Yet the animal falls short of personality. It is conscious, but not
self-conscious. It knows; but it does not know that it knows. It can
perform astonishing feats of intelligence. But it cannot explain, even
to itself, the way in which it does them. The animal can pass from one
particular experience to another along lines of association in time and
space with marvelous directness and accuracy. To rise from a particular
experience to the universal class to which that experience belongs; and
then, from the known characteristics of the class, to deduce the
characteristics of another particular experience of the same kind, is
beyond the power of the brute.
The brute likewise has feelings; but it does not recognize these
feelings as parts of a total and permanent self. Pleasure and pain the
animal feels probably as keenly as we do. Of happiness or unhappiness
they probably know nothing.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Animals can be trained to do right, but they cannot love righteousness.
They can be trained to avoid acts which are associated with painful
consequences, but they cannot hate iniquity. The life of an animal is a
series of sensations, impulses, thoughts, and actions. These are never
gathered up into unity. The animal is more than a machine, and less than
a person.
THE DUTY.
+We ought to realize that the animal has feelings as keen as our
own.+--We owe to these feelings in the animal the same treatment that we
would wish for the same feelings in ourselves. For animals as for
ourselves we should seek as much pleasure and as little pain as is
consistent with the performance of the work which we think it best to
lay upon them. The horse cannot choose for itself how heavy a load to
draw. We ought to adapt the load to its strength. And in order to do
that we must stop and consider how much strength it has. The horse and
cow and dog cannot select their own food and shelter. We must think for
them in these matters; and in order to do so wisely, we must consider
their nature, habits, and capacities. No person is fit to own an
animal, who is not willing to take the trouble to understand the needs,
capacities, and nature of that animal. And acts which result from
ignorance of such facts as can be readily learned are inexcusable.
THE VIRTUE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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