Animals.
Animals stand midway between things and persons. We own them, use them,
kill them, even, for our own purposes. Yet they have feelings, impulses,
and affections in common with ourselves. In some respects they surpass
us. In strength, in speed, in keenness of scent, in fidelity, blind
instinct in the animal is often superior to reason in the man.
Yet the animal falls short of personality. It is conscious, but not
self-conscious. It knows; but it does not know that it knows. It can
perform astonishing feats of intelligence. But it cannot explain, even
to itself, the way in which it does them. The animal can pass from one
particular experience to another along lines of association in time and
space with marvelous directness and accuracy. To rise from a particular
experience to the universal class to which that experience belongs; and
then, from the known characteristics of the class, to deduce the
characteristics of another particular experience of the same kind, is
beyond the power of the brute.
The brute likewise has feelings; but it does not recognize these
feelings as parts of a total and permanent self. Pleasure and pain the
animal feels probably as keenly as we do. Of happiness or unhappiness
they probably know nothing.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Animals can be trained to do right, but they cannot love righteousness.
They can be trained to avoid acts which are associated with painful
consequences, but they cannot hate iniquity. The life of an animal is a
series of sensations, impulses, thoughts, and actions. These are never
gathered up into unity. The animal is more than a machine, and less than
a person.
THE DUTY.
+We ought to realize that the animal has feelings as keen as our
own.+--We owe to these feelings in the animal the same treatment that we
would wish for the same feelings in ourselves. For animals as for
ourselves we should seek as much pleasure and as little pain as is
consistent with the performance of the work which we think it best to
lay upon them. The horse cannot choose for itself how heavy a load to
draw. We ought to adapt the load to its strength. And in order to do
that we must stop and consider how much strength it has. The horse and
cow and dog cannot select their own food and shelter. We must think for
them in these matters; and in order to do so wisely, we must consider
their nature, habits, and capacities. No person is fit to own an
animal, who is not willing to take the trouble to understand the needs,
capacities, and nature of that animal. And acts which result from
ignorance of such facts as can be readily learned are inexcusable.
THE VIRTUE.
+Kindness is the recognition that a feeling of another being is of just
as much consequence as a feeling of my own.+--Now we have seen that in
some respects animals are precisely like ourselves. Kindness recognizes
this bond of the kind, or kinship, as far as it extends. Kindness to
animals does not go so far as kindness to our fellow-men; because the
kinship between animals and man does not extend as far as kinship
between man and man. So far as it does extend, however, kindness to
animals treats them as we should wish to be treated by a person who had
us in his power. Kindness will inflict no needless suffering upon an
animal; make no unreasonable requirement of it; expose it to no needless
privation.
THE REWARD.
+Kindness toward animals reacts upon our hearts, making them tender and
sympathetic.+--Every act we perform leaves its trace in tendency to act
in the same way again. And in its effect upon ourselves it matters
little whether the objects on which our kindness has been bestowed have
been high or low in the scale of being. In any case the effect remains
with us in increased tenderness, not only toward the particular objects
which have called it forth, but toward all sentient beings. Kindness to
animals opens our hearts toward God and our fellow-men.
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
THE TEMPTATION.
+We are tempted to forget this sensitive nature of the animal, and to
treat it as a mere thing.+--We have a perfect right to sacrifice the
pleasure of an animal to the welfare of ourselves. We have no right to
sacrifice the welfare of the animal to our capricious feelings. We have
no right to neglect an animal from sheer unwillingness to give it the
reasonable attention which is necessary to provide it with proper food,
proper care, proper shelter, and proper exercise. A little girl,
reproved for neglecting to feed her rabbits, when asked indignantly by
her father, "Don't you love your rabbits?" replied, "Yes, I love them
better than I love to feed them." This love which doesn't love to feed
is sentimentality, the fundamental vice of all personal relations, of
which we shall hear more later. The temptation arises even here in our
relations to the animal. It is always so much easier to neglect a claim
made upon us from without, than to realize and respect it.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
+Ignorant or willful disregard of the nature and welfare of an animal is
cruelty.+--Overloading beasts of burden; driving them when lame; keeping
them on insufficient food, or in dark, cold, and unhealthy quarters;
whipping, goading, and beating them constantly and excessively are the
most common forms of cruelty to animals. Pulling flies to pieces,
stoning frogs, robbing birds' nests are forms of cruelty of which young
children are often guilty before they are old enough to reflect that
their sport is purchased at the cost of frightful pain to these poor
innocent and defenseless creatures. The simple fact that we are strong
and they are weak ought to make evident, to anyone capable of the least
reflection, how mean a thing it is to take advantage of our superior
strength and knowledge to inflict pain on one of these creatures which
nature has placed under the protection of our superior power and
knowledge, and lead us to resolve
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
+Subjection to animals degrading.+--The animals are vastly inferior to
man in dignity and worth. Many of them have strong wills of their own,
and if we will allow it, will run over us, and have their own way in
spite of us. Such subjection of a man or woman to an animal is a most
shameful sight. To have dominion over them is man's prerogative; and to
surrender that prerogative is to abrogate our humanity.
This subjection of a person to an animal may come about through a morbid
and sentimental affection for an animal. When a man or a woman makes an
animal so much of a pet that every caprice of the cat or dog is law;
when the whole arrangements of the household are made to yield to its
whims; when affections that are withheld from earnest work and human
service are lavished in profusion on a pug or a canary; there again we
see the order of rank in the scale of dignity and worth inverted, and
the human bowing to the beast.
THE PENALTY.
+Inhumanity to brutes brutalizes humanity.+--If we refuse by
consideration and kindness to lift the brute up into our human sympathy,
and recognize in it the rights and feelings which it has in common with
us, then we sink to the unfeeling and brutal level to which our cruelty
seeks to consign the brutes. Every cruel blow inflicted on an animal
leaves an ugly scar in our own hardened hearts, which mars and destroys
our capacity for the gentlest and sweetest sympathy with our fellow-men.