This essence is more than a body, more than humanness, more than animalness, more than instinct and desire and survival and death. It is lovingness, and it is sacred. For a sane person, the act of loving and nurturing an animal is wholly selfish, because of the fullness it provides in one’s own heart. Because like attracts like. And that likeness is love.
Except of, course, for those who live in abject denial of their true, loving essence. I dare say that the hollowed-eyed suspects above (if they are guilty) are worthy of pity. C. S. Lewis commented to the effect that evil is not the opposite of good, but the complete absence of it. Anyone who deliberately inflicts pain on an animal has no awareness of love, never tasted it, never extended it, and never received it. You might feel compelled to wish these young men to hell, but rest assured, they are already there.
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