Chapter M: S. Reinach’s opinion that in Totemism is to be found the secret of (4)

No one denies that the principle of reciprocity is the basis of all morality, and by extending it from men to sentient things, the Jainas have safeguarded their doctrine of _Ahimsa_ with a stronger wall of defence than any built on the fantastic fear of devouring one’s ancestors. Nor can it be said of the Jainas that to a superstitious repugnance to taking life they join indifference to causing suffering: inflicting suffering is hardly distinguished from inflicting death. “All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable law.” “Indifferent to worldly objects, a man should wander about treating all the creatures in the world as he himself would be treated.”

Perhaps the most remarkable of Jaina stories is a real masterpiece of wit and wisdom in which this theory of reciprocity is enforced. For the whole of it I must refer the reader to Professor Jacobi’s translation; I can only give the leading points. Once upon a time three hundred and sixty-three philosophers, representing a similar number of philosophical schools, and differing in character, opinions, taste, undertakings and plans, stood round in a large circle, each one in his place. They discussed their various views, and at last one man took a vessel full of red-hot coals which he held at a distance from him with a pair of tongs. “Now, you philosophers,” said he, “just take this for a moment and hold it in your hands. No trickery, if you please; you are _not_ to hold it with the tongs or to put the fire out. Fair and honest!”

With extreme unanimity the three hundred and sixty-two drew back their hands as fast as they could. Then the speaker continued: “How is this, philosophers; what _are_ you doing with your hands?” “They will be burnt,” said the others. “And what does it matter if they are burnt?” “But it would hurt us dreadfully.” “So you do not want to suffer pain?” Well, this is the case with all animals. This maxim applies to every creature, this principle, this religious reflection, holds good of all living things. Therefore those religious teachers who say that all sorts of living things may be beaten or ill-treated, or tormented, or deprived of life will, in time, suffer in the same way themselves, and have to undergo the whole round of the scale of earthly existence. They will be whirled round, put in irons, see their mothers, fathers, children die, have bad luck, poverty, the society of people they detest, separation from those they love, “they will again wander distraught in the beginningless and endless wilderness.”

Like a true orator the Jaina member of this early Congress of Religions, who has drifted from irony to fierce denunciation, does not leave his hearers with these visions of terror, but with the consoling promise to the merciful of everlasting beatitude.

WILD BULLS AND TAMED BULLS.
Reliefs on two gold cups found at Vapheio.
(_From Schuckhardt’s “Schliemann’s Excavations.” By permission of
Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._)]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

IX

LINES FROM THE ADI GRANTH

THE Adi Granth, or sacred Book of the Sikhs of the Punjab, was composed by the founder of their religion and their nationality, Baba Nanak (_b._ 1469), who abolished caste and idolatry, and established a pure monotheism. A striking incident at the Coronation Durbar was the arrival of the Sikh mission in charge of the Adi Granth, which was brought on a pilgrimage from its shrine in the exquisitely beautiful golden temple at Amritsar to the tomb of the disciple of Nanak, who, before suffering martyrdom at Delhi during the Mogul Empire, prophesied the advent of a fair race destined to sweep the Mogul power to the winds. I take these few sentences to show the essential continuity of Indian thought about animals. In the faith of Nanak none remains of the particular tenets of Buddhism or Jainism or Hinduism, but the animal is still _inside_, not _outside_, the pale of what may be called Pan-humanity: the whole family of earth-born creatures.

I.

Say not that this or that distasteful is,
In all the dear Lord dwells,—they all are His

Grieve not the humblest heart; all hearts that are,
Are priceless jewels, all are rubies rare.

Ah! If thou long’st for thy Beloved, restrain
One angry word that gives thy brother pain.

II.

All creatures, Lord, are Thine, and Thou art theirs,
One bond Creator with created shares;

To whom, O Maker! must they turn and weep
If not to Thee their Lord, who dost all keep?

All living creatures, Lord, were made by Thee,
Where Thou hast fixed their station, there they be.

For them Thou dost prepare their daily bread,
Out of Thy loving-kindness they are fed;

On each the bounties of Thy mercy fall,
And Thy compassion reaches to them all.

III.

One understanding to all flesh He gives,
Without that understanding nothing lives;

As is their understanding,—they are so;
The reckoning is the same. They come and go.

The faithful watch-dog that does all he can,
Is better far than the unprayerful man.

Birds in their purse of silver have no store,
But them the Almighty Father watches o’er.

They say who kill, they do but what they may,
Lawful they deem the bleating lamb to slay;

When God takes down the eternal Book of Fate,
Oh, tell me what, what then will be their state?

He who towards every living thing is kind,
Ah! he, indeed, shall true religion find!

IV.

Great is the warrior who has killed within
Self,—Self which still is root and branch of sin.

“I, I,” still cries the World, and gads about,
Reft of the Word which Self has driven out.

