The general tendency of nations, as they advance from a rude and warlike to a refined and peaceful condition, from the stage in which the realising powers are faint and dull, to those in which they are sensitive and vivid, is undoubtedly to become more gentle and humane in their actions; but this, like all other general tendencies in history, may be counteracted or modified by many special circumstances. The law I have mentioned about oxen was obviously one of those that belong to a very early stage of progress, when legislators are labouring to form agricultural habits among a warlike and nomadic people. The games in which the slaughter of animals bore so large a part, having been introduced but a little. before the extinction of the republic, did very much to arrest or retard the natural progress of humane sentiments. In ancient Greece, besides the bull-fights of Thessaly, the combats of quails and cocks were favourite amusements, and were much encouraged by the legis In the same way we find several chapters in the Zendavesta about the criminality of injuring dogs; which is explained by the great importance of shepherds' dogs to a pastoral people. 2 On the origin of Greek cock-fighting, see Ælian, Hist. Var. ii. 28. Many particulars about it are given by Athenæus. Chrysippus maintained that cock-fighting was the final cause of cocks, these birds being made by Providence in order to inspire us by the example of their courage. (Plutarch, De Repug. Stoic.) The Greeks do not, however, appear to have known' cock-throwing,' the favourite English game of throwing a stick called a 'cock-stick' at cocks. It was a very ancient and very popular amusement, and was practised especially on Shrove Tuesday, and by school-boys. Sir Thomas More had been famous for his skill in it. (Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 283.) Three origins of it have been given:-1st, that in the Danish wars the Saxons failed to surprise a certain city, in consequence of the crowing of cocks, and had in consequence a great hatred of that bird; 2nd, that the cocks (galli) were special representatives of Frenchmen, with whom the English were constantly at war; and 3rd, that they were connected with the denial of St. Peter. As Sir Charles Sedley said : 'Mayst thou be punished for St. Peter's crime, Knight's Old England, vol. ii. p. 126. lators, as furnishing examples of valour to the soldiers. The colossal dimensions of the Roman games, the circumstances that favoured them, and the overwhelming interest they speedily excited, I have described in a former chapter. We have seen, however, that notwithstanding the gladiatorial shows, the standard of humanity towards men was considerably raised during the empire. It is also well worthy of notice, that notwithstanding the passion for the combats of wild beasts, Roman literature and the later literature of the nations subject to Rome abound in delicate touches displaying in a very high degree a sensitiveness to the feelings of the animal world. This tender interest in animal life is one of the most distinctive features of the poetry of Virgil. Lucretius, who rarely struck the chords of pathos, had at a still earlier period drawn a very beautiful picture of the sorrows of the bereaved cow, whose calf had been sacrificed upon the altar.1 Plutarch mentions, incidentally, that he could never bring himself to sell, in its old age, the ox which had served him faithfully in the time of its strength.2 Ovid expressed a similar sentiment with an almost equal emphasis. Juvenal speaks of a Roman lady with her eyes filled with tears on account of the death of a sparrow. Apollonius of Tyana, on the ground 1 De Natura Rerum, lib. ii. 'Quid meruere boves, animal sine fraude dolisque, Ruricolam mactare suum.'-Metamorph. xv. 120–124. 'Cujus Turbavit nitidos extinctus passer ocellos.' Juvenal, Sat. vi. 7–8. There is a little poem in Catullus (iii.) to console his mistress upon the death of her favourite sparrow; and Martial more than once alludes to the pets of the Roman ladies. of humanity, refused, even when invited by a king, to participate in the chase.1 Arrian, the friend of Epictetus, in his book upon coursing, anticipated the beautiful picture which Addison has drawn of the huntsman refusing to sacrifice the life of the captured hare which had given him so much pleasure in its flight.2 These touches of feeling, slight as they may appear, indicate, I think, a vein of sentiment such as we should scarcely have expected to find coexisting with the gigantic slaughter of the amphitheatre. The progress, however, was not simply one of sentiment-it was also shown in distinct and definite teaching. Pythagoras and Empedocles were quoted as the founders of this branch of ethics. The moral duty of kindness to animals was in the first instance based upon a dogmatic assertion of the transmigration of souls, and the doctrine that animals are within the circle of human duty, being thus laid down, subsidiary considerations of humanity were alleged. The rapid growth of the Pythagorean school, in the latter days of the empire, made these considerations familiar to the people. Porphyry elaborately advocated, and even Compare the charming description of the Prioress, in Chaucer : 'She was so charitable and so pitous, She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous 1 Philost. Apol. i. 38. : Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.' 