{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_64498/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_64498","id":"gutenberg_64498","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64498","summary":null,"tags":["Animal rights","Animal rights -- Bibliography","Category: Environmental Issues","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Vivisection","Vivisection -- Bibliography"],"text":"ANIMALS\u2019 RIGHTS\n\n\n\n\n  ANIMALS\u2019 RIGHTS\n  CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO\n  SOCIAL PROGRESS\n\n  BY\n  HENRY S. SALT\n\n  _REVISED EDITION_\n\n  LONDON\n  G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.\n  YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET\n  1922\n\n\n\n\n  TO MY FRIEND HOWARD WILLIAMS\n  AND OTHER HUMANITARIAN\n  COLLEAGUES\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nAs a memorial of work done on behalf of the rights of animals, it has\nbeen thought fitting, by members and friends of the late Humanitarian\nLeague, that a new edition of this little book should be published\nin the year that brings the centenary of \u201cMartin\u2019s Act,\u201d the first\nlegislation for the prevention of cruelty to the non-human races.\n\nOf the progress made in this branch of ethics, since 1822, some account\nis incidentally given in the book; and during the last few years the\nadvance has been steadily continued. Attention has been drawn, for\ninstance, to the antiquated methods employed in the slaughter of\nanimals for food; and this has corresponded with an increase in the\npractice of vegetarianism. The treatment of other domestic animals,\nsuch as pit ponies, and the worn-out horses exported to the Continent,\nhas stirred the public conscience; and at the same time the cruelty and\nfolly of what is technically known as \u201cthe wild animal industry\u201d--the\nkidnapping of \u201cspecimens\u201d for exhibition in zoological gardens, or as\n\u201cperforming animals\u201d on the stage--are becoming better understood.\n\nAgain, the disgust caused by the ravages of \u201cmurderous millinery\u201d (a\nterm first used as a chapter-heading in this book) has taken visible\nshape in the recent Act for the regulation of the plumage trade; and\neven \u201csport,\u201d the last and dearest stronghold of the savage, has\nbeen seriously menaced, not only by the discontinuance of the Royal\nBuckhounds in 1901, but also lately by the emphatic condemnation of\npigeon-shooting.\n\nThe core of the contention for a recognition of the rights of animals\nwill be found in the following passage of a letter addressed by Mr.\nThomas Hardy to the Humanitarian League in 1910:\n\n  \u201cFew people seem to perceive fully as yet that the most far-reaching\n  consequence of the establishment of the common origin of all species\n  is ethical; that it logically involved a readjustment of altruistic\n  morals, by enlarging, as a necessity of rightness, the application\n  of what has been called \u2018The Golden Rule\u2019 from the area of mere\n  mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom.... While man was deemed\n  to be a creation apart from all other creations, a secondary or\n  tertiary morality was considered good enough to practise towards the\n  \u2018inferior\u2019 races; but no person who reasons nowadays can escape the\n  trying conclusion that this is not maintainable.\u201d\n\nIt may be taken, perhaps, as a sign of the extension of humane ideas\nthat, since its first appearance in 1892, this essay on \u201cAnimals\u2019\nRights\u201d has passed through numerous editions, and has been translated\ninto French, German, Dutch, Swedish, and other European tongues.\n\nValuable suggestions concerning the book have reached me from several\nfriends: in particular I am indebted to Sir George Greenwood, who has\nbeen actively associated, both in Parliament and elsewhere, with the\ncause of justice to animals.\n\n                                                                H. S. S.\n\n  _January 1922._\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n  CHAP.                                      PAGE\n\n     I. THE PRINCIPLE OF ANIMALS\u2019 RIGHTS        1\n\n    II. THE CASE OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS           23\n\n   III. THE CASE OF WILD ANIMALS               34\n\n    IV. THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD      41\n\n     V. SPORT, OR AMATEUR BUTCHERY             50\n\n    VI. MURDEROUS MILLINERY                    59\n\n   VII. EXPERIMENTAL TORTURE                   67\n\n  VIII. LINES OF REFORM                        77\n\n  APPENDICES                                   95\n\n  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                117\n\n  INDEX                                       123\n\n\n\n\nANIMALS\u2019 RIGHTS.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE PRINCIPLE OF ANIMALS\u2019 RIGHTS.\n\n\nHave the lower animals \u201crights\u201d? Undoubtedly--if men have. That is the\npoint I wish to make evident in this opening chapter. But have men\nrights? Let it be stated at the outset that I have no intention of\ndiscussing the abstract theory of rights, which at the present time\nis looked upon with suspicion and disfavour by many social reformers,\nsince it has not unfrequently been made to cover the most extravagant\nand contradictory assertions. But though its phraseology is vague,\nthere is nevertheless a solid truth underlying it--a truth which has\nalways been clearly apprehended by the moral faculty, however difficult\nit may be to establish it on an unassailable logical basis. If men have\nnot \u201crights\u201d--well, they have an unmistakable intimation of something\nvery similar; a sense of justice which marks the boundary-line where\nacquiescence ceases and resistance begins; a demand for freedom to\nlive their own lives, subject to the necessity of respecting the equal\nfreedom of other people.\n\nSuch is the doctrine of rights as formulated by Herbert Spencer.\n\u201cEvery man,\u201d he says, \u201cis free to do that which he wills, provided he\ninfringes not the equal liberty of any other man.\u201d And again, \u201cWhoever\nadmits that each man must have a certain restricted freedom, asserts\nthat it is _right_ he should have this restricted freedom.... And hence\nthe several particular freedoms deducible may fitly be called, as they\ncommonly are called, his _rights_\u201d (\u201cJustice,\u201d pp. 46, 62).[1]\n\nThe fitness of this nomenclature is disputed, but the existence of\nsome real principle of the kind can hardly be called in question;\nso that the controversy concerning \u201crights\u201d is little else than an\nacademic battle over words, which leads to no practical conclusion. I\nshall assume, therefore, that men are possessed of \u201crights,\u201d in the\nsense of Herbert Spencer\u2019s definition; and if any of my readers object\nto this qualified use of the term, I can only say that I shall be\nperfectly willing to change the word as soon as a more appropriate one\nis forthcoming.[2] The immediate question that claims our attention is\nthis--if men have rights, have animals their rights also?\n\nFrom the earliest times there have been thinkers who, directly\nor indirectly, answered this question with an affirmative. The\nBuddhist and Pythagorean canons, dominated perhaps by the creed of\nreincarnation, included the maxim \u201cnot to kill or injure any innocent\nanimal.\u201d The humanitarian philosophers of the Roman empire, among\nwhom Seneca, Plutarch, and Porphyry were the most conspicuous, took\nstill higher ground in preaching humanity on the broadest principle of\nuniversal benevolence. \u201cSince justice is due to rational beings,\u201d wrote\nPorphyry, \u201chow is it possible to evade the admission that we are bound\nalso to act justly towards the races below us?\u201d\n\nIt is a lamentable fact that during the churchdom of the middle ages,\nfrom the fourth century to the sixteenth, from the time of Porphyry to\nthe time of Montaigne, little or no attention was paid to the question\nof the rights and wrongs of the lower races. Then, with the Reformation\nand the revival of learning, came a revival also of humanitarian\nfeeling, as may be seen in many passages of Erasmus and More,\nShakespeare and Bacon; but it was not until the eighteenth century, the\nage of enlightenment and \u201csensibility,\u201d of which Voltaire and Rousseau\nwere the spokesmen, that the rights of animals obtained more deliberate\nrecognition. From the great Revolution of 1789 dates the period when\nthe world-wide spirit of humanitarianism, which had hitherto been felt\nby but one man in a million--the thesis of the philosopher or the\nvision of the poet--began to disclose itself, gradually and dimly at\nfirst, as an essential feature of democracy.\n\nA great and far-reaching effect was produced in England at this time\nby the publication of such revolutionary works as Thomas Paine\u2019s\n\u201cRights of Man\u201d and Mary Wollstonecraft\u2019s \u201cVindication of the Rights\nof Woman\u201d; and looking back now, after the lapse of a hundred years,\nwe can see that a still wider extension of the theory of rights was\nthenceforth inevitable. In fact, such a claim was anticipated--if\nonly in bitter jest--by a contemporary writer, who furnishes us with\na notable instance of how the mockery of one generation may become\nthe reality of the next. There was published anonymously in 1792 a\nlittle volume entitled \u201cA Vindication of the Rights of Brutes,\u201d[3] a\n_reductio ad absurdum_ of Mary Wollstonecraft\u2019s essay, written, as the\nauthor informs us, \u201cto evince by demonstrative arguments the perfect\nequality of what is called the irrational species to the human.\u201d The\nfurther opinion is expressed that \u201cafter those wonderful productions\nof Mr. Paine and Mrs. Wollstonecraft, such a theory as the present\nseems to be necessary.\u201d It _was_ necessary; and a very short term of\nyears sufficed to bring it into effect; indeed, the theory had already\nbeen put forward by several English pioneers of nineteenth-century\nhumanitarianism.\n\nTo Jeremy Bentham, in particular, belongs the high honour of first\nasserting the rights of animals with authority and persistence.\n\n  \u201cThe legislator,\u201d he wrote, \u201cought to interdict everything which may\n  serve to lead to cruelty. The barbarous spectacles of gladiators\n  no doubt contributed to give the Romans that ferocity which they\n  displayed in their civil wars. A people accustomed to despise human\n  life in their games could not be expected to respect it amid the fury\n  of their passions. It is proper for the same reason to forbid every\n  kind of cruelty towards animals, whether by way of amusement, or to\n  gratify gluttony. Cock-fights, bull-baiting, hunting hares and foxes,\n  fishing, and other amusements of the same kind, necessarily suppose\n  either the absence of reflection or a fund of inhumanity, since they\n  produce the most acute sufferings to sensible beings, and the most\n  painful and lingering death of which we can form any idea. Why should\n  the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will\n  come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which\n  breathes. We have begun by attending to the condition of slaves; we\n  shall finish by softening that of all the animals which assist our\n  labours or supply our wants.\u201d[4]\n\nSo, too, wrote one of Bentham\u2019s contemporaries: \u201cThe grand source of\nthe unmerited and superfluous misery of beasts exists in a defect in\nthe constitution of all communities. No human government, I believe,\nhas ever recognized the _jus animalium_, which ought surely to form a\npart of the jurisprudence of every system founded on the principles of\njustice and humanity.\u201d[5] A number of later moralists have followed\non the same lines, with the result that the rights of animals have\nalready, to a certain limited extent, been established both in private\nusage and by legal enactment.\n\nIt is interesting to note the exact commencement of this new principle\nin law. When Lord Erskine, speaking in the House of Lords in 1811,\nadvocated the cause of justice to the lower animals, he was greeted\nwith loud cries of insult and derision. But eleven years later the\nefforts of the despised humanitarians, and especially of Richard\nMartin, of Galway, were rewarded by their first success. The passing of\nthe Ill-treatment of Cattle Bill, commonly known as \u201cMartin\u2019s Act,\u201d in\nJuly, 1822, is a memorable date in the history of humane legislation,\nless on account of the positive protection afforded by it, for it\napplied only to cattle and \u201cbeasts of burden,\u201d than for the invaluable\nprecedent which it created. From 1822 onward, the principle of that\n_jus animalium_ for which Bentham had pleaded, was recognized, however\npartially and tentatively at first, by English law, and the animals\nincluded in the Act ceased to be the mere property of their owners;\nmoreover the Act has been several times supplemented and extended\nduring the past half century. It is scarcely possible, in the face\nof this legislation, to maintain that \u201crights\u201d are a privilege with\nwhich none but human beings can be invested; for if _some_ animals are\nalready included within the pale of protection, why should not more\nand more be so included in the future?[6]\n\nFor the present, however, what is most urgently needed is some\ncomprehensive and intelligible principle, which shall indicate, in a\nmore consistent manner, the true lines of man\u2019s moral relation towards\nthe lower animals. Hitherto even the leading advocates of animals\u2019\nrights seem to have shrunk from basing their claim on the only argument\nwhich can ultimately be held to be a sufficient one--the assertion\nthat animals, as well as men, though, of course, to a far less extent\nthan men, are possessed of a distinctive individuality, and therefore\nare in justice entitled to live their lives with a due measure of that\n\u201crestricted freedom\u201d to which Herbert Spencer alludes. It is of little\nuse to claim \u201crights\u201d for animals in a vague general way, if with the\nsame breath we explicitly show our determination to subordinate those\nrights to anything and everything that can be construed into a human\n\u201cwant\u201d; nor will it ever be possible to obtain full justice for the\nlower races so long as we continue to regard them as beings of a wholly\ndifferent order, and to ignore the significance of their numberless\npoints of kinship with mankind.\n\nFor example, it has been said by a well-known writer on the subject\nof humanity to animals[7] that \u201cthe life of a brute, having no moral\npurpose, can best be understood ethically as representing the sum\nof its _pleasures_; and the obligation, therefore, of producing the\npleasures of sentient creatures must be reduced, in their case, to the\nabstinence from unnecessary destruction of life.\u201d Now, with respect to\nthis statement, I must say that the notion of the life of an animal\nhaving \u201cno moral purpose\u201d belongs to a class of ideas which cannot\npossibly be accepted by the advanced humanitarian thought of the\npresent day--it is a purely arbitrary assumption, at variance with our\nbest science, and absolutely fatal (if the subject be clearly thought\nout) to any full realization of animals\u2019 rights. If we are ever going\nto do justice to the lower races, we must get rid of the antiquated\nnotion of a \u201cgreat gulf\u201d fixed between them and mankind, and must\nrecognize the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings in\none universal brotherhood.\n\nAs far as any excuses can be alleged, in explanation of the\ninsensibility or inhumanity of the western nations in their treatment\nof animals, these excuses may be mostly traced back to one or the other\nof two theories, wholly different in origin, yet alike in this--that\nboth postulate an absolute difference of nature between men and the\nlower kinds.\n\nThe first is the so-called \u201creligious\u201d notion, which awards immortality\nto man, but to man alone, thereby furnishing (especially in Catholic\ncountries) a quibbling justification for acts of cruelty to animals,\non the plea that they \u201chave no souls.\u201d \u201cIt should seem,\u201d says Mrs.\nJameson,[8] \u201cas if the primitive Christians, by laying so much stress\nupon a future life, in contradistinction to _this_ life, and placing\nthe lower creatures out of the pale of hope, placed them at the same\ntime out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this\nutter disregard of animals in the light of our fellow-creatures.\u201d\n\nI am aware that a quite contrary argument has, in a few isolated\ninstances, been founded on the belief that animals have \u201cno\nsouls.\u201d \u201cCruelty to a brute,\u201d says an old writer,[9] \u201cis an injury\nirreparable,\u201d because there is no future life to be a compensation for\npresent afflictions; and there is an amusing story, told by Mr. Lecky\nin his \u201cHistory of European Morals,\u201d of a certain humanely-minded\nCardinal, who used to allow vermin to bite him without hindrance, on\nthe ground that \u201cwe shall have heaven to reward us for our sufferings,\nbut these poor creatures have nothing but the enjoyment of this present\nlife.\u201d But this is a rare view of the question which need not, I think,\nbe taken into very serious account; for, on the whole, the denial of\nimmortality to animals (unless, of course, it be also denied to men)\ntends strongly to lessen their chance of being justly and considerately\ntreated. Among the many humane movements of the present age, none is\nmore significant than the growing inclination, noticeable both in\nscientific circles and in religious, to believe that mankind and the\nlower animals have the same destiny before them.[10]\n\nThe second and not less fruitful source of modern inhumanity is to\nbe found in the \u201cCartesian\u201d doctrine--the theory of Descartes and\nhis followers--that the lower animals are devoid of consciousness\nand feeling; a theory which carried the \u201creligious\u201d notion a step\nfurther, and deprived the animals not only of their claim to a life\nhereafter, but of anything that could, without mockery, be called a\nlife in the present, since mere \u201canimated machines,\u201d as they were thus\naffirmed to be, could in no real sense be said to _live_ at all! Well\nmight Voltaire turn his humane ridicule against this most monstrous\ncontention, and suggest, with scathing irony, that God \u201chad given the\nanimals the organs of feeling, to the end that they might _not_ feel!\u201d\n\u201cThe theory of animal automatism,\u201d says Professor Romanes, \u201cwhich\nis usually attributed to Descartes, can never be accepted by common\nsense.\u201d Yet it is to be feared that it has done much, in its time, to\nharden \u201cscientific\u201d sense against the just complaints of the victims of\nhuman arrogance and oppression.[11]\n\nLet me here quote a most impressive passage from Schopenhauer.\n\n  \u201cThe unpardonable forgetfulness in which the lower animals have\n  hitherto been left by the moralists of Europe is well known. It is\n  pretended that the beasts have no rights. They persuade themselves\n  that our conduct in regard to them has nothing to do with morals,\n  or (to speak the language of their morality) that we have no duties\n  towards animals: a doctrine revolting, gross, and barbarous, peculiar\n  to the west, and having its root in Judaism. In philosophy, however,\n  it is made to rest upon a hypothesis, admitted in despite of evidence\n  itself, of an absolute difference between man and beast. It is\n  Descartes who has proclaimed it in the clearest and most decisive\n  manner; and in fact it was a necessary consequence of his errors.\n  The Cartesian-Leibnitzian-Wolfian philosophy, with the assistance of\n  entirely abstract notions, had built up the \u2018rational psychology,\u2019\n  and constructed an immortal _anima rationalis_: but, visibly, the\n  world of beasts, with its very natural claims, stood up against\n  this exclusive monopoly--this _brevet_ of immortality decreed to\n  man alone--and silently Nature did what she always does in such\n  cases--she protested. Our philosophers, feeling their scientific\n  conscience quite disturbed, were forced to attempt to consolidate\n  their \u2018rational psychology\u2019 by the aid of empiricism. They therefore\n  set themselves to work to hollow out between man and beast an\n  enormous abyss, of an immeasurable width; by this they wish to prove\n  to us, in contempt of evidence, an impassable difference.\u201d[12]\n\nThe fallacious idea that the lives of animals have no moral purpose is\nat root connected with these religious and philosophical pretensions\nwhich Schopenhauer so powerfully condemns. To live one\u2019s own life--to\nrealize one\u2019s true self--is the highest moral purpose of man and animal\nalike; and that animals possess their due measure of this sense of\nindividuality is scarcely open to doubt. \u201cWe have seen,\u201d says Darwin,\n\u201cthat the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties,\nsuch as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc.,\nof which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes\nin a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.\u201d[13] Not less\nemphatic is the testimony of the Rev. J. G. Wood, who, speaking from\na great experience, gives it as his opinion that \u201cthe manner in which\nwe ignore individuality in the lower animals is simply astounding.\u201d He\nclaims for them a future life, because he is \u201cquite sure that most of\nthe cruelties which are perpetrated on the animals are due to the habit\nof considering them as mere machines without susceptibilities, without\nreason, and without the capacity of a future.\u201d[14]\n\nThe long-maintained distinction between human \u201creason\u201d and animal\n\u201cinstinct\u201d is being given up by recent scientific writers, as, for\nexample, by Dr. Wesley Mills in his work on \u201cThe Nature and Development\nof Animal Intelligence,\u201d and by Mr. E. P. Evans in \u201cEvolutional Ethics\nand Animal Psychology.\u201d\n\n  \u201cThe trend of investigation,\u201d says Dr. Mills, \u201cthus far goes to show\n  that at least the germ of every human faculty does exist in some\n  species of animal.... Formerly the line was drawn at reason. It\n  was said that the \u2018brutes\u2019 cannot reason. Only persons who do not\n  themselves reason about the subject with the facts before them can\n  any longer occupy such a position. The evidence of reasoning power is\n  overwhelming for the upper ranks of animals, and yearly the downward\n  limits are being extended the more the inferior tribes are studied.\u201d\n\nWe have to get rid, as Mr. Evans points out, of those \u201canthropocentric\u201d\ndelusions which \u201ctreat man as a being essentially different and\ninseparably set apart from all other sentient creatures, to which he is\nbound by no ties of mental affinity or moral obligation.\u201d\n\n  \u201cMan is as truly a part and product of Nature as any other animal,\n  and this attempt to set him up as an isolated point outside of it is\n  philosophically false and morally pernicious.\u201d\n\nThis, then, is the position of those who assert that animals, like men,\nare possessed of certain limited rights, which cannot be withheld from\nthem, as they are now withheld, without tyranny and injustice. They\nhave individuality, character, reason; and to have those qualities\nis to have the right to exercise them, in so far as surrounding\ncircumstances permit. No human being is justified in regarding an\nanimal as a meaningless automaton, to be worked, or tortured, or\neaten, as the case may be, for the mere object of satisfying the wants\nor whims of mankind. Together with the destinies and duties that are\nlaid on them and fulfilled by them, animals have also the right to be\ntreated with gentleness and consideration, and the man who does not so\ntreat them, however great his learning or influence may be, is, in that\nrespect, an ignorant and foolish man, devoid of the highest and noblest\nculture of which the human mind is capable.\n\nSomething must here be said on the important subject of nomenclature.\nIt is to be feared that the ill-treatment of animals is largely\ncaused--or at any rate the difficulty of amending that treatment is\nlargely aggravated--by the common use of such terms as \u201cbrute-beast,\u201d\n\u201clive-stock,\u201d etc., which implicitly deny to the lower races that\nintelligent individuality which is undoubtedly possessed by them. It\nwas long ago remarked by Bentham, in his \u201cIntroduction to Principles\nof Morals and Legislation,\u201d that, whereas human beings are styled\n_persons_, \u201cother animals, on account of their interests having been\nneglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded\ninto the class of _things_\u201d; and Schopenhauer also has commented on the\nmischievous absurdity of the idiom which applies the neuter pronoun\n\u201cit\u201d to such highly-organized animals as the dog and the ape.