CHAPTER VIII.

LINES OF REFORM.

Having now applied the principle with which we started to the several cases where it appears to be most flagrantly overlooked, we are in a better position to estimate the difficulties and the possibilities of its future acceptance. Our investigation of animals’ rights has necessarily been, in large measure, an enumeration of animals’ wrongs, a story of cruelty and injustice which might have been unfolded in far greater and more impressive detail, had there been any reason for here repeating what has been elsewhere established by other writers beyond doubt or dispute.

But my main purpose was to deal with a general principle rather than with particular instances; and enough has already been said to show that, while man has much cause to be grateful to the lower animals for the innumerable services rendered by them, he can hardly pride himself on the record of the counter-benefits which they have received at his hands.

“If we consider,” says Primatt, “the excruciating injuries offered on our part to the brutes, and the patience on their part; how frequent _our_ provocation, and how seldom _their_ resentment (and in some cases _our_ weakness and _their_ strength, _our_ slowness and _their_ swiftness); one would be almost tempted to suppose that the brutes had combined in one general scheme of benevolence, to teach mankind lessons of mercy and meekness by their own forbearance and longsuffering.”

It is unwise, no doubt, to dwell too exclusively on the wrongs of which animals are the victims; it is still more unwise to ignore them as they are to-day ignored by the large majority of mankind. It is full time that this question were examined in the light of some rational and guiding principle, and that we ceased to drift helplessly between the extremes of total indifference on the one hand, and spasmodic, partially-applied compassion on the other. We have had enough, and too much, of trifling with this or that isolated aspect of the subject, and of playing off the exposure of somebody else’s insensibility by way of a balance for our own, as if a _tu quoque_ were a sufficient justification of a man’s moral delinquencies.

The terrible sufferings that are quite needlessly inflicted on the lower animals under the plea of domestic usage, food-demands, sport, fashion, and science, are patent to all who have the seeing eye and the feeling heart to apprehend them; those sufferings will not be lessened, nor will man’s responsibility be diminished by any such irrelevant assertions as that vivisection is less cruel than sport, or sport less cruel than butchering,--nor yet by the contrary contention that vivisection, or sport, or flesh-eating, as the case may be, is the prime origin of all human inhumanity. We want a comprehensive principle which will cover all these varying instances, and determine the true lines of reform.

Such a principle, as I have throughout insisted, can only be found in the recognition of the right of animals, as of men, to be exempt from any unnecessary suffering or serfdom, the right to live a natural life of “restricted freedom,” subject to the real, not supposed or pretended, requirements of the general community. It may be said, and with truth, that the perilous vagueness of the word “necessary” must leave a convenient loop-hole of escape to anyone who wishes to justify his own treatment of animals, however unjustifiable that treatment may appear; the vivisector will assert that his practice is necessary in the interests of science, the flesh-eater that he cannot maintain his health without animal food, and so on through the whole category of systematic oppression.

The difficulty is an inevitable one. No form of words can be devised for the expression of rights, human or animal, which is not liable to some sort of evasion; and all that can be done is to fix the responsibility of deciding between what is necessary and unnecessary, between factitious personal wants and genuine social demands, on those in whom is vested the power of exacting the service or sacrifice required. The appeal being thus made, and the issue thus stated, it may be confidently trusted that the personal conscience of individuals and the public conscience of the nation, acting and reacting in turn on each other, will slowly and surely work out the only possible solution of this difficult and many-sided problem.

For that the difficulties involved in this animal question are many and serious, no one, I imagine, would dispute, and certainly no attempt has been made in this essay to minimize or deny them. It may suit the purpose of those who would retard all humanitarian progress to represent its advocates as mere dreamers and sentimentalists--men and women who befool themselves by shutting their eyes to the fierce struggle that is everywhere being waged in the world of nature, while they point with virtuous indignation to the iniquities perpetrated by man. But it is possible to be quite free from any sentimental illusions, and yet to hold a very firm belief in the principle of animals’ rights. We do not deny, or attempt to explain away, the existence of evil in nature, or the fact that the life of the lower races, as of mankind, is based to a large degree on rapine and violence; nor can we pretend to say whether this evil will ever be wholly amended. It is therefore confessedly impossible, at the present time, to formulate an entirely and logically consistent philosophy of rights; but that would be a poor argument against grappling with the subject at all.

Nor are the hard unmistakable facts of the situation, when viewed in their entirety, by any means calculated to inspire with confidence the opponents of humane reform. For, if it be true that internecine competition is a great factor in the economy of nature, it is no less true, as has been already pointed out, that co-operation is also a great factor therein. Furthermore, though there are many difficulties besetting the onward path of humanitarianism, an even greater difficulty has to be faced by those who refuse to proceed along that path, viz., the fact--a stronger fact than any that can be produced on the other side--that the instinct of compassion and justice to the lower animals has already been so largely developed in the human conscience as to obtain legislative recognition. If the theory of animals’ rights is a mere idealistic phantasy, it follows that we have long ago committed ourselves to a track which can lead us nowhither. Is it then proposed that we should retrace our steps, with a view to regaining the antique position of savage and consistent callousness; or are we to remain perpetually in our present meaningless attitude, admitting the moral value of a partially awakened sensibility, yet opposing an eternal _non possumus_ to any further improvement? Neither of these alternatives is for a moment conceivable; it is perfectly certain that there will still be a forward movement, and along the same lines as in the past.

Nor need we be at all disconcerted by the derisive inquiries of our antagonists as to the final outcome of such theories. “There is some reason to hope,” said the author of the ironical “Vindication of the Rights of Brutes,” “that this essay will soon be followed by treatises on the rights of vegetables and minerals, and that thus the doctrine of perfect equality will become universal.” To which suggestion we need only answer, “Perhaps.” It is for each age to initiate its own ethical reforms, according to the light and sensibility of its own instincts; further and more abstruse questions, at present insoluble, may safely be left to the more mature judgment of posterity. The human conscience furnishes the safest and simplest indicator in these matters. We know that certain acts of injustice affect us as they did not affect our forefathers--it is our duty to set these right. It is not our duty to agitate problems, which, at the present date, excite no unmistakable moral feeling.

The humane instinct will assuredly continue to develop. And it should be observed that to advocate the rights of animals is far more than to plead for compassion or justice towards the victims of ill-usage; it is not only, and not primarily, for the sake of the victims that we plead, but for the sake of mankind itself. Our true civilization, our race-progress, our _humanity_ (in the best sense of the term) are concerned in this development; it is ourselves, our own vital instincts, that we wrong, when we trample on the rights of the fellow-beings, human or non-human, over whom we chance to hold jurisdiction.

