[11] Prof. Huxley’s remarks, in “Science and Culture,” give a partial support to Descartes’ theory, but do not bear on the moral question of rights. For, though he concludes that animals are probably “sensitive automata,” he classes men in the same category. See Appendix [II].
[12] Schopenhauer’s “Foundation of Morality.” I quote the passage as translated in Mr. Howard Williams’s “Ethics of Diet.”
[13] “Descent of Man,” chap. iii.
[14] “Man and Beast, here and hereafter,” 1874.
[15] In Sir A. Helps’s “Animals and their Masters.” See an article on “Dumb Animals,” in “The Humanitarian,” November, 1912. Also the chapter on “Speech as a Barrier between Man and Beast,” in Mr. E. P. Evans’s work on “Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology,” 1898.
[16] See Prince Kropotkine’s articles on “Mutual Aid among Animals,” “Nineteenth Century,” 1890, where the conclusion is arrived at that “sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.” A similar view is expressed in the “Study of Animal Life,” 1892, by J. Arthur Thomson. “What we must protest against,” he says, in an interesting chapter on “The Struggle of Life,” “is that one-sided interpretation according to which individualistic competition is nature’s sole method of progress.”
Another and more recent work, which has a very important bearing on this question, is “Symbiosis: a Socio-Physiological Study of Evolution,” by H. Reinheimer, 1920.
[17] Auguste Comte included the domestic animals as an organic part of the Positivist conception of humanity.
[18] “Moral Duty towards Animals,” “Macmillan’s Magazine,” April, 1882, by the then Bishop of Carlisle.
[19] See Lewis Gompertz’ “Moral Inquiries” (1824), where it is argued that “at least in the present state of society it is unjust, and considering the unnecessary abuse they suffer from being in the power of man, it is wrong to use them, and to encourage their being placed in his power.”