Animals and Premonitions of Death by R. Scott Skirving
[April 30, 1892.]
In a recent Spectator there is a quotation from Pierre Loti to the effect that "animals not only fear death, but fear it the more because they are aware that they have no future." Pierre Loti is a brilliant novelist, but I am not aware that he is a scientific naturalist, and I trust his idea is a mere chimera. Loti would take from the brutes the one privilege for which men may envy them, and endows them with a knowledge of the aftertime that we have only by revelation. However, two common-sense naturalists have published their belief that the lower animals have a foreknowledge of death, and one of them goes so far as to give an account of an old horse committing suicide. He says the animal frequently suffered from some internal disease, and that it deliberately walked into a pond, and, putting its nostrils under water, stood thus till it dropped dead from suffocation. The incident, I think, is easily explained.
I should like to ask naturalists who think animals know that they must die, where they draw the line. They must stop somewhere between a dog and a dormouse. Poets have made far more frequent allusion to the subject than naturalists, and they may be quoted on both sides. Philip James Bailey, in illustration of his contention that hope is universal, says: "and the poor hack that sinks down on the flints, upon whose eye the dust is settling, he hopes to die." But we have on the other hand Shelley's Skylark, with its "ignorance of pain," because it differs from men who "look before and after." Wordsworth's little girl of eight knew less than her dog, if she had one, for, says the poet, "what could she know of death?" I admit that when the carnivora have crushed their prey to death they cease to mangle them; but I fancy that is only because there is no more resistance; and a bull will trample on a hat and leave it when it becomes a shapeless mass. The nearest thing I ever saw to an apparent foreknowledge of death, was in the case of that least intelligent of dogs, a greyhound. I had to shoot it to prevent useless suffering from disease. It followed me willingly, but when I led it to a pit prepared as its grave it instantly rushed off at its best speed. I suggest that it saw instinctively something unpleasant was about to happen, but it does not follow that death was present to its mind. Domestic poultry will furiously attack one of their number that struggles on the ground in its death-agony. They do not dream of death; they think its contortions are a challenge to combat.
[April 30, 1892.]
In a recent Spectator there is a quotation from Pierre Loti to the effect that "animals not only fear death, but fear it the more because they are aware that they have no future." Pierre Loti is a brilliant novelist, but I am not aware that he is a scientific naturalist, and I trust his idea is a mere chimera. Loti would take from the brutes the one privilege for which men may envy them, and endows them with a knowledge of the aftertime that we have only by revelation. However, two common-sense naturalists have published their belief that the lower animals have a foreknowledge of death, and one of them goes so far as to give an account of an old horse committing suicide. He says the animal frequently suffered from some internal disease, and that it deliberately walked into a pond, and, putting its nostrils under water, stood thus till it dropped dead from suffocation. The incident, I think, is easily explained.
I should like to ask naturalists who think animals know that they must die, where they draw the line. They must stop somewhere between a dog and a dormouse. Poets have made far more frequent allusion to the subject than naturalists, and they may be quoted on both sides. Philip James Bailey, in illustration of his contention that hope is universal, says: "and the poor hack that sinks down on the flints, upon whose eye the dust is settling, he hopes to die." But we have on the other hand Shelley's Skylark, with its "ignorance of pain," because it differs from men who "look before and after." Wordsworth's little girl of eight knew less than her dog, if she had one, for, says the poet, "what could she know of death?" I admit that when the carnivora have crushed their prey to death they cease to mangle them; but I fancy that is only because there is no more resistance; and a bull will trample on a hat and leave it when it becomes a shapeless mass. The nearest thing I ever saw to an apparent foreknowledge of death, was in the case of that least intelligent of dogs, a greyhound. I had to shoot it to prevent useless suffering from disease. It followed me willingly, but when I led it to a pit prepared as its grave it instantly rushed off at its best speed. I suggest that it saw instinctively something unpleasant was about to happen, but it does not follow that death was present to its mind. Domestic poultry will furiously attack one of their number that struggles on the ground in its death-agony. They do not dream of death; they think its contortions are a challenge to combat.
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