IN a work on “Moral Philosophy” in use as a text-book at Stonyhurst College, the author, Father Rickaby, S.]., in the section dealing with our attitude towards animals, writes as follows:
“Brute beasts, not having understanding, and therefore not being persons, cannot have any rights. . . . There is no shadow of evil resting on the practice of causing pain to brutes in sport where the pain is not in the sport itself, but an incidental concomitant of it. . . . Nor are we bound to any anxious care to make this pain as little as may be. Brutes are as things in our regard; so far as they are useful to us they exist for us, not for themselves, and we do right in using them unsparingly for our need and convenience. . . . We have no duties of charity, nor duties of any kind, to the lower animals, as neither to stocks and stones.”
Jeremy Bentham, the moral philosopher, says, on the other hand:
“The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could be withheld from them but by the hand of tyranny. . . . What is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable, animal than an infant of a day, or a week, or even of a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what could it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they speak? but, Can they suffer?”
Both of these views are probably put forth with perfect sincerity by their authors, and our object is to try to decide which of them comes nearer to the truth, and why so.
The question is not merely an academic one. On the view accepted by the community depends the welfare and happiness of countless sentient creatures, and also, to a considerable extent, the progress of the human race.
If, on the one hand, we accept the Stonyhurst professor’s theory, and act in accordance with it, there can be no reason why we should not inflict any kind or amount of suffering on any animal, or do absolutely anything we like with it. If, on the contrary, we adopt the other view, and try to act in accordance with it, a very considerable alteration will be necessary in the lives of most of us, and many actions and habits which have become almost a second nature to us will demand our very serious reconsideration.
While, probably, comparatively few persons will agree with the Stonyhurst statement in all its baldness, we find that, whatever their outward profession may be, most persons have as background to their belief the idea that animals were created for man’s use, and that he consequently has a perfect right to do what he likes with them, though they mostly agree that, for some undefined and illogical reason, his conduct ought to have a certain admixture of mercy in it. It is this view that animals were created for man which we especially wish to combat, as it is a relic of barbaric thought which should as soon as possible be dispelled.
It is not an idea standing alone, but is one aspect only of that more comprehensive claim, inherited from primitive times, that the whole universe was created for man and man alone.
In early childhood, when the world is all new to us, we reach out our hands and seize anything we want in the unexpressed belief that it was there for us. We regard it as our right, with no conception as yet of the rights of other persons. We resent anything of the nature of denial, and it is only by slow degrees that we learn that there are serious limitations to our rights, and most of us accept such limitations grudgingly, and only in so far as the similar claims of other people around us can be enforced against us. The individual is but an epitome of the race, and, like the baby, the infant race sees the world around it and claims it as its own, with no other idea than that it was created for it. To early man, when he still lived in tribes, the earth was a flat surface, bounded on all sides by the visible horizon, which to him was the end of all things. It was very natural to him to believe that this small world, of which he found himself the ruler, was made by his Creator specially for him. Since that time our ideas have expanded a good deal; but for many ages, while astronomical knowledge was but scanty, the earth was held to be the centre of the universe, and the sun revolved around it, and rose every morning that the earth might be warmed and lighted. It was a great step to find out that it was the earth which was whirling round the sun, which is itself only one of a thousand other suns united in an endless system.
There are, apparently, people who still think that the sun was created to mark the day for them, and show them when to work and when to rest, quite regardless of the fact that for part of the year it gives us a day of eighteen hours, and for another part about six hours only; and that in other portions of the world, if one followed the ruling of the sun, one would never close an eye for several months at a time, and never open one during a similar period. We notice, however, that such people’s actions are more reasonable than their theories, and that, except by accident, they do not get up to see the sun rise, or retire to rest when it goes down.
The moon, again, is said to have been created to provide light when the sun is away from the earth; but if so, we must all agree that it performs its function in a very slip shod manner, rising usually when no one wants it, and shining on in a sickly manner into the day long after the sun is up. There must, we think, be some better reason for its existence. The stars, claimed by some to have been sent to help the mariner on his course, are hardly more to be relied on, as, when most needed, in stormy or foggy weather, they usually are invisible.
