The difficulty in treating this subject—which might seem at the outset to be a fatal one is that we do and can know very little about it. A moment’s thought, however, will show anyone that some of the most interesting things in the universe are just those about which we know little, but wish to know more. Take, for instance, the kindred subject of the after-life of man. Who can be said to really know anything at all about it? Yet, it has interested many hundred millions of people since the world began, and has been the subject of an appalling number of treatises and sermons in all kinds of languages, while the multitudinous variety of ideas concerning it have been the leading principles in the noblest lives as well as the hopeless barrier to all aspiration, ending sometimes in self-destruction, in minds of another type.
We claim that the after-life of animals is inseparably connected with that of our own species, and that the time has come when it should receive our more serious consideration, and this for two reasons: (a) Because the general belief in an after-life for animals would make an immeasurable difference in our treatment of them; and (b) because our own progress and enlightenment are involved in it. For just as the examination of the bodily structure of animals has had a revolutionary effect on our view of the nature and origin of the human race, physically, so the due consideration of the psychical part of animals is likely to throw light on our own spiritual nature. Comparative psychology is now recognised as a definite science.
Though the vast majority of people consider—or will state without consideration—that the great distinction between men and the other animals is that men have souls and animals have not, there is an increasing number who recognise no such distinction, and while as a popular question it is a comparatively new one, there have always been people, from the earliest times, who have held the view which is still considered extravagant by the unthinking multitude.
Passing over the Eastern teachers, who from the time of Buddha have always been centuries in advance of the western world in all such lines of thought, we find that the early Greek philosophers, Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, and Porphyry, in the very early centuries accepted the idea that animals possessed an intelligent soul, like men, which would live on after death. In later days our Bishop Butler, in his work “The Analogy of Nature,” wrote:—
“We cannot find anything throughout the whole analogy of nature to afford us even the slightest presumption that animals ever lose their living powers, much less if it were possible that they lose them by death, for we have no faculties wherewith to trace any beyond or through it, so as to see what becomes of them. Death removes them from our view. It destroys the sensible proof which we had before their death of their being possessed of living powers, but does not appear to afford the least reason to believe that they are then or by that event deprived of them.”
Michelet, in his standard book on “The Bird,” writes:—
“Open your eyes to the evidence. Throw aside your prejudices, your traditional and derived opinions. Preconceived ideas and dogmatic theories apart, you cannot offend Heaven by restoring a soul to the beast. How much grander the Creator’s work if He has created persons, souls, and wills, than if He had constructed machines.”
Amongst other thinkers who have held similar views we may mention Luther, Wesley, Cowper, Southey, Shelley, Byron, Keble, Pope, Kingsley, and Dean Stanley.
PHYSICAL CONSIDERATIONS.
As there is very little or no direct evidence of the after-life of animals, just as there is so little with regard to our own future existence that many people hold the opinion that we have none—an opinion which it is impossible to disprove by direct evidence, whatever may be one’s feeling in the matter—the only way we can proceed is by analogy between the human and sub-human races.
Since Darwin’s time the world has accepted the general idea that our bodily structure has had its origin in lower forms, and that we and all sub-human species are really and actually kindred, having sprung from a similar origin and branched off in different directions. I need not labour the point, but will merely mention the following facts as stated in Howard Moore’s “Universal Kinship” in substantiation of the proposition:—
1. Man’s body is composed of millions of minute cells which are indistinguishable under the strongest microscope from those composing the bodies of the higher animals. 2. All animals commence existence as a single cell. 3. The skeletons of human beings and animals alike are composed chiefly of lime—lime being in the sea, where life spent so many of its earlier centuries—the most available material for parts which need durability. 4. Men and all other animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. 5. The general plan of structure in all vertebrate animals is the same. 6. The teeth of men and anthropoids are in number and all essential points identical. 7. Men and anthropoids live about the same number of years, both becoming toothless and wrinkled in old age. In short, as Huxley said:—‘‘The structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes.”
But the most extraordinary and convincing fact is that the young of the higher animals, including man, pass quickly through the lower stages of development before birth. It is quite impossible to account for these facts on any other supposition than that there has been a gradual growth from one type to another as far as the bodily structure is concerned.
