Frances Power Cobbe
The Rights of Man and the Claims of Beasts
「1863-Nov」Frances Power Cobbe, “The Rights of Man and the Claims of Beasts,” Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country 68「Google Books」 68 (1863 Nov): 586-602; Online at Animal Rights History, 2003.
If there be one moral offence which more than another seems directly an offence against God, it is this wanton infliction of pain upon his creatures. He, the Good One, has made them to be happy, but leaves us our awful gift of freedom to use or to misuse towards them. In a word, He places them absolutely in our charge. If we break this trust, and torture them, what is our posture towards Him? Surely as sins of the flesh sink man below humanity, so sins of cruelty throw him into the very converse and antagonism of Deity; he becomes not a mere brute, but a fiend.
THE RIGHTS OF MAN AND THE CLAIMS OF BRUTES.
BY FRANCES POWER COBBE.
THERE is a beautiful Eastern story to this purpose:—A mighty king of old built for himself the most magnificent city the world ever saw. The towers of the city were of marble, and the walls of eternal granite, with an hundred gates of brass; and in the centre of the city, by the side of an ever-flowing river, stood the palace of the king, which dazzled the eyes of the beholder with its beauty, and in whose garden there was a tree whose leaves were of emeralds and whose fruits of rubies.
But the king and his people, of whose power and riches there were no end, were wicked exceedingly, and given up to cruelty and iniquity. Therefore Allah sent a drought upon their land, and for seven years there remained no rain; and the river was dried up, and the fountains failed, and the cattle perished, and the women wailed in the streets, and the hearts of young men failed them utterly. Then said the wise men and the elders unto the king: ‘Send now, we pray thee, unto the prophet who dwelleth in the land of Israel, in the cave under the mountain of Carmel, and behold he will procure us rain from the Lord.’ Then the king hearkened unto his wise men, and sent messengers with precious gifts unto the prophet, that he should send them rain. And the messengers went up out of the glorious city, and travelled even unto Carmel, and came to the cave wherein the prophet dwelt; and they fell down at his feet, and offered him gifts, saying unto him, ‘O, my lord, send us rain!’ Then the prophet caused three great clouds to rise up out of the sea, even the sea of Tarshish, whereby he dwelt; and the first cloud was white as the fleece of the lamb, and the second cloud was red like blood, and the third cloud was black as night. And when the messengers saw the third cloud they cried with a loud voice, ‘O, my lord, give us the black cloud.’ Then the prophet said, ‘Be it unto you as you have desired, ye sons of Belial.’ And the messenger marvelled at him, and saluted him, and returned unto their king.
Then the king, and all his wise men and his mighty men, and all the city, both great and small, went out to meet the messengers; and the messengers fell down on their faces before the king and said, ‘O king, we have seen the prophet of Israel that dwelleth in Carmel, by the sea, and he offered unto us three clouds to go over our land—a white cloud, a red cloud, and a black cloud; and we chose the black cloud, to the end that the rain might fall, even the heavy rain, upon the earth’ Then the king, and all the wise men, and the mighty men, and all the people, both small and great, shouted for joy, and said ‘Ye chose well, O messengers. The black cloud—let the black cloud come over our land!’
And behold, while they yet shouted, there arose afar off, from the way of the sea, a mighty cloud, and it was black even as the night when the moon shineth not nor any star; and as the cloud arose the face of the sun was hid, and the darkness overspread the earth, and the birds flew to the thick branches, and the wild beasts came forth, till the roar of the lion was heard even by the people of the mighty city. And the king, and his wise men, and his men of war, and all the multitude, both small and great, fell on their faces and lifted up their hands to the cloud and cried, ‘The rain ! the rain!’
Then the cloud opened over the city and over all the people, and out of it came the SARSAR, the ice-cold Wind of Death; and it smote the king, and his wise men, and his men of war, and all the people, both small and great, and they died. There they died even as they lay upon the earth, with their hands lifted to the cloud, and the words in their mouths—’The rain !—give us the rain !’
And of that king and nation no「587」man remembered anything, nor could the city be found any more; but the land became a desert, and the wild beasts made their dens in the cedar chambers, and the reeds rustled where the river had rolled, and the birds of the air lodged in the tree of emeralds, and plucked at the ruby fruit.
But there dwelt one man alone in that city—he only was left when the king, and his wise men, and his men of war, and all the people perished; and he dwelt there alone, and gave himself to prayer, and heeded not the gold, nor the marble palaces, nor the precious stones, but prayed night and day. And the years passed away, and the generations of mankind changed, and still he dwelt there alone; and his beard and hair were white as snow, and his eyes were glittering like a sword, but his strength failed not, nor lacked he anything, but prayed seven times a day and seven times every night to Allah the Gracious and Merciful for forgiveness of his sins.
Then after a thousand years when the river had changed its courses, and the granite walls of the city had fallen down, and the thick trees grew in the courts of the palaces, and the owls and the hyenas lodged in the holy places of the temple, there came a servant of God, whose eyes were opened that he might find the city, and he entered in through the broken gates of brass, and came unto the fig-tree by the fountain, where dwelt the man of prayer—the solitary man; and the solitary man lifted his eyes, and when he saw the servant of God he fell on his face, and returned thanks that he had seen again the countenance of a man. Then the servant of God wept for pity, and said, ‘O my brother, how camest thou to dwell here alone?’ And the solitary man, the man of prayer, answered and said, ‘O servant of God, in a fortunate hour art thou come unto me; and blessed be He that sent thee, for now may I die, and my sins be forgiven. Behold I was one of the wicked men of this city, sons of Belial were we all, and thought not of God, but only of our own lusts, and our palaces, and our high feasts, and our beautiful women; and my brethren were cruel also, and scourged their slaves oftentimes, and tortured their prisoners of war, and put their cattle to death with evil treatment. And it came to pass that I saw a camel bound upon my father’s grave, and left to perish with hunger; and she knew me, and looked me in the face and groaned, and strove to lick my hands. Then was I moved with compassion, and loosened her and let her go free, and drove her into the rich pastures. And for this that I showed mercy to the camel hath the Lord showed mercy unto me; an when all my brethren went down to destruction in the day of His wrath, when the Sarsar came forth out of the black cloud and slew them all, then was I saved, to the end that I might repent. Lo ! a thousand years have I prayed in solitude, till the bones of my brethren are dust, and the thick trees grew in their palaces, and the roar of the lion is heard in their chambers of cedar; and no voice of man have I heard nor human face have I seen till thou hast visited me. And now know I that I have not prayed in vain, but that my sins are forgiven, and that I may die in peace. Therefore, I pray thee, lay thine hand upon me, and let me feel the hand of a man, and say for me the prayer of departure, and let me die.’ And the servant of God did just as the solitary man desired, and blessed him; and the shadows of death came over him like the twilight, and his eyes ceased to shine brightly, and he laid him down with his hand on the breast of the servant of God, and blessed God with a few words, and died in peace. And the servant of God buried him there under the fig-tree by the fountain, and wept over him, and went out of the city through the broken gates of brass, and returned not, neither looked back. And not man from that day forth has beheld it, neither entered there, nor knoweth any man where that city is to be found; but the wilderness hath swallowed it up, and the wild beasts have made it their home, because of the wickedness of the people and their oppressions upon「588」man and upon beast in the sight of the Lord.