\n\nA word of protest is needed also against such an expression as \u201cdumb\nanimals,\u201d which, though often cited as \u201can immense exhortation to\npity,\u201d[15] has in reality a tendency to influence ordinary people in\nquite the contrary direction, inasmuch as it fosters the idea of\nan impassable barrier between mankind and their dependents. It is\nconvenient to us men to be deaf to the entreaties of the victims of\nour injustice; and, by a sort of grim irony, we therefore assume that\nit is _they_ who are afflicted by some organic incapacity--they are\n\u201cdumb animals,\u201d forsooth! although a moment\u2019s consideration must prove\nthat they have innumerable ways, often quite human in variety and\nsuggestiveness, of uttering their thoughts and emotions. Even the term\n\u201canimals,\u201d as applied to the lower races, is incorrect, and not wholly\nunobjectionable, since it ignores the fact that _man_ is an animal no\nless than they. My only excuse for using it in this volume is that\nthere is no better brief term available.\n\nSo anomalous is the attitude of man towards the lower animals, that it\nis no marvel if many humane thinkers have wellnigh despaired over this\nquestion. \u201cThe whole subject of the brute creation,\u201d wrote Dr. Arnold,\n\u201cis to me one of such painful mystery, that I dare not approach it\u201d;\nand this (to put the most charitable interpretation on their silence)\nappears to be the position of the majority of moralists and teachers\nat the present time. Yet there is urgent need of some solution of the\nproblem; and in no other way can this be found than by the admission of\nthe lower races within the pale of human sympathy. All the promptings\nof our best and surest instincts point us in this direction. \u201cIt is\nabundantly evident,\u201d says Lecky, \u201cboth from history and from present\nexperience, that the instinctive shock, or natural feelings of disgust,\ncaused by the sight of the sufferings of men, is not generically\ndifferent from that which is caused by the sight of the suffering of\nanimals.\u201d If this be so, can it be seriously contended that the same\nhumanitarian tendency which has already emancipated the slave, will not\nultimately benefit the lower races also? Here, again, the historian of\n\u201cEuropean Morals\u201d has a significant remark:\n\n  \u201cAt one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family,\n  soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation,\n  then a coalition of nations, then all humanity; and finally its\n  influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world. In\n  each of these cases a standard is formed, different from that of the\n  preceding stage, but in each case the same tendency is recognized as\n  virtue.\u201d\n\nBut, it may be argued, vague sympathy with the lower animals is one\nthing, and a definite recognition of their \u201crights\u201d is another; what\nreason is there to suppose that we shall advance from the former phase\nto the latter? Just this; that every great liberating movement has\nproceeded exactly on such lines. Oppression and cruelty are invariably\nfounded on a lack of imaginative sympathy; the tyrant or tormentor\ncan have no true sense of kinship with the victim of his injustice.\nWhen once the sense of affinity is awakened, the knell of tyranny is\nsounded, and the ultimate concession of \u201crights\u201d is simply a matter\nof time. The present condition of the more highly-organized domestic\nanimals is in many ways very analogous to that of the negro slaves\nof a hundred years ago: look back, and you will find in their case\nprecisely the same exclusion from the common pale of humanity; the\nsame hypocritical fallacies, to justify that exclusion; and, as a\nconsequence, the same deliberate stubborn denial of their social\n\u201crights.\u201d Look back--for it is well to do so--and then look forward,\nand the moral can hardly be mistaken.\n\nWe find so great a thinker as Aristotle seriously pondering, in his\n\u201cEthics,\u201d whether a slave may be considered as a fellow-being. In\nemphasizing the point that friendship is founded on propinquity, he\nexpresses himself as follows:\n\n  \u201cNeither can men have friendships with horses, cattle, or slaves,\n  considered merely as such; for a slave is merely a living instrument,\n  and an instrument a lifeless slave. Yet, considered as a man, a slave\n  may be an object of friendship, for certain rights seem to belong to\n  all those capable of participating in law and engagement.\u201d\n\nSlaves, says Bentham,\n\n  \u201chave been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as in\n  England, for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The\n  day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those\n  rights which could never have been withholden from them but by the\n  hand of tyranny.\u201d\n\nLet us unreservedly admit the immense difficulties that stand in the\nway of this animal enfranchisement. Our relation towards the animals is\ncomplicated and embittered by innumerable habits handed down through\ncenturies of brutality and mistrust; we cannot, in all cases, suddenly\nrelax these habits, or do full justice even where we see that justice\nwill have to be done. A perfect ethic of humaneness is therefore\nimpracticable, if not unthinkable; and we can attempt to do no more\nthan to indicate in a general way the main principle of animals\u2019\nrights, noting at the same time the most flagrant particular violations\nof those rights, and the lines on which the only valid reform can\nhereafter be effected. But, on the other hand, it may be remembered,\nfor the comfort and encouragement of humanitarian workers, that these\nobstacles are, after all, only such as are inevitable in each branch of\nsocial improvement; for at every stage of every great reformation it\nhas been repeatedly argued, by indifferent or hostile observers, that\nfurther progress is impossible; indeed, when the opponents of a great\ncause begin to demonstrate its \u201cimpossibility,\u201d experience teaches us\nthat that cause is already on the high road to fulfilment.\n\nAs for the demand so frequently made on reformers, that they should\nfirst explain the details of their scheme--how this and that point will\nbe arranged, and by what process all kinds of difficulties, real or\nimagined, will be circumvented--the only rational reply is that it is\nabsurd to expect to see the end of a question when we are now but at\nits beginning. The persons who offer this futile sort of criticism are\nusually those who under no circumstances would be open to conviction;\nthey purposely ask for an explanation which, by the very nature of the\ncase, is impossible because it necessarily belongs to a later period of\ntime. It would be equally sensible to request a traveller to enumerate\nbeforehand all the particular things he will see by the way, on pain\nof being denounced as an unpractical visionary, although he may have a\nquite sufficient general knowledge of his course and destination.\n\nOur main principle is now clear. If \u201crights\u201d exist at all--and both\nfeeling and usage indubitably prove that they do exist--they cannot\nbe consistently awarded to men and denied to animals, since the same\nsense of justice and compassion apply in both cases. \u201cPain is pain,\u201d\nsays Humphry Primatt, \u201cwhether it be inflicted on man or on beast; and\nthe creature that suffers it, whether man or beast, being sensible of\nthe misery of it while it lasts, suffers _evil_; and the sufferance of\nevil, unmeritedly, unprovokedly, where no offence has been given, and\nno good can possibly be answered by it, but merely to exhibit power or\ngratify malice, is Cruelty and Injustice in him that occasions it.\u201d\n\nI commend this outspoken utterance to the attention of those ingenious\nmoralists who quibble about the \u201cdiscipline\u201d of suffering, and\ndeprecate immediate attempts to redress what, it is alleged, may be a\nnecessary instrument for the attainment of human welfare. It is perhaps\na mere coincidence, but it may be observed that those who are most\nforward to disallow the rights of others, and to argue that suffering\nand subjection are the natural lot of all living things, are usually\nthemselves exempt from the operation of this beneficent law, and that\nthe beauty of self-sacrifice is most loudly belauded by those who\nprofit most largely at the expense of their fellow-beings.\n\nBut \u201cnature is one with rapine,\u201d say some, and this utopian theory of\n\u201crights,\u201d if too widely extended, must come in conflict with that iron\nrule of internecine competition by which the universe is regulated.\nBut is the universe so regulated? We note that this very objection,\nwhich was confidently relied on a few years back by many opponents\nof the emancipation of the working-classes, is not heard of in that\nconnection now. Our learned economists and men of science, who set\nthemselves to play the defenders of the social _status quo_, have seen\ntheir own weapons of \u201cnatural selection,\u201d \u201csurvival of the fittest,\u201d\nand what not, snatched from their hands and turned against them, and\nare therefore beginning to explain to us, in a scientific manner, what\nwe untutored humanitarians had previously felt to be true, viz., that\ncompetition is not by any means the sole governing law among the human\nrace. We are not greatly dismayed, then, to find the same old bugbear\ntrotted out as an argument against animals\u2019 rights--indeed, we see\nalready unmistakable signs of a similar reversal of the scientific\njudgment.[16]\n\nThe charge of \u201csentimentalism\u201d is frequently brought against those\nwho plead for animals\u2019 rights. Now \u201csentimentalism,\u201d if any meaning\nat all can be attached to the word, must signify an inequality, an\nill balance of sentiment, an inconsistency which leads men into\nattacking one abuse, while they ignore or condone another where a\nreform is equally desirable. That this weakness is often observable\namong \u201cphilanthropists\u201d on the one hand, and \u201cfriends of animals\u201d on\nthe other, and most of all among those acute \u201cmen of the world,\u201d whose\nregard is only for themselves, I am not concerned to deny; what I wish\nto point out is, that the only real safeguard against sentimentality\nis to take up a consistent position towards the rights of men and of\nthe lower animals alike, and to cultivate a broad sense of universal\njustice (not \u201cmercy\u201d) for all living things. Herein, and herein alone,\nis to be sought the true sanity of temperament.\n\nIt is an entire mistake to suppose that the rights of animals are in\nany way antagonistic to the rights of men. Let us not be betrayed for\na moment into the specious fallacy that we must study human rights\nfirst, and leave the animal question to solve itself hereafter; for it\nis only by a wide and disinterested study of _both_ subjects that a\nsolution of either is possible. \u201cFor he who loves all animated nature,\u201d\nsays Porphyry, \u201cwill not hate any one tribe of innocent beings, and\nby how much greater his love for the whole, by so much the more will\nhe cultivate justice towards a part of them, and that part to which\nhe is most allied.\u201d To omit all worthier reasons, it is too late in\nthe day to suggest the indefinite postponement of a consideration\nof animals\u2019 rights, for from a moral point of view, and even from a\nlegislative point of view, we are daily confronted with the problem,\nand the so-called \u201cpractical\u201d people who affect to ignore it are\nsimply shutting their eyes to facts which they find it disagreeable to\nconfront.\n\nOnce more then, animals have rights, and these rights consist in the\n\u201crestricted freedom\u201d to live a natural life--a life, that is, which\npermits of the individual development--subject to the limitations\nimposed by the permanent needs and interests of the community. There\nis nothing quixotic or visionary in this assertion; it is perfectly\ncompatible with a readiness to look the sternest laws of existence\nfully and honestly in the face. If we must kill, whether it be man or\nanimal, let us kill and have done with it; if we must inflict pain,\nlet us do what is inevitable, without hypocrisy, or evasion, or cant.\nBut (here is the cardinal point) let us first be assured that it _is_\nnecessary; let us not wantonly trade on the needless miseries of\nother beings, and then attempt to lull our consciences by a series of\nshuffling excuses which cannot endure a moment\u2019s candid investigation.\nAs Leigh Hunt well says:\n\n  \u201cThat there is pain and evil, is no rule\n  That I should make it greater, like a fool.\u201d\n\nThus far the general principle of animals\u2019 rights. We will now proceed\nto apply this principle to a number of particular cases, from which we\nmay learn something both as to the extent of its present violation, and\nthe possibility of its better observance in the future.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE CASE OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS.\n\n\nThe main principle of animals\u2019 rights, if admitted to be fundamentally\nsound, will not be essentially affected by the wildness or the\ndomesticity, as the case may be, of the animals in question; _both_\nclasses have their rights, though these rights may differ largely in\nextent and importance. It is convenient, however, to consider the\nsubject of the domestic animals apart from that of the wild ones,\ninasmuch as their whole relation to mankind is so much altered and\nemphasized by the fact of their subjection. Here, at any rate, it\nis impossible, even for the most callous reasoners, to deny the\nresponsibility of man, in his dealings with vast races of beings,\nthe very conditions of whose existence have been modified by human\ncivilization.\n\nAn incalculable mass of drudgery, at the cost of incalculable\nsuffering, is daily, hourly performed for the benefit of man by these\nhonest, patient labourers in every town and country of the world. Are\nthese countless services to be permanently ignored in a community which\nmakes any pretension to a humane civilization? Will the free citizens\nof the enlightened republics of the future be content to reap the\nimmense advantages of animals\u2019 labour, without recognizing that they\nowe them some consideration in return? The question is one that carries\nwith it its own answer.[17]\n\nBut the human mind is subtle to evade the full significance of its\nduties, and nowhere is this more conspicuously seen than in our\ntreatment of the lower races. Given a position in which man profits\nlargely (or _thinks_ he profits largely, for it is not always a\nmatter of certainty) by the toil or suffering of the animals, and our\nrespectable moralists are pretty sure to be explaining to us that\nthis providential arrangement is \u201cbetter for the animals themselves.\u201d\nThe wish is father to the thought in these questions, and there is\nan accommodating elasticity in our social ethics that permits of the\njustification of almost any system which it would be inconvenient to\nus to discontinue. Thus we find it stated, and on the authority of\na bishop, that man may \u201clay down the terms of the social contract\nbetween animals and himself,\u201d because, forsooth, \u201cthe general life of a\ndomestic animal is one of very great comfort--according to the animal\u2019s\nown standard (_sic_) probably one of almost perfect happiness.\u201d[18]\n\nNow this prating about \u201cthe animal\u2019s own standard\u201d is nothing better\nthan hypocritical cant. If man is obliged to lay down the terms of the\ncontract, let him at least do so without having recourse to such a\nsuspiciously opportune afterthought. We have taken the animals from\na free, natural state, into an artificial thraldom, in order that\n_we_, and not _they_, may be the gainers thereby; it cannot possibly\nbe maintained that they owe us gratitude on this account, or that this\nalleged debt may be used as a means of evading the just recognition\nof their rights. It is the more necessary to raise a strong protest\nagainst this jesuitical mode of reasoning, because, as we shall see, it\nis so frequently employed, in one form or another, by the apologists of\nhuman tyranny.\n\nOn the other hand, I desire to keep clear also of the extreme contrary\ncontention, that man is not morally justified in imposing any sort\nof subjection on the lower animals.[19] An abstract question of this\nsort, however interesting as a speculation, and impossible in itself\nto disprove, is beyond the scope of the present inquiry, which is\nprimarily concerned with the state of things at present existing. We\nmust face the fact that the services of domestic animals have become,\nwhether rightly or wrongly, an integral portion of the system of modern\nsociety; we cannot immediately dispense with those services, any more\nthan we can dispense with human labour itself. But we _can_ provide,\nas at least a present step towards a more ideal relationship in the\nfuture, that the conditions under which all labour is performed,\nwhether by men or by animals, shall be such as to enable the worker to\ntake some appreciable pleasure in the work, instead of experiencing a\nlifelong course of injustice and ill-treatment.\n\nAnd here it may be convenient to say a word as to the existing line\nof demarcation between the animals legally recognized as \u201cdomestic,\u201d\nand those _fer\u00e6 natur\u00e6_, of wild nature. In the Act of 1849, in which\na penalty was imposed for cruelty to \u201cany animal,\u201d it was expressly\nprovided that\n\n  \u201cThe word _animal_ shall be taken to mean any horse, mare, gelding,\n  bull, ox, cow, heifer, steer, calf, mule, ass, sheep, lamb, hog, pig,\n  sow, goat, dog, cat, or any other domestic animal.\u201d\n\nBut as time went on, and public opinion was more sensitive, the\ninterpretation of this vague reference to \u201cany other domestic animal\u201d\nbecame a point of considerable importance, since it closely affected\nthe welfare of certain captive animals which, though regarded as wild,\nand therefore outside the pale of protection, were to all intents and\npurposes in a state of domestication. The Act of 1849 was accordingly\namended by the Wild Animals in Captivity Act of 1900, which made it\nan offence to maltreat a wild animal while actually in a state of\ncaptivity. (_See also_ the Act of 1911, _infra_ p. 34.)\n\n\u201cFood, rest, and tender usage,\u201d were declared by Humphry Primatt, the\nold author already quoted, to be the three rights of the domestic\nanimals. Lawrence\u2019s opinion was to much the same effect.\n\n  \u201cMan is indispensably bound to bestow upon animals, in return for\n  the benefit he derives from their services, good and sufficient\n  nourishment, comfortable shelter, and merciful treatment; to commit\n  no wanton outrage upon their feelings, whilst alive, and to put them\n  to the speediest and least painful death, when it shall be necessary\n  to deprive them of life.\u201d\n\nBut it is important to note that something more is due to animals,\nand especially to domestic animals, than the mere supply of provender\nand the mere immunity from ill-usage. \u201cWe owe justice to men,\u201d wrote\nMontaigne, \u201cand grace and benignity to other creatures that are capable\nof it; there is a natural commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them\nand us.\u201d Sir Arthur Helps admirably expressed this sentiment in his\nwell-known reference to the duty of \u201cusing courtesy to animals.\u201d[20]\n\nIf these be the rights of domestic animals, it is pitiful to reflect\nhow commonly and how grossly they are violated. The average life of our\n\u201cbeasts of burden,\u201d the horse, the ass, and the mule, is from beginning\nto end a rude negation of their individuality and intelligence; they\nare habitually addressed and treated as stupid instruments of man\u2019s\nwill and pleasure, instead of the highly-organized and sensitive beings\nthat they are. Well might Thoreau, the humanest and most observant of\nnaturalists, complain of man\u2019s \u201cnot educating the horse, not trying\nto develop his nature, but merely getting work out of him\u201d; for such,\nit must be acknowledged, is the prevalent method of treatment, in\nninety-nine cases out of a hundred, at the present day, even where\nthere is no actual cruelty or ill-usage.\n\nWe are often told that there is no other western country where tame\nanimals are so well treated as in England, and it is only necessary\nto read the records of a century back to see that the inhumanities of\nthe past were far more atrocious than any that are still practised in\nthe present. Let us be thankful for these facts, as showing that the\ncurrent of English opinion is at least moving in the right direction.\nBut it must yet be said that the sights that everywhere meet the eye\nof a humane and thoughtful observer, whether in town or country, are\na disgrace to our vaunted \u201ccivilization.\u201d Watch the cab traffic in\none of the crowded thoroughfares of our great cities--always the same\nlugubrious patient procession of underfed overloaded animals, the same\nbrutal insolence of the drivers, the same accursed sound of the whip.\nAnd remembering that these horses are gifted with a large degree of\nsensibility and intelligence, must one not feel that the fate to which\nthey are thus mercilessly subjected is a shameful violation of the\nprinciple which moralists have laid down?\n\nYet it is to this fate that even the well-kept horses of the rich must\nin time descend, so to pass the declining years of a life devoted to\nman\u2019s service! \u201cA good man,\u201d said Plutarch, \u201cwill take care of his\nhorses and dogs, not only while they are young, but when old and past\nservice. We ought certainly not to treat living beings like shoes and\nhousehold goods, which, when worn out with use, we throw away.\u201d Such\nwas the feeling of the old pagan writer, and our good Christians of the\npresent age scarcely seem to have improved on it. True, they do not\n\u201cthrow away\u201d their superannuated carriage-horses--it is so much more\nlucrative to _sell_ them to the shopman or cab-proprietor, who will in\ndue course pass them on to the knacker and cat\u2019s-meat man.\n\nThe use of machinery is often condemned, on \u00e6sthetic grounds, because\nof the ugliness it has introduced into so many features of modern life.\nOn the other hand, it should not be forgotten that it has immensely\nrelieved the huge mass of animal labour, and that when such forces are\ngenerally used for purposes of traction, one of the foulest blots on\nour social humanity is likely to disappear. Scientific and mechanical\ninvention, so far from being necessarily antagonistic to a true beauty\nof life, may be found to be of the utmost service to it, when they are\nemployed for humane and not merely commercial, purposes.[21] Herein\nThoreau is a wiser teacher than Ruskin. \u201cIf all were as it seems,\u201d he\nsays, \u201cand men made the elements their servants for noble ends! If the\ncloud that hangs over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds,\nor as beneficent as that which floats over the farmer\u2019s fields, then\nthe elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their\nerrands and be their escort.\u201d\n\nIt is no part of my purpose to enumerate the various acts of injustice\nof which domestic animals are the victims; it is sufficient to point\nout that the true cause of such injustice is to be sought in the\nunwarrantable neglect of their many intelligent qualities, and in the\ncontemptuous indifference which, in defiance of sense and reason, still\nclasses them as \u201cbrute-beasts.\u201d What has been said of horses in this\nrespect applies still more strongly to the second class of domestic\nanimals. Sheep, goats, and oxen are regarded as mere \u201clive-stock\u201d;\nwhile pigs, poultry, rabbits, and other marketable \u201cfarm-produce,\u201d meet\nwith even less consideration, and are constantly treated with brutal\ninhumanity by their human possessors. Let anyone who doubts this pay a\nvisit to a cattle-market, and study the scenes that are enacted there.\n\nThe question of the castration of animals may here be briefly referred\nto.[22] That nothing but imperative necessity could justify such a\npractice must, I think, be admitted; for mutilation of this kind is not\nonly painful in itself, but deprives those who undergo it of the most\nvigorous and spirited elements of their character. It is said--with\nwhat precise amount of truth I cannot pretend to determine--that\nman would not otherwise be able to maintain his dominion over the\ndomestic animals; but on the other hand it may be pointed out that\nthis dominion is in no case destined to be perpetuated in its present\nsharply-accentuated form, and that various practices which, in a sense,\nare \u201cnecessary\u201d now,--_i.e._ in the false position and relationship\nin which we stand towards the animals,--will doubtless be gradually\ndiscontinued under the humaner system of the future. Moreover,\ncastration as performed on cattle, sheep, pigs, and fowls, with no\nbetter object than to increase their size and improve their flavour\nfor the table, is, even at the present time, utterly needless and\nunjustifiable. \u201cThe bull,\u201d as Shelley says, \u201cmust be degraded into the\nox, and the ram into the wether, by an unnatural and inhuman operation,\nthat the flaccid fibre may offer a fainter resistance to rebellious\nnature.\u201d In all its aspects, this is a disagreeable subject, and one\nabout which the majority of people do not care to think--probably from\nan unconscious perception that the established custom could scarcely\nsurvive the critical ordeal of thought.