The origin and development of the moral ideas

In Zoroastrianism we meet with a different attitude towards the lower animal world. A fundamental distinction is made between the animals of Ormuzd and those of Ahriman. To kill one of the former is a heinous sin, to kill one of the latter is a pious deed.64 Sacred above all other animals is the dog. The ill-feeding and maltreatment of dogs are prosecuted as criminal, and extreme penalties are inflicted on those who venture to kill them.65 Nay, if there be in the house of a worshipper of Mazda a mad dog who has no scent, the worshippers of Mazda “shall attend him to heal him, in the same manner as they would do for one of the faithful.”66 In the eyes of the Parsis, animals are enlisted under the standards of either Ormuzd or Ahriman according as they are useful or hurtful to man; but M. Darmesteter is of opinion that they originally belonged to the one or the other not on account of any such qualities, but according as they chanced to have lent their forms to either the god or the fiend in the storm tales. “It was not animal psychology,” he says, “that disguised gods and fiends as dogs, otters, hedge-hogs, and cocks, or as snakes, tortoises, frogs, and ants, but the accidents of physical qualities and the caprice of popular fancy, as both the god and the fiend might be compared with, and transformed into, any object, the idea of which was suggested by the uproar of the storm, the blazing of the lightning, the streaming of the water, or the hue and shape of the clouds.”67 This hypothesis, however, seems to attach undue importance to mythical fancies, and it presupposes an

almost unbounded and capricious allegorism, for which there is apparently little foundation in facts. The suggestion that the animals are referred to either the one or the other category according as they are useful or obnoxious to man, is at all events borne out by a few salient features, although in many details the matter remains obscure.

It appears that among the Zoroastrians, also, the respect for the life of animals is partly due to superstitious ideas about their souls and fear of their revenge. According to the ‘Yasts,’ “the souls of the wild beasts and of the tame” are objects of worship;68 and in one of the Pahlavi texts it is said that people should abstain from unlawfully slaughtering any species of animals, since otherwise, in punishment for such an act, each hair of the animal killed becomes like a sharp dagger, and he who is unlawfully a slaughterer is slain.69 But here again we may assume the co-operating influence of the feeling of sympathy. Various passages in the Zoroastrian ‘Gathas’ which enjoin kindness to domestic animals70 suggest as their motives not only considerations of utility but genuine tenderness. In a later age Firdausi sang, “Ah! spare yon emmet rich in hoarded grain: He lives with pleasure, and he dies with pain.”71 And of the modern Persian Dr. Polak says that, “naturally not cruel, he treats animals with more consideration than men.”72 His present religion, too, enjoins kindness to animals as a duty.

According to Muhammedanism, beasts, birds, fish, insects, are all, like man, the slaves of God, the tools of His will. There is no intrinsic distinction between them and the human species, except what accidental diversity God may have been pleased to make.73 Muhammed said to his followers:—“There is not a beast upon the earth nor a bird that flies with both its wings, but is a nation like to you; … to their Lord shall they be gathered.”74 Muhammedan law prescribes that domestic animals shall be treated with consideration and not be overworked;75 and in various Muhammedan countries this law has also been habitually put into practice. The Moslems of India are kind to animals.76 In his earlier intercourse with the people of Egypt, Mr. Lane noticed much humanity to beasts.77 Montaigne said that the Turks gave alms to brutes and had hospitals for them;78 and Mr. Bosworth Smith is of opinion that beasts of burden and domestic animals are nowhere in Christendom with the one exception, perhaps, of Norway treated with such unvarying kindness and consideration as they are in Turkey. “In the East,” he adds, “so far as it has not been hardened by the West, there is a real sympathy between man and the domestic animals; they understand one another.”79

So also the ancient Greeks were on familiar terms with the animal world. This appears from the frequency with which their poets illustrate human qualities by metaphors drawn from it. And as men were compared with animals, so animals were believed to possess human peculiarities. When a beast was going to be sacrificed it had to give its consent to the act by a nod of the head before it was killed.80 Animals were held in some measure responsible for their deeds; they were tried for manslaughter, sentenced, and executed.81 On the other hand, honours were bestowed upon beasts which had rendered signal services to their masters. The graves of Cimon’s mares with which he three times conquered at the Olympic games were still in the days of Plutarch to be seen near his own tomb;82 and a certain Xanthippus honoured his dog by burying it on a promontory, since then called “the dog’s grave,” because when the Athenians were compelled to abandon their city it swam by the side of his galley to Salamis.83 According to Xenocrates, there were in existence at Eleusis three laws which had been made by an ancient legislator, namely:—“Honour your parents; Sacrifice to the gods from the fruits of the earth;

Injure not animals.”84 At Athens a man was punished for flaying a living ram.85 The Areopagites once condemned a boy to death because he had picked out the eyes of some quails.86 As we have noticed before, the life of the ploughing ox was sacred;87 and young animals in particular were believed to be under the protection of the gods.88 An ancient proverb says that “there are Erinyes even for dogs.”89 This seems to indicate that the Greeks, also, were influenced by the common notion that the soul of an animal may take revenge upon him who killed it, the Erinys of the slain animal being originally its persecuting ghost. Among the Pythagoreans, again, the rule that animals which are not obnoxious to the human race should be neither injured nor killed90 was connected with their theory of metempsychosis;91 and in some cases the prohibition of slaying useful animals may be traced to utilitarian motives.92 But both in Greece and Rome kindness to brutes was also inculcated for their own sake, on purely humanitarian grounds.

Porphyry says that, as justice pertains to rational beings and animals have been proved to be possessed of reason, it is necessary that we should act justly towards them.93 He adds that “he who does not restrict harmless conduct to man alone, but extends it to other animals, most closely approaches to divinity; and if it were possible to extend it to plants, he would preserve this image in a still greater degree.”94 According to Plutarch kindness and beneficence to creatures of every species flow from the breast of a well-natured man as streams that issue from the living fountain. We ought to take care of our dogs and horses not only when they are young, but when they are old and past service.95 We ought not to violate or kill anything whatsoever that has life, unless it hurt us first.96 And if we cannot live unblamably we should at least sin with discretion: when we kill an animal in order to satisfy our hunger we should do so with sorrow and pity, without abusing and tormenting it.97 Cicero says it is a crime to injure an animal.98 And Marcus Aurelius enjoins man to make use of brutes with a generous and liberal spirit, since he has reason and they have not.99