to perceive a continuity between himself and his ancestors, and to take an interest in the members of his family who lived several generations before him. All the ideas of property and honours, as descendable in families, are founded on a feeling which is exclusively human. Though animals fear pain, they have not an idea, and therefore an anticipation, of death.(37) No animal is distressed, or alarmed, by witnessing the death, or seeing the dead body, of one of its own species. For this reason, it may be safely affirmed that the story of animals in captivity having committed suicide from ennui is false. (*) An animal may have accidentally killed itself, as a moth flies into a burning candle, but not knowing what death is, it could not have intentionally committed suicide. Inasmuch as animals have no idea of death, they do not bury their dead; still less do they perform any rites of sepulture, or show any marks of respect to the remains or memory of the respect to the camel is repeated by Elian, Nat. An. iii. 47, (compare Camus, Notes sur l'Hist. d'An. d'Aristote, p. 188,) and that respecting the horse by Elian, Nat. An. iv. 7; Antigon. Hist. Mirab. c. 54, ed. Westermann; Varro, de Re Rust. ii. 7; Plin. Nat. Hist. viii. 64; Oppian, Cyn. i. 236-70. Seneca says, contrary to natural history Feræ quoque ipsæ veneris evitant nefas, As to the porphyrion and the stork resenting the conjugal infidelity of their mistress, Elian, Nat. An. iii. 42; viii. 20. As to the jealousy of elephants and lions with respect to their own females, ib. xi. 15; Plin. Hist. Nat. viii. 17. Compare Selden, ib. lib. i. c. 5. (37) Les bêtes n'ont point les suprêmes avantages que nous avons; elles en ont que nous n'avons pas. Elles n'ont point nos espérances, mais elles n'ont pas nos craintes; elles subissent comme nous la mort, mais c'est sans la connoître : la plupart même se conservent mieux que nous, et ne font pas un si mauvais usage de leurs passions.'-Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, liv. i. ch. 1. (38) See Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive, tom. iii. p. 786. Through the kindness of Professor Owen, I have learnt, with respect to suicidal beasts in captivity, that the only cases at the Zoological Gardens which could in any way be so interpreted, are those of some few that, under the irritation of skin disease, pick, scratch, and eat away parts, so as to bring on ulceration and death. A hyæna (he adds) has been known to begin at a sore toe, and eat away its own leg as far as the trunk. Monkeys nibble away their tails. How far the nervous irritation from captivity may induce this act is questionable. I believe the irritation to be merely local.' deceased. Apparently an animal suffers no pain at seeing the dead body of one of his race devoured by birds or beasts: Viva videns vivo sepeliri viscera busto.(39) For the same reason, no animal has any of the religious ideas which are connected with the posthumous existence of the soul, with its continuance in a disembodied state, and with a system of future rewards and punishments. : Man, on the other hand, has an idea of death. He anticipates his own death with various feelings, among which fear predominates. He is capable, however, of hating life, and therefore may, and sometimes does, commit intentional suicide. He sympathises with the fear of death felt by other men, and therefore can protect and assist them against it. He even feels a tenderness for the life of animals, which they are incapable of feeling for one another. He has invented an art of medicine, with a view of prolonging life, as well as other contrivances, having indirectly the same end. He regrets the death of kinsmen, friends, and persons whom he respects or admires. He treats the remains of his own species with respect a cannibal is an object of intense abhorrence among every nation above the savage state. He inters them in the earth, or treats them with other sepulchral rites, and erects monuments and inscriptions to the memory of the dead. He wears dress of a certain colour, and other marks of mourning, in token of his grief for their loss. All the feelings which are connected with the reverential treatment of dead bodies, with their preservation by mummification and embalming, or with the erection of monuments and epitaphs to the departed, are purely human. These feelings are doubtless much strengthened by the belief in the immortality or posthumous existence of the human soul; but their great antiquity, and wide diffusion, even among the most savage tribes, (") shows that they would exist, though perhaps in a diminished degree, (39) Lucret. v. 991. (40) See Gen. xxiii. 