There is a Western story, not quite so beautiful, and with a somewhat different moral—a story which may be found by the diligent reader in the Times and other journals for the months of July and August, in this year of grace one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three. This Western apologue runs somewhat to the following purpose:—
There was a certain great and lordly city whose prince was among the powerful of the earth, and for whose nod whole nations waited obediently; and this city, which aforetime had been a great and vast city, was by this prince still further exalted and adorned, till it was wonderful to behold. And there were in that city royal palaces, with pictures and statures innumerable, and gardens wherein were all manner of beasts of the field and fowls of the air; and temples were there, all bedaubed with gold, whereof the chief were dedicated, not to Allah the Gracious, the Merciful, but to two women, whose names were Miriam of Nazareth and Miriam of Magdala. And of the streets of that great city there were no end, for they were all made by the power of the prince; and every poor man’s house was pulled down, and every rich man’s house destroyed, so that those great streets might traverse the city, which became even as the cities of old under their tyrants—like unto Babylon, and unto Persepolis, and Tadmor of the Waste. Then men boasted of that great and wonderful city, and said it was the centre of the world, and that the buildings thereof were all on one great plan, even as the world which Allah has made. But they who made this boast were blind and fallible; for in the world of Allah nought is uniform or monotonous, nor does one tree resemble another tree, nor one mountain another mountain, but the great plan of them all is endless variety, and the unity thereof is the opposite of uniformity. But the works of men, the tyrants of the false priests, who have built cities and temples, and made laws, and established religions, these all have wrought to produce uniformity without variety; and these are they whose labours this great city resembles, rather than the blessed creations of Allah. And in this city dwelt many wise men and learned among the most learned of the earth; and there were delicate women, and men who wore soft raiment, and fared sumptuously every day. And all the people of the city believed that they were the most learned, and delicate, and refined people in all the world; and that elsewhere men were brutal and stupid, and women coarse and evil entreated, and that save in their city there was no civilization.
Now it came to pass that in that city a strange thing was found. Amid all the proud palaces, and delicious gardens, and halls for feasting, and places for singing men and singing women, and for dancing and all manner of luxurious delights—and among the gilded temples dedicated to Miriam of Nazareth and Miriam of Magdala—amount all these places there were certain buildings set apart for a purpose of another kind. Many wise men assembled there, and many learned men, and men adorned with tokens of the favour of the great prince, and with the ensigns of a noble order called that of Honour; and these men, with their disciples (who also were youths of the better sort, and habited ever in well-ordered garments), employed themselves in these public buildings* at frequent intervals, week after week, and year after year, in the form and manner following: They took a number of tame and inoffensive animals—but principally those noblest and most sensitive animals, horses—and having bound them carefully for their own safety, proceeded to cut, hew, saw, gouge, bore, and lacerate the flesh, bones, marrow, heart, and brains of the creatures「589」groaning helpless at their feet. And in so orderly and perfect a fashion was this accomplished, that these wise men, and learned men, and honourable men discovered that a horse could be made to suffer for ten hours, and to undergo sixty-four different modes of torture before he died. Wherefore to this uttermost limit permitted by the creature did they regularly push their cutting and hacking, delivering each horse into the hands of eight inexperienced students to practise upon him in turn during the ten hours.>* This, therefore, they did in that great city, not deigning to relive the pains they were inflicting by the beneficial fluid whereby all suffering may be alleviated, and not even heeding to put out of their agonies at the last the poor mangled remnants of creatures on which they had expended their tortures three score and four.
And the people of this city still boasted and said, ‘Behold, we are the most wise, and the most brave, and the most polished people on the face of the earth, and our city is the centre of civilization and of humanity.’
These Eastern and Western tales have a strangely-different character assuredly. The state of men’s minds, when they could imagine that a single act of mercy to a brute would procure the salvation of the doer in the midst of the destruction of his city, is curiously contrasted with that other state when they can calmly contemplate hideous tortures perpetrated regularly, and as a matter of business, upon hundreds of animals every year, and continue to uphold the tortures in esteem, and in high public functions, as the instructors of youth. We do not seem to have advanced much over the Moslem by our eighteen centuries of Christianity, so far as this matter is concerned.
The question, however, of cruelty to the brutes is one not to be hastily dismissed, nor can the recital of any barbarities be admitted to determine it in all is bearings. In quoting the above Eastern apologue, and recording the terrible fact of contemporary Parisian manner, we beg to disclaim all intention of treating the subject by that method of mere appeal to the feelings by which nearly every question of morals can be distorted and prejudiced. The infliction of pain is a thing naturally so revolting to the cultivated mind, that any description of it inevitably arouses strong sentiments of dislike, if not of horror; and were we to proceed no further to explain the motives and cause of such inflictions, vivid pictures of all penal, and even of all surgical treatment, might easily be drawn, so as to call forth reprobation upon the heads of the greatest benefactors of humanity. In the following pages we shall endeavour to reach the ground of the whole controversy by arriving at some answer to the fundamental question, ‘What is cruelty to animals ? What are the duties of man as regards the welfare of the brutes, and how are they to be ranked in comparison with the duties he owes to his human fellow-creatures?’ The search for the solution of these problems will fortunately absolve us from the painful task of entering into any description of the cruelties committed against animals either in France or England, or discussing special acts of public lecturers or private students of physiology. In all such cases it is the vagueness of popular moral opinion in which evil finds its great defence; and so long as cruel experiments are only rebuked by the denunciations of excited sentiment, so long will the perpetrators pass by contemptuously the ignorant blame of those who ‘understand nothing of the necessities of the case, or of the interests of science,’ or (at the best) will draw a veil of secresy over the disgusting mysteries of their operating tables. A different result would be obtained if society in general could be brought to form a sound and clear opinion of the limits wherein the sufferings of animals may lawfully be inflicted for「590」the benefit of mankind, and could then pronounce with calm and dispassionate judgment its severest censure and condemnation upon every act which should transgress these limits, and therefore deserve the opprobrium of ‘cruelty.’
