IN OTHER ANIMALS. 177 



that is finally made between the right, the expedient, 

 the wrong is determined by a variety of considerations 

 by conflicting emotions, by the balancing of probabilities 

 and inclinations, by the degree or kind of temptation, by 

 the presence or absence of witnesses, especially human, by 

 other specialities of an animal's position, by the nature and 

 extent of its moral training, by the character of the rewards 

 and punishments offered on previous occasions. In the dog 

 there is sometimes obviously the same kind of conflict and 

 collision between virtue and selfishness, between a sense of 

 what is right which is too generally also what is painful, 

 what calls for terrible self-denial and suffering, including 

 the physical pangs of hunger and thirst, as well as the 

 moral pangs, say, of unsatisfied revenge and a sense of 

 what is simply pleasant and profitable. 



Temptation frequently begets in the dog, cat, and other 

 animals the same kind of mental or moral agitation, and the 

 same sort of result, as in man. Sometimes we can see in 

 the dog, for instance the whole play of the animal's mind 

 the battle between its virtuous and vicious propensities, 

 its promptings to the right and its endeavours to stick by 

 the right, its longing' for the wrong for the titbit, which 

 it knows it would be improper to steal and the final 

 triumph either of virtue or temptation. The poor animal, 

 knowing or feeling the weakness of the flesh, sometimes has 

 the moral strength, the force of character, the good sense, to 

 avoid temptation altogether. But dogs, like men, are apt to 

 have the most trying temptations thrust unexpectedly upon 

 them, and then comes the tug of war of the appetites and 

 passions the moral turmoil that may make shipwreck of or 

 that may strengthen virtue. Sometimes, then, by the dog, 

 as by the man, temptation is successfully resisted after per- 

 haps a series of protracted and painful moral struggles that 

 have been very apparent to the onlooker. Unfortunately, 

 however, equally in dog and man, the resistance of tempta- 

 tion is less common by far than non-resistance or non- 

 success in resistance, the resuv t of which is various forms or 

 degrees of wrong-doing. 



But in the dog, cat, and other animals this wrong-doing 

 VOL. i. N 



