Yesterday, I posted a video of a house cat that chased away a dog--that bit and pulled the cat's owner's child from his little tricycle by the leg.
With a fearless and feral boldness that belied its size, that snarling feline made a beeline for that dog; which let go of that baby's leg and scampered away around a car, before the cat attacked it physically.
So extraordinarily ironic was this sight, and so paradoxical its import, that it set me to musing about sympathy: both animal and human.
In Charles Darwin's THE DESCENT OF MAN, I had recently read about a blind fat pelican. It was fat because its fellow pelicans would feed it. He writes: "Capt. Stansbury found on a salt lake in Utah an old and completely blind pelican, which was very fat, and must have been fed for a long time by his companions. Mr. Blyth, as he inform me, saw Indian crows feeding two or three of their companions that were blind; and I myself have heard of an analogous case with the domestic cock. We may if we choose call such actions instinctive; but such cases are much too rare for the development of any special instinct." P.126 (Penguin Classics, NY: 1879, 2004)
Darwin himself attributes such conduct to animal "sympathizing with each other's distress or danger." He gives another personal example. He writes: "I have myself seen a dog, who never passed a cat who lay sick in a basket, and was a great friend of his, without giving her a few licks with his tongue, the surest sign of kind feeling in a dog." Id.
Such sympathy was certainly shown by the house cat in the above video!
While Darwin affords very many interesting examples of such animal sympathy, I turn now to my own experience as an attorney with human sympathy in state and federal courts in Missouri.
Therein human sympathy is directly and specifically instructed against by the judge as a mandatory general instruction in every civil case in state and federal courts, in Missouri, if not across the country.
Of course, when you strike out sympathy, that leaves only its opposite to wreak havoc: antipathy!
So, sympathy which is displayed in animals toward each other, even those of a different species, is purposefully driven out of humans, by law, at a time when it might be most helpful in reaching a just verdict.
Without necessarily impugning the logic nor fairness of our legal system, state and federal, one may be excused to wonder how and why animal sympathy, as discussed above by Charles Darwin, is somehow antithetical to our current legal system, and how or why animal sympathy should trump that of human sympathy at trial!
The Descent of Man (Penguin Classics)
www.amazon.com
Thursday, May 15, 2014
ANIMAL AND HUMAN SYMPATHY
Animal and human sympathy
Yesterday, I posted a video of a house cat that chased away a dog--that bit and pulled the cat's owner's child from his little tricycle by the leg.
With a fearless and feral boldness that belied its size, that snarling feline made a beeline for that dog; which let go of that baby's leg and scampered away around a car, before the cat attacked it physically.
So extraordinarily ironic was this sight, and so paradoxical its import, that it set me to musing about sympathy: both animal and human.
In Charles Darwin's THE DESCENT OF MAN, I had recently read about a blind fat pelican. It was fat because its fellow pelicans would feed it. He writes: "Capt. Stansbury found on a salt lake in Utah an old and completely blind pelican, which was very fat, and must have been fed for a long time by his companions. Mr. Blyth, as he inform me, saw Indian crows feeding two or three of their companions that were blind; and I myself have heard of an analogous case with the domestic cock. We may if we choose call such actions instinctive; but such cases are much too rare for the development of any special instinct." P.126 (Penguin Classics, NY: 1879, 2004)
Darwin himself attributes such conduct to animal "sympathizing with each other's distress or danger." He gives another personal example. He writes: "I have myself seen a dog, who never passed a cat who lay sick in a basket, and was a great friend of his, without giving her a few licks with his tongue, the surest sign of kind feeling in a dog." Id.
Such sympathy was certainly shown by the house cat in the above video!
While Darwin affords very many interesting examples of such animal sympathy, I turn now to my own experience as an attorney with human sympathy in state and federal courts in Missouri.
Therein human sympathy is directly and specifically instructed against by the judge as a mandatory general instruction in every civil case in state and federal courts, in Missouri, if not across the country.
Of course, when you strike out sympathy, that leaves only its opposite to wreak havoc: antipathy!
So, sympathy which is displayed in animals toward each other, even those of a different species, is purposefully driven out of humans, by law, at a time when it might be most helpful in reaching a just verdict.
Without necessarily impugning the logic nor fairness of our legal system, state and federal, one may be excused to wonder how and why animal sympathy, as discussed above by Charles Darwin, is somehow antithetical to our current legal system, and how or why animal sympathy should trump that of human sympathy at trial!
The Descent of Man (Penguin Classics)
www.amazon.com
Yesterday, I posted a video of a house cat that chased away a dog--that bit and pulled the cat's owner's child from his little tricycle by the leg.
With a fearless and feral boldness that belied its size, that snarling feline made a beeline for that dog; which let go of that baby's leg and scampered away around a car, before the cat attacked it physically.
So extraordinarily ironic was this sight, and so paradoxical its import, that it set me to musing about sympathy: both animal and human.
In Charles Darwin's THE DESCENT OF MAN, I had recently read about a blind fat pelican. It was fat because its fellow pelicans would feed it. He writes: "Capt. Stansbury found on a salt lake in Utah an old and completely blind pelican, which was very fat, and must have been fed for a long time by his companions. Mr. Blyth, as he inform me, saw Indian crows feeding two or three of their companions that were blind; and I myself have heard of an analogous case with the domestic cock. We may if we choose call such actions instinctive; but such cases are much too rare for the development of any special instinct." P.126 (Penguin Classics, NY: 1879, 2004)
Darwin himself attributes such conduct to animal "sympathizing with each other's distress or danger." He gives another personal example. He writes: "I have myself seen a dog, who never passed a cat who lay sick in a basket, and was a great friend of his, without giving her a few licks with his tongue, the surest sign of kind feeling in a dog." Id.
Such sympathy was certainly shown by the house cat in the above video!
While Darwin affords very many interesting examples of such animal sympathy, I turn now to my own experience as an attorney with human sympathy in state and federal courts in Missouri.
Therein human sympathy is directly and specifically instructed against by the judge as a mandatory general instruction in every civil case in state and federal courts, in Missouri, if not across the country.
Of course, when you strike out sympathy, that leaves only its opposite to wreak havoc: antipathy!
So, sympathy which is displayed in animals toward each other, even those of a different species, is purposefully driven out of humans, by law, at a time when it might be most helpful in reaching a just verdict.
Without necessarily impugning the logic nor fairness of our legal system, state and federal, one may be excused to wonder how and why animal sympathy, as discussed above by Charles Darwin, is somehow antithetical to our current legal system, and how or why animal sympathy should trump that of human sympathy at trial!
The Descent of Man (Penguin Classics)
www.amazon.com
