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:—
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.