly in those times; it was on
September 12, 1379, that the Duke of Burgundy delivered judgment; only
the three guilty sows and one young pig (what had _it_ done?) were to be
executed; the others were set at liberty “notwithstanding that they had
seen the death of the boy without defending him.” Were the original ones
all alive after nine years? If so, would so long a respite have been
granted them had no legal proceedings been instituted?

An important trial took place in Savoy in the year 1587. The accused was
a certain fly. Two suitable advocates were assigned to the insects, who
argued on their behalf that these creatures were created before man, and
had been blessed by God, who gave them the right to feed on grass, and
for all these and other good reasons the flies were in their right when
they occupied the vineyards of the Commune; they simply availed
themselves of a legitimate privilege conformable to Divine and natural
law. The plaintiffs’ advocate retorted that the Bible and common sense
showed animals to be created for the utility of man; hence they could
not have the right to cause him loss, to which the counsel for the
insects replied that man had the right to command animals, no doubt, but
not to persecute, excommunicate and interdict them when they were merely
conforming to natural law “which is eternal and immutable like the
Divine.”

The judges were so deeply impressed by this pleading that to cut the
case short, which seemed to be going against him, the Mayor of St.
Julien hastened to propose a compromise; he offered a piece of land
where the flies might find a safe retreat and live out their days in
peace and plenty. The offer was accepted. On June 29, 1587, the citizens
of St. Julien were bidden to the market square by ringing the church
bells, and after a short discussion they ratified the agreement which
handed over a large piece of land to the exclusive use of the insects.
Hope was expressed that they would be entirely satisfied with the
bargain. A right of way across the land was, indeed, reserved to the
public, but no harm whatever was to be done to the flies on their own
territory. It was stated in the formal contract that the reservation was
ceded to the insects in perpetuity.

All was going well, when it transpired that, in the meantime, the flies’
advocates had paid a visit to that much-vaunted piece of land, and when
they returned, they raised the strongest objection to it on the score
that it was arid, sterile, and produced nothing. The mayor’s counsel
disputed this; the land, he said, produced no end of nice small trees
and bushes, the very things for the nutrition of insects. The judges
intervened by ordering a survey to find out the real truth, which survey
cost three florins. There, alas! the story ends, for the winding up of
the affair is not to be found in the archives of St. Julien.

Records of 144 such trials have come to light. Of the two I have
described, it will be remarked that one belongs, as it were, to criminal
and the other to civil law. The last class is the most curious. No doubt
the trial of flies or locusts was resorted to when other means of
getting rid of them had failed; it was hoped, somehow, that the
elaborate appearance of fair-play would bring about a result not to be
obtained by violence. We can hardly resist the inference that they
involved some sort of recognition or intuition of animals’ rights and
even of animal intelligence.

In the dawn of modern literature animals played a large, though
artificial, part which must not be quite ignored on account of its
artificiality, because in the Bestiaries as in the Æsopic and Oriental
fables from which they were mainly derived, there was an inextricable
tangle of observations of the real creature and arbitrary ascription to
him of human qualities and adventures. At last they became a mere method
for attacking political or ecclesiastical abuses, but their great
popularity was as much due to their outer as to their inner sense. There
is not any doubt that at the same time floods of Eastern fairy-tales
were migrating to Europe, and in these the most highly appreciated hero
was always the friendly beast. In a romance of the thirteenth century
called “Guillaume de Palerme” all previous marvels of this kind were
outdone by the story of a Sicilian prince who was befriended by a
were-wolf!

It is not generally remembered that the Indian or Buddhist view of
animals must have been pretty well known in Europe at least as early as
the fourteenth century. The account of the monastery “where many strange
beasts of divers kinds do live upon a hill,” which Fra Odoric, of
Pordenone, dictated in 1330, is a description, both accurate and
charming, of a Buddhist animal refuge, and in the version given of it in
Mandeville’s “Travels,” if not in the original, it must have been read
by nearly every one who could read, for no book ever had so vast a
diffusion as the “Travels” of the elusive Knight of St. Albans.

With the Italian Renaissance came the full modern æsthetic enjoyment of
animals; the admiration of their beauty and perfection which had been
appreciated, of course, long before, but not quite in the same spirit.
The all-round gifted Leo Battista Alberti in the fifteenth century took
the same critical delight in the points of a fine animal that a modern
expert would take. He was a splendid rider, but his interest was not
confined to horses; his love for his dog is shown by his having
pronounced a funeral oration over him. We feel that with such men
humanity towards animals was a part of good manners. “We owe justice to
men,” said the intensely civilised Montaigne, “and grace and benignity
to other creatures that are capable of it; there is a natural commerce
and mutual obligation between them and us.” Sir Arthur Helps, speaking
of this, called it “using courtesy to animals,” and when one comes to
think of it, is not such “courtesy” the particular mark and sign of a
man of good breeding in all ages?

The Renaissance brought with it something deeper than a wonderful
quickening of the æsthetic sense in all directions; it also brought that
spiritual quickening which is the co-efficient of every really upward
movement of the human mind. Leonardo da Vinci, greatest of
artist-humanists, inveighed against cruelty in words that might have
been written by Plutarch or Porphyry. His sympathies were with the
vegetarian. Meanwhile, Northern Churchmen who went to Rome were
scandalised to hear it said in high ecclesiastical society that there
was no difference between the souls of men and beasts. An attempt was
made to convert Erasmus to this doctrine by means of certain extracts
from Pliny. Roman society, at that time, was so little serious that one
cannot believe it to have been serious even in its heterodoxy. But
speculations more or less of the same sort were taken up by men of a
very different stamp; it was to be foreseen that animals would have
their portion of attention in the ponderings of the god-intoxicated
musers who have been called the Sceptics of the Renaissance. For the
proof that they did receive it we have only to turn to the pages of
Giordano Bruno. “Every part of creation has its share in being and
cognition.” “There is a difference, not in quality, but in quantity,
between the soul of man, the animal and the plant.” “Among horses,
elephants and dogs there are single individuals which appear to have
almost the understanding of men.”

