Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/610

 CRUCIFIX

542

CRUELTY

Felix of Croyland. Life of St. Guthlac in Acta SS., April, II, 38; GouGH, History and Antiquities of Croytand Abbey in Bib. Top. Brit., XI; Victoria History of Lincolnshire (1906), 105-llS; Hisloria Croylandensis in Rerum Angl. Scriptores, ed FuLM\N, I, 1-107: Ordericus Vitalis, Hist. Ecclcsiast.^ II; DuGDALE, Monast. Anglic.; II, 90-126.

D. O. Hunter-Blair.

Crucifix. See Cross and Crucifix. Crucifixion. See Cross and Crucifix; Passion.

Cruelty to Animals. — The first ethical writers of pagan antiquity to advocate the duty of kindness towards the brute creation were Pythagoras and Empedocles. Holding the doctrine of metempsy- chosis, or the transmigration of human souls into the bodies of lower animals after death, these philosophers taught that animals share in human rights, and that it is a crime to kill them. These ideas, together with an appreciation of the services rendered by domestic ani- mals to man, found some expression in early Roman legislation. The error of ascribing human rights to animals is condemned by Cicero (De Finibus, bk. Ill, xx). The Old Testament inculcates kindness towards animals. The Jews were forbidden to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn (Deut., xxv, 4) or to yoke together an ox and an ass (ibid., xxii, 10). Some other texts which are frequently quoted as instances are not so much to recommend kind treatment of ani- mals as to insist upon duties of neighbourly goodwill. The prohibition against seething the kid in its mother's milk, a process in which there is no cruelty at all, and the one against taking a mother-bird with her young, seem to have a religious rather than a humanitarian significance.

The New Testament is almost silent on this subject. Even when St. Paul cites the Mosaic prohibition against muzzling the ox, he brushes aside the literal in favour of a symbolic signification (I Cor., Lx, 9 sq.). The Fathers of the Church insist but little on this point of duty. Nevertheless, Christian teaching and practice from the beginning reflect in a general way the Scriptural ideal of righteousness which is ex- pressed in the words: "The just regardeth the lives of his beasts: but the bowels of the wicked are cruel" (Prov., xii, 10). The hagiological literature of monastic life in the Middle Ages, which so largely formed and guided the moral sentiment of the Christian world, as Lecky sets forth with ample evi- dence, "represents one of the most striking efforts made in Christendom to inculcate a feeling of kind- ness and pity towards the brute creation" (History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, II, 161 sqq.). This considerate feeling was a char- acteristic of many holy personages, even before St. Francis of Assisi and some of his followers carried it to a degree that seems almost incredible.

The scholastic theologians condemn the infliction of needless suffering on animals, chiefly because of the injurious effects on the character of the perpetrator. Thus St. Thomas, in his "Summa Contra Gentiles" (bk. II, cxii), after refuting the error that it is not lawful to take the lives of brutes, explains the import of the above-mentioned texts of Scripture. He says that these prohibitions are issued either "lest anyone by exercising cruelty towards brutes may become cruel also towards men; or, because an injury to brutes may result in loss to the owner, or on account of some symbolic signification". Elsewhere (Summa Theologica, I-II, Q. cii, a. 6, ad Sum) he states that God's purpose in recommending kind treatment of the brute creation is to dispose men to pity and ten- derness for one another. While the scholastics rest their condemnation of cruelty to animals on its de- moralizing influence, their general teaching concern- ing the nature of man's rights and duties furni.shes principles which have but to be applied in order to establish the direct and essential sinfulness of cruelty

to the animal world, irrespective of the results of such conduct on the character of those who practise it.

Catholic ethics has been criticized by some zoophil- ists because it refuses to admit that animals have rights. But it is indisputable that, when properly understood and fairly judged. Catholic doctrine, though it does not concede rights to the brute crea- tion, denounces cruelty to animals as vigorously and as logically as do those moralists who make our duty in this respect the correlative of a right in the animals. In order to establish a binding obligation to avoid the wanton infliction of pain on the brutes, it is not neces- sary to acknowledge any right inherent in them. Our duty in this respect is part of our duty towards God. From the juristic standpoint, the visible world with which man comes in contact is divided into persons and non-persons. For the latter term the word "things" is usually employed. Only a person, that is, a being possessed of reason and self-control, can be the subject of rights and duties; or, to express the same idea in terms more familiar to adherents of other schools of thought, only beings who are ends in them- selves, and may not be treated as mere means to the perfection of other beings, can possess rights. Rights and duties are moral ties which can exist only in a moral being, or person. Beings that may be treated simply as means to the perfection of persons can have no rights, and to this category the brute creation be- longs. In the Divine plan of the universe the lower creatures are subordinated to the welfare of man. But while these animals are, in contradistinction to persons, classed as things, it is none the less true that between them and the non-sentient world there exists a profound difference of nature which we are bound to consider in our treatment of them. The very essence of the moral law is that we respect and obey the order established by the Creator. Now, the animal Ls a nobler manifestation of His power and goodness than the lower forms of material existence. In imparting to the brute creation a sentient nature capable of suf- fering — a nature which the animal shares in common with ourselves — God placed on our dominion over them a restriction which does not exist with regard to our dominion over the non-sentient world. We are bound to act towards them in a manner conformable to their nature. We may la%\'fully use them for our reasonable wants and welfare, even though such em- ployment of them necessarily inflicts pain upon them. But the wanton infliction of pain is not the satisfac- tion of any reasonable need, and, being an outrage against the Divinely established order, is therefore sinful. This principle, by which, at least in the ab- stract, we may solve the problem of the lawfulness of vi\isection and other cognate questions, is tersely put by Zigliara: " The service of man is the end appointed by the Creator for brute animals. When, therefore, man, with no reasonable purpose, treats the brute cruelly he does wrong, not because he violates the right of the brute, but because his action conflicts with the order and the design of the Creator" (Phil- osophia Moralis, 9th ed., Rome, p. 136). With more feeling, but with no less exactness, the late Cardin;d Manning expressed the same doctrine: "It is perfectly true that obligations and duties are be- tween moral persons, and therefore the lower animals are not susceptible of the moral obligations which we owe to one another; but we owe a seven-fol<i obliga- tion to the Creator of those animals. Our obligation and moral duty is to Him who made them ; and if we wish to know the limit and the broad outline of our obligation, I say .at once it is His nature and His per- fections, and among these perfections one is, most profoundly, that of Eternal Mercy. .\nd therefore, although a poor mule or a poor horse is not, indeed, a moral person, yet the Lord and Maker of the mule is the highest Lawgiver, and His nature is a law unto Himself. And in giving a dominion over His creat-