Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress

Answers

• Q28PERSONHOOD

  Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?

  Yes. sentient beings have rights. Argues that if men have rights so do the lower animals, and rejects doctrines that deny animals feel pain.

  On the other side, the humanitarian contention is quite clear--that there is no difference _in kind_ between man and the other animals, nor any warrant in science or ethics for drawing between them, as between “persons” and “things,” an absolute line of demarcation. Compelled to admit that the difference is only one of degree, Mr. Ritchie sought to evade the significance of this fact by arguing that it does not follow that, if men have rights, animals also have rights “in the same sense of the term.” I maintain that it _does_ so follow. If by the recognition of rights we mean that man, as a sentient and intelligent being, should be exempt from all avoidable suffering, it follows that other beings who are also sentient and intelligent, though in a lower degree, should have, in a lower degree, the same exemption.

  Chapter I, "The Principle of Animals' Rights" · Gutenberg #64498; Chapter I heading and text read.