\n\nThere remains one other class of domestic animals, viz., those who\nhave become still more closely associated with mankind through being\nthe inmates of their homes. The dog is probably better treated on the\nwhole than any other animal;[23] though, to prove how far we still\nare from a rational and consistent appreciation of his worth, it is\nonly necessary to point to the fact that he is commonly regarded by a\nlarge number of educated people as a fit and proper subject for that\nexperimental torture which is known as vivisection. The cat has always\nbeen treated with far less consideration than the dog, and, despite\nthe numerous scattered instances that might be cited to the contrary,\nit is to be feared that De Quincey was in the main correct, when he\nremarked that \u201cthe groans and screams of this poor persecuted race, if\ngathered into some great echoing hall of horrors, would melt the heart\nof the stoniest.\u201d The institution of \u201cHomes\u201d for lost and starving dogs\nand cats is a welcome sign of the humane feeling that is asserting\nitself in some quarters; but it is also no less a proof of the general\nindifferentism which can allow the most familiar domestic animals to\nbecome homeless.\n\nIt may be doubted, indeed, whether the condition of the household\n\u201cpet\u201d is, in the long run, more enviable than that of the \u201cbeast of\nburden.\u201d Pets, like kings\u2019 favourites, are usually the recipients of\nan abundance of sentimental affection but of little real kindness; so\nmuch easier is it to give temporary caresses than substantial justice.\nIt seems to be forgotten, in a vast majority of cases, that a domestic\nanimal does not exist for the mere idle amusement, any more than for\nthe mere commercial profit, of its human owner; and that for a living\nbeing to be turned into a useless puppet is only one degree better than\nto be doomed to the servitude of a drudge. The injustice done to the\npampered lap-dog is as conspicuous, in its way, as that done to the\nover-worked horse, and both spring from one and the same origin--the\nfixed belief that the life of a \u201cbrute\u201d has no moral purpose, no\ndistinctive personality worthy of due consideration and development.\nIn a society where the lower animals were regarded as intelligent\nbeings, and not as animated machines, it would be impossible for this\nincongruous absurdity to continue.\n\nThis, then, appears to be our position as regards the rights of\ndomestic animals. Waiving, on the one hand, the somewhat abstruse\nquestion whether man is morally justified in utilizing animal labour\nat all, and on the other the fatuous assertion that he is constituting\nhimself a benefactor by so doing, we recognize that the services of\ndomestic animals have by immemorial usage become an important and,\nit may even be said, necessary element in the economy of modern life.\nIt is impossible, unless every principle of justice is to be cast to\nthe winds, that the due requital of these services should remain a\nmatter of personal caprice; for slavery is at all times hateful and\niniquitous, whether it be imposed on mankind or on the lower races.\nApart from the rights they possess in common with all intelligent\nbeings, domestic animals have a special claim on man\u2019s courtesy and\nsense of fairness, inasmuch as they are not his fellow-creatures only,\nbut his fellow-workers, his dependents, and in many cases the familiar\nassociates and trusted inmates of his home.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nTHE CASE OF WILD ANIMALS.\n\n\nThat wild animals, no less than domestic animals, have their rights,\nalbeit of a less positive character and far less easy to define, is\nan essential point which follows directly from the acceptance of the\ngeneral principle of a _jus animalium_. It is of the utmost importance\nto emphasize the fact that, whatever the _legal_ fiction may have been,\nor may still be, the rights of animals are not _morally_ dependent on\nthe so-called rights of property.\n\nThe domination of property has left its trail indelibly on the records\nof this question. Until the passing of \u201cMartin\u2019s Act\u201d in 1822, the\nmost atrocious cruelty, even to domestic animals, could only be\npunished where there was proved to be an infringement of the rights\nof ownership. Some measure of legal protection was, as I have said,\naccorded to wild animals in the Wild Animals in Captivity Act of 1900,\nwhich was repealed, re-enacted, and extended in the Protection of\nAnimals Act, 1911; which Act was itself strengthened by an Amendment\npassed in 1921, prohibiting the coursing or hunting of a wild animal\nin an enclosed space from which it has no reasonable chance of escape.\nWith this exception, it is permissible for anyone to kill or torture\nthem with impunity, except where the sacred privileges of \u201cproperty\u201d\nare thereby offended. \u201cEverywhere,\u201d it has been well said, \u201cit is\nabsolutely a capital crime to be an unowned creature.\u201d\n\nYet surely an unowned creature has the same right as another to live\nhis life unmolested and uninjured except when this is in some way\ninimical to human welfare. We are justified by the strongest of all\ninstincts, that of self-defence, in safe-guarding ourselves against\nsuch a multiplication of any species of animal as might imperil\nthe established supremacy of man; but we are _not_ justified in\nunnecessarily killing--still less in torturing--any harmless being\nwhatsoever. In this respect the position of wild animals, in their\nrelation to man, is somewhat analogous to that of the uncivilized\ntowards the civilized nations. Nothing is more difficult than to\ndetermine precisely to what extent it is morally permissible to\ninterfere with the autonomy of savage tribes--an interference which\nseems in some cases to conduce to the general progress of the race, in\nothers to foster the worst forms of cruelty and injustice; but it is\nbeyond question that savages, like other people, have the right to be\nexempt from all wanton insult and degradation.\n\nIn the same way, while admitting that man is justified, by the\nexigencies of his own destiny, in asserting his supremacy over the\nwild animals, we must deny him any right to turn his protectorate into\na tyranny, or to inflict one atom more of subjection and pain than is\nabsolutely unavoidable. To take advantage of the sufferings of animals,\nwhether wild or tame, for the gratification of sport, or gluttony, or\nfashion, is quite incompatible with any possible assertion of animals\u2019\nrights. We may kill, if necessary, but never torture or degrade.\n\n  \u201cThe laws of self-defence,\u201d says an old writer,[24] \u201cundoubtedly\n  justify us in destroying those animals who would destroy us, who\n  injure our properties or annoy our persons; but not even these,\n  whenever their situation incapacitates them from hurting us. I know\n  of no right which we have to shoot a bear on an inaccessible island\n  of ice, or an eagle on the mountain\u2019s top, whose lives cannot injure\n  us, nor deaths procure us any benefit. We are unable to give life,\n  and therefore ought not to take it away from the meanest insect\n  without sufficient reason.\u201d\n\nI reserve, for fuller consideration in subsequent chapters, certain\nproblems which are suggested by the wholesale slaughter of wild animals\nby the huntsman or the trapper, for purposes which are loosely supposed\nto be inevitable. Meantime a word must be said about the condition of\nthose tamed or caged animals which, though wild by nature, and not\nbred in captivity, are yet to a certain extent \u201cdomesticated\u201d--a class\nwhich stands midway between the true domestic and the wild. Is the\nimprisonment of such animals a violation of the principle we have laid\ndown? In most cases I fear this question can only be answered in the\naffirmative.\n\nAnd here, once more I must protest against the common assumption that\nthese captive animals are laid _under an obligation_ to man by the\nvery fact of their captivity, and that therefore no complaint can\nbe made on the score of their loss of freedom and the many miseries\ninvolved therein! It is extraordinary that even humane thinkers and\nearnest champions of animals\u2019 rights should permit themselves to be\nmisled by this most fallacious and flimsy line of argument. \u201cHarmful\nanimals,\u201d says one of these writers,[25] \u201cand animals with whom man has\nto struggle for the fruits of the earth, may of course be so shut up:\nthey gain by it, for otherwise they would not have been let live.\u201d\n\nAnd so in like manner it is sometimes contended that a menagerie is a\nsort of paradise for wild beasts, whose loss of liberty is more than\ncompensated by the absence of the constant apprehension and insecurity\nwhich, it is conveniently assumed, weigh so heavily on their spirits.\nBut all this notion of their \u201cgaining by it\u201d is in truth nothing\nmore than a mere arbitrary supposition; for, in the first place, a\nspeedy death may, for all we know, be very preferable to a protracted\ndeath-in-life; while, secondly, the pretence that wild animals enjoy\ncaptivity is even more absurd than the episcopal contention that the\nlife of a domestic animal is \u201cone of very great comfort, according to\nthe animal\u2019s own standard.\u201d\n\nTo take a wild animal from its free natural state, full of abounding\negoism and vitality, and to shut it up for the wretched remainder of\nits life in a cell where it has just space to turn round, and where it\nnecessarily loses every distinctive feature of its character--this\nappears to me to be as downright a denial as could well be imagined\nof the theory of animals\u2019 rights. Nor is there much force in the\nplea founded on the alleged scientific value of these zoological\ninstitutions, at any rate in the case of the wilder and less tractable\nanimals, for it cannot be maintained that the establishment of\nwild-beast shows is in any way necessary for the advancement of human\nknowledge. For what do the good people see, who go to the gardens on a\nhalf-holiday afternoon to poke their umbrellas at a blinking eagle-owl,\nor to throw dog-biscuits down the expansive throat of a hippopotamus?\nNot wild beasts or wild birds certainly, for there never have been\nor can be such in the best of all possible menageries, but merely\nthe outer semblances and _simulacra_ of the denizens of forest and\nprairie--poor spiritless remnants of what were formerly wild animals.\nTo kill and stuff these victims of our morbid curiosity, instead of\nimmuring them in lifelong imprisonment, would be at once a humaner and\na cheaper method, and could not possibly be of less use to science.[26]\n\nBut of course these remarks do not apply, with anything like the same\nforce, to the taming of such wild animals as are readily domesticated\nin captivity, or trained by man to some intelligible and practical\npurpose. For example, though we may look forward to the time when it\nwill not be deemed necessary to convert wild elephants into beasts\nof burden, it must be acknowledged that the exaction of such service,\nhowever questionable in itself, is very different from condemning an\nanimal to a long term of useless and deadening imbecility. There can be\nno absolute standard of morals in these matters, whether it be human\nliberty or animal liberty that is at stake; I merely contend that it is\nas incumbent on us to show good reason for curtailing the one as the\nother. This would be at once recognized, but for the prevalent habit of\nregarding the lower animals as devoid of purpose and individuality.\n\nThe caging of wild song-birds is another practice which deserves the\nstrongest reprobation. It is often pleaded that the amusement given\nby these unfortunate prisoners to the still more unfortunate human\nprisoners of the sick-room, or the smoky city, is a justification of\ntheir sacrifice; but surely such excuses rest only on habit--habitual\ninability or unwillingness to look facts in the face. Few invalids, I\nfancy, would be greatly cheered by the captive life that hangs at their\nwindow, if they had fully considered how blighted and sterilized a life\nit must be. The bird-catcher\u2019s trade and the bird-catcher\u2019s shop are\nalike full of horrors, and they are horrors which are due entirely to a\nsilly fashion and a habit of callous thoughtlessness, not on the part\nof the ruffianly bird-catcher (ruffianly enough, too often) who has to\nbear the burden of the odium attaching to these cruelties, but of the\nrespectable customers who buy captured larks and linnets without the\nsmallest scruple or consideration.\n\nFinally, let me point out that if we desire to cultivate a closer\nintimacy with the wild animals, it must be an intimacy based on a\ngenuine love for them as living beings and fellow-creatures, not on the\nsuperior power or cunning by which we can drag them from their native\nhaunts, warp the whole purpose of their lives, and degrade them to the\nlevel of pets, or curiosities, or captives. The sanctuaries which the\nparks of some large towns now afford to birds, squirrels, etc., suggest\nwhat our relations with wild animals _might_ be, under more humane\nconditions.\n\nOf all uses to which animals can be put--and this applies to the\ndomesticated as well as to the wild--the silliest, perhaps, is that\nof training them to \u201cperform.\u201d The true interest of animal life lies\nin its naturalness; and to see a dog, or horse, or lion performing a\n\u201ctrick\u201d is a sight which ought to cause disgust rather than pleasure\nin any rational mind, especially as the process of training in most,\nif not in all cases, involves the practice of cruelty. Humane persons\nshould discountenance every sort of entertainment in which animals are\nintroduced, from the dancing bear in the village to the more elaborate\nbut not less idiotic performances on the stage. Many of them are cruel;\nall of them are stupid; most of them are both.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTHE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD.\n\n\nIt is impossible that any discussion of the principle of animals\u2019\nrights can be at all adequate or conclusive which ignores, as many\nso-called humanitarians still ignore, the immense underlying importance\nof the food question. The origin of the habit of flesh-eating need\nnot greatly concern us; let us assume, in accordance with the most\nfavoured theory, that animals were first slaughtered by the uncivilized\nmigratory tribes under the stress of want, and that the practice thus\nengendered, being fostered by the religious idea of blood-offering\nand propitiation, survived and increased after the early conditions\nwhich produced it had passed away. What is more important to note, is\nthat the very prevalence of the habit has caused it to be regarded as\na necessary feature of modern civilization, and that this view has\ninevitably had a marked effect, and a very detrimental effect, on the\nstudy of man\u2019s moral relation to the lower animals.\n\nNow it must be admitted, I think, that it is a difficult thing\nconsistently to recognize or assert the rights of an animal on whom\nyou purpose to make a meal, a difficulty which has not been at all\nsatisfactorily surmounted by those moralists who, while accepting\nthe practice of flesh-eating as an institution which is itself\nbeyond cavil, have nevertheless been anxious to find some solid basis\nfor a theory of humaneness. \u201cStrange contrariety of conduct,\u201d says\nGoldsmith\u2019s \u201cChinese Philosopher,\u201d in commenting on this dilemma; \u201cthey\npity, and they _eat_ the objects of their compassion!\u201d There is also\nthe further consideration that the sanction implicitly given to the\nterrible cruelties inflicted on harmless cattle by the drover and the\nslaughterman render it, by parity of reasoning, wellnigh impossible to\nabolish many other acts of injustice that we see everywhere around us;\nand this obstacle the opponents of humanitarian reform have not been\nslow to utilize. Hence a disposition on the part of many humane writers\nto fight shy of the awkward subject of the slaughter-house, or to gloss\nit over with a series of contradictory and quite irrelevant excuses.\n\nLet me give a few examples.\n\n  \u201cWe deprive animals of life,\u201d says Bentham, in a delightfully na\u00efve\n  application of the utilitarian philosophy, \u201cand this is justifiable;\n  their pains do not equal our enjoyments.\u201d\n\n  \u201cBy the scheme of universal providence,\u201d says Lawrence, \u201cthe services\n  between man and beast are intended to be reciprocal, and the greater\n  part of the latter can by no other means requite human labour and\n  care than by the forfeiture of life.\u201d\n\nSchopenhauer\u2019s plea is somewhat similar to the foregoing:\n\n  \u201cMan deprived of all flesh-food, especially in the north, would\n  suffer more than the animal suffers in a swift and unforeseen death;\n  still we ought to mitigate it by the help of chloroform.\u201d\n\nThen there is the argument so frequently founded on the supposed\nsanction of Nature.\n\n  \u201cMy scruples,\u201d wrote Lord Chesterfield, \u201cremained unreconciled to the\n  committing of so horrid a meal, till upon serious reflection I became\n  convinced of its legality from the general order of Nature, which has\n  instituted the universal preying upon the weaker as one of her first\n  principles.\u201d\n\nFinally, we find the redoubtable Paley discarding as valueless the\nwhole appeal to Nature, and relying on the ordinances of Holy Writ.\n\n  \u201cA right to the flesh of animals. Some excuse seems necessary for the\n  pain and loss which we occasion to animals by restraining them of\n  their liberty, mutilating their bodies, and at last putting an end\n  to their lives for our pleasure or convenience. The reasons alleged\n  in vindication of this practice are the following: that the several\n  species of animals being created to prey upon one another affords\n  a kind of analogy to prove that the human species were intended to\n  feed upon them.... Upon which reason I would observe that the analogy\n  contended for is extremely lame, since animals have no power to\n  support life by any other means, and since we have, for the whole\n  human species might subsist entirely upon fruit, pulse, herbs, and\n  roots, as many tribes of Hindus actually do.... It seems to me that\n  it would be difficult to defend this right by any arguments which the\n  light and order of Nature afford, and that we are beholden for it to\n  the permission recorded in Scripture.\u201d\n\nIt is evident from the above quotations, which might be indefinitely\nextended, that the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb is constantly\nrepeating itself in the attitude of our moralists and philosophers\ntowards the victims of the slaughter-house. Far wiser and humaner,\non this particular subject, is the tone adopted by such writers as\nMichelet, who, while not seeing any way of escape from the practice\nof flesh-eating, at least refrain from attempting to support it by\nfallacious reasonings.\n\n  \u201cThe animals below us have also their rights before God. Animal life,\n  sombre mystery! Immense world of thoughts and of dumb sufferings!\n  All nature protests against the barbarity of man, who misapprehends,\n  who humiliates, who tortures his inferior brethren.... Life--death!\n  The daily murder which feeding upon animals implies--those hard and\n  bitter problems sternly placed themselves before my mind. Miserable\n  contradiction! Let us hope that there may be another globe in which\n  the base, the cruel fatalities of this may be spared to us.\u201d[27]\n\nMeantime, however, the simple fact remains true, and is every year\nfinding more and more scientific corroboration, that there is no such\n\u201ccruel fatality\u201d as that which Michelet imagined. Comparative anatomy\nhas shown that man is not carnivorous, but frugivorous, in his natural\nstructure; experience has shown that flesh-food is wholly unnecessary\nfor the support of healthy life. The importance of this more general\nrecognition of a truth which has in all ages been familiar to a few\nenlightened thinkers, can hardly be over-estimated in its bearing on\nthe question of animals\u2019 rights. It clears away a difficulty which has\nlong damped the enthusiasm, or warped the judgment of the humaner\nschool of European moralists, and makes it possible to approach the\nsubject of man\u2019s moral relation to the lower animals in a more candid\nand fearless spirit of enquiry. It is no part of my present purpose\nto advocate the cause of vegetarianism; but in view of the mass of\nevidence, readily obtainable, that the transit and slaughter of animals\nare necessarily attended by most atrocious cruelties, and that a large\nnumber of persons have for years been living healthily without the use\nof flesh-meat, it must at least be said that to omit this branch of the\nsubject from the most earnest and strenuous consideration is playing\nwith the question of animals\u2019 rights. Fifty or a hundred years ago,\nthere was perhaps some excuse for supposing that vegetarianism was a\nmere fad; there is absolutely no such excuse at the present time.\n\nThere are two points of especial significance in this connection.\nFirst, that as civilization advances, the cruelties inseparable from\nthe slaughtering system have been aggravated rather than diminished,\nowing both to the increased necessity of transporting animals long\ndistances by sea and land, under conditions of hurry and hardship\nwhich generally preclude any sort of humane regard for their comfort,\nand to the clumsy and barbarous methods of slaughtering too often\npractised in those ill-constructed dens of torment known as \u201cprivate\nslaughter-houses.\u201d[28]\n\nSecondly, that the feeling of repugnance caused among all people of\nsensibility and refinement by the sight, or mention, or even thought,\nof the business of the butcher is also largely on the increase; so that\nthe details of the revolting process are, as far as possible, kept\ncarefully out of sight and out of mind, being delegated to a pariah\nclass who do the work which most educated persons would shrink from\ndoing for themselves. In these two facts we have clear evidence, first\nthat there is good reason why the public conscience, or at any rate the\nhumanitarian conscience, should be uneasy concerning the slaughter of\n\u201clive-stock,\u201d and secondly that this uneasiness is already to a large\nextent developed and manifested.\n\nThe common argument, adopted by many apologists of flesh-eating, as\nof fox-hunting, that the pain inflicted by the death of the animals\nis more than compensated by the pleasure enjoyed by them in their\nlife-time, since otherwise they would not have been brought into\nexistence at all, is ingenious rather than convincing, being indeed\nnone other than the old familiar fallacy already commented on--the\narbitrary trick of constituting ourselves the spokesmen and the\ninterpreters of our victims. Mr. E. B. Nicholson, for example, is of\nopinion that \u201cwe may pretty safely take it that if he [the fox] were\nable to understand and answer the question, he would choose life,\nwith all its pains and risks, to non-existence without them.\u201d[29]\nUnfortunately for the soundness of this suspiciously partial\nassumption, there is no recorded instance of this strange alternative\nhaving ever been submitted either to fox or philosopher; so that a\nprecedent has yet to be established on which to found a judgment.\nMeantime, instead of committing the gross absurdity of talking\nof non-existence as a state which is good, or bad, or in any way\ncomparable to existence, we might do well to remember that animals\u2019\nrights, if we admit them at all, must begin with the birth, and can\nonly end with the death, of the animals in question, and that we cannot\nevade our just responsibilities by any such quibbling references to an\nimaginary ante-natal choice in an imaginary ante-natal condition.\n\nThe most mischievous effect of the practice of flesh-eating, in its\ninfluence on the study of animals\u2019 rights at the present time, is that\nit so stultifies and debases the very _raison d\u2019\u00eatre_ of countless\nmyriads of beings--it brings them into life for no better purpose than\nto deny their right to live. It is idle to appeal to the internecine\nwarfare that we see in some aspects of wild nature, where the weaker\nanimal is often the prey of the stronger, for there (apart from the\nfact that co-operation largely modifies competition) the weaker races\nat least live their own lives and take their chance in the game,\nwhereas the victims of the human carnivora are bred, and fed, and from\nthe first pre-destined to untimely slaughter, so that their whole mode\nof living is warped from its natural standard, and they are scarcely\nmore than animated beef or mutton or pork. It has been well said that\n\u201cto keep a man (slave or servant) for your own advantage merely, to\nkeep an animal that you may _eat_ it, is a lie. You cannot look that\nman or animal in the face.\u201d[30]\n\nVegetarianism, then, is the ideal towards which food-reformers must\nstrive; and in the meantime something may be done by the improvement of\nmethods of slaughtering. The advantages of the public over the private\nslaughter-house have repeatedly been demonstrated, as, for example, in\nthe Report of the Tuberculosis Commission of 1898, and in the Report\nof the Commission appointed by the Admiralty \u201cto consider the humane\nslaughtering of animals,\u201d issued in 1904. Anyone who will compare the\nblundering, haphazard methods of many English slaughter-houses with the\nmodel abattoirs of Germany, Switzerland, and other Continental States,\nwill at once see the pressing need of such reforms on the score of\nhumanity.