The world owes to Bishop Butler the exposition of that ultimate ground of moral obligation on whose broad basis stand our duties to all living beings, rational and irrational. He says that if any creature be sentient—i.e., capable of suffering pain or enjoying pleasure—it is cause sufficient why we should refrain from inflicting pain, and should bestow on it pleasure when we may. That is enough. We need go no further to seek for a primary ground of obligation for mercy and kindness. Many other motives may, and do, come in to enhance and modify this obligation; but, standing by itself, it is sufficient. If we could divest ourselves of every other idea, and even admit the dreadful hypothesis that neither man nor brute had any Creator, but came into existence by some concourse of unconscious forces; yet even then—in a sunless, hopeless, fatherless world—there would still remain the same duty, if the creature could feel pain, to avoid inflicting it; if it could feel pleasure, to bestow it. We cannot get below this principle. It is an ultimate canon of natural law—a necessary moral law (in metaphysical parlance) —since we cannot even conceive the contrary, nor figure to our imaginations a world or a condition of things wherein the obligation could be suspended or reversed.
Let us endeavour to arrive at a clear analysis of such natural obligations:—
First. In the case of rational, moral beings—what are our necessary obligations towards them ? We have seen that as they are sentient beings we are bound to avoid their pain and seek their pleasure; but as they are more than sentient, and also rational and moral beings, other and higher obligations are added to those which concern their pain and pleasure. The highest end of a merely sentient being is enjoyment of pleasure and freedom from pain, i.e., happiness; but the highest end of a rational and moral being is virtue. Thus, as we are bound to seek the sentient being’s happiness, because he is capable of happiness; so we are bound to seek the moral being’s virtue because he is capable of virtue. Here, also, we have reached an ultimate obligation. And inasmuch as virtue immeasurably transcends happiness, so must moral interests transcend sentient interests; and the being who is both moral and sentient, demands that his moral interests be primarily consulted, and his sentient interests secondarily; and the being who is only sentient and not moral is placed altogether subordinately, and can only claim that his interests be regarded after those of the moral being have been fulfilled. To this simple ground of obligation, to seek the virtue of all beings capable of virtue, there are, of course, added many religious and fraternal motives of the greatest force and sanctity in enhancing our duty of aiding our fellow men. But the original ground (as in the former case) is sufficient of itself. Were there no Divine Author of virtue, no immortality of blessedness for the virtuous soul, yet still the fact that a being could attain to virtue would constitute an obligation to seek his virtue.
The great ends, then, of the obligation of man to his rational fellow-creature is, in the first place, to seek his virtue, and in the second place his happiness. To the virtue he can conduce, and the happiness he can produce—both in limited degrees, which degrees are the sole bounds (theoretically) of his obligations.
But, practically, the power of any human being, either to conduce to the virtue, or produce the happiness of mankind are limited, not only by the influence he can exercise on any one, but by the numbers on whom he can, in his narrow sphere, exercise any influence at all. Secondary moral obligations here come into play, requiring that in that necessarily narrow sphere of his labours there shall be precedence in his benevolence given to certain persons above others. If a man’s「591」powers permitted him to aid the virtue and happiness of all mankind—of all equally—he would be bound to do so. As this is impossible, he must partition his benevolent cares on certain obvious principles of selection—propinquity of blood, contract of marriage, debts of gratitude, &c. Roughly speaking, these secondary obligations may be described as regulating that benevolence be first shown to those nearest to us, and afterwards to those more remote. They cannot be lawfully interpreted to abolish the claims of more remote objects of benevolence, but only to subordinate them; that is when any degree of equality exists between the wants of the nearer and further claimants, the nearer has the precedence and preference. But when the want of the nearest claimant is altogether trifling, and the want of the remoter claimant urgent and vital, the prior claims of the first cannot be held to supersede those of the second, which would in effect amount to their entire abolition.
These (we fear, somewhat tedious) analyses of principles lead us to the right point for considering the obligations owed by man to the lower animals. The brutes are sentient, but not moral creatures, therefore our concern is solely with their happiness. To what does this claim amount ? If we had absolute power we should desire to relieve all animals from all pain and want, and we should bestow on them such pleasures as their humble natures can receive. Obviously we can practically do little more than meet these obligations towards the animals, with whom we come in contact by refraining from causing them suffering, and supplying those which belong to us with proper food and shelter. The life of a brute, having no moral purpose, can best be understood ethically as representing the sum of its pleasures; and the obligation, therefore, of producing the pleasures of sentient creatures, must be reduced, in their case, to the abstinence from unnecessary destruction of life. Such, then, are our duties towards the brute, simply considered, without reference to the human race.
But the claims of the brutes on us for happiness must necessarily be subordinated not only to human claims for moral aid, but for human claims for happiness also. First, the happiness of animals is of a vastly lower and smaller thing than the happiness of man; secondly, all the interests of man touch upon moral grounds, assume higher importance than those of un-moral beings; and lastly, because that race of man to which we belong must have over us claims of precedence superior to any other race, were it even angelic, which should be more remote. So clear and so wide is this line of demarcation between our duties to man and to the brutes that it appears almost an impertinence thus to analyze it; and we may doubtless safely proceed in our argument, assuming it as granted on all hands that there is an absolute subordination between the claims of the animal and those of man. The whole lower creation is for ever and utterly subordinated to the higher.
What then remains of the obligation to consider the pain and pleasure of the sentient but un-moral animals ? Is there any space left for it in the crowd of human duties ? Surely there is a little space. Claims which are subordinated to higher claims are not (as we have already said) therefore abolished. Here is an error common both to our views of the relative claims of different human beings, and of the relative claims of brutes and men. There is in both cases a point where the rights of the secondary claimant come into the field, else were there in morals the anomaly of moral obligations which should never oblige any one. Where is this point to be found ?
We have already said that in regulating the precedency of human claims, the point is found where there ceases to be any kind of equality between the wants of the two claimants. Where the wants are equal (or anything like equal) the nearest comes first, the remoter afterwards. If a father need bread to save him from starvation, and a friend need it also for the same purpose,「592」the father’s claims must come first. But if the father need it only to amuse himself by, throwing it to fowls on the river, and the friend need it to save him from death, then the father’s claims go to the ground, and the friend’s become paramount. This principle is continually neglected in human affairs, and the neglect causes great moral errors. The parent, husband, wife, or child whom affection and duty both direct to make their nearest and dearest the object of their ‘precedency of benevolence,’ continually fall under the temptation to make them their exclusive objects, and evade other obligations under the delusion that they are all merged in the one primary obligation. The same thing takes place in the case of animals. Men say, ‘Human obligations come before all obligations to the brutes. Let us wait till all human beings are virtuous and happy, and then it will be time to attend to the brutes.’ But we are no more morally justified in the one case than in the other, neither in merging all human duties in duties to one individual, nor in waiting to consider our obligations to the animals to those Greek kalends when all human wants will be abundantly supplied.
