Chapter 21. The Rights of Animals It has lately become a growing fashion to
extend the concept of rights from human beings to animals, and to assert that since animals
have the full rights of humans, it is therefore impermissible, that is, that no man has the
right to kill or eat them. There are, of course, many difficulties with this position, including
There are not many theorists, for example, who would go so far as Albert Schweitzer and deny the right of anyone to step on a cockroach, and if the theory were extended further from conscious living beings to all living beings such as bacteria or plants, the human race would rather quickly die out.
But the fundamental flaw in the theory of animal rights is more basic and far-reaching.
For the assertion of human rights is not properly a simple emotive one.
Individuals possess rights not because we feel that they should, but because of a rational
inquiry into the nature of man and the universe.
In short, man has rights because they are natural rights.
They are grounded in the nature of man, the individual man's capacity for conscious choice,
the necessity for him to use his mind and energy to adopt goals and values, to find
out about the world, to pursue his ends in order to survive and prosper, his capacity
and need to communicate and interact with other human beings, and to participate in
the division of labor.
In short, man is a rational and social animal. No other animals or beings possess this ability
to reason, to make conscious choices, to transform their environment in order to prosper, or
to collaborate consciously in society and the division of labor.
Thus, while natural rights, as we have been emphasizing, are absolute, there is one sense
in which they are relative. They are relative to the species man. A rights ethic for mankind
is precisely that, for all men, regardless of race, creed, color or sex, but for the
species man alone. The biblical story was insightful to the effect that man was given,
or in natural law we may say has, dominion over all the species of the earth. Natural
The law is necessarily species-bound.
That the concept of a species ethic is part of the nature of the world may be seen, moreover,
by contemplating the activities of other species in nature.
It is more than a jest to point out that animals, after all, don't respect the rights of other
animals.
It is the condition of the world, and of all natural species, that they live by eating
other species.
Other species' survival is a matter of tooth and claw. It would surely be absurd to say
that the wolf is evil because he exists by devouring and aggressing against lambs, chickens,
etc. The wolf is not an evil being who aggresses against other species. He is simply following
the natural law of his own survival. Similarly for men. It is just as absurd to say that
Men Aggress Against Cows and Wolves as to say that wolves aggress against sheep.
If furthermore a wolf attacks a man and the man kills him, it would be absurd to say either
that the wolf was an evil aggressor, or that the wolf was being punished for his crime.
And yet such would be the implications of extending a natural rights ethic to animals.
Any concept of rights, of criminality, of aggression, can only apply to actions of one
man or group of men against other human beings.
What of the Martian problem?
If we should ever discover and make contact with beings from other planets, could they
be said to have the rights of human beings?
It would depend on their nature.
If our hypothetical Martians were like human beings, conscious, rational, able to communicate
with us and participate in the division of labor, then presumably they too would possess
the rights now confined to earthbound humans.
But suppose on the other hand that the Martians also had the characteristics, the nature,
of the legendary vampire, and could only exist by feeding on human blood.
In that case, regardless of their intelligence, the Martians would be our deadly enemy and
we could not consider that they were entitled to the rights of humanity.
Deadly enemy, again, not because they were wicked aggressors, but because of the needs
and requirements of their nature which would clash ineluctably with ours.
There is, in fact, rough justice in the common quip that we will recognize the rights of
animals whenever they petition for them.
The fact that animals can obviously not petition for their rights is part of their nature,
and part of the reason why they are clearly not equivalent to, and do not possess the
rights of, human beings.
And if it be protested that babies can't petition either, the reply of course is that
babies are future human adults, whereas animals obviously are not.
A fundamental error, then, of the advocates of animal rights is their failure to identify
or even to attempt to identify the specific nature of the species man, and hence the differences
between human beings and other species.
According to think in such terms, they fall back on the shifting sands of subjective feelings.