This is from C.S. Lewis' book, The Four Loves:
"...the higher and domesticated animal is, so to speak, a 'bridge' between us and the rest of nature. We all at times feel somewhat painfully our human isolation from the subhuman world--the atrophy of instinct which our intelligence entails, our excessive self-consciousness, the innumerable complexities of our situation, our inability to live in the present. If only we could shuffle it all off! We must not--and incidentally we can't--become beasts. But we can be with a beast. It is personal enough to give the word with a real meaning; yet it remains very largely a little bundle of biological impulses. It has three legs in nature's world, and one in ours. It is a link, an ambassador. Who would not wish, as Bosanquet put it, 'to have a representative at the court of Pan'? Man with dog closes a gap in the universe."
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