Is it the same with the destruction of animals intended for our nourishment? Is this destruction innocent, or must we, as did the Pythagoreans or Brahmins of old (for superstitious reasons, however), interdict all animal food?[53] This question has been so well solved by general usage that it is scarcely necessary to raise it. It is not likely men will ever think of giving up animal food, and no one regrets having eaten of a good roast. Yet for those who like to find out the reason of things, it is a problem to know whether we have the right to do what we do without remorse and scruples; and whether a universal and apparently indestructible practice is also a legitimate and innocent practice. Man, according to us, in living on flesh, is justified by nature herself, who made him a carnivorous creature. Every being is authorized to perform the acts which result from its organization.[54] The human organization, as the nature of the teeth and the whole digestive system indicate, is prepared to nourish itself with flesh. In many countries even all other nourishment is impossible; there are peoples whose very situation makes them necessarily hunters, fishermen, or shepherds; it is only in some countries highly favored, and, thanks to scientific cultivation, the result of civilization, that vegetable food could be made abundant enough to suffice, and hardly that for large masses of population; for we know quite well what disasters follow upon a scarcity of crops. What would be the result if the human race were deprived of half its means of subsistence? Add to this that, whatever may have been said against it, animal food mixed in a certain measure with vegetable food, is indispensable to the health and vigor of the human race.
As to the servitude of animals and the labor we impose on them, its justification lies first in the principle of legitimate self-defense, to which we have just now alluded. Many of our domestic races would, in a savage state, become veritable wild beasts. The wild hog is, they say, the wild boar; the wild dog, the jackal; the wild cat belongs to the leopard and tiger family. In reducing these sorts of animals to servitude, and in making of them companions and help-mates in our work, we thereby deliver ourselves from dangerous enemies. Domestication is better than destruction. Add to this, that if we except the first animals which have passed from the savage state to the domestic state (which, as to our domestic races, is lost in the night of time and escapes all responsibility), the present animals, born in servitude, know no other state, do not suffer from a want of liberty, and find even, thanks to our cares, a more certain subsistence than if they were free. They are, it is true, sacrificed by us to our wants, but they would be so by other animals in the savage state. Whether a sheep be eaten by men or wolves, it is not to be more pitied for that, one way or the other.
The right of man over animals being set aside, there remains an essential duty respecting them, namely: not to make them suffer without necessity.
Fontenelle relates that, having gone one day to see Malebranche,[55] at the fathers of the Oratoire, a dog of the house, big with young, entered the room and rolled about at the feet of the father. After having tried in vain to drive it away, Malebranche gave the dog a kick which caused it to utter a cry of pain and Fontenelle a cry of compassion: “Oh, pshaw!” said father Malebranche, coolly, “do you not know that these things do not feel?”
How could this philosopher be sure that these things did not feel? Is not the animal organized in the same manner as man? Has he not the same senses, the same nervous system? Does he not give the same signs of impressions received? Why should not the cry of the animal express pain as does the cry of a child? When man is not perverted by custom, cruelty, or the spirit of system, he cannot see the sufferings of animals without suffering himself, a manifest proof that there is something in common between them and us, for sympathy is by reason of similitude.
Animals, then, suffer; this is undeniable; they have, like ourselves, a physical sensibility; but they have also a certain moral sensibility; they are capable of attachment, of gratitude, of fidelity; of love for their little ones, of reciprocal affection. From this physical and moral analogy between men and animals, there obviously results the obligation of inflicting upon them no useless suffering. Madame Necker de Saussure[56] relates the story of a child who, finding himself in a garden where a tamed quail was freely running about beside the cage of a bird of prey, yielded to the temptation of seizing the poor quail and giving it to the bird to devour. The hero of this adventure relates himself the punishment inflicted on him:
“At dinner—there was a great deal of company that day—the master of the house began to relate the scene, coolly and without any remarks, simply naming me. When he was through, there was a moment of general silence, where every one looked at me with a kind of horror. I heard some words exchanged among the guests, and without any one’s directly speaking to me, I could understand that everybody thought me a monster.”
Connected with the cruelty toward animals are certain barbarous games where animals are made to fight with each other for our pleasure. Such are the bull-fights in Spain; the cock-fights in England; we do not go so far as to rank the chase among inhuman games, because, on the one hand, it has for its object to destroy the animals injurious to our forests and crops, and to furnish us useful food; and on the other, it is an exercise favorable to health, and exercises certain faculties of the soul; but the chase must at least not be a massacre, and must have for its end utility.
Brutality toward the animals which render us the greatest services, and which we see every day loaded beyond their strength, and beaten to bear up under the load, is also an odious act, and doubly wrong, as it is both contrary to humanity and contrary to our interests, since these animals, overloaded and beaten, will not be long in succumbing to the violence of their persecutors.
Nor can we consider as absolutely indifferent the act of killing or selling (except in cases of extreme necessity) a domestic animal that has served us a long time, and whose attachment we have experienced. “Among the conquerors at the Olympic Games,” the ancients tell us, “many share the distinctions which they receive with the horses which have helped to procure them; they provide for them a happy old age; they accord them an honorable burial, and sometimes even raise a monument over their graves.”