Читать книгу Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress онлайн

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The long-maintained distinction between human “reason” and animal “instinct” is being given up by recent scientific writers, as, for example, by Dr. Wesley Mills in his work on “The Nature and Development of Animal Intelligence,” and by Mr. E. P. Evans in “Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology.”

“The trend of investigation,” says Dr. Mills, “thus far goes to show that at least the germ of every human faculty does exist in some species of animal.... Formerly the line was drawn at reason. It was said that the ‘brutes’ cannot reason. Only persons who do not themselves reason about the subject with the facts before them can any longer occupy such a position. The evidence of reasoning power is overwhelming for the upper ranks of animals, and yearly the downward limits are being extended the more the inferior tribes are studied.”

We have to get rid, as Mr. Evans points out, of those “anthropocentric” delusions which “treat man as a being essentially different and inseparably set apart from all other sentient creatures, to which he is bound by no ties of mental affinity or moral obligation.”