I shall advert to only one other topic, namely, the treatment of the lower animals. With rare exceptions, it is only of late that this subject has been regarded as falling within the sphere of ethics, and it is greatly to the credit of Bentham that he was amongst the first to recognise its importance and to commend it to the consideration of the legislator. That the lower animals, as sentient beings, have a claim on our sympathies, and that, consequently, we have duties in respect of them, I can no more doubt than that we have duties in respect to the inferior members of our own race. But, at the same time, considering their place in the economy of nature, I cannot doubt that man has a right, within certain limits, to use them, and even to kill them, for his own advantage. What these limits are is a question by no means devoid of difficulty. There are those who maintain that we have no right to kill animals for food, while there are those who, without maintaining this extreme position, hold that we have no right to cause them pain for the purposes of our own amusement, or even for the alleviation of human suffering by means of the advancement of physiological and medical science. It will be seen that the three questions here raised are the legitimacy of the use of animal food, of field sports, and of vivisection. As respects the first, I do not doubt that, considering their relative places in the scale of being, man is morally justified in sacrificing the lives of the lower animals to the maintenance of his own health and vigour, let alone the probability that, if he did not, they would multiply to such an extent as to endanger his existence, and would themselves, in the aggregate, experience more suffering from the privation caused by the struggle for life than they now do by incurring violent deaths. At the same time, though man may kill the lower animals for his own convenience, he is bound not to inflict needless suffering on them. The torture of an animal, for no adequate purpose, is absolutely indefensible. Cock-fights, bull-fights, and the like seem to me to admit of no more justification than the gladiatorial shows. Are field-sports, then, in the same category? The answer, I think, depends on three considerations: (1) would the animal be killed any way, either for food, or as a beast of prey; (2) what is the amount of suffering inflicted on it, in addition to that which would be inflicted by killing it instantaneously; (3) for what purpose is this additional suffering inflicted. I shall not attempt to apply these considerations in detail, but I shall simply state as my opinion that, amongst the results of a legitimate application of them, would be the conclusions that worrying a dog or a cat is altogether unjustifiable; that fox-hunting might be justified on the ground that the additional suffering caused to the fox is far more than counterbalanced by the beneficial effects, in health