Seventy years among savages by Salt Henry Stephens 1851-1939

Author:Salt, Henry Stephens, 1851-1939
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Civilization, Animal welfare
Publisher: London : Allen & Unwin

130 SEVENTY YEARS AMONG SAVAGES

guinity except in the conventional forms, and simply does not comprehend the statement that " the animals " are our fellow-beings. There are numbers of good and kindly folk with whom, on this question, one never reaches the point of difference at all, but is involved in impenetrable misapprehensions: there may be talking on either side, but communication there is none. Tell them, in Howard Moore's words, that the non-human beings are " not conveniences but cousins," and they will answer, asscntingly, that they are all in favour of " kindness to animals" ; after which they will continue to treat them not as cousins but as conveniences. This impossibihty of even making oneself intelligible was brought home to me with great force, some years ago, in connection with the death of a very dear friend, a cat, whose long life of fifteen years had to be ended in the chloroform-box owing to an incurable ailment. The veterinary surgeon whose aid I invoked was an extremely kind man, for whose skill 1 shall always feel grateful; and from his patience and sympathetic manner I thought he partly understood what the occasion meant to me—that, like a human death-bed, it was a scene that could never pass from the mind. It was, therefore, with something of an amused shock that I recollected, after he had gone, what I had hardly noticed at the moment, that he had said to me, as he left the door : " You'll be wanting a new pussy-cat soon."

Richard Jefferies has remarked that the belief that animals are devoid of reason is rarely held by those who themselves labour in the fields : " It is the cabinet-thinkers who construct a universe of automatons." One is cheered now and then by hearing animals spoken of, quite simply and naturally, as rational beings. I once made the acquaintance, in the Lake District, of an old lady living in a roadside cottage, who had for her companion, sitting in an armchair by the fire, a lame hen, named Tetty, whom she had saved and reared

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