180 MORAL SENSE 



has its strange or striking vagaries, eccentricities, or incon- 

 sistencies in other animals. Thus a retriever that would 

 himself touch no food belonging to his master, yet offered no 

 objection to theft of the same food by a cat, nor did he decline 

 to accept a share of her plunder (Wood). 



The sense of guilt and its expression is more fully dis- 

 cussed in the chapters on f Crime ' and on ' Language.' 



Not only do animals feel their own wrong-doing, but they 

 appreciate evil or evil deeds in their young and in their fel- 

 lows, including other genera and species, and man himself. 

 They show this, for instance (l),by the punishment of offen- 

 ders, if not of offences, as well as (2) by the prevention of 

 threatened wrong-doing or the defence of the wronged, or 

 (3) by the resentment or revenge of injury or injustice of 

 any kind. Thus various animals resent and revenge the 

 wrongs committed by man not only on themselves or their 

 fellows, but even on brother man ; and this sense of wrong 

 or injury inflicted upon others leads sometimes to their 

 defence of man against his fellow-man. A case happened 

 recently in Ireland of a pet cow that defended its mistress 

 against the ill usage of its master, its mistress's husband ; 

 and many instances have been recorded of the dog, elephant, 

 and horse doing similar kindnesses to their human favourites. 

 It ought to be not a little humiliating to man's pride that 

 the so-called ' lower ' animals have so frequently to act as 

 mediators in human quarrels to defend lordly man against 

 his own species. 



In the same sense in which it can be said that the dog 

 and other animals are endowed sometimes with a perception 

 of wrong, it may also be said that they acquire a sense of the 

 illegality of certain not only of their own actions, but also of 

 man's. Human tribunals have apparently regarded sheep- 

 stealing dogs as conscious of the illegality of their deeds, as 

 sensible of the nature of their nefarious employment, as aware 

 of the character of their offence or crime, as alive to the 

 chances of detection and of the necessity for secrecy or con- 

 cealment, for nocturnal operations, for the avoidance of being 

 found associated with any of the evidences of guilt, as feeling 

 that they deserve punishment and that they will receive it 