19, 20. Herod. iv. 71, 127. even if the soul were conceived as mortal. Monuments and epitaphial inscriptions to animals, though expressive of a real feeling of affection, are, indeed, generally considered as sports of the imagination. Animals kill one another, even those of the same species, for food: and they fight, from other motives, so as to cause death.(") But killing, for the sake of extinguishing life, is peculiar to man. Both the preservation and the destruction of life, on its own account, are exclusively human. [Medicine and the care of the sick, on the one hand, and war and murder on the other, are distinctive attributes of our race. (42) (41) Compare Bayle, Dict. Barbe, note C. M. Comte considers the carnivorous organization of man as the principal cause of his destructive tendencies; and he remarks that, while the destructive nature of the carnivorous animals has led to no consequences beyond the satisfaction of their brutal appetites, it became in man the cause of war, which was the primitive cause of civilization, by uniting scattered families and tribes, and preparing the way for a permanent peace.Ib. tom. v. p. 92, 178. It is true that war was a necessary condition for the formation of political societies, and the foundation of regular government; but can it be said with truth, that the carnivorous nature of man is the main cause of war? Even in a savage state men do not fight merely to satisfy their appetite for animal food; and even when they fight for food,they may fight for corn or fruit, as well as for game or flocks and herds. (42) In one sense, therefore, the saying, 'homo homini lupus,' unduly disparages the possible goodness-in another, it diminishes the possible malignity, of human nature. (See Erasm. Adag. p. 459.) The Greek proverb, aveрwños ȧvОрáпоν daоviov (Zenob. i. 91), homo homini deus,' represents the good side of human nature. The former saying is in Plautus, Asinar. ii. 4, 88. 'Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quum qualis sit non norit.' The latter is borrowed by Cæcilius ap. Symmach, Ep. x. 104. (Poet. Lat. Scen. Fragm. vol. ii. p. 152: ed. Bothe.) Homo, sacra res homini,' in Sen. Epist. 95, § 33, appears to allude to the latter proverb. Σοφοὶ σοφους σώζουσιν, ἢν ὦσιν σοφοί, is a proverbial verse, probably from a tragic writer, in Plutarch, Anton. c. 80. A wicked man will do infinitely more harm than a brute: Aristot. Eth. Nic. vii. 7. When man is improved he is the best of animals; but without law and justice he is the worst of all. Injustice, with arms in its hands, is the most pernicious of all things.-Pol. i. 2, ad fin. 'Quum tibi proponas animalia cuncta timere Unum præcipio tibi plus hominem esse timendum.' Dionys. Cato, Dist. iv. 11. 'Bruta licet soleant animalia jure timeri, Avian. Fab. xvii. 19. Aristotle (Pol. iii. 16) opposes the dominion of law to that of human discretion, and says, that the introduction of the latter element is equivalent to the rule of a wild beast. Compare the remarks of Gibbon on this All races of men appear to have conceived the soul as existing separately from the body, and as capable of continuing after death, and have incorporated various ideas respecting metempsychosis, posthumous reward or punishment, visitation of the living by disembodied souls, or exaltation of souls of the dead into gods and demigods, in their religious system. Generally, animals are destitute of any religious notions; they appear to be incapable of conceiving anything supernatural or supersensual. Lactantius, who thinks that most of the faculties of brutes differ only in degree from those of man, makes the capacity for religion their characteristic distinction.(*) Man, both physically and mentally, is more liable to disease than animals. The liability to disease, in fact, is a distinctive mark, if not a privilege, of man as a rational being. Without reason and its attendant qualities, a being with an organization so tender and fragile, so liable to morbid affections, and so helpless in infancy and sickness, as man, would soon become passage (Decline and Fall, c. 22). The destructive qualities of man have likewise been brought into comparison with the agents of external nature. The historian (says Gibbon, c. 26) may content himself with an observation, which seems justified by experience, that man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures than from the convulsions of the elements. Compare the treatise of Dicœarchus, cited by Gibbon, as described by Cic. de Off. ii. 5. (43) Nullum est animal, ut ait Cicero [De Leg. i. 8], præter hominem quod habet aliquam notitiam Dei. Solus enim sapientia instructus