(5) Finally, we have a duty to those dumb brothers of ours, the animal species that share with us the earth. For they, too, feel pain and pleasure, and are much at our mercy. We must learn "Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."
All needless hurting of sentient creatures is cruelty, whether of the boy who tortures frogs and flies, or of the grown man who takes his pleasure in hunting to death a frightened deer. Beasts of prey must, indeed, be ruthlessly put to death, just as we execute murderers; among them are to be counted flies, mosquitoes, rats, and the other pests so deadly to the human race and to other animals. But death should be inflicted as painlessly as possible; no humane man will prolong the suffering of the humblest creature for the sake of "sport" or take pleasure in the killing. We must say with Cowper "I would not enter on my list of friends, (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm."
This does not necessarily imply that we may not rear and kill animals for food. When properly slaughtered, they suffer inappreciably-no more, and probably less, than they would otherwise suffer before death; the fear of the hunted animal is not present, and there is no danger of leaving mate and offspring to suffer. Indeed, the animals that are bred for food would not have their chance to live at all but for serving that end; and their existence is ordinarily, without doubt, of some positive balance of worth to them. Certainly the rearing of cattle and sheep and chickens adds appreciably to the picturesqueness and richness of human life; and if dieticians are to be believed, their food value could hardly be replaced by substitutes.
The question of vivisection is not a difficult one. Certainly experimentation on living animals should be sharply controlled, anesthetics should be used whenever possible, and the needless repetition of operations for illustrative purposes should be forbidden. But it is far better for the general good that necessary experimentation should be performed upon animals than upon human beings; not at all as a partisan judgment, to shift suffering from ourselves to others, which would be unjustifiable, but because animals are less sensitive to pain, and unable to foresee and fear it as human beings would. The human lives saved have been of far greater worth not only to themselves but objectively than the animal lives sacrificed. Moreover, except for a few glaring instances, vivisection has involved little cruelty; and the crusade against it, though actuated by a noble impulse, has rested upon misrepresentation of facts and exaggeration of evils.
What general duties do we owe our fellows?
(1) The abstract duty to refrain from hurting our fellows, and to give positive help, to whomever we can, will find constant application in connection with each specific problem we are to study. But a few general remarks may be pertinently made here. In the first place, we need to be reminded that to help requires insight and tact and ingenuity; it is not enough to respond to obvious needs or actual requests; we must learn to understand our fellows' wants, remember their tastes, seek out ways to add to their happiness or lighten their burdens. For another must realize the importance of manners, cultivate kindliness of voice and phrase, courtesy, cheerfulness, and good humor. Surliness and ill temper, glumness, touchiness, are inexcusable; nor may we needlessly burden others with our troubles and disappointments - the motto, "Burn your own smoke," voices an important duty. Again, we must remember that people generally are lonely and in need of love; we must be generous in our affection. It is sometimes said that love given as a duty is a mockery; and doubtless spontaneous and irresistible love is best. But it is possible to cultivate love. If we think of others not as rivals or enemies, but as fellows whose interests we ourselves have at heart, if we try to put ourselves in their place, see through their eyes, and enjoy their pleasures and successes, we shall find ourselves coming to want happiness for them and then feeling some measure of affection. Men and women do not have to be perfect to be loved; all or nearly all are love worthy, if we have it in us to love. (2) The question how far we should tolerate what we believe to be wrong in others, and how far we should work to reform them, is of the most difficult. Certainly moral evil must be fought; the counsel to "resist not evil" cannot be taken too sweepingly. No one can sit still while a big boy is bullying a smaller, while vice caterers are plying their trades, while cruelty and injustice of any sort are being perpetrated. In lesser matters, too, we must not be inactive, but use our influence and persuasion to call our fellows to better things. They may well at some later day reproach us if we shirk our duty to help them see and correct their faults; still more may we be reproached by others who have been harmed by faults that we might have done something toward curing. Often a single gentle and tactful admonition has turned the whole current of a man's life. The truest friendship is not too easy- going; it stimulates and checks as well as comforts. Emerson happily phrases this aspect of the matter: "I hate, when I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo."
