But, at the same time, considering
their place in the economy of nature, I cannot doubt that man has a
right, within certain limits, to use them, and even to kill them, for
his own advantage. What these limits are is a question by no means
devoid of difficulty. There are those who maintain that we have no right
to kill animals for food, while there are those who, without maintaining
this extreme position, hold that we have no right to cause them pain for
the purposes of our own amusement, or even for the alleviation of human
suffering by means of the advancement of physiological and medical
science. It will be seen that the three questions here raised are the
legitimacy of the use of animal food, of field sports, and of
vivisection. As respects the first, I do not doubt that, considering
their relative places in the scale of being, man is morally justified in
sacrificing the lives of the lower animals to the maintenance of his own
health and vigour, let alone the probability that, if he did not, they
would multiply to such an extent as to endanger his existence, and would
themselves, in the aggregate, experience more suffering from the
privation caused by the struggle for life than they now do by incurring
violent deaths. At the same time, though man may kill the lower animals
for his own convenience, he is bound not to inflict needless suffering
on them. The torture of an animal, for no adequate purpose, is
absolutely indefensible.
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