THE COMMON-SENSE VIEW i6i 



worthy the marble tribute which to-day stands in 

 Edinburgh to his memory. There has never been 

 recorded in the history of the world an instance 

 of more extravagant trust and devotion than that 

 told of the canine companion of a certain vivi- 

 sector, which licked the hand of his master while 

 undergoing the crime of being cut to pieces. 

 Such deeds of self-sacrifice remind one of the 

 tales told of imaginary saints. But they are the 

 deeds of ojtly dogs — of beings whom half the 

 world look upon with indifference and contempt, 

 and whom the other half would feel, if they came 

 within reach, under the strictest obligations to 

 kick. 



* When some proud son of man returns to earth, 

 Unknown to glory but upheld by birth, 

 The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe, 

 And storied urns record who rests below ; 

 When all is done, upon the tomb is seen, 

 Not what he was, but what he should have been ; 

 But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend, 

 The first to welcome, foremost to defend, 

 Whose honest heart is still his master's own. 

 Who labours, fights, lives, breathes, for him alone, 

 Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth — 

 Denied in heaven the soul he had on earth.' 



I am not one of those who regard the evidence 

 for the post-mortem existence of the human soul 

 as being either abundant or conclusive. But of 

 one thing I am positive, and that is, that there 

 are the same grounds precisely for believing in the 

 immortality of the bird and the quadruped as there 

 are for the belief in human immortality. And it 



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