The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals. E. P. Evans
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He states, in the first place, that curses and blessings can be pronounced only upon such things as are susceptible of receiving evil or good impressions from them, or in other words, upon sentient and rational beings, or upon irrational creatures and insentient things in their relation to rational beings, so that the latter are the objects ultimately aimed at and favourably or unfavourably affected. Thus God cursed the earth, because it is essential to a man’s subsistence; Jesus cursed the barren fig-tree symbolizing the Jews, who made a great show of leafage in the form of rites and ceremonies, but bore no fruits of righteousness; Job cursed the day on which he was born, because he took from his mother’s womb the taint of original sin; David cursed the rocks and mountains of Gilboa, because they were stained with the blood of “the beauty of Israel”; in like manner the Lord sends locusts and blight and mildew to destroy the harvests, because these are intimately connected with the happiness of mankind, whose sins he wishes to punish.
It is laid down as a legal maxim by mediæval jurisprudents that no animal devoid of understanding can commit a fault (nec enim potest animal injuriam fecisse quod sensu caret). This doctrine is endorsed by the great theologian and scholastic Thomas of Aquino. If we regard the lower animals, he says, as creatures coming from the hand of God and employed by him as agents for the execution of his judgments, then to curse them would be blasphemous; if, on the other hand, we curse them secundem se, i.e. merely as brute beasts, then the malediction is odious and vain and therefore unlawful (est odiosum et vanum et per consequens illicitum). There is, however, another ground, on which the right of excommunication or anathematization may be asserted and fully vindicated, namely, that the lower animals are satellites of Satan “instigated by the powers of hell and therefore proper to be cursed,” as the Doctor angelicus puts it. Chassenée refers to this opinion in the treatise already cited (I. § 75), and adds “the anathema then is not to be pronounced against the animals as such, but should be hurled inferentially (per modum conclusionis) at the devil, who makes use of irrational creatures to our detriment.” This notion seems to have been generally accepted in the Middle Ages, and the fact that evil spirits are often mentioned in the Bible metaphorically or symbolically as animals and assumed to be incarnate in the adder, the asp, the basilisk, the dragon, the lion, the leviathan, the serpent, the scorpion, etc., was considered confirmatory of this view.
But not all animals were regarded as diabolical incarnations; on the contrary, many were revered as embodiments and emblems of divine perfections. In a work entitled Le Liure du Roy Modus et de la Reyne Racio (The Book of King Mode and Queen Reason), which, as the colophon records, was “printed at Chambery by Anthony Neyret in the year of grace one thousand four hundred and eighty-six on the thirtieth day of October,” King Mode discourses on falconry and venery in general. Queen Reason brings forward, in reply to these rather conventional commonplaces, “several fine moralities,” and dilates on the natural and mystic qualities of animals, which she divides into two classes, sweet beasts (bestes doulces) and stenchy beasts (bestes puantes). Foremost among the sweet beasts stands that which Milton characterizes as
“Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind.”
According to the Psalmist, the hart panting after the water-brooks represents the soul thirsting for the living God and is the type of religious ardour and aspiration. It plays an important part in the legends of saints, acts as their guide, shows them where holy relics are concealed, and causes St. Eustace and St. Hubert to abandon the chase and to lead lives of pious devotion by appearing to them with a luminous cross between its antlers. The ten branches of its horns symbolize the ten commandments of the Old Testament and signify in the Roman ritual the ten fingers of the outstretched hand of the priest as he works the perpetual miracle of transubstantiation of the eucharist.
Chief of the stenchy beasts is the pig. In paganism, which to the Christians was merely devil-worship, the boar was an object of peculiar adoration; for this reason the farrow of the sow is supposed to number seven shotes, corresponding to the seven deadly sins. To the same class of offensive beasts belong the wolf, typical of bad spiritual shepherds, and the fox, which is described as follows: “Reynard is a beast of small size, with red hair, a long bushy tail and an evil physiognomy, for his visage is thin and sharp, his eyes deep-set and piercing, his ears small, straight and pointed; moreover he is deceitful and tricky above all other beasts and exceedingly malicious.” “We are all,” adds Queen Reason in a moralizing strain, “more or less of the brotherhood of Saint Fausset, whose influence is now-a-days quite extended.” Among birds the raven is pre-eminently a malodorous creature and imp of Satan, whereas the dove is a sweet beast and the chosen vessel for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the form in which the third person of the Trinity became incarnate.
This division of beasts corresponds in principle to that which is given in the Avesta, and according to which all animals are regarded as belonging either to the good creation of Ahuramazda or to the evil creation of Angrô-mainyush. The world is the scene of perpetual conflict between these hostile forces summed up in the religion and ethics of Zarathushtra as the trinity of the good thought, the good word, and the good deed (humata, hûkhta, huvarshta), which are to be fostered in opposition to the evil thought, the evil word, and the evil deed (dushmata, duzhûkhta, duzhvarshta), which are to be constantly combated and finally suppressed. Every man is called upon by the Iranian prophet to choose between these contraries; and not only the present and future state of his own soul, the complexion of his individual character, but also the welfare of the whole world, the ultimate destiny of the universe, depend, to no inconsiderable extent, upon his choice. His thoughts, words, and deeds do not cease with the immediate effect which they are intended to produce, but, like force in the physical world, are persistent and indestructible. As the very slightest impulse given to an atom of matter communicates itself to every other atom, and thus disturbs the equilibrium of the globe—the footfall of a child shaking the earth to its centre—so the influence of every human life, however small, contributes to the general increase and ascendency of either good or evil, and helps to determine which of these principles shall ultimately triumph. In the universal strife of these “mighty opposites,” the vicious are the allies of the devil; while the virtuous are not merely engaged in working out their own salvation, but have also the ennobling consciousness of being fellow-combatants with the Deity, who needs and appreciates their services in overcoming the adversary. This sense of solidarity with the Best and the Highest imparts additional elevation and peculiar dignity to human aims and actions, and lends to devotion a warmth of sympathy and fervour of enthusiasm springing from personal attachment and loyalty, which it is difficult for the Religion of Humanity to inspire. The fact, too, that evil exists in the world, not by the will and design of the Good Being, but in spite of him, and that all his powers are put forth to eradicate it, while detracting from his omnipotence, frees him from all moral obliquity and exalts his character for benevolence, thus rendering him far more worthy of love and worship and a much better model for human imitation than that “dreadful idealization of wickedness” which is called God in the Calvinistic creed. The idea that the humblest person may, by the purity and rectitude of his life, not only strengthen himself in virtue, but also increase the actual aggregate of goodness in the universe and even endue the Deity with greater power and aggressive energy in subduing and extirpating evil, is surely a sublime thought and a source of lofty inspiration and encouragement in well-doing, although it has been degraded by Parsi Dasturs—as all grand conceptions and ideals are apt to be under priestly influences—into a ridiculous and childish hatred of snakes, scorpions, frogs, lizards, water-rats, and other animals supposed to have been produced by Angrô-mainyush.
Plato held a similar theory of creation, regarding it not as the manifestation of pure benevolence endowed with almighty power, but rather as the expression of perfect goodness working at disadvantage in an intractable material, which by its inherent stubbornness prevented the full embodiment and realization of the original purpose and desire of the Creator or Cosmourgos, who was therefore obliged to content himself with what was, under the circumstances, the only possible, but by no means the best imaginable, world. The Manicheans attributed the same unsatisfactory result to the activity of an evil principle, which thwarted the complete actualization of the designs of the Deity. So conspicuous, indeed, is the defectiveness of nature as a means of promoting the highest conceivable human happiness, so marked and manifold are the causes of suffering in all