This most important point is constantly overlooked by the opponents of humanitarian reform. They labour, unsuccessfully enough, to minimize the complaints of animals’ wrongs, on the plea that these wrongs, though great, are not so great as they are represented to be, and that in any case it is not possible, or not urgently desirable, for man to alleviate them. As if _human_ interests also were not intimately bound up in every such compassionate endeavour!

And this brings us back to the moral of the whole matter. The idea of Humanity is no longer confined to man; it is beginning to extend itself to the lower animals, as in the past it has been gradually extended to savages and slaves. “Behold the animals. There is not one but the human soul lurks within it, fulfilling its destiny as surely as within you.” So writes the author of “Towards Democracy”; and what has long been felt by the poet is now being scientifically corroborated by the anthropologist and philosopher. “The standpoint of modern thought,” says Büchner,[44] “no longer recognizes in animals a difference of kind, but only a difference of degree, and sees the principle of intelligence developing through an endless and unbroken series.”

It is noteworthy that, on this point, evolutionary science finds itself in agreement with oriental tradition.

“The doctrine of metempsychosis,” says Strauss,[45] “knits men and beasts together here [in the East], and unites the whole of Nature in one sacred and mysterious bond. The breach between the two was opened in the first place by Judaism, with its hatred of the Gods of Nature, next by the dualism of Christianity. It is remarkable that at present a deeper sympathy with the animal world should have arisen among the more civilized nations, which manifests itself here and there in societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. It is thus apparent that what on the one hand is the product of modern science--the giving up of the spiritualistic isolation of man from Nature--reveals itself simultaneously through the channel of popular sentiment.”

The true scientist and humanist is he who will reconcile brain to heart, and show us how, without any sacrifice of what we have gained in knowledge, we may resume what we have temporarily lost during the process of acquiring that knowledge--the sureness of intuitive faculty which is originally implanted in men and animals alike. Only by this return to the common fount of feeling will it be possible for man to place himself in right relationship towards the lower animals, and to break down the fatal barrier of antipathy that he has himself erected.[46] If we contrast the mental and moral attitude of the generality of mankind towards the lower races with that of such men as St. Francis or Thoreau, we see what far-reaching possibilities still lie before us on this line of development.

A not altogether unjustifiable complaint is made against “lovers of animals,” that they are often indifferent to the struggle for human rights, while they concern themselves so eagerly over the interests of the lower races. Equally true is the converse statement, that many earnest reformers and philanthropists, men who have a genuine passion for human liberty and progress, are coldly sceptical or even bitterly hostile on the subject of the rights of animals. This organic limitation of sympathies must be recognized and regretted, but it is worse than useless for the one class of reformers to indulge in blame or recrimination against the other. It is certain that they are both working towards the same ultimate end; and if they cannot actually co-operate, they may at least refrain from unnecessarily thwarting and opposing each other.

The principles of justice, if they are to make solid and permanent headway, must be applied with thoroughness and consistency. If there are rights of animals, there must _à fortiori_ be rights of men; and, as I have shown, it is impossible to maintain that an admission of human rights does not involve an admission of animals’ rights also. Now it may not always fall to the lot of the same persons to advocate both kinds of rights, but these rights are, nevertheless, being simultaneously and concurrently advocated; and those who are in a position to take a clear and wide survey of the whole humanitarian movement are aware that its final success is dependent on this broad onward tendency.

The advent of democracy, imperfect though any democracy must be which does not embrace all sentient beings within its scope, will be of enormous assistance to the cause of animals’ rights, for under the present unequal and inequitable social system there is no possibility of those claims receiving their due share of attention. In the rush and hurry of a competitive society, where commercial profit is avowed to be the main object of work, and where the well-being of men and women is ruthlessly sacrificed to that object, what likelihood is there that the lower animals will not be used with a sole regard to the same predominant purpose? Humane individuals may here and there protest, and the growing conscience of the public may express itself in legislation against the worst forms of palpable ill-usage, but the bulk of the people simply cannot, and will not, treat animals as they ought to be treated. Do the wealthy classes show any such consideration? Let “amateur butchery” and “murderous millinery” be the answer. Can it be wondered, then, that the “lower classes,” whose own rights are existent far more in theory than in fact, should exhibit a feeling of stolid indifference to the rights of the still lower animals? It is to democracy, and the democratic sense of kinship and brotherhood, extending first to mankind, and then to the lower races, that we must look for future progress. The emancipation of men will bring with it another and still wider emancipation--of animals.[47]

In conclusion, we are brought face to face with this practical problem--by what means can we best provide for the attainment of the end we have in view? What are the surest remedies for the present wrongs, and the surest pledges for the future rights, of the victims of human tyranny? There are two pre-eminently important methods, which are sometimes regarded as contradictory in principle, but which, as I hope to show, are not only quite compatible, but even mutually serviceable and to some degree inter-dependent. We have no choice but to work by one or the other of these methods, and, if we are wise, we shall endeavour to work by both simultaneously, using the first as our chief instrument of reform, the second as an auxiliary.

I. Education, in the largest sense of the term, has always been, and must always remain, the indispensable condition of humanitarian progress. Very excellent are the words of John Bright on the subject:

“Humanity to animals is a great point. If I were a teacher in a school, I would make it a very important part of my business to impress every boy and girl with the duty of his or her being kind to all animals. It is impossible to say how much suffering there is in the world from the barbarity or unkindness which people show to what we call the inferior creatures.”

It may be doubted, however, whether the young will ever be specially impressed with the lesson of humanity as long as the general tone of their elders and instructors is one of cynical indifference, if not of absolute hostility, to the recognition of animals’ rights.[48] It is society as a whole, and not one class in particular, that needs enlightenment and remonstrance; in fact, the very conception and scope of what is known as a “liberal education” must be revolutionized and extended. For if we find fault with the narrow and unscientific spirit of what is known as “science,” we must in fairness admit that our academic “humanities,” the _literæ humaniores_ of colleges and schools, together with much of our modern culture and refinement, are scarcely less deficient in the spirit of sympathy and brotherhood. This divorce of “humanism” from humaneness is one of the subtlest dangers by which society is beset; for, if we grant that love needs to be tempered and directed by wisdom, still more needful is it that wisdom should be informed and vitalized by love.