Bruno’s prophetic guess that instinct is inherited habit might have
saved Descartes (who was much indebted to the Nolan) from giving his
name an unenviable immortality in connexion with the theory which is
nearly all that the ignorant know now of Cartesian philosophy. This was
the theory that animals are automata, a sophism that may be said to have
swept Europe, though it was not long before it provoked a reaction.
Descartes got this idea from the very place where it was likely to
originate, from Spain. A certain Gomez Pereira advanced it before
Descartes made it his own, which even led to a charge of plagiarism.
“Because a clock marks time and a bee makes honey, we are to consider
the clock and the bee to be machines. Because they do one thing better
than man and no other thing so well as man, we are to conclude that they
have no mind, but that Nature acts within them, holding their organs at
her disposal.” “Nor are we to think, as the ancients do, that animals
speak, though we do not know their language, for, if that were so, they,
having several organs related to ours, might as easily communicate with
us as with each other.”

About this, Huxley showed that an almost imperceptible imperfection of
the vocal chord may prevent articulated sounds. Moreover, the click of
the bushmen, which is almost their only language, is exceedingly like
the sounds made by monkeys.

Language, as defined by an eminent Italian man of science, Professor
Broca, is the faculty of making things known, or expressing them by
signs or sounds. Much the same definition was given by Mivart, and if
there be a better one, we have still to wait for it. Human language is
evolved; at one time man had it not. The babe in the cradle is without
it; the deaf mute, in his untaught state, is without it; _ergo_ the babe
and the deaf mute cannot feel. Poor babes and poor deaf mutes should the
scientific Loyolas of the future adopt this view!

I do not know if any one has remarked that rural and primitive folk can
never bring themselves to believe of any foreign tongue that it is real
human language like their own. To them it seems a jargon of meaningless
and uncouth sounds.

Chanet, a follower of Descartes, said that he would believe that beasts
thought when a beast told him so. By what cries of pain, by what looks
of love, have not beasts told men that they thought! Man himself does
not think in words in moments of profound emotion, whether of grief or
joy. _He cries out_ or he _acts_. Thought in its absolutely elementary
form is _action_. The mother thinks in the kiss she gives her child. The
musician thinks in music. Perhaps God thinks in constellations. I asked
a man who had saved many lives by jumping into the sea, “What did you
think of at the moment of doing it?” He replied: “You do not think, or
you might not do it.”

The whole trend of philosophic speculation worthy of the name lies
towards unity, but the Cartesian theory would arbitrarily divide even
man’s physical and sensational nature from that of the other animals. To
remedy this, Descartes admitted that man was just as much an automatic
machine as other creatures. By what right, then, does he complain when
he happens to have a toothache? Because, says Descartes triumphantly,
man has an immortal soul! The child thinks in his mother’s womb, but the
dog, which after scenting two roads takes the third without demur, sure
that his master must have gone that way, this dog is acting “by springs”
and neither thinks nor feels at all.

The misuse of the ill-treated word “Nature” cannot hide the fact that
the beginning, middle, and end of Descartes’ argument rests on a
perpetually recurrent miracle. Descartes confessed as much when he said
that God _could_ make animals as machines, so why should it be
impossible that He _had_ made them as machines? Voltaire’s clear reason
revolted at this logic; he declared it to be absurd to imagine that God
had given animals organs of feeling in order that they might _not_ feel.
He would have endorsed Professor Romanes’ saying that “the theory of
animal automatism which is usually attributed to Descartes can never be
accepted by common sense.”

On the other hand, while Descartes was being persecuted by the Church
for opinions which he did _not_ hold, this particular opinion of his was
seized upon by Catholic divines as a vindication of creation. Pascal so
regarded it. The miraculous element in it did not disturb him.
Malebranche said though opposed by reason it was approved by faith.

Descartes said that the idea that animals think and feel is a relic of
childhood. The idea that they do _not_ think and feel might be more
truly called a relic of that darkest side of perverse childhood, the
existence of which we are all fain to forget. Whoever has seen a little
child throwing stones at a toad on the highway—and sad because his hands
are too small to take up the bigger stones to throw—will understand what
I mean. I do not wish to allude more than slightly to a point which is
of too much importance to pass over in silence. Descartes was a
vivisector: so were the pious people at Port Royal who embraced his
teaching with enthusiasm, and liked to hear the howls of the dogs they
vivisected. M. Émile Ferrière, in his work “L’âme est la fonction du
cerveau,” sees in the “souls” of beasts exactly the same nature as in
the “soul” of man; the difference, he maintains, is one of degree;
though generally inferior, it is sometimes superior to “souls” of
certain human groups. Here is a candid materialist who deserves respect.
But there is a school of physiologists nowadays which carries on an
unflagging campaign in favour of belief in unconscious animal machines
which work by springs, while denying that there is a God to wind up the
springs, and in conscious human machines, while denying that there is a
soul, independent of matter, which might account for the difference.
“The wish is father to the thought.” _Non ragionam di lor ma guarda e
passa._

The strongest of all reasons for dismissing the machine theory of
animals is their variety of idiosyncrasy. It is said that to the
shepherd no two sheep look alike; it is certain that no two animals of
any kind have the same characters. Some are selfish, some are unselfish,
some are gentle, some irretrievably ill-tempered both to each other and
to man. Some animals do not show much regret at the loss of their
offspring, with others it is manifestly the reverse. Édouard Quinet
described how on one occasion, when visiting the lions’ cage in the
Jardin des Plantes, he observed the lion gently place his large paw on
the forehead of the lioness, and so they remained, grave and still, all
the time he was there. He asked Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who was with
him, what it meant. “Their lion cub,” was the answer, “died this
morning.” “Pity, benevolence, sympathy, could be read on those rugged
faces.” That these qualities are often absent in sentient beings what
man can doubt? But they are not to be found in the best mechanical
animals in all Nuremberg!

