The first is the so-called “religious” notion, which awards immortality to man, but to man alone, thereby furnishing (especially in Catholic countries) a quibbling justification for acts of cruelty to animals, on the plea that they “have no souls.” “It should seem,” says Mrs. Jameson,[8] “as if the primitive Christians, by laying so much stress upon a future life, in contradistinction to _this_ life, and placing the lower creatures out of the pale of hope, placed them at the same time out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this utter disregard of animals in the light of our fellow-creatures.” I am aware that a quite contrary argument has, in a few isolated instances, been founded on the belief that animals have “no souls.” “Cruelty to a brute,” says an old writer,[9] “is an injury irreparable,” because there is no future life to be a compensation for present afflictions; and there is an amusing story, told by Mr. Lecky in his “History of European Morals,” of a certain humanely-minded Cardinal, who used to allow vermin to bite him without hindrance, on the ground that “we shall have heaven to reward us for our sufferings, but these poor creatures have nothing but the enjoyment of this present life.” But this is a rare view of the question which need not, I think, be taken into very serious account; for, on the whole, the denial of immortality to animals (unless, of course, it be also denied to men) tends strongly to lessen their chance of being justly and considerately treated. Among the many humane movements of the present age, none is more significant than the growing inclination, noticeable both in scientific circles and in religious, to believe that mankind and the lower animals have the same destiny before them.[10] The second and not less fruitful source of modern inhumanity is to be found in the “Cartesian” doctrine--the theory of Descartes and his followers--that the lower animals are devoid of consciousness and feeling; a theory which carried the “religious” notion a step further, and deprived the animals not only of their claim to a life hereafter, but of anything that could, without mockery, be called a life in the present, since mere “animated machines,” as they were thus affirmed to be, could in no real sense be said to _live_ at all! Well might Voltaire turn his humane ridicule against this most monstrous contention, and suggest, with scathing irony, that God “had given the animals the organs of feeling, to the end that they might _not_ feel!” “The theory of animal automatism,” says Professor Romanes, “which is usually attributed to Descartes, can never be accepted by common sense.” Yet it is to be feared that it has done much, in its time, to harden “scientific” sense against the just complaints of the victims of human arrogance and oppression.[11] Let me here quote a most impressive passage from Schopenhauer.