ANIMALS’ RIGHTS
ANIMALS’ RIGHTS
CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO
SOCIAL PROGRESS
BY
HENRY S. SALT
_REVISED EDITION_
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET
1922
TO MY FRIEND HOWARD WILLIAMS
AND OTHER HUMANITARIAN
COLLEAGUES
PREFACE
As a memorial of work done on behalf of the rights of animals, it has
been thought fitting, by members and friends of the late Humanitarian
League, that a new edition of this little book should be published
in the year that brings the centenary of “Martin’s Act,” the first
legislation for the prevention of cruelty to the non-human races.
Of the progress made in this branch of ethics, since 1822, some account
is incidentally given in the book; and during the last few years the
advance has been steadily continued. Attention has been drawn, for
instance, to the antiquated methods employed in the slaughter of
animals for food; and this has corresponded with an increase in the
practice of vegetarianism. The treatment of other domestic animals,
such as pit ponies, and the worn-out horses exported to the Continent,
has stirred the public conscience; and at the same time the cruelty and
folly of what is technically known as “the wild animal industry”--the
kidnapping of “specimens” for exhibition in zoological gardens, or as
“performing animals” on the stage--are becoming better understood.
Again, the disgust caused by the ravages of “murderous millinery” (a
term first used as a chapter-heading in this book) has taken visible
shape in the recent Act for the regulation of the plumage trade; and
even “sport,” the last and dearest stronghold of the savage, has
been seriously menaced, not only by the discontinuance of the Royal
Buckhounds in 1901, but also lately by the emphatic condemnation of
pigeon-shooting.
The core of the contention for a recognition of the rights of animals
will be found in the following passage of a letter addressed by Mr.
Thomas Hardy to the Humanitarian League in 1910:
“Few people seem to perceive fully as yet that the most far-reaching
consequence of the establishment of the common origin of all species
is ethical; that it logically involved a readjustment of altruistic
morals, by enlarging, as a necessity of rightness, the application
of what has been called ‘The Golden Rule’ from the area of mere
mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom.... While man was deemed
to be a creation apart from all other creations, a secondary or
tertiary morality was considered good enough to practise towards the
‘inferior’ races; but no person who reasons nowadays can escape the
trying conclusion that this is not maintainable.”
It may be taken, perhaps, as a sign of the extension of humane ideas
that, since its first appearance in 1892, this essay on “Animals’
Rights” has passed through numerous editions, and has been translated
into French, German, Dutch, Swedish, and other European tongues.
Valuable suggestions concerning the book have reached me from several
friends: in particular I am indebted to Sir George Greenwood, who has
been actively associated, both in Parliament and elsewhere, with the
cause of justice to animals.
H. S. S.
_January 1922._
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE PRINCIPLE OF ANIMALS’ RIGHTS 1
II. THE CASE OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS 23
III. THE CASE OF WILD ANIMALS 34
IV. THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD 41
V. SPORT, OR AMATEUR BUTCHERY 50
VI. MURDEROUS MILLINERY 59
VII. EXPERIMENTAL TORTURE 67
VIII. LINES OF REFORM 77
APPENDICES 95
BIBLIOGRAPHY 117
INDEX 123
ANIMALS’ RIGHTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRINCIPLE OF ANIMALS’ RIGHTS.
Have the lower animals “rights”? Undoubtedly--if men have. That is the
point I wish to make evident in this opening chapter. But have men
rights? Let it be stated at the outset that I have no intention of
discussing the abstract theory of rights, which at the present time
is looked upon with suspicion and disfavour by many social reformers,
since it has not unfrequently been made to cover the most extravagant
and contradictory assertions. But though its phraseology is vague,
there is nevertheless a solid truth underlying it--a truth which has
always been clearly apprehended by the moral faculty, however difficult
it may be to establish it on an unassailable logical basis. If men have
not “rights”--well, they have an unmistakable intimation of something
very similar; a sense of justice which marks the boundary-line where
acquiescence ceases and resistance begins; a demand for freedom to
live their own lives, subject to the necessity of respecting the equal
freedom of other people.
Such is the doctrine of rights as formulated by Herbert Spencer.