Nor do machines commonly act as did the dog in the following true story
which relates to something that happened during the earthquake of Ash
Wednesday, 1887. At a place called Ceriana on the Italian Riviera a poor
man who earned his living as a milk-carrier was supposed to have gone on
his ordinary rounds, on which he was used to start at four o’clock in
the morning. No one, therefore, thought of inquiring about him, but the
fact was, that having taken a glass or two of wine in honour of the last
night of the Carnival, he had overslept himself, and was still asleep
when his cottage fell down upon him. He had a large dog which drew the
little cart bearing the milk up the mountain paths, and the dog by
chance was outside and safe. He found out where his master lay and
succeeded in clearing the masonry so as to uncover his head, which was
bleeding. He then set to work to lick the wounds; but, seeing that they
went on bleeding, and also that he could not liberate the rest of the
body, he started in search of help, running up and down among the
surrounding ruins till he met some one, whom he caught hold of by the
clothes. The man, however, thought that the dog was mad and fled for his
life. Luckily, another man guessed the truth and allowed himself to be
guided to the spot. History repeats itself, at least the history of
devoted dogs. The same thing happened after the greater earthquake at
Messina, when a man, one of the last to be saved, was discovered through
the insistence of his little dog, who approached a group of searchers
and whined piteously till he persuaded them to follow him to the ruins
which concealed his master.

Nor, again, do machines act like a cockatoo I heard of from a witness of
the scene. A lady was visiting the zoological gardens in a German town
with her daughter, when the little girl was seized with the wish to
possess a pretty moulted feather which was lying on the ground in the
parrots’ cage. She made several attempts to reach it, but in vain.
Seeing which, an old cockatoo hopped solemnly from the back of the cage
and taking up the feather in his beak, handed it to the child with an
air of the greatest politeness.

One of the first upholders of the idea of legislative protection of
animals was Jeremy Bentham, who asked why the law should refuse its
protection to any sensitive being? Most people forget the degree of
opposition which was encountered by the earlier combatants of cruel
practices and pastimes in England. Cobbett made a furious attack on a
clergyman who (to his honour) was agitating for the suppression of
bull-baiting, “the poor man’s sport,” as Cobbett called it. That it
demoralised the poor man as well as tormented the bull never entered
into the head of the inimitable wielder of English prose, pure and
undefiled, who took it under his (happily) ineffectual protection. “The
common law fully sanctions the baiting of bulls,” he wrote, “and, I
believe, that to sell the flesh of a bull which has _not_ been baited is
an offence which is punishable by that very law to which you appeal”
(“_Political Register_,” June, 1802).

Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had, in their day, to
undergo almost as much criticism and ridicule in England as they now
meet with in some parts of the Continent. Even the establishment of the
Dogs’ Home in London raised a storm of disapproval, as may be seen by
any one who turns over the files of the _Times_ for October, 1860. If
the friends of humanity persevere, the change of sentiment which has
become an accomplished fact in England will, in the end, triumph
elsewhere.

Unfortunately, humane sentiment and humane practice do not progress on a
level line. As long ago as 1782 an English writer named Soame Jenyns
protested against the wickedness of shooting a bear on an inaccessible
island of ice, or an eagle on the mountain’s top. “We are unable to give
life and therefore ought not to take it away from the meanest insect
without sufficient reason.” What would he say if he came back to earth
to find whole species of beautiful winged creatures being destroyed to
afford a barbarous ornament for women’s heads?

The “discovery” of Indian literature brought prominently forward in the
West the Indian ideas of animals of which the old travellers had given
the earliest news. The effect of familiarity with those ideas may be
traced in many writers, but nowhere to such an extent as in the works of
Schopenhauer, for whom, as for many more obscure students, they formed
the most attractive and interesting part of Oriental lore. Schopenhauer
cannot speak about animals without using a tone of passionate vehemence
which was, without doubt, genuine. He felt the intense enjoyment in
observing them which the lonely soul has ever felt, whether it belonged
to saint or sinner. All his pessimism disappears when he leaves the
haunts of man for the retreats of beasts. What a pleasure it is, he
says, to watch a wild animal going about undisturbed! It shows us our
own nature in a simpler and more sincere form. “There is only one
mendacious being in the world, and that is man. Every other is true and
sincere.” It strikes me that total sincerity did not shine on the face
of a dog which I once saw trotting innocently away, after burying a
rabbit he had caught in a ploughed field near a tree in the hedge—the
only tree there was—which would make it easy for him to identify the
spot. But about that I will say no more. The German “Friend of the
Creature” was indignant at “the unpardonable forgetfulness in which the
lower animals have hitherto been left by the moralists of Europe.” The
duty of protecting them, neglected by religion, falls to the police.
Mankind are the devils of the earth and animals the souls they torment.

Full of these sentiments, Schopenhauer was prepared to welcome
unconditionally the Indian conception of the Wheel of Being and to close
his eyes to its defects. Strauss, too, hailed it as a doctrine which
“unites the whole of Nature in one sacred and mysterious bond”—a bond in
which, he goes on to say, a breach has been made by the Judaism and
dualism of Christianity. He might have observed that the Church derived
her notions on the subject rather from Aristotle than from Semitic
sources.

Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that the ill-treatment of animals
arose directly from the denial to them of immortality, while it was
ascribed to men. There is and there is not truth in this. When all is
said, the well-conditioned man always was and always will be humane;
“the righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.” And since people
reason to fit their acts rather than act to fit their reasoning, he will
even find a motive for his humanity where others find an excuse for the
lack of it. Humphry Primatt wrote in 1776: “Cruelty to a brute is an
injury irreparable because there is no future life to be a compensation
for present afflictions.”

Mr. Lecky, in his “History of European Morals,” tells of a Cardinal who
let himself be bitten by gnats because “_we_ have heaven, but these poor
creatures only present enjoyment!” Could Jaina do more?

Strauss thought that the rising tide of popular sentiment about animals
was the direct result of the abandonment by science of the
spiritualistic isolation of man from Nature. I suspect that those who
have worked hardest for animals in the last half-century cared little
about the origin of species, while it is certain that some professed
evolutionists have been their worst foes. The fact remains, however,
that by every rule of logic the theory of evolution _ought_ to produce
the effect which Strauss thought that it had produced. The discovery
which gives its name to the nineteenth century revolutionises the whole
philosophic conception of the place of animals in the Universe.

Lamarck, whom Cuvier so cruelly attacked, was the first to discern the
principle of evolution. At one time he held the Chair of Zoology at the
University of Paris; but the opposition which his ideas met with crushed
him in body, though not in soul, and he died blind and in want in 1829,
only consoled by the care of an admirable daughter. His last words are
said to have been that it is easier to discover a truth than to convince
others of it.

