Part 1

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THE PLACE OF ANIMALS IN HUMAN THOUGHT

THE PLACE OF ANIMALS IN HUMAN THOUGHT

by

THE COUNTESS EVELYN MARTINENGO CESARESCO

“On ne connait rien que par bribes.”—M. BERTHELOT

New York Charles Scribner’S Sons 153-157 Fifth Avenue 1909

“C’est l’éternel secret qui veut être gardé.”

(_All rights reserved._)

PREFACE

AT the Congress held at Oxford in September, 1908, those who heard Count Goblet d’Alviella’s address on the “Method and Scope of the History of Religions” must have felt the thrill which announces the stirring of new ideas, when, in a memorable passage, the speaker asked “whether the psychology of animals has not equally some relation to the science of religions?” At any rate, these words came to me as a confirmation of the belief that the study which has engaged my attention for several years, is rapidly advancing towards recognition as a branch of the inquiry into what man is himself. The following chapters on the different answers given to this question when extended from man to animals, were intended, from the first, to form a whole, not complete, indeed, but perhaps fairly comprehensive. I offer them now to the public with my warmest acknowledgments to the scholars whose published works and, in some cases, private hints have made my task possible. I also wish to thank the Editor of the _Contemporary Review_ for his kindness in allowing me to reprint the part of this book which appeared first in that periodical.

Some chapters refer rather to practice than to psychology, and others to myths and fancies rather than to conscious speculation, but all these subjects are so closely connected that it would be difficult to divide their treatment by a hard-and-fast line.

With regard to the illustrations, I am glad to bear grateful testimony to the facilities afforded me by the Directors of the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Hague Gallery, the National Museum at Copenhagen, the Egypt Exploration Fund, and by the Secretary of State for India. H.E. Monsieur Camille Barrère, French Ambassador at Rome, has allowed me to include a photograph of his remarkably fine specimen of a bronze cat; and I have obtained the sanction of Monsieur Marcel Dieulafoy for the reproduction of one of Madame Dieulafoy’s photographs which appeared in his magnificent work on “L’Art Antique de la Perse.” Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Limited, and Messrs. Chapman and Hall, Limited, have permitted photographs to be taken of two plates in books published by them. Finally, Dr. C. Waldstein and Mr. E. B. Havell have been most kind in helping me to give the correct description of some of the plates.

SALÒ, LAGO DI GARDA.

_February 15, 1909._

CONTENTS

I

PAGE SOUL-WANDERING AS IT CONCERNS ANIMALS 11

II

THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF ANIMALS 22

III

ANIMALS AT ROME 44

IV

PLUTARCH THE HUMANE 62

V

MAN AND HIS BROTHER 84

VI

THE FAITH OF IRAN 113

VII

ZOROASTRIAN ZOOLOGY 141

VIII

A RELIGION OF RUTH 166

IX

LINES FROM THE ADI GRANTH 201

X

THE HEBREW CONCEPTION OF ANIMALS 205

XI

“A PEOPLE LIKE UNTO YOU” 221

XII

THE FRIEND OF THE CREATURE 245

XIII

VERSIPELLES 265

XIV

THE HORSE AS HERO 281

XV

ANIMALS IN EASTERN FICTION 306

XVI

THE GROWTH OF MODERN IDEAS ABOUT ANIMALS 336

INDEX 367

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE EMPEROR AKBAR PERSONALLY DIRECTING THE _Frontispiece_ TYING UP OF A WILD ELEPHANT. Tempera painting in the “Akbar Namah,” by Abu’l Fazl (1597-98). India Museum. _Photographed for this work._

DEER WORSHIPPING THE WHEEL OF THE LAW. Tope of Sanchi, drawn 11 by Lieut.-Col. Maisey _From Fergusson’s “Tree and Serpent Worship.” By permission of the India Office._

THE BUDDHISTIC TIGER 21 _From a painting on silk by Ko-Tō in the British Museum. Photographed for this work. In Japanese Buddhism the Tiger is the type of Wisdom._

ORPHEUS 32 _Fresco found at Pompeii._ (_Sommer._)

STELE WITH CAT AND BIRD 40 _Athens Museum._

CAPITOLINE SHE-WOLF 44 (_Bruckmann._) Bronze statue. Early Etruscan style. The twins are modern.

