Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/337

321 rights and duties is the product of a society, and the rights of the individual must, therefore, be judged from the point of view of a society as a whole, and not the society from the point of view of the individual" (p. 101). The appeal to Natural Rights is safe only "as an appeal to what is socially useful, account being taken not only of the immediate convenience of existing members of a particular society, but of the future welfare of the society in relation, so far as possible, to the whole of humanity. If it is argued that such an appeal is at least as ambiguous as a mere reference to Natural Rights, I answer, No; for in appealing to social utility, we are appealing to something that can be tested, not merely by the intuitions of an individual mind, but by experience." The discussions of 'animal rights' is confused and unsatisfactory (pp. 107-111). "Cruelty to animals is rightly supposed to be an offense against humanitarian feeling." Are the laws against cruelty to animals designed simply to relieve human beings of the sympathetic distress they experience at the thought or perception of animal suffering? If our only duty is a duty to human society, why, then, is it "our duty to put animals to death as painlessly as possible, when we wish their death for any human end"? If it were not such an abstract theory, one might suggest that pain is an evil because it is painful, and not merely because "it is an impediment to the maintenance and development of life." But physical pain, which is the only sort of pain we have any reason to suppose animals suffer, is not the greatest of evils, and we do not hesitate to inflict it upon ourselves, our fellow-beings, or animals, when the higher forms of human welfare are at stake.

The second, and larger, part of the work (pp. 119-286), takes up in detail all the principal rights that have been asserted in the various French and American declarations. In each case it is shown that not even the states professing the doctrine have actually accorded 'natural rights' to their citizens, and that the logical application of the theory could end only in anarchy. The references to the United States are numerous, and as fair, perhaps, as could be expected, when American institutions are held up as the grand illustration of the utter failure of the theory in hand. Some of the statements are rather surprising, however, e.g., "the rigidity of the (American) constitution made a war necessary in order to get rid of the institution of slavery, and of the idea that there was a 'right' of secession." Why is it that, if written laws are a mark of civilization (p. 55), a written constitution is such a questionable expedient? (p. 115). It is our religious intolerance, however, that meets with