V.

Thou, Lord, the cage,—the parrot, see! ’Tis I!
Yama the cat: he looks and passes by.

By Yama bound my mind can never be,
I call on Him who Yama made and me.

The Lord eternal is: what should I fear?
However low I fall, He still will hear.

He tends his creatures as a mother mild
Tends with untiring love her little child.

VI.

I do not die: the world within me dies:
Now, now, the Vivifier vivifies;

Sweet is the world,—ah! very sweet it is,
But through its sweets we lose the eternal bliss!

Perpetual joy, the inviolate mansion, where
There is no grief, woe, error, sin, nor care;

Coming and going and death, enter not in;
The changeless only there an entrance win.

Whosoe’er dieth, born again must be,
Die thou whilst living, and thou wilt be free!

VII.

He, the Supreme, no limit has nor end,
And what HE is how can _we_ comprehend?

Once did a wise man say: “He only knows
God’s nature to whom God His mercy shows.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

X

THE HEBREW CONCEPTION OF ANIMALS

I

... “About them frisking played
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase
In wood or wilderness, forest or den;
Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw
Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards,
Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant,
To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed
His lithe proboscis.”
_Paradise Lost_, Book IV.

THE idea of a condition of existence in which all creatures are happy and at peace implies a protest against the most patent fact of life as we see it. Western civilisation inherited from the Roman Empire the hardness of heart towards animals of which the popularity of beast-fights in the Arena was the characteristic sign. It was, however, a Roman poet who first pointed out in philosophical language that the sufferings of animals stand written in the great indictment against Nature no less than the sufferings of men. Not only man is born to sorrow, said Lucretius; look at the cow whose calf bleeds before some lovely temple, while she wanders disconsolate over all the fields, lowing piteously, uncomforted by the image of other calves, because her own is not.

Eighteen hundred years later Schopenhauer said that by taking a very high standard it was possible to justify the sufferings of man but not those of animals. Darwin arrived at the same conclusion. “It has been imagined,” he remarks, “that the sufferings of man tend to his moral improvement, but the number of men in the world is nothing compared with the number of other sentient beings which suffer greatly without moral improvement.” To him, the man of the religious mind whom men lightly charged with irreligion, it was “_an intolerable thought_” that after long ages of toil all these sentient beings were doomed to complete annihilation.

Yes, and to the young conscience of mankind this was also an intolerable thought. And since it was intolerable the human conscience in the strength of its youth shook it off, cast it aside, awoke from it as we awake from a nightmare. Religion has been regarded too exclusively as a submission to Nature. At times it is a revolt against Nature, a repudiation of what our senses report to us, an assertion that things seen are illusions, and that things unseen are real. Religion is born of Doubt. The incredibility of the Known forced man to seek refuge in the Unknown. From that far region he brought back solutions good or bad, sublime or trivial, to the manifold problems which beset man’s soul.

A poet, doomed to early death, who looked into Nature on a summer’s day and could discern nothing but “an eternal fierce destruction,” wrote, in his despair—

“Things cannot to the will
Be settled, but they tease us out of thought.
... It is a flaw
In happiness to see beyond our bourn;
It forces us in summer skies to mourn,
It spoils the singing of the nightingale.”

But when the world was young things _could_ be settled to the will. We are, of course, constantly regulating our impressions of phenomena by a standard of higher probability. If we see a ship upside down, we say, “This is not a ship, it is a mirage.” When the primitive man found himself face to face with seeming natural laws which offended his sense of inherent probability, he rejected the hypothesis that they were actual or permanent, and supposed them to be either untrustworthy appearances or deviations from a larger plan.

Every basic religion gave a large share of thought to animals. The merit, from a humane point of view, of the explanation of the mystery offered by the religious systems of India has been praised even to excess. In contrast to this, it was often repeated that the Hebrew religion ignored the claims of animals altogether. I wish to show that even if this charge were not open to other disproof, no people can be called indifferent to those claims which believes in a Nature Peace.

Traces of such a belief spread from the Mediterranean to the Pacific, from the Equator to the Pole. But the Peace is not always complete; there are reservations. In the glowing prediction of a Peace in Nature in the Atharva-Veda, vultures and jackals are excluded. Mazdeans would exclude the “bad” animals. The Hebrew Scriptures, on the other hand, declare that all species are good in the sight of their Maker. Every beast enjoyed perfect content according to the original scheme of the Creator. But man fell, and all creation was involved in the consequences of his fall.

I remember seeing at the Hague an impressive painting by a little-known Italian artist[6] which represents Adam about to take the apple from Eve while at their feet a tiger tenderly licks the wool of a lamb. Adam’s face shows that he is yielding—yielding for no better reason than that he cannot say “No”—to the beautiful woman at his side; and there, unconscious and happy, lie the innocent victims of his act: love to be turned to wrath, peace to war. The Nature Peace has been painted a hundred times, but never with such tragic significance.

