TRUE AND FALSE SENTIMENT ABOUT ANIMALS.
THE proposal which seems to have been made to provide " a burial-place for pet animals, dogs, pussy-cats, and little birds," accessible to Londoners, is, as the Pall Mall has justly remarked, not so grotesque as it seems at first. We have known more than one case in which many miles have had to be travelled by the mistress or master of the most faithful companion either had ever had, in order to bury its poor little body at all. Most London houses have no gardens, and moat people would shrink from casting the body of a creature of which they had been honestly fond on to the dust-heap, to be taken away by the
scavenger. There is even more of the feeling that the body of a dog, or cat, or bird, is identified with the living creature, than there is in the case of man, where the almost universal belief in immortality operates to excite a new train of associa- tions in a totally different direction. Still, there are very few who identify the creatures of which they have been fond so completely with the mere bodies of them, as to be willing to have them stuffed (as it was said that Jeremy Bentham was stuffed), to mock the memory with a dreadful parody on what they were. Hence, both for rich and poor, some burial-ground is necessary, unless the bodies of the dead favourites are to be spurned as mere garbage, a fate from which even the mildest degree of genuine sentiment necessarily saves them. Whether any "tribute to the memory" of these dead pets is appropriate and natural might raise more question, though we at least doubt whether any place could be fitter for such a tribute as Mr. Arnold's to his dog " Geist," than the immediate neighbourhood of the grave in which "Geist " was buried ; indeed, we strongly suspect that, in nine cases out of ten, the " tributes " paid to favourites of another
species would be more exactly in accordance with the tribute- payer's real belief, than they are in the case of men and women. We should have anecdotes of fidelity, sometimes true and some- times more or less imaginative, but always representing the master's or mistress's honest opinion ; anecdotes of sagacity; anecdotes, perhaps, of wilfulness and strength of pur- pose ;—all of these often true, and sometimes touching; and we should not have those conventional tributes, which are paid not because the writers feel the desire to pay them, but solely because they think that the external world will be expecting that something of the sort should be said. We should have more that was strictly true, and less that was "pumped up" in the case of the lower animals, than in the case of men, and we should certainly not have so much attempt to realise conventional expectations, attempts which represents nothing in the world except a "pictorial average,"—that is, a blurred image,—of fifty other more or less unreal epitaphs. There is, then, a good deal to be said for the objects of "The Zoological Necropolis Company (Limited)," though very little for its name, the word "necropolis " representing a thoroughly inconceivable idea, as well as a grandiose etymology, for how can there be any " city " of dead bodies However, we are not going to write about the advantages of a cemetery for animals, or the general character of the probable epitaphs. But as the epitaphs over human beings are cer- tainly amongst the least trustworthy of all expressions of sentiment, and we have already declared our belief that the epitaphs over departed favourites would be far less tinged by conventional falsehood, we should like to say something of the special character of that false shade in the sentiment which is undoubtedly constantly expressed in relation to the animal world, and to compare it with the conventional falsehoods uttered about men. Sometimes, we admit, the conventional expres- sions uttered about human beings are merely copied in the efforts of weak persons to express regret for the loss of a dif- ferent kind of favourite. We know of one case in which a lady put her servants into half-mourning for the death of a turkey, and after burying the creature, said, " Farewell, turkey, until the Day of Resurrection," though whether she really expected to see the turkey gobbling at her on that day in its old body, or whether she expected to be able in any way to dis- criminate the soul of a turkey from the soul (say) of a goose or gander, we cannot conceive. Still, it is rare, we think, to find people talking about animals they are, or have been, fond of, with that peculiarly conventional unreality with which they so often talk of men and women. They don't say, " What a sweet and fascinating creature is that dog of Mrs. A.'s ! " because no one expects them to say that it is either sweet or fascinating. Nobody gives dogs or cats false testimonials, unless, indeed, it be to sporting dogs whose price the falsehood enhances. You don't find books dedicated to the memory of a faithful mastiff, " now no more," as they often are to the memory of a friend who, even if still living, would have cared quite as little to read them as the mastiff himself. The false tone of sentiment about the lower animals is different from that about men, does not consist so much in attributing to them imaginary moral yid.