I’ve been asked whether yesterday’s post, “Blaming the Victim,” was about the student at Georgetown University who wrote after being mugged that it happened because people like him are “privileged.”  He said that until there is economic equality, “we should get comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins.  I can hardly blame them.”

No, I wasn’t commenting on him.  At the time I wrote the post I hadn’t even heard of him.

But I do have a suggestion for him.

Mr. Friedfeld, economic equality may never come.  But if you really think your opportunities are unjust – that is the question, isn’t it? -- then there is something you can do about it right now.  There is no need to continue accepting your unjust privileges.

So give them up.

Drop out of school.  Give away your money.  Accept no help from family.  Get a blue-collar job.  Work.  It will be good for you.  You will learn something.

I did.  And then I went back to school.

A young man dresses up in expensive clothing, stuffs his pockets to the bulging point with money, then walks into a rough neighborhood.  Someone hits him over the head, takes his money, and leaves him bleeding in the street.  If you suggest that he acted recklessly, you are accused of “blaming the victim.”

Why is it so difficult to make a few simple distinctions?

The perpetrator is entirely to blame for robbery and assault.

But the victim in this case is to blame for foolhardiness and indiscretion.

The victim’s foolishness does not mitigate the perpetrator’s guilt for his crime.

But the perpetrator’s guilt does not mitigate the victim’s blame for his folly.

The perpetrator deserves our reprobation, and should suffer the full penalty of law.

But the victim, who has already suffered the penalty of natural consequences, deserves our pity -- and a stern talking-to.

Once upon a long time ago I shared the foolish Romantic view that animals are somehow lessened by entering into partnership with man.  But if man is greater than animal, why shouldn’t we say that they are enobled by it?  The sheepdog or rescue dog which we admire is not a person; it is not rational; it does not understand the reasons for our commands.  Yet it gladly enters into a pattern of activity shaped by human reason.  This is only a “unity of order,” not a “unity of substance,” but even so it excites a certain wonder.

I do not wish to commit the anthropomorphic fallacy, imagining that animals are persons.  Yet to however slight a degree, I wonder whether it might be said that our animal servants and playfellows are taken up into the life of our rational nature, by distant analogy with how our own animal nature is taken up into the rational nature itself.  Or am I going too far?

A Higgs boson particle walks into a Catholic church.  Surprised, the priest asks, “what are you doing here?”  The particle replies, “You can’t have mass without me!”

I am always surprised by the resistance which the classical definition of man as a rational animal stirs.

Rationality has two aspects, one concerning how I decide what to do, the other concerning how I recognize the way things are.

As to the first aspect:  Humans do not always act for good reasons, but we always act for reasons.  The other animals do not have reasons; they only have motives.  To put it another way, they are incapable of reflection on their motives; for them, the impulse to do something is simply a given.  Even when they are torn by conflicting impulses, they don’t ask themselves questions about them; they go the way the stronger one directs.  Not even the most confused animal asks “what does all this mean?”

As to the second aspect:  Humans may not know much, but knowledge is always an issue for us; for animals, it never is.  However superior their sight or sense of smell may be to ours, they take in only facts, not truths.  Incapable of reflection on the correspondence between thought and reality, they cannot grasp what truth is.  They form habits, but not generalizations; they try to find things out (like where the mouse is), but not even the most curious cat longs to grasp the meaning of the whole.  A creature could even be more clever than we are, in a certain sense smarter than we are, and yet not be rational.

The Psalmist bids the birds, the skies, and even the reptiles to praise God, and they do so, just by being what He has made.  Yet we alone are capable of reflecting on that soaring hymn.  The skies are not aware that they declare His glory; the bird does not know that it exults.   Among all the animals, we are His only images, because we are the only mirrors.