2o8 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 



with this element of freedom, the peoples of our own Aryan 

 j-ace — and, fortunately, the most advanced of all its varieties, 

 the English-speaking part of the folk — have, by the divine 

 impulse towards moral advancement, been led to make a great 

 extension of the sympathetic motives. The first step in this 

 direction seems to have been towards the mitigation of the 

 horrors of war, which of old meant the slavery or slaugh- 

 ter of the prisoners. Under the dictates of the developing 

 spirit of mercy and without written law, these brutal actions 

 have been limited until the dogs of war are allowed to rend 

 only in the hour of battle. In this day the man who slays 

 the wounded or robs the dead is esteemed an outlaw. The 

 same beneficent motive was next extended towards human 

 slaves. In this matter English people led; and to them it 

 was almost altogether due that this evil has come nearly to 

 an end except among the Mohammedans, who are bound as 

 in chains to their sacred books and cannot win their way 

 to progress through statutes. In a like manner, in the care 

 of the poor, of prisoners for debt, and even of malefactors, 

 our English folk on both sides of the Atlantic have led in 

 the ongoing towards a higher moral estate. 



The last great excursion of sympathy which has character- 

 ized the English Aryans — one dating its beginning to this 

 century — is that relating to the rights of our domesticated 

 animals. This has come about, like the other movements, in 

 a w^ay unconsciously. Prophetic spirits have seen beyond 

 the vision of their fellows ; they have given their messages, 

 which have found an echo in the souls of men. The motive 

 orio-inated in the recoornition of the essential likeness of the 

 minds of the lower animals to our own. But it has been 

 greatly reenforced by the teachings of the naturalists to the 