This is, however, only half the truth. What Stevenson calls the "passion of interference with others" is one of the wretchedest poisoners of human happiness. People are, after all, hopelessly at variance in ideals, and we must be content to let others live in their own way and according to their own inner light, as we live by ours. Probably neither is the light of perfect day. Parents are particularly at fault in this respect; rare is the father or mother who is willing that son and daughter should leave the parental paths and follow their own ideals. Incalculable is the amount of needless suffering caused by the conscientious attempt to make others over into our own image. As Carlyle wrote, "The friendliest voice must speak from without; and a man's ultimate monition comes only from within." We need not only a shrugging "tolerance," but a willingness to admit that those who differ from us may after all be in the right of it. It often happens that as we live our standards change, and we come to see that those whom we were anxious to reform were less in need of reformation than we; and very likely while we were blaming others, they in their hearts were blaming us. The older we grow the less we feel ourselves qualified for the office of censor.
Certain practical counsels may perhaps be not too impertinent: Be sure you can take advice yourself without offense or irritation before you proffer it to others; there may be beams in your own eyes as well as motes in your neighbors'. Be sure you see through the other's eyes, and get his point of view; only so can you feel reasonably confident that you are right in your advice or reproof.[Footnote: Cf. W. E. H. Lecky, The Map of Life, p. 68: "Few men have enough imagination to realize types of excellence altogether differing from their own. It is this, much more than vanity, that leads them to esteem the types of excellence to which they themselves approximate as the best, and tastes and habits that are altogether incongruous with their own as futile and contemptible.">[ Be sure that you are saying what you are saying for the other's good, and not to give vent to your own irritability or selfishness or sense of superiority; say what must be said sweetly or gravely, never patronizingly or sharply, with resentfulness or petulance. Be sure you choose your occasion tactfully, and above all things do not nag; it is better to have it out once and for all than to be forever hinting and complaining and reproving. Praise when you can, temper advice with compliments, make it apparent that your spirit is friendly and your mood good-tempered. Talk and think as little as possible of others' faults; he who is above doing a low act is above talking about another's failings. The only right gossip is that which dwells upon the pleasant side of our neighbors' doings. Avoid all impatience, contempt, and anger; they poison no one so much as him who feels them. Cultivate kindliness and sympathy; love opens blind eyes, helps us to understand our neighbor, and to help him in the best way. Are the rich justified in living in luxury? Of all the problems that loyalty to our fellows involves, none is acuter, to the conscientious man, than that concerning the degree of luxury he may allow himself. It is strictly things in the world is limited; the more I have, the less others have. How can a good man be content to spend unnecessary sums upon himself and his own family, when within arm's reach men and women and children are being stunted mentally and morally, are living in dirt and squalor, are succumbing to disease, are actually dying, for lack of the comfort and opportunity that his superfluous wealth could give? "Wherever we may live, if we draw a circle around us of a hundred thousand [sic], or a thousand, or even of ten miles' circumference, and look at the lives of those men and women who are inside our circle, we shall find half- starved children, old people, pregnant women, sick and weak persons, all working beyond their strength, with neither food nor rest enough to support them, and so dying before their time."[Footnote: Tolstoy, What Shall We Do Then? chap. xxvi.] It is only a lack of imagination and sympathy, or an actual ignorance of conditions, that can permit so many really kind-hearted people to spend so much money upon clothes, amusements, elaborate dinners, and a lot of other superfluities, in a world so full of desperate need. It would be well if every citizen could be compelled to do a little charity-visiting, or something of the sort, that he might see with his own eyes the cramping and demoralizing conditions under which, for sheer lack of money, so many worthy poor, under the present crude social organization, must live. It is the segregation of the well to do in their separate quarters that fosters their shameless callousness, and leads, in the rich, "to that flagrant exhibition of great wealth which almost frightens those who know the destitution of the poor."
There is, however, a growing uneasiness among those who have, an increasing sense of responsibility toward those who have not; there are hopeful signs of a return to the sane ideal of the Greeks, who deemed it vulgar and barbaric to spend money lavishly on self. The compunctions of the rich are indicated, on the one hand, by generous donations made to all sorts of causes, and on the other hand, by the arguments which are now thought necessary to justify the selfish use of money. These arguments we may cursorily discuss.
(1) A clever writer in a recent magazine [Footnote: Katherine Fullerton Gerould, in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. 109, p. 135.] speaks of "factitious altruism"; with this "altruism of the Procrusteans" who would reduce every one to the simple life-she has "little patience." "Thousands of people seem to be infected with the idea that by doing more themselves they bestow leisure on others; that by wearing shabby clothes they somehow make it possible for others to dress better- though they thus admit tacitly that leisure and elegance are not evil things. Or perhaps-though Heaven forbid they should be right!-they merely think that by refusing nightingales' tongues they make every one more content with porridge. Let us be gallant about the porridge that we must eat; but let us never forget that there are better things to eat than porridge."