Here upon the opening of the shooting season, I am reminded of the
impression made on me some time ago by an article on hunting lions
in Africa written by a very well-known author. I remember being much
struck by his admirably expressed and lucid explanation of his reason
for engaging in that pursuit. Being a native of Vermont I had never
devoted much thought to the ethics of lion-hunting and was interested
to read that the author of the article felt justified in killing lions
because there is really no place for them in the modern world; because
they are anachronistic and objectionable survivals from another phase
of the world’s history; because they are obstacles in the advancing
tide of colonization. This very obvious line of reasoning had never
chanced to occur to me before. I stopped a moment to savor the pleasure
one always feels at having hazy ideas clarified and set in order, and
before I went on with the article I reflected that the world owes a
debt of gratitude to the highly educated men of trained minds who
undertake out-of-the-way enterprises, because with their habit of
searching and logical analysis they bring out the philosophy underlying
any occupation they may set themselves.
Then I read on further through some most entertaining descriptions
of African scenery till I came to an eloquently written paragraph
denouncing in spirited terms those men who hunted lions in “an
unsportsmanlike manner.” My curiosity was aroused. I wondered what
this objectionable method could be--probably one which involved the
escape of many of these undesirable lions, or possibly more suffering
to them. My astonishment was great, therefore, when I read that this
pernicious manner of hunting lions consisted in going after them
with dogs and horses, and that the author objected to it because it
is practically sure to secure every lion hunted. He put it with an
evident distaste, that the lion became so worn out with running and
so dazed with the barking of the dogs that the hunter could walk up
to him and put the rifle-barrel in his ear. If you really want to
kill a lion, my sportsman-author went on disdainfully, the thing to
do is to shoot a zebra, cut holes in the carcass, put strychnine in
the holes, and leave the carcass where the lions can get at it. The
ringing accent of scorn in which this whole passage was written cast
me into the greatest bewilderment. Had I not just read that the author
considered it a laudable thing to put lions out of the world? I must
have mistaken his meaning. Feeling greatly perplexed, I hastily turned
back over the pages until I encountered that first passage again, and
found that I had not in the least mistaken his meaning. He had said
in so many words that lions ought to be killed because they were an
anachronistic survival, etc., etc. Putting the two statements side by
side I looked from one to the other in the first of the seizures of
complete perplexity which marked my attempt to understand his ideal of
sportsmanship. I read on into the article with the liveliest curiosity,
hoping that the author would throw more light on the subject of what
constituted a really sportsmanlike method of killing an objectionable
animal, and from the sum total of his remarks I made out quite clearly
why he objected to the zebra-strychnine method. It was not after all
because it was sure, for his own avowed aim was to kill every lion
he encountered, and to look up all he possibly could, whether they
evidenced any desire to encounter him or not. It was because it “did
not give the lion a chance.”
In varying forms he repeated this sportsman’s ideal of “giving the game
a chance,” but from the context it was clear, even to my inexperienced
eye, that he did not mean to be taken literally. It was not a real
chance the lion had when the sportsman could arrange matters to his
taste--it was a hypothetical, metaphysical chance. The aim was to
give the animal the illusion of having a chance, and when, acting on
that idea, he had furnished the hunter with sufficient excitement in
frustrating his desperate attempts to escape, the sportsman was to kill
him in the end, thus proving his own skill and ingenuity. Yes, it was
all quite clearly set forth in the same lucid style which had aroused
my admiration at first.
With the repetition of these manœuvres in the case of every lion killed
in the author’s gentlemanly advance across Africa, I had a stronger and
stronger impression that somewhere else I had encountered this sort
of reasoning. Somewhere I had heard it all before; or if I had not
heard it, I had seen it. But how could I, a Vermont rustic, ever have
seen anything which might remind me of lion-hunting according to these
impeccably sportsmanlike rules? I laid down the book, trying to bring
up the haunting memory more clearly, and in a moment it had flashed
up vivid and clear-cut. Why yes, the sportsmanlike method of killing
lions reminded me of something with which I had been familiar all my
life,--of a cat playing with a live mouse before eating it. It was now
more evident that, in comparison with the brutally direct methods of
the pot-hunting dog, the cat is actuated by the finest devotion to the
ideals of sportsmanship. Not for her the quick pounce and avid crunch
of Rover. She “gives the mouse a chance,” and only kills him after she
has extracted the most deliciously titillating excitement out of his
frenzied dashes for liberty. The facts that he never does get away from
the cat, and that the lion does sometimes get away from the man only
prove how infinitely more clever in this game of sportsmanship, is the
cat than the man, since the open purpose of both cat and man is to kill
the other animal in the end.
