10 THE HUMANIZING OF THE BRUTE. 



than in kind from the purely intellectual acts of 

 man." J ) 



Now upon investigation into the cause underlying 

 this erroneous principle we might, as far as the more 

 popular circles are concerned, discover one reason in 

 the nervous sentimentalism of our days. At the be- 

 ginning of the twentieth century, no less than towards 

 the end of the eighteenth, people have become ex- 

 tremely sensitive to any sort of pain. Pain like a 

 haunting spectre is dreaded with the utmost anxiety 

 and avoided even to a nicety; and since the human 

 heart is inclined to find some correspondence between 

 external circumstances and its own apprehensions and 

 emotions, it kindles in sympathy wherever pain is no- 

 ticed, whether real or imaginary. This inclina- 

 tion will grow stronger as soon as there is question of 

 animated beings that are attached to man and afford 

 him sensuous pleasure, and leave upon him the im- 

 pression of a certain helplessness. Of course, as is 

 attested by daily experience, one of the first and fore- 

 most places among such cherished creatures must be 

 assigned to the animals known as our "domestic com- 

 panions." Besides there exists a certain analogy be- 

 tween the manifestations of pain in man and in the 

 brute, between the expression of man's spiritual affec- 

 tions and the corresponding merely sensuous feelings 

 indicated in the features of animals. Thus it hap- 

 pens that from the expression visible in the eye of a 

 faithful dog the inference is drawn, not to an empty 

 stomach, but rather to a heart oppressed by sorrow 



)A. S. Packard, M. D. Ph. D., Zoology (10th ed.) p. 

 680. 



