220 DOGS AND DOG LOVERS 



a debased nature. A dog lover will grant this to be 

 an unavoidable intellectual conclusion, but in the 

 secret corners of his mind he will feel something 

 more hostile than mere Christian pity for these 

 emotionally deformed people. If he holds Ere- 

 whonian doctrines he would like to send for the 

 family straightener, and bear with fortitude the 

 punishment inflicted on his friends and relations. 



I fear that we, the dog lovers, are, by those who 

 do not share our tastes, held to be unbalanced 

 persons, who intrude their passions, on the reason- 

 able and well bred. They object to us as victims 

 of perverted instincts, who talk unknown dog- 

 language in and out of season. It is not clear to 

 me why we care so much for dogs. Is it, in truth, an 

 exaggeration, or an offshoot of that love of the 

 helpless young of our own kind which natural 

 selection developes in social animals ? This is not 

 necessarily maternal, as we see in the story of the 

 heroic male baboon, who risked his life in saving 

 a young one from a pack of baying hounds.^ Or 

 is it an instinct developed in a hunting tribe — a 

 blind tendency to take good care of the food- 

 providers (at the expense of starving aunts and 

 grandmothers), such as we see among the Fuegians, 

 who explained that, "Doggies catch otters — old 

 women no."^ 



However this may be, it is I think certain that 

 the love of dogs is an unreasoning passion, having 

 all the force of an instinct. In a story by Miss 



1 Descent of Man, 1871, Vol. i., p. 75. 



' Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches, etc., ed. i860, p. 214. 