Now nothing can be more unphilosophical in one’s attitude towards
the world than to blame creatures for acting according to their
natures, and I have never felt in the least inclined to censure the
cat, although I always put her out of the room with some violence if
she brings in a live mouse and begins her sportsmanlike tactics with
him. This is not because I think the cat is a wicked animal and ought
to be punished, but merely because the sight of the frantic mental
sufferings of the mouse happens to be very disagreeable to me. I have
no illusions about pussy. I know that if I kicked her out of the room
a thousand times ten thousand, I could never inculcate in her any
genuine conception of the idea that it may be wrong to get her fun out
of another’s extreme pain. That is the way cats are. Her virtues lie in
other directions. If she keeps herself and her kittens clean, and does
not steal my beef-steak, I can ask no more from her.
But now as I meditated on her character, for which I felt a
contemptuous tolerance founded on a knowledge of her limitations, I was
most disagreeably struck by the close resemblance between her nature
and that of the gentleman-sportsman. It is all very well to make the
best of the cat’s shortcomings, to refrain from expressing, in the only
way she can understand, my disgust at a trait she cannot alter, but it
is quite another thing to resign myself to the presence of the same
trait in the character of many human beings for whom I should like to
feel nothing but admiration and respect.
I recognize of course that the lion-hunter may shift his ground, admit
that he hunts more for the excitement of the chase than to protect
poor colonists from marauding lions, yet still protest against my
criticism. “It is unfair,” he may urge, “to assume that human nature
is all mind and spirit. Flesh and blood exist and have their claim for
consideration. Killing animals might be unworthy for a seraph, but I
am a man, and for me it is a harmless method of exercising my age-old
inherited battle-lust. I as well as the cat am linked to the past. Is
it fair for you to censure in me what you pass over in her?”
Such a plea will hardly answer. Human nature is not animal nature, and
though dogs and cats may possibly have their own standards of right and
wrong, based on the needs and possibilities of their species, man with
his different needs and possibilities has no ethical point of contact
with them. But in his own case he is and always has been convinced of
the spark disturbing his clod. He is not content to regard himself as
a highly intelligent primate, destined to make over the material world
for his own uses; whatever his practice may be, he cannot free himself
from the belief that he must be good, and must become better. Nor has
this conviction wasted itself in impotent speculation. Throughout his
history, he has continued to set up standards of conduct so lofty that
no age has come near to living up to its profession of right living.
Nevertheless aspiration has induced development: for the standard of
its ancestors has seemed inadequate to every generation. What the
grandfather considered a matter of course, and the father condoned as
a peccadillo, the son and his contemporaries proclaim a vice. They may
themselves indulge in the vice, but they do so with a feeling of guilt,
and they hail with rejoicing the moments when they resolve to improve
their lives: such wishes are everything: the rest is merely a matter of
time.
No man, therefore, can regard himself solely as the son of an earthy
family: for with the lusts of the flesh he has also inherited the
aspirations of the spirit; and he is bound by this mental heredity to
hold himself responsible as the father of a posterity always advancing
toward perfection. Unless he is willing to confess himself either an
imbecile or a criminal, he is not justified in yielding to an impulse
which he recognizes as unworthy.
Again, the gentleman-lion-hunter may object that I am stating the
matter with too much heat. Even though forced to admit that hunting is
neither really useful (since lions can be exterminated more easily and
surely without it) nor an ineradicable heritage from man’s savage past
(since men have outgrown so many other supposedly ingrained instincts)
he may make a stand on the contention that hunting is a blameless
pastime, and that if a gentleman chooses to spend his vacation shooting
lions, instead of climbing mountains, neither he, nor society, nor
posterity will ever be a penny the worse for it.