The point where the inferior claim of the brute, as of the man, must come into the field, can only be in each case where there ceases to be any kind of equality between the superior and inferior claims. We must consider carefully what can constitute the relative claims of beings of such different rank. Passing below the last human claimant on our benevolence, we find ‘a great gulf fixed.’ With the rationality and moral freedom of the agent, life itself has so far altered its value that we no longer recognize in it any of the sanctity which pertained to the life of a man; nor can the creature’s comfort or enjoyment of any kind be put in the balance. We can in no case say that the claim of life for the brute is the same thing as the claim of life for a man; nay, even of security, or food, or comfort of any kind for the man. Everything which could fairly interpreted to be a want for the man must have precedence over even the life of the animal; but here we must stop. Those cruel impulses of destruction, which we may call wantonness in a man, have no claims to be weighed against the brute’s life and welfare. His gluttonous tastes, his caprices, his indolence, have no claims. Here the claims of the brute come on the field. Our obligations to consider its humble happiness must appear here or nowhere. They are postponed utterly to man’s wants. They stand good against his wantonness. Practically, where does the principle lead us ? Simply to this—that we may slay cattle for food, and take the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea to supply our table; but that we may not (for example) torture calves to produce white meat, nor slash living salmon to make them more delicate, nor nail fowls to the fireside to give them diseased livers. We may use horses and asses in our ploughs and our carriages, but we have no right to starve and torture our poor brute servants for our avarice or malignity. We may clear every inhabited country of wild beasts an noxious reptiles and insects whose existence would imperil our security or militate against our health or cleanliness, or who would devour our own proper food; but we have no right to go into untrodden deserts to take away the lives of creatures, who there have their proper home, nor to kill in our own country harmless things like seagulls and frogs for the mere gratification of our destructive propensities
And further. Beside these limits to the taking of life, there are limits to the infliction of pain. Here again, if the pain be necessary, if life demanded by human wants can not be taken without the infliction of some degree of pain; or if (without killing a brute) we are obliged put it to some suffering, to fetter it for our security, or for any similar reason, here, also, we may be justified. But though we may inflict pain for our want, we are no more justified in inflicting it than in taking life for our wantonness. If from the odious delight in witnessing「593」 suffering, or from furious tempers, or parsimony, or idle curiosity, we put an animal to needless torture, we stand condemned; we have offended against the law requiring us to refrain from inflicting pain on any being which, by its sentient nature, is sensible to pain.
These views are surely almost self-evident. To affirm the contrary and maintain that we have a right to take animal life in mere wantonness, or to inflict needless torture upon animals, is to deny that a sentient being has any claims whatever, or that his capacity for suffering pain and enjoying pleasure ought to determine in any way our conduct towards him. For if that capacity for enjoyment is not to protect his life (i.e., the whole sum of pleasures) against our wanton destruction, nor his capacity for pain protect his nervous frame from our infliction of needless torture, there is nothing left to be imagined of occasion wherein his claims could be valid.
The line then which we are seeking must be drawn here or nowhere. Animals’ lives (i. e., their whole sum of pleasures) may be taken for man’s wants, even if those wants be ever so small, but not for his wantonness; nor may they be taken in any case with needless infliction of pain.
We shall assume that the reader will concede this principle. It remains to test its application to the controversy which concerns us at present—the right of men to put animals to torture for the sake of (what they claim to be) the interests of science. We must endeavour to discuss this question very calmly, and not allow ourselves to be carried away by the natural indignation caused by pictures of agony. Almost similar pictures of human agony might be drawn from the scenes in any military hospital, and yet would argue nothing against the goodness of the operation.
‘Science’ is a great and sacred word. When we are called on to consider its ‘interests’ we are considering the cause of that truth which is one of the three great portals whereby man may enter the temple of God. Physical science, the knowledge of God’s material creation, is in its highest sense a holy thing—the revelation of God’s power, wisdom, love, through the universe of inorganic matter and organic life. The love of truth for its own sake, irrespective of the utility of its applications, has here one of its noblest fields;and no love of the beautiful by the artist, nor of the good by the philanthropist, can surpass it in sanctity, or claim, on moral grounds, a larger liberty.
Where then are we to rank ‘the interests of science,’ among human wants or wantonnesses ? Surely among the wants deserving of fullest privilege. Man, in his highest capacity as a rational being, hungers for truth as the food of his soul, even as he hungers for meat for his body; and the wants of the soul must ever be placed in higher rank than those of the body. He has a right to seek truth as he has a right to seek natural food, and may obtain it equally lawfully by the same measures. Thus we arrive at the conclusion that man has a right to take animal life for the purposes of science as he would take it for food, or security, or health. And this, be it remembered, is strictly for science, as science, apart from the contingent utility which may result from any discovered truths. When men go about explaining the probable use which may be derived from a scientific experiment, they are employing a supererogatory argument. The scientific truth, as a truth, is an end in itself: the derivable utility affords another and supplementary argument.
Of course, when it happens, as in the case of anatomical researches, that every discovered truth is likely in a high degree to contribute to the restoration of human health and the salvation of human life, then the supplementary argument hence derived for the prosecution of such researches is proportioned to the whole value of human health and life, and deserves the highest recognition. For all purposes of reasoning, however, we may carry with us the full admission that the interests of science alone, as science, are enough「594」to justify a man in taking away the life of any animal.
We may take animal life (that is, the whole sum of the animal’s pleasures) for the interests of science; but we must take it with ‘no needless infliction of pain.’ NOW, unhappily, until lately, nearly all experiments of science were inevitably accompanied by the infliction of torture. It was not so much the creature’s life which the experimenter required as its endurance of all manner of lacerations and ‘vivisections.’ It must be owned that here was a trying problem. Should science (it was asked) turn aside in her royal progress and forego her claims for the sake of some miserable brute or reptile—say of the frog, which Marshall Hall dared to call ‘God’s gift to the physiologist ?’ Or should the torture of a thousand animals be held as nothing in the balance against the supreme interests of man ? It would seem that in such a conflict, such an antinomy of duties, as Kant would have named it, our sympathies would have been with the man who relinquished his experiment at the instigations of mercy; but that, at the same time, we could not presume to censure the man who pursued it unrelentingly.
Be it remembered, however, that here and everywhere it can only be in the true interests of science that such sacrifices can be justified at all. Of this we shall say more anon. But this whole phase of the question may now be put aside for ever. The most beneficent discovery of ages—the discovery for which the sages of old would have offered hecatombs, and yet for which no Te Deum has ascended from the churches of Christendom as for many a bloody victory—the great discovery of perfect anæsthetics, has altered the whole condition of the case between the man of science and the brutes. It is at the option of the physiologist, by the use of chloroform, to perform nearly every experiment he can desire without the infliction of any pain whatever. With trifling exceptions of a few prolonged experiments of doubtful value, he can test at will any scientific truth at the cost, perhaps, of life, but never of torture.
