Read Ebook: Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress by Salt Henry S

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APPENDICES 95

BIBLIOGRAPHY 117

INDEX 123

ANIMALS' RIGHTS.

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.

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. 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.

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."

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.

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.

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, "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 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.

Let me here quote a most impressive passage from Schopenhauer.

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." 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."

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.

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 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.

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.

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 for all living things. Herein, and herein alone, is to be sought the true sanity of temperament.

"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.

THE CASE OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS.

An incalculable mass of drudgery, at the cost of incalculable suffering, is daily, hourly performed for the benefit of man by these honest, patient labourers in every town and country of the world. Are these countless services to be permanently ignored in a community which makes any pretension to a humane civilization? Will the free citizens of the enlightened republics of the future be content to reap the immense advantages of animals' labour, without recognizing that they owe them some consideration in return? The question is one that carries with it its own answer.

But the human mind is subtle to evade the full significance of its duties, and nowhere is this more conspicuously seen than in our treatment of the lower races. Given a position in which man profits largely by the toil or suffering of the animals, and our respectable moralists are pretty sure to be explaining to us that this providential arrangement is "better for the animals themselves." The wish is father to the thought in these questions, and there is an accommodating elasticity in our social ethics that permits of the justification of almost any system which it would be inconvenient to us to discontinue. Thus we find it stated, and on the authority of a bishop, that man may "lay down the terms of the social contract between animals and himself," because, forsooth, "the general life of a domestic animal is one of very great comfort--according to the animal's own standard probably one of almost perfect happiness."

But as time went on, and public opinion was more sensitive, the interpretation of this vague reference to "any other domestic animal" became a point of considerable importance, since it closely affected the welfare of certain captive animals which, though regarded as wild, and therefore outside the pale of protection, were to all intents and purposes in a state of domestication. The Act of 1849 was accordingly amended by the Wild Animals in Captivity Act of 1900, which made it an offence to maltreat a wild animal while actually in a state of captivity.

"Food, rest, and tender usage," were declared by Humphry Primatt, the old author already quoted, to be the three rights of the domestic animals. Lawrence's opinion was to much the same effect.

"Man is indispensably bound to bestow upon animals, in return for the benefit he derives from their services, good and sufficient nourishment, comfortable shelter, and merciful treatment; to commit no wanton outrage upon their feelings, whilst alive, and to put them to the speediest and least painful death, when it shall be necessary to deprive them of life."

But it is important to note that something more is due to animals, and especially to domestic animals, than the mere supply of provender and the mere immunity from ill-usage. "We owe justice to men," wrote Montaigne, "and grace and benignity to other creatures that are capable of it; there is a natural commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and us." Sir Arthur Helps admirably expressed this sentiment in his well-known reference to the duty of "using courtesy to animals."

If these be the rights of domestic animals, it is pitiful to reflect how commonly and how grossly they are violated. The average life of our "beasts of burden," the horse, the ass, and the mule, is from beginning to end a rude negation of their individuality and intelligence; they are habitually addressed and treated as stupid instruments of man's will and pleasure, instead of the highly-organized and sensitive beings that they are. Well might Thoreau, the humanest and most observant of naturalists, complain of man's "not educating the horse, not trying to develop his nature, but merely getting work out of him"; for such, it must be acknowledged, is the prevalent method of treatment, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, at the present day, even where there is no actual cruelty or ill-usage.

We are often told that there is no other western country where tame animals are so well treated as in England, and it is only necessary to read the records of a century back to see that the inhumanities of the past were far more atrocious than any that are still practised in the present. Let us be thankful for these facts, as showing that the current of English opinion is at least moving in the right direction. But it must yet be said that the sights that everywhere meet the eye of a humane and thoughtful observer, whether in town or country, are a disgrace to our vaunted "civilization." Watch the cab traffic in one of the crowded thoroughfares of our great cities--always the same lugubrious patient procession of underfed overloaded animals, the same brutal insolence of the drivers, the same accursed sound of the whip. And remembering that these horses are gifted with a large degree of sensibility and intelligence, must one not feel that the fate to which they are thus mercilessly subjected is a shameful violation of the principle which moralists have laid down?