est, ut religionem solus intelligat. Et hæc est hominis atque mutorum vel præcipua vel sola distantia. Nam cetera quæ videntur hominis esse propria, etsi non sint talia in mutis, tamen similia videri possunt. Quod si horum omnium, quæ ascribi homini solent, in mutis quoque deprehenditur similitudo, apparet solam esse religionem, cujus in mutis nec vestigium aliquod nec ulla suspicio inveniri potest. Religionis est propria justitia, quam nullum aliud animal attingit.' (De Irâ Dei, c. 6.) A fabulous story is told in Plin. (Hist. Nat. viii. 1), of certain elephants in Africa, which performed religious rites to the new moon. M. Comte, indeed, is of opinion that the higher species of animals are capable of a sort of coarse fetichism; and that some, under human influence, even arrive at a slight rudiment of polytheism. He does not, however, particularize the facts on which these opinions are founded. Je suis convaincu que les animaux assez élevés pour manifester, en cas de loisir suffisant, une certaine activité spéculative (et beaucoup d'espèces en sont assurément susceptibles), parviennent spontanément, de la même manière que nous, à une sorte de fétichisme grossier, consistant toujours à supposer les corps extérieurs, même les plus inertes, animés de passions et de volontés plus ou moins analogues aux impressions personnelles du extinct.(") Reason is one of the main conditions for the maintenance of the human species; and, as such, deserves the consideration of the physiologist, not less than instinct in brutes. Animals in a wild state are occasionally subject to murrains, by which large numbers of them are destroyed; (4) but they are comparatively exempt from disease.(*) In general they die spectateur. Une judicieuse exploration de l'intelligence des animaux ne laisse aucun doute sur la réalité de cette similitude essentielle, sauf la différence fondamentale que présente l'incontestable aptitude de l'entendement humain à se dégager graduellement de ces ténèbres primitives, qui, pour les autres organismes, même les plus éminens, doivent, au contraire, indéfiniment persister; excepté, peut-être, chez quelques animaux choisis, un faible commencement de polythéisme, qu'il faudrait d'ailleurs attribuer surtout au contact humain.'-Cours de Phil. Pos. tom. v. p. 36, and compare p. 126 (note), where the statement that the higher animals attain to a sort of fetichism is repeated. (44) In many species the young animal seems to be, from the first, in the full possession of its senses, and has considerable power of active locomotion; in general, however, it is very dependent upon its parent, only being able to obtain food when this is placed within its immediate grasp. Such is the case with the human infant, which is closely dependent upon its parent during a larger proportion of its existence than is the young of any other animal. Here, again, therefore, we perceive the application of the general law, that the higher the grade of development a being is ultimately to assume, the more does it require to be assisted during the early stages of its progress. In the case of man, the prolongation of this period has a most important and evident influence upon the social condition of the race; being, in fact, one of the chief means by which the solitary are bound together in families.'-Carpenter's Human Physiology, § 45. (45) As to the existence of contagious disease in wild animals, see Cumming's Hunter's Life in South Africa (vol. i. p. 138). For the history of epizootic diseases from the earliest times, see Paulet, Recherches Historiques et Physiques sur les Maladies Epizootiques, 2 vols. Paris, 1775. Poetical accounts of epidemics in wild animals, as that in the Georgics of Virgil, where not only horses and cattle, but wolves, deer, birds, serpents, and fish, are described as included in the pestilence, are manifestly fabulous (iii. 480, 537-47). Similarly Ovid, Met. vii. 545-8; Silius, xiv. 594-7. Aristotle (Hist. Nat. viii. 19, 20) describes fishes as exempt from pestilential diseases, such as horses and cattle, and some other tame and wild viviparous quadrupeds, are subject to. (46) In this respect, savages approach wild animals: Severe diseases are rarely seen by the casual visitors of savage tribes. Death is their doctor, and the grave their hospital.'-Cooke Taylor, Nat. Hist. of Society, vol. i. P. 24. The following fabulous description of the ancient African nations applies rather to animal species than to men :- Genus hominum salubri corpore, velox, patiens laborum; plerosque senectus dissolvit, nisi qui ferro aut bestiis interiere: nam morbus haud sæpe quemquam superat.'-Sallust, Bell. Jug. c. 17. |