“Every man,” he says, “is free to do that which he wills, provided he
infringes not the equal liberty of any other man.” And again, “Whoever
admits that each man must have a certain restricted freedom, asserts
that it is _right_ he should have this restricted freedom.... And hence
the several particular freedoms deducible may fitly be called, as they
commonly are called, his _rights_” (“Justice,” pp. 46, 62).[1]
The fitness of this nomenclature is disputed, but the existence of
some real principle of the kind can hardly be called in question;
so that the controversy concerning “rights” is little else than an
academic battle over words, which leads to no practical conclusion. I
shall assume, therefore, that men are possessed of “rights,” in the
sense of Herbert Spencer’s definition; and if any of my readers object
to this qualified use of the term, I can only say that I shall be
perfectly willing to change the word as soon as a more appropriate one
is forthcoming.[2] The immediate question that claims our attention is
this--if men have rights, have animals their rights also?
From the earliest times there have been thinkers who, directly
or indirectly, answered this question with an affirmative. The
Buddhist and Pythagorean canons, dominated perhaps by the creed of
reincarnation, included the maxim “not to kill or injure any innocent
animal.” The humanitarian philosophers of the Roman empire, among
whom Seneca, Plutarch, and Porphyry were the most conspicuous, took
still higher ground in preaching humanity on the broadest principle of
universal benevolence. “Since justice is due to rational beings,” wrote
Porphyry, “how is it possible to evade the admission that we are bound
also to act justly towards the races below us?”
It is a lamentable fact that during the churchdom of the middle ages,
from the fourth century to the sixteenth, from the time of Porphyry to
the time of Montaigne, little or no attention was paid to the question
of the rights and wrongs of the lower races. Then, with the Reformation
and the revival of learning, came a revival also of humanitarian
feeling, as may be seen in many passages of Erasmus and More,
Shakespeare and Bacon; but it was not until the eighteenth century, the
age of enlightenment and “sensibility,” of which Voltaire and Rousseau
were the spokesmen, that the rights of animals obtained more deliberate
recognition. From the great Revolution of 1789 dates the period when
the world-wide spirit of humanitarianism, which had hitherto been felt
by but one man in a million--the thesis of the philosopher or the
vision of the poet--began to disclose itself, gradually and dimly at
first, as an essential feature of democracy.
A great and far-reaching effect was produced in England at this time
by the publication of such revolutionary works as Thomas Paine’s
“Rights of Man” and Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights
of Woman”; and looking back now, after the lapse of a hundred years,
we can see that a still wider extension of the theory of rights was
thenceforth inevitable. In fact, such a claim was anticipated--if
only in bitter jest--by a contemporary writer, who furnishes us with
a notable instance of how the mockery of one generation may become
the reality of the next. There was published anonymously in 1792 a
little volume entitled “A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes,”[3] a
_reductio ad absurdum_ of Mary Wollstonecraft’s essay, written, as the
author informs us, “to evince by demonstrative arguments the perfect
equality of what is called the irrational species to the human.” The
further opinion is expressed that “after those wonderful productions
of Mr. Paine and Mrs. Wollstonecraft, such a theory as the present
seems to be necessary.” It _was_ necessary; and a very short term of
years sufficed to bring it into effect; indeed, the theory had already
been put forward by several English pioneers of nineteenth-century
humanitarianism.
To Jeremy Bentham, in particular, belongs the high honour of first
asserting the rights of animals with authority and persistence.
“The legislator,” he wrote, “ought to interdict everything which may
serve to lead to cruelty. The barbarous spectacles of gladiators
no doubt contributed to give the Romans that ferocity which they
displayed in their civil wars. A people accustomed to despise human
life in their games could not be expected to respect it amid the fury
of their passions. It is proper for the same reason to forbid every
kind of cruelty towards animals, whether by way of amusement, or to
gratify gluttony. Cock-fights, bull-baiting, hunting hares and foxes,
fishing, and other amusements of the same kind, necessarily suppose
either the absence of reflection or a fund of inhumanity, since they
produce the most acute sufferings to sensible beings, and the most
painful and lingering death of which we can form any idea. Why should
the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will
come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which
breathes. We have begun by attending to the condition of slaves; we
shall finish by softening that of all the animals which assist our
labours or supply our wants.”[4]
So, too, wrote one of Bentham’s contemporaries: “The grand source of
the unmerited and superfluous misery of beasts exists in a defect in
the constitution of all communities. No human government, I believe,
has ever recognized the _jus animalium_, which ought surely to form a
part of the jurisprudence of every system founded on the principles of
justice and humanity.”[5] A number of later moralists have followed
on the same lines, with the result that the rights of animals have
already, to a certain limited extent, been established both in private
usage and by legal enactment.
