other animals through the myopic lens of our self-importance, we have misperceived who and what they are. Because we have repeated our ignorance, one to the other, we have mistaken it for knowledge. It takes no special training to recognize how little one knows. It does take a special kind of wisdom to acknowledge and overcome it. As he demonstrates on every page of this book, Gary Kowalski is among the very few who are wise.
Earlier, I noted that our species’ hubris has infected how we understand other animals. Not surprisingly, our shared arrogance has also encouraged widespread misconceptions about who and what we are. Steeped in the traditions of denial, we humans have wanted to view ourselves as being in the world, but not of it—alive within the larger community of life, but not an equal member in it.
If Gary Kowalski has his way, this all-too-familiar fantasy will not long endure. Since other-than-human animals really are so much like us, how can we be so much better than they? Since they not only are in the world, but of the world, how can we plausibly continue to view ourselves as apart from, not as a part of, the city of life?
“We are the youngest siblings in life’s family—the perpetual neonates of the animal world,” Gary Kowalski writes near this book’s end. “In a fundamental way we need other creatures to tell us who we are.” Whether or not we learn from these, our neglected tutors, this much we know: all animals are fortunate to have Gary Kowalski as our shared ambassador, creating the cognitive space in which other animals can speak the truths they know, preparing the spiritual place for us to hear them.
—TOM REGAN
PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
Tom Regan is a Professor and Department Head for the Department of Philosophy and Religion at North Carolina State University.
For ancient peoples, the soul was located in the breath or the blood. For me, soul resides at the point where our lives intersect with the timeless, in our love of goodness, our passion for beauty, our quest for meaning and truth. In asking whether animals have souls, we are inquiring whether they share in the qualities that make life more than a mere struggle for survival, endowing existence with dignity and élan.
Imagine a warm spring day on a small farm in Mississippi. The flowers are in fragrant bloom, and a sow that has free run of the farmyard has just given birth to piglets. Later that day, a glance under the porch where the new babies are resting reveals a wonderful sight. The mother pig has carefully bitten off blossoms to make a bouquet of jonquils, which she has arranged in a bright yellow wreath surrounding the sleeping litter.
No one who saw such a scene could doubt that animals know just as much about nurturing and celebrating life as people do, and maybe much more. The woman who wrote to tell me about this barnyard nativity accompanied her letter with a hand-rendered drawing showing a halo of flowers with their stems pointing outward, petals toward the center, piglets nestled snugly in the middle. She included other stories as well, like the one about her two horses Rifle, a gelding, and April, a pretty black mare. Rifle was quite enamored of April. When the mare was sent to Missouri to be bred to a race horse, Rifle was never the same again, and he died not long afterward. Such experiences, along with seventy-four years of caring for dogs and cats, convinced my correspondent that animals indeed have souls, with joys and sorrows very much like our own.
Over the years I received a good many letters like that from readers who believed, like me, that animals can inspire us to wiser and more winsome living. When The Souls of Animals was first published, I wrote about my own dog, Chinook, calling him my spiritual guide. Although he is no longer living, what I said then still holds:
“My dog has deep knowledge to impart. He makes friends easily and doesn’t hold a grudge. He enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it comes. Like a true Zen master, he eats when he’s hungry and sleeps when he’s tired. He’s not hung up about sex. Best of all, he befriends me with an unconditional love that human beings would do well to emulate.
“Chinook does have his failings, of course. He’s afraid of firecrackers and hides in the clothes closet whenever we run the vacuum cleaner, but unlike me he’s not afraid of what other people think of him or anxious about his public image. He barks at the mail carrier and the newsboy, but in contrast with some people I know he never growls at the children or barks at his wife.
“So my dog is a sort of guru. When I become too serious and preoccupied, he reminds me of the importance of frolicking and play. When I get too wrapped up in abstractions and ideas, he reminds me of the importance of exercising and caring for my body. On his own canine level, he shows me that it might be possible to live without inner conflicts or neuroses: uncomplicated, genuine, and glad to be alive.”
As Mark Twain remarked long ago, human beings have a lot to learn from the Higher Animals. Just because they haven’t invented static cling, ICBMs, or television evangelists doesn’t mean they aren’t spiritually evolved.
But what does it mean for an animal (including the human animal) to be spiritually evolved? In my mind, it means many things: the development of a moral sense, the appreciation of beauty, the capacity for creativity, and the awareness of one’s self within a larger universe as well as a sense of mystery and wonder about it all. These are the most precious gifts we possess, yet there is nothing esoteric or otherworldly about such spiritual capabilities. Indeed, my contention is that spirituality is quite natural, rooted firmly in the biological order and in the ecology shared by all life.
This book is about the spiritual lives of animals: whooping cranes, elephants, jackdaws, gorillas, songbirds, horses, and household dogs and cats. Much has been written about the intelligence of other species and their ability to solve problems. But spirituality is related less to problem-solving than to the kinds of problems we are even able to consider. We may contemplate death, for instance, without ever really hoping to “solve” the problem of our own demise. In reflecting on the spiritual lives of other creatures, therefore, I am concerned less with raw brain power, memory, and learning ability than I am with more subtle facets of intellgience such as empathy, artistry, and imagination.
Investigations of interspecies spirituality take us into unmapped territory. Are other animals conscious of themselves, as we are? Do they grieve or have thoughts and feelings about the end of life? Do animals dream? Do they have a conscience or a sense of right and wrong? Do other species make music or appreciate art?
In the years that have passed since this book first appeared, more and more experts have begun to address questions like these. A well-known psychologist has published a work on the emotional lives of animals: When Elephants Weep. Frans de Waal, a noted primatologist, has written books on peacemaking among primates and on the ways the political manuevering of chimps often seems to mirror our own. I am glad that these issues are finally receiving more attention from reputable researchers and scientists. Indeed, this book could not have been written without the insights of pioneers like Jane Goodall and Konrad Lorenz. Since I am not a zoologist, I depend heavily on their data. But while I have striven to be accurate and objective in my findings, this is a book that has more to do with religion than with science.
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