1876.] Conscience in Animals . 15 1 
experience has reference to ideas of an abstraction so high 
as to extend far beyond the individual, or even the commu- 
nity, which our actions primarily affect. No wonder, there- 
fore, that when any course of action is being contemplated, 
conscience asserts her voice within us as a voice of supreme 
authority, commanding us to look beyond all immediate 
issues, inclinations, and even sympathies, to those great 
principles of action which the united experience of mankind 
has proved to be best for the individual to follow in all his 
attempts to promote the happiness or to alleviate the misery 
of his race. But with animals, of course, the case is dif- 
ferent. They start with a very small allowance of hereditary 
experience in the respects we are considering ; they have 
very few opportunities of adding to those experiences them- 
selves ; they probably have no powers of forming abstract 
ideas ; and so their moral sense, rudimentary in its nature, 
can never be exercised with reference to anything other than 
concrete objects— relation, companion, or herd. 
We may now proceed to answer the question already 
propounded, namely — Supposing Mr. Darwin’s theory con- 
cerning the origin of the moral sense to be true, where 
among animals should we expect to find indications of such 
a sense ? I think reflection will show that the three essen- 
tial conditions to the presence of a moral sense are only 
complied with among animals in the case of three groups — 
namely, dogs, elephants, and monkeys. I need not say any- 
thing about the intelligence or the sociability of these animals, 
for it is proverbial that there are no animals so intelligent 
or more social. It is necessary, however, to say a few words 
about sympathy. 
In the case of dogs sympathy exists in an extraordinary 
degree. I have myself seen the life of a terrier saved by 
another dog which stayed in the same house with him, and 
with which he had always lived in a state of bitter enmity. 
Yet when the terrier was one day attacked by a large dog, 
which shook him by the back and would certainly have killed 
him, his habitual enemy rushed to the rescue, and after saving 
the terrier had great difficulty in getting away himself. 
With regard to elephants I may quote the well-known 
instance from the “ Descent of Man ” : — “ Dr. Hooker in- 
forms me that an elephant, which he was riding in India, 
became so deeply bogged that he remained stuck fast until 
next day, when he was extracted by means of ropes. Under 
such circumstances elephants seize with their trunks any 
object, dead or alive, to place under their knees, to prevent 
their sinking deeper in the mud ; and the driver was dread- 