With regard to the flowers, Mr. E. P. Evans, in his work on “Evolutional Ethics,” writes:
“Not only are the fruits of the earth supposed to grow for human sustenance, but the flowers of the field are supposed to bud and blossom solely as a contribution to human happiness; and it has long been considered one of the mysteries and mistakes of Nature that these things should expend their beauty and fragrance in places where man cannot appreciate them. As the poet says:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
“Science has finally and effectually taken this conceit out of man by showing that the flowers bloom, not for his sake, but for their own purposes, and that they put forth beautiful blossom long before he appeared on the earth as a rude, cave-haunting, flint-chipping savage. The colour and scent of flowers we now know are designed, not to please man, but to attract insects, which promote the process of fertilisation, and thus insure the preservation of the species. Plants, on the other hand, which depend on the force of the wind for their fertilisation are not distinguished for beauty of colour or sweetness of perfume, as these qualities, however agreeable to man, would be wasted on the winds.”
Are those who hold that the earth was created for man prepared to maintain that vast forests existed centuries ago in order that he might have coal for the kitchen fire now, or that electricity was created in order that he might in the twentieth century ride to his office on an electric railway? Or were the mountains created in order that he might erect hotels on them and drive a thriving trade, or have they not all rather been evolved for some other purpose which we do not know, and he has merely found out that he can utilise them for his own ends? The smoker (if he is a religious-minded man) will tell me that, of course, tobacco was sent that he might enjoy his pipe. The non-smoker, on the other hand, tells me that the sickness which invariably follows the first attempt was “sent” to warn him that he should not smoke. They cannot both be right, and there is no reason beyond the wish of the individual why one should be more right or less wrong than the other. Each man, like the infant, grasps at what he likes, and, as his easiest justification, he claims that his Creator made it for that purpose.
We had better perhaps give up the claim, and admit that, while we may have the power and the right to utilise much that we find on the earth, we cannot reasonably claim that it was created especially for us and our use. Most intelligent persons have, of course, arrived at this point already—at any rate, nominally; but old inherited mental traits die very hard, and, whatever may be their professed opinion, we see on all sides little indications that the barbaric superstition is still alive, as when, for instance, people seem to believe that the whole course of nature will be altered, and it really is more likely to rain if they go out without an umbrella.
Having thus cleared the way with regard to the lower kingdoms in nature, and agreed, we hope, that they were not created for man, but that he is himself only a portion of them, with power to tame and utilise some of the rest for his own purposes, let us see how the matter stands with regard to the higher kingdoms. Here, too, we are feeling our way along, but are moving slowly from the anthropocentric or man-centred theory of the universe. Here, too, primitive man, with characteristic conceit, assumed that all the animals he could lay hands on were created for him, and until quite recent times no one has arisen to disturb this belief, so pleasing and flattering to himself. Readers of Tennyson will remember the fat-faced curate, Edward Bull, who maintained with persistency that “God made the woman for the use of man.”
It was not a new idea, but one that has existed from the earliest times, and is still very common in many parts of the world; but it is interesting as showing how, even fifty years ago, our Poet Laureate could without ridicule put the sentiment into the mouth of one of his characters—a minister of the Gospel.
Since that time, however, women have had something to say in the matter, and—at any rate, in England and America—we have learnt that there are two sides to the question.
The almost universal belief amongst white races that the black were created to be subservient to them is only another instance of the same autocratic idea, that what you can wrest to your use was made for that purpose. This theory of races being marked out by God as servants to others is dying before increased enlightenment, but it is dying only slowly.
In Demerara a law has lately been passed sanctioning flogging for certain offences for both men and women natives only, of course! In South Africa the Chinese labourers have been flogged for commercial, not criminal, offences—a punishment which is nowhere allowed amongst the labourers of the dominant race; and the recent outrages committed in Egypt on the natives will be in everyone’s memory.
