This is unworthy of man, and disposes him to inhumanity towards his
own species. Yet the converse is not to be relied on: there have been
cruel men who have made pets of the brute creation. But there is no
shadow of evil resting on the practice of causing pain to brutes _in
sport_, where the pain is not the sport itself, but an incidental
concomitant of it. Much more in all that conduces to the sustenance of
man may we give pain to brutes, as also in the pursuit of science. Nor
are we bound to any anxious care to make this pain as little as may
be. Brutes are as _things_ in our regard: so far as they are useful to
us, they exist for us, not for themselves; and we do right in using
them unsparingly for our need and convenience, though not for our
wantonness. If then any special case of pain to a brute creature be a
fact of considerable value for observation in biological science or
the medical art, no reasoned considerations of morality can stand in
the way of man making the experiment, yet so that even in the quest of
science he be mindful of mercy.
4. Altogether it will be found that a sedulous observance of the
rights and claims of other men, a mastery over one's own passions, and
a reverence for the Creator, give the best assurance of a wise and
humane treatment of the lower animals.
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