Page:Complete Works of Lewis Carroll.djvu/1210

1190 made. I think I may assume that the proposition most generally accepted is an intermediate one, namely, that the infliction of pain is in some cases justifiable, but not in all.

3. That our right to inflict pain on animals is co-extensive with our right to ill, or even to exterminate a race (which prevents the existence of possible animals) all being alike infringements of their rights.

This is one of the commonest and most misleading of all the fallacies. Mr. Freeman, in an article, on Field Sports and Vivisection, which appeared in the Fortnightly Review for May, 1874, appears to countenance this when he classes death with pain together, as if they were admitted to be homogeneous. For example—

"By cruelty then I understand, as I have understood throughout, not all infliction of death or suffering on man or beast, but their wrongful or needless infliction My positions then were two. First that certain cases of the infliction of death or suffering on brute creatures may be blameworthy. The second was, that all infliction of death or suffering for the purpose of mere sport is one of those blameworthy cases."

But in justice to Mr. Freeman I ought also to quote the following sentence, in which he takes the opposite view: "I must in all cases draw a wide distinction between mere killing and torture."

In discussing the "rights of animals," I think I may pass by, as needing no remark, the so-called right of a race of animals to be perpetuated, and the still more shadowy right of a non-existent animal to come into existence. The only question worth consideration is whether the killing of an animal is a real infringement of right. Once grant this, and a reductio ad absurdum is imminent, unless we are illogical enough to assign rights to animals in