dog and other animals give unquestionable evidence that they know what, according to man's law to them, is right and wrong, and they prefer to do the one or the other according to their individuality and the character of their previous moral training.

Monkeys and other animals sometimes show, as much as does the human child, a very decided enjoyment of forbidden pleasures, not only knowing that they are, but because of their being, interdicted.

The dog, horse, mule, elephant, and other animals have frequently a distinct sense, feeling, or knowledge of duty, trust, or task; and this not only as regards their own personal obligations, but in so far as duty of various kinds is attachable to other individuals of the same species, or to those of other genera and species, including man himself— when, for instance, such duty of man's has any immediate reference to, or connection with, themselves. In other words, they have clear conceptions of their own duties, and of the duties of others, including man, in relation to them.

The discharge of their own duties, which in many instances are self-imposed, involves, or is characterised by—

1. An understanding of the nature of the work to be executed-of the duty required, for instance, by man.

2. Conscientiousness in the discharge of duty, which again implies

a. Sterling honesty and fidelity.

b. Willingness or zeal.

c. Regularity, including perseverance, patience, and method.

d. Accuracy, based on high intelligence.

The working elephant requires that the nature of its work should be explained to it, to as great an extent as possible demonstratively-by illustration. It very quickly and readily comprehends what it is that man wishes and expects it to do, and it very soon learns to execute its task without supervision, bringing to the discharge of its duty so much zeal or heartiness, so much conscientiousness, that it frequently displays an obvious dread of failure in, or of inability for, the due fulfilment of its trust, even when the causes of such failure or

incompetency, where they exist, scarcely come within, or are altogether beyond, the animal's control. There are such things in the dog, elephant, horse, and other animals as excess of zeal, wrong ideas of duty, mistakes in the mode of discharging it, and morbid conscientiousness, the discussion of which, however, belongs rather to such chapters as those on 'Error' and on 'Mental Derangement' or its causation. Man's cruel taunts not unfrequently lead the too willing horse or elephant to the attempting of tasks for which their strength, or lack thereof, does not qualify them, and death in or from such attempts is the occasional result; while the dog sometimes carries its honesty or fidelity in the defence of a trust to a ridiculous extent, or displays qualities, noble in themselves, under absurd circumstances. The dog's anxiety to learn his duty has been pointed out by the Ettrick Shepherd, who thus writes of his celebrated Sirrah:- 'As soon as he discovered that it was his duty [to turn sheep], and that it obliged me, I can never forget with what anxiety and eagerness he learned his different evolutions.'

Duties that are voluntarily assumed, that are frequently of an irksome and even unnatural kind, are sometimes discharged in the most admirable way-for instance, by self-constituted foster-parents that have adopted orphaned or deserted young, often belonging to other genera and species, and even to natural enemies.

Quite as frequently, perhaps, parental or maternal duties, of a natural and important character, are delegated or left to any other animal possessed of a sufficiently powerful charity or compassion, a sufficiently strong maternal or parental 'instinct.' The duties of parentage or otherwise may be simply left undischarged, without the slightest regard to the results of such neglect; every opportunity may be taken of shirking work that is disagreeable, or a task, of whatever nature, is executed in a very perfunctory, perhaps merely nominal, way. There is, in other words, in some cases just as decided an insensibility to the claims of duty, just as marked a cold. indifference to its discharge, as in other cases there is conscientiousness and kindliness. It is only fair, however, to bear in mind that such apathy, frequently of an obviously

unnatural character, is one of the common results of mental defect or disorder, just as it is too frequently in man himself.

The dog frequently makes duty and its discharge paramount to all other considerations. To it are sacrificed even revenge, on the one hand, or temptations to the pursuit of game, or to access to food, on the other. Death itself is sometimes preferred to the desertion of a trust or charge (Watson). Many a dog restrains all its natural propensities under a sense of duty and responsibility. When 'on duty,' entrusted with a message from a master, it very literally places business before pleasure;' its self-control may even prevent desirable or necessary self-defence.