It may perhaps be said that we grant the evolution of the higher races from the lower, but the lower have existed only to lead up to the higher and have died out, or will die out when their work is done. But this cannot be maintained. In races, as well as in individuals, we find a close analogy between the sub-human species and the human. In the order of creation or evolution the bird comes as a development of the reptile or lizard—not in the direct order of progress between the lower forms and man who came by a different route, but as an offshoot or side development, and these side developments are valuable, as showing that man is not necessarily (as we in our conceit are sometimes inclined to think) the sole end and aim in creation. That the very large section of animated nature represented by the birds has been created and developed in its own way, with no evidence that it has any intention of leading up to anything human, is surely good evidence that it has to work out its destiny for its own ends and for purposes which we cannot at present pretend to understand.
In the same way we find that since the dawn of creation there have been races, huge mammoths as well as tiny species, which have dwelt on the earth for a time and then succumbed to varied conditions and died out leaving no trace but fossil remains—just as the races of men have come for a time, succumbed, and died out.
It is as though Nature were always trying experiments, many of which are not successful. The white races are not the descendants of the black as we at present know them. The latter, like the dinotherium or mammoth, are a side development or unsuccessful experiment, and apparently, in most cases, are destined to die before the white man and his ways.
Had those primitive, unformed races of men, who differed but little from apes, no meaning beyond what we see? Was their existence a purely wasteful freak of nature? They were not an essential link in the chain of future generations of more developed races, but were a side development like the sub-human races. Do we not hold that the individuals in these human tribes had some spark of the life that does not die, but continues its development in another sphere? And, if so, may we not logically hold the same with regard to the other side developments which we find around us?
MENTAL ATTRIBUTES.
Having accepted the position that the human body has evolved from the sub-human, it is difficult to see how we can avoid the con elusion that the mind and spirit have also evolved in the same way. They have always been the inhabitants of the body, so to speak, and the growth of the one has gone on concurrently with that of the other. As in the body, so in the mind we find in the animal the identical qualities and faculties in various stages of development which we find in ourselves— not only the so-called animal or bodily feelings, but the higher faculties also, as memory, reason, love, sympathy, and self-sacrifice.
It is also a very significant fact that just as we saw that the child before birth goes through in rapid succession the stages of race development, so the human mind in its growth gradually unfolds and recapitulates in a wonderful way the mental stages which the race has come through.
As Howard Moore says:—
“The earliest powers of the new-born babe are those of sensation and perception. The babe cannot think. It has no feeling of fear, no affection, no sympathy, and no shame. It can see and hear and taste and feel pain and satisfaction, but even these are vague and confused. In a week the perceptions are more sharp and vivid, more distinct and orderly. Memory arises. Memory is the power of reproducing past impressions. At three weeks old the emotions begin to sprout. The first to make their appearance are fear and surprise. When the baby is about seven weeks old the social affections show themselves and the simplest acts of association are performed. At the age of twelve weeks jealousy and anger may be expected. At fourteen weeks affection and reason dawn. Sympathy germinates at about the age of five months, pride and resentment at eight months, then grief, hate, and benevolence, and later shame and remorse.
“Now the remarkable thing about this is that this is very much like the order in which mind in the animal kingdom as a whole has apparently evolved. The lower orders of animals have none of the higher emotions, and none of the more complicated processes of mind. There is no shame in a reptile, no dissimulation in the fish, no sympathy in a mollusc, and no memory in the sponge. Memory dawns somewhere near the radiate stage of development and fear and surprise in the worms. Pugnacity makes its appearance in the insects, imagination in the spiders, and jealousy in the fishes. Pride, emulation, and resentment originate in the birds, grief and hate in the carnivora, shame and remorse amongst dogs and monkeys, and superstition in the savage.”
Again, as in the physical body, the animals have far surpassed man in certain qualities, which have been useful to them in their struggle for existence, such as flight, vision, hearing, and scent, while men have developed others to suit their needs, so in the mental realm we find that the animals have surpassed us in certain departments. It may be doubted whether any woman even has ever achieved a higher level of self-sacrificing devotion than has been found in some dogs, or any man more courage than that of the small tom-tit, who will fearlessly attack a human being a thousand times his own size, while the tiny race of ants have evolved and live in a social system which is much in advance of anything that man has achieved anywhere on the earth.
