240 MENTAL EVOLUTION IX AKIMALS. 



or even to give references to cases illustrating the exalted 

 level to which sympathy has attained. This, together with 

 the intelligent affection from which it springs, gives rise to a 

 love of approbation and dread of blame, which as far as they 

 go are in no way distinguisljable from the same feelings as 

 they occur in man himself. To this subject I shall have to 

 return when in my next work we come to treat of the genesis 

 of Conscience. 



Again, as Mr. Grant Allen has pointed out, the sense of 

 dependence which a dog shows is very instructive. " The 

 original dog, who was a wolf or something very like it, could 

 not have had any such artificial feeling. He was an inde- 

 pendent, self-reliant animal. . . . But at least as early 

 as the days of the Danish shell-mounds, perhaps thousands 

 of years earlier, man had learned to tame the dog." There- 

 fore, as a result of continuous education, selection, and breed- 

 ing, althouo-h " anions^ a few dogs, like those of Constanti- 

 nople, the instinct may have died out by disuse, .... 

 when a dog is brought up from puppyhood under a master, 

 the instinct is fully and freely developed, and the masterless 

 condition is thenceforth for him a thwarting and disappoint- 

 ing of all his natural feelings and affections."* 



Indeed, so strong are the combined effects of long-con- 

 tinued breeding and individual education, that they may 

 overcome the strongest of natural instincts and desires — 

 witness a dog which will starve rather than steal, and also 

 the recorded cases in which even the maternal instinct has 

 been overborne by the desire of serving a master. To give 

 only one example of this surprising fact, I shall quote from 

 the " Shepherd's Calendar " of the poet Hogg : — 



A collie belonged to a man named Steele, w^ho was in 

 the habit of consigning sheep to her charge without super- 

 vision. On one occasion, says Hogg, "whether Steele 

 remained behind or took another road, T know not, but, on 

 arriving home late in the evening, he was astonished to hear 

 that his faithful animal had never made her appearance with 

 the drove. He and his son, or servant, instantly prepared to 

 set out by different paths in search of her, but on their going 

 out into the streets, there was she coming with the drove, not 

 one missing, and, marvellous to relate, she was carrying a 

 young pup in her mouth. She had been taken in travail on 



* Evolutionist Abroad, p. 182, et seq. 



