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.
I am a parish minister by vocation, so my own field of expertise is in the realm of the 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.