This theory of the entire subservience of the animal world to our human needs can certainly not be criticized for being too ethereally exalted. In fact its best friends cannot claim that it is very elevated doctrine; but at least it is an honest acknowledgment of apparent necessity, it is tempered by all the mercy possible under the circumstances, it is fairly consistent, and it has been accepted by the majority of the inhabitants of the civilized world as a working theory. But how can the curious institution of the good sportsman be fitted into this frank and open modern attitude about a sombre mystery in the intertwined interests of the world? As a matter of fact modern ideas and the good sportsman cannot possibly be reconciled, and whenever society has cast a glance at sportsmanship, that institution, dreading a real scrutiny and a resulting question concerning its right to existence, has hastily thrown out a sop of concession, muttering angrily under its breath about the demagogic modern mob which undertakes to restrict the freedom of gentlemen. In this way, some hundred years ago, the institution of bear-baiting was conceded to be not precisely a sport to inculcate fine qualities in its human spectators; many years later, the contention that prize-fighting was good fodder for the younger generation was given up, and very recently, with a pettish protest that really the world is becoming too emasculated, the fine, virile joys of trap-pigeon-shooting have been grudgingly abandoned. But for the most part society is busy about more important matters, and no one except a few unheeded sentimentalists pays any attention to the conflicting claims of man and the animals. During such tranquil periods, the sportsman revises his code according to his own ideas, for, having long outlived the days when its contribution to the food supply gave it actual value, hunting has reached the critical, codified stage common to the senility of all institutions. To an outsider it is rather entertaining to see the unanimity with which each succeeding generation of sportsmen looks back with scorn on its predecessors as a parcel of muckers with no true idea of gentlemanly restraint in sport; a mild diversion is to be extracted from the elaborate platforms in which they set forth the latest rules,—that artificial flies are noble,—that bait is an abomination,—that a magazine shot-gun is fit only for the pot-hunter,—that men need precisely the exercise for their wit, courage, foresight, perseverance and skill which is to be found in hunting animals according to whatever rules chance to be in vogue in the sporting world of their day.
It is true that hunting animals trains a man to use his brains and perseverance in overcoming obstacles. It is also true that everything worth while is achieved against obstacles, so that we do well to train ourselves to overcome them in our play as well as our work. And it is true that a man playing a trout with light tackle enjoys the delight of exercising his own wit, ingenuity, and perseverance in the battle against obstacles; but so would he if, without tying the animal, he should set himself to the difficult undertaking of skinning a dog alive. The fact that he causes more pain in one case than in the other, differentiates the two pursuits only in the matter of degree. How shall the line be drawn? How much pain, in what manner, to what sort of animal, may a man cause for the sole purpose of enjoying the exercise of his wit, ingenuity and perseverance?
As to the exercise of courage in hunting, it is difficult to take seriously this claim on the part of huntsmen, who for the most part are quite unable to travel far enough to encounter any animals more ferocious than a trout, a fox (whose cowardice is proverbial), or at most a deer, who asks nothing better than to be allowed to run away as long as breath lasts. But there are exceptions. There is, for example, the gentleman-sportsman in Africa, who by the expenditure of a great amount of time, effort, and money has succeeded in getting to a country inhabited by an animal which, if sufficiently annoyed would undeniably eat up a gentleman-sportsman if he could get at him. This is exciting no doubt, this undoubtedly calls for physical courage. Courage is a virtue, and excitement is certainly a need of the human heart. No observer of human nature can deny that we need excitement as much as we do bread. But the modern world does not consider even this great desire to justify every and any mode of gratifying it. The man who hunts lions according to the code of the gentleman-sportsman gets his excitement out of the fact that the animal he is attempting to kill may possibly be able to turn the tables and kill him. It would be even more exciting and dangerous, and would call for even more courage, to attempt to track down and kill a man fully armed like the hunter. But the conscience of the world, insensitive as it is to some of the finer points of conduct, would not for a moment countenance turning loose even the lowest of convicted criminals for the purpose of allowing other men to extract excitement out of his chase,—no! not though all the most delicate distinctions of the most modern and fastidious code of gentlemanly hunting were thrown around this most inimitably thrilling of sports. The fact is that the world is becoming more and more squeamish about the way in which its inhabitants are to secure their excitement. There was a time when all the gentlemen-sportsmen supplied themselves with excitement by sitting in comfortable seats about an arena and watching wild animals tear human beings to pieces. There is still a modern nation which allows its gentlemen to vary the monotony of their lives by watching bulls gore horses and even men, to death. There is even a considerable amount of excitement to be extracted from a whiskey-bottle if administered to that end. But there are some ingenious moderns who manage to escape from boredom by seeking for rare and valuable new plants in remotest Thibet, or in risking their lives in the pursuit of the microbe which causes cancer, or (if these pursuits are too costly for their means) there is the profession of fireman in a great city, or coastguard on a dangerous shore, or surveying engineer in a new country. All of these occupations call for a reasonable amount of physical courage, and supply a change from the dull routine of humdrum life.