LION BEING LED FROM THE ARENA BY A SLAVE 47 _From the mosaic pavement of a Roman villa at Nennig._

BACCHUS RIDING ON A PANTHER 74 _Mosaic found at Pompeii._ (_Sommer._)

BRONZE STATUE OF AN EGYPTIAN CAT 82 _From the Collection of H.E. Monsieur Camille Barrère, French Ambassador at Rome_

REINDEER BROWSING. OLDER STONE AGE 86 _Found in a cave at Thayngen in Switzerland._

HORSE DRAWING DISC OF THE SUN. OLDER BRONZE AGE 86 _National Museum at Copenhagen._

HATHOR COW 102 _Found in 1906 by Dr. Édouard Naville at Deir-el-bahari. By permission of the Egypt Exploration Fund._

WILD GOATS AND YOUNG 108 _Assyrian Relief. British Museum._ (_Mansell._)

ASSYRIAN GOD CARRYING ANTELOPE AND WHEAT-EAR 116 _British Museum._ (_Mansell._)

COUNTING CATTLE 128 _Egyptian Fresco. British Museum._ (_Mansell._)

KING FIGHTING GRIFFIN (“BAD ANIMAL”) 142 _Relief in Palace of Darius at Persepolis. Photographed by Jane Dieulafoy. From “L’Art Antique de la Perse.” By permission of M. Marcel Dieulafoy._

THE REAL DOG OF IRAN 152 _Bronze Statuette found at Susa. Louvre. From Perrot’s “History of Art in Ancient Persia.” By permission of Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Ltd._

BUDDHA PACIFYING AN INTOXICATED ELEPHANT WHICH HAD BEEN SENT 188 TO DESTROY HIM. THE ELEPHANT STOOPS IN ADORATION Græco-Buddhist sculpture from a ruined monastery at Takt-i-Bahi. _India Museum. Photographed for this work._

RECLINING BULL 192 _Ancient Southern Indian sculpture. From a photograph in the India Museum._

WILD BULLS AND TAMED BULLS 201 _Reliefs on two gold cups found in a tomb at Vapheio near Amyclae. Fifteenth century B.C. (possibly earlier). From Schuckhardt’s “Schliemann’s Excavations.” By permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd._

THE GARDEN OF EDEN 208 _By Rubens. Hague Gallery._ (_Bruckmann._)

GENESIS VIII. 212 _Loggie di Raffaello. In the Vatican. Drawn by N. Consoni._

DANIEL AND THE LIONS 216 _From an early Christian Sarcophagus in S. Vitale, Ravenna._ (_Alinari._)

“AN INDIAN ORPHEUS” 222 _Inlaid marble work panel originally surmounting a doorway in the Great Hall of Audience in the Mogul Palace at Delhi (about 1650). Photographed for this work from a painting by a native artist in the India Museum. Imitated from a painting by Raphael._

MOSLEM BEGGAR FEEDING DOGS AT CONSTANTINOPLE 226 _From life._

ST. JEROME EXTRACTING A THORN FROM THE PAW OF A LION 253 _By Hubert van Eyck. Naples Museum._ (_Anderson._)

ST. EUSTACE (OR ST. HUBERT) AND THE STAG 256 _By Vittore Pisano. National Gallery._ (_Hanfstängl._)

“LE MENEUR DES LOUPS” 276 _Designed and drawn by Maurice Sand._

THE ASSYRIAN HORSE 284 _From a relief in the British Museum._ (_Mansell._)

ARABIAN HORSE OF THE SAHARA 288 _From life._

THE BANYAN DEER 328 _From “Stûpa of Bharhut.” By General Cunningham. By permission of the India Office._ (_Griggs._)

EGYPTIAN OFFICIAL, WITH HIS WIFE, ENGAGED IN FOWLING IN THE 330 PAPYRUS SWAMP. HIS HUNTING CAT HAS SEIZED THREE BIRDS. _Mural painting in British Museum._ (_Mansell._)

ASSYRIAN LION AND LIONESS IN PARADISE PARK 336 _British Museum._ (_Mansell._) The King’s reservations for big game were called “paradises.”

LAMBS 338 _Relief on a fifth century tomb at Ravenna._ (_Alinari._)

“IL BUON PASTORE” 346 _Mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia at Ravenna._

The Place of Animals in Human Thought

I

SOUL-WANDERING AS IT CONCERNS ANIMALS

IN one of these enigmatic sayings which launch the mind on boundless seas, Cardinal Newman remarked that we know less of animals than of angels. A large part of the human race explains the mystery by what is called transmigration, metempsychosis, _Samsara_, _Seelenwanderung_; the last a word so compact and picturesque that it is a pity not to imitate it in English. The intelligibility of ideas depends much on whether words touch the spring of the picture-making wheel of the brain; “Soul-wandering” does this.

Ancient as the theory is, we ought to remember what is commonly forgotten—that somewhere in the distance we catch sight of a time when it was unknown, at least in the sense of a procession of the soul from death to life through animal forms. Traces of it are to be found in the Sutras and it is thoroughly developed in the Upanishads, but if the Sutras belong to the thirteenth century and the Upanishads to about the year 700 before Christ, a long road still remains to the Vedas with their fabulous antiquity.

