societies may advance to the contrary. Brute animals are for the use of
man, for his food and clothing, his mental and physical improvement, and
even his reasonable recreations. Man can lawfully hunt and fish and
practise his skill at the expense of the brute creation, notwithstanding
the modern fad of sentimentalists. The teacher and the pupil can use
vivisection, and thus to some extent prolong the sufferings of the brute
subject for the sake of science, of mental improvement, and intelligent
observation. But is not this cruelty? and has a man a right to be cruel?
No man has a right to be cruel; cruelty is a vice, it is degrading to
man's noble nature. But vivisection practised for scientific purposes is
not cruel. Cruelty implies the _wanton_ infliction of pain: there are
people who delight in seeing a victim tortured; this is cruelty or
savagery, and is a disgrace to man. Even to inflict pain without
benefit is cruel and wrong; but not when it is inflicted on the brute
creation for the benefit of man, unless the pain should be very great
and the benefit very small. Certainly it is right to cultivate habits of
kindness even to animals; but this matter must not be carried to excess.

The teaching of humane societies condemning all vivisection is due to
the exaggeration of a good sentiment and to ignorance of first
principles. For they suppose that sufferings inflicted on brute animals
are a violation of their rights. Now we maintain that brute animals have
no rights in the true sense of the word. To prove this thesis we must
explain what a right is and how men get to have rights. A _right_ is a
moral claim to a thing, which claim other persons are obliged to
respect. Since every man has a destiny appointed for him by his Creator,
and which he is to work out by his own acts, he must have the means
given him to do so. For to assign a person a task and not to give him
the means of accomplishing it would be absurd. Therefore the Creator
wants him to have those means, and forbids every one to deprive him of