How, when our fellow-men are still regarded in this way, can the animals be expected to escape? We consequently and that it is a very general belief that animals were created for man—we were going to say “even in Christian countries”; but in this matter Christian countries are often behind those which have never heard of Christianity, for a reason to be mentioned later.
It is in reality a monstrous proposition that the whole animal creation was made for man’s use, and the acceptance of it leads us into endless difficulties. How, on this theory, are we to account for the countless races of living creatures who lived on the earth and became extinct before man even appeared? What are the meaning and purpose of the myriad creatures in the depths of the ocean who live out their lives while man has no knowledge even of their existence? What of the poisonous snakes and other destructive creatures from whom man has to fly to avoid their fatal touch? Can anyone seriously maintain that the cow, who, in common with all mammals, provides milk for its offspring, was created in order that man should upset the course of nature, and, having slain the calf, appropriate the milk intended for it, or has man merely found that this method is convenient for himself, and, being the stronger, has adopted it? As Dr. L. Robinson says in his “Wild Traits in Tame Animals”: “Did Nature in the first place provide the milk for our benefit? Not at all; it is the provision for the poor, innocent calf, and we have filched his property from him by force and trickery.”
Can anyone who thinks seriously maintain that the South African elephant was created that men might make billiard-balls from his tusks, or shall we say that he was created that the “big-game” hunter might find his selfish pleasure in slaughtering him and hanging a new ghastly trophy in his hall? Can anyone who has read Maeterlinck’s “Life of the Bee” seriously maintain that all the incomprehensible mysteries of that hive were created and have been carried on for centuries that men should have honey on their breakfast-tables? Were seals “sent” that their skins should be stripped from their bodies for women to wear? and were larks created that gourmets should enjoy them in pies, or were they, perhaps, created for the use of that other part of the community who prefer to enjoy their song rather than their flesh?
This plea of rival claims introduces fresh difficulties into the question, and it would be interesting to know whether the frog was sent, for instance, that he should be eaten, as in France, or whether we are to regard him, as a well-known vivisector suggested, as “God’s gift to physiologists,” because he is such a very convenient creature to cut up alive in the laboratory.
As Mr. Evans says:
“If it was the Creator’s intention that the lower animals should minister to man, the Divine plan has proved to be a failure, since the number of animals which, after centuries of effort, he has succeeded in bringing more or less under his dominion is extremely small. Millions of living creatures fly in the air, crawl on the earth, dwell in the waters, and roam the fields and forests, over whom he has no control whatever. Not one in twenty thousand is fit for food, and of those which are edible he does not eat more than one in ten thousand.”
A strong argument against the theory that animals were created for the use of man is to be found in the fact that the very faculties and qualities which man finds most useful were developed in the animals for their own purposes.
For instance, the speed of the horse, which we have found so useful, is the quality which has been most essential to the animal’s own existence. The horse is a timid animal—he is no fighter; and, in the time of his early ancestors, his only salvation, when pursued by his greatest enemies, the wolves, was in his own legs. The weak and the slow were caught and devoured, the swift and the strong escaped, and transmitted their saving faculties to their offspring, and that which man claims to have been made for him was in reality evolved to save the race itself.
In the same way the value of the bull or ox in agriculture, which leads so many people living in foreign countries to think that he was sent by Heaven to help man in ploughing the fields, is in reality the result of the furious combats of the bulls through countless generations for supremacy, by which the finest and strongest survived to enable the race to hold its own against its many enemies. The bull’s method of fighting being to charge with the head down, and push and struggle against each other, they have developed the enormous strength in the head and shoulders which man finds so useful, and which, by the way, fully justifies the method of harnessing in vogue abroad which some people have thought cruel—namely, by fixing a bar across the forehead for the ox to push against.
The cow, who, perhaps, more than any other animal might be considered as God’s gift to man, and who, I believe, is so indispensable that even vegetarians, who have abjured all other animal products, find it difficult to dispense with her milk—she, too, owes her value to purely racial requirements. That she is able to supply large quantities of milk morning and night is due to the fact that in her natural state she often had far to go to reach her pasture-ground. The calf, unlike the foal, is slow and clumsy, and had to be left behind, hidden in a thicket, while the cow went off for some hours in search of food, to return in the evening with a plentiful meal to make up for the long fast. The large size of the udder of the cow and the stomach of the calf, as compared with those of the horse and the foal, who never parted company for long, is thus explained; and yet man flatters himself that the cow was specially sent for him!
