e secret corners of his mind he will feel something
more hostile than mere Christian pity for these emotionally deformed
people. If he holds Erewhonian doctrines he would like to send for the
family straightener, and bear with fortitude the punishment inflicted on
his friends and relations.

I fear that we, the dog lovers, are, by those who do not share our
tastes, held to be unbalanced persons, who intrude their passions on the
reasonable and well bred. They object to us as victims of perverted
instincts, who talk unknown dog-language in and out of season. It is not
clear to me why we care so much for dogs. Is it, in truth, an
exaggeration, or an offshoot of that love of the helpless young of our
own kind which natural selection develops in social animals? This is not
necessarily maternal, as we see in the story of the heroic male baboon,
who risked his life in saving a young one from a pack of baying hounds.
{220a} Or is it an instinct developed in a hunting tribe--a blind
tendency to take good care of the food-providers (at the expense of
starving aunts and grandmothers), such as we see among the Fuegians, who
explained that, "Doggies catch otters--old women no." {220b}

However this may be, it is I think certain that the love of dogs is an
unreasoning passion, having all the force of an instinct. In a story by
Miss Wilkins we see how the love even of a cat may come to be regarded as
a human right or need. The old woman who had lost her cat (he afterwards
emerged half starved from the cellar), rebelled against the will of God.
She allowed that the happiness of husband and children was possibly not
to be expected by everyone, but "there _was_ cats enough to go all
round."

I think it impossible to account for the especial affection that we bear
to certain dogs. Dogs are, as I have said, in a degree like our
children; they come to us and they have to be tended, fed, and guarded,
and in these services we learn to love them. And when our affection is
reflected back to us from the thing we love, it gains an especially
touching quality. In the case of dogs our affection is certainly not a
response to any inherent charm obvious to all the world--and here again
they resemble children. The dog I loved best was an inferior Irish
terrier, who gave me much trouble and anxiety. He was constantly
fighting; he barked fiercely at innocent visitors. He killed chickens,
and for this I had to beat him cruelly, tie him u