XIV 

 DOGS AND DOG LOVERS 



'•The more I see of men, the more I like dogs." — Archbishop 

 Whately.* 



Why is it that some people do not like dogs ? 

 There are those who dislike other people's dogs just 

 as they dislike strange children. This is a point of 

 view which is comprehensible though unattractive. 

 Still, in comparison with those who do not like 

 dogs at all this class seem positively amiable. I 

 knew a lady with the most perfect understanding 

 of the qualities of human beings, whether bad or 

 good, yet she had no sympathy with dogs. She 

 would be kind to them, as an external duty to all 

 living things, but a dog had absolutely no place in 

 her heart. What made this blindness seem all the 

 more incomprehensible was the fact that she could 

 love a bullfinch ; she could not therefore plead that 

 she loved humanity so much that she had no love 

 left for beings of another sort. After all, it may 

 be that not to care for dogs is no more a blemish 

 than a lack of musical ear, which is not a sign 

 of general dullness of artistic perception since it is 

 found in some poets. We must accordingly allow 

 that not to love dogs is not a sign of a black heart or 



* Quoted by Professor A. C. Bradley in his Oxford Lectures on 

 Poetry, 1909, p. 341. 



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