An Italian named Carlo Lessona was one of the first to be convinced. He
wrote a work containing the phrase, “The intelligence of animals”—which
work, by the rule then in force, had to be presented to the
ecclesiastical Censor at Turin to receive his permit before publication.
The canon who examined the book fell upon the words above mentioned, and
remarked: “This expression, ‘intelligence of animals,’ will never do!”
“But,” said Lessona, “it is commonly used in natural history books.”
“Oh!” replied the canon, “natural history has much need of
revision.”[12]

Footnote 12:

  See Dr. F. Franzolini’s interesting monograph on animal psychology
  from the point of view of science (“Intelligenza delle Bestie,” Udine,
  1899).

The great and cautious Darwin said that the senses, intuitions,
emotions, and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity,
imitation, reason, of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or
even, sometimes, in a well-developed condition in the lower animals.
“Man, with all his noble qualities, his God-like intellect, still bears
in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. Our
brethren fly in the air, haunt the bushes, and swim in the sea.” Darwin
agreed with Agassiz in recognising in the dog something very like the
human conscience.

Dr. Arnold said that the whole subject of the brute creature was such a
painful mystery that he dared not approach it. Michelet called animal
life a “sombre mystery,” and shuddered at the “daily murder,” hoping
that in another globe “these base and cruel fatalities may be spared to
us.” It is strange to find how many men of very different types have
wandered without a guide in these dark alleys of speculation. A few of
them arrived at, or thought they had arrived at, a solution. Lord
Chesterfield wrote that “animals preying on each other is a law of
Nature which we did not make, and which we cannot undo, for if I do not
eat chickens my cat will eat mice.” But the appeal to Nature will not
satisfy every one; our whole human conscience is a protest against
Nature, while our moral actions are an attempt to effect a compromise.
Paley pointed out that the law was not good, since we could live without
animal food and wild beasts could not. He offered another justification,
the permission of Scripture. This was satisfactory to him, but he must
have been aware that it waives the question without answering it.

Some humane people have taken refuge in the automata argument, which is
like taking a sleeping-draught to cure a broken leg. Others, again, look
for justice to animals in the one and only hope that man possesses of
justice to himself; in compensation after death for unmerited suffering
in this life. Leibnitz said that Eternal Justice _ought_ to compensate
animals for their misfortunes on earth. Bishop Butler would not deny a
future life to animals.

Speaking of her approaching death, Mrs. Somerville said: “I shall regret
the sky, the sea, with all the changes of their beautiful colouring; the
earth with its verdure and flowers: but far more shall I grieve to leave
animals who have followed our steps affectionately for years, without
knowing for certainty their ultimate fate, though I firmly believe that
the living principle is never extinguished. Since the atoms of matter
are indestructible, as far as we know, it is difficult to believe that
the spark which gives to their union life, memory, affection,
intelligence, and fidelity, is evanescent.”

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, seven or eight small works,
written in Latin in support of this thesis, were published in Germany
and Sweden. Probably in all the world a number, unsuspectedly large, of
sensitive minds has endorsed the belief expressed so well in the lines
which Southey wrote on coming home to find that a favourite old dog had
been “destroyed” during his absence:—

             ... “Mine is no narrow creed;
             And He who gave thee being did not frame
             The mystery of life to be the sport
             Of merciless man! There is another world
             For all that live and move—a better one!
             Where the proud bipeds, who would fain confine
             Infinite Goodness to the little bounds
             Of their own charity, may envy thee!”

The holders of this “no narrow creed” start with all the advantages from
the mere point of view of dialectics. They can boast that they have
placed the immortality of the soul on a scientific basis. For truly, it
is more reasonable to suppose that the soul is natural than
supernatural, a word invented to clothe our ignorance; and, if natural,
why not universal?

They have the right to say, moreover, that they and they alone have
“justified the ways of God.” They alone have admitted all creation that
groaneth and travaileth to the ultimate guerdon of the “Love which moves
the sun and other stars.”


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                                 INDEX




------------------------------------------------------------------------




 Abdâls, 261-262

 Abu Djafar al Mausur, Caliph, 232

 Abu Jail, 241-243

 Achilles, 26-27, 298

 Adi Granth, 201

 _Æsop’s fables_, 25, 29-30, 80-81

 Aethe, 26

 Aethon, 26

 Afghan ballad, 241-243

 African pastoral tribes, 95

 Agamemnon, 25-26, 29

 Agassiz, 364

 Agora Temple, 77

 _Ahimsa_, 166-167, 172, 193

 Ahriman, 124-126, 143, 145-146, 149-151, 158-159

 Ahriman, hymn to, 125

 Ahuna-Vairya, 138

 Ahura Mazda, 116, 121-122, 136, 138-139, 143, 154, 158-159

 Alberti, Leo Battista, 154, 158-159, 352

 Albigenses, 346

 Alexander the Great, 75, 133

 Alfonso, King of Spain, 291-292

 Alger, W. R., 286

 Alhambra, 229

 Al Rakîm, 230

 Amatongo, 107-109

 Amazulu, 107

 _L’âme est la fonction du cerveau_, 357

 Ammon, Temple of, 31

 Amon Ra, 103

 Amritsar, 201

 Anaxandrides, 82

 Anchorites, 179, 252-254

 Andromache, 26

 Animals, treatment of, in India, 19;
   the purgatory of men, 21;
   slaying of, by Greeks, 24-25;
   naming of, 26;
   prophetic powers of, 27-28;
   talking, 29;
   Roman treatment of, 45-46;
   butchery of, at Colosseum, 51;
   imported for arena, 51-52;
   humanity of, 53-54;
   performing, 54-55;
   Plutarch on kindness to, 64-71;
   Plutarch on animal intelligence, 67-71;
   instances of discrimination of, 75-76;
   domestication of, 90-91;
   value of, 94-95;
   excuses for killing, 100;
   attitude of savages to, 107-108;
   killing of, by priests, 148-150;
   Zoroastrian treatment of, 147-157;
   in sacred books, 188;
   Hebrew treatment of, 212-220;
   hunting of, by Moslems, 224-225, 232, 241-243;
   musical instinct in, 245-246;
   and the Messiah, 247-252;
   and saints, 259;
   stories of, 306-316;
   theory of Celsus as to intelligence of, 340-344;
   theory of Porphyry, 344;
   the Church and humanity, 346;
   animal prosecutions, 347-351;
   Renaissance admiration of, 352-353;
   animals and thought, 355;
   automata
   theory, 353-359, 365;
   societies to protect, 359-360;
   ill-treatment and immortality, 362;
   principle of evolution, 363