\n\nThe butchers\u2019 objections to the abattoir system arise from the usual\ntrade prejudices, and from the fear that their interests would suffer;\nbut private interests, real or imagined, should not be allowed to stand\nin the way of a reform which would in the long run benefit all classes\nof the community--not least the unhappy victims of the shambles.\nOne thing is certain, that if all flesh-eaters could themselves see\nwhat goes on behind the scenes in many private slaughter-houses, an\nend would soon be put to a system which is as barbarous as it is\ninsanitary--a fruitful cause of cruelty to the animals and of danger to\nthe public.\n\nReform of diet will doubtless be slow, and attended in many individual\ncases with its difficulties and drawbacks. But at least we may lay down\nthis much as incumbent on all humanitarian thinkers--that everyone\nmust satisfy himself of the necessity, the real necessity, of the use\nof flesh-food, before he comes to any conclusion on the subject of\nanimals\u2019 rights. It is easy to see that, as the question is more and\nmore discussed, the result will be more and more decisive. \u201cWhatever my\nown practice may be,\u201d wrote Thoreau, \u201cI have no doubt that it is a part\nof the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave\noff eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating\neach other when they came in contact with the more civilized.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nSPORT, OR AMATEUR BUTCHERY.\n\n\nThat particular form of recreation which is euphemistically known\nas \u201csport\u201d has a close historical connection with the practice of\nflesh-eating, inasmuch as the hunter was in old times what the butcher\nis now,--the \u201cpurveyor\u201d on whom the family was dependent for its daily\nsupply of victuals. Modern sport, however, as usually carried on in\ncivilized European countries, has degenerated into what has been well\ndescribed as \u201camateur butchery,\u201d a system under which the slaughter of\ncertain kinds of animals is practised less as a necessity than as a\nmeans of amusement and diversion. Just as the youthful nobles, during\nthe savage scenes and reprisals of the Huguenot wars, used to seize\nthe opportunity of exercising their swordsmanship, and perfecting\nthemselves in the art of dealing graceful death-blows, so the modern\nsportsman converts the killing of animals from a prosaic and perhaps\ndistasteful business into an agreeable and gentlemanly pastime.\n\nNow, on the very face of it, this amateur butchery is, in one sense,\nthe most wanton and indefensible of all possible violations of the\nprinciple of animals\u2019 rights. If animals--or men, for that matter--have\nof necessity to be killed, let them be killed accordingly; but to seek\none\u2019s own _amusement_ out of the death-pangs of other beings, this is\nsaddening stupidity indeed! Wisely did Wordsworth inculcate as the\nmoral of his \u201cHartleap Well,\u201d\n\n  \u201cNever to blend our pleasure or our pride\n  With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.\u201d\n\nBut the sporting instinct is due to sheer callousness and\ninsensibility; the sportsman, by force of habit, or by force of\nhereditary influence, cannot understand or sympathize with the\nsufferings he causes, and being, in the great majority of instances, a\nman of slow perception, he naturally finds it much easier to follow the\nhounds than to follow an argument. And here, in his chief blame, lies\nalso his chief excuse; for it may be said of him, as it cannot be said\nof certain other tormentors, that he really does not comprehend the\nimport of what he is doing. Whether this ultimately makes his position\nbetter or worse, is a point for the casuist to decide.\n\nThat \u201cit would have to be killed anyhow\u201d is a truly deplorable reason\nfor torturing any animal whatsoever; it is an argument which would\nequally have justified the worst barbarities of the Roman amphitheatre.\nTo exterminate wolves, and other dangerous species, may indeed, at\ncertain places and times, be necessary and justifiable enough. But the\nsportsman nowadays will not even perform this practical service of\nexterminating such animals--the fox, for example--as are noxious to the\ngeneral interests of the community; on the contrary, he \u201cpreserves\u201d\nthem (note the unintended humour of the term!), and then, by a happy\nafterthought, claims the gratitude of the animals themselves for his\nhumane and benevolent interposition.[31] In plain words, he first\nundertakes to rid the country of a pest, and then, finding the process\nan enjoyable one to himself, he contrives that it shall never be\nbrought to a conclusion. Prometheus had precisely as much reason to be\ngrateful to the vulture for eternally gnawing at his liver, as have\nthe hunted animals to thank the predaceous sportsmen who \u201cpreserve\u201d\nthem. Let me once more enter a protest against the canting Pharisaism\nwhich is afraid to take the just responsibility of its own selfish\npleasure-seeking.\n\n  \u201cWhat name should we bestow,\u201d said a humane essayist of the\n  eighteenth century,[32] \u201con a superior being who, without provocation\n  or advantage, should continue from day to day, void of all pity\n  and remorse, to torment mankind for diversion, and at the same\n  time endeavour with the utmost care to preserve their lives and to\n  promulgate their species, in order to increase the number of victims\n  devoted to his malevolence, and be delighted in proportion to the\n  miseries which he occasioned? I say, what name detestable enough\n  could we find for such a being? Yet, if we impartially consider the\n  case, and our intermediate situation, we must acknowledge that, with\n  regard to the inferior animals, just such a being is the sportsman.\u201d\n\nThe excuses alleged in favour of English blood-sports in general, and\nof hunting in particular, are for the most part as irrelevant as they\nare unreasonable. It is often said that the manliness of our national\ncharacter would be injuriously affected by the discontinuance of these\nsports--a strange argument, when one considers the very unequal, and\ntherefore unmanly, conditions of the strife. But, apart from this\nconsideration, what right can we possess to cultivate these personal\nqualities at the expense of unspeakable suffering to the lower races?\nSuch actions may be pardonable in a savage, or in a schoolboy in whom\nthe savage nature still largely predominates, but they are wholly\nunworthy of a civilized and rational man.\n\nAs for the nonsense sometimes talked about the beneficial effects of\nthose field-sports which bring men into contact with the sublimities\nof nature, the dynamiters who used to cross the ocean to blow up an\nEnglish town might on this principle have justified the object of their\njourney by the assertion that the sea-voyage brought them in contact\nwith the exalting and ennobling influence of the Atlantic.[33]\n\nAs the case stands between the sportsman and his victims, there cannot\nbe much doubt as to whence the benefits proceed, and from which party\nthe gratitude is due.\n\n  \u201cWoe to the ungrateful!\u201d says Michelet. \u201cBy this phrase I mean the\n  sporting crowd, who, unmindful of the numerous benefits we owe to the\n  animals, exterminate innocent life. A terrible sentence weighs on the\n  tribes of sportsmen--they can create nothing. They originate no art,\n  no industry.... It is a shocking and hideous thing to see a child\n  partial to sport; to see woman enjoying and admiring murder, and\n  encouraging her child. That delicate and sensitive woman would not\n  give him a knife, but she gives him a gun.\u201d\n\nThe sports of hunting and coursing are a brutality which could not be\ntolerated for a day in a state which possessed anything more than the\nmere name of justice, freedom, and enlightenment. Sir Thomas More says\nof his model citizens in \u201cUtopia:\u201d\n\n  \u201cNor can they comprehend the pleasure of seeing dogs run after a hare\n  more than of seeing one dog run after another; for if the seeing them\n  run is that which gives the pleasure, you have the same entertainment\n  to the eye on both these occasions, since that is the same in both\n  cases; but if the pleasure lies in seeing the hare killed and torn by\n  the dogs, this ought rather to stir pity, that a weak, harmless, and\n  fearful hare should be devoured by strong, fierce, and cruel dogs.\u201d\n\nTo be accurate, the zest of sport lies neither in the running nor the\nkilling, as such, but in the excitement caused by the fact that a\nlife (some one else\u2019s life) is at stake, that the pursuer is matched\nin a fierce game of hazard against the pursued. The opinion has been\nexpressed, by one well qualified to speak with authority on the\nsubject, that \u201cwell-laid drags, tracked by experts, would test the\nmettle both of hounds and riders to hounds; but then a terrified,\npalpitating, fleeing life would not be struggling ahead, and so the\nidea is not pleasing to those who find pleasure in blood.\u201d[34]\n\nThe case is even worse when the quarry is to all intents and purposes\ndomesticated, an animal wild by nature, but by force of circumstances\nand surroundings tame. Such are the park deer, the victims of the\nsportsmen who persist in carrying on the carted stag hunt, in spite of\nthe abolition of the Royal Buckhounds in 1901. There is urgent need\nthat the laws which relate to the humane treatment of animals should be\namended, or more wisely interpreted, on this particular point, so as to\nafford immediate protection to these domesticated stags, whose torture,\nunder the name and sanction of \u201csport,\u201d has been long condemned by\nthe public conscience. Bear-baiting and cock-fighting have now been\nabolished by legal enactment, and it is high time that the equally\ndemoralizing sport of hunting of tame stags should be relegated to the\nsame category.[35]\n\nThe same must be said of some sports which are practised by the\nEnglish working man--rabbit-coursing, in particular, that half-holiday\ndiversion which is so popular in many villages of the North. An attempt\nis often made by the apologists of amateur butchery to play off one\nclass against another in the discussion of this question. They protest,\non the one hand, against any interference with aristocratic sport,\non the plea that working men are no less addicted to such pastimes;\nand, on the other hand, a cry is raised against the unfairness of\nrestricting the amusements of the poor, while noble lords and ladies\nare permitted to hunt the carted stag with impunity.\n\nThe obvious answer to these quibbling excuses is that _all_ such\nbarbarities, whether practised by rich or poor, are alike condemned by\nany conceivable principle of justice and humaneness; and, further, that\nit is a doubtful compliment to working men to suggest that they have\nnothing better to do in their spare hours than to torture defenceless\nrabbits. It was long ago remarked by Martin, the author of the famous\nAct of 1822, that such an argument indicates at bottom a contempt\nrather than regard for the working-classes; it is as much as to say,\n\u201cPoor creatures, let them alone--they have few amusements--let them\nenjoy them.\u201d\n\nNothing can be more shocking than the treatment commonly accorded to\nrabbits, rats, and other small animals, on the plea that they are\n\u201cvermin,\u201d and therefore, it is tacitly assumed, outside the pale of\nhumanity and justice; we have here another instance of the way in which\nthe application of a contemptuous name may aggravate and increase\nthe actual tendency to barbarous ill-usage. How many a demoralizing\nspectacle, especially where the young are concerned, is witnessed\nwhen \u201cfun\u201d is made out of the death and torture of \u201cvermin\u201d! How\nhorrible is the practice, apparently universal throughout all country\ndistricts, of setting steel traps along the ditches and hedgerows, in\nwhich the victims are frequently left to linger, in an agony of pain\nand apprehension, for hours, or even days! Yet there are no means of\nredressing these barbarities, because the laws, such as they are, which\nprohibit cruelty to animals, are not designed to take any cognizance of\n\u201cvermin.\u201d\n\nAll that has been said of hunting and coursing is applicable also--in\na less degree, perhaps, but on exactly the same principle--to the\nsports of shooting and fishing. Let me quote a striking testimony to\nthe wickedness and injustice of sport, as exhibited in one of its most\nrefined and fashionable forms, the \u201ccult of the pheasant.\u201d[36]\n\n  \u201cFor what is it but the deliberate massacre in cold blood every year\n  of thousands and tens of thousands of tame, hand-reared birds who are\n  literally driven into the jaws of death and mown down in a peculiarly\n  brutal manner?... A perfect roar of guns fills the air, louder tap\n  and yell the beaters, above the din can be heard the heart-rending\n  cries of wounded hares and rabbits, some of which can be seen\n  dragging themselves away, with both hind legs broken, or turning\n  round and round in their agony before they die. And the pheasants!\n  They are on every side, some rising, some dropping, some lying dead,\n  but the greater majority fluttering on the ground wounded, some\n  with both legs broken and a wing, some with both wings broken and a\n  leg, others merely winged, running to hide, others mortally wounded\n  gasping out their last breath of life amidst the fiendish sounds\n  which surround them. And this is called _sport_!... Sport in every\n  form and kind is horrible, from the rich man\u2019s hare-coursing to the\n  poor man\u2019s rabbit-coursing. All show the \u2018tiger\u2019 that lives in our\n  natures, and which nothing but a higher civilization will eradicate.\u201d\n\nIt does not in the least matter, so far as the question of animals\u2019\nrights is concerned, whether you run your victim to death with a pack\nof yelping hounds, or shoot him with a gun, or drag him from his native\nwaters by a hook; the point at issue is simply whether man is justified\nin inflicting any form of death or suffering on the lower races for his\nmere amusement and caprice. There can be little doubt what answer must\nbe given to this question.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nMURDEROUS MILLINERY.\n\n\nWe have seen what a vast amount of quite preventable suffering is\ncaused through the agency of the slaughterman who kills for a business,\nand of the sportsman who kills for a pastime, the victims in either\ncase being regarded as mere irrational automata, with no higher destiny\nthan to satisfy the most artificial wants or the most cruel caprices\nof mankind. A few words must now be said about the fur and feather\ntraffic--the slaughter of mammals and birds for human clothing or\nhuman ornamentation--a subject connected on the one hand with that of\nflesh-eating, and on the other, though to a less degree, with that of\nsport. What I shall say will of course have no reference to wool, or\nany other substance which is obtainable without injury to the animal\nfrom whom it is taken.\n\nIt is evident that in this case, as in the butchering trade, the\nresponsibility for whatever wrongs are done must rest ultimately on the\nclass which demands an unnecessary commodity, rather than on that which\nis compelled by economic pressure to supply it; it is not the man who\nkills the bird, but the lady who wears the feathers in her hat, who is\nthe true offender. But here it will be asked, _is_ the use of furs and\nfeathers unnecessary? Now of course if we consider solely the present\nneeds and tastes of society, in regard to these matters, it must be\nadmitted that a sudden, unexpected withdrawal of the numberless animal\nproducts on which our \u201ccivilization\u201d depends would be a very serious\nembarrassment; the world, as alarmists point out to us, might have to\ngo to bed without candles, and wake up to find itself without boots.\nIt must be remembered, however, that such changes do not come about\nwith suddenness, but, on the contrary, with the extremest slowness\nimaginable; and a little thought will suggest, what experience has\nalready in many cases confirmed, that there is really no indispensable\nanimal substance for which a substitute cannot be provided, when once\nthere is sufficient demand, from the vegetable or mineral kingdom.\n\nTake the case of leather, for instance, a material which is in almost\nuniversal use, and may, under present circumstances, be fairly\ndescribed as a necessary. What should we do without leather? was, in\nfact, a question very frequently asked of vegetarians during the early\nand callow years of the food-reform movement, until it was found that\nvegetable leather could be successfully employed in boot-making, and\nthat the inconsistency of which vegetarians at present stand convicted\nis only a temporary and incidental one. Now of course so long as oxen\nare slaughtered for food, their skins will be utilized in this way; but\nit is not difficult to foresee that the gradual discontinuance of the\nhabit of flesh-eating will lead to a similar gradual discontinuance of\nthe use of hides, and that human ingenuity will not be at a loss in the\nprovision of a substitute. So that it does not follow that a commodity\nwhich, in the immediate sense, is necessary now, would be absolutely or\npermanently necessary, under different conditions, in the future.\n\nMy sole reason for dwelling on this typical point is that I wish to\nguard myself, by anticipation, against a very plausible argument, by\nwhich discredit is often cast on the whole theory of animals\u2019 rights.\nWhat can be the object, it is said, of entering on the sentimental path\nof an impossible humanitarianism, which only leads into insurmountable\ndifficulties and dilemmas, inasmuch as the use of these various animal\nsubstances is so interwoven with the whole system of society that it\ncan never be discontinued until society itself comes to an end? I\nassert that the case is by no means so desperate--that it is easy to\nmake a right beginning now, and to foresee the lines along which future\nprogress will be effected. Much that is impossible in our own time may\nbe realized, by those who come after us, as the natural and inevitable\noutcome of reforms which it now lies with us to inaugurate.\n\nThis said, it may be freely admitted that, at the outset, humanitarians\nwill do well to draw a practical distinction between such animal\nproducts as are converted to some genuine personal use, and those\nwhich are supplied for no better object than to gratify the idle whims\nof luxury or fashion. The _when_ and the _where_ are considerations\nof the greatest import in these questions. There is a certain\nfitness in the hunter--himself the product of a rough, wild era in\nhuman development--assuming the skins of the wild creatures he has\nconquered; but it does not follow because an Eskimo, for example, may\nappropriately wear fur, or a Red Indian feathers, that this apparel\nwill be equally becoming to the inhabitants of London or New York;\non the contrary, an act which is perfectly natural in the one case\nis often a sign of crass vulgarity in the other. Hercules, clothed\ntriumphant in the spoils of the Nemean lion, is a subject for painter\nand poet; but what if he had purchased the skin, ready dressed, from a\ncontemporary manufacturer?\n\nWhat we must unhesitatingly condemn is the blind and reckless barbarism\nwhich has ransacked, and is ransacking, whole provinces and continents,\nwithout a glimmer of suspicion that the birds and quadrupeds which it\nis rapidly exterminating have any other part or purpose in nature than\nto be sacrificed to human vanity, that idle gentlemen and ladies may\nbedeck themselves, like certain characters in the fable, in borrowed\nskins and feathers. What care _they_ for all the beauty and tenderness\nand intelligence of the varied forms of animal life? and what is it to\nthem whether these be helped forward by man in the universal progress\nand evolution of all living things, or whether whole species be\ntransformed and degraded by the way--boiled down, like the beaver, into\na hat, or, like the seal, into a lady\u2019s jacket?\n\nWhatever it may be in other respects, the fur trade, in so far as it is\na supply of ornamental clothing for those who are under no necessity\nof wearing fur at all, is a barbarous and stupid business. It makes\npatchwork, one may say, not only of the hides of its victims, but of\nthe conscience and intellect of its patrons. A fur garment or trimming,\nwe are told, appearing to the eye as if it were one uniform piece, is\ngenerally made up of many curiously shaped fragments. It is significant\nthat a society which is enamoured of so many shams and fictions, and\nwhich detests nothing so strongly as the need of looking facts in the\nface, should pre-eminently esteem those articles of apparel which are\nconstructed on the most deceptive and illusory principle. The story of\nthe Ass in the Lion\u2019s skin is capable, it seems, of a new and wider\napplication.\n\nCruel as is all hunting of animals for their fur, there is a peculiar\ncallousness in the seal \u201cfishery,\u201d not only because the seal, far from\nbeing a fish, is one of the most sensitive of warm-blooded animals, but\nbecause of the atrocious methods by which the practice of \u201csealing\u201d has\ntoo often been pursued. In all the history of man\u2019s dealings with the\nlower races, there is no bloodier record than that of his treatment of\nthe trustful and unresisting seal.\n\nBut if the fur trade gives cause for serious reflection, what are we to\nsay of the still more abominable trade in feathers? Murderous, indeed,\nis the millinery which finds its most fashionable ornament in the dead\nbodies of birds--birds, the loveliest and most blithesome beings in\nNature! It has been said that \u201cto enumerate all the feathers used for\nornamental purposes would be practically to give a complete list of\nall known and obtainable birds.\u201d The figures and details published by\nthose humane writers who have raised an unavailing protest against this\nlatest and worst crime of Fashion are really appalling in their stern\nand naked record of unremitting cruelty.\n\n  \u201cOne dealer in London is said to have received as a single\n  consignment 32,000 dead humming-birds, 80,000 aquatic birds, and\n  800,000 pairs of wings. A Parisian dealer had a contract for 40,000\n  birds, and an army of murderers were turned out to supply the order.\n  No less than 40,000 terns have been sent from Long Island in one\n  season for millinery purposes. At one auction alone in London there\n  were sold 404,389 West Indian and Brazilian bird-skins, and 356,389\n  East Indian, besides thousands of pheasants and birds-of-paradise.\u201d\n\nThe meaning of such statistics is simply that the women of Europe and\nAmerica have given an order for the ruthless extermination of birds.\n\nIt is not seriously contended in any quarter that this wholesale\ndestruction, effected often in the most revolting and heartless manner,\nis capable of excuse or justification; yet the efforts of those who\naddress themselves to the better feelings of the offenders appear\nto meet with little or no success. The cause of this failure must\nundoubtedly be sought in the general lack of any clear conviction that\nanimals have rights; and the evil will never be thoroughly remedied\nuntil not only this particular abuse, but all such abuses, and the\nprime source from which such abuses originate, have been subjected to\nan impartial criticism.[37]\n\nIn saying this I do not of course mean to imply that special efforts\nshould not be directed against special cruelties. I have already\nremarked that the main responsibility for the daily murders which\nfashionable millinery is instigating must lie at the door of those\nwho demand, rather than those who supply, these hideous and funereal\nornaments. Unfortunately the process, like that of slaughtering cattle,\nis throughout delegated to other hands than those of the ultimate\npurchaser, so that it is exceedingly difficult to bring home a due\nsense of blood-guiltiness to the right person.\n\nThe confirmed sportsman, or amateur butcher, at least sees with his\nown eyes the circumstances attendant on his \u201csport\u201d; and the fact\nthat he feels no compunction in pursuing it is due, in most cases, to\nan obtuseness or confusion of the moral faculties. But many of those\nwho wear seal-skin mantles, or feather-bedaubed bonnets are naturally\nhumane enough; they are misled by pure ignorance or thoughtlessness,\nand would at once abandon such practices if they could be made\naware of the methods employed in the wholesale massacre of seals\nor humming-birds. Still, it remains true that all these questions\nultimately hang together, and that no complete solution will be found\nfor any one of them until the whole problem of our moral relation\ntowards the lower animals is studied with far greater comprehensiveness.