{"id":10161,"date":"2025-03-02T14:54:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-02T18:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-souls-of-animals-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2025-03-02T14:54:56","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T18:54:56","slug":"the-souls-of-animals-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-souls-of-animals-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Souls of Animals \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey do not sweat and whine about their condition,\u201d Walt Whitman wrote of the other animals, \u201cthey do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things.\u201d <\/p>\n

Here was \u201cthe poet of the body and the poet of the soul\u201d holding up a mirror to us creatures inhabiting an animal body complicated by a soul \u2014 that organ of want and worry which we ourselves invented to explain why we make art, why we fall in love, why we yearn to converse with reality in prayers and postulates.<\/p>\n

It is daring enough to ask what a soul actually is. Carl Jung knew that it defies the substance we are made of<\/a>: \u201cThe soul is partly in eternity and partly in time.\u201d Virginia Woolf knew<\/a> that it defies our best technology of thought: \u201cOne can\u2019t write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes.\u201d It is doubly daring to question the age-old dogma that the soul is the province of the human animal alone. Even as we have incrementally and reluctantly<\/a> admitted other creatures into the temple of consciousness, we have denied them souls \u2014 denied them, because our tools of communication and computation have failed to probe it, an inner life capable of imagination and play, of love and grief, of dreams and wonder. And yet our very language defies our denial: the word animal<\/em> comes from the Latin for soul<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Art by Jackie Morris from The Lost Words<\/em><\/a> by Robert Macfarlane<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1991, long before we came to consider the soul of an octopus<\/a>, long before fMRI and EEG studies revealed not only that birds dream but what they dream about<\/a>, Gary Kowalski took up this daring question in The Souls of Animals<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 an inquiry into the \u201cspiritual lives\u201d (and into what that means) of whooping cranes, elephants, jackdaws, gorillas, songbirds, horses, dogs, and cats. At its center is the idea that spirituality \u2014 which he defines as \u201cthe development of a moral sense, the appreciation of beauty, the capacity for creativity, and the awareness of one\u2019s self within a larger universe as well as a sense of mystery and wonder about it all\u201d \u2014 is a natural byproduct of \u201cthe biological order and in the ecology shared by all life.\u201d (There are in this view echoes of Kepler, who believed that the Earth itself is an ensouled body<\/a>, and of myriad native cosmogonies that regard other animals as sources of more-than-human wisdom and emissaries of the numinous.)<\/p>\n

Kowalski \u2014 a parish minister by vocation, who spends his days praying with the dying, blessing bonds of love, and helping people navigate moral quandaries \u2014 celebrates the soul as \u201cthe magic of life,\u201d as that which \u201cgives life its sublimity and grandeur,\u201d and reflects:<\/p>\n

\n

For ancient peoples, the soul was located in the breath or the blood. For me, soul resides at the point where our lives intersect with the timeless, in our love of goodness, our passion for beauty, our quest for meaning and truth. In asking whether animals have souls, we are inquiring whether they share in the qualities that make life more than a mere struggle for survival, endowing existence with dignity and \u00e9lan.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

Many people think of soul as the element of personality that survives bodily death, but for me it refers to something much more down-to-earth. Soul is the marrow of our existence as sentient, sensitive beings. It\u2019s soul that\u2019s revealed in great works of art, and soul that\u2019s lifted up in awe when we stand in silence under a night sky burning with billions of stars. When we speak of a soulful piece of music, we mean one that comes out of infinite depths of feeling. When we speak of the soul of a nation, we mean its capacity for valor and visionary change\u2026 Soul is present wherever our lives intersect the dimension of the holy: in moments of intimacy, in flights of fancy, and in rituals that hallow the evanescent events of our lives with enduring significance. Soul is what makes each of our lives a microcosm \u2014 not merely a meaningless fragment of the universe, but at some level a reflection of the whole.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Half a century after Henry Beston insisted that \u201cwe need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,\u201d for they are \u201cgifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear,\u201d<\/a> Kowalski writes:<\/p>\n

