NATURAL HISTORY OF THE DOG. 37 



passions, endued with memory and recollection, disposed to imita- 

 tion, profiting by experience, and acquiring skill from discipline 

 and instruction, then we might hope to see them properly estimated, 

 their importance acknowledged, and their treatment amended. The 

 properties here detailed are, in some degree, common to all ; but 

 in the dog they shine with a lustre that none but those who study 

 the animal can be aware of. We owe something also of the con- 

 tempt in which dogs are held to the figurative language derived 

 from eastern writings, both sacred and prophane. "You dog!" 

 is a common term of reproach used towards those, as well as by 

 those, who have not half the virtues of one ; yet in uninformed 

 and in unreflecting minds this metaphoric sarcasm serves to be- 

 get contempt, both for the original and the portrait. Our oldest 

 writers, with whom every thing vile and base is doglike, are full 

 of this imagery. Even the sacred writings, abounding in the 

 sublimest precepts of humanity, have added their share of obloquy 

 and reproach, which sinks deep in many minds, and begets a tra- 

 ditional contempt and ill-will towards one of the most deserving 

 animals of the brute creation. To combat these popular sources 

 of inhumanity, I have before observed, no means seem so well cal- 

 culated as to place the subject of our inquiry in his proper point 

 of view, which is not that of a mere instinctive machine, but that 

 of an intellectual being, and that of one who uses his mental and 

 bodily powers principally for the good of mankind. 



For the rationality of the dog I am almost ashamed to contend, 

 the proofs are so numerous ; and yet there are those who deny it 

 him in the face of the ablest philosophers and metaphysicians, who 

 have clearly allowed him this distinction ; but the extent of his 

 reasoning powers has occasioned great diversity of opinion among 

 them also. Much, however, if not all, of this discordance has 

 arisen for want of a precise idea of that inherent property we 

 name instinct, under which general term it has been too common 

 with writers to include the phenomena of reason. It is foreign to 

 my present purpose, if it were within the reach of my ability, to 

 enter on a metaphysical inquiry into the faculty of reason. It 