It is therefore not only our children who need to be educated in the proper treatment of animals, but our scientists, our religionists, our moralists, and our men of letters. For, in spite of the great progress of humanitarian ideas during the past century, it must be confessed that the popular exponents of western thought are still for the most part quite unable to appreciate the profound truth of those words of Rousseau, which should form the basis of an enlightened system of instruction:

“Hommes, soyez humains! C’est votre premier devoir. Quelle sagesse y a-t-il pour vous, hors de l’humanité?”

But how is this vast educational change to be inaugurated? Like all far-reaching reforms which are promoted by a few believers in the face of the public indifference, it can only be carried through by the energy and resolution of its supporters. The efforts which the various humane societies are now making in special directions, each concentrating its attack on a particular abuse, must be supplemented and strengthened by a crusade--an intellectual, literary, and social crusade--against the central cause of oppression, viz.: the disregard of the natural kinship between man and the animals, and the consequent denial of their rights. We must insist on having the whole question fully considered and candidly discussed, and must no longer permit its most important issues to be shirked because it does not suit the convenience or the prejudices of comfortable folk to give attention to them.

Above all, the sense of ridicule that at present attaches to the supposed “sentimentalism” of an advocacy of animals’ rights must be faced and swept away. The fear of this absurd charge deprives the cause of humanity of many workers who would otherwise lend their aid, and accounts in part for the unduly diffident and apologetic tone which is too often adopted by humanitarians. We must meet this ridicule, and retort it without hesitation on those to whom it properly pertains. The laugh must be turned against the true “cranks” and “crotchet-mongers”--the noodles who can give no wiser reason for the infliction of suffering on animals than that it is “better for the animals themselves”--the flesh-eaters who labour under the pious belief that animals were “sent” to us as food--the silly women who imagine that the corpse of a bird is a becoming article of head-gear--the half-witted sportsmen who vow that the vigour of the English race is dependent on the practice of fox-hunting--and the half-enlightened scientists who are unaware that vivisection has moral and spiritual, no less than physical, consequences. That many of our arguments are mere superficial sword-play, and do not touch the profound emotional sympathies on which the cause of humanity rests, is a fact which does not lessen their controversial significance. For this is a case where those who take the sword shall perish by the sword; and the clever men-of-the-world who twit consistent humanitarians with sentimentality may perhaps discover that they themselves--fixed as they are in an ambiguous and utterly untenable position--are the sickliest sentimentalists of all.

II. Legislation, where the protection of harmless animals is concerned, is the fit supplement and sequel to education, and the objections urged against it are for the most part unreasonable. It must inevitably fail in its purpose, say some; for how can the mere passing of a penal statute prevent the innumerable unwitnessed acts of cruelty and oppression which make up the great total of animal suffering? But the purpose of legislation is not merely thus preventive. Legislation is the record, the register, of the moral sense of the community; it follows, not precedes, the development of that moral sense, but nevertheless in its turn reacts on it, strengthens it, and secures it against the danger of retrocession. It is well that society should proclaim, formally and decisively, its abhorrence of certain practices; and I do not think it can be doubted, by those who have studied the history of the movement, that the general treatment of domestic animals in this country, bad as it still is, would be infinitely worse at this day but for the legislation that dates from the passing of “Martin’s Act” in 1822.

The further argument so commonly advanced, that “force is no remedy,” and that it is better to trust to the good feeling of mankind than to impose a legal restriction, is an amiable criticism which might doubtless be applied with great effect to a large majority of our existing penal enactments, but it is not very applicable to the case under discussion. For if force is ever allowable, surely it is so when it is applied for a strictly _defensive_ purpose, such as to safeguard the weak and helpless from violence. The protection of animals by statute marks but another step onward in that course of humanitarian legislation which, among numerous triumphs, has abolished slavery and passed the Factory Acts--always in the teeth of this same time-honoured objection that “force is no remedy.” Equally fatuous is the assertion that the administrators of the law cannot be trusted to adjudicate between master and “beast.” It was long ago stated by Lord Erskine that “to distinguish the severest discipline, for enforcing activity and commanding obedience in such dependents, from brutal ferocity and cruelty, never yet puzzled a judge or jury--never, at least, in my long experience.”

Such arguments against the legal protection of animals were admirably refuted by John Stuart Mill:

“The reason for legal intervention in favour of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals. It is by the grossest misunderstanding of the principles of Liberty that the infliction of exemplary punishment on ruffianism practised towards these defenceless beings has been treated as a meddling by Government with things beyond its province--an interference with domestic life. The domestic life of domestic tyrants is one of the things which it is most imperative on the Law to interfere with. And it is to be regretted that metaphysical scruples respecting the nature and source of the authority of governments should induce many warm supporters of laws against cruelty to the lower animals to seek for justification of such laws in the incidental consequences of the indulgence of ferocious habits to the interest of human beings, rather than in the intrinsic merits of the thing itself. What it would be the duty of a human being, possessed of the requisite physical strength, to prevent by force, if attempted in his presence, it cannot be less incumbent on society generally to repress. The existing laws of England are chiefly defective in the trifling--often almost nominal--maximum to which the penalty, even in the worst cases, is limited.”[49]

Only with the gradual progress of an enlightened sense of equality shall we remedy these wrongs; and the object of our crusade should be not so much to convert opponents (who, by the very disabilities and limitations of their faculties, can never be really converted,) as to set the confused problem in a clear light, and at least discriminate unmistakably between our enemies and our allies. In all social controversies the issues are greatly obscured by the babel of names and phrases and cross arguments that are bandied to and fro; so that many persons, who by natural sympathy and inclination are the friends of reform, are found to be ranked among its foes; while not a few of its foes, in similar unconsciousness, have strayed into the opposite camp. To state the issues distinctly, and so attract and consolidate a genuine body of support, is, perhaps, at the present time, the best service that humanitarians can render to the movement they wish to promote.

In conclusion, I would state emphatically that this essay is not an appeal _ad misericordiam_ to those who themselves practise, or who condone in others, the deeds against which a protest is here raised. It is not a plea for “mercy” (save the mark!) to the “brute-beasts” whose sole criminality consists in not belonging to the noble family of _homo sapiens_. It is addressed rather to those who see and feel that, as has been well said, “the great advancement of the world, throughout all ages, is to be measured by the increase of humanity and the decrease of cruelty”--that man, to be truly man, must cease to abnegate his common fellowship with all living nature--and that the coming realization of human rights will inevitably bring after it the tardier but not less certain realization of the rights of the lower races.

