CANINE MORALS AND MANNERS. i; 



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Most interesting would it be, were it possible, to get the dog's 

 precise view of the situation. The chief bar to our doing so is 

 owing to the difficulty of putting our human minds, even in im- 

 agination, within the restricting limits of the canine thinking 

 apparatus. Thus we constantly see, when anecdotes of the clever- 

 ness of dogs are told, that the narrator is quite unable, in esti- 

 mating the supposed motives and mental processes, to get out of 

 himself sufficiently to escape the inveterate tendency to anthropo- 

 morphism ; and he almost invariably gives the dog credit for 

 faculties which it is very doubtful if it possesses. When we 

 come to consider how few persons have that power of imaginative 

 sympathy with their own kind which enables us to see to some 

 extent through another's mental spectacles, it is no matter of sur- 

 prise that a human being should generally fail in trying to think 

 like a dog. 



Thinking, after all, is, like flying, an organic process, depend- 

 ent in every case on actual physical machinery ; and dissimilarity 

 of brain structure therefore absolutely precludes us from seeing 

 eye to eye, mentally, with the lower animals. 



But this structural difference of brain with its inevitable con- 

 sequences, although it balks us in one way, comes to our aid in 

 another. As has been said, our custom of ascribing human facul- 

 ties and modes of thought is an involuntary and invariable one 

 when we are dealing with the mental processes of other beings. 

 Even when we speak of the supernatural the same habit is mani- 

 fest, and human passions, emotions, and weaknesses are con- 

 stantly ascribed to beings presumed to be infinitely more remote 

 from us in power and knowledge than we are from the dog. Thus 

 we see in the not very distant past, roasted flesh and fruits were 

 thought by men to be acceptable to the gods ; doubtless because 

 they were pleasing to the palates of the worshipers, who reasoned 

 by analogy from the known to the unknown. This should teach 

 us to bear in mind that there is, affecting the dog's point of view, 

 almost undoubtedly such a thing as cynomorphism, and that he 

 has his peculiar and limited ideas of life and range of mental 

 vision, and therefore perforce makes his artificial surroundings 

 square with them. It has been said that a man stands to his dog 

 in the position of a god ; but when we consider that our own con- 

 ceptions of deity lead us to the general idea of an enormously 

 powerful and omniscient Man, who loves, hates, desires, rewards, 

 and punishes, in human-like fashion, it involves no strain of 

 imagination to conceive that from the dog's point of view his 

 master is an elongated and abnormally cunning dog ; of different 

 shape and manners certainly to the common run of dogs, yet 

 canine in his essential nature. 



The more one considers the matter the more probable does 



TOL. XLII. 12 