It is interesting to note the exact commencement of this new principle
in law. When Lord Erskine, speaking in the House of Lords in 1811,
advocated the cause of justice to the lower animals, he was greeted
with loud cries of insult and derision. But eleven years later the
efforts of the despised humanitarians, and especially of Richard
Martin, of Galway, were rewarded by their first success. The passing of
the Ill-treatment of Cattle Bill, commonly known as “Martin’s Act,” in
July, 1822, is a memorable date in the history of humane legislation,
less on account of the positive protection afforded by it, for it
applied only to cattle and “beasts of burden,” than for the invaluable
precedent which it created. From 1822 onward, the principle of that
_jus animalium_ for which Bentham had pleaded, was recognized, however
partially and tentatively at first, by English law, and the animals
included in the Act ceased to be the mere property of their owners;
moreover the Act has been several times supplemented and extended
during the past half century. It is scarcely possible, in the face
of this legislation, to maintain that “rights” are a privilege with
which none but human beings can be invested; for if _some_ animals are
already included within the pale of protection, why should not more
and more be so included in the future?[6]
For the present, however, what is most urgently needed is some
comprehensive and intelligible principle, which shall indicate, in a
more consistent manner, the true lines of man’s moral relation towards
the lower animals. Hitherto even the leading advocates of animals’
rights seem to have shrunk from basing their claim on the only argument
which can ultimately be held to be a sufficient one--the assertion
that animals, as well as men, though, of course, to a far less extent
than men, are possessed of a distinctive individuality, and therefore
are in justice entitled to live their lives with a due measure of that
“restricted freedom” to which Herbert Spencer alludes. It is of little
use to claim “rights” for animals in a vague general way, if with the
same breath we explicitly show our determination to subordinate those
rights to anything and everything that can be construed into a human
“want”; nor will it ever be possible to obtain full justice for the
lower races so long as we continue to regard them as beings of a wholly
different order, and to ignore the significance of their numberless
points of kinship with mankind.
For example, it has been said by a well-known writer on the subject
of humanity to animals[7] that “the life of a brute, having no moral
purpose, can best be understood ethically as representing the sum
of its _pleasures_; and the obligation, therefore, of producing the
pleasures of sentient creatures must be reduced, in their case, to the
abstinence from unnecessary destruction of life.” Now, with respect to
this statement, I must say that the notion of the life of an animal
having “no moral purpose” belongs to a class of ideas which cannot
possibly be accepted by the advanced humanitarian thought of the
present day--it is a purely arbitrary assumption, at variance with our
best science, and absolutely fatal (if the subject be clearly thought
out) to any full realization of animals’ rights. If we are ever going
to do justice to the lower races, we must get rid of the antiquated
notion of a “great gulf” fixed between them and mankind, and must
recognize the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings in
one universal brotherhood.
As far as any excuses can be alleged, in explanation of the
insensibility or inhumanity of the western nations in their treatment
of animals, these excuses may be mostly traced back to one or the other
of two theories, wholly different in origin, yet alike in this--that
both postulate an absolute difference of nature between men and the
lower kinds.
The first is the so-called “religious” notion, which awards immortality
to man, but to man alone, thereby furnishing (especially in Catholic
countries) a quibbling justification for acts of cruelty to animals,
on the plea that they “have no souls.” “It should seem,” says Mrs.
Jameson,[8] “as if the primitive Christians, by laying so much stress
upon a future life, in contradistinction to _this_ life, and placing
the lower creatures out of the pale of hope, placed them at the same
time out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this
utter disregard of animals in the light of our fellow-creatures.”
