occur to me to compare the two. I have no active dislike for dogs, any

more than I have for monkeys, human beings, tradesmen, cows, sheep, or

pterodactyls; but for the cat I have entertained a particular respect and

affection ever since the earliest days of my infancy. In its flawless

grace and superior self-sufficiency I have seen a symbol of the perfect

beauty and bland impersonality of the universe itself, objectively

considered, and in its air of silent mystery there resides for me all the

wonder and fascination of the unknown. The dog appeals to cheap and facile

emotions; the cat to the deepest founts of imagination and cosmic

perception in the human mind. It is no accident that the contemplative

Egyptians, together with such later poetic spirits as Poe, Gautier,

Baudelaire and Swinburne, were all sincere worshippers of the supple

grimalkin.

Naturally, one's preference in the matter of cats and dogs depends wholly

upon one's temperament and point of view. The dog would appear to me to be

the favorite of superficial, sentimental, and emotional people -- people

who feel rather than think, who attach importance to mankind and the

popular conventional emotions of the simple, and who find their greatest

consolation in the fawning and dependent attachments of a gregarious

society. Such people live in a limited world of imagination; accepting

uncritically the values of common folklore, and always preferring to have

their naive beliefs, feelings, and prejudices tickled, rather than to