APPENDIX

I

THE TERM “RIGHTS”[50]

It was argued by Mr. D. G. Ritchie, in his book on “Natural Rights,” that though “we may be said to have duties of _kindness towards_ the animals,” it is “incorrect to represent these as strictly _duties towards_ the animals themselves, as if they had rights against us.” (The italics are Mr. Ritchie’s.) I take this to mean that, in man’s “duty of kindness,” it is the “kindness” only that has reference to animals, the “duty” being altogether the private affair of the man. The kindness is, so to speak, the water, and the duty is the tap; and the convenience of this arrangement is that the man can shut off the kindness whenever it suits him to do so; as, for example, it suited Mr. Ritchie in regard to the question of vivisection.

It is strange that ethical authorities should thus hold, as Catholic theologians do, that we owe no direct duties to animals, and that animals not being “persons” have, strictly speaking, no rights. Indeed, so entertaining did the very idea of the “personality” of animals appear to Mr. Ritchie that he waxed humorous in his desire to know whether a sponge is a “person” or “several persons,” and whether the parasites on a dog are to be respected as “persons,” and so forth.

On the other side, the humanitarian contention is quite clear--that there is no difference _in kind_ between man and the other animals, nor any warrant in science or ethics for drawing between them, as between “persons” and “things,” an absolute line of demarcation. Compelled to admit that the difference is only one of degree, Mr. Ritchie sought to evade the significance of this fact by arguing that it does not follow that, if men have rights, animals also have rights “in the same sense of the term.” I maintain that it _does_ so follow. If by the recognition of rights we mean that man, as a sentient and intelligent being, should be exempt from all avoidable suffering, it follows that other beings who are also sentient and intelligent, though in a lower degree, should have, in a lower degree, the same exemption. This principle, if pressed to its extreme logical conclusion, will of course lead, like all other principles, to what Mr. Ritchie called “difficult questions of casuistry,” and will open a door for small jokes about the personality of parasites and sponges.

Then, again, it is too often overlooked that the rights claimed for animals, as for men, are not absolute but conditional (“this restricted freedom” is Herbert Spencer’s expression), and that a recognition of the rights of other beings is not incompatible with an equal assertion of one’s own. Self-defence is the first and most obvious right of everyone. If, for instance, we hold that a tiger has a right to be spared any unnecessary torture, are we compelled on that account to allow him to eat us if he comes out of his cage? And how would our shooting the tiger, under those untoward circumstances, prove that the tiger is not a “person,” inasmuch as murderers and _human_ tigers, are similarly treated under similar conditions? This “tiger” argument, to which Professor Ritchie was much addicted, is really very small game.

1895.

II

THE NEO-CARTESIANS[51]

Attempts are still made, from time to time, to revive the old Cartesian doctrine that animals do not feel pain. Thus Mr. E. Kay Robinson, in a book entitled “The Religion of Nature” (1906) has sought to bring peace and comfort to the minds of his readers, and to reconcile the seeming cruelties of Nature with the existence of a merciful God, by proving that the non-human races, unlike mankind, have no consciousness of suffering, even when they exhibit all the symptoms of pain and show a dread of its recurrence. This is nothing but the ancient doctrine of Descartes in a new garb, and is itself the outcome of the old anthropocentric view of the world.

On the practical results that would follow the general acceptance of Mr. Robinson’s theories it is hardly worth while to speculate. He himself is at pains to suggest that while the Cartesian doctrine undoubtedly led to cruelty in the past, the modern Robinsonian version of it would have the opposite effect. I greatly doubt it. For to whatever extent it is true that animals are unconscious of pain, to the same extent it must be true that there is no “cruelty” (in the true sense of the term) in “paining” them. An enlightened man, no doubt, will avoid any tyrannical interference with the lives of other beings, whether they are conscious or not, but the majority of men are not enlightened, nor in any hurry to become so; we are living, in fact, in an age of very gross and palpable savagery, out of which nothing can lift us but the growing sense of kinship. Mr. Robinson’s book is one of the latest attempts--and, in some respects, the feeblest--to impair in a very important respect this sense of close kinship between the human and the non-human, and for that reason I regard it as very mischievous in its tendency. As a fair instance of Mr. Robinson’s logic, let us take his triumphant citation of the fact that even a human being, when engaged in some desperate and painful struggle, is often conscious, for the moment, of neither fear nor pain. From this Mr. Robinson quietly assumes that animals are _always_ thus unconscious, because (_a_) some of their actions and emotions are so, and (_b_) “we have no right to suppose that one action or emotion of an animal is more conscious than another.” But, on the contrary, we have every right to suppose that consciousness varies in animals, as in men, as may be gathered from the indifference which two fighting dogs will show to the blows rained upon them by their owners, though at a moment of less excitement the same blows would elicit the most obvious signs of pain.

The _crux_ of the whole problem lies here--in the meaning of the gestures by which animals appear to indicate that, like human beings, they are conscious of their various emotions, and it is by his chapter on “Actions of Animals Explained” that Mr. Robinson’s treatise must be judged. Humanitarians entirely reject his dogmatic assertion (to take a typical example) that “a dog’s exhibition of distress when separated from its master and mistress is only the working of the strong instinct of the gregarious, hunting animal, needing the primary factor of his life, namely, a leader to follow.” Not a particle of real proof can be given in support of such statements, and it is upon foundations of this kind that the “Religion of Nature” is built. And here there come to mind those trenchant words of Mr. Cunninghame Graham, which exactly describe the tone and method of Mr. Robinson’s argument:

“Instinct and reason; the hypothetical difference which good weak men use as an anæsthetic, when their conscience pricks them for their sins of omission and commission to their four-footed brethren. But a distinction wholly without a difference, and a link in the long chain of fraud and force with which we bind all living things, men, animals, and most of our reasoning selves, in one crass neutral-tinted slavery.”

