ffectional convenience; it
is a vision. It is heroic, and even saintly, in this: that it asks for
nothing in return. I love all the eats in the street as St. Francis of
Assisi loved all the birds in the wood or all the fishes in the sea; not
so much, of course, but then I am not a saint. But he did not wish to
bridle a bird and ride on its back, as one bridles and rides on a horse.
He did not wish to put a collar round a fish's neck, marked with the
name "Francis," and the address "Assisi"—as one does with a dog.
He did not wish them to belong to him or himself to belong to them;
in fact, it would be a very awkward experience to belong to a lot of
fishes. But a man does belong to his dog, in another but an equally
real sense with that in which the dog belongs to him. The two bonds of
obedience and responsibility vary very much with the dogs and the men;
but they are both bonds. In other words, a man does not merely love a
dog; as he might (in a mystical moment) love any sparrow that perched
on his windowsill or any rabbit that ran across his path. A man likes a
dog; and that is a serious matter.

To me, unfortunately perhaps (for I speak merely of individual taste), a
cat is a wild animal. A cat is Nature personified. Like Nature, it is
so mysterious that one cannot quite repose even in its beauty. But like
Nature again, it is so beautiful that one cannot believe that it is
really cruel. Perhaps it isn't; and there again it is like Nature. Men
of old time worshipped cats as they worshipped crocodiles; and those
magnificent old mystics knew what they were about. The moment in which
one really loves cats is the same as that in which one (moderately and
within reason) loves crocodiles. It is that divine instant when a man
feels himself—no, not absorbed into the unity of all things (a
loathsome fancy)—but delighting in the difference of all things.
At the moment when a man really knows he is a man he will feel, however
faintly, a kind of fairy-tale pleasure in the fact that a crocodile is
a crocodile. All the more will he exult in the things that are more
evidently beautiful than crocodiles, such as flowers and birds and
eats—which are more beautiful than either. But it does not follow
that he will wish to pick all the flowers or to cage all the birds or to
own all the cats.

No one who still believes in democracy and the rights of man will admit
that any division between men and men can be anything