"Because the passion of pity arises from the afflictions of others, and it happens even to brute animals to feel pain, the affection of pity may arise in man even about the afflictions of animals. Obviously, whoever is practised in the affection of pity towards animals, is thereby more disposed to the affection of pity towards men: whence it is said in Proverbs xii. 10: 'The just regardeth the lives of his beasts, but the bowels of the wicked are cruel.' And therefore the Lord, seeing the Jewish people to be cruel, that He might reclaim them to pity, wished to train them to pity even towards brute beasts, forbidding certain things to be done to animals which seem to touch upon cruelty. And therefore He forbade them to seethe the kid in the mother's milk (Deut. xiv. 21), or to muzzle the treading ox (Deut. xxv. 4), or to kill the old bird with the young." (Deut. xxii. 6, 7.)
3. It is wanton cruelty to vex and annoy a brute beast for sport. This is unworthy of man, and disposes him to inhumanity towards his own species. Yet the converse is not to be relied on: there have been cruel men who have made pets of the brute creation. 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 brutes, as also in the pursuit of science. Nor are we 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. If then any special case of pain to a brute creature be a fact of considerable value for observation in biological science or the medical art, no reasoned considerations of morality can stand in the way of man making the experiment, yet so that even in the quest of science he be mindful of mercy.
4. Altogether it will be found that a sedulous observance of the rights and claims of other men, a mastery over one's own passions, and a reverence for the Creator, give the best assurance of a wise and humane treatment of the lower animals. But to preach kindness to brutes as a primary obligation, and capital point of amendment in the conversion of a sinner, is to treat the symptom and leave unchecked the inward malady.
Reading.—St. Thos., 2a 2æ, q. 25, art. 3.
SECTION III.—Of the right to Honour and Reputation.
1. Honour is the attestation of another's excellence. Reputation is the opinion of many touching another's life and conduct. Honour is paid to a man to his face, whereas his reputation is bruited behind his back. Honour is taken away by insult, reputation by detraction. If the detraction involve a falsehood, it is called calumny or slander. The name backbiting, given to detraction, points to the absence of the person spoken of. But no one meets with an insult except where he is present, either in person or by his representative.
2. Both honour and reputation are goods that a man can call his own, and has a right to, but on different titles. Honour, some honour at least, appertains to a man simply for his being a man: reputation is won by deeds. Honour is primarily a connatural right: reputation is acquired. An entire stranger has no reputation, but a certain honour is his due to start with.
3. As there is a right to honour and a right to reputation, so insult and detraction are sins, not against charity, but against commutative justice, calling for restitution. (Ethics, c. v., s. ix., n. 6, p. 106.) We must tender an apology for an insult, and labour to restore the good name that our detracting tongue has taken away.
4. Calumny is a double sin, one sin against truth, and another sin, the heavier of the two, against justice. If the blackening tale be true, the first sin is absent, but the second is there. The truth of the story is no justification for our publishing it. Though it is wrong to lie, it is not always right to blurt out the truth, especially when we are not asked for it. There are unprofitable disclosures, unseasonable, harmful, and wrongful. But, it will be said, does not a man forego his right to reputation by doing the evil that belies his fair fame? No, his right remains, unless the evil that he does, either of its own proper working or by the scandal that it gives, be subversive of social order. If he has committed a crime against society, he is to be denounced to the authorities who have charge of society: they will judge him, and, finding him guilty, they will punish him and brand him with infamy. If, again, he does evil, though not immediately against society, yet in the face of society and before the sun; he shocks the public conscience and rends his own reputation. But the evil private and proper to himself that any man works in secret, is not society's care, nor affects his social standing, nor brings any rightful diminution to his good name. If all our secret and personal offences are liable to be made public by any observer, which of us shall abide it? Our character is our public character; and that is not forfeit except for some manner of public sin.
5. Suppose a veteran, long retired, has made a name for military prowess by boasting of battles wherein he never came into danger, is the one old comrade who remembers him for a skulker and a runaway, justified in showing him up? No, for that reputation, however mendaciously got together, is still truly a good possession: it is not a fruit of injustice, therefore it is no matter of restitution: nor is it any instrument of injustice, which the holder is bound to drop: thus, as he is not bound to forego it, now that he has got it, so his neighbour may not rightfully take it from him.