III

MOTOR VERSUS HORSE[52]

“After many centuries of usefulness,” so it is said, “the horse is about to be retired from active service as an agent in locomotion.” Electricity, petrol, and cable tramcars are to be the chief factors in this change, which will replace horsepower by the greater energies of mechanical invention, and will make it possible to ride a hundred miles “for about a shilling.” Looking at the matter as humanitarians we are heartily pleased at the prospect. To be sure, it is not very creditable to the good feelings of mankind that, “after many centuries of usefulness,” the horse should be “retired,” not because we are ashamed of the ill-usage he has received, but because we have discovered a cheaper method of traction; nor is it pleasant to reflect on the countless myriads of undeserved blows and curses that have descended on our faithful friend and helper during the period of his service. But letting that pass, as one of the many blots with which the pages of history are disfigured, we rejoice to think that the wretched system of horse-traction is perhaps drawing to a close, and we trust that the present century will see it legally prohibited in England, as dog-traction has already been.

No doubt we shall hear a lot of sentimental talk about the picturesque beauty of the horse, the ugliness of machinery, and so forth; but we shall know what to reply to such “æsthetic” arguments, with the experience before us (or, let us hope, _behind_ us) of the hackney-cab, the tramcar, and the tradesman’s cart and wagon. The usage of the horse, in our so-called civilization, has reached a pitch of sordid deformity which, even if regarded solely from the point of view of the artist, makes it impossible to advance any valid argument against the motor-car. However unromantic such mechanical conveyance may be, it will at least save us from the unseemly sights that have outraged every sense of beauty, decency and humaneness. The motor will not be recklessly overloaded; it will not be cursed, and thrashed, and wrenched out of its natural shape by way of an outlet for the savage temper of its driver; for curiously enough, the lifeless machine will be treated with far more respect, and in a far more rational spirit, than the living animal, and the conductor who should ill-use a car, as horses are now ill-used, would be promptly conveyed to the nearest police-cell or lunatic-asylum.

But what, it may be asked, is to become of the horse himself, in the new age of machinery? Is “retirement,” in his case, to be the same thing as extinction? We do not know; but we know this--that, in the case of our “beasts of burden,” merciful extinction is a preferable fate to what is humorously called “preservation.” Centuries hence, perhaps, some learned antiquarian will reconstruct, from such anatomical data as may be available, the gaunt, misshapen, pitiable figure of the London cab-horse, and a more humane and enlightened posterity will shudder at the sight of what we still regard as a legitimate “agent in locomotion.”

From _The Humanitarian_. 1896.

IV

ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.[53]

Some fifty or sixty years ago the poet, James Thomson (“B.V.”), wrote as follows in his journal:--

“It being a very wet Sunday, I had to keep in, and paced much, prisoner-like, to and fro my room. This reminded me of the wild beasts at Regent’s Park, and especially of the great wild birds, the vultures and eagles. How they must suffer! How long will it be ere the thought of such agonies becomes intolerable to the public conscience, and wild creatures be left at liberty when they need not be killed. Three or four centuries, perhaps.”

This gloomy prognostication hardly seems likely to be fulfilled, for there has lately been a great awakening of the conscience, if not of the general public, at least of the humaner section of it, and much improvement in the condition of the wild animals in the “Zoo” has now been effected. Ever since its establishment in 1891 the Humanitarian League has been drawing attention to the cruelty of cellular imprisonment for animals as for men, and it is therefore with legitimate satisfaction that humanitarians note the introduction of a reform which they were the first to advocate. Here, for example, is an extract from a pamphlet which I wrote for the League in 1895, under the title of “A Zoophilist at the Zoo”:--

“‘Christianos ad leones’ was the cry of the heathen persecutors in ages long past, when the Christian martyrs were flung to the lions in the Roman amphitheatre. Time has now had his revenges; but we do not know that the new version of ‘Christianos ad leones,’ as daily exemplified in the stream of visitors to the lion-houses at the Zoo, is altogether edifying. Indeed, it has sometimes occurred to us, when musing on that strange medley of thoughtless sight-seers, who derive an unaccountable pleasure from staring at the wretched life-prisoners in our great animal convict-station, that the infra-human is not always confined to the inner side of the bars, and that there was some force in Thoreau’s epigram that God made man ‘a little lower than the _animals_.’ Well, we must hope for better things in the future. Less than a century ago it was the fashion to cage pauper lunatics where passers-by could see them; and benevolent nurses, when inclined to give a treat to the children in their charge, would pleasantly take them to have a peep at the frenzied ravings of the maniacs. We marvel now to hear of such inhumanity, but it may be that a future generation will equally marvel to hear that the sight of caged animals--those martyrs of Christian civilization--could give any satisfaction to the children, and the grown-up children to whom a “Zoo” is a Paradise.

“It all depends on how we look at these things. At present menageries are simply part of the whole system which regards the lower animals as mere goods and chattels, created for the use and amusement of mankind, without any definite claim, in return, to a free and healthy existence. The animals are no more than subjects for the museum or menagerie, the laboratory or dissecting-room. Does a rare bird alight on our shores? Our object is to knock it down first, and, as the taxidermists say, ‘set it up’ afterwards; or, if it still lives, to confine it in a cage or aviary. The London Gardens are doubtless a great deal better than many other menageries; but our whole method of treating animals is stupid and barbarous. We want a more humane and intelligent appreciation of animal life, and that sense of _kinship_ which would make us desirous of seeing our rudimentary brethren under happier and more natural conditions.

And, after all, we have ourselves paid the penalty for our lack of humanity, by the loss of humour that accompanied it; for the bathos of the notices that used to meet us at every turn in the Gardens was very depressing to those who were alive enough to feel it. The Bengal Tigers’ den labelled, ‘Beware of Pickpockets’! The Eagles’ Aviaries labelled, ‘To the Refreshment Rooms’! Were ever such incongruous ideas set in such ludicrous proximity? There, disconsolate in durance vile, sat the fabled Bird of Jove, who bore off Ganymede to be the god’s cup-bearer, while, within a few yards, the _modern_ Ganymede was serving out coffees and lemon-squashes, and enjoying (though perhaps he knew it not) the most complete vengeance on the great Raptor who enslaved him.”

The most powerful indictment of the Zoological Gardens, as they were, was the series of articles contributed by Mr. Edmund Selous to the _Saturday Review_ in 1901, and afterwards reprinted as a pamphlet by the Humanitarian League, under the title “The Old Zoo and the New,” a picture of what the Zoo actually was, as contrasted with what it might become. It was the publication of this trenchant criticism, synchronizing as it did with a movement for reform within the Zoological Society itself, that brought about the present improved state of public opinion as to the management of the Gardens, and caused the _Daily Mail_, that enterprising journal which is ready to exploit even humanitarian ideas when they seem likely to be popular, to publish a number of caustic articles on “The Tortured Animals at the Zoo.”

