I suspect, in fact, that this inclining of our race to these brute servitors is largely due to the same cause which promotes the love of "horse-flesh." Man must assert his dominion over the brutes. He wants some tangible evidence, always beside him and running at his heels, of his superiority to something. It is a great upholder of his self-respect. It is so consoling, amid our conscious defeats and snubbings by a proud and unmanageable world, to have at hand a fellow-creature, strong enough to tear us in pieces, who will grovel at our feet, and quail before our eye, and let us laugh at him while he makes a fool of himself at our bidding. Even the most successful and superior men find herein a grateful outlet for their surplus masterfulness.
But I prefer to ascribe the tender and enthusiastic feeling which men have for their dogs not so much to the merits of the latter as to an overflowing and supererogatory goodness in the former. The human runs readily into the humane. Man is, after all, a loving animal, and is disposed to lavish his affection upon all who come into the right relation and moral angle with himself. He loves to be munificent as well as magnificent, and to be the patron of somebody or something. He has no little magnanimity toward such as put themselves in an abject dependence upon his honor and justice. He is ready to see all good in those who come not in competition with himself. He has a fund of generous enthusiasm which finds too little occupation in the world, and is glad to find or create an object for it near at hand. So that his dog, unconsciously to himself, is seen rather in the reflection of his own light. He clothes him with those amiable qualities which superabound in his own heart, and attributes to him a fidelity which is really far more remarkable on his own side.
Dogs are remarkable for their dreaming capacity. A dog never seems to sleep but he dreams, and very likely is quite unable to distinguish his waking and sleeping impressions. And is it not altogether probable that those who have much to do with them catch the infection, so that they view the canine race through a dream-like medium and as slumbering dogs are haunted by imaginary flies?