 Antelope, 240

 Ants, wisdom of, 76-77;
   killing of, 149-150;
   Hebrew proverb, 216;
   in the Koran, 227;
   social economy of, 341-342

 Apis, 102, 144

 Apollo, 246

 Apollonius of Tyana, 268-269; 337-340; 345

 Apsarases, the, 279-280

 Apuleius, 55

 Archæological Congress, 95

 Archetypes (_see_ Fravashi)

 Ardâ Vîrâf, 159-165

 Arena, cruelties of the, 45-46

 Ariosto, 297

 Aristophanes, 28

 Aristotle, 58, 78, 80, 269, 340, 362

 Arnold, Dr., 364

 Arnold, Sir Matthew, 302-303

 Aryans, 13, 18, 113-115

 Asceticism, 179-183

 Astrachan, 258

 Ataro, 162

 Atharva-Veda, 208

 Atman, 14

 Augustus, 336

 Automata theory, 353-359, 365

 Avebury, Lord, 343

 Avesta, 113, 116, 120, 123, 125, 128, 131, 133-140, 143, 145-148, 153,
    155, 159, 163, 233-234


 Bactria, 131

 Baiardo, 297

 Balaam’s ass, 212-213, 219

 Balius, 26-27

 Balkis, Queen, 229

 Bankes’ horse, 283

 Banyan deer, 327-230

 Barbary, 296

 Basan, Bulls of, 144

 Basri, Hasan, 234

 _Battle of the frogs and mice_, 29

 Baudelaire, 18

 Bavieca, 289-294

 Bears, legends of, 88-89

 Beast tales, 28, 317, 351

 Beaver (_see_ Udra)

 Bedouins, 272

 Behkaa, 104

 Benares, 183

 Benedict XII., 49

 Bentham, Jeremy, 359

 Bhagavad, Gita, 14

 Bion, 64

 Birds, in captivity, 56-57;
   Plutarch’s views on, 78;
   language of, 226-227;
   and St. Francis, 259-260

 Bismarck, 304

 Bi’sm-illah, custom of saying, 224

 Bivar, Ruy Diaz de, 289-294

 Blackbird, White, 51

 Blake, Wm., 251

 Bleeck, 153

 Blessing the beast, rite of, 347

 Boccaccio’s falcon, 285

 Bœotia, 62

 Boëthius, 345

 Bolingbroke, 296

 Bosanquet, Dr. R. C., 95

 Brahmans, 14, 21, 169, 175, 183, 309

 _Breath from the veldt, A_, 240

 British school at Athens, 95

 Broca, Professor, 354

 Browning, Robert, 138

 Bruno, Giordano, 216, 260-261, 353

 Bubastis, 81

 Bucephalus, 75

 Buddhism, 21, 105-106, 124, 130, 167-173, 187, 190-196, 261, 273, 308,
    321-328

 _Buddhist India_, 328

 Buffalo of Karileff, 254

 Bull-baiting, 50, 359-360

 Bull-fights, 32, 47-50

 Bulls, 143-146

 _Bundehesh_, 142-143

 Burgundy, Duke of, 349

 Burial, methods of, 123-124

 Burkitt, Prof. F. C., 135-136

 Burns and Oates, 346

 Burns, Robert, 59


 Cæsar, Julius, 51, 53, 55, 296

 Cagliari, 248

 Callaway, Canon, 109

 Cambaleth, 195

 Cambyses, 144

 Camels, 286

 Canna, 333-334

 Carbonaria, 49

 Carlyle, Thos., 33

 Cartesian philosophy, 353-355

 Carthage, 211

 Cassandra, 29

 Cato, 45

 Cats, 80-83, 155, 222, 258, 278, 314, 322

 Celsus, 73, 339-344

 Celts, 273-274

 Ceriana, 358

 Cervantes, 290

 Chanet, 355

 Chantal, Mdme. de, 178

 Chariot-racing, 30

 Charles, King (the Peace), 50

 Chesterfield, Lord, 364

 Childebert, 254-255

 _China, religion of_, 327

 Chinese, belief and folk-lore, 104-106;
   saving of animal life, 194;
   folk-lore stories, 306-308, 313-316, 326-330.

 Chinvat, 154, 158, 162

 Choo-Foo-Tsze, 104

 Christianity, approach of, 337-338

 Cicada, 260

 Cicero, 16, 50, 58-59, 128, 340

 Cignani, 208

 Cimon, 31

 Circuses, 54-55

 _Clothilde’s God_, 93

 Clovis, 93

 Clytemnestra, 29

 Cobbett, 359

 Cockatoo, Story of a, 359

 Colonna, Cardinal, 49

 Colosseum, Butchery at inauguration of, 51

 Comte, Auguste, 133

 Concha, 57-58

 Confucianism, 104-105, 130

 Constantinople, 233

 Constantinople, Council at, 14

 _Contemporary Review_, 6

 Copenhagen National Museum, 47

 Corinna, Parrot of, 56

 Corsica, 347

 Crete, 32, 77, 95

 Cuvier, 363

 Cyrus, 118, 121-122


 Daevas, 116

 d’Alviella, Count Goblet, 5

 Damascus, 231, 306

 Dante, 13, 160, 162-163, 187

 Darmesteter, James, 241

 Darius, 119, 121-122

 Darwin, Charles, 150-151, 206, 344, 363-364

 Darwin, Francis, 175

 Davids, Professor T. W. Rhys, 328

 Deathlessness of souls, 91-92

 Deer (_see_ Banyan deer)

 Dervishes, 234-235, 261

 Descartes, 16, 353-357

 Deucalion, dove of, 78

 Diaz, Gil, 293

 Digby, Sir Kenelm, 283

 Dog, grave of a faithful, 314

 Dogs, 57-59, 79-80, 114-115, 151-153, 158, 229-233, 244, 306-308, 312,
    314-316, 322-324, 358-359