From America comes the same complaint, as in the following passage taken from an article in _Our Animal Friends_ (New York):--

“It is indeed high time that the conditions of animals in menageries and zoological establishments should be made a subject of very practical concern. In many cases their condition is pitiable. Few things are more distressing to observe than the restive motions of the larger cats, such as lions, tigers, and leopards, or of smaller animals like wolves and foxes, pacing back and forth in their small dens, as if suffering an agony of restlessness, as indeed they often must be. No animal ought to be kept in any such condition, and the time may come--we think it has already come--when this form of cruelty may be abolished by the strong hand of law, where it cannot be terminated by the milder methods of persuasion.”

V

SCIENTIST AND SACERDOTALIST[54]

What do our up-to-date scientists think (if they think at all) of the justification of vivisection put forward by Monsignor John S. Vaughan, a sacerdotalist of the medieval school? To a watchful observer few things could have been more entertaining than the spectacle of an old-world Catholic, a belated casuist of (say) thirteenth century temperament, coming forward in the _Saturday Review_ (new style) to justify, from a moral standpoint, the doings of the modern vivisector, and basing his argument on the immemorial “proposition” that “beasts exist for the use and benefit of man.”

Now, there are undoubtedly numbers of persons living in this twentieth century who still hold the belief that the animals were created for man’s pleasure, and it may be that, in appealing to that ancient superstition, Mgr. Vaughan was using the most popular weapon in the pro-vivisectionist armoury. But whatever the “man in the street” may think on this subject, the evolutionist and man of science, at any rate, is _not_ able to take refuge in the plea that man is the centre of the universe, and that all other beings were created for mankind; for if there is one thing above others that Darwin’s followers have scouted, it is this old anthropocentric notion which forms the Monsignor’s “proposition.” The animals, according to the scientific view, were not designed for man’s benefit, nor is there any impassable gulf between human and non-human--on the contrary, man was evolved from among the animals, and is in very truth an animal himself. This is the creed, beyond denial or evasion, of the Darwinian scientists, whose torture of their rudimentary brethren the sacerdotalist is so eager to condone. Monsignor Vaughan is defending vivisection by an assumption which the vivisectors themselves must hold to be unscientific and obsolete. The sufficient answer to the anthropocentric fallacy of the theologian is found in Mr. Howard Moore’s laconic remark: “But Darwin has lived.”

But vivisection has got to be defended somehow, on moral, as well as medical, grounds; and to do Monsignor Vaughan justice the ground he alleges is the only one that can afford, or could once have afforded, any semblance of logical foot-hold. “Beasts exist for the use and benefit of man.” In that unquestioned belief lay the justification--the supposed justification--of the horrible tortures inflicted on animals in the medicinal and magical quackery of the middle ages, when, as Dr. Berdoe has pointed out, “the nastier the medicament the more was expected of it.” Animals were regarded alike by the religion, and the science, and the common usage of the times, as mere _things_, providentially designed to be the instruments of man’s welfare, at the cost of whatever suffering to themselves. What, therefore, if they were carved, and tortured, and vivisected to provide mankind with the filthy nostrums prescribed as the remedies for disease? An anthropocentric philosophy could explain and justify it all. And so it might do at the present time, but for the fact that the anthropocentric philosophy--as a philosophy--has itself ceased to exist.

Indeed, the point of the complaint against the scientists is precisely this--that the practice of vivisection, though perhaps logically justifiable on the absurd old belief that animals have no _raison d’être_ except to minister to man’s convenience, is wholly unjustifiable in the light of evolutionary science, which has demonstrated beyond question the kinship of all sentient life. That the scientist, in order to rake together a moral defence for his doings, should condescend to take shelter even under the medieval reasoning of the sacerdotalist, is a proof that his position is hopelessly inconsistent and unsound; for having got rid of the old anthropocentric fallacy in the realm of science, he actually avails himself of the same fallacy in the realm of ethics. This, of course, is less surprising when we remember that one and the same person may be, and often is, as reactionary in one department of thought as he is progressive in another, and that the modern man of science is not infrequently a medievalist in morals. The present writer well remembers the incident which first shook his faith in the infallibility of “science.” He had adopted a vegetarian diet, and a distinguished scientist with whom he happened to be on friendly terms expressed a wish to “speak to him” on the subject. The writer felt that a critical moment had arrived, and awaited the scientific pronouncement with respectful anxiety. When it came--spoken with evident earnestness--it was this: “Don’t you think the animals were _sent_ us as food?”

So we see the scientist and the sacerdotalist, forgetting their radical differences, patching up a superficial alliance with the pious object of perpetuating the experimental torture of the laboratory. Henceforward let none say that Darwinian and Catholic are not in agreement. _Laborare est orare_ was the old saying; and now surely it should be expanded by Monsignor Vaughan and his Catholic fellow-vivisectionists into _laboratorium est oratorium_--the house of torture is the house of prayer. If it is not exactly “mercy and truth” that are met together, “righteousness and peace” that have kissed each other, still it is a beautiful and touching scene of reconciliation--this meeting of scientist and sacerdotalist over the torture-trough of the helpless animal. They might exclaim in the words of Tennyson:--

“There above the little grave, O there above the little grave, We kissed again with tears.”

It seems to us as humanitarians, that, as far as Monsignor Vaughan and the Catholic vivisectionist school is concerned (it is otherwise with the scientists), it is pure waste of time to argue with them, there being a fundamental difference of opinion as to data and principles. The sole reason for discussion is to insure that the humanitarian view of the question be rightly placed before the public, and this can best be done by stating it clearly in contradistinction to the anthropocentric dogma. We do _not_ admit the assumption that “beasts exist for the use and benefit of man.” We view the matter in a wholly different aspect. We find ourselves born into an age which has been evolved in a gradual progress from savagery to civilization, with old-world wrongs around us, the worst of which are being slowly redeemed, century after century, by a growing spirit of brotherhood. We have never pretended that these wrongs, woven as they are into the fabric of Society, can be immediately and simultaneously righted, nor do we admit, in the case of the lower animals any more than in the case of men, that the necessity of inflicting _some_ pain confers the right to inflict _any_ pain. We insist on the undeniable tendency from barbarism to humaneness, which has already at many points bridged the gulf between man and man, and will also bridge the gulf between man and his lower fellow-creatures. Science has exploded the idea that there is any difference in kind, and not in degree only, between the human and the non-human animal; and sympathy, guided by reason, is making it more and more impossible that we should for ever treat as mere automata fellow-beings to whom we are, in fact, very closely akin.

