In conclusion, I would state emphatically that this essay is not an appeal _ad misericordiam_ to those who themselves practise, or who condone in others, the deeds against which a protest is here raised. It is not a plea for “mercy” (save the mark!) to the “brute-beasts” whose sole criminality consists in not belonging to the noble family of _homo sapiens_. It is addressed rather to those who see and feel that, as has been well said, “the great advancement of the world, throughout all ages, is to be measured by the increase of humanity and the decrease of cruelty”--that man, to be truly man, must cease to abnegate his common fellowship with all living nature--and that the coming realization of human rights will inevitably bring after it the tardier but not less certain realization of the rights of the lower races.
It was argued by Mr. D. G. Ritchie, in his book on “Natural Rights,” that though “we may be said to have duties of _kindness towards_ the animals,” it is “incorrect to represent these as strictly _duties towards_ the animals themselves, as if they had rights against us.” (The italics are Mr. Ritchie’s.) I take this to mean that, in man’s “duty of kindness,” it is the “kindness” only that has reference to animals, the “duty” being altogether the private affair of the man. The kindness is, so to speak, the water, and the duty is the tap; and the convenience of this arrangement is that the man can shut off the kindness whenever it suits him to do so; as, for example, it suited Mr. Ritchie in regard to the question of vivisection.
It is strange that ethical authorities should thus hold, as Catholic theologians do, that we owe no direct duties to animals, and that animals not being “persons” have, strictly speaking, no rights. Indeed, so entertaining did the very idea of the “personality” of animals appear to Mr. Ritchie that he waxed humorous in his desire to know whether a sponge is a “person” or “several persons,” and whether the parasites on a dog are to be respected as “persons,” and so forth.
On the other side, the humanitarian contention is quite clear--that there is no difference _in kind_ between man and the other animals, nor any warrant in science or ethics for drawing between them, as between “persons” and “things,” an absolute line of demarcation. Compelled to admit that the difference is only one of degree, Mr. Ritchie sought to evade the significance of this fact by arguing that it does not follow that, if men have rights, animals also have rights “in the same sense of the term.” I maintain that it _does_ so follow. If by the recognition of rights we mean that man, as a sentient and intelligent being, should be exempt from all avoidable suffering, it follows that other beings who are also sentient and intelligent, though in a lower degree, should have, in a lower degree, the same exemption. This principle, if pressed to its extreme logical conclusion, will of course lead, like all other principles, to what Mr. Ritchie called “difficult questions of casuistry,” and will open a door for small jokes about the personality of parasites and sponges.