Footnote 6:

Cignani. A singular sixteenth-century “Nature War” may be observed in
a _graffito_ on the pavement of the Chapel of St. Catherine in the
church of St. Domenico, at Siena. A nude youth, resembling Orpheus,
sits on a rock in a leafy grove, in the midst of various animals; with
a disturbed air he looks into a mirror at the back of which is an eye,
a leopard shows his teeth at him, while a vulture screams at a monkey,
and another bird snatches a surprised rabbit or squirrel; the other
creatures, unicorn, wolf, eagle, display signs of uneasiness.
Endeavours to read this fable have not proved satisfactory.

_Photo:_ _Bruckmann._
THE GARDEN OF EDEN.
(_By Rubens._)
Hague Gallery.]

The Miltonic Adam sees in the mute signs of Nature the forerunners of further change:—

“The bird of Jove, stooped from his airy tour,
Two birds of gayest plume before him drove;
Down from a hill the beast that reigns in woods,
First hunter then, pursued a gentle brace,
Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind.”

In an uncanonical version of Genesis which was translated from an Armenian manuscript preserved at Venice, by my dear and sadly missed friend, Padre Giacomo Issaverdens, a still more dramatic description is given of the manner in which the Peace ended. When Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden they met a lion, which attacked Adam. “Why,” asked Adam, “do you attack me when God ordered you and all the animals to obey me?” “You disobeyed God,” replied the lion, “and we are no longer bound to obey you.” Saying which, the noble beast walked away without harming Adam. But war was declared.

War was declared, and yet the scheme of the Creator could not be for ever defeated. Man who had erred might hope—and how much more must there be hope for those creatures that had done no harm.

When the Prophets spoke of a Peace in Nature in connexion with that readjustment of the eternal scales which was meant by the coming of the Messiah, it cannot be doubted that they spoke of what was already a widely accepted tradition. But without their help we should have known nothing of it and we are grateful to them. Of all the radiant dreams with which man has comforted his heart, aching with realities, is there one to be compared with this? It is of the earth earthly, and that is the beauty of it. “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion together; and a little child shall lead them; the cow and the bear shall feed; and their young ones lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”

“For behold I create new heavens and a new earth. They shall not
hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, saith the Lord.”

Is not this the best of promised lands, the kindest of Elysiums, which leaves none out in the cold of cruelty and hatred? The importunate questioner may inquire, How can this primal and ultimate happiness compensate for the intervening ages of pain? About this, it may be observed that in religious matters people ought not to want to know too much. This is true of the faithful and even of the unfaithful. Scientific researches in the great storehouse which contains the religions of the world are more aided by a certain reserve, a certain reverence, than by the insatiable curiosity of the scalpel. Religions sow abroad _idées mères_; they tell some things, others they leave untold. They take us up into an Alpine height whence we see the broad configuration of the country and lose sight of the woods and the tortuous ravines among which we so often missed the track. Now, from the Alpine height of faith, the idea of an original and final Nature Peace makes the intervening discord seem of no account—a false note between two harmonies.

The Nature Peace as the emblem of perfect moral beauty became nearly the first Christian idea carried out in art. I remarked a rude but striking instance of it on one of the funereal monuments which have been found lately at Carthage, belonging to a date when Christian and pagan commemorated their dead in the same manner, the former generally only adding some slight symbolical indication of his faith. In this stele Christ, carrying the lamb across His shoulders, is attended by a panther and a lion. All such primitive attempts to represent a Nature Peace are chiefly interesting (and from this point of view their interest is great) from the fact that in child-like, stammering efforts they reveal the intrinsic idiosyncrasy of Christian thought after the Church had parted from the realities of proximity with its Founder, and had not reached the realities of a body corporate striving for supremacy. Christ the Divine Effluence was the faith which made men willing to face the lions.

Doubtless many of those martyrs clung to the sublime conception of a final Peace, the complement of the first. That this was accepted as no allegory by the later spiritualised Jews, and especially by the Pharisees, seems to be a well-established fact. It is difficult to interpret in any other way the solemn statement of St. Paul, that the “whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together _until now_,” waiting for redemption; or the beatific vision of Josephus: “The whole Creation also will lift up a perpetual hymn ... and shall praise Him that made them together with the angels and spirits and men, now freed from all bondage.” _Homines et jumenta salvabis Domine._

II.

What was the view taken of animals by the Jewish people, apart from the fundamental ideas implied by a primordial Peace in Nature?

It was the habit of Hebrew writers to leave a good deal to the imagination; in general, they only cared to throw as much light on hidden subjects as was needful to regulate conduct. They gave precepts rather than speculations. There remain obscure points in their conception of animals, but we know how they did _not_ conceive them: they did not look upon them as “things”; they did not feel towards them as towards automata.