I am aware that a quite contrary argument has, in a few isolated
instances, been founded on the belief that animals have “no
souls.” “Cruelty to a brute,” says an old writer,[9] “is an injury
irreparable,” because there is no future life to be a compensation for
present afflictions; and there is an amusing story, told by Mr. Lecky
in his “History of European Morals,” of a certain humanely-minded
Cardinal, who used to allow vermin to bite him without hindrance, on
the ground that “we shall have heaven to reward us for our sufferings,
but these poor creatures have nothing but the enjoyment of this present
life.” But this is a rare view of the question which need not, I think,
be taken into very serious account; for, on the whole, the denial of
immortality to animals (unless, of course, it be also denied to men)
tends strongly to lessen their chance of being justly and considerately
treated. Among the many humane movements of the present age, none is
more significant than the growing inclination, noticeable both in
scientific circles and in religious, to believe that mankind and the
lower animals have the same destiny before them.[10]
The second and not less fruitful source of modern inhumanity is to
be found in the “Cartesian” doctrine--the theory of Descartes and
his followers--that the lower animals are devoid of consciousness
and feeling; a theory which carried the “religious” notion a step
further, and deprived the animals not only of their claim to a life
hereafter, but of anything that could, without mockery, be called a
life in the present, since mere “animated machines,” as they were thus
affirmed to be, could in no real sense be said to _live_ at all! Well
might Voltaire turn his humane ridicule against this most monstrous
contention, and suggest, with scathing irony, that God “had given the
animals the organs of feeling, to the end that they might _not_ feel!”
“The theory of animal automatism,” says Professor Romanes, “which
is usually attributed to Descartes, can never be accepted by common
sense.” Yet it is to be feared that it has done much, in its time, to
harden “scientific” sense against the just complaints of the victims of
human arrogance and oppression.[11]
Let me here quote a most impressive passage from Schopenhauer.
“The unpardonable forgetfulness in which the lower animals have
hitherto been left by the moralists of Europe is well known. It is
pretended that the beasts have no rights. They persuade themselves
that our conduct in regard to them has nothing to do with morals,
or (to speak the language of their morality) that we have no duties
towards animals: a doctrine revolting, gross, and barbarous, peculiar
to the west, and having its root in Judaism. In philosophy, however,
it is made to rest upon a hypothesis, admitted in despite of evidence
itself, of an absolute difference between man and beast. It is
Descartes who has proclaimed it in the clearest and most decisive
manner; and in fact it was a necessary consequence of his errors.
The Cartesian-Leibnitzian-Wolfian philosophy, with the assistance of
entirely abstract notions, had built up the ‘rational psychology,’
and constructed an immortal _anima rationalis_: but, visibly, the
world of beasts, with its very natural claims, stood up against
this exclusive monopoly--this _brevet_ of immortality decreed to
man alone--and silently Nature did what she always does in such
cases--she protested. Our philosophers, feeling their scientific
conscience quite disturbed, were forced to attempt to consolidate
their ‘rational psychology’ by the aid of empiricism. They therefore
set themselves to work to hollow out between man and beast an
enormous abyss, of an immeasurable width; by this they wish to prove
to us, in contempt of evidence, an impassable difference.”[12]
The fallacious idea that the lives of animals have no moral purpose is
at root connected with these religious and philosophical pretensions
which Schopenhauer so powerfully condemns. To live one’s own life--to
realize one’s true self--is the highest moral purpose of man and animal
alike; and that animals possess their due measure of this sense of
individuality is scarcely open to doubt. “We have seen,” says Darwin,
“that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties,
such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc.,
of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes
in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.”[13] Not less
emphatic is the testimony of the Rev. J. G. Wood, who, speaking from
a great experience, gives it as his opinion that “the manner in which
we ignore individuality in the lower animals is simply astounding.” He
claims for them a future life, because he is “quite sure that most of
the cruelties which are perpetrated on the animals are due to the habit
of considering them as mere machines without susceptibilities, without
reason, and without the capacity of a future.”[14]
The long-maintained distinction between human “reason” and animal
“instinct” is being given up by recent scientific writers, as, for
example, by Dr. Wesley Mills in his work on “The Nature and Development
of Animal Intelligence,” and by Mr. E. P. Evans in “Evolutional Ethics
and Animal Psychology.”