I cannot agree with the Gentleman-sportsman. His contention that lion
shooting is an obviously blameless recreation for civilized men does
not appear to me self-evident. Among the difficulties which beset us
in our great campaign to keep the higher elements in human nature, and
to discard the lower ones, there is no more puzzling problem than the
question of our relation to the animal-world. On this problem there
is a great difference of opinion between the older and the younger
branches of the Aryan family. The Hindus elaborated their merciful and
elevated theory of life at a time when, so to speak, we were still
tearing meat from the bones and eating it raw. When, at a much later
period, we ourselves came to face the problem, the discoveries of
science had so widened the horizon of our knowledge that we were unable
to accept the Hindu doctrine of never taking animal life because the
principle of life is sacred. Aware that life is not only animal, but
exists in everything, we perceived that to eat a dish of oatmeal is to
destroy life as truly as to butcher an ox. It is apparent to us that
one of the dark mysteries of the world is that we can avoid taking life
only by refusing to live ourselves.
Confronted with this problem, when we began to question our habits,
we have, after a fashion, worked it out on logical grounds, and have
decided that we have a right to take life which is necessary to ours,
or which is injurious to ours; but we have tempered this high-handed
decision by the feeling, based on all that is best and highest in
our natures, that to take life is a serious business, should be
undertaken in a serious spirit, for some evident purpose, and should be
accomplished in the most painless fashion possible. All the nation-wide
campaign against flies has not lessened by a jot our horror at the
child who amuses himself by tearing off their wings. Moderns think of
themselves as the legal executioners of those animals which they elect
must die; and the essence of the executioner’s duty is to be merciful,
quick, competent in the accomplishment of his task. Most of us would
not care to work in a slaughter-house, but that is not because we think
the butcher a wicked man. Neither would we choose of our own accord to
care for the insane, or clean out the sewers in a city, but that is not
because those are shameful acts. They are necessary but uncomely parts
of the world’s economy, to be performed with a decent reticence and as
quickly and economically as possible.
This theory of the entire subservience of the animal world to our
human needs can certainly not be criticized for being too ethereally
exalted. In fact its best friends cannot claim that it is very
elevated doctrine; but at least it is an honest acknowledgment of
apparent necessity, it is tempered by all the mercy possible under the
circumstances, it is fairly consistent, and it has been accepted by
the majority of the inhabitants of the civilized world as a working
theory. But how can the curious institution of the good sportsman
be fitted into this frank and open modern attitude about a sombre
mystery in the intertwined interests of the world? As a matter of fact
modern ideas and the good sportsman cannot possibly be reconciled, and
whenever society has cast a glance at sportsmanship, that institution,
dreading a real scrutiny and a resulting question concerning its
right to existence, has hastily thrown out a sop of concession,
muttering angrily under its breath about the demagogic modern mob
which undertakes to restrict the freedom of gentlemen. In this way,
some hundred years ago, the institution of bear-baiting was conceded
to be not precisely a sport to inculcate fine qualities in its human
spectators; many years later, the contention that prize-fighting
was good fodder for the younger generation was given up, and very
recently, with a pettish protest that really the world is becoming
_too_ emasculated, the fine, virile joys of trap-pigeon-shooting
have been grudgingly abandoned. But for the most part society is
busy about more important matters, and no one except a few unheeded
sentimentalists pays any attention to the conflicting claims of man
and the animals. During such tranquil periods, the sportsman revises
his code according to his own ideas, for, having long outlived the
days when its contribution to the food supply gave it actual value,
hunting has reached the critical, codified stage common to the senility
of all institutions. To an outsider it is rather entertaining to see
the unanimity with which each succeeding generation of sportsmen
looks back with scorn on its predecessors as a parcel of muckers with
no true idea of gentlemanly restraint in sport; a mild diversion
is to be extracted from the elaborate platforms in which they set
forth the latest rules,--that artificial flies are noble,--that bait
is an abomination,--that a magazine shot-gun is fit only for the
pot-hunter,--that men need precisely the exercise for their wit,
courage, foresight, perseverance and skill which is to be found in
hunting animals according to whatever rules chance to be in vogue in
the sporting world of their day.
