Shame is an ethical feeling. And as we have briefly discussed the germs of æsthetics in animals, so we may now as briefly consider the germs of ethics. In its developed form ethics is one of the “normative sciences” involving standards of right and wrong. It is, as Professor Mackenzie says,[167] “the science of the ideal in conduct.” It involves a standard of “ought,” the product of reflection and generalization. Conduct is compared with the ideal, and perceived to be either below, up to, or perhaps beyond, the normal standard accepted by civilized mankind. This involves a judgment; and so far as conduct is shaped in accordance with the ideal we attribute the guidance to ethical motives. Such ideals, such judgments, and the control of conduct through the play of such motives, are probably beyond the mental capacities of animals. They belong to the ideational stage of mental development, when the conative tendency becomes volitional; not to the perceptual stage, when it is impulsive. They do not enter into the conscious situation as it takes form in the animal mind. Behaviour has not in them acquired ethical meaning, since in developed ethics, as normative, such meaning always has reference to the norm, or standard. A real sense of shame implies that our acts have fallen below our ideal.
It may be said that we cannot prove that animals do not frame such ideals. But, if we accept the canon of interpretation above laid down, what has to be proved is that they do frame them. Is there any case among the hundreds that are popularly adduced to show that dogs are ashamed of themselves, that they possess a sense of justice, that they feel the prick of conscience, that on the one hand they know when they have done wrong, or on the other hand enjoy a sense of conscious rectitude--is there any particular case so described in the popular phraseology of anecdote, which could not be more simply described as the direct outcome of the coalescent situation, without the introduction of any implied reference to a standard of behaviour reached by reflective thought? The pug that has taken a nap on the drawing-room sofa, leaps down and slinks off with a “guilty” look on his master’s approach. One can surely picture the previous situations, and be tolerably certain that they contained an element of reproof or something more energetic. The poodle that has successfully performed his tricks bounds to his mistress with an air of duty well performed. Has he never been petted and patted under such circumstance? Routine in many animals--so often creatures of habit--begets a customary sequence, the breach of which is at once felt. To this I ventured[168] to ascribe the conduct of the turnspit dog reported by Arago. He refused with bared teeth to enter out of his turn the drum by which the spit was rotated. The companion dog was put in for a few moments and then released; whereupon the dog which before had been so refractory seemed satisfied that his turn for drudgery had come, and, entering the wheel of his own accord, began turning the spit as usual. The bared teeth may be here perhaps ascribed to an outraged sense of justice. But is it not a more simple, and just as probable, supposition that the behaviour was due to breach of customary routine. A trainer with whom I had some conversation on this matter pointed out a collie bitch, and said, “If I put her through her tricks in the usual order she does them like an angel; but if I try and make her alter the order she snaps and sulks like the devil.”