Part 20

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!”

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“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.”