The use of machinery is often condemned, on aesthetic grounds, because of the ugliness it has introduced into so many features of modern life. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that it has immensely relieved the huge mass of animal labour, and that when such forces are generally used for purposes of traction, one of the foulest blots on our social humanity is likely to disappear. Scientific and mechanical invention, so far from being necessarily antagonistic to a true beauty of life, may be found to be of the utmost service to it, when they are employed for humane and not merely commercial, purposes. Herein Thoreau is a wiser teacher than Ruskin. "If all were as it seems," he says, "and men made the elements their servants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as that which floats over the farmer's fields, then the elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their errands and be their escort."

It is no part of my purpose to enumerate the various acts of injustice of which domestic animals are the victims; it is sufficient to point out that the true cause of such injustice is to be sought in the unwarrantable neglect of their many intelligent qualities, and in the contemptuous indifference which, in defiance of sense and reason, still classes them as "brute-beasts." What has been said of horses in this respect applies still more strongly to the second class of domestic animals. Sheep, goats, and oxen are regarded as mere "live-stock"; while pigs, poultry, rabbits, and other marketable "farm-produce," meet with even less consideration, and are constantly treated with brutal inhumanity by their human possessors. Let anyone who doubts this pay a visit to a cattle-market, and study the scenes that are enacted there.

There remains one other class of domestic animals, viz., those who have become still more closely associated with mankind through being the inmates of their homes. The dog is probably better treated on the whole than any other animal; though, to prove how far we still are from a rational and consistent appreciation of his worth, it is only necessary to point to the fact that he is commonly regarded by a large number of educated people as a fit and proper subject for that experimental torture which is known as vivisection. The cat has always been treated with far less consideration than the dog, and, despite the numerous scattered instances that might be cited to the contrary, it is to be feared that De Quincey was in the main correct, when he remarked that "the groans and screams of this poor persecuted race, if gathered into some great echoing hall of horrors, would melt the heart of the stoniest." The institution of "Homes" for lost and starving dogs and cats is a welcome sign of the humane feeling that is asserting itself in some quarters; but it is also no less a proof of the general indifferentism which can allow the most familiar domestic animals to become homeless.

It may be doubted, indeed, whether the condition of the household "pet" is, in the long run, more enviable than that of the "beast of burden." Pets, like kings' favourites, are usually the recipients of an abundance of sentimental affection but of little real kindness; so much easier is it to give temporary caresses than substantial justice. It seems to be forgotten, in a vast majority of cases, that a domestic animal does not exist for the mere idle amusement, any more than for the mere commercial profit, of its human owner; and that for a living being to be turned into a useless puppet is only one degree better than to be doomed to the servitude of a drudge. The injustice done to the pampered lap-dog is as conspicuous, in its way, as that done to the over-worked horse, and both spring from one and the same origin--the fixed belief that the life of a "brute" has no moral purpose, no distinctive personality worthy of due consideration and development. In a society where the lower animals were regarded as intelligent beings, and not as animated machines, it would be impossible for this incongruous absurdity to continue.

This, then, appears to be our position as regards the rights of domestic animals. Waiving, on the one hand, the somewhat abstruse question whether man is morally justified in utilizing animal labour at all, and on the other the fatuous assertion that he is constituting himself a benefactor by so doing, we recognize that the services of domestic animals have by immemorial usage become an important and, it may even be said, necessary element in the economy of modern life. It is impossible, unless every principle of justice is to be cast to the winds, that the due requital of these services should remain a matter of personal caprice; for slavery is at all times hateful and iniquitous, whether it be imposed on mankind or on the lower races. Apart from the rights they possess in common with all intelligent beings, domestic animals have a special claim on man's courtesy and sense of fairness, inasmuch as they are not his fellow-creatures only, but his fellow-workers, his dependents, and in many cases the familiar associates and trusted inmates of his home.

THE CASE OF WILD ANIMALS.

The domination of property has left its trail indelibly on the records of this question. Until the passing of "Martin's Act" in 1822, the most atrocious cruelty, even to domestic animals, could only be punished where there was proved to be an infringement of the rights of ownership. Some measure of legal protection was, as I have said, accorded to wild animals in the Wild Animals in Captivity Act of 1900, which was repealed, re-enacted, and extended in the Protection of Animals Act, 1911; which Act was itself strengthened by an Amendment passed in 1921, prohibiting the coursing or hunting of a wild animal in an enclosed space from which it has no reasonable chance of escape. With this exception, it is permissible for anyone to kill or torture them with impunity, except where the sacred privileges of "property" are thereby offended. "Everywhere," it has been well said, "it is absolutely a capital crime to be an unowned creature."

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