It is true that hunting animals trains a man to use his brains and
perseverance in overcoming obstacles. It is also true that everything
worth while is achieved against obstacles, so that we do well to train
ourselves to overcome them in our play as well as our work. And it is
true that a man playing a trout with light tackle enjoys the delight
of exercising his own wit, ingenuity, and perseverance in the battle
against obstacles; but so would he if, without tying the animal, he
should set himself to the difficult undertaking of skinning a dog
alive. The fact that he causes more pain in one case than in the
other, differentiates the two pursuits only in the matter of degree.
How shall the line be drawn? How much pain, in what manner, to what
sort of animal, may a man cause for the sole purpose of enjoying the
exercise of his wit, ingenuity and perseverance?
As to the exercise of courage in hunting, it is difficult to take
seriously this claim on the part of huntsmen, who for the most part
are quite unable to travel far enough to encounter any animals more
ferocious than a trout, a fox (whose cowardice is proverbial), or at
most a deer, who asks nothing better than to be allowed to run away as
long as breath lasts. But there are exceptions. There is, for example,
the gentleman-sportsman in Africa, who by the expenditure of a great
amount of time, effort, and money has succeeded in getting to a country
inhabited by an animal which, if sufficiently annoyed would undeniably
eat up a gentleman-sportsman if he could get at him. This is exciting
no doubt, this undoubtedly calls for physical courage. Courage is a
virtue, and excitement is certainly a need of the human heart. No
observer of human nature can deny that we need excitement as much as
we do bread. But the modern world does not consider even this great
desire to justify every and any mode of gratifying it. The man who
hunts lions according to the code of the gentleman-sportsman gets his
excitement out of the fact that the animal he is attempting to kill
may possibly be able to turn the tables and kill him. It would be even
more exciting and dangerous, and would call for even more courage, to
attempt to track down and kill a man fully armed like the hunter. But
the conscience of the world, insensitive as it is to some of the finer
points of conduct, would not for a moment countenance turning loose
even the lowest of convicted criminals for the purpose of allowing
other men to extract excitement out of his chase,--no! not though all
the most delicate distinctions of the most modern and fastidious
code of gentlemanly hunting were thrown around this most inimitably
thrilling of sports. The fact is that the world is becoming more and
more squeamish about the way in which its inhabitants are to secure
their excitement. There was a time when all the gentlemen-sportsmen
supplied themselves with excitement by sitting in comfortable seats
about an arena and watching wild animals tear human beings to pieces.
There is still a modern nation which allows its gentlemen to vary the
monotony of their lives by watching bulls gore horses and even men,
to death. There is even a considerable amount of excitement to be
extracted from a whiskey-bottle if administered to that end. But there
are some ingenious moderns who manage to escape from boredom by seeking
for rare and valuable new plants in remotest Thibet, or in risking
their lives in the pursuit of the microbe which causes cancer, or (if
these pursuits are too costly for their means) there is the profession
of fireman in a great city, or coastguard on a dangerous shore, or
surveying engineer in a new country. All of these occupations call for
a reasonable amount of physical courage, and supply a change from the
dull routine of humdrum life.
To return to our lions; although to hunt them by the sportsman’s code
undoubtedly takes courage, does it not seem rather a pity to waste in
the destruction of animals admitted vermin, a human quality so fine,
so inspiriting, so necessary as physical courage, sanctified as it
is by a thousand struggles of men against disease, against wrong and
violence, against the inert forces of Nature? Lions interfere with the
peaceable occupation of the world by humanity: therefore we believe we
have a right to kill them. Formerly the only way in which they could
be killed was by the exercise of physical courage on the part of men.
