The second and not less fruitful source of modern inhumanity is to be found in the “Cartesian” doctrine—the theory of Descartes and his followers—that the lower animals are devoid of consciousness and feeling; a theory which carried the “religious” notion a step further, and deprived the animals not only of their claim to a life hereafter, but of anything that could, without mockery, be called a life in the present, since mere “animated machines,” as they were thus affirmed to be, could in no real sense be said to live at all! Well might Voltaire turn his humane ridicule against this most monstrous contention, and suggest, with scathing irony, that God “had given the animals the organs of feeling, to the end that they might not feel!” “The theory of animal automatism,” says Professor Romanes, “which is usually attributed to Descartes, can never be accepted by common sense.” Yet it is to be feared that it has done much, in its time, to harden “scientific” sense against the just complaints of the victims of human arrogance and oppression.[11]
Let me here quote a most impressive passage from Schopenhauer.
“The unpardonable forgetfulness in which the lower animals have hitherto been left by the moralists of Europe is well known. It is pretended that the beasts have no rights. They persuade themselves that our conduct in regard to them has nothing to do with morals, or (to speak the language of their morality) that we have no duties towards animals: a doctrine revolting, gross, and barbarous, peculiar to the west, and having its root in Judaism. In philosophy, however, it is made to rest upon a hypothesis, admitted in despite of evidence itself, of an absolute difference between man and beast. It is Descartes who has proclaimed it in the clearest and most decisive manner; and in fact it was a necessary consequence of his errors. The Cartesian-Leibnitzian-Wolfian philosophy, with the assistance of entirely abstract notions, had built up the ‘rational psychology,’ and constructed an immortal anima rationalis: but, visibly, the world of beasts, with its very natural claims, stood up against this exclusive monopoly—this brevet of immortality decreed to man alone—and silently Nature did what she always does in such cases—she protested. Our philosophers, feeling their scientific conscience quite disturbed, were forced to attempt to consolidate their ‘rational psychology’ by the aid of empiricism. They therefore set themselves to work to hollow out between man and beast an enormous abyss, of an immeasurable width; by this they wish to prove to us, in contempt of evidence, an impassable difference.”[12]
The fallacious idea that the lives of animals have no moral purpose is at root connected with these religious and philosophical pretensions which Schopenhauer so powerfully condemns. To live one’s own life—to realize one’s true self—is the highest moral purpose of man and animal alike; and that animals possess their due measure of this sense of individuality is scarcely open to doubt. “We have seen,” says Darwin, “that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.”[13] Not less emphatic is the testimony of the Rev. J. G. Wood, who, speaking from a great experience, gives it as his opinion that “the manner in which we ignore individuality in the lower animals is simply astounding.” He claims for them a future life, because he is “quite sure that most of the cruelties which are perpetrated on the animals are due to the habit of considering them as mere machines without susceptibilities, without reason, and without the capacity of a future.”[14]
The long-maintained distinction between human “reason” and animal “instinct” is being given up by recent scientific writers, as, for example, by Dr. Wesley Mills in his work on “The Nature and Development of Animal Intelligence,” and by Mr. E. P. Evans in “Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology.”
“The trend of investigation,” says Dr. Mills, “thus far goes to show that at least the germ of every human faculty does exist in some species of animal.... Formerly the line was drawn at reason. It was said that the ‘brutes’ cannot reason. Only persons who do not themselves reason about the subject with the facts before them can any longer occupy such a position. The evidence of reasoning power is overwhelming for the upper ranks of animals, and yearly the downward limits are being extended the more the inferior tribes are studied.”
We have to get rid, as Mr. Evans points out, of those “anthropocentric” delusions which “treat man as a being essentially different and inseparably set apart from all other sentient creatures, to which he is bound by no ties of mental affinity or moral obligation.”
“Man is as truly a part and product of Nature as any other animal, and this attempt to set him up as an isolated point outside of it is philosophically false and morally pernicious.”
This, then, is the position of those who assert that animals, like men, are possessed of certain limited rights, which cannot be withheld from them, as they are now withheld, without tyranny and injustice. They have individuality, character, reason; and to have those qualities is to have the right to exercise them, in so far as surrounding circumstances permit. No human being is justified in regarding an animal as a meaningless automaton, to be worked, or tortured, or eaten, as the case may be, for the mere object of satisfying the wants or whims of mankind. Together with the destinies and duties that are laid on them and fulfilled by them, animals have also the right to be treated with gentleness and consideration, and the man who does not so treat them, however great his learning or influence may be, is, in that respect, an ignorant and foolish man, devoid of the highest and noblest culture of which the human mind is capable.
Something must here be said on the important subject of nomenclature. It is to be feared that the ill-treatment of animals is largely caused—or at any rate the difficulty of amending that treatment is largely aggravated—by the common use of such terms as “brute-beast,” “live-stock,” etc., which implicitly deny to the lower races that intelligent individuality which is undoubtedly possessed by them. It was long ago remarked by Bentham, in his “Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation,” that, whereas human beings are styled persons, “other animals, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things”; and Schopenhauer also has commented on the mischievous absurdity of the idiom which applies the neuter pronoun “it” to such highly-organized animals as the dog and the ape.