[1] An admirable definition of Rights is given by Mr. G. W. Foote in his contribution to “The New Charter”: “Rights are of three sorts--legal, moral, and natural. The legal meaning of ‘Rights’ is undoubtedly the primary one ... and this is the only _definite_ sense, in which the word can be used.... Moral Rights are widespread new sentiments, demanding incorporation into Legal Rights; and Natural Rights are still newer sentiments, aspiring to recognition as Moral Rights, with a view to ultimate incorporation as Legal Rights.... They are respectively, a solid fact, a general demand, and a growing aspiration.” [2] This remark implies not the “disparagement of logic and of all careful use of language,” with which Professor D. G. Ritchie has charged me in his book on “Natural Rights,” but simply that social reformers cannot be debarred from using the best available terms because no logically exact term is forthcoming. See Appendix I. [3] Attributed to Thomas Taylor, the Platonist. [4] “Principles of Penal Law,” chap, xvi., 1780. [5] John Lawrence, “Philosophical Treatise on the Moral Duties of Man towards the Brute Creation,” 1796. [6] Professor Ritchie contends in his “Natural Rights” that domestic animals have _not_ been granted rights in English law. “Because a work of art, or some ancient monument, is protected by law from injury, do we speak of the _rights_ of pictures or stones?” But the distinction is obvious--works of art are protected only as _property_, domestic animals as _sentient beings_, whether owned or unowned. [7] “Fraser,” November, 1863; “The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes,” by Frances Power Cobbe. [8] “Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies,” 1854. [9] Humphry Primatt, D.D., author of “The Duty of Mercy to Brute Animals” (1776). [10] See the article on “Animal Immortality,” “The Nineteenth Century,” Jan., 1891, by Norman Pearson. The upshot of his argument is that, “if we accept the immortality of the human soul, and _also_ accept its evolutional origin, we cannot deny the survival, in some form or other, of animal minds.” [11] Prof. Huxley’s remarks, in “Science and Culture,” give a partial support to Descartes’ theory, but do not bear on the moral question of rights. For, though he concludes that animals are probably “sensitive automata,” he classes men in the same category. See Appendix II. [12] Schopenhauer’s “Foundation of Morality.” I quote the passage as translated in Mr. Howard Williams’s “Ethics of Diet.” [13] “Descent of Man,” chap. iii. [14] “Man and Beast, here and hereafter,” 1874. [15] In Sir A. Helps’s “Animals and their Masters.” See an article on “Dumb Animals,” in “The Humanitarian,” November, 1912. Also the chapter on “Speech as a Barrier between Man and Beast,” in Mr. E. P. Evans’s work on “Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology,” 1898.