But that is not in the least necessary, now that a powerful drug has
been discovered which will do the unsavory but necessary task for us
and leave us free to use our courage for more valuable purposes. Why
not let this unimportant and unpleasant detail of the world’s work be
attended to in the most competent way possible, without the unseemly
attempt to make it at the same time an entertaining spectacle for
human beings? And why not apply the same principle to the killing of
other animals for whose destruction we feel we have a fair warrant of
execution signed by our reasonable needs. Rabbits and foxes injure our
crops, and propagate so fast that they are a menace to our husbandry.
If they are to be killed, and everyone except an occasional zoölater
grants that the world is not large enough now both for them and for us,
let us kill as many as we need to put out of the way, as quickly and
surely as may be, with no quaint discrimination against ferrets in the
case of rabbits, or rifles in the case of foxes. If we need fish as a
variety in our diet, let us go honestly about the business of securing
it, and not quibble about the great ethical elevation of light tackle
as opposed to nets. And if a man is trying to kill a bird for food,
let him forget the grotesque reasoning that it is not fair to shoot it
sitting on a bough where he can almost certainly kill it at one shot,
but must let it fly so that there are ten chances to one that the shot
will only maim or mutilate it.
Now it is certainly true that there are among our twentieth century
men, a good many individuals from whom no help in the upward movement
of the race can be expected, and whose fondness for hunting,
undoubtedly is based upon the survival in them of the paleolithic
liking to kill. They prefer to hunt rabbits rather than shoot at a
mark, because a target cannot shed blood. If they make no pretence
about this taste being the basis of their liking for hunting, it
would be showing no due sense of the proportion of things to visit
them with too serious a reprobation. It is possible that this sort of
man, if he were not allowed to amuse himself by tormenting animals
might react from the humane régime of his time by committing deeds of
violence against human beings. Only let this outlet for non-eliminated
pre-historic instincts be frankly a drainage-pipe for the purpose of
moral sanitation only. Let there be no attempt to fool our noses as
to its true scent, by the use of the musk of pseudo-gentlemanliness.
If hunters will but be open about it, theirs is not a very heinous
survival of what was a most necessary, though now superseded instinct
in humanity. There are many worse things than having fun out of the
dying struggles of a trout or a rabbit. Hunting in the open air is
certainly better than the opium habit. Animals nearly always die
a violent death anyhow, and it does not, I daresay, make a vital
difference to them whether it is a fox or a man, or a bigger fish which
finally dispatches them.
The number of human beings unleavened by humanity appears larger than
it really is, because most children as they live rapidly through their
personal reproduction of the history of mankind, pass through the cave
man’s phase of frank, thoughtless, and unconscious cruelty; and some
of them are slow to pass out of it. But cases of prolonged atavism are
few, and though disagreeable, need be little more regretted than the
occasional outcropping survival in a modern of the tremendous jaw and
beetling brows of our neolithic grandsires. Left to themselves, these
anachronistic and objectionable traits will vanish as the race ascends
the slow spiral of its upward way. Already most twentieth-century boys
and girls (if their development be not arrested by perverted public
opinion) tend to outgrow this relic of savagery, as they outgrow their
exaggerated gregariousness, their slavish conformity to the ideas of
others, and the rest of the primitive phases of their development. The
process needs no special attention from their instructors: good example
and encouragement to clear thinking about habitual actions will almost
always do the work.
But few young brains are vigorous enough to continue clear thinking
under the narcotic influence of a generally accepted social hypocrisy.
It is not acquaintance with the grim necessity of killing as the
butcher practises it which is dangerous to young consciences, it is
the sight of the sportsman killing without necessity. What stupifies
the moral sense in this connection is the pretence that to take
one’s pleasure at the cost of another’s suffering is a commendable,
highly respectable, nay, even very aristocratic amusement for grown
men of brains and education. The most gentlemanly restrictions cast
about hunting animals for fun, cannot mask the fact that its essence
is enjoyment taken consciously at the expense of another’s pain, an
enjoyment against which the conscience of the world has pronounced
a righteous verdict of total condemnation. The butcher kills, the
pot-hunter kills, the sportsman kills; but only the last openly finds
entertainment in the act.