The same holds good throughout. The wool of the sheep was certainly made to keep the sheep warm, and not to be sheared off and made into blankets and clothes. It is pure nonsense that the kind sheep yield up their wool to us, as the poets say. They are, on the contrary, inconsiderately thrown on their sides, and their wool is stripped from them whether they will or not, and miserable, shivering objects they look afterwards. “Robbery with violence” is the technical name for such a deed; and here, again, we make use of the Creator to justify our high-handed act, and invent the proverb, “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.” The shorn lamb’s opinion on the matter would be interesting.
The tender and succulent muscles in the tail of the ox were certainly developed that he might protect himself from flies, and not that they should supply what is considered by some people a specially savoury soup.
The excellent habit of the dog in barking at intruders is only a development of his early habit of defending his own cave or den. Even the pariah dogs in Eastern cities have their own “beats,” and woe betide any stranger dog who ventures to intrude on them! Were the dog’s instincts intended for man’s use, he would bite the burglar only, and not the postman, as we know occasionally happens.
To say that animals were created for the use of man is one thing; to say that they, like ourselves, were created for purposes which we are unable to fathom, but that man has found he can bend a few of them to his uses, is quite another thing, and the latter seems to us the more reverent, the more philosophical, and the more scientific attitude. To our thinking the sheep was created for man to eat exactly in the same way, and to the same extent, as man was created for the Bengal tiger to eat—When he gets the chance.
While man exclaims, “See all things for my use!”
“See man for mine!” replies a pampered goose;
And just as short of reason must he fall,
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.
POPE’S Essay on Man.
So far we have talked mainly of the reasons for which animals do not exist. Why they do exist is a more difficult question, but it is one of which we enormously increase the difficulty by approaching it in a very unreasonable manner. Mrs. Jameson, in her “Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies,” wrote:
“It would seem as if the primitive Christian, by laying so much stress upon a future life in contradistinction to this life, and placing the lower creatures out of the pale of hope, placed them at the same time out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this utter disregard of animals in the light of our fellow-creatures.”
And this explains what we hinted at earlier—that in Christian lands the position of animals is often worse than in so-called heathen lands. The problem before us would lose much of its difficulty if stated amongst those Oriental nations where the kinship of men and animals has been recognised from the earliest times, and their just and humane treatment enjoined as a religious duty. Why do we so dogmatically assert that animals can have no share in an after-life? Bishop Butler many years ago, in his work on the “Analogy of Religion,” said: “We cannot find anything throughout the whole analogy in nature to afford us the slightest presumption that animals ever lose their living powers”—or, in other words, that they have not immortal life in some form. Another writer, Mr. Howard Moore, of our own time, has said:
“The doctrine that human beings are not animals, and that animals not human are a mindless, feelingless, virtueless mass of machinery, is an unjust and unqualified falsehood. It has no foundation either in science or in common-sense. It is not a disinterested conclusion arrived at after patient and honourable effort to find the truth, but an uncandid excuse for some very unhandsome specimens of human conduct. The supposed psychical gulf between human and nonhuman beings has no more existence outside the imagination of man than has the once supposed physical gulf.