“The trend of investigation,” says Dr. Mills, “thus far goes to show
that at least the germ of every human faculty does exist in some
species of animal.... Formerly the line was drawn at reason. It
was said that the ‘brutes’ cannot reason. Only persons who do not
themselves reason about the subject with the facts before them can
any longer occupy such a position. The evidence of reasoning power is
overwhelming for the upper ranks of animals, and yearly the downward
limits are being extended the more the inferior tribes are studied.”
We have to get rid, as Mr. Evans points out, of those “anthropocentric”
delusions which “treat man as a being essentially different and
inseparably set apart from all other sentient creatures, to which he is
bound by no ties of mental affinity or moral obligation.”
“Man is as truly a part and product of Nature as any other animal,
and this attempt to set him up as an isolated point outside of it is
philosophically false and morally pernicious.”
This, then, is the position of those who assert that animals, like men,
are possessed of certain limited rights, which cannot be withheld from
them, as they are now withheld, without tyranny and injustice. They
have individuality, character, reason; and to have those qualities
is to have the right to exercise them, in so far as surrounding
circumstances permit. No human being is justified in regarding an
animal as a meaningless automaton, to be worked, or tortured, or
eaten, as the case may be, for the mere object of satisfying the wants
or whims of mankind. Together with the destinies and duties that are
laid on them and fulfilled by them, animals have also the right to be
treated with gentleness and consideration, and the man who does not so
treat them, however great his learning or influence may be, is, in that
respect, an ignorant and foolish man, devoid of the highest and noblest
culture of which the human mind is capable.
Something must here be said on the important subject of nomenclature.
It is to be feared that the ill-treatment of animals is largely
caused--or at any rate the difficulty of amending that treatment is
largely aggravated--by the common use of such terms as “brute-beast,”
“live-stock,” etc., which implicitly deny to the lower races that
intelligent individuality which is undoubtedly possessed by them. It
was long ago remarked by Bentham, in his “Introduction to Principles
of Morals and Legislation,” that, whereas human beings are styled
_persons_, “other animals, on account of their interests having been
neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded
into the class of _things_”; and Schopenhauer also has commented on the
mischievous absurdity of the idiom which applies the neuter pronoun
“it” to such highly-organized animals as the dog and the ape.
A word of protest is needed also against such an expression as “dumb
animals,” which, though often cited as “an immense exhortation to
pity,”[15] has in reality a tendency to influence ordinary people in
quite the contrary direction, inasmuch as it fosters the idea of
an impassable barrier between mankind and their dependents. It is
convenient to us men to be deaf to the entreaties of the victims of
our injustice; and, by a sort of grim irony, we therefore assume that
it is _they_ who are afflicted by some organic incapacity--they are
“dumb animals,” forsooth! although a moment’s consideration must prove
that they have innumerable ways, often quite human in variety and
suggestiveness, of uttering their thoughts and emotions. Even the term
“animals,” as applied to the lower races, is incorrect, and not wholly
unobjectionable, since it ignores the fact that _man_ is an animal no
less than they. My only excuse for using it in this volume is that
there is no better brief term available.
So anomalous is the attitude of man towards the lower animals, that it
is no marvel if many humane thinkers have wellnigh despaired over this
question. “The whole subject of the brute creation,” wrote Dr. Arnold,
“is to me one of such painful mystery, that I dare not approach it”;
and this (to put the most charitable interpretation on their silence)
appears to be the position of the majority of moralists and teachers
at the present time. Yet there is urgent need of some solution of the
problem; and in no other way can this be found than by the admission of
the lower races within the pale of human sympathy. All the promptings
of our best and surest instincts point us in this direction. “It is
abundantly evident,” says Lecky, “both from history and from present
experience, that the instinctive shock, or natural feelings of disgust,
caused by the sight of the sufferings of men, is not generically
different from that which is caused by the sight of the suffering of
animals.” If this be so, can it be seriously contended that the same
humanitarian tendency which has already emancipated the slave, will not
ultimately benefit the lower races also? Here, again, the historian of
“European Morals” has a significant remark:
“At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family,
soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation,
then a coalition of nations, then all humanity; and finally its
influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world. In
each of these cases a standard is formed, different from that of the
preceding stage, but in each case the same tendency is recognized as
virtue.”