\n\nFor this reason it is perhaps unscientific to assert that any\nparticular form of cruelty to animals is _worse_ than another form; the\ntruth is, that each of these hydra-heads, the offspring of one parent\nstem, has its own proper characteristic, and is different, not worse\nor better than the rest. To flesh-eating belongs the proud distinction\nof causing a greater bulk of animal suffering than any other habit\nwhatsoever; to sport, the meed of unique and unparalleled brutality;\nwhile the patrons of murderous millinery afford the most marvellous\ninstance of the capacity the human mind possesses for ignoring its\npersonal responsibilities. To re-apply Keats\u2019s words:\n\n  \u201cFor them the Ceylon diver held his breath,\n    And went all naked to the hungry shark;\n  For them his ears gush\u2019d blood; for them in death\n    The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark\n  Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe\n    A thousand men in troubles wide and dark;\n  Half ignorant, they turn\u2019d an easy wheel,\n  That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nEXPERIMENTAL TORTURE.\n\n\nGreat is the change when we turn from the easy, thoughtless\nindifferentism of the sportsman or the milliner to the more determined\nand deliberately chosen attitude of the scientist--so great, indeed,\nthat by many people, even among professed champions of animals\u2019\nrights, it is held impossible to trace such dissimilar lines of\naction to one and the same source. Yet it can be shown, I think, that\nin this instance, as in those already examined, the prime cause of\nman\u2019s injustice to the lower animals is the belief that they are mere\nautomata, devoid alike of spirit, character, and individuality; only,\nwhile the ignorant sportsman expresses this contempt through the medium\nof the battue, and the milliner through that of the bonnet, the more\nseriously-minded physiologist works his work in the \u201cexperimental\ntorture\u201d of the laboratory. The difference lies in the temperament of\nthe men, and in the tone of their profession; but in their denial of\nthe most elementary rights of the lower races, they are all inspired\nand instigated by one common prejudice.\n\nThe analytical method employed by modern science tends ultimately, in\nthe hands of its most enlightened exponents, to a recognition of the\nclose relationship between mankind and the animals; but incidentally\nit has exercised a most sinister effect on the study of the _jus\nanimalium_ among the mass of average men. For consider the dealings\nof the so-called naturalist with the animals whose nature he makes it\nhis business to observe! In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, he is\nwholly unappreciative of the distinctive quality, the individuality,\nof the subject of his investigations, and becomes nothing more than a\ncontented accumulator of facts, an industrious dissector of carcasses.\n\n  \u201cI think the most important requisite in describing an animal,\u201d says\n  Thoreau, \u201cis to be sure that you give its character and spirit, for\n  in that you have, without error, the sum and effect of all its parts\n  known and unknown. Surely the most important part of an animal is its\n  _anima_, its vital spirit, on which is based its character and all\n  the particulars by which it most concerns us. Yet most scientific\n  books which treat of animals leave this out altogether, and what they\n  describe are, as it were, phenomena of dead matter.\u201d\n\nThe whole system of our \u201cnatural history\u201d as practised at the present\ntime, is based on a deplorably partial and misleading method. Does\na rare bird alight on our shores? It is at once slaughtered by some\nenterprising collector, and proudly handed over to the nearest\ntaxidermist, that it may be \u201cpreserved,\u201d among a number of other\nstuffed corpses, in the local Museum. It is a dismal business at best,\nthis science of the fowling-piece and the dissecting-knife, but it\nis in keeping with the utilitarian tendency of a certain school of\nthought, and only a few of its professors rise out of it, and above\nit, to a maturer and more far-sighted understanding.\n\n  \u201cThe child,\u201d says Michelet, \u201cdisports himself, shatters, and\n  destroys; he finds his happiness in _undoing_. And science, in its\n  childhood, does the same. It cannot study unless it kills. The sole\n  use which it makes of a living mind is, in the first place, to\n  dissect it. None carry into scientific pursuits that tender reverence\n  for life which Nature rewards by unveiling to us her mysteries.\u201d\n\nUnder these circumstances, it is scarcely to be wondered at that\nmodern scientists, their minds athirst for further and further\nopportunities of satisfying this analytical curiosity, should desire\nto have recourse to the experimental torture which is euphemistically\ndescribed as \u201cvivisection.\u201d They are caught and impelled by the\novermastering passion of knowledge; and, as a handy subject for the\ngratification of this passion, they see before them the helpless race\nof animals, in part wild, in part domesticated, but alike regarded by\nthe generality of mankind as incapable of possessing any \u201crights.\u201d They\nare practically accustomed (despite their ostensible disavowal of the\nCartesian theory) to treat these animals as automata--things made to be\nkilled and dissected and catalogued for the advancement of knowledge;\nthey are, moreover, in their professional capacity, the lineal\ndescendants of a class of men who, however kindly and considerate\nin other respects, have never scrupled to subordinate the strongest\npromptings of humaneness to the least of the supposed interests of\nscience.[38] Given these conditions, it seems as inevitable that the\nphysiologist should vivisect as that the country gentleman should\nshoot. Experimental torture is as appropriately the study of the\nhalf-enlightened man as sport is the amusement of the half-witted.\n\nBut the fact that vivisection is not, as some of its opponents would\nappear to regard it, a portentous, unaccountable phenomenon, but rather\nthe logical outcome of a certain ill-balanced habit of mind, does not\nin any way detract from its intellectual and moral loathsomeness.\nIt is idle to spend a single moment in advocating the rights of the\nlower animals, if such rights do not include a total and unqualified\nexemption from the awful tortures of vivisection--from the doom of\nbeing slowly and mercilessly dismembered, or flayed, or baked alive, or\ninfected with some deadly virus, or subjected to any of the numerous\nmodes of torture inflicted by the Scientific Inquisition.[39] Let us\nheartily endorse the words of Miss Cobbe on this crucial subject:\n\n  \u201cThe _minimum_ of all possible rights plainly is--to be spared the\n  worst of all possible wrongs; and if a horse or dog have no claim\n  to be spared from being maddened and mangled after the fashion of\n  Pasteur and Chauveau, then it is impossible it can have any right at\n  all, or that any offence against it, by gentle or simple, can deserve\n  punishment.\u201d\n\nThe assertion, commonly made by the apologists of the Scientific\nInquisition, that vivisection is justified by its utility--that it is,\nin fact, indispensable to the advance of knowledge and civilization--is\nfounded on a mere half-view of the position; the scientist, as I have\nalready remarked, is a half-enlightened man. Let us assume (a large\nassumption, certainly, controverted as it is by some most weighty\nmedical testimony) that the progress of surgical science is assisted\nby the experiments of the vivisector. What then? Before rushing to the\nconclusion that vivisection is justifiable on that account, a wise man\nwill take into full consideration the other, the moral side of the\nquestion--the hideous injustice of torturing a sentient animal, and the\nterrible wrong thereby done to the humane sense of the community.[40]\n\nThe wise scientist and the wise humanist are identical. A true science\ncannot possibly ignore the incontrovertible fact that the practice\nof vivisection is revolting to the human conscience, even among the\nordinary members of a not over-sensitive society. The so-called\n\u201cscience\u201d which overlooks this vital fact, and confines its view to\nthe material aspects of the problem, is not science at all, but a\none-sided assertion of the views which find favour with a particular\nclass of specialists.\n\nNothing is necessary which is abhorrent, revolting, intolerable,\nto the general instincts of humanity. Better a thousand times that\nscience should forego or postpone the questionable advantage of certain\nproblematical discoveries, than that the moral conscience of the\ncommunity should be unmistakably outraged by the confusion of right and\nwrong. The short cut is not always the right path; and to perpetrate\na cruel injustice to the lower animals, and then attempt to excuse it\non the ground that it will benefit posterity, is an argument which is\nas irrelevant as it is immoral. Ingenious it may be (in the way of\nhoodwinking the unwary) but it is certainly in no true sense scientific.\n\nIf there be one bright spot, one refreshing oasis, in the discussion\nof this dreary subject, it is the humorous recurrence of the old\nthreadbare fallacy of \u201cbetter for the animals themselves.\u201d Yes, even\nhere, in the laboratory of the vivisector, amidst the baking and sawing\nand dissection, we are sometimes met by that familiar friend--the proud\nplea of a single-hearted regard for the interests of the suffering\nanimals! Who knows but what some beneficent experimentalist, if only\nhe be permitted to cut up a sufficient number of victims, may discover\nsome potent remedy for all the lamented ills of the animal as well as\nof the human creation? Can we doubt that the victims themselves, if\nonce they could realize the noble object of their martyrdom, would vie\nwith each other in rushing eagerly on the knife? The only marvel is\nthat, where the cause is so meritorious, no _human_ volunteer has as\nyet come forward to die under the hands of the vivisector![41]\n\nIt is fully admitted that experiments on men would be far more valuable\nand conclusive than experiments on animals; yet scientists usually\ndisavow any wish to revive these practices, and indignantly deny the\nrumours, occasionally circulated, that the poorer patients in hospitals\nare the subjects of such anatomical curiosity. Now here, it will be\nobserved, in the case of men, the _moral_ aspect of vivisection is\nadmitted by the scientist as a matter of course, yet in the case\nof animals it is allowed no weight whatever! How can this strange\ninconsistency be justified, unless on the assumption that men have\nrights, but animals have no rights--in other words, that animals are\nmere _things_, possessed of no claim on the justice and forbearance of\nthe community?\n\nOne of the most notable and ominous features in the apologies offered\nfor vivisection is the assertion, so commonly made by scientific\nwriters, that it is \u201cno worse\u201d than certain kindred practices. When\nthe upholders of any accused institution begin to plead that it is\n\u201cno worse\u201d than other institutions, we may feel quite assured that\nthe case is a very bad one indeed--it is the drowning man catching\nat the last straw and shred of argument. Thus the advocates of\nexperimental torture are reduced to the expedient of laying stress on\nthe cruelties of the butcher and the herdsman, and inquiring why, if\npole-axing and castration are permissible, vivisection may not also be\npermitted.[42] Sport, also, is a practice which has greatly shocked the\nsusceptibilities of the humane vivisector. A writer in the \u201cFortnightly\nReview\u201d has defined sport as \u201cthe love of the clever destruction of\nliving things,\u201d and has calculated that three millions of animals\nare yearly mangled by English sportsmen, in addition to those killed\noutright.[43]\n\nNow if the attack on vivisection emanated primarily or wholly from\nthe apologists of the sportsman and slaughterer, this _tu quoque_\nof the scientist\u2019s must be allowed to be a smart, though rather\nflippant, retort; but when _all_ cruelty is arraigned as inhuman\nand unjustifiable, an evasive answer of this kind ceases to have\nany pertinence. Let us admit, however, that, in contrast with the\nchildish brutality of the sportsman, the undoubted seriousness and\nconscientiousness of the vivisector (for I do not question that he acts\nfrom conscientious motives) may be counted to his advantage. But then\nwe have to remember, on the other hand, that the conscientious man,\nwhen he goes wrong, is far more dangerous to society than the knave or\nthe fool; indeed, the special horror of vivisection consists precisely\nin this fact, that it is not due to mere thoughtlessness and ignorance,\nbut represents a deliberate, avowed, conscientious invasion of the\nvery principle of animals\u2019 rights.\n\nI have already said that it is idle to speculate which is the worst\nform of cruelty to animals, for certainly in this subject, if anywhere,\nwe must\n\n              \u201c... reject the lore\n  Of nicely calculated less or more.\u201d\n\nVivisection, if there be any truth at all in the principle for which\nI am contending, is not the root, but the flower and consummation of\nbarbarity and injustice--the _ne plus ultra_ of iniquity in man\u2019s\ndealings with the lower races. The root of the evil lies, as I have\nthroughout asserted, in that detestable assumption (detestable equally\nwhether it be based on pseudo-religious or pseudo-scientific grounds)\nthat there is a gulf, an impassable barrier, between man and the\nanimals, and that the moral instincts of compassion, justice, and love,\nare to be as sedulously repressed and thwarted in the one direction as\nthey are to be fostered and extended in the other.\n\nFor this very reason our crusade against the Scientific Inquisition, to\nbe thorough and successful, must be founded on the rock of consistent\nopposition to cruelty in every form and phase; it is useless to\ndenounce vivisection as the source of all inhumanities, and, while\ndemanding its immediate suppression, to suppose that other minor\nquestions may be indefinitely postponed. It is true that the actual\nemancipation of the lower races, as of the human, can only proceed\nstep by step, and that it is both natural and politic to strike first\nat what is most repulsive to the public conscience. I am not denying\nthe wisdom of such a concentration of effort on any particular point,\nbut warning my readers against the too common tendency to forget the\ngeneral principle that underlies each individual protest.\n\nThe spirit in which we approach these matters should be a liberal\nand far-seeing one. Those who work for the abolition of vivisection,\nor any other particular wrong, should do so with the avowed purpose\nof capturing one stronghold of the enemy, not because they believe\nthat the war will then be over, but because they will be able to use\nthe position thus gained as an advantageous starting-point for still\nfurther progression.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nLINES OF REFORM.\n\n\nHaving now applied the principle with which we started to the several\ncases where it appears to be most flagrantly overlooked, we are in a\nbetter position to estimate the difficulties and the possibilities\nof its future acceptance. Our investigation of animals\u2019 rights has\nnecessarily been, in large measure, an enumeration of animals\u2019 wrongs,\na story of cruelty and injustice which might have been unfolded in far\ngreater and more impressive detail, had there been any reason for here\nrepeating what has been elsewhere established by other writers beyond\ndoubt or dispute.\n\nBut my main purpose was to deal with a general principle rather than\nwith particular instances; and enough has already been said to show\nthat, while man has much cause to be grateful to the lower animals for\nthe innumerable services rendered by them, he can hardly pride himself\non the record of the counter-benefits which they have received at his\nhands.\n\n  \u201cIf we consider,\u201d says Primatt, \u201cthe excruciating injuries offered\n  on our part to the brutes, and the patience on their part; how\n  frequent _our_ provocation, and how seldom _their_ resentment (and in\n  some cases _our_ weakness and _their_ strength, _our_ slowness and\n  _their_ swiftness); one would be almost tempted to suppose that the\n  brutes had combined in one general scheme of benevolence, to teach\n  mankind lessons of mercy and meekness by their own forbearance and\n  longsuffering.\u201d\n\nIt is unwise, no doubt, to dwell too exclusively on the wrongs of which\nanimals are the victims; it is still more unwise to ignore them as\nthey are to-day ignored by the large majority of mankind. It is full\ntime that this question were examined in the light of some rational\nand guiding principle, and that we ceased to drift helplessly between\nthe extremes of total indifference on the one hand, and spasmodic,\npartially-applied compassion on the other. We have had enough, and too\nmuch, of trifling with this or that isolated aspect of the subject,\nand of playing off the exposure of somebody else\u2019s insensibility by\nway of a balance for our own, as if a _tu quoque_ were a sufficient\njustification of a man\u2019s moral delinquencies.\n\nThe terrible sufferings that are quite needlessly inflicted on the\nlower animals under the plea of domestic usage, food-demands, sport,\nfashion, and science, are patent to all who have the seeing eye and\nthe feeling heart to apprehend them; those sufferings will not be\nlessened, nor will man\u2019s responsibility be diminished by any such\nirrelevant assertions as that vivisection is less cruel than sport, or\nsport less cruel than butchering,--nor yet by the contrary contention\nthat vivisection, or sport, or flesh-eating, as the case may be, is the\nprime origin of all human inhumanity. We want a comprehensive principle\nwhich will cover all these varying instances, and determine the true\nlines of reform.\n\nSuch a principle, as I have throughout insisted, can only be found\nin the recognition of the right of animals, as of men, to be exempt\nfrom any unnecessary suffering or serfdom, the right to live a natural\nlife of \u201crestricted freedom,\u201d subject to the real, not supposed or\npretended, requirements of the general community. It may be said, and\nwith truth, that the perilous vagueness of the word \u201cnecessary\u201d must\nleave a convenient loop-hole of escape to anyone who wishes to justify\nhis own treatment of animals, however unjustifiable that treatment may\nappear; the vivisector will assert that his practice is necessary in\nthe interests of science, the flesh-eater that he cannot maintain his\nhealth without animal food, and so on through the whole category of\nsystematic oppression.\n\nThe difficulty is an inevitable one. No form of words can be devised\nfor the expression of rights, human or animal, which is not liable\nto some sort of evasion; and all that can be done is to fix the\nresponsibility of deciding between what is necessary and unnecessary,\nbetween factitious personal wants and genuine social demands, on those\nin whom is vested the power of exacting the service or sacrifice\nrequired. The appeal being thus made, and the issue thus stated, it may\nbe confidently trusted that the personal conscience of individuals and\nthe public conscience of the nation, acting and reacting in turn on\neach other, will slowly and surely work out the only possible solution\nof this difficult and many-sided problem.\n\nFor that the difficulties involved in this animal question are many and\nserious, no one, I imagine, would dispute, and certainly no attempt\nhas been made in this essay to minimize or deny them. It may suit\nthe purpose of those who would retard all humanitarian progress to\nrepresent its advocates as mere dreamers and sentimentalists--men\nand women who befool themselves by shutting their eyes to the fierce\nstruggle that is everywhere being waged in the world of nature, while\nthey point with virtuous indignation to the iniquities perpetrated\nby man. But it is possible to be quite free from any sentimental\nillusions, and yet to hold a very firm belief in the principle of\nanimals\u2019 rights. We do not deny, or attempt to explain away, the\nexistence of evil in nature, or the fact that the life of the lower\nraces, as of mankind, is based to a large degree on rapine and\nviolence; nor can we pretend to say whether this evil will ever be\nwholly amended. It is therefore confessedly impossible, at the present\ntime, to formulate an entirely and logically consistent philosophy of\nrights; but that would be a poor argument against grappling with the\nsubject at all.\n\nNor are the hard unmistakable facts of the situation, when viewed in\ntheir entirety, by any means calculated to inspire with confidence\nthe opponents of humane reform. For, if it be true that internecine\ncompetition is a great factor in the economy of nature, it is no less\ntrue, as has been already pointed out, that co-operation is also a\ngreat factor therein. Furthermore, though there are many difficulties\nbesetting the onward path of humanitarianism, an even greater\ndifficulty has to be faced by those who refuse to proceed along that\npath, viz., the fact--a stronger fact than any that can be produced\non the other side--that the instinct of compassion and justice to the\nlower animals has already been so largely developed in the human\nconscience as to obtain legislative recognition. If the theory of\nanimals\u2019 rights is a mere idealistic phantasy, it follows that we have\nlong ago committed ourselves to a track which can lead us nowhither.\nIs it then proposed that we should retrace our steps, with a view to\nregaining the antique position of savage and consistent callousness;\nor are we to remain perpetually in our present meaningless attitude,\nadmitting the moral value of a partially awakened sensibility, yet\nopposing an eternal _non possumus_ to any further improvement? Neither\nof these alternatives is for a moment conceivable; it is perfectly\ncertain that there will still be a forward movement, and along the same\nlines as in the past.\n\nNor need we be at all disconcerted by the derisive inquiries of our\nantagonists as to the final outcome of such theories. \u201cThere is some\nreason to hope,\u201d said the author of the ironical \u201cVindication of the\nRights of Brutes,\u201d \u201cthat this essay will soon be followed by treatises\non the rights of vegetables and minerals, and that thus the doctrine of\nperfect equality will become universal.\u201d To which suggestion we need\nonly answer, \u201cPerhaps.\u201d It is for each age to initiate its own ethical\nreforms, according to the light and sensibility of its own instincts;\nfurther and more abstruse questions, at present insoluble, may safely\nbe left to the more mature judgment of posterity. The human conscience\nfurnishes the safest and simplest indicator in these matters. We know\nthat certain acts of injustice affect us as they did not affect our\nforefathers--it is our duty to set these right. It is not our duty to\nagitate problems, which, at the present date, excite no unmistakable\nmoral feeling.\n\nThe humane instinct will assuredly continue to develop. And it\nshould be observed that to advocate the rights of animals is far\nmore than to plead for compassion or justice towards the victims of\nill-usage; it is not only, and not primarily, for the sake of the\nvictims that we plead, but for the sake of mankind itself. Our true\ncivilization, our race-progress, our _humanity_ (in the best sense\nof the term) are concerned in this development; it is ourselves, our\nown vital instincts, that we wrong, when we trample on the rights of\nthe fellow-beings, human or non-human, over whom we chance to hold\njurisdiction.\n\nThis most important point is constantly overlooked by the opponents of\nhumanitarian reform. They labour, unsuccessfully enough, to minimize\nthe complaints of animals\u2019 wrongs, on the plea that these wrongs,\nthough great, are not so great as they are represented to be, and that\nin any case it is not possible, or not urgently desirable, for man to\nalleviate them. As if _human_ interests also were not intimately bound\nup in every such compassionate endeavour!\n\nAnd this brings us back to the moral of the whole matter. The idea of\nHumanity is no longer confined to man; it is beginning to extend itself\nto the lower animals, as in the past it has been gradually extended\nto savages and slaves. \u201cBehold the animals. There is not one but the\nhuman soul lurks within it, fulfilling its destiny as surely as within\nyou.\u201d So writes the author of \u201cTowards Democracy\u201d; and what has long\nbeen felt by the poet is now being scientifically corroborated by the\nanthropologist and philosopher. \u201cThe standpoint of modern thought,\u201d\nsays B\u00fcchner,[44] \u201cno longer recognizes in animals a difference of\nkind, but only a difference of degree, and sees the principle of\nintelligence developing through an endless and unbroken series.\u201d\n\nIt is noteworthy that, on this point, evolutionary science finds itself\nin agreement with oriental tradition.\n\n  \u201cThe doctrine of metempsychosis,\u201d says Strauss,[45] \u201cknits men and\n  beasts together here [in the East], and unites the whole of Nature\n  in one sacred and mysterious bond. The breach between the two was\n  opened in the first place by Judaism, with its hatred of the Gods\n  of Nature, next by the dualism of Christianity. It is remarkable\n  that at present a deeper sympathy with the animal world should have\n  arisen among the more civilized nations, which manifests itself here\n  and there in societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. It\n  is thus apparent that what on the one hand is the product of modern\n  science--the giving up of the spiritualistic isolation of man from\n  Nature--reveals itself simultaneously through the channel of popular\n  sentiment.