Domesticated animals

by Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

THE RIGHTS OF ANIMALS

Recent Understanding as to the Rights of Animals; Nature of these Rights; their Origin in Sympathy.—Early State of Sympathetic Emotions.—Place of Statutes concerning Animal Rights.—Present and Future of Animal Rights.—Question of Vivisection.—Rights of Domesticated Animals to Proper Care; to Enjoyment.—Ends of the Breeder's Art.—Moral Position of the Hunter.—Probable Development of the Protecting Motive as applied to Animals.

It is well to note the fact that, in considering the rights of the creatures below the level of man, we are dealing with a question which does not seem to have entered into the minds of the ancients. Such old phrases as "the merciful man is merciful to his beast" indicate that cruelty to the domesticated creatures was, in a way, reprobated by the ancients; but not until well on in the present century do we find any indication that reason had come to the help of pity in an effort to frame rules having the weight of law and the support of sanctions, either those of public opinion or the more direct penalties of the courts, to limit the conduct of men towards the lower animals. The great tide of mercy and justice which marks our modern civilization had first to break down the grievous and strongly founded evils of human slavery. Having effected that great work, the sympathetic motives are moving on to a similar conflict with the moral ills which arise from an improper treatment of those slaves of a lower estate, the domesticated animals.

It is impossible to see our position in relation to the matter of the rights of animals without looking somewhat carefully into the intellectual and moral steps which have at length brought us to the consideration of the question. First let us note that while the rights of their fellows have been impressed on men by the precepts of religions, particularly by those of Christianity, the rules of conduct which guide us in our contacts with beings below the level of our species have never been determined by the canons of our faith, for the reason that they are the product of very modern conditions; they are the thought of our own time. New as are these tenets, however, they may fairly be received as but the last though not the final expression of that most interesting of all natural series—the succession in the development of sympathy which, step by step in the progress of organic life, has led from the original dull insensitiveness of the lower animals upwards to the outgoing spirit of man.

In the lower stages of animal life we find no traces of appreciation of the neighbor except those which necessarily relate to the selection and capture of food and perhaps to the selection of mates. Further on in the process of development we note the love of offspring, and, as a consequence of that love, the growth of the family sense, which rarely is maintained beyond the time when the young can shift for themselves. Among the species of the higher groups—certain insects, the greater part of the birds, and the nobler of the mammals—the instinct of the family is extended until it includes the tribe, or perhaps goes yet further and leads to a certain kindliness to all the individuals of the race. Thus it comes about that the individuals of many species below the level of man will respond to the cries of their kindred though they may never have had a chance to know them. There is in these cases a sympathetic bond that binds the kind together. It is with this condition of the sympathies that the task of their further evolution is transferred to man. Inheriting as he does the essential motives of the lower beings through which he came to his present estate, man proceeds to deal with them in a manner which is determined by the peculiar rational power which belongs to him. In place of the blind following of the emotions which characterizes the sympathetic movements of the lower animals, we find that even among the most primitive and lowly savages rules of conduct are instituted which serve to direct the ways in which the individual shall act with regard to his fellows. In almost all cases these rules are much intermingled with the religion of the people; usually they rest upon a body of advancing public opinion which amplifies the motives and, in turn, is enlarged by their growth. As time goes on and the folk attain the stage of records, these rules of conduct become definite laws which at first are based on religious ordinances; but in time they are, in the latest stage of social growth, brought into the state of ordinary statutes which, while they may have some religious sanction, are supported by the machinery of the secular government.

After the first rude work of shaping the body of ancient experience into law was done, there remained the larger and more difficult task of continuing the development of the sympathetic motives with a corresponding amplification of customs and statutes so that the steps of advance should be duly embodied in these rules of conduct. The stages of this purely human attainment have been slowly taken, the onward way has been effectively won but by few peoples. A part of the slowness in advance in the enlargement of the sympathetic motives beyond the stage which has been attained in the life below the human grade is to be accounted for in the fact that no sooner are laws formed than they become in a way sacred. If they be cast in the religious mould their sanctity may be such that they are almost beyond the reach of modification; even when they are secular the reverence for the wisdom of the forefathers naturally leads men to regard them as the ark of safety. Thus it has come about that the codification of the ancient sympathies, won by experience in the pre-human time and in the early life of man, has led to the institution of a barrier which makes further advance a matter of difficulty—one which, in the case of most peoples, binds them firmly to the past, arresting their sympathetic development at a point which it had attained when their laws were framed. This is, indeed, the position of nearly all the peoples except those of our own Aryan race.