% but rather in exaggerating or expressing very awkwardly the feelings of the master or mistress on the subject of these favourites, perhaps under the impression that occasional exaggerations compensate in some degree for inade- quate acknowledgments of other obligations. " I adore dogs," said a statesman, who probably hardly ever gave up a visit in his life, that he might not leave his most familiar canine friend companionless while he was away. The adoration announced was a sort of general compensation for all particular remissness. Again, you often hear a young lady addressing her dog in terms of the most inapplicable and extravagant adulation, calling it " divinely beautiful," " adorably sweet," " too, too precious," "my angel," and so forth, though all this is only meant to describe the merits of pretty brown eyes, a glossy coat, and a decided preference for its mistress over strangers, though also, perhaps, to record 'a vague impression that it is a great merit in a dog to enjoy food and milk when that food and milk are presented by its mistress. The truth is, that when people try to express how much they enjoy the presence of their favourite animals, they almost always do so in words which convey some- thing quite different from their own enjoyment,—namely, praise of imaginary qualities of which the creature cannot possibly possess any. The author of "Lorna Doone" remarks very justly that there is nothing more soothing in life than to see a favourite animal taking its food kindly; and this is quite tree. But then most people will go and try to express the unques- tionably soothing effect of this spectacle, as if it constituted a merit in the animal itself, which it certainly does not. When a gentle little mare takes an apple out of your hand, and munches it, you feel a very lively satisfaction ; but the unthinking express that satisfaction as if they had detected a new and marvellous moral quality in the mare. So when a selfish little dog growls at his mistress, as she tries to get into her own bed, that foolish mistress is very apt to address it as a rogue who is more charming than ever for his sense of humour; whereas, there is no more sense of humour in the dog on the bed, than there is when he growls because she tries to take away from him the bone he is gnawing.
The truth, we suppose, is that when you have said all you can can say with any exactness about your pleasantest companions in the animal world, you feel that there is a great deal left unsaid which you do not know how to say.. But when you try to indicate this by attributing to these creatures qualities which they assuredly have not, and which you would not enjoy in them at all, even if they had them, you become a sentimentalist. A great deal of the companionableness of horses, dogs, cats, and creatures generally, consists in their not understanding a great many of your thoughts, and not criticising even what they do understand. You are at home with them because they enter into only a part of your feelings, and cannot say what they think, articulately, even of those which they partly understand, so that the way in which they do express what they feel is fresh and pathetic from its very inadequacy. When a dog licks its crying mistress, or begs to her, or pulls her dress to draw her away, as he thinks, from her grief, his mode of consolation is all the more comforting for its pathetic inadequacy. When a blind and almost dying dog toils slowly up and down stairs, feeling its way by the wall, only in order to be in the same room with its mistress, the inarticulateness of the aireetioh expressed is half the pathos of the expression. But we wholly sentimentalise, when we translate the pleasure these traits give us into praises which we should lavish on human beings for qualities entirely different from those of the lower animals, qualities, indeed, very mach less resting and fascinating to us. Yet we often use lan- guage only applicable to human characteristics, and those, perhaps,
'characteristics of a kind which we do not always value even in human beings, and which we could not endure in our animal pets even if such characteristics could be conferred on them. A dog's vigilance,, and fidelity, and affectionateness even, are, in great degree, due to his limitations, to his not enjoying books, or prospects, or new society, or artistic effects. Yet a'good deal of the praise bestowed on him is praise which might be applicable to beings of ranch larger mental range than men, but which is absolutely irrelevant when bestowed on creatures which we value just in proportion to the complete- ness of their exclusion from these more complex and shadowy regions of thought and desire. We sentimentalise on the lower animals, when we fail to see that what we specially love in them is not their likeness to man, but their unlikeness to man,—the very definite limitation of their nature to a sort of vigilance, a kind of ease, a class of enjoyments, which are the more interesting to us because they represent something much more the result of instinct than of reason, much more the result of nature than of culture, much more the result of concentration in a few narrow fields of activity, than of a range over many and wide-spread fields.
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