intangible. I pray with the dying and counsel the bereaved. I christen infants, and share in the joy of parents when new life comes into the world. I occasionally help people think through moral quandaries and make ethical decisions, and I also share a responsibilty for educating the young, helping them realize their inborn potential for reverence and compassion. Week after week I stand before my congregation and try to talk about the unfathomed riddles of existence. While I do not claim to know all the answers, having the title “Reverend” in front of my name does permit me to raise a host of questions that might be considered off-limits by hard-headed scientists and academicians. Clergy have a professional license to ponder topics that others consider imponderable.
As late twentieth-century shamans, we are allowed to examine enigmas like “What makes us human?” and “What makes life sacred?” We can ask not only about the mating behavior and survival strategies of other animals but whether they have souls and spirits like our own. The danger here is that we are often in over our heads. But at least we are swimming in deep water and out of the shallows. In searching for answers to such queries, I have found, we not only enrich our understanding of other creatures, we also gain insight into ourselves.
Without anthropomorphizing our nonhuman relations we can acknowledge that animals share many human characteristics. They have individual likes and dislikes, moods and mannerisms, and possess their own integrity, which suffers when not respected. They play and are curious about their world. They develop friendships and sometimes risk their own lives to help others. They have “animal faith,” a spontaneity and directness that can be most refreshing.
To me, animals have all the traits indicative of soul. For soul is not something we can see or measure. We can observe only its outward manifestations: in tears and laughter, in courage and heroism, in generosity and forgiveness. Soul is what’s behind-the-scenes in the tough and tender moments when we are most intensely and grippingly alive. But what exactly is the soul? Since The Souls of Animals first came to print, a great deal has been written on that subject. Bookstores now have shelves bursting with titles like Care of the Soul and Chicken Soup for the Soul (in multiple servings). Having been neglected and almost lost for many years, the term soul is currently in danger of becoming clichéd through overuse. That would be a shame, for soul is a rich and resonant word that needs to be reclaimed and, perhaps, redefined.
Many people think of soul as the element of personality that survives bodily death, but for me it refers to something much more down-to-earth. Soul is the marrow of our existence as sentient, sensitive beings. It’s soul that’s revealed in great works of art, and soul that’s lifted up in awe when we stand in silence under a night sky burning with billions of stars. When we speak of a soulful piece of music, we mean one that comes out of infinite depths of feeling. When we speak of the soul of a nation, we mean its capacity for valor and visionary change. “The soul,” said the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, “is partly in eternity and partly in time.” Soul is present wherever our lives intersect the dimension of the holy: in moments of intimacy, in flights of fancy, and in rituals that hallow the evanescent events of our lives with enduring significance. Soul is what makes each of our lives a microcosm—not merely a meaningless fragment of the universe, but at some level a reflection of the whole.
No one can prove that animals have souls. Asking for proof would be like demanding proof that I love my wife and children, or wanting me to prove that Handel’s Messiah is a glorious masterpiece of music. Some truths simply cannot be demonstrated. But if we open our hearts to other creatures and allow ourselves to sympathize with their joys and struggles, we will find they have the power to touch and transform us. There is an inwardness in other creatures that awakens what is innermost in ourselves.
For ages people have known that animals have a balance and harmony we can learn from. Their instincts and adaptations to life are sometimes healthier than our own. “In the beginning of all things,” said the Pawnee Chief Letakots-Lesa, “wisdom and knowledge were with the animals.” The Pawnee believed that “Tirawa, the One Above,” did not speak directly to human beings but sent certain animals as messengers and healers, and that humans should learn from them as well as from the stars, the sun, and the moon. Other creatures have inhabited the earth much longer than we have, and as native peoples realized, they have much to teach us about our world.
This book is devoted to exploring the extent to which animals can be our guides, soul mates and fellow travelers, sharing in the things that make us most deeply human. Each chapter looks at a different facet of animal experience. Why do animals play? What are their fears and fantasies? What does the world look like through their eyes? How close are their experiences to our own?
A work like this may raise more questions than it answers. Yet if the questions serve to make us more appreciative of the other creatures who share this planet, the book will have served its purpose. For I believe that if we are to keep our family homestead—third stone from the sun—safe for coming generations, we must awaken to a new respect for the family of life.
Those of us alive today are witnesses and accomplices to an extintinction of the earth’s inhabitants unlike any known in previous human history. Millions of species are at risk. Yet as animal rights activist and author Alice Walker reminds us, “anything we love can be saved.” In asking if animals have souls, we are also asking whether we can learn to care about them passionately enough to insure their future … and our own.
Thankfully, more and more people are becoming concerned for other species—one additional reason for an updated version of this book. In a poll of more than a thousand Americans conducted in 1996 by the Associated Press, two thirds of those questioned agreed with the premise that “an animal’s right to live free of suffering should be just as important as a person’s.” The same number believed it was wrong to use animals in cosmetics testing, while a majority disapproved of killing them for their fur or in hunting for sport. In America, as elsewhere, attitudes are changing. The more we learn about other creatures, in their richness and complexity, the more people come to realize the preciousness of life in all its forms.
Frequently, it is one particular animal that opens our hearts. For me, it was my dog Chinook, who was twelve when he lay down last summer for the final time. Now that I have a galloping, bouncing puppy in the house, I realize that Chinook was an “old soul” even as a youngster: considerate, calm, even-tempered, and gentle. But while Chinook was a remarkable animal, I also realize that he was far from being unique. The world is full of astonishing creatures, each with a gift to share and a lesson to impart. Is it possible, I wonder, to embrace all of creation—the insects, the birds, the plants, wild creatures and tame ones—with a degree of the same doting fondness I felt for that wise, sweet-natured old dog? If I can learn to love that much, then there’s hope for me, and maybe hope for us all.
Life is filled with grief. Death and loss are unavoidable companions of the flesh. But are we the only animals who grieve? Do other creatures have thoughts and feelings about the end of life or wonder what lies beyond? The consciousness of our own mortality is part of what makes us human—it is one of the elements that makes us a spiritual animal—but it may be an aspect of life we share with many other species.
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