\n

Without anthropomorphizing our nonhuman relations we can acknowledge that animals share many human characteristics. They have individual likes and dislikes, moods and mannerisms, and possess their own integrity, which suffers when not respected. They play and are curious about their world. They develop friendships and sometimes risk their own lives to help others. They have \u201canimal faith,\u201d a spontaneity and directness that can be most refreshing\u2026 all the traits indicative of soul. For soul is not something we can see or measure. We can observe only its outward manifestations: in tears and laughter, in courage and heroism, in generosity and forgiveness. Soul is what\u2019s behind-the-scenes in the tough and tender moments when we are most intensely and grippingly alive.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

By investigating the inner lives of other creatures, Kowalski argues, we are invariably deepening our own:<\/p>\n

\n

As [modern] shamans, we are allowed to examine enigmas like \u201cWhat makes us human?\u201d and \u201cWhat makes life sacred?\u201d We can ask not only about the mating behavior and survival strategies of other animals but whether they have souls and spirits like our own. The danger here is that we are often in over our heads. But at least we are swimming in deep water and out of the shallows. In searching for answers to such queries, I have found, we not only enrich our understanding of other creatures, we also gain insight into ourselves.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

There is an inwardness in other living beings that awakens what is innermost in ourselves. I have often marveled, for instance, watching a flock of shore birds. On an invisible cue, they simultaneously rise off the beach and into the air, then turn and bank seawards in tight formation. They are so finely coordinated and attuned in their aeronautics it is as though they share a common thought, or even a group mind, guiding their ascent. At such moments, I feel there are depths of \u201cinner space\u201d in nature that can never be sounded. And it is out of those same depths, in me, that awe arises as I contemplate the synchronicity of their flight. To contain such depths is to participate in the realm of spirit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We have invented no greater expression of our inwardness than music \u2014 the language of the soul, with its eternal translation between mathematics and mystery. We know that other animals partake of that language \u2014 each spring birds sing the world back to life, each summer cicadas serenade the sun with their living mandolin<\/a>, and when we set out to tell the cosmos who we are, a whale song joined Bulgarian folk music and Bach on The Golden Record<\/a>. <\/p>\n

<\/a>
Art by Sophie Blackall from If You Come to Earth<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Birds, Kowalski observes, sing for reasons beyond the pragmatic \u2014 their song is \u201cfar from a mechanical performance\u201d and \u201cmuch more complex than a simple cry of self-assertion.\u201d It is music, which is distinguished from noise by an organizing principle of creative intent, and creativity may be the purest evidence of soul. Kowalski writes:<\/p>\n

\n

Surprisingly, many birds are relatively insensitive to pitch. But the best singers employ all the elements of tone, interval, rhythm, theme, and variation in complex and highly pleasing combinations. And what is music if not the deliberate arrangement of sound in aesthetic patterns?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Greatly influenced by philosopher Martin Buber\u2019s I-Thou<\/em> model of relating<\/a>, Kowalski admonishes against relying on our own frames of reference in assaying what other creatures are expressing and how it is being expressed:<\/p>\n

\n

The tempo of life is faster-paced for birds than for people. This is one of the reasons the individual notes in bird song are so short, sometimes distinguishable only with a spectrograph, and why the compositions of birds last a few seconds at most, compared to an hour or more for a human symphony. It is also why birds sing in the upper registers (just as the pitch on a phonograph record rises when played at high speed). To the birds, with a metabolism continually in allegro, human beings must appear to be lazy and dim-brained creatures indeed. Just as our music reflects the rhythm and intensity of our inner life, the music of birds expresses the flash and flutter of their nervous and high-strung existence.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Examining another subset of the creative impulse \u2014 visual art \u2014 Kowalski cites Desmond Morris\u2019s famous 1950s studies, which found that non-human primates given pens and paints not only became adept at using them with \u201ca distinct feel for symmetry and balance,\u201d but developed individual styles of drawing. He considers what that indicates:<\/p>\n