To return to our lions; although to hunt them by the sportsman’s code undoubtedly takes courage, does it not seem rather a pity to waste in the destruction of animals admitted vermin, a human quality so fine, so inspiriting, so necessary as physical courage, sanctified as it is by a thousand struggles of men against disease, against wrong and violence, against the inert forces of Nature? Lions interfere with the peaceable occupation of the world by humanity: therefore we believe we have a right to kill them. Formerly the only way in which they could be killed was by the exercise of physical courage on the part of men. But that is not in the least necessary, now that a powerful drug has been discovered which will do the unsavory but necessary task for us and leave us free to use our courage for more valuable purposes. Why not let this unimportant and unpleasant detail of the world’s work be attended to in the most competent way possible, without the unseemly attempt to make it at the same time an entertaining spectacle for human beings? And why not apply the same principle to the killing of other animals for whose destruction we feel we have a fair warrant of execution signed by our reasonable needs. Rabbits and foxes injure our crops, and propagate so fast that they are a menace to our husbandry. If they are to be killed, and everyone except an occasional zoölater grants that the world is not large enough now both for them and for us, let us kill as many as we need to put out of the way, as quickly and surely as may be, with no quaint discrimination against ferrets in the case of rabbits, or rifles in the case of foxes. If we need fish as a variety in our diet, let us go honestly about the business of securing it, and not quibble about the great ethical elevation of light tackle as opposed to nets. And if a man is trying to kill a bird for food, let him forget the grotesque reasoning that it is not fair to shoot it sitting on a bough where he can almost certainly kill it at one shot, but must let it fly so that there are ten chances to one that the shot will only maim or mutilate it.
Now it is certainly true that there are among our twentieth century men, a good many individuals from whom no help in the upward movement of the race can be expected, and whose fondness for hunting, undoubtedly is based upon the survival in them of the paleolithic liking to kill. They prefer to hunt rabbits rather than shoot at a mark, because a target cannot shed blood. If they make no pretence about this taste being the basis of their liking for hunting, it would be showing no due sense of the proportion of things to visit them with too serious a reprobation. It is possible that this sort of man, if he were not allowed to amuse himself by tormenting animals might react from the humane régime of his time by committing deeds of violence against human beings. Only let this outlet for non-eliminated pre-historic instincts be frankly a drainage-pipe for the purpose of moral sanitation only. Let there be no attempt to fool our noses as to its true scent, by the use of the musk of pseudo-gentlemanliness. If hunters will but be open about it, theirs is not a very heinous survival of what was a most necessary, though now superseded instinct in humanity. There are many worse things than having fun out of the dying struggles of a trout or a rabbit. Hunting in the open air is certainly better than the opium habit. Animals nearly always die a violent death anyhow, and it does not, I daresay, make a vital difference to them whether it is a fox or a man, or a bigger fish which finally dispatches them.
The number of human beings unleavened by humanity appears larger than it really is, because most children as they live rapidly through their personal reproduction of the history of mankind, pass through the cave man’s phase of frank, thoughtless, and unconscious cruelty; and some of them are slow to pass out of it. But cases of prolonged atavism are few, and though disagreeable, need be little more regretted than the occasional outcropping survival in a modern of the tremendous jaw and beetling brows of our neolithic grandsires. Left to themselves, these anachronistic and objectionable traits will vanish as the race ascends the slow spiral of its upward way. Already most twentieth-century boys and girls (if their development be not arrested by perverted public opinion) tend to outgrow this relic of savagery, as they outgrow their exaggerated gregariousness, their slavish conformity to the ideas of others, and the rest of the primitive phases of their development. The process needs no special attention from their instructors: good example and encouragement to clear thinking about habitual actions will almost always do the work.
But few young brains are vigorous enough to continue clear thinking under the narcotic influence of a generally accepted social hypocrisy. It is not acquaintance with the grim necessity of killing as the butcher practises it which is dangerous to young consciences, it is the sight of the sportsman killing without necessity. What stupifies the moral sense in this connection is the pretence that to take one’s pleasure at the cost of another’s suffering is a commendable, highly respectable, nay, even very aristocratic amusement for grown men of brains and education. The most gentlemanly restrictions cast about hunting animals for fun, cannot mask the fact that its essence is enjoyment taken consciously at the expense of another’s pain, an enjoyment against which the conscience of the world has pronounced a righteous verdict of total condemnation. The butcher kills, the pot-hunter kills, the sportsman kills; but only the last openly finds entertainment in the act.