them than tell men that his father cared for them? He has thereby
wakened and is wakening in the hearts of men a seed his father planted.
It grows but slowly, yet has already borne a little precious fruit. His
loving friend St Francis has helped him, and many others have tried,
and are now trying to help him: whoever sows the seed of that seed the
Father planted is helping the Son. Our behaviour to the animals, our
words concerning them, are seed, either good or bad, in the hearts of
our children. No one can tell to what the animals might not grow, even
here on the old earth under the old heaven, if they were but dealt with
according to their true position in regard to us. They are, in sense
very real and divine, our kindred. If I call them our poor relations, it
is to suggest that poor relations are often ill used. Relatives, poor or
rich, may be such ill behaved, self-assertive, disagreeable persons,
that we cannot treat them as we gladly would; but our endeavour should
be to develop every true relation. He who is prejudiced against a
relative because he is poor, is himself an ill-bred relative, and to be
ill-bred is an excluding fault with the court of the high countries.
There, poverty is welcome, vulgarity inadmissible.
Those who love certain animals selfishly, pampering them, as so many
mothers do their children with worse results, that they may be loved of
them in return, betray them to their enemies. They are not lovers of
animals, but only of favourites, and do their part to make the rest of
the world dislike animals. Theirs are the dogs that inhospitably growl
and bark and snap, moving the indifferent to dislike, and confirming
the unfriendly in their antagonism. Any dog-parliament, met in the
interests of their kind, would condemn such dogs to be discreetly
bitten, and their mistresses to be avoided. And certainly, if animals
are intended to live and grow, she is the enemy of any individual
animal, who stunts his moral and intellectual development by unwise
indulgence. Of whatever nature be the heaven of the animals, that animal
is not in the fair way to enter it. The education of the lower lies at
the door of the higher, and in true education is truest kindness.
But what shall I say of such as for any kind of end subject animals to
torture? I dare hardly trust myself to the expression of my judgment of
their conduct in this regard.
'We are investigators; we are not doing it for our own sakes, but for
the sake of others, our fellow-men.'
The higher your motive for it, the greater is the blame of your
unrighteousness. Must we congratulate you on such a love for your
fellows as inspires you to wrong the weaker than they, those that are
without helper against you? Shall we count the man worthy who, for the
sake of his friend, robbed another man too feeble to protect himself,
and too poor to punish his assailant? For the sake of your children,
would you waylay a beggar? No real good can grow in the soil of
injustice.
I cannot help suspecting, however, that the desire to know has a greater
share in the enormity than the desire to help. Alas for the science that
will sacrifice the law of righteousness but to behold a law of sequence!
The tree of knowledge will never prove to man the tree of life. There is
no law says, Thou shalt know; a thousand laws cry out, Thou shalt do
right. These men are a law unto themselves--and what a law! It is the
old story: the greed of knowing casts out righteousness, and mercy, and
faith. Whatever believed a benefit may or may not thus be wrought for
higher creatures, the injustice to the lower is nowise affected. Justice
has no respect of persons, but they are surely the weaker that stand
more in need of justice!
Labour is a law of the universe, and is not an evil. Death is a law of
this world at least, and is not an evil. Torture is the law of no world
but the hell of human invention. Labour and death are for the best good
of those that labour and die; they are laws of life. Torture is
doubtless over-ruled for the good of the tortured, but it will one day
burn a very hell in the hearts of the torturers.
Torture can be inflicted only by the superior. The divine idea of a
superior, is one who requires duty, and protects, helps, delivers: our
relation to the animals is that of their superiors in the family, who
require labour, it may be, but are just, helpful, protective. Can they
know anything of the Father who neither love nor rule their inferiors,
but use them as a child his insensate toys, pulling them to pieces to
know what is inside them? Such men, so-called of science--let them have
the dignity to the fullness of its worth--lust to know as if a man's
life lay in knowing, as if it were a vile thing to be ignorant--so vile
that, for the sake of his secret hoard of facts, they do right in
breaking with torture into the house of the innocent! Surely they shall
not thus find the way of understanding! Surely there is a maniac thirst
for knowledge, as a maniac thirst for wine or for blood! He who loves
knowledge the most genuinely, will with the most patience wait for it
until it can be had righteously.