THINGS OF THE SPIRIT.
It may be urged that we have no monopoly of mental attributes, all of which are shared with us by the animals, but they still have no conception of the things of the spirit—that they have no idea of Deity or religion. The unanimity of opinion of those who have made a careful study of this subject, and whose views are therefore entitled to the greatest consideration, is quite remarkable, as Mr. E. P. Evans points out in his “Evolutional Ethics.” M. de Quatrefages (in his Rapport sur le Progrès de l’Anthropologie, Paris, 1867) maintains that domestic animals are religious since they are amenable to rewards and punishments, doing the will and seeking to win the favour of superior beings, on whom they are dependent, propitiating and fawning upon them, creeping and grovelling upon the ground in adoration, in order to assuage them anger and secure their kind regard. There is no difference, says this author, between the negro who worships a dangerous animal and the dog who crouches at his master’s feet to obtain pardon for a fault. Animals fly to man for protection as a believer does to his God.
According to Darwin,
“The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future and perhaps other elements. No being could experience so complex an emotion until advanced in his intellectual and moral faculties to a moderately high level. Nevertheless, we see some distinct approach to this state of mind in the deep love of a dog for his master, associated with complete submission, some fear, and perhaps other feelings.”
Comte held that the higher animals are capable of forming fetiehistic conceptions, and have been known to be strongly influenced by them.
Herbert Spencer admits that “the behaviour of animals elucidates the genesis (origin) of fetichism.” He instances the case of a retriever, who, associating the fetching of game with the pleasure of the person to whom she brought it, would often fetch various objects and lay them down at her master’s feet, and thinks this had become in her mind an act of propitiation.
Still more interesting and instructive were Mr. Romanes’ experiments with a Skye terrier. This dog, who was unusually intelligent, and, therefore, a good subject for psychological study, used to play with dry bones, tossing them up in the air and throwing them to a distance, giving them the appearance of animation, in order to give himself the ideal pleasure of worrying them. This writer says:—
“On one occasion I tied a long fine thread to a dry bone and gave him the latter to play with. After he had tossed it about for a short time I took the opportunity, when it had fallen at a distance from him and while he was following it up, of gently drawing it away from him by means of the invisible thread. Instantly his whole demeanour changed. The bone which he had previously pretended to be alive began to look as u it really were alive, and his astonishment knew no bounds He first approached it with nervous caution, but as the slow receding motion continued and he became quite certain that the movement could not be accounted for by any residuum of force which he had himself communicated, his astonishment became dread, and he ran to hide himself under some article of furniture, there to watch at a distance the uncanny spectacle of a dry bone coming to life.”
In this instance we have the experience of close observation, judgment, reason, and imagination, culminating in the exhibition of superstitious fear—all the elements, in short, which constitute religious sentiment in its crudest form.
Mr. W. J. Long has an interesting chapter on the subject of religion in animals in his “Brier Patch Philosophy.” He argues that religion has two elements—intuition and reason. Now, an animal has intuition—which is inborn knowledge independent of the senses—as you admit when you speak of his instinct, and he, obviously, has also some claim to elemental reasoning, so there is no impossibility in his possessing a rudimentary religion.
The same writer continues:—
“Since you have lost much of your intuitive power in following the long road to reason, and since the animal’s intuitions are admittedly much keener than your own, it seems only a reasonable question to ask, what is there to prevent the animal also from being more or less dimly conscious of that invisible life which man first discerned through his intuitions? Among wild animals certainly the feeling of the presence of an unsensed friend or enemy is so strong that hunters have noticed and wondered at it. So real is the feeling that it overmasters the keen senses upon which we usually depend. A deer, for instance, usually trusts his nose and his ears absolutely; but let a deer feel the presence of a danger, and though he can neither hear nor smell the cause of his alarm, he moves away swiftly and silently without a question. Among domestic animals you have noticed that the courage and devotion and all the best qualities even of a dog or horse are greatly developed by the simple fact that he recognises a master’s spirit above him. Your dog certainly does not obtain his idea of a master’s spirit through the senses; man is not nearly so powerful or noble as many of your great beasts. Whatever idea your dog has of you as his master is the recognition in you of some mental and spiritual quality, and is gained by him through some mental and spiritual perception. What is there, then, to prevent all animals feeling more or less surely the simple presence of one whom all your religions recognise as the Master and Euler of the solitudes, present and active in all things though no mortal eye can see Him, nor any ear hear the sound of His footsteps?”