 Dog’s Grave, the, 79

 Dolmen-builders, 92-93, 96

 Domestication of animals, 90-91

 Doughty, Charles M., 236

 Doukhobors, 32

 Downe, 283

 Draupadi, story of, 322-324

 Dravidians, 18-19, 163

 Duperron, Anquetil, 135, 152


 Eden, Garden of, 208-209

 Eden, Garden of (picture by Rubens), 247

 Edkins, Joseph, D.D., 327

 _l’Église et la Pitié envers les Animaux_, 346

 Egyptian cosmogony, 103-104

 El Djem, well at, 109

 Elephants, legend of, 74-75, 77;
   in Oriental books, 188;
   white elephant killed by Rustem, 294

 Eleusinian mysteries, 32

 Elisha and the she-bears, 248-249

 Elmocadessi, Azz’Eddin, 236

 Empedocles, 14-15, 34, 72

 Epictetus, 73-74

 Epirus, 57

 Erasmus, 16, 353

 Eskimo, the, 88-89, 92

 Euripides, 78, 190, 246, 340

 Evolution, theory of, 363-365


 Falcon, Persian fable of a, 313

 Faliscus, Gratius, 57

 Fargard XIII., 152

 Ferrière, Émile, 357

 _Fioretti_, 74, 258

 Firdusi, 141, 225, 240, 294, 296, 301-304

 Flesh-eating, 24-25, 31-32, 61-64, 71, 85-86, 148, 193-194, 217-218

 Folk-lore Association of Chicago, 102

 _Folk-Songs of Southern India_, 17

 Foxes, 106

 Franzolini, Dr. F., 363

 Fravashi, 117, 145, 162


 Games, Roman, 47-48, 51-52

 Gargantuan feasts, 148

 Garibaldi, 294, 298

 Gâthâs, 134, 139, 144-145

 Gautama, 308

 Gayatri, 117-118, 138

 Gayo Marathan, 143

 Gellert, Beth, 306-307, 309, 312

 Geus Urva, 143-144

 Ghusni, 241

 Giles, Dr., 105, 313, 316

 Gladiators, importation of, 52-53

 Gnostics, 346

 Goat, Story of a, 245

 Goethe, 333

 Gover, Charles E., 17

 Gray, Asa, 150-151

 Gubernatis, Count de, 290

 _Guillaume de Palerme_, 351

 Gunádhya, 245

 Guru, 168, 181, 345

 Gymnosophists, 172


 Hall, 283

 Hallal, custom of the, 224

 Hatem, Tai, 285-286

 Hatos, 290

 Hawk and the pigeon, legend of, 317-321, 325

 Haziûm, 296

 Heber, Bishop, 231

 Hebrews, the, 114, 145, 149, 159, 161, 207-208, 212-220, 284

 Hector, 26

 Hedgehog, appreciation of the, 79

 Heine, 344

 _Helena_, 190

 Helps, Sir Arthur, 352

 Henotheism, 118

 Hera, 25-27

 Heraclites, 72

 Herakles, 24

 Hermits (_see_ Anchorites)

 Herodotus, 31, 81, 128, 148-149, 301

 Hero-worship, 299-300

 Hidery, 102

 Hinduism, 13, 17, 218-219, 265-266

 _History of European Morals_, 362

 Homa, 148-149

 Homer, 23-26, 77, 79, 241

 Homizd IV., 161

 Honover, 138

 Horace, 76

 Horses, famous, 26-27;
   sacrifice of, 114;
   in Oriental books, 188;
   St. Columba’s horse, 255;
   in chivalrous age, 281-282;
   thinking, 283;
   Arab and his horse, 285-288;
   Hatem’s horse, 285-286;
   the Cid’s horse, 289-294;
   horse of Rustem, 294;
   talking, 298;
   Bengal fable, 313;
   Russian folk-lore tale, 322

 Hugo, Victor, 19, 45, 57, 164

 Humanitarianism, 145-147, 175, 198-200, 243, 308, 346

 Húsheng, 141-142

 Huxley, Professor, 354


 Iblís, 142

 Ibsen, 186

 Ichneumon, 311-312

 “Iliad,” 25

 Immortality, 159, 362

 Improta, Leandro, 22

 Indian doctrine of transmigration, 14-17

 Indra, 116-117, 319-323

 Insects, killing of, 149

 _Intelligenza delle Bestie_, 363

 Iranians, 113-134, 155

 Isaiah, 249

 Isis, 336

 Islam, 160, 221

 Issaverdens, Padre Giacomo, 209

 Itongo, 107, 259

 Itvara, 186


 Jacobi, Professor Hermann, 169, 199

 Jaina hermit’s story, 332

 Jainism, 168-193, 196-200

 _Jātaka Book_, 328

 Jebb, Sir Richard, 135

 Jenyns, Soame, 360

 Jesus Christ, 130, 145, 188, 216, 231, 244, 249-252, 320

 Jews (_see_ Hebrews)

 Jinas, 170

 Joghi, 181

 John, Father, 338

 John XXII., Pope, 49

 Jones, Sir William, 135, 152, 225, 333

 Jonson, Ben, 283

 Joseph of Anchieta, 255-256

 Josephus, 24

 Julia Domna, Empress, 338


 Kálidása, 333

 Kambôga, 188

 Karileff, 254

 Karman, 175-177

 Kasi, King of, 330-331

 Katmir, 230

 Keats, John, 207

 Kempis, Thomas à, 171

 Keshub Chunder Sen, 25

 Khordah Avesta, 134, 137, 159

 Kirghis, the, 85

 Koran, 136, 221-223, 226-230, 237, 261, 287

 Koureen, 296


 Lahore Zoological Gardens, 236

 Lake dwellers, 90

 Lamarck, 363

 Lamartine, 69

 Lampus, 26

 Lancelot, 296

 Lane, 224

 Language, definition of, 354-355

 Laplander, the, 87-90

 Lapwing, Solomon and the, 228-229

 Lebid, 237-239

 Lecky, 362

 _Legenda Aurea_, 249, 258

 Leibnitz, 365

 Leland, C. G., 277

 Leopardi, 59, 125, 187

 Lesbia’s sparrow, 56

 Lessona, Carlo, 363

 Leveson, Major, 269

 Lion, legend of a humane, 53;
   Christ in the lions’ den, 250-251;
   St. Jerome and the, 253;
   lioness at Chartres, 262;
   eating of monkeys and men by, 268-269;
   love for his mate, 269-270;
   legend of vulture and, 325;
   sympathy of, 358