After the Deluge, there was established “the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.” Evidently, you cannot make a covenant with “things.”

_N. Consoni._
GENESIS VIII.
(_Loggie di Raffaello._)]

That the Jews supposed the intelligence of animals to be not extremely different from the intelligence of man is to be deduced from the story of Balaam, for it is said that God opened the mouth—not the mind—of the ass. The same story illustrates the ancient belief that animals see apparitions which are concealed from the eyes of man. The great interest to us, however, of the Scriptural narrative is its significance as a lesson in humanity. When the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, what did the ass say? She asks her master why he had smitten her three times? Balaam answers, with a frankness which, at least, does him credit, because he was enraged with the ass for turning aside and not minding him, and he adds (still enraged, and, strange to say, nowise surprised at the animal’s power of speech) that he only wishes he had a sword in his hand, as he would then kill her outright. How like this is to the voice of modern brutality! The ass, continuing the conversation, rejoins in words which it would be a shame to disfigure by putting them into the idiom of the twentieth century: “Am I not thine ass upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to do so unto thee?” Balaam, who has the merit, as I have noticed, of being candid, replies, “No, you never were.” Then, for the first time, the Prophet sees the angel standing in the path with a drawn sword in his hand—an awe-inspiring vision! And what are the angel’s first words to the terrified prophet who lies prostrate on his face? They are a reproof for his inhumanity. “Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times?” Then the angel tells how the poor beast he has used thus has saved her master from certain death, for had she not turned from him, he would have slain Balaam and saved her alive. “And Balaam said unto the angel of the Lord, I have sinned.”

Balaam was not a Jew; but the nationality of the personages in the Bible and the origin or authorship of its several parts are not questions which affect the present inquiry. The point of importance is, that the Jews believed these Scriptures to contain Divine truth.

With regard to animals having the gift of language, it appears from a remark made by Josephus that the Jews thought that all animals spoke before the Fall. In Christian folk-lore there is a superstition that animals can speak during the Christmas night: an obvious reference to their return to an unfallen state.

Solomon declares that the righteous man “regardeth the life of his beast”; a saying which is often misquoted, “merciful” being substituted for “righteous,” by which the proverb loses half its force. The Hebrew Scriptures contain two definite injunctions of humanity to animals. One is the command not to plough with the ox and the ass yoked together—in Palestine I have seen even the ass and the camel yoked together; their unequal steps cause inconvenience to both yoke-fellows and especially to the weakest. The other is the prohibition to muzzle the ox which treads out the corn: a simple humanitarian rule which it is truly surprising how any one, even after an early education in casuistry, could have interpreted as a metaphor. There are three other commands of great interest because they show how important it was thought to preserve even the mind of man from growing callous. One is the order not to kill a cow or she-goat or ewe and her young both on the same day. The second is the analogous order not to seethe the kid in its mother’s milk. The third refers to bird-nesting: if by chance you find a bird’s nest on a tree or on the ground and the mother bird is sitting on the eggs or on the fledglings, you are on no account to capture her when you take the eggs or the young birds (one would like bird-nesting to have been forbidden altogether, but I fear that the human boy in Syria had too much of the old Adam in him for any such law to have proved effectual!). Let the mother go, says the sacred writer, and if you must take something, take only the young ones. This command concludes in a very solemn way, for it ends with the promise (for what may seem a little act of unimportant sentiment) of the blessing promised to man for honouring his own father and mother—that it will be well with him and that his days will be long in the land.

In the law relative to the observance of the Seventh Day, not only is no point insisted on more strongly than the repose of the animals of labour, but in one of the oldest versions of the fourth commandment the repose of animals is spoken of as if it were the chief object of the Sabbath: “Six days shalt thou do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: _that_ thine ox and thine ass may rest” (Exodus xxiii. 12). Moreover, it is expressly stated of the Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh year when no work was to be done, that all which the land produces of itself is to be left to the enjoyment of the beasts that are in the land. The dominant idea was to give animals a chance—to leave something for them—to afford them some shelter, as in the creation of bird-sanctuaries in the temples.

In promises of love and protection to man, to the Chosen People, animals are almost always included. “The heavens shall tremble: the sun and moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining” (Joel ii. 10). “Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig-tree and the vine do yield their strength. Be glad, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God” (Joel ii. 22, 23).

The wisdom of animals is continually praised. “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” So said the wisest of the Jews. I am tempted to quote here a passage from the writings of Giordano Bruno: “With what understanding the ant gnaws her grain of wheat lest it should sprout in her underground habitation. The fool says this is instinct, but we say it is a species of understanding.” If Solomon did not make the same reflection, it was only because that wonderful word “instinct” had not yet been invented.