How stands the case now ? Surely that such experiments as may be required by science at the cost of animal life may be freely made at such cost; and that the experiments which require processes naturally involving torture, may be freely performed with the use of anæsthetics and consequent avoidance of torture, but not otherwise. Here is the line which Providence has drawn for us in these latter days as clear as daylight. There is in our hands the means of obviating the torture while reserving the interests of science; and we are inexcusable if from indolence, parsimony, or any other motive, we fail to use it. The experiment then becomes unlawful to us and falls under the condemnation of wanton cruelty. Let us see precisely what these two conditions involve: firstly, that the life we are going to take is really demanded by science; secondly, that the painof the experiment shall be removed by anæsthetics.
For animal life to be really demanded by science we must conclude that it is wanted firstly, for the discovery of some new truth; secondly, for the establishment of some questionable fact; thirdly, for general instruction. Thus an anatomist may kill a bird or beast to discover or ascertain the facts of its structure, and the natural historian may kill it to affix its place in zoology or ornithology, or the toxicologist may kill it to preserve it in a museum for general instruction. All these reasons for taking the lives of animals must be held valid. But, where there is no anticipation of discovering a new truth, where there is no questionable fact to be ascertained, and where general instruction can be obtained perfectly without the sacrifice of fresh life, then there remains no justification for the act. It passes under the censure of wanton destruction.
Secondly, that we may consider the conditions for the justification of torturing experiments fulfilled, we must demand that in, every case in which the production of severe pain 「595」is involved, the experimenter is bound to employ chloroform or some other anæsthetic with such sufficient care as to obviate the pain. No excuse of trouble or expense can be admitted; for if the individual society be unwilling or unable to undergo such needful trouble and expense, they are disqualified from undertaking experiments which cannot lawfully be performed save under such conditions. Here then stands the case against the vivisectionists. Have they done that which in itself is lawful under lawful conditions ? Have they taken the lives of brutes only when the interests of science really demanded them ? and have they performed painful experiments always under the influence of anæsthetics? If they have observed these conditions they must stand morally exempt from blame, and the popular outcry against them deserves to be disregarded as ignorant and futile. If they have transgressed these conditions, then they must stand morally convicted of the heinous offence of cruelty, and the indignation and disgust of mankind would be amply justified against them.
We cannot pretend to bring foward evidence of the infraction of these conditions by the societies and individuals who have been accused of cruelty in vivisection. The subject has been discussed in all the leading journals of the country, and facts have been alleged of sufficient gravity and supported by ample authority to justify in full the anxious investigation of the case by men of humanity. Viewing the evidence before us, it appears impossible to doubt that in France, for years back, a vast number of horses and dogs have been dissected alive and submitted to every conceivable operation for the instruction of pupils in anatomy and veterinary surgery, and that no chloroform has been in use on these occasions. On the other hand, in England, it is affirmed, seemingly on good authority, that vivisections are comparatively rare, and are performed only by scientific men for the ascertainment of physiologic facts, and usually with the exhibition of chloroform.
If these facts be so, it appears beyond question that the French system has terribly transgressed the limits of morality in this matter. Dead horses and dogs would have served the purpose of instruction to the pupils in anatomy as well as living ones; and the whole mass of torture involved in their living dissection might have been spared. If for the purpose of instructing their pupils in the surgery of the living fibre, it may have been necessary to perform some operations on animals before death, yet of those actually performed daily at Allfort (sixty-four on each horse) the great majority were (like the removal of the hoof) wholly useless, and present no kind of compensating benefit for the acute torture they inflict, inasmuch as the operations cannot be copied in the human subject, nor would they ever be used by any owner in the case of a horse. As to the primary motives justifying such taking of life for purposes of science, they cannot be alleged in the case at all; for there is no attempt at discovering any new fact, or ascertaining any doubtful one, ever propounded. These points. have been clearly demonstrated in the French Academ y; and in the Séance of August 25 of the present year, M. Dubois proposed a motion, whereby the evils in question would have henceforth been forbidden; the pupils instructed on dead bodies, and the dissection of living animals confined to special cases of the discovery or verification of new facts. He proposed that three replies should be made to the questions asked by Government on the subject, to the following effect:—
- The Academy, without dwelling on the injurious form of the documents that have been submitted to it, acknowledges that abuses have been introduced into the practice of vivisection.
- To prevent these abuses, the Academy expresses the wish that, henceforward, vivisections may be exclusively reserved to the research of new facts or the verification of doubtful ones; and that, consequently, they may be no more practised in the public or private courses (of lectures) for the demonstration of facts already established by science.
- The Academy equally expresses the「596」wish that the pupils at the schools of veterinary medicine may henceforward be exercised in the practice of operations on dead bodies, and no more on living horses.
As this report was negatived by a majority in the Academy, and the report actually adopted evaded the questions presented, and left the whole matter in its original condition, we are under the painful necessity of still leaving at the door of the men of science in France the terrible charge of perpetrating and sanctioning the agonizing deaths of multitudes of highly sensitive animals, wholly without justification from the real interests of science.
Further, the condition on which painful experiments can be lawfully made, namely, the use of anæsthetics, being to all appearance altogether rejected in the case of the French vivisections, the last justification is withdrawn, and the case stands as an exemplification of the greatest possible offence to be committed towards the animals, without any extenuating circumstances. The most highly organized and most friendly creatures are put to the death of uttermost and most prolonged agony, entirely without justification, and with the habitual neglect of that precaution by which all their sufferings might have been obviated. When we say that this great moral offence has been committed for years, and is still committed, in defiance of remonstrance, by the splendidly-endowed scientific associations of one of the most civilized countries in the world, we seem to have reached the last term of condemnation which useless, wanton, deliberate, and exquisite cruelty can incur.
In the preceding pages we have endeavoured to examine this question from the purely moral side, and as a problem of ethics separable from religious considerations, or natural sentiments of pity or disgust. Solely as a matter of moral duty imperative on us as rational free agents, we have (it is hoped) demonstrated that the claims of animals must be regarded so far as to cause us to respect their lives when no human want, but only wantonness, asks their destruction; and also that the infliction of torturing experiments upon them can only be justified when accompanied by the use of anæsthetics. Offences against these principles we have condemned on purely ethical grounds, and as infractions of the immutable laws of morality.
But it is impossible to regard a subject of this kind solely from the bare stand-point of ethics. Man is something else beside the agent of a ‘categoric imperative.’ He is also a creature of affections and sympathies; and, above all, he is a religious being, whose acts and feelings bear a certain relation to his Creator.