“But it is not necessary to be learned in science in order to possess assurances that non-human peoples have souls. It is only necessary to associate with them. Just the ordinary observation of them in their daily lives about us—in their comings and goings and doings—will convince any observant person that they are beings with joys and sorrows, desires and capabilities, similar to our own. No man with a conscientious desire to learn the truth, and with a mind unbiassed by prejudice, can associate intimately day after day with these people associate with them as he himself would desire to be associated with in order to be interpreted in a kind, straightforward, magnanimous manner: make them his friends, and really enter into their inmost lives—without realising that they are almost unknown by human beings, that they are constantly and criminally misunderstood, and that they are in reality beings actuated by substantially the same impulses, and affected by approximately the same experiences, as we ourselves. They eat and sleep; seek pleasure and strive to avoid pain; cling to life; experience health and disease; suffer hunger and thirst; love and provide for their children; build homes and defend them; fight against enemies; learn from experience; have friends, and favourites, and pastimes; appreciate kindness; dream dreams; cry out in distress; see, hear, smell, taste, and feel; are industrious, provident, and cleanly; have languages; risk their lives for others; manifest ingenuity, individuality, fidelity, affection, gratitude, heroism, sorrow, self-control, fear, love, hate, pride, suspicion, jealousy, joy, reason, resentment, selfishness, curiosity, memory, imagination, remorse—all these things, and a thousand others, just as human beings do.”
We venture to suggest a solution which seems to be the only one by which the theological and scientific views can be harmonised, and which is now being accepted by many thinking persons. We most of us believe that there has been an evolution of some sort in Form or Body. We most of us believe that all life is one, springing from one source, and we grant even to the humblest creature a spark of this divine fire. Is there anything unreasonable or unscientific in thinking that there may also be an evolution of Life or Consciousness, the life needing for its development the experiences of many existences?
As Thoreau says: “Animals are but undeveloped men, standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation.” If we took half as much trouble to look for evidence of mind in the subhuman world as we do to pass over or misinterpret it where disclosed, we should have no doubt as to the psychical kinship of all living creatures. That we coolly arrogate all reason to ourselves, and leave instinct only, as we are pleased to call it, to the subhuman animals, is only another outcome of our anthropocentric view of the world.
When a man possesses that curious mental faculty by which he can divine or detect water in the earth 30 feet beneath him, we call it—well, a curious mental faculty; but if a horse, left to himself, conducts his thirsting rider to a distant spring, this is called instinct, and that is supposed to settle the matter.
If, again, a man possesses the power which some people have of finding their way about readily in unknown regions, it is explained as the unconscious co-ordination of previous mental impressions, or something of that kind; but if a swallow returns year after year to build its nest on the same cottage, that is only instinct, and settles the matter, without anyone attempting to say what instinct is. It is enough that it is something that animals have, as opposed to thought or reason, of which we claim the monopoly. The distinction is purely artificial, and made to suit our vanity. As Mrs. Helen Wilmans says in her “Home Course in Mental Science”:
“Do you know that our little brothers and sisters, the insects and worms, are in their sphere each one the embodiment of some peculiar phase of Wisdom? If you do not know this, you have much to learn from the study of natural history. Take, for instance, this fact as illustrative of the intelligence which their desire for life induces them to manifest in their bodies. There are a good many insects and worms that the birds do not like—they have an unpleasant taste. These insects and worms become known to the birds by their peculiar marking, and are therefore left unmolested. Other insects and worms that are good to eat, and that the birds are fond of, know this fact, and their desire to prolong their lives causes them to acquire the same markings and colours that their distasteful neighbours have, and so their own lives are perpetuated. Do you imagine that these little things do not think? They do think, and possess a wisdom unknown to us—or, at least, unknown to our objective minds, though, no doubt, a part of our subjective intelligences. Many a little beetle, for instance, has taken on a soft brown coat, and made for himself yellow bands around his body in order to resemble the bee. Why? Because the birds are afraid of the bee on account of its sting. These little creatures were defenceless, having no sting. Why did they not create stings for themselves? The question is an apt one, and the answer sustains the claim of the power vested in individualisation. Students of natural history are apt to disregard the mighty power of individualisation, with its moving soul of intelligent desire, and they say, ‘Oh, it is Nature that does all these wonderful things,’ and here they drop the matter. Well, it is Nature, but Nature expresses herself in the myriad personalities of which all these little creatures are a part. Each one does his own thinking in his own way. The instinctive desire for life has provided them with instinctive methods of self-preservation. They know that the bee is rejected as food, while they are accepted. That part of the bee which appeals to their perception is his yellow band on his brown coat. Desire, prompted by the instinct of self-preservation, gives them the yellow bands and brown coat. They know more of the colour of the bee than of his sting.