\u201d\n\nThe true scientist and humanist is he who will reconcile brain to\nheart, and show us how, without any sacrifice of what we have gained\nin knowledge, we may resume what we have temporarily lost during the\nprocess of acquiring that knowledge--the sureness of intuitive faculty\nwhich is originally implanted in men and animals alike. Only by this\nreturn to the common fount of feeling will it be possible for man\nto place himself in right relationship towards the lower animals,\nand to break down the fatal barrier of antipathy that he has himself\nerected.[46] If we contrast the mental and moral attitude of the\ngenerality of mankind towards the lower races with that of such men as\nSt. Francis or Thoreau, we see what far-reaching possibilities still\nlie before us on this line of development.\n\nA not altogether unjustifiable complaint is made against \u201clovers of\nanimals,\u201d that they are often indifferent to the struggle for human\nrights, while they concern themselves so eagerly over the interests\nof the lower races. Equally true is the converse statement, that\nmany earnest reformers and philanthropists, men who have a genuine\npassion for human liberty and progress, are coldly sceptical or even\nbitterly hostile on the subject of the rights of animals. This organic\nlimitation of sympathies must be recognized and regretted, but it is\nworse than useless for the one class of reformers to indulge in blame\nor recrimination against the other. It is certain that they are both\nworking towards the same ultimate end; and if they cannot actually\nco-operate, they may at least refrain from unnecessarily thwarting and\nopposing each other.\n\nThe principles of justice, if they are to make solid and permanent\nheadway, must be applied with thoroughness and consistency. If there\nare rights of animals, there must _\u00e0 fortiori_ be rights of men;\nand, as I have shown, it is impossible to maintain that an admission\nof human rights does not involve an admission of animals\u2019 rights\nalso. Now it may not always fall to the lot of the same persons to\nadvocate both kinds of rights, but these rights are, nevertheless,\nbeing simultaneously and concurrently advocated; and those who are in\na position to take a clear and wide survey of the whole humanitarian\nmovement are aware that its final success is dependent on this broad\nonward tendency.\n\nThe advent of democracy, imperfect though any democracy must be which\ndoes not embrace all sentient beings within its scope, will be of\nenormous assistance to the cause of animals\u2019 rights, for under the\npresent unequal and inequitable social system there is no possibility\nof those claims receiving their due share of attention. In the rush\nand hurry of a competitive society, where commercial profit is avowed\nto be the main object of work, and where the well-being of men and\nwomen is ruthlessly sacrificed to that object, what likelihood is\nthere that the lower animals will not be used with a sole regard to\nthe same predominant purpose? Humane individuals may here and there\nprotest, and the growing conscience of the public may express itself in\nlegislation against the worst forms of palpable ill-usage, but the bulk\nof the people simply cannot, and will not, treat animals as they ought\nto be treated. Do the wealthy classes show any such consideration?\nLet \u201camateur butchery\u201d and \u201cmurderous millinery\u201d be the answer. Can\nit be wondered, then, that the \u201clower classes,\u201d whose own rights are\nexistent far more in theory than in fact, should exhibit a feeling of\nstolid indifference to the rights of the still lower animals? It is\nto democracy, and the democratic sense of kinship and brotherhood,\nextending first to mankind, and then to the lower races, that we must\nlook for future progress. The emancipation of men will bring with it\nanother and still wider emancipation--of animals.[47]\n\nIn conclusion, we are brought face to face with this practical\nproblem--by what means can we best provide for the attainment of the\nend we have in view? What are the surest remedies for the present\nwrongs, and the surest pledges for the future rights, of the victims of\nhuman tyranny? There are two pre-eminently important methods, which are\nsometimes regarded as contradictory in principle, but which, as I hope\nto show, are not only quite compatible, but even mutually serviceable\nand to some degree inter-dependent. We have no choice but to work\nby one or the other of these methods, and, if we are wise, we shall\nendeavour to work by both simultaneously, using the first as our chief\ninstrument of reform, the second as an auxiliary.\n\nI. Education, in the largest sense of the term, has always been,\nand must always remain, the indispensable condition of humanitarian\nprogress. Very excellent are the words of John Bright on the subject:\n\n  \u201cHumanity to animals is a great point. If I were a teacher in a\n  school, I would make it a very important part of my business to\n  impress every boy and girl with the duty of his or her being kind to\n  all animals. It is impossible to say how much suffering there is in\n  the world from the barbarity or unkindness which people show to what\n  we call the inferior creatures.\u201d\n\nIt may be doubted, however, whether the young will ever be specially\nimpressed with the lesson of humanity as long as the general tone of\ntheir elders and instructors is one of cynical indifference, if not\nof absolute hostility, to the recognition of animals\u2019 rights.[48] It\nis society as a whole, and not one class in particular, that needs\nenlightenment and remonstrance; in fact, the very conception and scope\nof what is known as a \u201cliberal education\u201d must be revolutionized and\nextended. For if we find fault with the narrow and unscientific spirit\nof what is known as \u201cscience,\u201d we must in fairness admit that our\nacademic \u201chumanities,\u201d the _liter\u00e6 humaniores_ of colleges and schools,\ntogether with much of our modern culture and refinement, are scarcely\nless deficient in the spirit of sympathy and brotherhood. This divorce\nof \u201chumanism\u201d from humaneness is one of the subtlest dangers by which\nsociety is beset; for, if we grant that love needs to be tempered and\ndirected by wisdom, still more needful is it that wisdom should be\ninformed and vitalized by love.\n\nIt is therefore not only our children who need to be educated in the\nproper treatment of animals, but our scientists, our religionists, our\nmoralists, and our men of letters. For, in spite of the great progress\nof humanitarian ideas during the past century, it must be confessed\nthat the popular exponents of western thought are still for the most\npart quite unable to appreciate the profound truth of those words\nof Rousseau, which should form the basis of an enlightened system of\ninstruction:\n\n  \u201cHommes, soyez humains! C\u2019est votre premier devoir. Quelle sagesse y\n  a-t-il pour vous, hors de l\u2019humanit\u00e9?\u201d\n\nBut how is this vast educational change to be inaugurated? Like all\nfar-reaching reforms which are promoted by a few believers in the\nface of the public indifference, it can only be carried through by\nthe energy and resolution of its supporters. The efforts which the\nvarious humane societies are now making in special directions, each\nconcentrating its attack on a particular abuse, must be supplemented\nand strengthened by a crusade--an intellectual, literary, and social\ncrusade--against the central cause of oppression, viz.: the disregard\nof the natural kinship between man and the animals, and the consequent\ndenial of their rights. We must insist on having the whole question\nfully considered and candidly discussed, and must no longer permit\nits most important issues to be shirked because it does not suit the\nconvenience or the prejudices of comfortable folk to give attention to\nthem.\n\nAbove all, the sense of ridicule that at present attaches to the\nsupposed \u201csentimentalism\u201d of an advocacy of animals\u2019 rights must be\nfaced and swept away. The fear of this absurd charge deprives the cause\nof humanity of many workers who would otherwise lend their aid, and\naccounts in part for the unduly diffident and apologetic tone which\nis too often adopted by humanitarians. We must meet this ridicule,\nand retort it without hesitation on those to whom it properly\npertains. The laugh must be turned against the true \u201ccranks\u201d and\n\u201ccrotchet-mongers\u201d--the noodles who can give no wiser reason for the\ninfliction of suffering on animals than that it is \u201cbetter for the\nanimals themselves\u201d--the flesh-eaters who labour under the pious belief\nthat animals were \u201csent\u201d to us as food--the silly women who imagine\nthat the corpse of a bird is a becoming article of head-gear--the\nhalf-witted sportsmen who vow that the vigour of the English race is\ndependent on the practice of fox-hunting--and the half-enlightened\nscientists who are unaware that vivisection has moral and spiritual,\nno less than physical, consequences. That many of our arguments are\nmere superficial sword-play, and do not touch the profound emotional\nsympathies on which the cause of humanity rests, is a fact which\ndoes not lessen their controversial significance. For this is a\ncase where those who take the sword shall perish by the sword; and\nthe clever men-of-the-world who twit consistent humanitarians with\nsentimentality may perhaps discover that they themselves--fixed as they\nare in an ambiguous and utterly untenable position--are the sickliest\nsentimentalists of all.\n\nII. Legislation, where the protection of harmless animals is concerned,\nis the fit supplement and sequel to education, and the objections urged\nagainst it are for the most part unreasonable. It must inevitably\nfail in its purpose, say some; for how can the mere passing of a\npenal statute prevent the innumerable unwitnessed acts of cruelty and\noppression which make up the great total of animal suffering? But the\npurpose of legislation is not merely thus preventive. Legislation\nis the record, the register, of the moral sense of the community;\nit follows, not precedes, the development of that moral sense, but\nnevertheless in its turn reacts on it, strengthens it, and secures it\nagainst the danger of retrocession. It is well that society should\nproclaim, formally and decisively, its abhorrence of certain practices;\nand I do not think it can be doubted, by those who have studied the\nhistory of the movement, that the general treatment of domestic animals\nin this country, bad as it still is, would be infinitely worse at this\nday but for the legislation that dates from the passing of \u201cMartin\u2019s\nAct\u201d in 1822.\n\nThe further argument so commonly advanced, that \u201cforce is no remedy,\u201d\nand that it is better to trust to the good feeling of mankind than\nto impose a legal restriction, is an amiable criticism which might\ndoubtless be applied with great effect to a large majority of our\nexisting penal enactments, but it is not very applicable to the case\nunder discussion. For if force is ever allowable, surely it is so when\nit is applied for a strictly _defensive_ purpose, such as to safeguard\nthe weak and helpless from violence. The protection of animals by\nstatute marks but another step onward in that course of humanitarian\nlegislation which, among numerous triumphs, has abolished slavery and\npassed the Factory Acts--always in the teeth of this same time-honoured\nobjection that \u201cforce is no remedy.\u201d Equally fatuous is the assertion\nthat the administrators of the law cannot be trusted to adjudicate\nbetween master and \u201cbeast.\u201d It was long ago stated by Lord Erskine\nthat \u201cto distinguish the severest discipline, for enforcing activity\nand commanding obedience in such dependents, from brutal ferocity and\ncruelty, never yet puzzled a judge or jury--never, at least, in my long\nexperience.\u201d\n\nSuch arguments against the legal protection of animals were admirably\nrefuted by John Stuart Mill:\n\n  \u201cThe reason for legal intervention in favour of children apply not\n  less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims\n  of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals. It is by the\n  grossest misunderstanding of the principles of Liberty that the\n  infliction of exemplary punishment on ruffianism practised towards\n  these defenceless beings has been treated as a meddling by Government\n  with things beyond its province--an interference with domestic life.\n  The domestic life of domestic tyrants is one of the things which it\n  is most imperative on the Law to interfere with. And it is to be\n  regretted that metaphysical scruples respecting the nature and source\n  of the authority of governments should induce many warm supporters of\n  laws against cruelty to the lower animals to seek for justification\n  of such laws in the incidental consequences of the indulgence of\n  ferocious habits to the interest of human beings, rather than in the\n  intrinsic merits of the thing itself. What it would be the duty of a\n  human being, possessed of the requisite physical strength, to prevent\n  by force, if attempted in his presence, it cannot be less incumbent\n  on society generally to repress. The existing laws of England are\n  chiefly defective in the trifling--often almost nominal--maximum to\n  which the penalty, even in the worst cases, is limited.\u201d[49]\n\nOnly with the gradual progress of an enlightened sense of equality\nshall we remedy these wrongs; and the object of our crusade should be\nnot so much to convert opponents (who, by the very disabilities and\nlimitations of their faculties, can never be really converted,) as to\nset the confused problem in a clear light, and at least discriminate\nunmistakably between our enemies and our allies. In all social\ncontroversies the issues are greatly obscured by the babel of names\nand phrases and cross arguments that are bandied to and fro; so that\nmany persons, who by natural sympathy and inclination are the friends\nof reform, are found to be ranked among its foes; while not a few of\nits foes, in similar unconsciousness, have strayed into the opposite\ncamp. To state the issues distinctly, and so attract and consolidate\na genuine body of support, is, perhaps, at the present time, the best\nservice that humanitarians can render to the movement they wish to\npromote.\n\nIn conclusion, I would state emphatically that this essay is not an\nappeal _ad misericordiam_ to those who themselves practise, or who\ncondone in others, the deeds against which a protest is here raised. It\nis not a plea for \u201cmercy\u201d (save the mark!) to the \u201cbrute-beasts\u201d whose\nsole criminality consists in not belonging to the noble family of _homo\nsapiens_. It is addressed rather to those who see and feel that, as has\nbeen well said, \u201cthe great advancement of the world, throughout all\nages, is to be measured by the increase of humanity and the decrease of\ncruelty\u201d--that man, to be truly man, must cease to abnegate his common\nfellowship with all living nature--and that the coming realization of\nhuman rights will inevitably bring after it the tardier but not less\ncertain realization of the rights of the lower races.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX\n\n\nI\n\nTHE TERM \u201cRIGHTS\u201d[50]\n\nIt was argued by Mr. D. G. Ritchie, in his book on \u201cNatural Rights,\u201d\nthat though \u201cwe may be said to have duties of _kindness towards_ the\nanimals,\u201d it is \u201cincorrect to represent these as strictly _duties\ntowards_ the animals themselves, as if they had rights against us.\u201d\n(The italics are Mr. Ritchie\u2019s.) I take this to mean that, in man\u2019s\n\u201cduty of kindness,\u201d it is the \u201ckindness\u201d only that has reference to\nanimals, the \u201cduty\u201d being altogether the private affair of the man.\nThe kindness is, so to speak, the water, and the duty is the tap; and\nthe convenience of this arrangement is that the man can shut off the\nkindness whenever it suits him to do so; as, for example, it suited Mr.\nRitchie in regard to the question of vivisection.\n\nIt is strange that ethical authorities should thus hold, as Catholic\ntheologians do, that we owe no direct duties to animals, and that\nanimals not being \u201cpersons\u201d have, strictly speaking, no rights. Indeed,\nso entertaining did the very idea of the \u201cpersonality\u201d of animals\nappear to Mr. Ritchie that he waxed humorous in his desire to know\nwhether a sponge is a \u201cperson\u201d or \u201cseveral persons,\u201d and whether the\nparasites on a dog are to be respected as \u201cpersons,\u201d and so forth.\n\nOn the other side, the humanitarian contention is quite clear--that\nthere is no difference _in kind_ between man and the other animals,\nnor any warrant in science or ethics for drawing between them, as\nbetween \u201cpersons\u201d and \u201cthings,\u201d an absolute line of demarcation.\nCompelled to admit that the difference is only one of degree, Mr.\nRitchie sought to evade the significance of this fact by arguing that\nit does not follow that, if men have rights, animals also have rights\n\u201cin the same sense of the term.\u201d I maintain that it _does_ so follow.\nIf by the recognition of rights we mean that man, as a sentient and\nintelligent being, should be exempt from all avoidable suffering, it\nfollows that other beings who are also sentient and intelligent, though\nin a lower degree, should have, in a lower degree, the same exemption.\nThis principle, if pressed to its extreme logical conclusion, will of\ncourse lead, like all other principles, to what Mr. Ritchie called\n\u201cdifficult questions of casuistry,\u201d and will open a door for small\njokes about the personality of parasites and sponges.\n\nThen, again, it is too often overlooked that the rights claimed for\nanimals, as for men, are not absolute but conditional (\u201cthis restricted\nfreedom\u201d is Herbert Spencer\u2019s expression), and that a recognition of\nthe rights of other beings is not incompatible with an equal assertion\nof one\u2019s own. Self-defence is the first and most obvious right of\neveryone. If, for instance, we hold that a tiger has a right to be\nspared any unnecessary torture, are we compelled on that account to\nallow him to eat us if he comes out of his cage? And how would our\nshooting the tiger, under those untoward circumstances, prove that the\ntiger is not a \u201cperson,\u201d inasmuch as murderers and _human_ tigers, are\nsimilarly treated under similar conditions? This \u201ctiger\u201d argument, to\nwhich Professor Ritchie was much addicted, is really very small game.\n\n                                                                   1895.\n\n\nII\n\nTHE NEO-CARTESIANS[51]\n\nAttempts are still made, from time to time, to revive the old Cartesian\ndoctrine that animals do not feel pain. Thus Mr. E. Kay Robinson, in\na book entitled \u201cThe Religion of Nature\u201d (1906) has sought to bring\npeace and comfort to the minds of his readers, and to reconcile the\nseeming cruelties of Nature with the existence of a merciful God, by\nproving that the non-human races, unlike mankind, have no consciousness\nof suffering, even when they exhibit all the symptoms of pain and show\na dread of its recurrence. This is nothing but the ancient doctrine\nof Descartes in a new garb, and is itself the outcome of the old\nanthropocentric view of the world.\n\nOn the practical results that would follow the general acceptance\nof Mr. Robinson\u2019s theories it is hardly worth while to speculate.\nHe himself is at pains to suggest that while the Cartesian doctrine\nundoubtedly led to cruelty in the past, the modern Robinsonian version\nof it would have the opposite effect. I greatly doubt it. For to\nwhatever extent it is true that animals are unconscious of pain, to the\nsame extent it must be true that there is no \u201ccruelty\u201d (in the true\nsense of the term) in \u201cpaining\u201d them. An enlightened man, no doubt,\nwill avoid any tyrannical interference with the lives of other beings,\nwhether they are conscious or not, but the majority of men are not\nenlightened, nor in any hurry to become so; we are living, in fact, in\nan age of very gross and palpable savagery, out of which nothing can\nlift us but the growing sense of kinship. Mr. Robinson\u2019s book is one of\nthe latest attempts--and, in some respects, the feeblest--to impair in\na very important respect this sense of close kinship between the human\nand the non-human, and for that reason I regard it as very mischievous\nin its tendency. As a fair instance of Mr. Robinson\u2019s logic, let us\ntake his triumphant citation of the fact that even a human being, when\nengaged in some desperate and painful struggle, is often conscious, for\nthe moment, of neither fear nor pain. From this Mr. Robinson quietly\nassumes that animals are _always_ thus unconscious, because (_a_) some\nof their actions and emotions are so, and (_b_) \u201cwe have no right to\nsuppose that one action or emotion of an animal is more conscious than\nanother.\u201d But, on the contrary, we have every right to suppose that\nconsciousness varies in animals, as in men, as may be gathered from the\nindifference which two fighting dogs will show to the blows rained upon\nthem by their owners, though at a moment of less excitement the same\nblows would elicit the most obvious signs of pain.\n\nThe _crux_ of the whole problem lies here--in the meaning of the\ngestures by which animals appear to indicate that, like human beings,\nthey are conscious of their various emotions, and it is by his chapter\non \u201cActions of Animals Explained\u201d that Mr. Robinson\u2019s treatise must be\njudged. Humanitarians entirely reject his dogmatic assertion (to take\na typical example) that \u201ca dog\u2019s exhibition of distress when separated\nfrom its master and mistress is only the working of the strong instinct\nof the gregarious, hunting animal, needing the primary factor of his\nlife, namely, a leader to follow.\u201d Not a particle of real proof can\nbe given in support of such statements, and it is upon foundations of\nthis kind that the \u201cReligion of Nature\u201d is built. And here there come\nto mind those trenchant words of Mr. Cunninghame Graham, which exactly\ndescribe the tone and method of Mr. Robinson\u2019s argument:\n\n  \u201cInstinct and reason; the hypothetical difference which good weak\n  men use as an an\u00e6sthetic, when their conscience pricks them for\n  their sins of omission and commission to their four-footed brethren.\n  But a distinction wholly without a difference, and a link in the\n  long chain of fraud and force with which we bind all living things,\n  men, animals, and most of our reasoning selves, in one crass\n  neutral-tinted slavery.\u201d\n\n\nIII\n\nMOTOR VERSUS HORSE[52]\n\n\u201cAfter many centuries of usefulness,\u201d so it is said, \u201cthe horse is\nabout to be retired from active service as an agent in locomotion.\u201d\nElectricity, petrol, and cable tramcars are to be the chief factors\nin this change, which will replace horsepower by the greater energies\nof mechanical invention, and will make it possible to ride a hundred\nmiles \u201cfor about a shilling.\u201d Looking at the matter as humanitarians\nwe are heartily pleased at the prospect. To be sure, it is not\nvery creditable to the good feelings of mankind that, \u201cafter many\ncenturies of usefulness,\u201d the horse should be \u201cretired,\u201d not because\nwe are ashamed of the ill-usage he has received, but because we have\ndiscovered a cheaper method of traction; nor is it pleasant to reflect\non the countless myriads of undeserved blows and curses that have\ndescended on our faithful friend and helper during the period of his\nservice. But letting that pass, as one of the many blots with which the\npages of history are disfigured, we rejoice to think that the wretched\nsystem of horse-traction is perhaps drawing to a close, and we trust\nthat the present century will see it legally prohibited in England, as\ndog-traction has already been.\n\nNo doubt we shall hear a lot of sentimental talk about the picturesque\nbeauty of the horse, the ugliness of machinery, and so forth; but\nwe shall know what to reply to such \u201c\u00e6sthetic\u201d arguments, with the\nexperience before us (or, let us hope, _behind_ us) of the hackney-cab,\nthe tramcar, and the tradesman\u2019s cart and wagon. The usage of the\nhorse, in our so-called civilization, has reached a pitch of sordid\ndeformity which, even if regarded solely from the point of view of\nthe artist, makes it impossible to advance any valid argument against\nthe motor-car. However unromantic such mechanical conveyance may be,\nit will at least save us from the unseemly sights that have outraged\nevery sense of beauty, decency and humaneness. The motor will not\nbe recklessly overloaded; it will not be cursed, and thrashed, and\nwrenched out of its natural shape by way of an outlet for the savage\ntemper of its driver; for curiously enough, the lifeless machine will\nbe treated with far more respect, and in a far more rational spirit,\nthan the living animal, and the conductor who should ill-use a car,\nas horses are now ill-used, would be promptly conveyed to the nearest\npolice-cell or lunatic-asylum.