BENEVOLENCE IN MAN AND BEAST 157 



tendency to perform these and other services to other 

 animals, because the domesticated creatures volun- 

 tarily offer these services of benevolence to man. How 

 can any one doubt that animals (in domestication) 

 are willing to feed each other, when there are cats all 

 over England and Scotland which delight in bringing 

 food as presents to their owners ! We need not go 

 back to the historic cat which caught a pigeon every 

 day and brought it to its master when a prisoner in 

 the Tower. 



It is the natural impulse, usually of male cats, to 

 do this. The writer has seen it constantly ; and if 

 references are needed we need only turn to St. John, 

 who mentions a Highland shepherd whose cat brought 

 him something edible nearly every day in the year. 



Not the least interesting fact in the growth of the 

 sense of benevolence in animals is that when it is 

 engendered (usually in a rudimentary form, but the 

 same in kind as the virtue which we understand by 

 the word), it is at once diverted naturally from other 

 animals and directed by preference to the service of 

 man. Thus the other creatures benefit only in the 

 smallest degree. Proud of its new idea of being 

 serviceable and beneficent, the animal devotes itself 

 not to other animals, but to its master, who uncon- 

 sciously absorbs all the benefits which the new " virtue " 

 in the beast prompts it to bestow. 



