[1] An admirable definition of Rights is given by Mr. G. W. Foote in his contribution to “The New Charter”: “Rights are of three sorts—legal, moral, and natural. The legal meaning of ‘Rights’ is undoubtedly the primary one ... and this is the only definite sense, in which the word can be used.... Moral Rights are widespread new sentiments, demanding incorporation into Legal Rights; and Natural Rights are still newer sentiments, aspiring to recognition as Moral Rights, with a view to ultimate incorporation as Legal Rights.... They are respectively, a solid fact, a general demand, and a growing aspiration.”
[2] This remark implies not the “disparagement of logic and of all careful use of language,” with which Professor D. G. Ritchie has charged me in his book on “Natural Rights,” but simply that social reformers cannot be debarred from using the best available terms because no logically exact term is forthcoming. See Appendix [I].
[3] Attributed to Thomas Taylor, the Platonist.
[4] “Principles of Penal Law,” chap, xvi., 1780.
[5] John Lawrence, “Philosophical Treatise on the Moral Duties of Man towards the Brute Creation,” 1796.
[6] Professor Ritchie contends in his “Natural Rights” that domestic animals have not been granted rights in English law. “Because a work of art, or some ancient monument, is protected by law from injury, do we speak of the rights of pictures or stones?” But the distinction is obvious—works of art are protected only as property, domestic animals as sentient beings, whether owned or unowned.
[7] “Fraser,” November, 1863; “The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes,” by Frances Power Cobbe.
[8] “Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies,” 1854.
[9] Humphry Primatt, D.D., author of “The Duty of Mercy to Brute Animals” (1776).
[10] See the article on “Animal Immortality,” “The Nineteenth Century,” Jan., 1891, by Norman Pearson. The upshot of his argument is that, “if we accept the immortality of the human soul, and also accept its evolutional origin, we cannot deny the survival, in some form or other, of animal minds.”