32 



JOURNAL OF MAINE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert 

 watchfulness, faithful and true even 

 in death." 



It is alleged that, after this, some 

 of the jurors were anxious to hang 

 the defendant. 



Lastly, animals ought to be espe- 

 cially interesting to us because they 

 are probably immortal. 



I will offer a few reasons for believ- 

 ing that animals may be immortal; 

 first, on the supposition that all 

 men are immortal; then, on the sup- 

 position that man's immortality is 

 conditional. 



Of course, a proposition like this 

 will always find many opposers. Our 

 natural pride rebels against the idea 

 that animals are to share immortality 

 with us. This belief is very old. It 

 was clearly stated more than twenty- 

 three centuries ago. This opinion has 

 been held by many distinguished men 

 and women whom we greatly admire. 

 Tholuck believed that the kingdom of 

 God will exist on the earth and be 

 peopled by the entire animal creation, 

 freed from the material body, as did 

 Luther and many other German theo- 

 logians and philosophers. Tholuck 

 seems to base his belief, in part, at 

 least, upon an interpretation of Rom- 

 ans VIII, 19-23. Prof. Hitchcock re- 

 marks upon this interpretation, in his 

 Religion of Geology. "This exposi- 

 tion," he says, "surely carries with it 

 a great deal of naturalness and 

 probability. Both Bishop Butler and 

 John Wesley believed in the im- 

 mortality of animals and they both 

 express confidence in the idea that 

 animals in the future will arrive at 

 great attainments and become rational 

 and moral agents. Bishop Butler 

 says that men endued with capacities 

 for religion and virtue are without the 

 use of them in infancy and child- 

 hood and that a great part of the 

 human species go out of the pres- 

 ent world before they come to the 

 exercise of these capacities in any 

 degree at all. Adam Clarke gives 

 ten reasons for belief in the immor- 

 tality of animals. 



Besides these mentioned above, the 

 following are some of the celebrated 

 men and women who have expressed 

 their belief in the immortality of the 

 lower animals in most emphatic lan- 

 guage, some of whom I shall later 

 have occasion to quote: Plato, 

 Cicero, Leibnitz, Jeremy Taylor, Max 



Muller, Bishop Ellicott, Sir Charles 

 Lye 11, Agassiz, Charles Kingsley, 

 Lamartine, Mary Russell Mitford, 

 Mary Somerville, Dr. John Brown, 

 Olive Thorne Miller, Southey, Rev. 

 F. O. Morris, and Rev. J. G. Wood. 



Of these there are three classes. 

 First, the philosophers, — Plato, Cicero, 

 Bishop Butler and Leibnitz, who 

 maintain that there is the same rea- 

 son for believing in the immortality 

 of animals as in that of man. Their 

 belief is based on the fact that man 

 has a twofold nature, that he has a 

 body and a soul; that the material 

 body perishes at death and that the 

 soul survives; that the soul cannot 

 perish, tliat immortality is inherent 

 in its nature; that the lower animals 

 have this duality; that they are body 

 and soul. What is the soul? It is 

 that which thinks, feels and wills; it 

 is that which is intelligent and affec- 

 tionate. We naturally infer that the 

 intelligence and affection which the 

 dog possesses do not pertain to mat- 

 ter but to soul. But we hesitate to 

 believe that animal love and animal 

 intelligence are the same in their na- 

 ture as human love and human in- 

 telligence. 



I wish to quote a few authorities 

 on this point. Wordsworth called 

 his dog Mercy, "A soul of love." 

 Dr. John Brown beautifully says, 

 "Are not these dumb friends of 

 ours persons rather than things. Is 

 not their soul ampler, as Plato would 

 say, than their body and contains 

 rather than is contained? Is not 

 what lives and wills in them and is 

 affectionate, as spiritual and imma- 

 terial, as truly removed from mere 

 flesh and bones as that soul which is 

 the proper self of their master? And 

 when we look each other in the face, 

 as I look in Dick's who is lying in his 

 corner by the fireside, and he in 

 mine, is it not as much the dog with- 

 in looking out from his eyes— the 

 windows of the soul — as it is the man 

 from mine?" 



"Knowest thou not," says Milton, 

 "their knowledge and their ways? 

 They also know and reason not con- 

 temptibly." And Aristotle, "There 

 are between animals and man facul- 

 ties in common, near and analogous." 



"The camel driver has his thoughts 

 and the camel, he has his thoughts" 

 is an Arabian proverb. Every horse- 

 man of experience and observation 