_Photo:_ _Alinari._
DANIEL AND THE LIONS.
(_Early Christian Sarcophagus at Ravenna._)]

We have seen that the Jews supposed animals to be given to men for use not for abuse, and the whole of Scripture tends to the conclusion that the Creator—who had called good all the creatures of His hand—regarded none as unworthy of His providence. This view is plainly endorsed by the saying of Christ that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of the Father (or “not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God”), and by the saying of Mohammed, who likewise believed himself the continuer of Jewish tradition: “There is no beast that walks upon the earth but its provision is from God.”

But there is something more. Every one knows that the Jews were allowed to kill and eat animals. The Jewish religion makes studiously few demands on human nature. “The ways of the Lord were pleasant ways.” Since men craved for meat or, in Biblical language, since they lusted after flesh, they were at liberty to eat those animals which, in an Eastern climate, could be eaten without danger to health. But on one condition: the body they might devour—what was the body? It was earth. The soul they might not touch. The mysterious thing called life must be rendered up to the Giver of it—to God. The man who did not do this, when he killed a lamb, was a murderer. “The blood shall be imputed to him; he hath shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people.”

The inclination must be resisted to dispose of this mysterious ordinance as a mere sanitary measure. It was a sanitary measure, but it was much besides. The Jews believed that every animal had a soul, a spirit, which was beyond human jurisdiction, with which they had no right to tamper. When we ask, however, what this soul, this spirit, was, we find ourselves groping in the dark. Was it material, as the soul was thought to be by the Egyptians and by the earliest doctors of the Christian Church? Was it an immaterial, impersonal, Divine essence? Was its identity permanent, or temporary? We can give no decisive answer; but we may assume with considerable certainty that life, spirit, whatever it was, appeared at least to the majority of the Jews to possess one nature, whether in men or in animals. When a Jew denied the immortality of the soul, he denied it both for man and for beast. “I said in my heart,” wrote the author of Ecclesiastes, “concerning the estate of the sons of men that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so the other dieth; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast.”

The mist which surrounds the Hebrew idea of the soul may proceed from the fact that they did not know themselves what they meant by it, or from the fact that they once knew what they meant by it so well as to render elucidation superfluous. If the teraphim represented the Lares or family dead, then the archaic Jewish idea of the soul was simple and definite. It is possible that in all later times two diametrically opposed opinions existed contemporaneously, as was the case with the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Jewish people did not feel the pressing need to dogmatise about the soul that other peoples have felt; they had one living soul which was immortal, and its name was Israel!

Still, through all ages, from the earliest times till now, the Jews have continued to hold sacred “the blood which is the life.”

In Hindu religious books, where similar ordinances are enforced, there are hints of a suspicion which, as I have said elsewhere, could not have been absent from the minds of Hebrew legislators—the haunting suspicion of a possible mixing-up of personality. Here we tread on the skirts of magic: a subject which belongs to starless nights.

We come back into the light of day when we glance at the relations which, according to Jewish tradition, existed between animals and their Creator. We see a beautiful interchange of gratitude on the one side and watchful care on the other. As the ass of Balaam recognised the angel, so do all animals—except man—at all times recognise their God. “But ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee.... Who knoweth not of all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.”

I will only add to these words of Job a few verses taken here and there from the Psalms, which form a true anthem of our fellow-creatures of the earth and air:—

“Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl, let them
praise the name of the Lord.
He giveth to the beast his food and to the young ravens which cry.
He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills;
They give drink to every beast of the field, the wild asses quench
their thirst.
By them shall the fowls of heaven have their habitation which sing
among the branches:
The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which He
hath planted,
Where the birds make their nests; as for the stork, the fir-trees are
her house.
The great hills are a refuge for the wild goats and the rocks for the
conies.
Thou makest darkness, and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the
forest do creep forth;
The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God;
The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together and lay them down in
their dens.
... Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for
herself where she may lay her young.
Even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God!”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XI

“A PEOPLE LIKE UNTO YOU”

A FRIEND who was spending the winter at Tunis asked me if it were true that there was any teaching of kindness to animals in the religion of Islam? She had seen with pain the little humanity practised by the lower class of Arabs, and she had difficulty in believing that such conduct was contrary to the law of the Prophet. I replied, that if men are sometimes better than their creeds, at other times they are very much worse. At the head of every chapter of the Koran, it is written: “In the name of the most merciful God.” If God be merciful, shall man be unmerciful? Alas, that the answer should have been so often “yes”!