Need I argue the injustice? Can a sentient creature come forth without
rights, without claim to well-being, or to consideration from the other
creatures whom they find, equally without action of their own, present
in space? If one answer, 'For aught I know, it may be so,'--Where then
are thy own rights? I ask. If another have none, thine must lie in thy
superior power; and will there not one day come a stronger than thou?
Mayst thou not one day be in Naboth's place, with an Ahab getting up to
go into thy vineyard to possess it? The rich man may come prowling
after thy little ewe lamb, and what wilt thou have to say? He may be the
stronger, and thou the weaker! That the rights of the animals are so
much less than ours, does not surely argue them the less rights! They
have little, and we have much; ought they therefore to have less and we
more? Must we not rather be the more honourably anxious that they have
their little to the full. Every gain of injustice is a loss to the
world; for life consists neither in length of days nor in ease of body.
Greed of life and wrong done to secure it, will never work anything but
direst loss. As to knowledge, let justice guide thy search and thou wilt
know the sooner. Do the will of God, and thou shalt know God, and he
will open thine eyes to look into the very heart of knowledge. Force thy
violent way, and gain knowledge, to miss truth. Thou mayest wound the
heart of God, but thou canst not rend it asunder to find the Truth that
sits there enthroned.
What man would he be who accepted the offer to be healed and kept alive
by means which necessitated the torture of certain animals? Would he
feel himself a gentleman--walking the earth with the sense that his life
and conscious well-being were informed and upheld by the agonies of
other lives?
'I hope, sir, your health is better than it has been?'
'Thank you, I am wonderfully restored--have entered in truth upon a
fresh lease of life. My organism has been nourished with the agonies of
several dogs, and the pangs of a multitude of rabbits and guinea-pigs,
and I am aware of a marvellous change for the better. They gave me their
lives, and I gave them in return worse pains than mine. The bargain has
proved a quite satisfactory one! True, their lives were theirs, not
mine; but then their sufferings were theirs, not mine! They could not
defend themselves; they had not a word to say, so reasonable was the
exchange. Poor fools! they were neither so wise, nor so strong, nor such
lovers of comfort as I! If they could not take care of themselves, that
was their look-out, not mine! Every animal for himself!'
There was a certain patriotic priest who thought it better to put a just
man to death than that a whole nation should perish. Precious salvation
that might be wrought by injustice! But then the just man taught that
the rich man and the beggar must one day change places.
'To set the life of a dog against the life of a human being!'
No, but the torture of a dog against the prolonged life of a being
capable of torturing him. Priceless gain, the lengthening of such a
life, to the man and his friends and his country!
That the animals do not suffer so much as we should under like
inflictions, I hope true, and think true. But is toothache nothing,
because there are yet worse pains for head and face?
Not a few who now regard themselves as benefactors of mankind, will one
day be looked upon with a disapprobation which no argument will now
convince them they deserve. But yet another day is coming, when they
will themselves right sorrowfully pour out disapprobation upon their own
deeds; for they are not stones but men, and must repent. Let them, in
the interests of humanity, give their own entrails to the knife, their
own silver cord to be laid bare, their own golden bowl to be watched
throbbing, and I will worship at their feet. But shall I admire their
discoveries at the expense of the stranger--nay, no stranger--the poor
brother within their gates?
Your conscience does not trouble you? Take heed that the light that is
in you be not darkness. Whatever judgment mean, will it suffice you in
that hour to say, 'My burning desire to know how life wrought in him,
drove me through the gates and bars of his living house'? I doubt if you
will add, in your heart any more than with your tongue, 'and I did
well.'
To those who expect a world to come, I say then, Let us take heed how
we carry ourselves to the creation which is to occupy with us the world
to come.
To those whose hearts are sore for that creation, I say, The Lord is
mindful of his own, and will save both man and beast.
THE END.