But, it may be argued, vague sympathy with the lower animals is one
thing, and a definite recognition of their “rights” is another; what
reason is there to suppose that we shall advance from the former phase
to the latter? Just this; that every great liberating movement has
proceeded exactly on such lines. Oppression and cruelty are invariably
founded on a lack of imaginative sympathy; the tyrant or tormentor
can have no true sense of kinship with the victim of his injustice.
When once the sense of affinity is awakened, the knell of tyranny is
sounded, and the ultimate concession of “rights” is simply a matter
of time. The present condition of the more highly-organized domestic
animals is in many ways very analogous to that of the negro slaves
of a hundred years ago: look back, and you will find in their case
precisely the same exclusion from the common pale of humanity; the
same hypocritical fallacies, to justify that exclusion; and, as a
consequence, the same deliberate stubborn denial of their social
“rights.” Look back--for it is well to do so--and then look forward,
and the moral can hardly be mistaken.
We find so great a thinker as Aristotle seriously pondering, in his
“Ethics,” whether a slave may be considered as a fellow-being. In
emphasizing the point that friendship is founded on propinquity, he
expresses himself as follows:
“Neither can men have friendships with horses, cattle, or slaves,
considered merely as such; for a slave is merely a living instrument,
and an instrument a lifeless slave. Yet, considered as a man, a slave
may be an object of friendship, for certain rights seem to belong to
all those capable of participating in law and engagement.”
Slaves, says Bentham,
“have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as in
England, for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The
day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those
rights which could never have been withholden from them but by the
hand of tyranny.”
Let us unreservedly admit the immense difficulties that stand in the
way of this animal enfranchisement. Our relation towards the animals is
complicated and embittered by innumerable habits handed down through
centuries of brutality and mistrust; we cannot, in all cases, suddenly
relax these habits, or do full justice even where we see that justice
will have to be done. A perfect ethic of humaneness is therefore
impracticable, if not unthinkable; and we can attempt to do no more
than to indicate in a general way the main principle of animals’
rights, noting at the same time the most flagrant particular violations
of those rights, and the lines on which the only valid reform can
hereafter be effected. But, on the other hand, it may be remembered,
for the comfort and encouragement of humanitarian workers, that these
obstacles are, after all, only such as are inevitable in each branch of
social improvement; for at every stage of every great reformation it
has been repeatedly argued, by indifferent or hostile observers, that
further progress is impossible; indeed, when the opponents of a great
cause begin to demonstrate its “impossibility,” experience teaches us
that that cause is already on the high road to fulfilment.
As for the demand so frequently made on reformers, that they should
first explain the details of their scheme--how this and that point will
be arranged, and by what process all kinds of difficulties, real or
imagined, will be circumvented--the only rational reply is that it is
absurd to expect to see the end of a question when we are now but at
its beginning. The persons who offer this futile sort of criticism are
usually those who under no circumstances would be open to conviction;
they purposely ask for an explanation which, by the very nature of the
case, is impossible because it necessarily belongs to a later period of
time. It would be equally sensible to request a traveller to enumerate
beforehand all the particular things he will see by the way, on pain
of being denounced as an unpractical visionary, although he may have a
quite sufficient general knowledge of his course and destination.
Our main principle is now clear. If “rights” exist at all--and both
feeling and usage indubitably prove that they do exist--they cannot
be consistently awarded to men and denied to animals, since the same
sense of justice and compassion apply in both cases. “Pain is pain,”
says Humphry Primatt, “whether it be inflicted on man or on beast; and
the creature that suffers it, whether man or beast, being sensible of
the misery of it while it lasts, suffers _evil_; and the sufferance of
evil, unmeritedly, unprovokedly, where no offence has been given, and
no good can possibly be answered by it, but merely to exhibit power or
gratify malice, is Cruelty and Injustice in him that occasions it.”