Whether it be from a sense of justice, of duty, or of conscientiousness, it is a fact that certain working dogs and other animals not only attend faithfully to their own duties, but see that their companions give equal attention to theirs. They exact duty or work from, or enforce it in, their colleagues (Watson).

Certain of the lower animals have a very decided sense of justice and injustice, of equity or fairness and the reverse, as is more fully pointed out in the chapters on Law and Punishment' and 'Crime and Criminality.' Thus the dog, horse, mule, ass, camel, elephant, and other working animals have a feeling that the labourer is worthy of his hire;' that they deserve a certain meed of praise, credit, or reward-a certain return in food and drink, in domestic comfort or personal attention-for service rendered. There is a clear recognition of the value of service-a knowledge of personal deserts. Hence they so frequently exhibit a sore sense of ill-requital of hard labour or of self-sacrifice. Punishment which they know to be undeserved they resent-sometimes dangerously to man-and in doing so they discriminate and estimate man's injustice.

The bread-buying dog does very much the same thing— detects and protests against man's unfair dealing when, offering its penny for a roll, a baker tries, waggishly or otherwise, to cheat it by giving it something of inferior value or refusing it a quid pro quo at all.

There must further exist, in certain animals, some per

ception of the distinction between spoken as well as acted truth and falsehood, fact and fiction; for we are told, for instance, that the parrot sometimes not only detects, but denounces with the utmost indignation, man's verbal falsehoods ('Animal World'). On the other hand, one of the occasionally base or bad purposes to which the same bird applies its wonderful gift of speech is mendacity: so that it is capable at once of telling lies' itself and of detecting and reprimanding falsehood in man.

A certain sentiment of decency, modesty, or propriety occurs in various social animals, illustrated as it is by— 1. Their sexual bashfulness and chastity.

2. Their care of the dead, including the-
3. Use of dying-places and cemeteries.

4. Their employment of latrines or their equivalents. It has to be remarked that the moral virtues are illustrated mainly by or in those animals that have directly or indirectly received their moral training from man-such animals as the dog, elephant, and horse. As a general rule-to which there are exceptions both in man and other animals-the human child and the young animal can equally be educated both to distinguish and do the right. In the formation of their character moral virtue may be made to dominate over moral vice, though it is probably impossible in either case to extinguish the latter. Moral perfectibility may be aimed at, though it cannot be attained; but the degree of moral excellence attainable is such in other animals, as in the child, that it should stimulate man to put forth all efforts in the moral training of both. This, however, is a subject that pertains more properly to the chapters on Education.'

CHAPTER III.

MORAL MERIT AND DEMERIT.

THERE are many worthy people who, while they are compelled, by the evidence of facts, to admit that certain animals perform actions that from man's-that is, their own-point of view must be regarded as beneficent, deny that such actions in other animals are motived by the same moral or mental influences that operate in man. While making no objection to attributing to the lower animals the capacity, for instance, for any kind or degree of self-sacrifice, they refuse to associate therewith any sort of moral merit; and, as a corollary, they do not recognise demerit in actions of an opposite kind. They resolutely oppose, in a great variety of ways, all supposition of moral merit in the actions of the lower animals just because they are lower animals, and on no other ground apparently. Thus

1. They deny that, in actions involving self-sacrifice, the animals that sacrifice themselves have any true consciousness or perception of the nature of their acts; that such actions are voluntary and deliberate; or that they are the result of anything like human motive.

2. By regarding the lower animals as mere automata, they get rid of all such difficulties, referring self-sacrifice and other beneficent actions to 'instinct.'

3. They attempt all manner of restricted definitions of such terms as morality, religion, motive, and so forth, so as, if possible, to exclude all other animals from participation in attributes which they fondly regard as peculiar to man.

But such objectors to granting to other animals credit or merit for actions that in man would meet with the highest