In the Vedas it is stated that the soul may wander, even during sleep, and that it will surely have a further existence after death, but there is nothing to show that in this further existence it will take the form of an animal. Man will be substantially man, able to feel the same pleasures as his prototype on earth; but if he goes to a good place, exempt from the same pains. What, then, was the Vedic opinion of animals? On the whole, it is safe to assume that the authors of the Vedic chants believed that animals, like men, entered a soul-world in which they preserved their identity. The idea of funeral sacrifices, as exemplified in these earliest records, was that of sending some one before. The horse and the goat that were immolated at a Vedic funeral were intended to go and announce the coming of the man’s soul. Wherever victims were sacrificed at funerals, they were originally meant to do something in the after-life; hence they must have had souls. The origin of the Suttee was the wish that the wife should accompany her husband, and among primitive peoples animals were sacrificed because the dead man might have need of them. Not very long ago an old Irish woman, on being remonstrated with for having killed her dead husband’s horse, replied with the words, “Do you think I would let my man go on foot in the next world?” On visiting that wonderfully emotion-awakening relic, the Viking ship at Christiania, I was interested to see the bones of the Chief’s horses and dogs as well as his own. Did the Norsemen, passionately devoted to the sea as they were, suppose, that not only the animals, but also the vessel in which they buried their leader, would have a ghostly second existence? I have no doubt that they did. Apart from what hints may be gleaned from the Vedas, there is an inherent probability against the early Aryans, any more than the modern Hindu, believing that the soul of man or beast comes suddenly to a full stop. To destroy spirit seems to the Asiatic mind as impossible as to destroy matter seems to the biologist.

Leaving the Vedas and coming down to the Sutras and Upanishads, we discover the transmigration of souls at first suggested and then clearly defined. Whence came it? Was it the belief of those less civilised nations whom the Aryans conquered, and did they, in accepting it from them, give it a moral complexion by investing it with the highly ethical significance of an upward or downward progress occasioned by the merits or demerits of the soul in a previous state of being?

A large portion of mankind finds it as difficult to conceive a sudden beginning as a sudden end of spirit. We forget difficulties which we are not in the habit of facing; those who have tried to face this one have generally stumbled over it. Even Dante with his subtle psychophysiological reasoning hardly persuades. The ramifications of a life before stretched far: “Whosoever believes in the fabled prior existence of souls, let him be anathema,” thundered the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 543. Which shows that many Christians shared Origen’s views on this subject.

From the moment that soul-wandering became, in India, a well-established doctrine, some three thousand years ago, the conception of the status of animals was perfectly clear. “Wise people,” says the Bhagavad Gita, “see the same soul (Atman) in the Brahman, in worms and insects, in the outcasts, in the dog and the elephant, in beasts, cows, gadflies, and gnats.” Here we have the doctrine succinctly expounded, and in spite of subtleties introduced by later philosophers (such as that of the outstanding self) the exposition holds good to this day as a statement of the faith of India. It also described the doctrine of Pythagoras, which ancient traditions asserted that he brought from Egypt, where no such doctrine ever existed. Pythagoras is still commonly supposed to have borrowed from Egypt; but it is strange that a single person should continue to hold an opinion against which so much evidence has been produced; especially as it is surely very easy to explain the tradition by interpreting Egypt to have stood for “the East” in common parlance, exactly as in Europe a tribe of low caste Indians came to be called gypsies or Egyptians. Pythagoras believed that he had been one of the Trojan heroes, whose shield he knew at a glance in the Temple of Juno where it was hung up. After him, Empedocles thought that he had passed through many forms, amongst others those of a bird and a fish. Pythagoras and his fire-spent disciple belong to times which seem almost near if judged by Indian computations: yet they are nebulous figures; they seem to us, and perhaps they seemed to men who lived soon after them, more like mysterious, half Divine bearers of a word than men of flesh and blood. But Plato, who is real to us and who has influenced so profoundly modern thought, Plato took their theory and displayed it to the Western world as the most logical explanation of the mystery of being.

The theory of transmigration did not commend itself to Roman thinkers, though it was admirably stated by a Roman poet:—

“Omnia mutantur: nihil interit. Errat, et illinc Huc venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus Spiritus, eque feris, humana in corpora transit, Inque feras noster, nec tempore deperit ullo. Utque novis facilis signatur cera figuris, Nec manet ut fuerat, nec formas servat easdem, Sed tamen ipsa eadem est: animam sic semper eandem Esse.”