\n\nBut what, it may be asked, is to become of the horse himself, in the\nnew age of machinery? Is \u201cretirement,\u201d in his case, to be the same\nthing as extinction? We do not know; but we know this--that, in the\ncase of our \u201cbeasts of burden,\u201d merciful extinction is a preferable\nfate to what is humorously called \u201cpreservation.\u201d Centuries hence,\nperhaps, some learned antiquarian will reconstruct, from such\nanatomical data as may be available, the gaunt, misshapen, pitiable\nfigure of the London cab-horse, and a more humane and enlightened\nposterity will shudder at the sight of what we still regard as a\nlegitimate \u201cagent in locomotion.\u201d\n\n                                                From _The Humanitarian_.\n                                                          1896.\n\n\nIV\n\nZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.[53]\n\nSome fifty or sixty years ago the poet, James Thomson (\u201cB.V.\u201d), wrote\nas follows in his journal:--\n\n  \u201cIt being a very wet Sunday, I had to keep in, and paced much,\n  prisoner-like, to and fro my room. This reminded me of the wild\n  beasts at Regent\u2019s Park, and especially of the great wild birds,\n  the vultures and eagles. How they must suffer! How long will it be\n  ere the thought of such agonies becomes intolerable to the public\n  conscience, and wild creatures be left at liberty when they need not\n  be killed. Three or four centuries, perhaps.\u201d\n\nThis gloomy prognostication hardly seems likely to be fulfilled,\nfor there has lately been a great awakening of the conscience, if\nnot of the general public, at least of the humaner section of it,\nand much improvement in the condition of the wild animals in the\n\u201cZoo\u201d has now been effected. Ever since its establishment in 1891\nthe Humanitarian League has been drawing attention to the cruelty of\ncellular imprisonment for animals as for men, and it is therefore with\nlegitimate satisfaction that humanitarians note the introduction of a\nreform which they were the first to advocate. Here, for example, is an\nextract from a pamphlet which I wrote for the League in 1895, under the\ntitle of \u201cA Zoophilist at the Zoo\u201d:--\n\n  \u201c\u2018Christianos ad leones\u2019 was the cry of the heathen persecutors in\n  ages long past, when the Christian martyrs were flung to the lions\n  in the Roman amphitheatre. Time has now had his revenges; but we do\n  not know that the new version of \u2018Christianos ad leones,\u2019 as daily\n  exemplified in the stream of visitors to the lion-houses at the Zoo,\n  is altogether edifying. Indeed, it has sometimes occurred to us, when\n  musing on that strange medley of thoughtless sight-seers, who derive\n  an unaccountable pleasure from staring at the wretched life-prisoners\n  in our great animal convict-station, that the infra-human is not\n  always confined to the inner side of the bars, and that there was\n  some force in Thoreau\u2019s epigram that God made man \u2018a little lower\n  than the _animals_.\u2019 Well, we must hope for better things in the\n  future. Less than a century ago it was the fashion to cage pauper\n  lunatics where passers-by could see them; and benevolent nurses,\n  when inclined to give a treat to the children in their charge, would\n  pleasantly take them to have a peep at the frenzied ravings of the\n  maniacs. We marvel now to hear of such inhumanity, but it may be that\n  a future generation will equally marvel to hear that the sight of\n  caged animals--those martyrs of Christian civilization--could give\n  any satisfaction to the children, and the grown-up children to whom a\n  \u201cZoo\u201d is a Paradise.\n\n  \u201cIt all depends on how we look at these things. At present menageries\n  are simply part of the whole system which regards the lower animals\n  as mere goods and chattels, created for the use and amusement of\n  mankind, without any definite claim, in return, to a free and healthy\n  existence. The animals are no more than subjects for the museum or\n  menagerie, the laboratory or dissecting-room. Does a rare bird alight\n  on our shores? Our object is to knock it down first, and, as the\n  taxidermists say, \u2018set it up\u2019 afterwards; or, if it still lives, to\n  confine it in a cage or aviary. The London Gardens are doubtless a\n  great deal better than many other menageries; but our whole method of\n  treating animals is stupid and barbarous. We want a more humane and\n  intelligent appreciation of animal life, and that sense of _kinship_\n  which would make us desirous of seeing our rudimentary brethren under\n  happier and more natural conditions.\n\n  And, after all, we have ourselves paid the penalty for our lack of\n  humanity, by the loss of humour that accompanied it; for the bathos\n  of the notices that used to meet us at every turn in the Gardens was\n  very depressing to those who were alive enough to feel it. The Bengal\n  Tigers\u2019 den labelled, \u2018Beware of Pickpockets\u2019! The Eagles\u2019 Aviaries\n  labelled, \u2018To the Refreshment Rooms\u2019! Were ever such incongruous\n  ideas set in such ludicrous proximity? There, disconsolate in\n  durance vile, sat the fabled Bird of Jove, who bore off Ganymede to\n  be the god\u2019s cup-bearer, while, within a few yards, the _modern_\n  Ganymede was serving out coffees and lemon-squashes, and enjoying\n  (though perhaps he knew it not) the most complete vengeance on the\n  great Raptor who enslaved him.\u201d\n\nThe most powerful indictment of the Zoological Gardens, as they were,\nwas the series of articles contributed by Mr. Edmund Selous to the\n_Saturday Review_ in 1901, and afterwards reprinted as a pamphlet by\nthe Humanitarian League, under the title \u201cThe Old Zoo and the New,\u201d\na picture of what the Zoo actually was, as contrasted with what it\nmight become. It was the publication of this trenchant criticism,\nsynchronizing as it did with a movement for reform within the\nZoological Society itself, that brought about the present improved\nstate of public opinion as to the management of the Gardens, and caused\nthe _Daily Mail_, that enterprising journal which is ready to exploit\neven humanitarian ideas when they seem likely to be popular, to publish\na number of caustic articles on \u201cThe Tortured Animals at the Zoo.\u201d\n\nFrom America comes the same complaint, as in the following passage\ntaken from an article in _Our Animal Friends_ (New York):--\n\n  \u201cIt is indeed high time that the conditions of animals in menageries\n  and zoological establishments should be made a subject of very\n  practical concern. In many cases their condition is pitiable. Few\n  things are more distressing to observe than the restive motions of\n  the larger cats, such as lions, tigers, and leopards, or of smaller\n  animals like wolves and foxes, pacing back and forth in their small\n  dens, as if suffering an agony of restlessness, as indeed they often\n  must be. No animal ought to be kept in any such condition, and the\n  time may come--we think it has already come--when this form of\n  cruelty may be abolished by the strong hand of law, where it cannot\n  be terminated by the milder methods of persuasion.\u201d\n\n\nV\n\nSCIENTIST AND SACERDOTALIST[54]\n\nWhat do our up-to-date scientists think (if they think at all) of the\njustification of vivisection put forward by Monsignor John S. Vaughan,\na sacerdotalist of the medieval school? To a watchful observer few\nthings could have been more entertaining than the spectacle of an\nold-world Catholic, a belated casuist of (say) thirteenth century\ntemperament, coming forward in the _Saturday Review_ (new style) to\njustify, from a moral standpoint, the doings of the modern vivisector,\nand basing his argument on the immemorial \u201cproposition\u201d that \u201cbeasts\nexist for the use and benefit of man.\u201d\n\nNow, there are undoubtedly numbers of persons living in this twentieth\ncentury who still hold the belief that the animals were created for\nman\u2019s pleasure, and it may be that, in appealing to that ancient\nsuperstition, Mgr. Vaughan was using the most popular weapon in the\npro-vivisectionist armoury. But whatever the \u201cman in the street\u201d\nmay think on this subject, the evolutionist and man of science, at\nany rate, is _not_ able to take refuge in the plea that man is the\ncentre of the universe, and that all other beings were created for\nmankind; for if there is one thing above others that Darwin\u2019s followers\nhave scouted, it is this old anthropocentric notion which forms the\nMonsignor\u2019s \u201cproposition.\u201d The animals, according to the scientific\nview, were not designed for man\u2019s benefit, nor is there any impassable\ngulf between human and non-human--on the contrary, man was evolved from\namong the animals, and is in very truth an animal himself. This is the\ncreed, beyond denial or evasion, of the Darwinian scientists, whose\ntorture of their rudimentary brethren the sacerdotalist is so eager to\ncondone. Monsignor Vaughan is defending vivisection by an assumption\nwhich the vivisectors themselves must hold to be unscientific and\nobsolete. The sufficient answer to the anthropocentric fallacy of the\ntheologian is found in Mr. Howard Moore\u2019s laconic remark: \u201cBut Darwin\nhas lived.\u201d\n\nBut vivisection has got to be defended somehow, on moral, as well as\nmedical, grounds; and to do Monsignor Vaughan justice the ground he\nalleges is the only one that can afford, or could once have afforded,\nany semblance of logical foot-hold. \u201cBeasts exist for the use and\nbenefit of man.\u201d In that unquestioned belief lay the justification--the\nsupposed justification--of the horrible tortures inflicted on animals\nin the medicinal and magical quackery of the middle ages, when, as\nDr. Berdoe has pointed out, \u201cthe nastier the medicament the more was\nexpected of it.\u201d Animals were regarded alike by the religion, and\nthe science, and the common usage of the times, as mere _things_,\nprovidentially designed to be the instruments of man\u2019s welfare, at the\ncost of whatever suffering to themselves. What, therefore, if they were\ncarved, and tortured, and vivisected to provide mankind with the filthy\nnostrums prescribed as the remedies for disease? An anthropocentric\nphilosophy could explain and justify it all. And so it might do at the\npresent time, but for the fact that the anthropocentric philosophy--as\na philosophy--has itself ceased to exist.\n\nIndeed, the point of the complaint against the scientists is\nprecisely this--that the practice of vivisection, though perhaps\nlogically justifiable on the absurd old belief that animals have\nno _raison d\u2019\u00eatre_ except to minister to man\u2019s convenience, is\nwholly unjustifiable in the light of evolutionary science, which has\ndemonstrated beyond question the kinship of all sentient life. That the\nscientist, in order to rake together a moral defence for his doings,\nshould condescend to take shelter even under the medieval reasoning\nof the sacerdotalist, is a proof that his position is hopelessly\ninconsistent and unsound; for having got rid of the old anthropocentric\nfallacy in the realm of science, he actually avails himself of the same\nfallacy in the realm of ethics. This, of course, is less surprising\nwhen we remember that one and the same person may be, and often is,\nas reactionary in one department of thought as he is progressive in\nanother, and that the modern man of science is not infrequently a\nmedievalist in morals. The present writer well remembers the incident\nwhich first shook his faith in the infallibility of \u201cscience.\u201d He had\nadopted a vegetarian diet, and a distinguished scientist with whom he\nhappened to be on friendly terms expressed a wish to \u201cspeak to him\u201d on\nthe subject. The writer felt that a critical moment had arrived, and\nawaited the scientific pronouncement with respectful anxiety. When it\ncame--spoken with evident earnestness--it was this: \u201cDon\u2019t you think\nthe animals were _sent_ us as food?\u201d\n\nSo we see the scientist and the sacerdotalist, forgetting their\nradical differences, patching up a superficial alliance with the\npious object of perpetuating the experimental torture of the\nlaboratory. Henceforward let none say that Darwinian and Catholic are\nnot in agreement. _Laborare est orare_ was the old saying; and now\nsurely it should be expanded by Monsignor Vaughan and his Catholic\nfellow-vivisectionists into _laboratorium est oratorium_--the house\nof torture is the house of prayer. If it is not exactly \u201cmercy and\ntruth\u201d that are met together, \u201crighteousness and peace\u201d that have\nkissed each other, still it is a beautiful and touching scene of\nreconciliation--this meeting of scientist and sacerdotalist over the\ntorture-trough of the helpless animal. They might exclaim in the words\nof Tennyson:--\n\n  \u201cThere above the little grave,\n  O there above the little grave,\n    We kissed again with tears.\u201d\n\nIt seems to us as humanitarians, that, as far as Monsignor Vaughan and\nthe Catholic vivisectionist school is concerned (it is otherwise with\nthe scientists), it is pure waste of time to argue with them, there\nbeing a fundamental difference of opinion as to data and principles.\nThe sole reason for discussion is to insure that the humanitarian\nview of the question be rightly placed before the public, and this\ncan best be done by stating it clearly in contradistinction to the\nanthropocentric dogma. We do _not_ admit the assumption that \u201cbeasts\nexist for the use and benefit of man.\u201d We view the matter in a wholly\ndifferent aspect. We find ourselves born into an age which has been\nevolved in a gradual progress from savagery to civilization, with\nold-world wrongs around us, the worst of which are being slowly\nredeemed, century after century, by a growing spirit of brotherhood.\nWe have never pretended that these wrongs, woven as they are into the\nfabric of Society, can be immediately and simultaneously righted, nor\ndo we admit, in the case of the lower animals any more than in the\ncase of men, that the necessity of inflicting _some_ pain confers the\nright to inflict _any_ pain. We insist on the undeniable tendency from\nbarbarism to humaneness, which has already at many points bridged the\ngulf between man and man, and will also bridge the gulf between man and\nhis lower fellow-creatures. Science has exploded the idea that there\nis any difference in kind, and not in degree only, between the human\nand the non-human animal; and sympathy, guided by reason, is making it\nmore and more impossible that we should for ever treat as mere automata\nfellow-beings to whom we are, in fact, very closely akin.\n\n                                                  _Humane Review_, 1901.\n\n\nVI\n\nTHE CONFESSIONS OF A PHYSICIAN[55]\n\n\u201cConfessions of a Physician,\u201d by V. Veresaeff, is a Russian work,\nfirst published in 1901, the writer of which exposes with the\nutmost frankness the secrets of the medical profession--the doubts,\ndifficulties, dangers, scruples, failures, and even homicides, that\nfall to the lot of the practitioner. It is not that Veresaeff is\ndisloyal to his colleagues; but his judgment is drawn in two opposite\ndirections by his sense of duty to Science on the one side, and to\nMorality on the other, and is exercised by the problem of how to\nreconcile the \u201cnecessities,\u201d as he conceives them, of medical research\nwith the \u201crights,\u201d as he cannot but admit them to be, of its human and\nnon-human victims. Hence, though Veresaeff is himself only in part\na humanitarian, his book has considerable interest for humanitarian\nreaders.\n\nIn a dissertation on the English anti-vivisection movement, from which\nthe Russian movement originated, Veresaeff, while not stifling his\nmisgivings, falls back on the assertion that vivisection is necessary,\nbecause it is impossible without it to know the living organism. He is\nvery contemptuous of the \u201cclergymen, society ladies, statesmen, persons\nentirely unassociated with science,\u201d who seek to refute the scientists;\nbut then, veering to the moral side of the question, he makes the\nfollowing reference to this book on \u201cAnimals\u2019 Rights\u201d:\n\n  \u201cHowever, we must give them their due; for not all the\n  anti-vivisectionists base their opinions upon such crude and\n  ignorant tenets. A number of them seek to base the whole question\n  upon foundations of pure principle; thus, for instance, the author\n  of \u2018Animals\u2019 Rights, Considered in relation to Social Progress,\u2019\n  says: \u2018Let us assume that the progress of surgical science is\n  assisted by the experiments of the vivisector. What then? Before\n  rushing to the conclusion that vivisection is justifiable on that\n  account, a wise man will take into full consideration the other--the\n  moral side of the question--the hideous injustice of torturing an\n  innocent animal.\u2019 This is the only possible and fitting position for\n  the anti-vivisectionist to take up; whether science can dispense\n  with vivisection or not, does not concern him; animals are made to\n  suffer, and that settles everything. The question is plainly put,\n  and there can be no room for any equivocation. I repeat, we ought\n  not to ridicule the pretensions of the anti-vivisectionists--the\n  sufferings of animals are truly horrible--and sympathy with them is\n  not sentimentality; but we must bear in mind that there is no \u2018way\n  round,\u2019 where the building up of scientific medicine--its goal--the\n  healing of mankind--is at stake.\u201d[56]\n\nWhile welcoming this statement, I must point out that in the passage\nof \u201cAnimals\u2019 Rights\u201d (p. 71) to which Dr. Veresaeff refers, I did not\nfor a moment _admit_ that vivisection is necessary to surgical science;\nI merely _assumed_ it for purposes of argument, and I added the\nimportant qualifying words which are omitted in the Russian quotation:\n\u201cA large assumption certainly, controverted as it is by some most\nweighty medical testimony.\u201d It is necessary to point this out, because\nwe humanitarians do not share Dr. Veresaeff\u2019s perplexity, swayed as\nhe is between the demands of a vivisecting science and the protests\nof a suffering humanity; on the contrary, we are convinced that the\npainful contradiction between conflicting duties, by which his mind\nis troubled, is a phantom of his own creation. No doubt if he assumes\nthat one particular science, that of medicine, must pursue its course\nregardless of any other science, such as that of morals, he will find\nhimself confronted by problems and contradictions innumerable, to which\nno direct answer can be given; but that very assumption is one which\nno clear-headed thinker will grant. No single science can make true\nprogress at the expense of another science; and when such conflicts\narise they are a sign that there is something wrong, and that it is\ntime to pause and to reflect. Medical problems, like all others, can\nonly be solved in the solution of the social question as a whole, and\nthere is no royal road to the achievement of medical aspirations.\n\n\nVII\n\nANTIPATHY OR SYMPATHY?[57]\n\nIt is to be regretted that so distinguished a writer as Mr. G. K.\nChesterton should have given countenance to the idea that an assertion\nof the rights of animals implies a denial of the rights of man. \u201cI use\nthe word humanitarian,\u201d he says (in his book \u201cOrthodoxy,\u201d) \u201cin the\nordinary sense, as meaning one who upholds the claims of all creatures\nagainst those of humanity.\u201d This strange blunder of supposing that\nwe humanitarians regard the interests of humans and sub-humans as\nantagonistic to each other seems to arise from a misunderstanding\nof our statement that, in the spread of humane feelings, there is a\n_gradual_, not immediate, recognition of kinship, embracing first the\nfamily, then the fellow citizen, then the slave, and then the non-human\nrace--a progressive sense of morality which is thus ridiculed by Mr.\nChesterton:\n\n  \u201cI think it wrong to sit on a man. Soon, I shall think it wrong to\n  sit on a horse. Eventually (I suppose,) I shall think it wrong to\n  sit on a chair. That is the drive of the argument.... A perpetual\n  tendency, to touch fewer and fewer things might, one feels, be a mere\n  brute unconscious tendency, like that of a species to produce fewer\n  and fewer children.\u201d\n\nMr. Chesterton, it will be seen, supposes that the trend of humanitarian\nthought is merely \u201cto touch fewer and fewer things\u201d--to \u201ctouch,\u201d that\nis, with the whip, the hob-nailed boot, the hunting-knife, the scalpel,\nor the pole-axe. He wholly fails to see that what we really desire is\nto \u201ctouch\u201d not fewer and fewer things, but more and more--_i.e._, to\nget into touch with them by virtue of that sympathetic intelligence\nwhich shows us that they are akin to ourselves. Why, ultimately, do we\nobject to such practices as vivisection, blood-sport, and the butchery\nof animals for food? Because of the cruelty involved in them, no doubt;\nbut also, and even more, because of the hideous narrowing of our own\nhuman sympathies and human pleasures which these savage customs involve.\n\nLet Mr. Chesterton imagine the existence of an ogreish race of men so\npowerful that wherever one of them appeared, all ordinary mortals would\nbe fain to run at full speed into holes and corners to escape him.\nWould these tyrants find it to be a diminution, and not rather a vast\nincrease, of their enjoyment, if they learnt gradually \u201cto touch fewer\nand fewer things\u201d in the ogreish sense, while they touched more and\nmore in the sense of brotherhood and friendship? Precisely the same in\nkind, though not, of course, in degree, is the relation, as apprehended\nby humanitarians, of man towards the lower animals.\n\nEqually erroneous is Mr. Chesterton\u2019s assumption that mankind is, in\nsome special and exclusive sense, a \u201csociety,\u201d different in kind, and\nnot in degree only, from the lower races.\n\n  \u201cMankind is not a tribe of animals to which we owe compassion.\n  Mankind is a club to which we owe our subscription. Pity, the vague\n  sentiment of the _sunt lacrym\u00e6 rerum_, is due indisputably to\n  everything that lives. And as regards this, the difference between\n  our pity for suffering men and our pity for suffering animals is very\n  possibly only a question of degree. But the difference between our\n  moral relation to men and to animals is not a difference of degree in\n  the least. It is a difference of kind. What we owe to a human being\n  we owe to a fellow-member of a fixed, responsible, and reciprocal\n  society.... This is the basic error upon which all Mr. Salt\u2019s school\n  goes wrong. They will not see that when we talk of human superiority\n  we do not mean superiority in a degree on an inclined plane; we\n  mean the existence of a certain definite society, different from\n  everything else, and founded not on the sorrows of all living, but\n  on the rights of men. Cruelty to man and cruelty to animals are two\n  quite detestable, but quite different, sins.... The man who breaks\n  a cat\u2019s back breaks a cat\u2019s back. The man who breaks a man\u2019s back\n  breaks an implied treaty. The tyrant to animals is a tyrant. The\n  tyrant to men is a traitor. Nay, he is a rebel, for man is royal.\u201d[58]\n\nMankind, says Mr. Chesterton, is a society. But so are bees and\nbeavers. There are innumerable societies, and it is impossible to prove\nthat human society is more organic or more conclusive than the rest.\nOur sense of kinship is continually widening, and there never has been,\nnor is, any finality in the social bond of which Mr. Chesterton speaks.\nIt would have surprised the Greek or Roman of old to be informed that\nhe was a member of the same society with the barbarian or the slave.\nIt would hardly be admitted by the white American of to-day that he\nand the African negro are own brethren. That, presumably, is because\ntheir sympathies are not yet developed enough to enable them to see\neven the fact of human kinship; but what if Mr. Chesterton\u2019s sympathies\nare not developed enough to enable _him_ to see what many less subtle\nintellects have already seen--that beyond this \u201chuman\u201d society there is\nthe still larger society of the higher sentient existence.\n\n\u201cThe man who breaks a cat\u2019s back breaks a cat\u2019s back.\u201d This terse\nsaying contains the root of all cruelty to animals, the quintessence\nof all the anthropocentric bigotry which has caused the immemorial\nill-usage of the non-human races through the length and breadth of the\nworld. \u201cThe man who breaks a cat\u2019s back breaks a cat\u2019s back.\u201d Yes, and\nthe scientist who vivisects a dog, vivisects a dog; the sportsman who\nbreaks up a hare breaks up a hare; the butcher who bleeds a calf bleeds\na calf. That is all. And if one points out the cruelty, injustice, and\nfolly of vivisection, or sport, or flesh-eating, appeal is instantly\nmade to the vaunted fact that man is \u201croyal\u201d and the human race \u201ca\nsociety\u201d!