But the Doctor dwelt with most pleasure on the intellectual capabilities of Dogs. There had been Dogs, he said, who from the mere desire of following their master's example had regularly frequented either the Church or the Meeting House;—others who attended the Host whenever they heard the bell which announced that it was carried abroad; one who so modulated his voice as to accompany instrumental music through all the notes of a song; and Leibnitz had actually succeeded in teaching one to speak. A dog may be made an epicure as well as his master. He acquires notions of rank and respectability; understands that the aristocracy are his friends, regards the beggar as his rival for bones, and knows that whoever approaches in darkness is to be suspected for his intentions. A dog's physiognomical discernment never deceives him; and this the Doctor was fond of observing, because wherever he was known the dogs came to return the greeting they expected. He has a sense of right and wrong as far as he has been taught; a sense of honour and of duty, from which his master might sometimes take a lesson; and not unfrequently a depth and heroism of affection, which the Doctor verily believed would have its reward in a better world. John Wesley held the same opinion, which has been maintained also by his enemy Augustus Toplady, and by his biographer the laureated L. L. D. or the El-el-deed Laureate. The Materialist, Dr. Dove would argue, must allow upon his own principles that a dog has as much soul as himself; and the Immaterialist, if he would be consistent, must perceive that the life and affections and actions of an animal are as little to be explained as the mysteries of his own nature by mere materiality. The all-doubting and therefore always half-believing Bayle has said that _les actions des bêtes sont peut-être un des plus profonds abîmes sur quoi notre raison se puisse exercer_. But here the Doctor acknowledged himself to be in doubt. That another state of existence there must be for every creature wherein there is the breath of life, he was verily persuaded. To that conclusion the whole tenour of his philosophy led him, and what he entertained as a philosophical opinion, acquired from a religious feeling something like the strength of faith. For if the whole of a brute animal's existence ended in this world, then it would follow that there are creatures born into it, for whom it had been better never to have been, than to endure the privations, pains and wrongs and cruelties, inflicted upon them by human wickedness; and he would not, could not, dared not believe that any, even the meanest of God's creatures, has been created to undergo more of evil than of good (where no power of choice was given)—much less to suffer unmingled evil, during its allotted term of existence. Yet this must be, if there were no state for animals after death.