That some of the domesticated animals have a well-developed moral sense and a conscience will hardly be denied by anyone who has associated intimately with them. By his behaviour a dog or a cat will often show that he has done something “wrong,” before his master has any idea what the wrong action may have been, and this is not a question merely of fearing any severe punishment, for they will act no differently when the only punishment they ever receive is a look or a word of disapproval; and is not the wish to gain the approval and love of the higher being the greatest incentive to right conduct amongst men, and, in fact, one of the chief elements in practical religion? Again, the small dog, who will run terrified from another in the road, becomes a bold defender as soon as he gets within his own gate, when supported by the sense of right and duty in protecting, exactly as one sees a weak, retiring person become a living force when filled with enthusiasm for a righteous cause. On the other hand, the bigger dog on his part, while bold enough on the thoroughfare, becomes hesitating and weak, and allows himself to be driven away by the plucky little defender. All of which seems to show a consciousness in both of them of the inherent power of right and the weakness of wrong.
That all the powers of the human mind are but the development of elementary powers found also in the sub-human races, seems really to settle the question of an animal’s claim to some elementary form of religion.
TELEPATHY.
Again the essential unity of the animal and human mind is strongly evidenced by the telepathic communication which has been found to exist between them. A striking instance of this has lately been reported to us by a lady in whom we have absolute confidence, in the case of a dog named Rufus, taken in at the Boston Animal Rescue League:—
“When we got him he was a most discouraging-looking animal. After three months of kind treatment he began to improve. As soon as he had recovered his spirit we began his education. He soon learned to roll over, sit up, die, trust, say his prayers, etc. Then I began teaching him to pick out playing cards. It required some time and patience to teach him the first one, but after that he learned a new one as soon as I told him the name of it. He now knows eighteen different cards, the four queens, three aces, and the two of spades. Then I began teaching him to spell. He can now spell two words—“Rufus” and “Simmons”—for he is a loyal supporter of Simmons’ College. I put a lot of blocks in front of him and he picks out the right letters one at a time with his foot, and is rewarded each time with a piece of cooky. I intend to teach him to spell some more words, and perhaps later on to count.”
Three weeks later the lady writes:—
“Since I wrote you Rufus has developed quite remarkably. I got some numbers and taught him to add. Suddenly one day I discovered that he would find the right number before I taught it to him. I tried subtraction, multiplication, and division, and he hit the right number each time. Then I asked him to spell ‘dog,’ and he spelled it as well as the words I had taught him. I asked him to translate it into German and into French, and he did! I did nothing but put the letters within his reach, mixed in with other letters. Then I took some playing cards which he had never seen, and he got them all right. He put his fore paw gravely on the figure indicating the result of such a complicated arithmetical problem as ‘how much is three times six, plus three, minus seven, divided by two?’ I decided that he must read my mind, for when I think of the wrong one he invariably gets it, and when I think of the right one he gets it about nine times out of ten.”
Then the lady gave a convincing demonstration of the fact that Rufus is governed by mental control. If she said to him, “Rufus, which is A?” and at the same time thought of B, Rufus put his paw on B. If she said, “Rufus, pick out the number 5,” and thought of 9, Rufus put his paw on 9. A friend of hers came to her house and wanted to know if she would let her try to ask him questions. She did so, and Miss B sat close by. As long as she was near him with her mind fixed on the answers to the questions, he answered them correctly. She then tried this experiment: She went away out of his sight in a corner of the room, and kept saying to herself over and over again, so that she should not think of anyone else, the letter “S.” Her friend called out to her and said, “I cannot get Rufus to make any reply to my questions, excepting ‘S.’ He answers ‘S’ to everything I ask him.” This is certainly a very singular illustration of the telepathy, I suppose one might call it, which may exist between two minds—the mind of a human being and the mind of a dog.
