AND ANOTHER THING
No animals have rights, but human beings have duties to them
PAUL JOHNSON
Te stinks don from New College has been making trouble again. Defending abortion, he argues (`Are chimps sacred?', Letters, 15 April) that there is no such thing as 'the sanctity of human life', since under Darwinian theory this would imply that 'along the chain of 200,000 African generations, a child whose life was sacred was born to parents whose life was not'. Old Stinky dismisses the notion of absolute values and morality as 'an inadequate sub- stitute for thought'.
I wish I could be as certain as some of these scientists are about what happened 200,000 generations ago (I suppose he means about 6 million BC). Unfortunately, being a historian, I plead ignorance. In fact, our reasonably secure knowledge does not stretch back much further than about 6000 BC, in sites like ancient Jericho, where we have some materials to work on and means of dating them roughly. Hard evidence in deep antiquity is rare. It is often question- able at much later periods. Until recently, some scholars dismissed Jesus Christ as largely mythical; but we have considerably more contemporary or near-contemporary documentary evidence about him than we do in the case of prominent figures in Roman secular history whose existence no one has ever doubted.
When I was writing my books on ancient Egypt and Palestine, I became uneasily aware to what extent our confident descrip- tions of what actually happened in, say, the Egyptian Old Kingdom, around 2700 BC, were based on suppositions and deductions and hypotheses, often varying dramatically from one generation of historians to anoth- er, and tentative readings of ancients texts whose language is imperfectly understood. To some extent, I fear, much of our under- standing of deep antiquity is based on an interlocking series of what might be called honest con-tricks.
And of course the further you go back, the greater the uncertainties. The evolution of human life is certain to remain a mystery to us, this side of paradise. It seems odd to me that physical scientists, accustomed to working with absolute proof in their own specialities, should so glibly, on no evi- dence at all beyond deductive supposition, insist that a specific event occurred 6 mil- lion years BC — a change from monkey into man — simply because it fits in with their notions of Darwinian evolution. This is faith, not knowledge. And since we are dealing in faith, I prefer the creation story that God made man 'in His own image' as a deliberate act, being fully aware of and intending the infinite consequences of this act at the time. In that sense there was nothing accidental or evolutionary in the creation of man. It was indeed an absolute act, which necessarily introduced new moral absolutes, including the sanctity of human life.
Human life is sacred because we are an image, albeit a flawed one, of Absolute Goodness. But, in a sense, all created life is sacred. What do I mean by this? Like many people, as I grow older, I tend to look more closely at life-forms, being so soon to lose my own. An ordinary house-fly now seems to me, on close inspection, such a marvel- lous living contrivance that I cannot bring myself to swat one any more, however annoying it may be, and will go to consider- able lengths to get it out of the window. I still, I regret to say, kill mosquitoes because they seem to regard me as a particular tar- get, but I hope for the day when I will spare even them. In the meantime I am moving slowly but inexorably towards vegetarianism.
None of this makes me doubt for a sec- ond that man is uniquely valuable. Indeed living creatures of all kinds are, partly at least, valuable precisely because they make us think about the extraordinary nature of creation, of which man is the crown. And because man is the crown, all other living organic creatures are subservient to his needs. That means he may kill and eat. But he must do so intelligently, and as he uses his intelligence to refine his dependence on brute power, so he must gradually eliminate from his food supplies the higher creatures whose sensibilities make them undesirable for food production. The moral case for vegetarianism is that a growing number of affluent humans no longer need to be meat- `You have to spend all your holidays preparing for the next industrial action.' eaters or fish-eaters or even to rely on milk, eggs and other animal products. We can improve our moral stature as the ruler and protector of the entire animal kingdom by using our ingenuity to find practical alterna- tives to this form of cannibalism. I have no doubt at all that, in due course, eating ani- mals of any kind will be regarded as being just as atrocious as human cannibalism.
None of this means that animals have rights. I rather doubt if anyone has rights, except God. And if humans have rights, it is only because they have, in the first instance, duties. There is no moral possibility of ani- mals possessing rights unless they are con- scious of duties. And, unfortunately, animal duties have to be imposed by man: no ani- mal has an autonomous sense of duty. If it sometimes looks that way, as in Millais' painting 'The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourn- er', that is mere sentimental anthropomor- phism. So the so-called 'Animal Rights' campaign is moral nonsense, and it is not surprising it is degenerating into savagery.
Those who feel animals need more pro- tection should switch the emphasis from animal rights to human duties. Our duties to animals are very clear, and they are beautifully set out in the new papal Cate- chism, 516-7. The Seventh Commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. All organic life is intended for the common good of the created universe, past, present and future, the summit of which is humani- ty. Use by man of these resources cannot be divorced from respect for moral impera- tives. The dominion of man is relative; he has a leasehold, not a freehold, of the plan- et, and all his actions must be limited by concern for his neighbour, including gener- ations to come, and a religious respect for the integrity of creation. Towards animals we have the duty of providential care and kindness. It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly and that includes the duty to prevent over- breeding. It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them which should as a priority go to relieve human suffering. One can and may love animals, but it is sinful to direct to them the affection due only to persons.
All this is eminently sensible and there is no reason at all why dutiful and conscien- tious farmers, shippers and the like should not abide by it. But, if man is to continue to subscribe to moral absolutes — as he must to survive — I see no long-term future for livestock farming.
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