My Last Friend Dog Dick/Addenda, The Editor's Apology
ADDENDA
THE EDITOR'S APOLOGY
This Study is valuable. "Il mio ultimo Amico," My Dog Dick, is valuable or De Amicis would never have written it, nor would J. G. Lista have translated it, nor would our greatest naturalist, John Burroughs, have touched, ever so remotely on the same theme, "The Animal Mind," including the Mind of the Dog.
De Amicis writes lovingly. His heart is full of his subject. He longs to prove that Dick has a mind and a soul. Browning, like De Amicis, is always in search of a soul. He concerns himself about the soul of a dog, Tray, who saves a drowning child and then returns to bring ashore the child's doll.
"Outside should suffice for evidence:
And whoso desires to penetrate
Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense—"
"Love greatens and glorifies
Till God's all aglow to the loving eyes
In what was mere earth before,"
says Browning.
De Amicis makes these points: the dog's quick understanding, ready response, manifestations of intelligence, mental penetration, tenderness, powers of acting a part, pretending to be innocent, varied expressions of the eyes such as a curiosity, reproach, ardent demand of rights, his sense of right. Dick suspects "waggery concealed in a menace," and sees "treachery in a earess," detects "ostentatious sweetness." How clever of Dog Dick!
Such are the points selected by De Amicis as signs that the dog has reason.
"A dog has no reason, and so you can not convince him." This is the scientific way of looking at it. "It is the reason that is convinced." Reason demands sufficient grounds for being convinced. We know a fact when we believe it to be true on sufficient grounds. De Amicis with exceeding truthfulness believes only what he knows to be true on sufficient grounds and so he observes every detail, and stores it away. He seems to believe in evolution backwards, you might say: "Words that can not come forth," "the aggravation of forced speechlessness," "the spasm of a soul compressed in a prison of bones and flesh that feels the mutilation of the ancient faculties," so he accounts for the dumbness of Dick. Has a dog ever been known plainly to enunciate words? I have read of one such instance in some newspaper. It certainly is not true that the dog confines his words to "bow wow," or "'woof, woof."
Every point, however, that De Amicis has made in the study of Dog Dick is well taken and worth studying, the strongest being—"Does he know the secret in my mind?" "He can understand. He does understand." Oh, what a climax is that!
What difference does it make whether a dog has a mind or not? What difference does it make whether a woman, or a man, or a child has a mind or not! The more mind, the less confusion, the greater happiness and the more truth, throughout the whole world. How many of us have seen a dog "reason it out alone?"
I once saw G. W. Cable standing on a corner shaking with laughter. Across the street from him, there paraded a much barbered Russian Poodle, a mane like a lion's, a shaven body, a pink ribbon at the end of a barbered tail, a tuft around each foot. The Poodle walked along like a dog of good pedigree, in measured tread and unconscious of his decorations. He was absurdly funny. But Mr. Cable was not laughing at him. In the street was a little common cur, "eaten up with curiosity," trying to "'"reason it out alone."
"Who is that?" he seemed to say. "How cool he is! I must investigate." The cur had many expressions in his face, one at a time.
It was the cur that caused Mr. Cable to laugh, his intelligent recognition of the incongruous which Science calls Reason. The poor dog does not get any credit for having Reason, or a mind because he does not laugh. Lista says that he had a dog that did laugh. Dick never laughs and De Amicis says nothing on the point, but Burroughs discredits the intelligence, or mind of animals because they have no perception of the incongruous.
"Il mio ultimo Amico," Dog Dick, is the most subtle, the most elusive, the nearest to the untranslatable of any Italian text I have ever seen. It can not be translated by the use of mere words, or correct construction of mere sentences, or by grammatical rules. The spirit in it is the essential. "Dive by the spirit-sense."
I have seen many a triumph among the thousands of pupils that have come to me in my years of teaching but never a triumph so great as the translation of "Il mio ultimo Amico."
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