 _Lion’s Kingdom_, 30

 _Lives_, Plutarch’s, 65, 74

 Lizard, sacredness of, 108-110

 Lockhart, 291

 Lombroso, 267

 Long, Rev. J., 168

 Lotus-flower, white, 176

 Lucian, 15, 56, 278

 Lucretius, 84, 206, 239

 Lyall, Sir Alfred, 180

 Lyall, Sir Chas., 238

 Lycæus, Mount, 273

 Lycanthropy, 274-275


 Maeterlinck, 331

 Magians, the, 119, 124, 127-129, 148, 226

 Magic, 273-280

 Magpie, legend of a, 77-78

 _Mahabharata_, 317, 322

 Mahavira, 169-173, 197-198

 Mahmoud, 241

 _Malay Magic_, 224

 Malebranche, 356

 Man, ages of, 84

 Mandeville, 196, 352

 Man-eating animals, 268, 270-272

 Manichæism, 127, 261

 Manning, Cardinal, 347

 Manu, Institutes of, 29

 Marcellus, Theatre of, 55

 Marcus Aurelius, 59

 Mare, story of the creation of, 288

 Marne, 254

 Marriage in the East, 139-140

 Martial, 58

 Massaia, Cardinal, 262

 Matreya, 170

 Mazdaism, 116-119, 124, 129, 133-139, 155, 157-158, 159, 160-161, 225,
    233

 Mecca, 231

 Media, 129

 Medina, 232

 Melampus, 344

 Melior, parrot of, 56-57

 Menelek, Emperor, 229

 Merodach, 122

 Metempsychosis (_see_ Transmigration)

 Michelet, 364

 Mill, J. S., 127

 Millais, Guille, 240

 Milton, John, 205

 Minotaur legend, 30

 Mithra, 120, 147, 158, 336

 Mivart, 354

 Modi, Jivanji Jamsedji, 45

 Mohammedanism, 109, 130, 216-217, 221-222, 248

 Monkeys, 306

 Monotheism, 118-123, 128

 Montaigne, 352

 _Moral Philosophy_, 346

 “Morocco,” 283

 Moslemism, 221-236

 Moti (tiger at Lahore), 236

 Moufflons, 85

 Muklagerri Hills, 171

 Mule of the Parthenon, 66-67

 Mungoose stories, 306-307, 309-311

 Murad, Sultan, 223


 Nanak, Baba, 201

 Napier, Lord, of Magdala, 316

 Naples, gladiatorial shows at, 49

 Natural History Museum, S. Kensington, 240

 Natural History Society, Bombay, 45

 Nedrotti, the, 98

 Ne-kilst-lass, 102

 Nemesianus, 57

 Nennig, mosaic at, 47-48

 Neolithic Age, 91-92

 Neoplatonism, 344-346

 Newman, Cardinal, 11

 _Nibelungenlied_, 140

 Nirvana, 178, 190-192

 Nizami, 243-244

 Nobarnus, 52

 Non-killing (_see_ _Ahimsa_)


 Oakesmith, Dr., 63

 Octavius, 339

 Odoric, Fra, 194-196, 351

 _Odyssey_, 23, 25

 Okubo, 122

 Oppert, Prof. Jules, 118

 _Oriental Proverbs_, 168

 _Orientalists, Congress of_, 47, 168

 Origen, 14, 339, 343

 Origin of man and animals, 84-86

 _Origin of Species_, 85

 Ormuzd, 124, 126

 Orpheus, 32, 246-247

 Orphic sect, 31

 Oseberg, 94

 Ovid, 15

 Owls, 112


 Pahlavi, 134-135

 Paley, 364

 Pallas Athene, 112

 _Panchatantra_, the, 307, 311

 Pandion, King of Athens, 345

 _Paradise Lost_, 205

 Paris, University of, 363

 Parrots, 56-57, 359

 Parsis, food of the, 119-120;
   burial customs of, 124;
   and the Avesta, 133-135;
   and the Ardâ Vîrâf, 164-165

 Parthenon, the, 66-67

 Pascal, 356

 Patmore, Coventry, 174

 Patmos, Seer of, 160

 Paul the Hermit, 254

 Paulicians, 346

 Pausanias, 50-51, 128, 273

 Pavia, Corte da, 282

 Peace in Nature, 210-212, 231-232, 332-333

 Pelicans, legend of, 92

 Pereira, Gomez, 354

 Pericles, 30, 66

 Persepolis, 121, 133

 Persians of the eleventh century, 298

 Petrarch, 49

 Petronius, 51, 58

 Philo, 346

 Philostratus, 338

 Piet, Om, 240

 Pigs, 115, 232

 Pinder, 294

 Pius X., 346

 Plato, 15-16, 20

 Pliny, 66-67, 353

 Plotinus, 344

 Plutarch, 45, 62-69, 74, 353

 Pluto, 20

 Podarges, 26

 _Political Register_ (1802), 360

 Pompeii, mosaic at, 83

 Porphyry, 28, 339, 344, 353

 Portionuculo, 260

 Primatt, Humphry, 362

 Prometheus, 65

 Prosecution of animals, 347-351

 Provence, 90

 Psalms, quotation from, 219-220

 Punishment in the Ardâ Vîrâf, 163-164

 Purgatory and animal incarnation, 21

 Pythagoreanism, 14-15, 33-34, 59-60, 72, 175, 337, 346


 Quartenary Age, 86-88

 Quinet, Édouard, 357-358


 Rakush, 294-300

 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 283

 Ravenna, mosaic at, 73

 Ravens, 272

 Reasoning power of animals, 158-159;
   Plutarch’s views on, 67-69

 Reinach, M. S., 80, 101

 Reindeer hunters, 86-89, 96;
   and the Lapps, 285

 _Religion of Plutarch_, 63

 Religions, Congress for History of, 120

 Religious knowledge in animals, 72-74;
   early religions, 93

 Renan, 225

 Reptiles, killing of, 149

 Réville, Albert, 136

 Rhinoceroses, 51

 Rickaby, Father, 346

 Rig-Veda, 113-115, 117, 139

 Romanes, Professor, 356

 “Rooh Allah,” 231

 Rozinante, 290

 Rustem, 294-305


 Sacerdotalism, 168

 Sacontala, 233-234

 Sacred birds, animals, and reptiles, 100-101, 104-110

 Sacred carpet, 222, 227

 Sacrifices, funeral, 12-13;
   Greek, 24-25;
   bloodless, 31;
   belief in, 94;
   of domestic animals, 95-96;
   Gift and Pact, 96;
   Totemism, 97-98;
   of Persians, 119;
   in the _Bundehesh_, 143;
   to Homa, 148-149;
   for Udra-killing, 156;
   the “True Sacrifice” legend, 183-184;
   apostolate for abolition of animal, 337