Inhumanity to animals is against the whole spirit of the Koran, and also against that of Moslem tradition. In the “Words of Mohammed,” of which one thousand four hundred and sixty-five collections exist, and which are looked upon as “the Moslem’s dictionary of morals and manners,” the Apostle is described as saying: “Fear God in these dumb animals, and ride them when they are fit to be rode, and get off them when they are tired.” Mohammed was asked by his disciples: “Verily, are there rewards for our doing good to quadrupeds and giving them water to drink? “He said: “There are rewards for benefiting every animal having a moist liver” (every sentient creature). He said again: “There is no Moslem who planteth a tree or soweth a field, and man, birds or beasts eat from them, but it is a charity for him.” Like all other religious teachers, he was made by legend the central figure of a Nature Peace. He had miraculous authority over beasts as well as over man, and beasts, more directly than man, knew him to be from God. Once he was standing in the midst of a crowd when a camel came and prostrated itself before him. His companions exclaimed, “O Apostle of God! Beasts and trees worship thee, then it is meet for us to worship thee.” Mohammed replied, “Worship God, and you may honour your brother—that is, me.”

Those who know nothing else about Mohammed know the story of how he cut away his sleeve rather than awaken his cat, which was sleeping upon it. He is reported to have told how a woman was once punished for a cat: she tied it till it died of hunger—she gave that cat nothing to eat, nor did she allow it to go free, so that it might have eaten “the reptiles of the ground.” (Cats do eat lizards and snakes too, even when they have plenty of food—very bad for them it is.) Mohammed’s fondness of cats has been suggested as the reason why two or three of them usually go with the Caravan which takes the Sacred Carpet from Cairo to Mecca, but perhaps the origin of that custom is far more remote.

“AN INDIAN ORPHEUS.”
Royal Palace at Delhi.
(_Imitated from a painting by Raphael._)]

In the words of Mohammed there is this beautiful version of the “Sultan Murad” cycle: an adulteress was passing by a well when she saw a dog which was holding out its tongue from the thirst which was killing him. The woman drew off her shoe and tied it to the end of her garment; then she drew up water and gave the dog to drink. The dog fawned on her and licked her hands. Now the Sultan was passing that way, and he saw the woman and the dog and inquired into the matter. When he had heard all, he told the guards to undo her chain and give her back her veil and lead her to her own home.

On one occasion the Prophet met a man who had a nest of young doves, and the mother fluttered after and even down about the head of him that held it. The Prophet told him to put the nest back where he found it, for this wondrous love comes from God.

The verse which gives the keynote to Moslem ideas about animals occurs in the sixth chapter of the Koran, and runs thus: “There is no beast on earth nor bird which flieth with its wings but the same is a people like unto you, we have not omitted anything in the Book of our decrees; then unto their Lord shall they return.” In other texts where the word “creatures” is used there is a strong presumption that animals, as well as men, genii and angels, are included; as, for instance, “unto Him do all creatures which are in heaven and earth make petition,” and again, “all God’s creatures are His family, and he is the most beloved of God who trieth to do the most good to God’s creatures”—which is almost word for word—

“He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”

The common grace after eating is “Praise be to the Lord of all creatures!” Moslem hunters and butchers have the custom, called the Hallal, of pronouncing a formula of excuse (Bi’sm-illah!) before slaying any animal. The author of “Malay Magic” mentions, that if a Malay takes a tiger in a pitfall, the Pawang, or medicine-man, has to explain to the quarry that it was not he that laid the snare but the Prophet Mohammed.

By orthodox Moslem law hunting was allowed, provided it was for some definite end or necessity. It was legitimate to hunt for food, or for clothing, as when the skin was the object. Dangerous wild beasts, the incompatible neighbours of all but saints, might be hunted to protect the more precious lives of men. Beyond this, from an orthodox point of view, hunting was regarded as indefensible. Such was the rule, and there is no greater mistake than to undervalue the moral standard because every one does not attain to it. Perhaps few Moslems keep this rule rigidly, but it is true now as it was when Lane wrote on the subject, that a good Moslem who hunts for amusement does not seek to prolong the chase: he tries to take the game as quickly as he can, and if it is not dead when taken, it is instantly killed by having its throat cut. Such amusements as shooting pigeons, or the unspeakable abomination of firing at wild birds from ships, which makes certain tourist steamers a curse in the Arctic regions, would inspire even the not too orthodox Moslem with profound disgust.

There were some Moslems who went far beyond the law—for whom taking life, when the fact of doing so came rudely before them, was a thing revolting in itself. Such sensibility was manifest in the Persian poets, and it has been attributed to their inherited Zoroastrian tendencies; but to think this is to misunderstand the groundwork of Mazdean humane teaching, which was not based on sensitiveness about taking life. Such sensitiveness is rarely found, except among Aryan races, and Zoroastrianism, though it spread among an Aryan people, was not an Aryan religion. It is more likely to be true that the Persian peculiar tenderness for animals was an atavistic revival of the old Aryan temperament. Renan said that Sufism was a racial Aryan reaction against _l’effroyable simplicité de l’esprit sémitique_. Sensitiveness about animals was a necessary ingredient, so to speak, of Sufism. Sadi, the Sufic poet _par excellence_, poured blessings on the departed spirit of Firdusi for the couplet which Sir William Jones translated so well and loved so much:—

“Ah, spare yon emmet, rich in hoarded grain;
He lives with pleasure, and he dies with pain.”