_Humane Review_, 1901.

VI

THE CONFESSIONS OF A PHYSICIAN[55]

“Confessions of a Physician,” by V. Veresaeff, is a Russian work, first published in 1901, the writer of which exposes with the utmost frankness the secrets of the medical profession--the doubts, difficulties, dangers, scruples, failures, and even homicides, that fall to the lot of the practitioner. It is not that Veresaeff is disloyal to his colleagues; but his judgment is drawn in two opposite directions by his sense of duty to Science on the one side, and to Morality on the other, and is exercised by the problem of how to reconcile the “necessities,” as he conceives them, of medical research with the “rights,” as he cannot but admit them to be, of its human and non-human victims. Hence, though Veresaeff is himself only in part a humanitarian, his book has considerable interest for humanitarian readers.

In a dissertation on the English anti-vivisection movement, from which the Russian movement originated, Veresaeff, while not stifling his misgivings, falls back on the assertion that vivisection is necessary, because it is impossible without it to know the living organism. He is very contemptuous of the “clergymen, society ladies, statesmen, persons entirely unassociated with science,” who seek to refute the scientists; but then, veering to the moral side of the question, he makes the following reference to this book on “Animals’ Rights”:

“However, we must give them their due; for not all the anti-vivisectionists base their opinions upon such crude and ignorant tenets. A number of them seek to base the whole question upon foundations of pure principle; thus, for instance, the author of ‘Animals’ Rights, Considered in relation to Social Progress,’ says: ‘Let us assume that the progress of surgical science is assisted by the experiments of the vivisector. What then? Before rushing to the conclusion that vivisection is justifiable on that account, a wise man will take into full consideration the other--the moral side of the question--the hideous injustice of torturing an innocent animal.’ This is the only possible and fitting position for the anti-vivisectionist to take up; whether science can dispense with vivisection or not, does not concern him; animals are made to suffer, and that settles everything. The question is plainly put, and there can be no room for any equivocation. I repeat, we ought not to ridicule the pretensions of the anti-vivisectionists--the sufferings of animals are truly horrible--and sympathy with them is not sentimentality; but we must bear in mind that there is no ‘way round,’ where the building up of scientific medicine--its goal--the healing of mankind--is at stake.”[56]

While welcoming this statement, I must point out that in the passage of “Animals’ Rights” (p. 71) to which Dr. Veresaeff refers, I did not for a moment _admit_ that vivisection is necessary to surgical science; I merely _assumed_ it for purposes of argument, and I added the important qualifying words which are omitted in the Russian quotation: “A large assumption certainly, controverted as it is by some most weighty medical testimony.” It is necessary to point this out, because we humanitarians do not share Dr. Veresaeff’s perplexity, swayed as he is between the demands of a vivisecting science and the protests of a suffering humanity; on the contrary, we are convinced that the painful contradiction between conflicting duties, by which his mind is troubled, is a phantom of his own creation. No doubt if he assumes that one particular science, that of medicine, must pursue its course regardless of any other science, such as that of morals, he will find himself confronted by problems and contradictions innumerable, to which no direct answer can be given; but that very assumption is one which no clear-headed thinker will grant. No single science can make true progress at the expense of another science; and when such conflicts arise they are a sign that there is something wrong, and that it is time to pause and to reflect. Medical problems, like all others, can only be solved in the solution of the social question as a whole, and there is no royal road to the achievement of medical aspirations.

VII

ANTIPATHY OR SYMPATHY?[57]

It is to be regretted that so distinguished a writer as Mr. G. K. Chesterton should have given countenance to the idea that an assertion of the rights of animals implies a denial of the rights of man. “I use the word humanitarian,” he says (in his book “Orthodoxy,”) “in the ordinary sense, as meaning one who upholds the claims of all creatures against those of humanity.” This strange blunder of supposing that we humanitarians regard the interests of humans and sub-humans as antagonistic to each other seems to arise from a misunderstanding of our statement that, in the spread of humane feelings, there is a _gradual_, not immediate, recognition of kinship, embracing first the family, then the fellow citizen, then the slave, and then the non-human race--a progressive sense of morality which is thus ridiculed by Mr. Chesterton:

“I think it wrong to sit on a man. Soon, I shall think it wrong to sit on a horse. Eventually (I suppose,) I shall think it wrong to sit on a chair. That is the drive of the argument.... A perpetual tendency, to touch fewer and fewer things might, one feels, be a mere brute unconscious tendency, like that of a species to produce fewer and fewer children.”

Mr. Chesterton, it will be seen, supposes that the trend of humanitarian thought is merely “to touch fewer and fewer things”--to “touch,” that is, with the whip, the hob-nailed boot, the hunting-knife, the scalpel, or the pole-axe. He wholly fails to see that what we really desire is to “touch” not fewer and fewer things, but more and more--_i.e._, to get into touch with them by virtue of that sympathetic intelligence which shows us that they are akin to ourselves. Why, ultimately, do we object to such practices as vivisection, blood-sport, and the butchery of animals for food? Because of the cruelty involved in them, no doubt; but also, and even more, because of the hideous narrowing of our own human sympathies and human pleasures which these savage customs involve.

Let Mr. Chesterton imagine the existence of an ogreish race of men so powerful that wherever one of them appeared, all ordinary mortals would be fain to run at full speed into holes and corners to escape him. Would these tyrants find it to be a diminution, and not rather a vast increase, of their enjoyment, if they learnt gradually “to touch fewer and fewer things” in the ogreish sense, while they touched more and more in the sense of brotherhood and friendship? Precisely the same in kind, though not, of course, in degree, is the relation, as apprehended by humanitarians, of man towards the lower animals.

Equally erroneous is Mr. Chesterton’s assumption that mankind is, in some special and exclusive sense, a “society,” different in kind, and not in degree only, from the lower races.