 Sadi, 225

 St. Anthony, 254, 259

 St. Augustine, 273, 337

 St. Bernard, 256-257

 St. Columba, 255

 St. Edward the Martyr, 274

 St. Francis, 74, 167, 234, 257-263

 St. François de Sale, 178

 St. James, 54

 St. Jerome, 253-254

 St. Josephat, 261

 St. Julien, town of, 349-350

 St. Marculphe, 255

 St. Martin, 259

 St. Paul, 211-212

 St. Philip Neri, 347

 St. Teresa, 184

 St. Thomas Aquinas, 275

 Saint-Calais, 255

 Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy, 358

 Sakya Muni, 129, 169, 197

 Sama, Legend of, 330-332

 Samengan, 299-301

 Sásánians, 119, 139-140

 _Satyricon_, 51

 Schopenhauer, 206, 258, 361

 Sebectighin, 240-241

 Secundra Orphanage, 45

 Semites (_see_ Hebrews)

 Seneca, 59-61, 82

 _Sensitive Plant, The_, 174

 Serapeum, 102

 Serapis, 336

 Serpent, the, 110-111

 Sestius, 61

 _Seven Sleepers of Ephesus_, 229-230

 _Shah Nameh_, 141, 294, 301

 Shakespeare, William, 256, 282-283

 She-wolves of Rome, 44-45

 Sheba, 228

 Sheikh of Tús, 141

 Shughdad, 303

 Siam, 194

 Siegemund and Siegelind, 140

 Siegfried, 294

 Siena, 208

 Sikhs, 201

 Simurghs, 298

 Sivi, King, 321-322

 Smith, Dr. H. P., 110

 Snakes, in India, 265-266;
   and the mungoose, 309-311

 Societies to protect animals, 356-360

 Socrates, 156, 162

 Sohrab, 299-305

 Solomon in the Valley of Ants, 227

 Soma, 148

 Somerville, Mrs., 100

 Sophocles, 90

 Sotio, 60-61

 Southey, Robert, 365-366

 Srosh, 162

 Stable, a sanctuary, 305

 Stag, fable of a, 326

 Statius, 53, 56-57

 _Stelæ_, 80

 Stevenson, R. L., 196

 Stoics, the, 65, 71

 Stork, legend of a, 255

 _Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio_, 313

 Strauss, 362-363

 Sufism, 225

 Suicide in India, 186

 “Sultan,” 312

 Sumner, Charles, 281

 Sutras, 11-12

 Suttees, 12

 Swan-maidens (_see_ Apsarases)

 Swine-flesh, forbidding of, 232

 Sycamore-tree at Matarea, 248

 Symmachus, 52-53


 Tahmineh, 301, 303

 Taliumen, 142

 Taoism, 105-106

 _Tatchi-lou-lun_, 326

 Taylor, John, 283

 Taylor, Canon Isaac, 91

 Temple, building, 121-122;
   Jaina temples, 171

 Tennyson, 296

 Thaumaturgy, 181-183

 Thebaid, 181

 Theogony, 128

 Theophrastus, 56

 Theocritus, 83

 Thomas, Pseudo-, 248

 _Three Merchants, Parable of the_, 176

 Tiberius, 61

 Tigers in India, 265-268, 270-272

 Tigress, fable of the, 327

 _Times, The_, 360

 Tirthakaras, 170-171

 Titus, 52

 Tobias, 92-93

 Tobit’s dog, 114

 Todas, 285

 Torquemada, 151, 339

 Totemism, 96-102, 107, 272

 Transformation, 270-280

 Transmigration, 11-21, 186-189, 261

 Tribal system, 129

 Triptolemus, 345

 Troglodite Age, 88-89

 _Trusty Lydia_, 58


 Udra, the 155-156

 Ulemas, 234, 288

 Upanishads, 12-13

 Uruguay, 298


 Valencia, 292

 Varro, 275

 Varuna, 116

 Vedas, 13-14, 20, 93, 117-178, 183, 279-280

 Vegetarianism, 167, 172, 193

 Velasquez’s horse, 284

 Venidâd, 134, 152, 156-157

 Vespasian, 55

 Viking ship, 13, 94

 Vinci, Leonardo da, 353

 Virgil, 25, 275, 336

 Vispered, 134

 Vivisection, 29, 357

 Voltaire, 247, 356


 Walaric, 255

 Were-wolves, 274-277, 351

 Wildebeest and Om Piet, 240

 Witchcraft (_see_ Magic)

 Wolf, the, 149, 268, 273-277

 Wolf of Agobio, 257-258

 Women and Jainism, 184-186

 Wordsworth, William, 65

 Worms, Council of, 348

 Wu-hu, 314-315

 Wusinara, 317-319


 Xanthus, 26-28

 Xantippus, 79

 Xenocrates, 30


 Yama, 20, 158, 203, 324

 Yasna, 134-135

 Yogis, legend of two, 235

 Yudishthira, story of, 322-324


 Zal, 294-296

 Zarathustra (_see_ Zoroaster)

 Zechariah’s war-horse, 284

 Zend (_see_ Avesta)

 Zoolatry, 144

 _Zoological Mythology_, 290

 Zoomorphism in Egypt, 102, 340

 Zorák, 142

 Zeus, 25, 273

 Zoroaster, teaching of, 113, 118-125, 129-165, 225



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Transcriber’s note:

    ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.

    ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

    ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
      when a predominant form was found in this book.

    ○ Unpaired double quotation marks were left intact if correction
      was not obvious.