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It may be taken, perhaps, as a sign of the extension of humane ideas that, since its first appearance in 1892, this essay on “Animals’ Rights” has passed through numerous editions, and has been translated into French, German, Dutch, Swedish, and other European tongues.

Valuable suggestions concerning the book have reached me from several friends: in particular I am indebted to Sir George Greenwood, who has been actively associated, both in Parliament and elsewhere, with the cause of justice to animals.

H. S. S.

January 1922.

ANIMALS’ RIGHTS.

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Have the lower animals “rights”? Undoubtedly—if men have. That is the point I wish to make evident in this opening chapter. But have men rights? Let it be stated at the outset that I have no intention of discussing the abstract theory of rights, which at the present time is looked upon with suspicion and disfavour by many social reformers, since it has not unfrequently been made to cover the most extravagant and contradictory assertions. But though its phraseology is vague, there is nevertheless a solid truth underlying it—a truth which has always been clearly apprehended by the moral faculty, however difficult it may be to establish it on an unassailable logical basis. If men have not “rights”—well, they have an unmistakable intimation of something very similar; a sense of justice which marks the boundary-line where acquiescence ceases and resistance begins; a demand for freedom to live their own lives, subject to the necessity of respecting the equal freedom of other people.