\n

Art arises from a spiritual longing that all people share: to make our mark on the world and to spend our life energy in a work that rises above the mundane, adding grace to existence. We respond to the light of the world around us by giving expression to our own inner light, and when the two are on the same wavelength, the world seems more brilliant and finely focused.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Insisting that such spiritual longings do not belong to human beings alone, he cites an astonishing case study:<\/p>\n

\n

In 1982 Jerome Witkin, a professor of art at Syracuse University and a respected authority on abstract expressionism, was invited to view a collection of drawings by a \u201cmystery artist.\u201d The professor was busy at the time, preparing for a traveling exhibition. Nevertheless, he was sufficiently intrigued to accept the invitation. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese drawings are very lyrical, very, very beautiful,\u201d the professor said when he saw the portfolio. \u201cThey are so positive and affirmative and tense, the energy is so compact and controlled, it\u2019s just incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis piece is so graceful, so delicate,\u201d he said of one drawing. \u201cI can\u2019t get most of my students to fill a page like this.\u201d <\/p>\n

Only after he had finished his professional evaluation did Witkin learn the identity of the artist: a fourteen-year-old, 8,400-pound Asian elephant named Siri who lived in Syracuse\u2019s Burnet Park Zoo. Siri\u2019s keeper, David Gucwa, had seen her tracing lines with sticks and stones in the dust of her cage. Against the wishes of the zoo\u2019s superintendent, who scoffed at the notion of an artistic elephant, Gucwa had given her pads of paper and charcoal, permitting her to express herself more freely.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When Witkin showed Siri\u2019s drawings to a colleague without context \u2014 an expert on children\u2019s drawings charing the university\u2019s art education department \u2014 she firmly concluded that they were not done by a child. Witkin himself readily likened them to the work of Willem de Kooning, wishing the painter himself could see Siri\u2019s art. <\/p>\n

It was this report of Siri that inspired May Sarton \u2014 one of my favorite poets and favorite thinkers<\/a> \u2014 to reimagine these reckonings in a poem. (The footnote of credit in Sarton\u2019s collection is how I discovered Kowalski\u2019s book.) <\/p>\n

\n

THE ARTIST<\/strong>
by May Sarton<\/em><\/p>\n

The drawings were abstract,
Delicate,
Like Japanese calligraphy.
When the painter de Kooning
Was shown them, he said,
\u201cInteresting.
Not done by a child, I think,
Or if so, an extraordinary child.\u201d
\u201cThe artist is an elephant, Sir,
Named Siri.\u201d<\/p>\n

It had once come about
That the keeper noticed
Her sensitive trunk
Drawing designs in the dust.
After an argument
With the head of the zoo
Who laughed at him,
The keeper himself
Brought large sheets of paper
And boxes of charcoal
And laid them at Siri\u2019s feet.
For an hour at a time
In happy concentration
The elephant created designs.
Like Japanese calligraphy.
What artist\u2019s hand
As skillful
As that sensuous, sensitive trunk?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"
Elephant by Utagawa Yoshimori, 1863<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two decades after Iris Murdoch found psychological symmetry between art and morality, locating in both \u201can occasion for unselfing,\u201d<\/a> Kowlaski turns to the acts of selflessness and compassion that evince a moral faculty \u2014 that fundament of a soul. Pelicans and crows, he notes, have been known to care for blind comrades. Darwin himself reported of a band of monkeys coming to the aid of member seized by an eagle, at the risk of their own lives. But nothing renders such morally tinted actions more vivid and more moving than one nineteenth-century naturalist\u2019s account of a misfire.<\/p>\n

Working in an era when \u201ccollecting specimens\u201d meant killing creatures, he aimed at a tern but only wounded the bird, which fell helplessly into the sea. Immediately, other terns began circling above \u201cmanifesting much apparent solicitude,\u201d until two of them dove down toward their wounded comrade. They lifted him up, one at each wing, carried him several yards, and gently put him down before another two picked him up, and so the group took turns carrying him the entire distance to the shore. The naturalist was so moved by this display of compassion and solidarity that, although he was within shot of the rock on which the wounded tern had been rested, he couldn\u2019t bring himself to finish what he had set out to do. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Tern divination from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days<\/em><\/a>, also available as a stand-alone print<\/a> and as stationery cards<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To witness such a scene is to be stilled with wonder and with humility \u2014 which, as Rachel Carson so poignantly wrote<\/a>, \u201care wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.\u201d A generation after her, and well ahead of our still dawning awakening to the ecological and ethical dignity of other species, Kowalaski reflects:<\/p>\n