“Throughout the living world there are signs to anyone who will look for them of thought—not extraneous thought of a Creator, but innate thought in the creature. It may differ from our thought, and doubtless does so; but it is definite thought, directed to a distinct object, essential to the well-being of the creature, and, in so far as we share and can understand its nature, we can trace the similarity in the working of its mentality in ourselves as though we had passed through similar experiences.”
In this fundamental unity of all life is the true relationship of man with all other forms of life. It is not that we see in man the descendant from the animals, nor from a common ancestor with the apes, in the ordinary popular or scientific way, but that we hold that man has passed through innumerable lower stages on his way to his present place in the evolutionary scale, and that we recognise in the animals that which will eventually become as human as ourselves. We can see in them only less developed brethren, who claim from man not merely “mercy,” but practical, intelligent help and guidance along the evolutionary path, which it is ever the duty of the elder and stronger to bestow on the younger and weaker in the world-family, not less than in the human family. To “have dominion” does not mean to have license to torture and tyrannise, but to have control and guidance, to have duties and responsibilities, which should ever be the accompaniments of true kingship.
It may seem fanciful, but it is an idea which no one can be any the worse for harbouring, that it may be one of our duties to help in the development, as far as possible, of these our humbler fellow-creatures. Most of us know from experience the difference between the dog who is kept chained up in the back-yard, and has a piece of meat thrown to him once a day, and the other dog, possibly of the same species, who lives with the family, and knows all their ways and doings; who understands and rejoices as much as any member of the family when he sees preparations for going to the seaside, remembering the fun he had there the last year; who adapts his habits and takes his moral code, to a great extent, from his human friends, and who, as people say, becomes “almost human.” Why cannot we extend this feeling of fellowship not merely to an individual here and there, but to all living creatures?
It may well be doubted whether, in developing in the hound only those qualities and capacities which lead to bloodshed of his fellow-creatures, we are not doing him a moral wrong, instead of developing those higher faculties which he possesses.
Suppose that, instead of devoting his energy to the production of fat cattle, diseased pigs, crammed capons and pâté de foie gras, man aimed only to produce healthy bodies, and to train and develop the mental and moral qualities of the animals—what a difference might be made!
Not until we can clear away these illusions, and recognise the oneness of the evolving Life within, shall we understand, and understanding work towards, that “one eternal purpose” for which the animals, not less than ourselves, exist.
To sum up, we think we have shown—
1. That there is overwhelming evidence that animals were not made for the use and purposes of men, but for purposes of their own which we may be unable to fathom.
2. That in mind, no less than in body, they are nearly related to us in what concerns this life, and that there is no evidence at all that they do not have a continued existence in other spheres.
3. That we can in no way evade the conclusion that the same rule of conduct should apply to them as to human beings in as far as the development of their faculties makes it applicable.
In conclusion, I cannot better sum up my idea of the feeling and attitude we should hold towards the lower animals than in the words of Edward Carpenter:
I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me.
I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and fur, or condemned for awhile to roam four-footed among the brambles. I caught the clinging, mute glance of the prisoner, and swore that I would be faithful.
Thee, my brother and sister, I see and mistake not. Do not be afraid. Dwelling thus and thus for a while, fulfilling thy appointed time—-thou too shalt come to thyself at last.
Thy half-warm horns and long tongue lapping round my wrist do not conceal thy humanity any more than the learned talk of the pedant conceals his-for all thou art dumb we have words and plenty between us.
Come nigh, little ‘bird, with your half-stretched, quivering wings—within you I behold choirs of angels, and the Lord himself in vista.
(Towards Democracy.)
* The writer of this essay wishes to express his indebtedness, not only for several direct quotations, but also for many ideas, to the two excellent books, “Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology,” by E. P. Evans (Heinemann), and “Wild Traits in Tame Animals,” by Dr. Louis Robinson (Blackwood)
Ernest Bell
The Humane Review, 1906-7, 129-144