[140] Montaigne, Essais, ii. 11.
[141] Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, iii. 1.
[142] Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, p. 187.
[143] Bentham, Theory of Legislation, p. 428 sq.
[144] Young, op. cit. p. 75 sq.
[145] Salt, Animals’ Rights, p. v.
This rapidly increasing sympathy with animal suffering is no doubt to a considerable extent due to the decline of the anthropocentric doctrine and the influence of another theory, which regards man, not as an image of the deity separated from the lower animals by a special act of creation, but as a being generally akin to them, and only representing a higher stage in the scale of mental evolution. Through this doctrine the orthodox contempt for dumb creatures was succeeded by feelings of affinity and kindly interest. But apart from any theory as regards human origins, growing reflection has also taught men to be more considerate in their treatment of animals by producing a more vivid idea of their sufferings. Human thoughtlessness has been responsible for much needless pain to which they have been made subject. In spite of some improvement it is so still; whilst, at the same time, the movement advocating greater humanity to animals is itself not altogether free from inconsistencies and a certain lack of discrimination.
It has been observed that the Neapolitan would not act so cruelly as he does to almost all animals except the cat if he could bring himself to conceive their capacity for joy and pain.[146] So also we ourselves should often behave differently if we realised the tortures we thoughtlessly cause to creatures whose sufferings escape our notice from want of obvious outward expression. While the practice of whipping young pigs to death to make them tender, which occurred in England not much more than a century ago,[147] would nowadays be regarded with general horror, cruelties inflicted for gastronomic purposes upon creatures of a lower type are little thought of. Cray-fish, oysters, and fish in general, as Mandeville observed, excite hardly any compassion at all, because “they express themselves unintelligibly to us; they are mute, and their inward formation, as well as outward figure, vastly different from ours.”[148] On the other hand, even passionate sportsmen describe the hunting of monkeys as repulsive on account of their resemblance to man; Rajah Brooke thought it almost barbarous to kill an orang-utan, unless for the sake of scientific research.[149] Buddhism itself declares that “he who takes away the life of a large animal will have greater demerit than he who takes away the life of a small one…. The crime is not great when an ant is killed; its magnitude increases in this progression—a lizard, a guana, a hare, a deer, a bull, a horse, and an elephant.”[150] How little the feelings which underlie men’s opinions concerning conduct towards the lower animals are influenced by reflection is also apparent in the present crusade against vivisection, when compared with the public indifference to the sufferings inflicted on wild animals in sport. The vivisector who in cold blood torments his helpless victim in the interest of science and for the benefit of mankind is called a coward, and is a much more common object of hatred than the sportsman who causes agonies to the creature he pursues for sheer amusement. The pursued animal, it is argued, has “free chances of escape.”[151] This is an excellent argument—provided we share the North American Indian’s conviction that an animal can never be killed without its own permission.
[146] ‘Cruelty to Animals in Naples,’ in Saturday Review, lix. 854.
[147] The World, 1756, nr. 190, p. 1142. Young, op. cit. p. 129.