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I think it’s obvious, or nearly so, that mosquitoes have no conscience and likewise no consciousness, hence nothing meriting the word “soul”. These flying, buzzing, blood-sucking automata are more like miniature heat-seeking missiles than like soulful beings. Can you imagine a mosquito experiencing mercy or pity or friendship? ’Nough said. Next!

What about, say, lions — the very prototype of the notion of carnivore? Lions stalk, pounce on, rip into, and devour giraffes and zebras that are still kicking and braying, and they do so without the slightest mercy or pity, which suggests a complete lack of compassion, and yet they seem to care a great deal about their own young, nuzzling them, nurturing them, protecting them, teaching them. This is quite unmosquito-like behavior! Moreover, I suspect that lions can easily come to care for certain beasts of other species (such as humans). In this sense, a lion can and will internalize certain limited aspects of the interiority of at least some other creatures (especially those of a few other lions, most particularly its immediate family), even though it may remain utterly oblivious to and indifferent to those of most other creatures (a quality that sounds depressingly like most humans).

I think it’s also obvious, or nearly so, that most dogs care about other creatures — particularly humans who belong to their inner circle. Indeed, it’s well known that some dogs, displaying incredible magnanimity, will lay down their lives for their owners. I have yet to hear about a lion doing such a thing for any animal of another species, although I suppose some dog-like lion, somewhere or other, may have once fought to the death against another beast in order to save the life of a human companion. It’s a bit too much of a stretch, however, to imagine a lion choosing to be a vegetarian.

And yet a quick Web search shows that the idea of a vegetarian lion is not all that rare (usually in fiction, admittedly, but not always). Indeed, such a lion, a female named “Little Tyke”, was apparently brought up as a pet near Seattle. For four years (so says the Web site), Little Tyke refused all meat offered her until finally her owners gave up trying and accepted her vegetarian ways and her joy at playing with lambs, chickens, and other beasts. Until her dying day, Little Tyke was a vegetarian lion. Will miracles never cease?

In any case, having a conscience — a sense of morality and of caring about doing “the right thing” towards other sentient beings — strikes me as the most natural and hopefully also the most reliable sign of consciousness in a being. Perhaps this simply boils down to how much one puts into practice the Golden Rule.

Albert Schweitzer and Johann Sebastian Bach

I have to admit that I have always intuitively felt there was another and quite different yardstick for measuring consciousness, although a most blurry and controversial one: musical taste. I certainly cannot explain or defend my own musical taste, and I know I would be getting myself into very deep, hot, and murky waters if I were to try, so I won’t even begin. I will, however, have to reveal a little bit of my musical taste in order to talk about Albert Schweitzer and his musical profundity.

For my sixteenth birthday, my mother gave me a record of the first eight preludes and fugues of Book One of J. S. Bach’s monumental work, The Well-Tempered Clavier, as played on the piano by Glenn Gould. This was my first contact with the notion of “fugue”, and it had an electrifying effect on my young mind. For the next several years, every time I went into a record store, I would seek out other parts of The Well-Tempered Clavier on piano, for it was a genuine rarity those days (even on harpsichord, but especially on piano, which I preferred). Every time I found a new set of preludes and fugues from either volume, the act of putting the needle down in the grooves of the new record and listening to it for the first time was among the most exciting