THE MORAL SEN'SE IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 353 



Certain of the lower animals have a very decided sense of Justice 

 and injustice, of equity or fairness and the reverse. Thus the dog, 

 horse, mule, ass, camel, elephant, and other working animals have a 

 feeling that " the laborer is worthy of his hire " ; that they deserve a 

 certain meed of praise, credit, or reward — a certain return in food and 

 drink, in domestic comfort or personal attention — for service rendered. 

 There is a clear recognition of the value of service — a knowledge of 

 personal deserts. Hence they so frequently exhibit a sore sense of ill- 

 requital of hard labor or of self-sacrifice. Punishment which they 

 know to be undeserved they resent — sometimes dangerously to man — 

 and in doing so they discriminate and estimate man's injustice. 



The bread-buying dog does very much the same thing — detects and 

 protests against man's unfair dealing when, offering its penny for a 

 roll, a baker tries, waggishly or otherwise, to cheat it by giving it 

 something of inferior value or refusing it a quid pro quo at all. 



There must further exist in certain animals some perception of the 

 distinction between spoken as well as acted truth and falsehood, fact 

 and fiction ; for we are told, for instance, that the parrot sometimes 

 not only detects but denounces with the utmost indignation man's 

 verbal falsehoods (" Animal World "). On the other hand, one of the 

 occasionally base or bad purposes to which the same bird applies its 

 wonderful gift of speech is mendacity : so that it is capable at once of 

 " telling lies " itself and of detecting and reprimanding falsehood in 

 man. 



A certain sentiment of decency, modesty, or propriety occurs in va- 

 rious social animals, illustrated as it is by — 



1. Their sexual bashfulness and chastity. 



2. Their care of the dead, including the — 



3. Use of dying-places and cemeteries. 



4. Their employment of latrines or their equivalents. 



It has to be remarked that the moral virtues are illustrated mainly 

 by or in those animals that have directly or indirectly received their 

 moral training from man — such animals as the dog, elephant, and horse. 

 As a general rule — to which there are exceptions both in man and 

 other animals — the human child and the young animal can equally be 

 educated both to distinguish and do the right. In the formation of 

 their characters moral virtue may be made to dominate over moral vice 

 though it is probably impossible in either case to extinguish the latter. 

 IVIoral perfectibility may be aimed at, though it can not be attained ; 

 but the degree of moral excellence attainable is such in other animals, 

 as in the child, that it should stimulate man to put forth all efforts in 

 the moral training of both. 

 VOL. XVI. — 23 



