178 MORAL SENSE 



is accompanied by a perfect consciousness or conception of 

 the nature of their behaviour. They are quite aware of 

 being engaged in actions that will bring inevitable punish- 

 ment, which penalty, moreover, they are sensible they de- 

 serve. Miss Buist gives the history of a pet canary that was 

 given to prancing about on her piano keys, and that knew 

 it was wrong in so doing. 



Abundant evidence of a consciousness of wrong-doing is 

 to be found either generally in the 



1. Pricks, stings, or pangs of conscience. 



2. The various expressions of a sense of guilt for instance, 

 the 



a. Sneaking gait. 



6. Depressed head, ears, and tail. 



c. Temporary disappearance. 



d. Permanent absconding ; desertion of home and 



master. 



3. The multiform exhibitions of contrition, regret, repent- 

 ance, self-reproach, remorse 



Or more specifically in the 



4. Efforts at reconciliation and pardon, including the 

 giving of peace offerings. 



5. Various forms of making atonement. 



6. Concealment of crime or its proofs. 



7. Artifices for escaping detection or conviction. 



8. Non-resentment of punishment. 



9. Sensitiveness to reproof, or even under mere reference 

 to former delinquency. 



10. Punishment of offenders by and among each other. 



Conscience is frequently as severe a monitor in other ani- 

 mals as in man, its reproaches as stinging and hard to be 

 borne, its torments sometimes intolerable. We may speak 

 quite correctly, for instance, of the conscience-stricken animal 

 thief, the cat or dog caught in the act of pilfering from the 

 larder. The signs of detected and acknowledged guilt are 

 the same in kind as would be exhibited under parallel cir- 

 cumstances by the human child. The animal, like the child, 

 if rendered sensitive by previous moral training, shows un- 

 mistakably its consciousness of delinquency. Its look and 



