The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-02-11
HAVE BRUTEs SOULS?
English Bishop Argues That They
Have.

In the course of an address on
! Teachings From the zoo," delivered
at the monthly service for men at
Blackburn Parish church, Bishop
Thornton, assistant bishop of Man
chester, expressed the opinion that the
lower animals possessed souls as well
as minds. Brutes, he explained, have
not souls in the popular theology
which speaks of the soul as the ex-
elusive endowment of man; but Scrip
ture uses the very same word for the
living SOUL of the brute as for that
of man. reserving the word spirit to
, denote the special endowment of man
kind
Yes said Bishop Thornton, ''the
soul of man, by which he hopes and
fears, reJOices and sorrows, loves and
hates, seems shared by him with the
lower animals. 1t is that in his i'm
material nature which hangs suspend
ed between the flesh and the spirit,
capable of being dominated, as in
brutes. by the animal prOpensities-
capable, as in a sanctified man. of be-
ing linked UP with what is spiritual,
immortal and divine This soul and
spirit are not only identical, but may
be in conflict with one another. The
writer to the Hebrews speaks of the
dividing of the soul and spirit, of the
joints and marrow Yes, the lower
animals have souls, and exhibit what
may be called moral qualities. They
display sympathy, generosity, courage
or coWardice; they evince pride, jeal-
Ousy, vindictiveness; they manifest
roguery and what may be called con-
scientiousness. Time fails me to give
examples, but we all remember the
hound Gelert, who let himself be
slain by his mistaken master when. at
the cost almost of his own life, he had
saved the masters child from the wolf
whose blood, and not the child's, was
on his muzzle.
Some would draw the inference
continued his lordship, in answer to a
question, mot only that the brutes pos
sess souls. or moral and emotional
nature-in which L should agree with
them-but even that a resurrection and
a personal immortality is before them.
One cannot treat contemptuously an
opinion, however startling, that has
been entertained not only by savage |
peoples, but by such thinkers as Luth- |
er, Butler, Southey, Lamartine, and |
ments used in favor of it are such as |
these: The body of brute is indestruc |
tible, for, although it dissolves, its con-
parts never really PERISH If, i
then, the brute has a nOb1er and i'm !
material part, why should not that
fortiOri be conceived2 And as its i'm |
material part is indivisible, it must, if
it survive death at all, exist on in its /
integrity, which means Immortality for
brutes, or, at any rate, transmigration
or reincarnation.
"Others demur to these reasonings.
If there be future reward for brutes /
they urge, there must be future pun !
ishment, which. for some reason, one |
feels it impossible to believe. Indeed, |
the individual brute life is not import |
ant enough to demand a future to re- |
dress its deficiencies. A horse has full I
filed adequately the aim and ideal of |
his being if he has served the cOnVen- /
fence of man, ministered to his needs |
and innocent pleasures. That after |
death it should minister to the nourish-
ment of his pack of hounds is, on the |
whole, no inappropriate or even I'M
worthy conclusion of his career As /
for the moral qualities discoverab1e in |
brutes, it is said they have been over !
rated There is no touch in these with |
what is spiritual, divine, eternal Con- |
science in brutes amounts to little or /
nothing more than a fear of punishment |
or the hope of sensual gratifica ton.
IF you look around the zoo and
study the denizens of its cages you
may find there resemblance and cor /
respondence and kinship to man in
bodily structure, mental endowment, /
and moral quality; but you will utterly |
fail to find the least trace of one
characteristic of man-his grandest-i
the want of which differentiates the
lower animals absolutely from the hui
man race. And what is this? Spirit
capacity for religion. Seriously, is
there diScernible in any animal known
to biologists besides man aspiration,
contemplation, self-introspec lection, awe
chastity, filial duty humil-
ity. as we understand those ideas? To
ask the question is to answer it.
Here, then, IS the grand distinction
between man and beast. Man is ca
pabIe of religious experience. He is
capable of sin. of superstition of
idolatry, of vice. of which no brute is
ever guilty; but he is capable, too, of a
spiritual and therefore an eternal life,
to which so far as we can learn from
the brutes they are utter strangers.
There is a something in man which
tinges and elevates all that he shares
with them, TRANSPORTING it into what
is different from anything they pos
sess- London Daily Telegraph. /