Now, as to the affections and sympathies of man, there are many species of animals on which they are naturally bestowed in a greater or less degree, and to kill or torture such animals is not only an offence against the laws of morality, but against the instincts of humanity and the feelings of the heart. So strongly has this been felt, that a great philosopher has actually asserted that the ground「of our duty of mercy to the animals was not founded on their sentient nature but on our sensibilities; and that cruelty was forbidden, not because it tortured the animal, but because it brutalized the man.* Here, however, he committed (as Bentham well showed) an enormous error, and ignored the true principle laid down by Butler. Such a doctrine, if admitted, would introduce the same hateful system of morals towards the brutes as that which too often polluted human charity, causing it to be performed, not for the benefit of the receiver, but the moral and spiritual interest of the giver. Each duty must be done for its own sake, not for the sake of any other object, however desirable; nay,「597」in truth, no duty can be fulfilled truly (in both sentiment and action) save disinterestedly. The attempt to produce our own moral culture out of our humanity or beneficence is, by the hypothesis, absurd. Only disinterested and single-hearted actions really warm and enlarge the soul, not self-regardful ones. We are bound to consider the welfare of the brutes for their sakes, not ours, because they are so constituted as to suffer and enjoy. That is the moral principle of the case.
Humane feelings, however, towards the brutes, though not the ground of our obligations towards them, form a natural tie which cannot be rudely broken without doing violence to many of the finer attributes of our nature. If a man be condemned in the court of morality for selling a faithful horse or dog to the vivisectionists, he would surely also be condemned for that act in the sentiments of every man of refined feelings. There is a story extant, so hideous that we hesitate to tell it, of a certain man of science who performed on his dog what he was pleased to term une experience morale. He tortured it for days in a peculiarly horrible manner, to try when the animal’s affection would be overcome by his cruelty. The result proved that the dog died without ceasing to show his humble devotion to the man (or monster, we should say) who put him to such a test. The indignation which this fiendish act arouses in our minds is not solely a moral reprobation: it partakes also of the bitterness provoked by an outrage upon the affections.
The sentiment of tenderness to the brutes is of course but only inferior in sacredness to the moral principle, but also unlike it in being a very variable matter. Different nations and different individuals have it in very diverse degrees. The inquiry into its extent and influence would doubtless afford an interesting chapter in the study of human nature: we should find, as a rule, the more highly cultivated nations feeling the sentiment most vividly; but to this rule there would be many exceptions. The Arab’s care for horses, the Turk’s care for cats, are probably unparalleled elsewhere. But on the other hand, we find the Greeks, even in Homer’s time, able to relish the sweet tale of Argus; while the whole magnificent literature of the Hebrews contains no passage, save in the story of Tobit, to imply any friendly feelings towards the animals. The singular commands in the Pentateuch, not to ‘muzzle the ox which treadeth out the corn,’ and not to ‘seethe a kid in its mother’s milk,’ suggests rather the design of the legislator to soften the hard natures of the Israelites than to protect the animals from suffering, inasmuch as neither of the acts forbidden involved any real cruelty. In Hindoo literature, again, there appear to be perpetual tender references to the lower creatures. In the Mahabharata, in particular, there is an exquisite story of the hero who insisted on the admission of his faithful dog along with himself into heaven, and refused to accept the offers of Ludra to conduct him there without it. At last the dog transforms himself into Yamen, god of Death, who has followed the hero’s steps through the world, and now leaves him with a blessing to enter Paradise, free from the penalty of mortality.* As might naturally be expected, the condition of animals is much modified in countries where they are either supposed to be inhabited by Divine beings, or else the abodes of human souls undergoing metempsychosis. This latter doctrine, involving such low and ludicrous circumstances as the transmigration represented in the Theban tomb of the gluttonous man into the pig, has perhaps met on that account with more contempt among us than its moral character deserves. Among the multitudinous superstitions of mankind, and fantastic dreams concerning the ‘undiscovered country, from whose 「598」bourne no traveller returns, not by any means the worst is that which would represent the future punishment for sinking our human nature in cruelty, sensuality, or sloth, to be the loss of that human nature for a time, and the incarnation of the sinful soul in some cruel, or sensual, or slothful brute. Between this idea (combined, as it always is, with the prospect of final restoration) and the doctrine of a burning cave of ever-lasting blasphemy and despair, it may be thought that the notions of Pythagoras and the originators of the Egyptian and Hindoo theologies were not unworthy of comparison. Probably, however, the results of neither doctrine concerning the future would have essentially conduced to human virtue; and as to the influence of that of the metempsychosis on the conduct of men towards the brutes, its humanizing effects have doubtless been counterbalanced by the introduction of vegetarian errors, and consequent discouragement of animal life; and also by inducing a degree of care for some favoured brutes, infringing monstrously upon the rights of mankind. The writer’s father was witness, during the old Mahratta wars, of various revolting scenes of famine, wherein the sacred cows of the Hindoo temples were standing gorged to repletion beside huge vessels of rice devoted to their use, while the starving population lay dying and dead of hunger all around.
Turning from nations to classes, we should find as a rule that the most cultivated are the most merciful. But here also there are exceptions. In England it is the half-brutalized and sottish carter, or the the degraded and filthy dealer in ‘marine stores,’ who is brought up before the magistrate for furiously flogging his stubborn horse, or skinning alive some miserable cat. In France, alas it is men of science—men belonging to the learned professions —who disembowel living horses and open the brains of dogs. In the case of individuals, the presence or absence of tenderness for animals appears to constitute a very curious test of character. Its connexion with benevolence towards mankind is of the inverse kind in too many instances. Few earnest philanthropists care at all for animals, or have any special sympathies with favourite dogs, horses, or birds; and they often seem to resent the care of others for such creatures as a defrauding of human claims. When the proposal was made for opening that very unassuming little institution in Islington for the shelter of lost dogs, the outcry raised on the part of human charity was greater than has ever greeted the erection of one of the gin-palaces or casinos, or other conservatories of vice in the kingdom. The objectors did not recognize the great law of human nature by which mercy begets mercy, even as ‘revenge and wrong bring forth their kind,’ and that the ‘merciful man’ may not seldom have become merciful by beginning with mercy to ‘his beast.’ If it had no result whatever on human feelings, it would be hard to say that keeping a kennel for a few starving brutes was a much worse expenditure of money than sundry others with which the rich gentlemen of England indulge themselves.
