[105] Ibid. ix. 2 sq.
[106] Cf. Evans, ‘Ethical Relations between Man and Beast,’ in Popular Science Monthly, xlv. 637 sq.
Among the Hebrews the harshness of this anthropocentric doctrine was somewhat mitigated by the sympathy which a simple pastoral and agricultural people naturally feels for its domestic animals. In Christianity, on the other hand, it was further strengthened by the exclusive importance which was attached to the spiritual salvation of man. He was now more than ever separated from the rest of sentient beings. Even his own animal nature was regarded with contempt, the immortality of his soul being the only object of religious interest. “It would seem,” says Dr. Arnold, “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.”[107] St. Paul asks with scorn, “Doth God take care for oxen?”[108] No creed in Christendom teaches kindness to animals as a dogma of religion.[109] In the Middle Ages various councils of the Church declared hunting unlawful for the clergy;[110] but the obvious reason for this prohibition was its horror of bloodshed,[111] not any consideration for the animals. Mr. Mauleverer in Sir Arthur Helps’ ‘Talk about Animals and their Masters,’ says, “Upon a moderate calculation, I think I have heard, in my time, 1320 sermons; and I do not recollect that in any one of them I ever heard the slightest allusion made to the conduct of men towards animals.”[112] Nor is there any such allusion in most treatises on Ethics which base their teachings upon distinctly Christian tenets. The kindest words, I think, which from a Christian point of view have been said about animals have generally come from Protestant sectarians, Quakers and Methodists,[113] whereas Roman Catholic writers—with a few exceptions[114]—when they deal with the subject at all, chiefly take pains to show that animals are entirely destitute of rights. Brute beasts, says Father Rickaby, cannot have any rights for the reason that they have no understanding and therefore are not persons. We have no duties of any kind to them, as neither to stocks and stones; we only have duties about them. We must not harm them when they are our neighbour’s property, we must not vex and annoy them for sport, because it disposes him who does so to inhumanity towards his own species. But there is no shadow of evil resting on the practice of causing pain to brutes in sport, where the pain is not the sport itself, but an incidental concomitant of it. Much more in all that conduces to the sustenance of man may we give pain to animals, and we are not “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, though not for our wantonness.”[115] According to another modern Catholic writer the infliction of suffering upon an animal is not only justifiable, but a duty, “when it confers a certain, a solid good, however small, on the spiritual nature of man.”[116] Pope Pius IX. refused a request for permission to form in Rome a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on the professed ground that it was a theological error to suppose that man owes any duty to an animal.[117]
[107] Arnold, quoted by Evans, in Popular Science Monthly, xlv. 639.
[108] 1 Corinthians, ix. 9.
[109] The Manichæans prohibited all killing of animals (Baur, Das Manichäische Religionssystem, p. 252 sqq.); but Manichæism did not originate on Christian ground (Harnack, ‘Manichæism,’ in Encyclopædia Britannica, xv. 485; supra, [ii. 312]).
[110] Le Grand d’Aussy, Histoire de la vie privée des François, i. 394 sq.
[111] Supra, [i. 381 sq.]
[112] Helps, Some Talk about Animals and their Masters, p. 20. Cf. Mrs. Jameson, Common-Place Book of Thoughts, p. 212.
[113] See Gurney, Views and Practices of the Society of Friends, p. 392 sq. n. 8; Richmond, ‘Sermon on the Sin of Cruelty to the Brute Creation,’ in Methodist Magazine (London), xxx. 490 sqq.; Chalmers, ‘Cruelty to Animals,’ in Methodist Magazine (New York), ix. 259 sqq.