The dog has no money. This is not, in his case, a predicament. He occupies a room, consumes provisions, enjoys the use of certain upholstered territories, and occasionally expresses a dissatisfaction with the premises that would, in a paying guest, be considered actionable. Yet nobody asks him for a deposit. Nobody wishes to inspect his credit. His references, insofar as he possesses any, consist of a moist nose and the enthusiastic testimony of the person already paying for everything.
Here, surely, is a creature who has understood civilization.
We, who invented it, have been less fortunate.
A man may spend thirty years acquiring the right to sleep beneath a roof which the dog, arriving on a Tuesday with no assets and an obscure personal history, accepts as the natural arrangement of the universe. The man must demonstrate income, continuity of employment, and a satisfactory relationship with the past. The dog must demonstrate that he is, more or less, a dog. Even this qualification is loosely administered.
One hesitates to call the arrangement unjust. Justice is precisely the sort of human invention from which the dog has had the good taste to abstain.
Consider the curious difficulty of being somewhere.
To the uninitiated eye, a room is an interval between walls. There is air in it; light arrives, somewhat unequally, through a window; the floor offers its ancient and dependable opposition to falling. But this is merely the room in its vulgar, physical sense. The civilized room is a much more elaborate organism. It has a title, a valuation, a permitted use, a taxable existence, and possibly a dispute concerning a drain. One cannot simply inhabit it. One must first become financially intelligible to it.
The dog enters, turns three times, and lies down.
I do not say that he has refuted private property. Refutation would require an interest in our argument. He has done something considerably more insulting: he has found the patch of sunlight.
How much of human unhappiness consists in being unable to enter a patch of sunlight without first explaining one’s circumstances?
We have developed a magnificent talent for placing an invisible vestibule before every necessity. Before bread, money. Before money, employment. Before employment, an address, a document, a history of having already been employed. Before rest, the satisfactory completion of procedures which make rest increasingly necessary. The entire edifice possesses the intricate, self-confirming beauty of a palace whose architect has forgotten the stairs.
And yet it would be childish to pretend that the dog has escaped dependence. His liberty is financed. Behind his luxurious indifference stands somebody comparing prices.
He has not abolished the economy; he has acquired a representative.
While he sleeps, a human being maintains diplomatic relations with the bank, the grocer, the veterinary receptionist, and that obscure authority which determines whether a particular animal is welcome in a particular building. His innocence is administered on his behalf. His freedom from paperwork generates paperwork elsewhere.
This is not independence. It is something far more aristocratic.
The dog resembles an impoverished duke whose ancestral privileges have survived the disappearance of the estate. He expects attendance without understanding its mechanism. Meals appear through the workings of a loyal but faintly overwrought household. Doors open. Cushions are restored. An indiscretion upon the carpet produces, after a brief ministerial crisis, a clean carpet.
His contribution is presence.
We should not underestimate this. Many distinguished people have contributed less.