But if the strong feelings of philanthropists for human claimants are somewhat chill as regards the animals, there is, on the other hand, a more deplorable inclination among all who have a tendency to misanthropy to bestow on animals an amount of affection very visibly distorted from its rightful human channels. Every Timon in the world has his dog, every embittered old maid her cat or parrot. They do not love these creatures so much because the dog, cat, or parrot fills up the measure of their affections, as because they have withdrawn their affections from humanity, and pour them out on the brutes in the place of better objects. This kind of love for animals has in it somewhat truly painful to Witness. It cannot be defended in any manner, yet our pity may fairly be given to a condition of heart which reveals a past of intense suffering, and is in itself a state of disease of the affections. We are inclined to feel contemptuous, or perhaps a little resentful, when, in a world full of「599」human woes and wants, a vast amount of tenderness and compassion is lavished upon some overfed spaniel, dying of the results of excessive indulgence, or a legacy, which might have afforded education to a child, is devoted to the maintenance of a parrot. We are disgusted when we hear of a lady comforting a mother on the death of her only daughter, by saying, ‘I felt just the same when my Fido died.’ But resentment and contempt are no right sentiments for such sorrowful exhibitions of moral malady any more than for the depraved appetite of physical disease. Probably the worst form of this distortion of the affections, and one for which no excuse can be made; is to be found when the pride of the over-indulged men and women of wealth and rank keeps them aloof from their human fellow-creatures, and leads them to lavish on their animal favourites the care and tenderness they would disdain to display to a human being. The lady of fashion, who leaves her child unvisited for days in its nursery, under the care of menials, while she watches the feeding of her spaniel, and covers it with caresses, is about as odious a specimen of humanity as may easily be found.
0n the other hand, there are cases of intense love for animals in persons necessarily of a solitary life which are among the most affecting incidents in the world. In Le Maitre’s beautiful story of Le Lépreux de la Citè d’Aoste (founded entirely on facts verified on the spot to the present day), the outcast leper and his sister are recorded to have dwelt in the ruined tower outside the city for many years of their suffering lives, utterly cut off from human intercourse. One day a poor little cur, starving and homeless, wandered into their secluded garden. They received it with delight, and the sister fed it, and made it her constant companion and favourite. After some years the sister died, and the leper was left utterly and for ever alone, save for the presence of the little dog, which gave him the only semblance of affection left for him to hope for in the world; and by its caresses and intelligence served a little to beguile his days and nights of ceaseless suffering. One day the poor animal strayed out of his garden towards the town. It was recognized as the leper’s dog, and the people were seized with the alarm that it would carry the infection of his disease into the town. Fear is the most cruel of all things. They stoned and beat the poor creature till it only escaped from them at last to crawl back to its master and expire at his feet. He who would not sympathize with the leper’s grief, must have a heart hardened indeed.
Again, there is a most remarkable story (recorded, we believe, a few-years ago, in a paper in the Quarterly Review) of a French convict who was long the terror of the prison authorities by his violence and audacity. Time after time he had broken out and made savage assaults on his jailers. Stripes and chains had been multiplied year after year; and he was habitually confined in an underground cell, from whence he was only taken to work with his fellow convicts in the prison yard: but his ferocity long remained untamed. At last it was observed that he grew rather more calm and docile, without apparent cause for the change, till one day, when he was working with his comrades, a large rat suddenly leaped from the breast of his coat and ran across the yard. Naturally the cry was raised to kill the rat, and the men were preparing to throw stones at it, when the convict, hitherto so ferocious, with a sudden outburst of feeling implored them to desist, and allow him to recover his strange favourite. The prison officials for once were guided by a happy compassion, and suffered him to call back his rat, which came to his voice, and nestled back in his dress. The convict’s gratitude was as strong as his rebellious disposition had hitherto proved, and from that day he proved submissive and orderly. After some years he became the trusted assistant of the jailers, and finally the poor fellow was killed in defending them against a mutiny of the other convicts. The love of that humblest creature finding a place in his rough heart had「600」changed his whole character. Who shall limit the miracles to be wrought by affection, when the love of a rat could transform a man ?
But whatever result a general review might give us of the amount of tenderness of nations and classes of men for animals, there can be little doubt that it would prove to be a real characteristic of humanity, and possessed of a definite place among the sentiments of our nature. On the other hand, the affection and devotion of many species of animals for man are matters of too great notoriety to need more than passing reference. The dog, horse, elephant, cat, seal, and many species of birds, show these feelings in the most unmistakable manner; in some cases marking their love by truly heroic self-sacrifice, or by dying of grief for the loss of their masters. Probably many other species of beasts and birds would prove capable, on experiment, of similar attachment. The tie established in such instances between a man and the brute who gives him his unbounded devotion, is unquestionably one of great tenderness. The poor dog’s love is a thing so beautiful that to despise it is to do violence to every softer instinct. The man is in so far below the brute if the brute can give him a pure, disinterested, devoted love, and he can give back no tenderness and pity in return. Cowper said well—
I would not have that man to be my friend,
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
The human affections of one who could feel no emotions of pity for the animal which attached itself to him must be of little worth, and partake largely of egotism or mere selfish passion. Woe to the woman or the child who should depend on such a man.
To choose for objects of cruel experiments animals endowed with the wondrous power of love, is not then only a moral offence, viewed in the light of a needless torture of sentient creatures; it is also a sin against all the instincts of tenderness and pure sentiment. We are justified not only in condemning it on moral grounds, but in revolting against it in the name of the common heart of humanity.
There remains one grave and solemn side of this question which we have some hesitation in approaching. Man and brutes are not mere creatures of chance. Sentiment of pity are not matters of arbitrary taste. Moral laws do not alone bind us with a sacred obligation of mercy. The MAKER of man is also the Maker of all the tribes of earth and air and waters. Our Lord is their Lord also. We rule the animal creation, not as irresponsible sovereigns, but as the vicegerents of God.
The position of the brutes in the scale of creation would appear to be that of the complement of the mighty whole. We cannot suppose that the material universe of suns and planets was created for irrational and immoral beings, but rather to be the habitation of various orders of intelligences endowed with that moral freedom by which they may attain to virtue and approach to God in ever-growing likeness and love. If we may presume to speculate on the lawful designs of the Supreme Architect, we almost inevitably come to this conclusion, that these world-houses were all built to be, sooner or later, in the million millenniums of their existence, the abodes of living souls. Be this as it may regarding the other worlds in the universe, we must at least believe that here (where such beings actually exist) their palace-home of plains and hills and woods and waters, with all its libraries of wisdom, its galleries of beauty, has been built for them, and not for their humble fellow-lodgers, the brutes and the fowls, the insects and the fish. They are, we must conclude, the complement and filling-up of the great design. Some of then are the servants appointed for our use; all of them are made to be happy—to fill the world with their innocent delight. We cannot think that any of them, any sentient creature, was made primarily for another creature’s benefit, but first for its own happiness, and then afterwards to ‘second too some other use.’ Thus「601」we believe the world was made for man, the end of whose creation is virtue and eternal union with God; and the complement of the plan are the brutes, whose end is such as their natures may permit.