\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE ANIMAL QUESTION AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION[59]\n\nIt is, perhaps, not sufficiently recognized by zoophilists how\nlargely the ill-usage of the lower animals is due to the iniquity of\npresent social conditions, and how vain it is to expect to remedy the\nconsequences without attacking the cause. So long as pecuniary profit\nand self-interest are accepted as the guiding principles of trade, it\nwill remain impossible to secure a right treatment for animals; because\nit is absurd to suppose that mankind will agree to exempt the lower\nraces from the results of an economic tyranny of which men also are the\nvictims. If the worship of the great god \u201cProfit\u201d bears so hardly on\nmen and women, is it likely that the result of this pitiless struggle\nwill be less disastrous to the animals, who by most people are not\nregarded as fellow-beings at all?\n\nLet us take a few instances. The over-working of horses is one of the\ncommonest and worst forms of ill-treatment to which domestic animals\nare liable, and is justly punishable by law when \u201ccruelty\u201d--that\nsomewhat vague offence--can be proved. But such proof, except in\nflagrant cases, is rendered practically impossible by the fact that,\nfor the sake of employers\u2019 profits, men and women are daily over-worked\nquite as cruelly as horses are. If tramway companies are permitted\nto work their men long and shameful hours to swell the shareholders\u2019\ndividends, what can be done for the horses? And where there is actual\nill-usage of horses by those who have charge of them, it must be\nremembered that the men\u2019s ill-temper is often the result of the harsh\nconditions under which they work. Selfishness begets its like, and the\nsufferers by a harsh system will in turn treat other sufferers harshly.\n\nAgain, why is it that so many persons are engaged in trades that\ninvolve cruelty to animals? Obviously because the present conditions of\nsociety leave them no choice. One man must be a slaughterman, another\na cattle drover, another a bird-catcher, because no other occupation\nhappens to be open to him, and he naturally chooses to ill-treat\nanimals rather than to starve himself. Economic necessity leaves no\nscope for humaneness. Before we fairly condemn the brutal drover, or\nsealer, or bird-catcher, we must so reconstitute society as to ensure\nto each citizen a decent and humane livelihood. It is idle to preach\nhumanity to those who themselves live in ever-present fear of the\nhunger-wolf.\n\nIn like manner \u201csport,\u201d in its baser forms, is maintained and\nperpetuated by bad social conditions. It was the \u201changers on\u201d of the\nRoyal Buckhounds who made it so difficult to abolish that disreputable\ninstitution; tame stags must still be worried that local \u201ctrade\u201d\nmay be encouraged; and that rich idlers may come into the hunting\ndistricts to spend their wealth. So, too, the blackguardly pastimes\nof rabbit-coursing and pigeon-shooting are mainly supported by the\nbetting and gambling element, which thrives in proportion as honest\nwork is underpaid. Nor is it to be wondered that many individuals\nof all classes should become gamblers and rogues, when the principle\nof commercial enterprise is what it is--an utterly immoral desire to\nmake money by the quickest possible method, and without the slightest\nconsideration for any interests but one\u2019s own.\n\nIn this breakneck competition everything must be done at high pressure,\nor the margin of \u201cprofit\u201d will be lost. It is horrible, is it not,\nthat the slaughterman should sometimes skin the sheep alive? But time\nis money; and the slaughterman may himself be the victim of some\nskinflint employer, and perhaps he is anxious to rise to eminence in\nhis profession and give his children a real Christian bringing up.\nThus, too, the master-butchers have opposed the abolition of private\nslaughter-houses because their \u201cprofits\u201d would be lessened. It costs\nmore to have the best and most modern appliances--so humanity once more\nhas had to wait.\n\nThe moral is that zoophilists, while in no wise relaxing their efforts\nfor the welfare of the animals, should also range themselves on the\nside of social reform. And this suggests the remark that the sub-title\nof this book is not devoid of significance, for it is when they are\n\u201cconsidered in relation to social progress\u201d that the rights of animals\nare most likely to be understood.\n\n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY[60]\n\n\n\u201cFree Thoughts upon the Brute Creation.\u201d By John Hildrop, M.A. London,\n1742. This examination of Father Bougeant\u2019s \u201cPhilosophical Amusement\nupon the Language of Beasts\u201d (1740) is an argument in favour of animal\nimmortality.\n\n\u201cA Reasonable Plea for the Animal Creation.\u201d By Robert Morris. London,\n1746. A reprint of some letters urging that \u201cwe have no right to\ndestroy, much less to eat of any thing which has life.\u201d\n\n\u201cAn Essay on the Future Life of Brutes.\u201d By Richard Dean. Manchester,\n1767. The probability of a future life for animals is asserted on\nscriptural and other grounds.\n\n\u201cAn Apology for the Brute Creation, or Abuse of Animals Censured.\u201d\nBy James Granger. London, 1772. A short sermon condemning cruelty to\nanimals in sport, etc.\n\n\u201cA Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty to Brute\nAnimals.\u201d By Humphry Primatt, D.D. London, 1776. A quaint but excellent\nbook, urging, as a rule of conduct, \u201cto do unto others as, in their\ncondition, you would be done unto.\u201d\n\n\u201cDisquisitions on Several Subjects.\u201d By Soame Jenyns. London, 1782.\nChapter II treats of \u201cCruelty to Inferior Animals.\u201d\n\n\u201cIntroduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.\u201d By Jeremy\nBentham. London, 1780. Bentham\u2019s works contain several passages\nasserting the rights of animals. His views, ridiculed by Dr. Whewell,\nwere supported by J. S. Mill, \u201cDissertations and Discussions,\u201d ii, pp.\n482-485.\n\n\u201cThe Cry of Nature, or An Appeal to Mercy and Justice on behalf of the\nPersecuted Animals.\u201d By John Oswald. London, 1791. Written to advocate\nthe discontinuance of flesh-eating.\n\n\u201cA Vindication of the Rights of Brutes.\u201d London, 1792. Attributed to\nThomas Taylor. (See above, p. 4.)\n\n\u201cA Philosophical Treatise on Horses, and on the Moral Duties of Man\ntowards the Brute Creation.\u201d By John Lawrence. Two vols. London,\n1796-1798. The author of this humane book was a farmer, an authority\non the management of domestic animals, who was consulted by Richard\nMartin, M.P., on the details of his Ill-treatment of Cattle Bill, which\nbecame law in 1822.\n\n\u201cOn the Conduct of Man to Inferior Animals.\u201d By George Nicholson.\nManchester, 1797. A compilation of passages illustrating man\u2019s cruelty\nto the lower races.\n\n\u201cAn Essay on Humanity to Animals.\u201d By Thomas Young, Fellow of Trinity\nCollege, Cambridge. London, 1798. The book contains chapters on sport,\ncruelties connected with the table, etc.\n\n\u201cThe Hare, or Hunting Incompatible with Humanity.\u201d Dublin, 1800. A\nstory, by an anonymous writer, purporting to be told by a Hare.\n\n\u201cZoophilos.\u201d By Henry Crowe. Buckingham, 1819. Contains chapters on\nsport, methods of slaughter for food, vivisection, etc.\n\n\u201cMoral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes.\u201d By Lewis\nGompery. London, 1824. The author of this book was secretary of the\nSociety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and founder of an\nAnimals\u2019 Friend Society. A later volume, \u201cFragments in Defence of\nAnimals,\u201d was published by him in 1852.\n\n\u201cThe Rights of Animals, and Man\u2019s Obligation to treat them with\nHumanity.\u201d By William H. Drummond, D.D. London, 1838. A guarded essay,\nin which the writer pleads for the restriction of vivisection, but\njustifies flesh-eating and field-sports.\n\n\u201cPhilozoia, or Moral Reflections on the Actual Condition of the Animal\nKingdom, and the means of improving the same.\u201d By T. Forster. Brussels,\n1839. A plea for humane education. A section of the book is devoted to\nthe condition of animals on the Continent.\n\n\u201cThe Obligation and Extent of Humanity to Brutes, principally\nconsidered with reference to the Domesticated Animals.\u201d By W. Youatt.\nLondon, 1839. The writer, a Professor in the Royal Veterinary College,\nwas a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.\n\n\u201cThe Morality of Field Sports.\u201d By Professor E. A. Freeman,\n\u201cFortnightly Review,\u201d October, 1869. This article, together with\na reply by Anthony Trollope and a rejoinder by Prof. Freeman, was\nreprinted (1900), under the title of \u201cThe Morality of Hunting,\u201d by Mr.\nR. K. Gaye, of Trinity College, Cambridge.\n\n\u201cSome Talk about Animals and their Masters.\u201d By Sir Arthur Helps.\nLondon, 1873. This popular little book contains many good remarks, but\ndoes not advance any consistent view of the question.\n\n\u201cThe Rights of an Animal, a New Essay in Ethics.\u201d By Edward Byron\nNicholson. London, 1879. This book, with much interesting information,\nincludes a reprint of a chapter by John Lawrence on \u201cThe Rights of\nBeasts.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Ethics of Diet, a Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Habit\nof Flesh-Eating.\u201d By Howard Williams. London and Manchester, 1883.\nThough written primarily from a vegetarian standpoint, this scholarly\nwork contains a large amount of general information invaluable to\nstudents of the animal question.\n\n\u201cAnimals\u2019 Rights, considered in relation to Social Progress.\u201d By Henry\nS. Salt. London, 1892.\n\n\u201cMoral Philosophy.\u201d By Joseph Rickaby, S.J. London, 1892. Contains a\nstatement of the Catholic position in denial of rights to animals.\n\n\u201cNatural Rights.\u201d By David G. Ritchie. London, 1895. See above,\nAppendix I.\n\n\u201cThe New Charter, a discussion of the Rights of Men and the Rights of\nAnimals.\u201d Essays published by the Humanitarian League. London, 1896.\n\n\u201cEvolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology.\u201d By E. P. Evans. London,\n1898.\n\n\u201cThe Nature and Development of Animal Intelligence.\u201d By Wesley Mills,\nM.D. London, 1898.\n\n\u201cKith and Kin: Poems of Animal Life.\u201d Edited by Henry S. Salt. London,\n1901.\n\n\u201cEvery Living Creature.\u201d By Ralph Waldo Trine. London, 1901.\n\n\u201cThe Basis of Morality.\u201d By Arthur Schopenhauer. Translated by A. B.\nBullock. London, 1903.\n\n\u201cThe Universal Kinship.\u201d By J. Howard Moore. London, 1906.\nThis brilliantly written work asserts the scientific basis of\nhumanitarianism, and treats of the subject of animals\u2019 rights under\nthree heads--the physical, the psychical, and the ethical kinship\nbetween human and sub-human.\n\n\u201cThe New Ethics.\u201d By J. Howard Moore. London, 1907.\n\n\u201cThe Church and Kindness to Animals.\u201d London, 1907. A translation\nfrom the French, \u201cL\u2019\u00c9glise et la Piti\u00e9 envers les Animaux\u201d (1903), in\nvindication of the Catholic Church against the charge of indifference\nto animal suffering.\n\n\u201cThe Place of Animals in Human Thought.\u201d By the Countess Martinengo\nCesaresco. London, 1909. A work of value to those who are studying the\npsychological aspect of the question.\n\n\u201cThe Mahatma and the Hare.\u201d By H. Rider Haggard. London, 1911.\n\n\u201cKilling for Sport.\u201d By various writers, edited by Henry S. Salt, with\nIntroduction by G. Bernard Shaw. London, 1915.\n\nThe Publications of the Humanitarian League--Pamphlets on various\nsubjects, 1891-1919.\n\n\u201cSuffering and Wrong. The Message of the New Religion.\u201d By Francis\nWood. London, 1916.\n\n\u201cSavage Survivals.\u201d By J. Howard Moore. London, 1916.\n\n\u201cThe Great Kinship.\u201d An Anthology of Humanitarian Poetry, edited by\nBertram Lloyd. London, 1921.\n\n\u201cThe Soul of an Animal.\u201d By T. S. Hawkins. London, 1921.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX.\n\n\n Aberdare, Lord, on Vivisection, 73 (note 41).\n\n Aristotle, quoted, 17.\n\n Arnold, Dr., quoted, 15.\n\n\n Bentham, Jeremy, on rights, 5, 14, 17, 42.\n\n \u201cBetter for the animals themselves,\u201d 24, 25, 37, 46, 52, 72,\n    73 (note 41).\n\n Bright, John, quoted, 86.\n\n B\u00fcchner, quoted, 83.\n\n\n Caged animals, 36-39.\n\n Caging of birds, 39.\n\n Cartesian doctrine, 10, 11.\n\n Castration of animals, 30, 31.\n\n Cattle traffic, 42, 45.\n\n Chesterfield, Lord, quoted, 43.\n\n Church, the, and rights of animals, 3.\n\n Cobbe, Frances Power, 8, 70, 71.\n\n Comte, Auguste, 24 (note 17).\n\n Cruelty to animals, causes of, 8-10, 16;\n   responsibility for, 59;\n   forms of, 75, 78.\n\n\n Darwin, quoted, 12.\n\n Democracy and rights of animals, 4, 23, 24, 85, 86.\n\n Dixie, Lady F., quoted, 57.\n\n \u201cDomestic\u201d animals, protected by law, 26.\n\n \u201cDumb\u201d animals, an objectionable term, 14, 15.\n\n\n Education, as a method of reform, 86-89.\n\n Erskine, Lord, quoted, 90.\n\n Evans, E. P., quoted, 12-14.\n\n\n Feather trade, 63, 64.\n\n Flesh-eating, 42-47.\n\n Food question, importance of, 41.\n\n Fur trade, 59-63.\n\n\n Gompertz, Lewis, quoted, 25 (note 19).\n\n\n Helps, Sir A., 27.\n\n Huxley, 10 (note 11).\n\n\n Immortality of animals, 9, 10, 12.\n\n\n Jenyns, Soame, quoted, 36, 52.\n\n\n Kropotkine, P., 20 (note 16).\n\n\n Law for preventing cruelty to animals, need of amendment, 55-57.\n\n Lawrence, John, quoted, 5, 6, 26, 27, 42.\n\n Lecky\u2019s \u201cHistory of European Morals,\u201d 9, 15, 16.\n\n Legislation, as a method of reform, 89-91.\n\n\n Machinery, use of, 29.\n\n \u201cMartin\u2019s Act,\u201d 6, 34, 56, 90.\n\n Michelet, quoted, 44, 53, 54, 69.\n\n Mill, J. S., quoted, 91.\n\n Mills, Dr. Wesley, 12, 13.\n\n Montaigne, 27.\n\n More, Sir T., on sport, 54.\n\n\n Natural history, true method and false, 67-69.\n\n Nature, and struggle for existence, 19, 20, 47, 80, 81.\n\n Necessity, plea of, 72, 79.\n\n Nicholson, E. B., quoted, 37, 46.\n\n Nomenclature, influence of, 14, 15.\n\n\n Pain, the \u201cdiscipline\u201d of, 19.\n\n Paine, Thomas, 4.\n\n Paley, Dr. W., quoted, 43.\n\n Performing Animals, 40.\n\n \u201cPets,\u201d 32.\n\n Pheasant-shooting, 57.\n\n Plutarch, 28.\n\n Porphyry, 3, 21.\n\n \u201cPreservation\u201d of animals, by sportsmen, 51, 52;\n   by collectors, 68.\n\n Primatt, Dr. H., 9, 19, 26, 77, 78.\n\n Property, influence on legislation, 34, 35.\n\n\n Rabbit-coursing, 56.\n\n Reason and instinct, 12, 13.\n\n Rights, definition, 1, 2;\n   need of a clear principle, 7, 78, 79.\n\n Ritchie, D. G., 2, 3, 7.\n\n Romanes, Professor, 10.\n\n Rousseau, 3, 88.\n\n\n Scientists and the rights of animals, 67-70.\n\n Schopenhauer, quoted, 11, 14, 42.\n\n Seal Fishery, 63.\n\n Slavery, 16, 17.\n\n Spencer, Herbert, on rights, 2.\n\n Sport, as related to other cruelties, 50, 51, 65, 66, 74;\n   excuses for, 53;\n   zest of, 54, 55.\n\n Stag-hunting, 55.\n\n Strauss, quoted, 83.\n\n\n Thomson, J. Arthur, quoted, 20 (note 16).\n\n Thoreau, 27, 29, 49, 68.\n\n\n Vegetarianism, 44, 48, 49.\n\n \u201cVermin,\u201d treatment of, 56, 57.\n\n Vivisection, its iniquity, 69, 70 (note 39);\n   relation to other cruelties, 67, 70, 74;\n   morality of, 71, 73;\n   right method of combating, 75, 76.\n\n Voltaire, 3, 10.\n\n\n Wild animals, unprotected by law, 26, 34-36;\n   sanctuaries for, 40, 55.\n\n Wood, Rev. J. G., quoted, 12.\n\n Wordsworth, quoted, 51.\n\n\n Zoological Gardens, 38.\n\n\nCHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE,\nLONDON.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] An admirable definition of Rights is given by Mr. G. W. Foote\nin his contribution to \u201cThe New Charter\u201d: \u201cRights are of three\nsorts--legal, moral, and natural. The legal meaning of \u2018Rights\u2019 is\nundoubtedly the primary one ... and this is the only _definite_ sense,\nin which the word can be used.... Moral Rights are widespread new\nsentiments, demanding incorporation into Legal Rights; and Natural\nRights are still newer sentiments, aspiring to recognition as Moral\nRights, with a view to ultimate incorporation as Legal Rights....\nThey are respectively, a solid fact, a general demand, and a growing\naspiration.\u201d\n\n[2] This remark implies not the \u201cdisparagement of logic and of all\ncareful use of language,\u201d with which Professor D. G. Ritchie has\ncharged me in his book on \u201cNatural Rights,\u201d but simply that social\nreformers cannot be debarred from using the best available terms\nbecause no logically exact term is forthcoming. See Appendix I.\n\n[3] Attributed to Thomas Taylor, the Platonist.\n\n[4] \u201cPrinciples of Penal Law,\u201d chap, xvi., 1780.\n\n[5] John Lawrence, \u201cPhilosophical Treatise on the Moral Duties of Man\ntowards the Brute Creation,\u201d 1796.\n\n[6] Professor Ritchie contends in his \u201cNatural Rights\u201d that domestic\nanimals have _not_ been granted rights in English law. \u201cBecause a work\nof art, or some ancient monument, is protected by law from injury, do\nwe speak of the _rights_ of pictures or stones?\u201d But the distinction\nis obvious--works of art are protected only as _property_, domestic\nanimals as _sentient beings_, whether owned or unowned.\n\n[7] \u201cFraser,\u201d November, 1863; \u201cThe Rights of Man and the Claims of\nBrutes,\u201d by Frances Power Cobbe.\n\n[8] \u201cBook of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies,\u201d 1854.\n\n[9] Humphry Primatt, D.D., author of \u201cThe Duty of Mercy to Brute\nAnimals\u201d (1776).\n\n[10] See the article on \u201cAnimal Immortality,\u201d \u201cThe Nineteenth Century,\u201d\nJan., 1891, by Norman Pearson. The upshot of his argument is that, \u201cif\nwe accept the immortality of the human soul, and _also_ accept its\nevolutional origin, we cannot deny the survival, in some form or other,\nof animal minds.\u201d\n\n[11] Prof. Huxley\u2019s remarks, in \u201cScience and Culture,\u201d give a partial\nsupport to Descartes\u2019 theory, but do not bear on the moral question of\nrights. For, though he concludes that animals are probably \u201csensitive\nautomata,\u201d he classes men in the same category. See Appendix II.\n\n[12] Schopenhauer\u2019s \u201cFoundation of Morality.\u201d I quote the passage as\ntranslated in Mr. Howard Williams\u2019s \u201cEthics of Diet.\u201d\n\n[13] \u201cDescent of Man,\u201d chap. iii.\n\n[14] \u201cMan and Beast, here and hereafter,\u201d 1874.\n\n[15] In Sir A. Helps\u2019s \u201cAnimals and their Masters.\u201d See an article on\n\u201cDumb Animals,\u201d in \u201cThe Humanitarian,\u201d November, 1912. Also the chapter\non \u201cSpeech as a Barrier between Man and Beast,\u201d in Mr. E. P. Evans\u2019s\nwork on \u201cEvolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology,\u201d 1898.\n\n[16] See Prince Kropotkine\u2019s articles on \u201cMutual Aid among Animals,\u201d\n\u201cNineteenth Century,\u201d 1890, where the conclusion is arrived at that\n\u201csociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.\u201d A similar\nview is expressed in the \u201cStudy of Animal Life,\u201d 1892, by J. Arthur\nThomson. \u201cWhat we must protest against,\u201d he says, in an interesting\nchapter on \u201cThe Struggle of Life,\u201d \u201cis that one-sided interpretation\naccording to which individualistic competition is nature\u2019s sole method\nof progress.\u201d\n\nAnother and more recent work, which has a very important bearing\non this question, is \u201cSymbiosis: a Socio-Physiological Study of\nEvolution,\u201d by H. Reinheimer, 1920.\n\n[17] Auguste Comte included the domestic animals as an organic part of\nthe Positivist conception of humanity.\n\n[18] \u201cMoral Duty towards Animals,\u201d \u201cMacmillan\u2019s Magazine,\u201d April, 1882,\nby the then Bishop of Carlisle.\n\n[19] See Lewis Gompertz\u2019 \u201cMoral Inquiries\u201d (1824), where it is argued\nthat \u201cat least in the present state of society it is unjust, and\nconsidering the unnecessary abuse they suffer from being in the power\nof man, it is wrong to use them, and to encourage their being placed in\nhis power.\u201d\n\n[20] \u201cAnimals and their Masters,\u201d p. 101.\n\n[21] See Appendix III.\n\n[22] Under the Animals (Anaesthetics) Act, 1919, an an\u00e6sthetic is now\nrequired in certain cases, but the scope of the Act needs to be greatly\nenlarged.\n\n[23] The use of dogs for purposes of draught was prohibited in London\nin 1839, and in 1854 this enactment was extended to the whole kingdom.\n\n[24] \u201cOn Cruelty to the Inferior Animals,\u201d by Soame Jenyns, 1782.\n\n[25] Mr. E. B. Nicholson. See Appendix IV.\n\n[26] Unfortunately they are not of much value even for _that_ purpose,\nowing to the deterioration of health and vigour caused by their\nimprisonment. \u201cThe skeletons of aged carnivora,\u201d says Dr. W. B.\nCarpenter, \u201care often good for nothing as museum specimens, their bones\nbeing rickety and distorted.\u201d\n\n[27] \u201cLa Bible de l\u2019Humanit\u00e9.\u201d\n\n[28] See the Humanitarian League pamphlets on \u201cCattle-ships,\u201d and \u201cThe\nReform of the Slaughter-house.\u201d\n\n[29] \u201cThe Rights of an Animal,\u201d 1879.\n\n[30] Edward Carpenter, \u201cEngland\u2019s Ideal.\u201d\n\n[31] As in the article by Sir Herbert Maxwell on \u201cOur Obligations to\nWild Animals,\u201d \u201cBlackwood\u2019s Magazine,\u201d August, 1899.\n\n[32] Soame Jenyns, 1782.\n\n[33] See the chapter on Fallacies of Sportsmen in the volume of essays\nentitled \u201cKilling for Sport\u201d (George Bell and Sons, 1915). Several of\nthe sophisms by which fox-hunting is commonly defended were employed\nby Dr. Lang, Archbishop of York, in an address which he gave (November\n16, 1913) when dedicating a stained window to the memory of a deceased\nblood-sportsman.\n\n[34] \u201cThe Horrors of Sport,\u201d Humanitarian League pamphlet, by Lady\nFlorence Dixie.\n\n[35] \u201cIt is extremely difficult to see why these tame deer of park and\npaddock should not be held to be domestic animals within the meaning of\nthe Acts for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Indeed, if they have\nceased to be _fer\u00e6 natur\u00e6_ they must be domestic animals, unless there\nbe some miserable _tertium quid_ which is neither one nor the other. I\nam not aware that there ever has been a definite decision of the High\nCourt upon this matter, and I venture to think that if a suitable case\nwere to be taken up and properly argued, it is possible that a judgment\nwelcome to humanitarians might be obtained.\u201d--_Sir George Greenwood_\n(\u201cHumane Review,\u201d January, 1908).\n\n[36] Letter to \u201cPall Mall Gazette,\u201d March 24th, 1892, by Lady Florence\nDixie.\n\n[37] Since this was written, more than thirty years ago, there has been\na welcome growth of public feeling, resulting in a better control of\nthe plumage trade.\n\n[38] See Appendix V.\n\n[39] We are told that in this country such barbarities are no longer\npossible, because, by the Act of 1876, vivisections may be performed\nby none but licensed persons, and the use of anaesthetics is made\nobligatory. It has to be remembered, however, that special licences\ncan be obtained to dispense with anaesthetics, or, if an an\u00e6sthetic be\nadministered, to allow the vivisector to keep the animal alive after\nthe effect of the an\u00e6sthetic has passed away, in order to watch the\nresults of the experiment, during which period the animal frequently\nhas to endure great suffering.\n\n[40] On the reference to this passage in \u201cThe Confessions of a\nPhysician,\u201d by V. Veresaeff, see Appendix VI.\n\n[41] It is said that the first Lord Aberdare, in presiding over a\nmeeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,\nand in warning the society against entering on an anti-vivisection\ncrusade, gave utterance to the delightfully irrelevant remark that he\nhad himself been thrice operated on, and was all the better for it!\n\n[42] See J. Cotter Morrison\u2019s article on \u201cScientific _versus_ Bucolic\nVivisection,\u201d \u201cFortnightly Review,\u201d 1885.\n\n[43] Professor Jevons, \u201cFortnightly Review,\u201d 1876.\n\n[44] \u201cMind in Animals,\u201d translated by Annie Besant.\n\n[45] \u201cThe Old Faith and the New.\u201d\n\n[46] See Appendix VII.\n\n[47] See Appendix VIII.\n\n[48] \u201cThey tell children, perhaps, that they must not be cruel to\nanimals.... What avails all the fine talk about morality, in contrast\nwith acts of barbarism and immorality presented to them on all\nsides?\u201d--Gustav von Struve.\n\n[49] \u201cPrinciples of Political Economy.\u201d\n\n[50] See p. 3.\n\n[51] See p. 10.\n\n[52] See p. 29.\n\n[53] See p. 37.\n\n[54] See p. 69.\n\n[55] See p. 71.\n\n[56] From the translation by Simeon Linden, London, 1904; pp. 158, 159.\n\n[57] See p. 84.\n\n[58] _Daily News_, April 10, 1906.\n\n[59] See p. 86.\n\n[60] It has not been attempted in the following pages to give a\ncomplete bibliography of the doctrine of Animals\u2019 Rights, but merely\na list of some of the chief works, in English, that touch directly on\nthat subject.\n\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIBER\u2019S NOTES:\n\n\n  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.\n\n  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.\n\n  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.\n\n  Alternate or archaic spelling has been retained from the original.","title":"Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":32515}