When the conditions of a people are fortunately such that they may continue their sympathetic growth, they proceed to carry onward the process of sympathetic enlargement, modifying their laws to suit the gains in understanding which come with this growth. It may be noticed that the development takes place most readily where the rules of conduct are embodied in statute law; for this law, being the evident result of human action, is manifestly alterable in a way that cannot be taken when the prescriptions are supposed to rest on divine commands. Under such conditions of statute law men are freer to advance than they can possibly be where the rules of action are in the form of revered precepts, such as guide the peoples who are accustomed to base their action on the books which they esteem as sacred. Endowed with this element of freedom, the peoples of our own Aryan race—and, fortunately, the most advanced of all its varieties, the English-speaking part of the folk—have, by the divine impulse towards moral advancement, been led to make a great extension of the sympathetic motives. The first step in this direction seems to have been towards the mitigation of the horrors of war, which of old meant the slavery or slaughter of the prisoners. Under the dictates of the developing spirit of mercy and without written law, these brutal actions have been limited until the dogs of war are allowed to rend only in the hour of battle. In this day the man who slays the wounded or robs the dead is esteemed an outlaw. The same beneficent motive was next extended towards human slaves. In this matter English people led; and to them it was almost altogether due that this evil has come nearly to an end except among the Mohammedans, who are bound as in chains to their sacred books and cannot win their way to progress through statutes. In a like manner, in the care of the poor, of prisoners for debt, and even of malefactors, our English folk on both sides of the Atlantic have led in the ongoing towards a higher moral estate.

The last great excursion of sympathy which has characterized the English Aryans—one dating its beginning to this century—is that relating to the rights of our domesticated animals. This has come about, like the other movements, in a way unconsciously. Prophetic spirits have seen beyond the vision of their fellows; they have given their messages, which have found an echo in the souls of men. The motive originated in the recognition of the essential likeness of the minds of the lower animals to our own. But it has been greatly reënforced by the teachings of the naturalists to the effect that all the life of this sphere is akin in its origin and that our subjects are not very far away from our own ancestral line.

It is characteristic of sympathetic movements that, while they are slowly prepared for, their final development is very rapid. Thus it has come about that within one hundred years the conception of the rights of animals has advanced with almost startling rapidity. No other moral gain has been made with such speed or has so rapidly become a part of the property of civilized man. The steps are those which have been taken in all the other great moral advances: at first there were but a few who, in the manner of the skirmishers of armies, set the standards far on in the new ground; gradually the less ardent win their way to them, only to be led the further by their natural guides. As the great advance is still making, it is difficult to see how far it may attain; it is, however, easy to recognize some of the important gains and to foretell the path if not the field of full accomplishment of the conquest. A century ago a man, so far as the law was concerned, owned his living chattels as he did the inanimate things of his property. He could torture or slay them as whim or malice might dictate; there were no limitations by statute, and public opinion, where it might reprobate, was too weak to influence his conduct. Now the statute books of all countries which are moving in the path of moral advance show that public opinion has attained the point where it begins to formulate itself in statutes which restrict the relations of men to their domesticated animals—or, in other words, endow them with definite rights. He may, of course, force them to do him their fit service; he may at his need slay them; but he must exercise his authority without brutality; he must, in form at least, be merciful unto his beasts. With this limitation the rights of domesticated animals began to exist.

At first sight it may seem unreasonable to found the rights of dumb beasts on the embodiment of public opinion in the law, and this for the reasons that many persons have held, that rights have an establishment in the ultimate moral constitution of the world. It may be granted that even before man or even life existed in the universe there were certain logical moral principles which were destined to take shape when the creatures to which they were adapted came to be; but such speculations are fanciful and do not much concern those who are dealing with the problems of the barnyard. We may, to bring the matter nearer, say that the slave of half a century ago had a right to be free; but this right, in all practical senses, meant only that certain people very much disliked to see him enthralled.