That birds and many, if not all, animals have a language by which they can interchange their thoughts is a belief shared by Moslems, both learned and ignorant. The Koran says that the language of birds was understood by Solomon, and folk-lore gives many other persons credit for the same accomplishment. A person believed to have such powers could turn the belief, if not the powers, to uses both good and bad. An Arabian tale relates how a pleasure-loving Persian king summoned a Maubadz, a head Magian, to tell him what two owls were chattering about. The Maubadz told with considerable detail the plan which the female owl was unfolding to the male owl, of how each of their future numerous offspring might be set up in life as sole possessor of a forsaken village, if only the present “fortunate king” lived long enough. The monarch understood the rebuke, and resolved to mend his ways, and to encourage tillage and agriculture, instead of devoting himself to idle pastimes.

MOSLEM BEGGAR FEEDING DOGS AT CONSTANTINOPLE.]

Bird-trills mean sentences or words, chiefly religious. The pigeon cries continually, “Alláh! Alláh!” The common dove executes this long sentence: “Assert the unity of your Lord who created you, so will He forgive you your sin.” There was a parrot who could repeat the whole Koran by heart and could never be put out so as to make mistakes. I knew of an old priest who repeated the _Divina Commedia_ from the first line to the last, and the knowledge of the whole of the _Iliad_ was common in ancient Athens, where people were laughed at who gave themselves the airs of scholars on the ground of such feats of memory. But in the bird-world the Moslem parrot surely stands alone, though we hear of a pious raven who could say correctly the thirty-second chapter and who always made the proper prostration when it came to the words: “My body prostrateth itself before Thee, and my heart confideth in Thee.”

The chapter of the Koran entitled “the Ant” is full of charming zoology. God bestowed knowledge on David and Solomon, and Solomon, who was “David’s heir,” said to the people: “O men, we have been taught the speech of birds, and have had all things bestowed on us: this is manifest excellence.” The armies of Solomon consisted of men and genii and birds: they were arrayed in proper order on an immense carpet of green silk: the men were placed to the right, the genii to the left, and the birds flew overhead, making a canopy of shade from the burning rays of the sun. Solomon sat in the middle on his throne, and when it was desired to move, the wind transported the carpet with all on it from one place to another. This account, however, is not in the Koran, and need not be believed. But that the armies were of the three species of beings we have the highest authority for asserting. They arrived, one day, in the Valley of Ants. A sentinel ant beheld the approaching host and called to her companions to hasten into their habitations for fear that Solomon and his armies should crush them underfoot without perceiving it. This made Solomon smile, but while he laughed at her words, he yet remembered to thank the Lord for the favour wherewith He had favoured him: the privilege of knowing the language of beasts. After blessing God, and praying that in the end He would take him into paradise among His righteous servants, the king looked around at his feathered army and lo! he missed the lapwing. Some say that the reason why he noticed her absence was because in that place water was lacking for the ablution, and, as every one knows, the lapwing is the water-finder. Be that as it may (it is not stated in the Koran), he cried in displeasure: “What is the reason I do not see the lapwing? Is she absent? Verily I will chastise her with a severe punishment, or I will put her to death unless she bring me a just excuse.” Not long did he have to wait before the lapwing appeared, nor was the just excuse wanting. She had seen a country which the king had not seen, and she brought hence a remarkable piece of news. In the land of Saba (Sheba) a woman reigned who received all the honour due to a great prince. She had a magnificent throne of gold and silver; she and her people worshipped the Sun besides God. Satan, added the lapwing, becoming controversial, had turned them away from the truth lest they should worship the true God, from whom nothing is hid. And then this little bird of a story like a fairy-tale ends her discourse with one of those sharp, sudden, antithetical organ-blasts which again and again lift the mind of the reader of the Koran into the highest regions of poetry and religion: “God! there is no God but He; the Lord of the Magnificent Throne!” What wonderful art there is in the repetition of the words which had been applied just before to earthly splendour! The effect is the same as that of the words in Arabic which we see carved at every turn in the splendid halls of the Alhambra: “God only is conqueror.” What is the splendour or the power of earthly kings?

The story resumes its course. Solomon tells the lapwing that they will see, by and by, if she has told the truth or is a liar. He writes a letter (which tradition says was perfumed with musk and sealed with the king’s signet), and he commands the bird to take it to the land of Saba. Some say that the lapwing delivered the letter by throwing it into the queen’s bosom as she sat surrounded by her army; others that she brought it to her through an open window when she was sitting in her chamber: at any rate, it reached its destination, and the lapwing’s character was completely rehabilitated. With regard to Queen Balkis, the Bible, the Koran, and the Emperor Menelek may be consulted.

