Mankind, says Mr. Chesterton, is a society. But so are bees and beavers. There are innumerable societies, and it is impossible to prove that human society is more organic or more conclusive than the rest. Our sense of kinship is continually widening, and there never has been, nor is, any finality in the social bond of which Mr. Chesterton speaks. It would have surprised the Greek or Roman of old to be informed that he was a member of the same society with the barbarian or the slave. It would hardly be admitted by the white American of to-day that he and the African negro are own brethren. That, presumably, is because their sympathies are not yet developed enough to enable them to see even the fact of human kinship; but what if Mr. Chesterton’s sympathies are not developed enough to enable _him_ to see what many less subtle intellects have already seen--that beyond this “human” society there is the still larger society of the higher sentient existence. “The man who breaks a cat’s back breaks a cat’s back.” This terse saying contains the root of all cruelty to animals, the quintessence of all the anthropocentric bigotry which has caused the immemorial ill-usage of the non-human races through the length and breadth of the world. “The man who breaks a cat’s back breaks a cat’s back.” Yes, and the scientist who vivisects a dog, vivisects a dog; the sportsman who breaks up a hare breaks up a hare; the butcher who bleeds a calf bleeds a calf. That is all. And if one points out the cruelty, injustice, and folly of vivisection, or sport, or flesh-eating, appeal is instantly made to the vaunted fact that man is “royal” and the human race “a society”! VIII THE ANIMAL QUESTION AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION[59] It is, perhaps, not sufficiently recognized by zoophilists how largely the ill-usage of the lower animals is due to the iniquity of present social conditions, and how vain it is to expect to remedy the consequences without attacking the cause. So long as pecuniary profit and self-interest are accepted as the guiding principles of trade, it will remain impossible to secure a right treatment for animals; because it is absurd to suppose that mankind will agree to exempt the lower races from the results of an economic tyranny of which men also are the victims. If the worship of the great god “Profit” bears so hardly on men and women, is it likely that the result of this pitiless struggle will be less disastrous to the animals, who by most people are not regarded as fellow-beings at all?