Some people find arguments for an after-life for man in the apparent injustice of the world. We mean the injustice which gives some favoured persons all the good things of life, while others, apparently equally deserving, are born to a life of squalor and hardship, and die without ever having a chance of knowing what life contains. It seems to many persons that, if justice exists anywhere, there must be another life in which compensation will be made for this seeming wrong.
Again, that lives are mercilessly and apparently meaninglessly cut short suddenly in the full tide of their development seems to some people almost to demand that there shall be an existence in some other sphere where their course may be continued and completed.
These arguments will have different weight with different people, but, in as far as they are valid for human beings, they must be allowed also to apply to sub-humans. That one dog should lead a life of pleasure surrounded always by affectionate friends, and die a quiet and peaceful death, while another has to bear kicks and cuffs all his days, and at the end endure the tortures of the vivisector’s laboratory, seems to demand some explanation not given in this existence, while the arrest in their developments differs only in degree from that of human beings.
REAPPEARANCE AFTER DEATH.
The reappearance of animals after death, of which there are now a good many instances on record, will probably be the strongest argument with many people. We have space to quote only one case out of a good many which have been carefully investigated by the Psychical Research Society:—
“In the year 1883 we were staying at the Hotel des Anglais, at Mentone. I had left at home (in Norfolk) in the care of our gardener a very favourite little dog, a black and tan terrier, named Judy. I was sitting at table d’hôte, and suddenly saw my dog run across the room, and unthinkingly exclaimed: ‘Why, there is Judy!’ There was no dog in the hotel, and when I went upstairs I told my daughter, who was ill, what I had seen. A few days after I got a letter saying that Judy had gone out with the gardener as usual in the morning quite well, but when he returned at breakfast time she was suddenly taken ill, and died in half-an-hour. At this distance of time I cannot distinctly remember whether the dates agreed, but my impression is that she had died the day I saw her.”
The lady’s daughter referred to the incident in her diary as follows:—
“Mamma saw Judy’s ghost at table d’hôte!”
The same lady related her own personal recollections of it as follows:—
“I distinctly remember my father and mother and sister, and my cousin, coming into my bedroom, all laughing, and telling me how my mother had seen Judy (black and tan terrier) running across the room whilst they were at table d’hôte. My mother was so positive about it that one of the others (I think my father) had asked the waiter if there were any dog in the hotel, and he had answered in the negative.’’—Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Vol. xiv., p. 285.
THEOSOPHICAL VIEW.
The theosophical teaching in this matter, if we understand it rightly, is that all animals are endowed with a soul in some form, but that in the lower forms the soul at the time of physical death returns to what is called the “group-soul,” from which portions are continually reincarnated and return. It is only after the animal has attained a certain degree of development that it attains to an individual consciousness, and becomes, so to speak, a separate soul. It is, naturally, not possible to define even approximately when this change may take place, but we are told that many creatures far below the rank of our higher domestic animals often manifest an individuality of character which seems to point to the probability that they have already attained individuality of existence.
SUMMARY.
To sum up, we find our world populated by many widely different races of creatures who live the most varied lives in air, in water, or on earth, but in all of them you see a general similarity of structure, varied obviously in accordance with and by reason of their different surroundings and needs. We find no decided gap in the chain. We find them all taking their origin in a similar minute cell, and we see the higher of them passing in their personal early development through the various stages still found in the lower.
We find the same mysterious essence, which we call Life, actuating them all.
We find they all have similar feelings, impulses, affections, developed in varying degrees, the so-called lower forms possessing some of them in higher degree than the more advanced forms where they have been useful in their daily lives.
We find the sub-human and human types alike developing in side directions—reaching a certain point, and then dying out as unfit to survive as a race in this world.
We find the intangible portion of the individual, the mind, so near akin in human and sub-human that communications pass between them quite apart from the senses in a manner incomprehensible to either.
We find that even after the extinction of life in the body communications can yet be made between the minds of the human and sub-human.
Will any candid-minded person venture to affirm that if there is an individual after-life for man, there is not also one for the other animals, and, if so, on what grounds?
Ernest Bell
The Animals’ Cause, Vol. 1, 1909, pp. 354-373