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

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Again, the disgust caused by the ravages of “murderous millinery” (a term first used as a chapter-heading in this book) has taken visible shape in the recent Act for the regulation of the plumage trade; and even “sport,” the last and dearest stronghold of the savage, has been seriously menaced, not only by the discontinuance of the Royal Buckhounds in 1901, but also lately by the emphatic condemnation of pigeon-shooting.

The core of the contention for a recognition of the rights of animals will be found in the following passage of a letter addressed by Mr. Thomas Hardy to the Humanitarian League in 1910:

“Few people seem to perceive fully as yet that the most far-reaching consequence of the establishment of the common origin of all species is ethical; that it logically involved a readjustment of altruistic morals, by enlarging, as a necessity of rightness, the application of what has been called ‘The Golden Rule’ from the area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom.... While man was deemed to be a creation apart from all other creations, a secondary or tertiary morality was considered good enough to practise towards the ‘inferior’ races; but no person who reasons nowadays can escape the trying conclusion that this is not maintainable.”