man loves the dog, but how much more ought he to love it if he considered, in the inflexible harmony of the laws of nature, the sole exception, which is that love of a being that succeeds in piercing, in order to draw closer to us, the partitions, every elsewhere impermeable, that separate the species! we are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that[pg 41] surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. a few creatures fear us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. in the world of plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves; but they serve us in spite of themselves. they simply endure our laws and our yoke. they are impotent prisoners, victims incapable of escaping, but silently rebellious; and, so soon as we lose sight of them, they hasten to betray us and return[pg 42] to their former wild and mischievous liberty. the rose and the corn, had they wings, would fly at our approach like the birds.
among the animals, we number a few servants who have submitted only through indifference, cowardice or stupidity: the uncertain and craven horse, who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing; the passive and dejected ass, who stays with us only because he knows not what to do nor where to go,[pg 43] but who nevertheless, under the cudgel and the pack-saddle, retains the idea that lurks behind his ears; the cow and the ox, happy so long as they are eating, and docile because, for centuries, they have not had a thought of their own; the affrighted sheep, who knows no other master than terror; the hen, who is faithful to the poultry-yard because she finds more maize and wheat there than in the neighbouring forest. i do not speak of the cat, to whom[pg 44] we are nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat, whose sidelong contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in our own homes. she, at least, curses us in her mysterious heart; but all the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree. they do not love us, do not know us, scarcely notice us. they are unaware of our life, our death, our departure, our return, our sadness, our joy, our[pg 45] smile. they do not even hear the sound of our voice, so soon as it no longer threatens them; and, when they look at us, it is with the distrustful bewilderment of the horse, in whose eye still hovers the infatuation of the elk or gazelle that sees us for the first time, or with the dull stupor of the ruminants, who look upon us as a momentary and useless accident of the pasture.
for thousands of years, they have been living at our side, as[pg 46] foreign to our thoughts, our affections, our habits as though the least fraternal of the stars had dropped them but yesterday on our globe. in the boundless interval that separates man from all the other creatures, we have succeeded only, by dint of patience, in making them take two or three illusory steps. and if, to-morrow, leaving their feelings toward us untouched, nature were to give them the intelligence and the weapons wherewith to conquer[pg 47] us, i confess that i should distrust the hasty vengeance of the horse, the obstinate reprisals of the ass and the maddened meekness of the sheep. i should shun the cat as i should shun the tiger; and even the good cow, solemn and somnolent, would inspire me with but a wary confidence. as for the hen, with her round, quick eye, as when discovering a slug or a worm, i am sure that she would devour me without a thought.[pg 48]