“Mankind is not a tribe of animals to which we owe compassion. Mankind is a club to which we owe our subscription. Pity, the vague sentiment of the _sunt lacrymæ rerum_, is due indisputably to everything that lives. And as regards this, the difference between our pity for suffering men and our pity for suffering animals is very possibly only a question of degree. But the difference between our moral relation to men and to animals is not a difference of degree in the least. It is a difference of kind. What we owe to a human being we owe to a fellow-member of a fixed, responsible, and reciprocal society.... This is the basic error upon which all Mr. Salt’s school goes wrong. They will not see that when we talk of human superiority we do not mean superiority in a degree on an inclined plane; we mean the existence of a certain definite society, different from everything else, and founded not on the sorrows of all living, but on the rights of men. Cruelty to man and cruelty to animals are two quite detestable, but quite different, sins.... The man who breaks a cat’s back breaks a cat’s back. The man who breaks a man’s back breaks an implied treaty. The tyrant to animals is a tyrant. The tyrant to men is a traitor. Nay, he is a rebel, for man is royal.”[58]

Mankind, says Mr. Chesterton, is a society. But so are bees and beavers. There are innumerable societies, and it is impossible to prove that human society is more organic or more conclusive than the rest. Our sense of kinship is continually widening, and there never has been, nor is, any finality in the social bond of which Mr. Chesterton speaks. It would have surprised the Greek or Roman of old to be informed that he was a member of the same society with the barbarian or the slave. It would hardly be admitted by the white American of to-day that he and the African negro are own brethren. That, presumably, is because their sympathies are not yet developed enough to enable them to see even the fact of human kinship; but what if Mr. Chesterton’s sympathies are not developed enough to enable _him_ to see what many less subtle intellects have already seen--that beyond this “human” society there is the still larger society of the higher sentient existence.

“The man who breaks a cat’s back breaks a cat’s back.” This terse saying contains the root of all cruelty to animals, the quintessence of all the anthropocentric bigotry which has caused the immemorial ill-usage of the non-human races through the length and breadth of the world. “The man who breaks a cat’s back breaks a cat’s back.” Yes, and the scientist who vivisects a dog, vivisects a dog; the sportsman who breaks up a hare breaks up a hare; the butcher who bleeds a calf bleeds a calf. That is all. And if one points out the cruelty, injustice, and folly of vivisection, or sport, or flesh-eating, appeal is instantly made to the vaunted fact that man is “royal” and the human race “a society”!

VIII

THE ANIMAL QUESTION AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION[59]

It is, perhaps, not sufficiently recognized by zoophilists how largely the ill-usage of the lower animals is due to the iniquity of present social conditions, and how vain it is to expect to remedy the consequences without attacking the cause. So long as pecuniary profit and self-interest are accepted as the guiding principles of trade, it will remain impossible to secure a right treatment for animals; because it is absurd to suppose that mankind will agree to exempt the lower races from the results of an economic tyranny of which men also are the victims. If the worship of the great god “Profit” bears so hardly on men and women, is it likely that the result of this pitiless struggle will be less disastrous to the animals, who by most people are not regarded as fellow-beings at all?

Let us take a few instances. The over-working of horses is one of the commonest and worst forms of ill-treatment to which domestic animals are liable, and is justly punishable by law when “cruelty”--that somewhat vague offence--can be proved. But such proof, except in flagrant cases, is rendered practically impossible by the fact that, for the sake of employers’ profits, men and women are daily over-worked quite as cruelly as horses are. If tramway companies are permitted to work their men long and shameful hours to swell the shareholders’ dividends, what can be done for the horses? And where there is actual ill-usage of horses by those who have charge of them, it must be remembered that the men’s ill-temper is often the result of the harsh conditions under which they work. Selfishness begets its like, and the sufferers by a harsh system will in turn treat other sufferers harshly.

Again, why is it that so many persons are engaged in trades that involve cruelty to animals? Obviously because the present conditions of society leave them no choice. One man must be a slaughterman, another a cattle drover, another a bird-catcher, because no other occupation happens to be open to him, and he naturally chooses to ill-treat animals rather than to starve himself. Economic necessity leaves no scope for humaneness. Before we fairly condemn the brutal drover, or sealer, or bird-catcher, we must so reconstitute society as to ensure to each citizen a decent and humane livelihood. It is idle to preach humanity to those who themselves live in ever-present fear of the hunger-wolf.

In like manner “sport,” in its baser forms, is maintained and perpetuated by bad social conditions. It was the “hangers on” of the Royal Buckhounds who made it so difficult to abolish that disreputable institution; tame stags must still be worried that local “trade” may be encouraged; and that rich idlers may come into the hunting districts to spend their wealth. So, too, the blackguardly pastimes of rabbit-coursing and pigeon-shooting are mainly supported by the betting and gambling element, which thrives in proportion as honest work is underpaid. Nor is it to be wondered that many individuals of all classes should become gamblers and rogues, when the principle of commercial enterprise is what it is--an utterly immoral desire to make money by the quickest possible method, and without the slightest consideration for any interests but one’s own.

In this breakneck competition everything must be done at high pressure, or the margin of “profit” will be lost. It is horrible, is it not, that the slaughterman should sometimes skin the sheep alive? But time is money; and the slaughterman may himself be the victim of some skinflint employer, and perhaps he is anxious to rise to eminence in his profession and give his children a real Christian bringing up. Thus, too, the master-butchers have opposed the abolition of private slaughter-houses because their “profits” would be lessened. It costs more to have the best and most modern appliances--so humanity once more has had to wait.

The moral is that zoophilists, while in no wise relaxing their efforts for the welfare of the animals, should also range themselves on the side of social reform. And this suggests the remark that the sub-title of this book is not devoid of significance, for it is when they are “considered in relation to social progress” that the rights of animals are most likely to be understood.

BIBLIOGRAPHY[60]

“Free Thoughts upon the Brute Creation.” By John Hildrop, M.A. London, 1742. This examination of Father Bougeant’s “Philosophical Amusement upon the Language of Beasts” (1740) is an argument in favour of animal immortality.

“A Reasonable Plea for the Animal Creation.” By Robert Morris. London, 1746. A reprint of some letters urging that “we have no right to destroy, much less to eat of any thing which has life.”

“An Essay on the Future Life of Brutes.” By Richard Dean. Manchester, 1767. The probability of a future life for animals is asserted on scriptural and other grounds.

“An Apology for the Brute Creation, or Abuse of Animals Censured.” By James Granger. London, 1772. A short sermon condemning cruelty to animals in sport, etc.

“A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals.” By Humphry Primatt, D.D. London, 1776. A quaint but excellent book, urging, as a rule of conduct, “to do unto others as, in their condition, you would be done unto.”

“Disquisitions on Several Subjects.” By Soame Jenyns. London, 1782.