If this be so, our relation to the whole animal creation is simply that of fellow-creatures, of a rank so much higher, that our interests must always have precedence. But to some orders of animals we are in a much nearer relation, for these are the servants given us expressly by God, and fitted with powers and instincts precisely suiting them to meet our wants. The camel, horse, ass, elephant, the cow, sheep, goat, dog, cat, and many species of fowls, are all so constituted as to supply us with what we need in the way of services, food, clothing, and protection. Our use or misuse of these servants is a matter in which it is impossible to conceive that we are irresponsible, or that we do not offend the merciful Creator when, instead of profiting by His gifts, we use our superior power to torture and destroy the creatures He has made to serve us, and to be happy, also. If there be one moral offence which more than another seems directly an offence against God, it is this wanton infliction of pain upon his creatures. He, the Good One, has made them to be happy, but leaves us our awful gift of freedom to use or to misuse towards them. In a word, He places them absolutely in our charge. If we break this trust, and torture them, what is our posture towards Him ? Surely as sins of the flesh sink man below humanity, so sins of cruelty throw, him into the very converse and antagonism of Deity; he becomes not a mere brute, but a fiend.
These would seem to be the simple facts of our relation to the animals, viewed from the religious point of view, on the hypothesis that our usual ideas concerning the lower creation are correct, that brutes have no germ of a moral nature, no prospect of immortality, and that between us and them there are no other ties but those of fellow-creaturehood. It may be that a more advanced mental philosophy, and further researches in science, may codify these ideas. It may be that we shall come to see that sentient life and consciousness and self-consciousness are mysterious powers working upward through all the orders of organic existence; that here are rudiments in the sagacious elephant and the affectionate dog of moral faculties which we need not ensign hopelessly to annihilation. It may be that we shall find that man himself, in all the glory of his reason, has sprung, in the far-off eyes of the primeval world, not from the ‘clod of the valley’ any more than from Deucalion’s stones, but from some yet-undiscovered creature which once roamed the forests of the elder world, and through whom he stands allied in blood to all the beasts of the field. It may be we shall find all these things; and finding them we shall not degrade man, but only elevate the brute. By such ideas, should science ever ratify them, we shall certainly arrive at new and vivid interests in, the animal creation, and the brutes will receive at our hands (we must needs believe) some more tender consideration. But these are, as yet, all doubtful speculations and we do not need to rest a feather’s weight of argument upon them to prove that as religious beings we are bound to show mercy to all God’s creatures. God has made all the domestic animals with special adaptations to our use. But there is one species whose purpose is manifestly so peculiarly beneficent, that we cannot pass over it in forming an estimate of our relation to the lower creatures. Many beasts and birds are capable of attaching themselves to man, but the dog is endowed with a capacity for loving his master with a devotion whose parallel we must seek only in the records of the purest human friendship. There is no phenomenon in all the wondrous field of natural history more marvellous than this; and the beaver’s architecture, the bee’s geometry, may justly be ranked second to the exquisite instinct by which the dog has been rendered capable of such quick and vivid sympathy, such disinterested and self-sacrificing「602」devotion. Nowhere, would it seem, do we come on clearer traces of the tender mercies of the Universal Father, and of His thoughtful provision (if we may so express it) for his children’s wants, than in these instincts given to the dog to make him the friend of man, and enable his humble companionship to soothe the aching and cheer the solitary heart. In the various vicissitudes of human life, Providence has found it needful to allot to thousands years of loneliness, and days filled with the anguish of bereaved, or separated, or deceived affection. At the best, numbers of us must lack (amid, perhaps, much true friendship) that special tenderness of unquestioning and caressing love which children might supply. But even here that same Providence has, in a measure, supplied and forestalled the want of our hearts, even as it supplies the wants of our physical nature for food and rest. As a mother might give to her child a toy to replace some unsuitable companion, so has the dog been given to us, and fitted to be our gentle playfellow. How does he so marvellously understand our happy moods, and bound beside us with his joyful gambits? And how does he, in a moment, comprehend when we are sad— he who sheds no tears, nor shows any of our marks of grief—and try to lick the listless hand, and nestle to our side, as if to prove to us that his humble devotion will never fail us? How does it come to pass that his affection for his own species, and attachment to his home, and care for his food and safety, are all secondary with him to the love of his master; and that he leaves his companions and his abode without a sign of regret, and flings himself into any danger of robbers, or angry seas, to save him; and, finally, will often refuse all food, and die of starvation upon his grave? These are wondrous instincts—wondrous powers of pure disinterested love, whose existence in a creature so suitable in other ways to be the companion and guardian of man, is surely as much an evidence of the Creator’s goodness as almost any other in the range of natural theology.
Nor is it some costly animal, whose support only the rich man could afford, or some delicate one, unable to live in different climates, to which such instincts have been given. Over all the globe, from north to south, the canine race can live where man can live, from the Esquimaux’s hut to the’ kraal of the Hottentot; nor are there many so poor but that they may enjoy its possession. From the king who distrusts the friendship of his venal courtiers, to the blind beggar in his uttermost desolation, there are few whose deceived or lonely hearts cannot find some humble comfort in the true attachment of a dog.
Nay, may we go yet a step further? May we say that in these dumb companions God has placed beside us, in some sense, the emblems of what our own devotion might be to Him who is our Master; on whom we depend for all things, and from whose hand we also ought to take our joys and chastisement with the same unwavering faith and grateful love ? It may be so; and we, the oft-offending children of that great Father, may look on the blameless and loving servants He has given us—servants who obey us so readily, and trust us so unreservedly—and find in them more than companions, even monitors also.
But we must not pursue these themes. Still less can we turn now to argue as to the right of men to subject creatures like these to hideous experiments and agonizing tortures. God help us not only to have mercy on His creatures, but to love them also in their place, and bless Him for their service to us, and for the happiness which He, the Lord of all, has not disdained to bestow upon them. We shall be the nearer to him for doing so; for well did Coleridge say:—
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man, and bird, and beast;
He prayeth best who loveth best
All creatures great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He makes and loves them all.
p588-* The School of Medicine, the College of France, the Faculty of Sciences, and the Veterinary College at Allfort.
p589-* The Times, Sept. 5th (or 6th).
p596-* This sentence is a parphrase of Macaulay’s excellent epigram that the Puritans forbade bear-baiting, not because it caused pain to the brute, but because it caused pleasure to the man.
p597-* See the résumé of the poem in Mrs. Spiers’ (now Mrs. Manning’s) admirable book, Ancient India.