I commend this outspoken utterance to the attention of those ingenious
moralists who quibble about the “discipline” of suffering, and
deprecate immediate attempts to redress what, it is alleged, may be a
necessary instrument for the attainment of human welfare. It is perhaps
a mere coincidence, but it may be observed that those who are most
forward to disallow the rights of others, and to argue that suffering
and subjection are the natural lot of all living things, are usually
themselves exempt from the operation of this beneficent law, and that
the beauty of self-sacrifice is most loudly belauded by those who
profit most largely at the expense of their fellow-beings.
But “nature is one with rapine,” say some, and this utopian theory of
“rights,” if too widely extended, must come in conflict with that iron
rule of internecine competition by which the universe is regulated.
But is the universe so regulated? We note that this very objection,
which was confidently relied on a few years back by many opponents
of the emancipation of the working-classes, is not heard of in that
connection now. Our learned economists and men of science, who set
themselves to play the defenders of the social _status quo_, have seen
their own weapons of “natural selection,” “survival of the fittest,”
and what not, snatched from their hands and turned against them, and
are therefore beginning to explain to us, in a scientific manner, what
we untutored humanitarians had previously felt to be true, viz., that
competition is not by any means the sole governing law among the human
race. We are not greatly dismayed, then, to find the same old bugbear
trotted out as an argument against animals’ rights--indeed, we see
already unmistakable signs of a similar reversal of the scientific
judgment.[16]
The charge of “sentimentalism” is frequently brought against those
who plead for animals’ rights. Now “sentimentalism,” if any meaning
at all can be attached to the word, must signify an inequality, an
ill balance of sentiment, an inconsistency which leads men into
attacking one abuse, while they ignore or condone another where a
reform is equally desirable. That this weakness is often observable
among “philanthropists” on the one hand, and “friends of animals” on
the other, and most of all among those acute “men of the world,” whose
regard is only for themselves, I am not concerned to deny; what I wish
to point out is, that the only real safeguard against sentimentality
is to take up a consistent position towards the rights of men and of
the lower animals alike, and to cultivate a broad sense of universal
justice (not “mercy”) for all living things. Herein, and herein alone,
is to be sought the true sanity of temperament.
It is an entire mistake to suppose that the rights of animals are in
any way antagonistic to the rights of men. Let us not be betrayed for
a moment into the specious fallacy that we must study human rights
first, and leave the animal question to solve itself hereafter; for it
is only by a wide and disinterested study of _both_ subjects that a
solution of either is possible. “For he who loves all animated nature,”
says Porphyry, “will not hate any one tribe of innocent beings, and
by how much greater his love for the whole, by so much the more will
he cultivate justice towards a part of them, and that part to which
he is most allied.” To omit all worthier reasons, it is too late in
the day to suggest the indefinite postponement of a consideration
of animals’ rights, for from a moral point of view, and even from a
legislative point of view, we are daily confronted with the problem,
and the so-called “practical” people who affect to ignore it are
simply shutting their eyes to facts which they find it disagreeable to
confront.
Once more then, animals have rights, and these rights consist in the
“restricted freedom” to live a natural life--a life, that is, which
permits of the individual development--subject to the limitations
imposed by the permanent needs and interests of the community. There
is nothing quixotic or visionary in this assertion; it is perfectly
compatible with a readiness to look the sternest laws of existence
fully and honestly in the face. If we must kill, whether it be man or
animal, let us kill and have done with it; if we must inflict pain,
let us do what is inevitable, without hypocrisy, or evasion, or cant.
But (here is the cardinal point) let us first be assured that it _is_
necessary; let us not wantonly trade on the needless miseries of
other beings, and then attempt to lull our consciences by a series of
shuffling excuses which cannot endure a moment’s candid investigation.
As Leigh Hunt well says:
“That there is pain and evil, is no rule
That I should make it greater, like a fool.”
Thus far the general principle of animals’ rights. We will now proceed
to apply this principle to a number of particular cases, from which we
may learn something both as to the extent of its present violation, and
the possibility of its better observance in the future.