Now, before man had made a direct study of nature, and, marking the invariability of sequence in the precision of its phenomena, had attached to that invariability the term “laws of nature,” the word “law” denoted a lawgiver issuing arbitrary commands. It is in this primitive sense that our journalist uses the word “law.” He entirely ignores its appropriation by science and the modern acceptation of the term “laws of nature.” Nature has no arbitrary commands, he says, and therefore infers no laws. We admit the premise while denying the inference. The laws of health are invariable, although they do not necessarily dominate, since other and opposing laws of disorganization may at any moment get the upper hand. Man is competent to disregard the laws of life; but if he so acts, another course of natural order is initiated, and he becomes subject to pathological laws which conduct him steadily to the grave. Necessity without arbitrary command rules in the cosmos; and if happiness, which all humanity desires, is attained, it will be by conforming to all the laws of nature that favour that end. Within, there are the laws of human organization, without, the laws of circumstance or environment. The humanity that has intellect and scientific knowledge may, by union and co-operation, take a firm advantage of these laws or uniformities of nature and march steadily forward, controlling the forces of nature by a willing obedience to natural law. No sooner, observe, does this control become possible than natural rights come into existence. Man rises in the scale of being to a sphere of self-direction and comparative liberty. The wolf and bear and all wild animals are on the lower level, and have no natural rights. They are controlled by forces external to themselves, and the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest is the law of destiny to them. It is not so, however, with the horse, dog, cat, etc., for man has lifted all domesticated animals from under the rule of genetic forces, and placed them under the rule of reasoned forces. He controls their breeding, limits their numbers, and gives them a happy life consistent with his own. Further, he claims for them and concedes to them natural rights; and note this point, the last phrase of our journalist’s misleading paragraph is strictly true: “All rights are conventional.” Convention means by tacit agreement, and it is by tacit agreement on the part of civilized men that rights of men and rights of animals exist and are respected. An impulse of the higher life, viz., a law of sympathy, impels civilized man to seek happiness for other beings as well as himself, and intelligence shows him that individual happiness promotes general happiness, and further that no individual happiness is possible without a certain amount of personal liberty.