HUMANE IDEAS AND FEELINGS. 47 



feelings, in regard to some of our domestic animals. A certain 

 animal regarded as a fit subject for contempt by some peoples has 

 been an object of worship, or something akin to it, by others ; 

 hence it is not surprising that the lot of such animals has been 

 very different in some parts of the world as compared with others. 

 To illustrate this we need go no further than the universally dis- 

 tributed dog and cat. In the East the dog is rarely other than 

 a homeless, despised outcast. In Europe generally he is a mem- 

 ber of the family. But it is to Great Britain especially that we 

 look to find all our domestic animals in the highest perfection, 

 and cherished with feelings of peculiar regard. In Britain it is 

 contrary to law to hitch a dog, however large and strong, to a cart 

 to draw even a small child, while in Germany dogs may be seen 

 used as beasts of burden in all the large cities. In no part of the 

 world are the good qualities of dogs so appreciated and valued as 

 in Great Britain ; hence it is not at all inexplicable that cruelty 

 to the dog and other animals is there comparatively rare. 



It may safely be said that never before in civilized countries 

 were animals and especially our domestic animals treated so 

 well, because never before were they so thoroughly understood. 

 To what is this to be attributed ? Not alone to the spread of kind- 

 lier feelings and better principles generally, but largely to the 

 advance of science. There was a time, well within the recollec- 

 tion of persons not yet old, when man, we were told by those to 

 whom we looked for light and guidance, stood utterly apart from 

 all else in the universe as the one being in whom the Creator 

 specially, and we might say solely, delighted, and for whose benefit 

 every other object, animate and inanimate, existed. How natu- 

 ral, then, for man to believe that animals, as such, had few if any 

 rights ! 



The one test to which many persons naturally enough brought 

 every animal was just this : Is the creature of any use whatever 

 to man ? If not, then it was held that it simply cumbered the 

 ground. People, it is true, admitted that man was an animal ; but 

 they did not realize what this expression meant, or did not accept 

 it in its full significance. To them man was an " animal," but not 

 like the others. He was too exalted to have any more than the 

 common principle of life. Men could not realize then as now that 

 mind and body are so closely related that for every mental process 

 there must be a corresponding physical correlative. But this once 

 being admitted it became possible to understand that animals be- 

 low man may have minds whose processes are akin to ours. The 

 question then became, not have animals minds, but what sort of 

 minds. Wherein does animal intelligence in the widest sense dif- 

 fer from human intelligence ? As soon as man himself became 

 better understood it was plain that his feelings were, on certain 