2 See the curious chapter in his Kunyeriкóg, xvi. and compare it with No. 116 in the Spectator. 3 In his De Abstinentia Carnis. The controversy between Origen and Celsus furnishes us with a very curious illustration of the extravagancies into which some Pagans of the third century fell about animals. Celsus objected to the Christian doctrine about the position of men in the universe; But Seneca for a time practised, abstinence from flesh the most remarkable figure in this movement is unquestionably Plutarch. Casting aside the dogma of transmigration, or at least speaking of it only as a doubtful conjecture, he places the duty of kindness to animals on the broad ground of the affections, and he urges that duty with an emphasis and a detail to which no adequate parallel can, I believe, be found in the Christian writings for at least seventeen hundred years. He condemns absolutely the games of the amphitheatres, dwells with great force upon the effect of such spectacles in hardening the character, enumerates in detail, and denounces with unqualified energy, the refined cruelties which gastronomic fancies had produced, and asserts in the strongest language that every man has duties to the animal world as truly as to his fellow-men.1 If we now pass to the Christian Church, we shall find that little or no progress was at first made in this sphere. Among the Manicheans, it is true, the mixture of Oriental notions was shown in an absolute prohibition of animal food, and abstinence from this food was also frequently practised upon totally different grounds by the orthodox. One or two of the Fathers have also mentioned with approbation the humane councils of the Pythagoreans. But, on the other hand, the doctrine of transmigration was emphatically repudiated by the Catholics; the human race was isolated, by the scheme of re that many of the animals were at least the equals of men both in reason and in religious feeling and knowledge. (Orig. Cont. Cels. lib. iv.) These views are chiefly defended in his two tracts on eating flesh. Plutarch has also recurred to the subject, incidentally, in several other works; especially in a very beautiful passage in his Life of Marcus Cato. 2 See, for example, a striking passage in Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. ii. St. Clement imagines Pythagoras had borrowed his sentiments on this subject from Moses. demption, more than ever from all other races; and in the range and circle of duties inculcated by the early Fathers those to animals had no place. This is indeed the one form of humanity which appears more prominently in the Old Testament than in the New. The many beautiful traces of it in the former, which indicate a sentiment,1 even where they do not very strictly define a duty, gave way before an ardent philanthropy which regarded human interests as the one end, and the relations of man to his Creator as the one question of life, and dismissed somewhat contemptuously, as an idle sentimentalism, notions of duty to animals. A refined and subtle sympathy with animal feeling is indeed rarely found among those who are engaged very actively in the affairs of life, and it was not without a meaning or a reason that Shakspeare placed that exquisitely pathetic analysis of the sufferings of the wounded stag, which is perhaps its most perfect poetical expression, in the midst of the morbid dreamings of the diseased and melancholy Jacques. But while what are called the rights of animals had no place in the ethics of the Church, a feeling of sympathy with the irrational creation was in some degree inculcated indirectly by the incidents of the hagiology. It was very natural that the hermit, living in the lonely deserts of the East, or in the vast forests of Europe, should come into 1 There is, I believe, no record of any wild beast combats existing among the Jews, and the rabbinical writers have been remarkable for the great emphasis with which they inculcated the duty of kindness to animals. See some passages from them, cited in Wollaston, Religion of Nature, § ii. § 1, note. Maimonides believed in a future life for animals, to recompense them for their sufferings here. (Bayle, Dict. art. 'Rorarius D.') There is a curious collection of the opinions of different writers on this last point in a little book called the Rights of Animals, by William Drummond (London, 1838), pp. 197-205. 2 * Thus St. Paul (1 Cor. ix. 9) turned aside the precept, 'Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn,' from its natural meaning, with the contemptuous question, 'Doth God take care for oxen ?' |