This description is as accurate as it is elegant; but it remains a question whether Ovid had anything deeper than a folk-lorist’s interest in transmigration joined to a certain sympathy which it often inspires in those who are fond of animals. The enthusiastic folk-lorist finds himself believing in all sorts of things at odd times. Lucian’s admirers at Rome doubtless enjoyed his ridiculous story of a Pythagorean cock which had been a man, a woman, a prince, a subject, a fish, a horse and a frog, and which summed up its varied experience in the judgment that man was the most wretched and deplorable of all creatures, all others patiently grazing within the enclosures of Nature while man alone breaks out and strays beyond those safe limits. This story was retold with great gusto by Erasmus. The Romans were a people with inclusive prejudices, and they were not likely to welcome a narrowing of the gulf between themselves and the beasts of the field. Cicero’s dictum that, while man looks before and after, analysing the past and forecasting the future, animals have only the perception of the present, does not go to the excess of those later theorists who, like Descartes, reduced animals to automata, but it goes farther than scientific writers on the subject would now allow to be justified.

It is worth while asking, what was it that so powerfully attracted Plato in the theory of transmigration? I think that Plato, who made a science of the moral training of the mind, was attracted by soul-wandering as a scheme of soul-evolution. Instead of looking at it as a matter of fact which presupposed an ethical root (which is the Indian view), he looked upon it as an ethical root which presupposed a matter of fact. He was influenced a little, no doubt, by the desire to get rid of Hades, “an unpleasant place,” as he says, “and not true,” for which he felt a peculiar antipathy, but he was influenced far more by seeing in soul-wandering a rational theory of the ascent of the soul, a Darwinism of the spirit. “We are plants,” he said, “not of earth but of heaven,” but it takes the plants of heaven a long time to grow.

We ought to admire the Indian mind, which first seized the idea of time in relation to development and soared out of the cage of history (veritable or imaginary) into liberal æons to account for one perfect soul, one plant that had accomplished its heavenly destiny. But though the Indian seer argues with Plato that virtue has its own reward (not so much an outward reward of improved environment as an inward reward of approximation to perfection), he disagrees with the Greek philosopher with regard to the practical result of all this as it affects any of us personally. Plato found the theory of transmigration entirely consoling; the Indian finds it entirely the reverse. Can the reason be that Plato took the theory as a beautiful symbol while the Indian takes it as a dire reality?

The Hindu is as much convinced that the soul is re-born in different animals as we are that children are born of women. He is convinced of it, but he is not consoled by it. Let us reflect a little: does not one life give us time to get somewhat tired of it; how should we feel after fifteen hundred lives? The wandering Jew has never been thought an object of envy, but the wandering soul has a wearier lot; it knows the sorrows of all creation.

“How many births are past I cannot tell, How many yet may be no man may say, But this alone I know and know full well, That pain and grief embitter all the way.”[1]

Footnote 1:

“Folk-Songs of Southern India,” by Charles E. Gover, a fascinating but little-known work.

Rather than this—death. How far deeper the gloom revealed by these lines from the folk-songs of an obscure Dravidian tribe living in the Nilgiri Hills, than any which cultured Western pessimism can show! Compared with them, the despairing cry of Baudelaire seems almost a hymn of joy:—

“’Tis death that cheers and gives us strength to live, ’Tis life’s chief aim, sole hope that can abide, Our wine, elixir, glad restorative Whence we gain heart to walk till eventide.

Through snow, through frost, through tempests it can give Light that pervades th’ horizon dark and wide; The inn which makes secure when we arrive Our food and sleep, all labour laid aside.

It is an Angel whose magnetic hand Gives quiet sleep and dreams of extasy, And strews a bed for naked folk and poor.

’Tis the god’s prize, the mystic granary, The poor man’s purse and his old native land, And of the unknown skies the opening door.”

Folk-songs are more valuable aids than the higher literature of nations in an inquiry as to what they really believe. The religion of the Dravidian mountaineers is purely Aryan (though their race is not); their songs may be taken, therefore, as Aryan documents. They are particularly characteristic of the dual belief as to a future state which is, to this day, widely diffused. How firmly these people believe in transmigration the quatrain quoted above bears witness; yet they also believe that souls are liable to immediate judgment. This contradiction is explained by the theory that a long interval may elapse between death and re-incarnation and that during this interval the soul meets with a reward or punishment. To say the truth, the explanation sounds a rather lame one. Is it not more likely that the idea of immediate judgment, wherever it appears, is a relic of Vedic belief which has to be reconciled, as best it can, with the later idea of transmigration? The Dravidian songs are remarkable for their strong inculcation of regard for animals. In their impressive funeral dirge which is a public confession of the dead man’s sins, it is owned that he killed a snake, a lizard and a harmless frog. And that not mere lifetaking was the point condemned, is clearly proved by the further admission that the delinquent put the young ox to the plough before it was strong enough to work. In a Dravidian vision of Heaven and Hell certain of the Blest are perceived milking their happy kine, and it is explained that these are they who, when they saw the lost kine of neighbour or stranger in the hills, drove them home nor left them to perish from tiger or wolf. Surely in this, as in the Jewish command which it so closely resembles, we may read mercy to beast as well as to man.