Part 15 (2/2)
According to us, there are four cla.s.ses of duties, and these four cla.s.ses are not reducible the one to the other.[52]
No one can deny from a practical point of view that there are duties towards animals; for we know very well that it is not permitted to maltreat them or cause them unnecessary pain; and every enlightened conscience condemns cruelty to animals. Therefore can there be here question only of a speculative scruple. It can be very well seen that there is a duty here; but it is, they say, a duty towards ourselves; for it is our duty not to be cruel, and cruelty toward animals accustoms us too easily to cruelty toward men. But this is a very useless subtlety, and too roundabout a way to express a very simple thing. We prefer simply saying that kindness toward an animal is a duty toward that animal.
Besides, the reasons given against the duties toward animals, appear to us more specious than substantial. It is said that animals, having neither will nor intelligence, are not _persons_, but _things_; that, consequently, they have no _rights_, and that we can have no duties toward what has no rights.
These are inadmissible subtleties. One can, in law terms, divide all objects of nature into persons and things; and animals, not being persons, are things, in the sense that they can be _appropriated_. But, strictly speaking, can a being endowed with sensibility be called a thing?
Is it true, moreover, that an animal has no intelligence, no will--that consequently it has not any vestige of personality? Is it true again that an animal has no kind of rights? This, in the first place, is to suppose what is in question. And, moreover, does not conscience say to us that an animal which has served us long years with affection has thereby acquired a certain right to our grat.i.tude? And, finally, is it really true that we have only duties towards those that have duties towards us? That were a very perilous maxim in social morality. We are told not to be cruel to animals in order not to become cruel towards men. But if one were sure not to become cruel towards men, would it follow therefrom that it is permitted to be so towards animals? No, it will be said; but it is because cruelty, though its object be only animals, is in itself a vice, base and unworthy of man. One should not conclude from that, that cruelty is a direct crime against them. But for the same reason it might be maintained that we have no duties toward others, and only toward ourselves; injustice, cruelty, are odious vices in themselves; goodness and justice, n.o.ble qualities; we should shun the one and avoid the other out of respect for ourselves, and regardless of the object of these vices and virtues.
If, despite these considerations, it is then thought better to make, nevertheless, a distinction between the duties toward others and those toward ourselves, there should for the same reason be made a distinct cla.s.s of the duties toward animals. Finally, if we owe nothing to animals, it is not very clear why acts hypothetically indifferent should be treated as cruelties; nor why such acts should be considered as lowering and dishonoring the character.
On the whole, and to avoid all theoretical difficulties, it may be said that we have duties, if not toward animals, at least _in regard_ to animals.
Our duties in regard to animals, are they, however, of a kind to make us doubt our right to destroy or reduce them to servitude?
The destruction of animals may have two causes; it may be for our defense, it may be for our subsistence. As to the first there is no difficulty; the right of legitimate self-defense authorizes us to destroy what would otherwise destroy us. Between us and beasts injurious to man there is evidently a state of natural war, and in that state the law is that might makes right. This same law is the one which regulates the relations of the animals between themselves: it is also their law in regard to us. The lion, for instance, might not always be as tenderly inclined as the lion of Androcles or the lion of Florence: it would not be well to trust it. We need not, therefore, even theoretically, entertain any scruples concerning the destruction of injurious animals.
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 superst.i.tious 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.sion: ”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 grat.i.tude, of fidelity; of love for their little ones, of reciprocal affection. From this physical and moral a.n.a.logy 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 c.o.c.k-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 ma.s.sacre, 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 succ.u.mbing 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.”
”It is not reasonable,” says Plutarch, ”to use things which have life and feeling, as we would use a shoe or any other instrument, throwing it away when worn out and ruined by dint of service done; if it were for no other cause than to induce and stimulate us to constant compa.s.sion, we should accustom ourselves to gentleness and charitableness, even to performing the humblest offices of kindness; as for me, I should never have the heart to sell an ox who for a long time had ploughed my land, because, by reason of old age, he can no longer work.”
A very serious question has been raised these latter times, namely, the question of _vivisection_, and how far, in a scientific point of view, we have a right to practice on living animals. The point is not to interdict to science what is the indispensable condition of its progress and propagation; but we should limit ourself to the strictly necessary, and not with revolting prodigality multiply sacrifices that are not absolutely useful.
One of the princ.i.p.al reasons for condemning cruelty toward animals, is that through the instinct of imitation and sympathy men may get into the habit of doing to others what they have seen practiced on animals. There is a story of a child who caused his brother to suffer the same death he had just seen inflicted on an animal.[57]
The men who are brutal toward animals are likewise so toward each other, and treat with the same cruelty their wives and children.
It is by reason of these considerations of social utility and humanity that the law in France decided to interfere to prevent and punish the bad treatment inflicted upon animals;[58] and the consequences of this measure have been most happy.
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