One of the beasts most esteemed by Moslems, one of those who, with Balaam’s ass, Jonah’s whale, Abraham’s ram, Solomon’s ant, and several other favourite animals, are known to have been admitted into the highest heaven, is the dog in the Moslem version of the “Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,” the legend of the seven young men who hid in a cave and slept safely through a long period of persecution. The dog has a Divine command to say to the young men, “I love those who are dear to God, and I will guard you.” He lay stretched across the mouth of the cave during the whole time that the persecution lasted. Moslems say of a very avaricious man, “He would not give a bone to the dog of the Seven Sleepers.” The dog’s name was Katmîr (though some said it was Al Rakîm), and people wrote it as a talisman on important letters sent to a distance or oversea, to make sure of their arriving safely: it was like registration without the fee. He appears to have slept, as did his masters, while he guarded the entrance to the cave: the protection which he afforded must be attributed to his supernatural gifts as a devil-scarer rather than to the watch he kept. Dogs were believed to see “things invisible to us”—_i.e._, demons. If a dog barks in the night the Faithful ask God’s aid against Satan. The cock is also a devil-scarer and sees angels as well as demons: when he crows it is a sign that he has just seen one.

Sometimes genii take the form of certain animals such as cats, dogs, and serpents (animals which are not eaten). If a man would kill one of the animals in which genii often appear, he must first warn the genii to vacate its form. This means that there is a greater prejudice against taking the life of such animals than in the case of animals slaughtered for food, when it is sufficient (though necessary) to say “If it pleases God.” While non-mystical Moslems did not respect life as such, nevertheless they realised the great scientific truth that _life_ is the supreme mystery. “The idols ye invoke besides God,” says the Koran, “can never create a single fly although they were all assembled for that purpose, and if the fly snatch anything from them” (such as offerings of honey) “they cannot recover the same from it.” Moslems are fond of the legend from the Gospel of the Infancy of how the Child Jesus, when He and other children were playing at making clay sparrows, breathed on the birds made by Him and they flew away or hopped on His hands. The parents of the other children forbade them to play any more with the Holy Child, whom they thought to be a sorcerer. That the Jews really imagined the unusual things done by Christ to be magic-working, and that this belief entered more into their wish to compass His death than is commonly supposed, a knowledge of Eastern ideas on magic inclines one to think. Moslems readily admit the truth of the miracle of the sparrows as of the other miracles of Jesus; they add, however, that life came into the clay figures “by permission of God.”

Towards the end of the world, animals will speak with human language. Before this happens will have come to pass the reign of the “Rooh Allah,” the Spirit of God, as all Moslems call Christ. It is told that He will descend near the White Tower east of Damascus and will remain on earth for forty (or for twenty-four) years, during which period malice and hatred will be laid aside and peace and plenty will rejoice the hearts of men. While Jesus reigns, lions and camels and bears and sheep will live in amity and a child will play with serpents unhurt.

A kind of perpetual local Nature Peace prevails at Mecca; no animals are allowed to be slaughtered within a certain distance of the sacred precinct. It should be noted also that pilgrims are severely prohibited from hunting; the wording of the verse in the Koran which establishes this rule seems to imply the possibility that wild animals themselves are doing the pilgrimage; hence they must be held sacred.

The law forbidding Moslems to eat the flesh of swine was copied from the Jewish ordinance, without doubt from the conviction that it was unwholesome. Those who were driven by extreme hunger to eat of it were not branded as unclean. There is a curious Indian folk-tale which gives an account of why swine-flesh was forbidden. At the beginning Allah restrained man from eating any animals but those which died a natural death. As they did not die as quickly as they wished, men began to hasten their deaths by striking them and throwing stones at them. The animals complained to Allah, who sent Gabriel to order all the men and all the animals to assemble so that He might decide the case. But the obstinate pig did not come. So Allah said: “The pigs, the lowest of animals, are disobedient; let no one eat them or touch them.” There is no record whatever of the pigs having signed a protest.

It is by no means clear when the prejudice against dogs took hold of the Moslem mind. At first their presence was even tolerated inside the Mosque, and the report that the Prophet ordered all the dogs at Medina to be killed, especially those of a dark colour, is certainly a fable. The Caliph Abu Djafar al Mausur asked a learned man this very question: why dogs were treated with scorn? The learned man was so worthy of that description that he had the courage to say he did not know. “Tradition said so.” The Caliph suggested that it might be because dogs bark at guests and at beggars. There is a modern saying that angels never go into a house where there is a dog or an image. Still, the ordinary kindness of the Turks to the pariah dogs at Constantinople, where the beggar shares his last crust with them, shows that the feeling belongs more to philology than to nature. The pariah dog is the type of the despised outcast, but when a European throws poisoned bread to him the act is not admired by the Moslem more than it deserves to be.