We are always making God our accomplice,
that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is
consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in
benedictions for any victorious enormity. So that what, in the
beginning, was the relation of man to the animal becomes that of people
to people and man to man.
If so, we have before us an expiation too seldom noticed but altogether
just. All crime must be expiated, and slavery is the repetition among
men of the sufferings brutally imposed by man upon other living beings;
it is the theory bearing its fruits. The right of man over the animal
seems to me to cease with the need of defense and of subsistence. So
that all unnecessary murder and torture are cowardice and even crime.
The animal renders a service of utility; man in return owes it a need of
protection and of kindness. In a word, the animal has claims on man, and
the man has duties to the animal. Buddhism, no doubt, exaggerates this
truth, but the Westerns leave it out of count altogether. A day will
come, however, when our standard will be higher, our humanity more
exacting, than it is to-day. _Homo homini lupus_, said Hobbes: the time
will come when man will be humane even for the wolf--_homo lupo homo_.
December 30, 1866.
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