Section 2 of Animals: why They Must Not Be Brutalized 

Inference and Speculation

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habit, they would give more heed to their conduct while still in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. 
William James – Papers on Philosophy

   There seems to be no shirking the conclusion, based on concrete evidence provided by bone-bearing sediment, and artifacts, that our primeval ancestors exploited animals. Can we infer that it probably facilitated survival and speculate that violent exploitation born of compelling need degenerated over time into a deadly habit? Poet John Dryden’s trenchant insight provides a thought-provoking concept about the unlimited influence of habit.

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us. All habits gather by unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.

   Our civilization today is a sea, polluted by man as never before with the blood of billions upon billions of "only animals." Thus another book evolves, purporting to present justification for the emancipation of animals form human tyranny. The test by which such a claim must be judged must be coldly rational and objective. Do the facts invoked sustain the interpretations adduced? Are the premises well grounded? Do the conclusions based upon them follow with logical necessity, and sustain the justification as claimed?

   At issue in the dispute between biocentric animal advocates and their anthropocentric opposition, is whether or not the animal kingdom should continue to be subjected to human exploitation which, inevitably entails human tyranny. Anti-animal partisans maintain that animals are, in terms of human interest, expendable items. Included in this category is the divine right element insisting on man’s right to exploit animals: methods and consequences notwithstanding. Thus, we are told:

An animal does not have a soul, can’t experience pain as we do, must eventually die, why not in man’s behalf?

Progress in human, and veterinary medicine depends to a great degree on unfettered experiments on animals.

Many animals prey upon other animals, why should they not be preyed upon by humans?

Shall it be your child, or Fido?

  As we shall see, such rhetoric cannot survive thoughtful rebuttal, but is nevertheless, a contributing factor to the unceasing torment of animals. Unfortunately, most people are ignorant of the gruesome facts.

  Some examples of what we humans are doing to animals are mentioned in section thirteen; the whole story, not being known, can never be told. But that story would be, if we can speculate from what is known, a revolting record of cyclopedic dimensions.

  That record is history, which we are powerless to change. The future, however, is not beyond our power to affect. If history is not to be a prophesy of the future, the present must be employed as an agent for change to a world not sullied by the injustice of human generated tyranny of animals. And let me not be told that this is a cry for equal rights for animals, which would be prima facie nonsense.

   The rescue of animals from human tyranny in a comprehensive sense must ultimately entail a moral and legal transformation of heroic dimensions, predicated on reason and on an old but augmented principle of justice, as formulated in the next section. "Nature red in tooth and claw" is outside the human pale, and will stay in regard to predation as constituted. Those who find such realism depressing may find solace in my paraphrase of an ancient Roman aphorism: Beyond one’s power, one is not obliged to act. Another extension of justice, however, is not beyond collective human power intent on no longer emulating "nature red in tooth and claw."

Animals:
Why They Must Not Be Brutalized
J.B. Suconik 
Smyth sewn-acid free paper
 Hard cover library binding 
 158 pages and 6 note pages
Indexed-referenced

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