By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
What can be said about the general appearance of this monkey? The horribly coarse and wrinkled skin, the vulgar and immeasurably wide mouth, the flat nostrils in an almost nonexistent nose, the scant, ugly hairs forming a semblance of a beard at once bristly and sparse. Yet, amid all this deformity, there is a certain resemblance that makes one think of man … a terrible resemblance accentuated by the eyes. What eyes! At times, they seem pensive and full of a melancholic expression. Yet observing them at other moments, they seem empty, dull, and lacking all significance.
Thus is the animal kingdom. In it God placed admirable species in which man could see the wisdom, the grace, and the goodness of Him Who created it. Yet, at the same time in beings like this one, it allows us to very clearly see all the coarseness of irrational nature. By the former animals we are elevated to God. By the latter, the coarse ones, we sense our natural dignity better; we fully understand the hierarchy that Our Lord placed in the universe. And, loving our own superiority and the holy inequality of creation, we are also elevated toward the Creator.
Perhaps we never perceive the abyss that separates us from the animal world better than when, among all its species, we contemplate precisely those that most resemble us!
The animals that God made for man’s companionship are precisely those whose natural coarseness is veiled by beautiful or even splendid appearances: birds with brilliant feathers or harmonious warbles, cats with elegant airs and silky coats, dogs with noble bearings or imposing aspects, charming little terriers, and fish that gracefully display their fins in the placidity of their aquariums. These are elements of beauty, distraction, and repose in our everyday existence. Since God respects the nobility of man, He cloaks the natural coarseness of every nonspiritual being destined for man’s companionship with these magnificent appearances. Clearly these creatures are like the flowers of the animal kingdom—destined for our homes as are the flowers of the plant kingdom.
According to the standards of good tradition, there are ways ordained for man to appreciate the beautiful flowers and live with the attractive animals without exceeding proper limits by bestowing an affection or conceding an intimacy to these creatures that should be accorded only to humans.
Animals, then, can have their place in a well-formed Christian sensibility, but within proper limits. Thus, just as there are plants that serve to adorn the life of man while others have a rudeness incompatible for this end, so also with animals. A lady does not demean herself by looking at a flower, breathing its perfume and using it as an adornment. But she would demean herself if she would do the same with a cauliflower or, perhaps even worse, a simple cabbage.
For the same reason, man, for whom the company of a dog is so fitting, was not made to kiss the muzzles of dogs as he would kiss his wife or daughter. He also was not made for intimacy with monkeys, mice, wild boars, and giraffes. All the inferiority of animal nature, so obvious in these beings, is incompatible with this indiscriminate mingling with man.Man degrades himself when he puts aside his natural repugnance and becomes intimate with these creatures, whose animal crudeness is not veiled by any outward appearances. Ignoring this repugnance, man dulls the sense of his own superiority and, so to speak, accepts and assumes the inferiority of the beast.
This disposition of spirit is very frequent in an age like ours wherein all egalitarianism, even the most degrading, finds a sympathetic climate.
One should not take the bread of the children, warns Our Lord, and cast it to the dogs (cf. Mark 7:27) nor cast pearls before swine (cf. Matt. 7:6).
This is what one does who, through foolish, and profoundly egalitarian, sentimentality grants to animals the affection and intimacy that the order of Providence reserved for relationships between human beings.
Ambiences, Customs and Civilizations, “Catolicismo” No. 81 – September 1957
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