\n

If we are to keep our family homestead \u2014 third stone from the sun \u2014 safe for coming generations, we must awaken to a new respect for the family of life.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

We are kin to, and must be kind to, all creation. Overcoming speciesism \u2014 the illusion of human superiority \u2014 will be the next step in our moral and spiritual evolution.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Art by Jackie Morris from The Lost Spells<\/em><\/a> by Robert Macfarlane<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To behold such a display of moral feeling with our own eyes is stirring enough, but to be witnessed back by another creature\u2019s eyes is nothing short of a spiritual experience. In a passage that calls to mind Alan Lightman\u2019s transcendent account of looking into the eyes of an osprey<\/a>, Kowalski writes:<\/p>\n

\n

It is difficult to probe the inward awareness of another being. The realm of what one mystic called \u201cthe interior castle\u201d is wholly private and wrapped in solitude. But when we look into another\u2019s eyes \u2014 even into the eyes of an animal \u2014 we may find a small window into that inner sanctum, a window through which our souls can hail and greet one another.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

The act of making eye contact with another being presupposes a conscious self behind either pair of peepers: I see you seeing me, and I am aware that you are aware that we are looking at each other.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps in the end it is not we who have the power to acknowledge or deny the souls of other creatures but other creatures who confer soul-ness upon us. Kowalski writes:<\/p>\n

\n

If by soul we mean our sense of self, our identity as particular persons, then our souls are interwoven with those of other living beings\u2026 We know ourselves as human, in part, through our relationships with the nonhuman world.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

We are rather unsure of ourselves. What distinguishes our species may be this inward anxiety. While other animals may be endowed with special gifts\u2014acute hearing, keen eyesight, incredible speed \u2014 human beings are nothing special. This is both a biological and a moral judgment. Lack of specialization makes us highly adaptable, but it also means we have no fixed form or definite identity. Without many inborn instincts to guide us, we as human beings need models for how to live. We need a sense of our own possibilities and limits, and we find them not only in the artificial rules and restraints imposed by human society but in the lessons for living suggested by biology and the earth itself. We are the younger siblings in life\u2019s family \u2014 the perpetual neonates of the animal world. In a fundamental way we need other creatures to tell us who we are.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Out of this arises an urgency more than ethical, more than ecological, but existential \u2014 nothing less than examining what we are and why we are here at all:<\/p>\n

\n

What profit do we have if we gain the whole world and lose or forfeit our own souls? The human race may survive without the chimpanzees, orangutans, and other wild creatures who share the planet. But we will have attenuated the conditions that are necessary for our own \u201censoulment\u201d\u2026 And when we look into the mirror there will be less and less to love.<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

There is a glimmering of eternity about our lives. In the vastness of time and space, our lives are indeed small and ephemeral, yet not utterly insignificant. Our lives do matter. Because we care for one another and have feelings, because we can dream and imagine, because we are the kinds of creatures who make music and create art, we are not merely disconnected fragments of the universe but at some level reflect the beauty and splendor of the whole. And because all life shares in One Spirit, we can recognize this indwelling beauty in other creatures. <\/p>\n

Animals, like us, are microcosms.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Couple The Souls of Animals<\/em><\/strong><\/a> with John James Audubon \u2014 who was both a visionary ahead of his time and, like the tern-shooting naturalist, a product of its blind spots \u2014 on other minds and the secret knowledge of animals<\/a>, then revisit Loren Eiseley on the wonder of being alive<\/a> lensed through a bouquet of warblers and a reflection on signs vs. omens and our search for meaning<\/a> lensed through a great blue heron. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThey do not sweat and whine about their condition,\u201d Walt Whitman wrote of the other animals, \u201cthey do not lie awake in the dark and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}