More exhilarating was the discussion when Mr. G. K. Chesterton entered the lists as champion of those high prerogatives of Mankind, which he saw threatened by the sinister devices of humanitarians, who, as he has explained in one of his books, “uphold the claims of all creatures against those of humanity.” A debate with Mr. Chesterton took place in the Essex Hall; and for several years afterwards the argument was renewed at times, as, for instance, when reviewing a book of mine on _The Logic of Vegetarianism_, he insisted[27] that “the difference between our moral relation to men and to animals is not a difference of degree in the least: it is a difference of kind.” The human race, he held, is a definite society, different from everything else. “The man who breaks a cat’s back breaks a cat’s back. The man who breaks a man’s back breaks an implied treaty.” To us, this terse saying of Mr. Chesterton’s seemed to contain unintentionally the root of all cruelty to animals, the quintessence of anthropocentric arrogance. 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. That is all. The victims are not human. But it is a distinction which has caused, in savage hands, the immemorial ill-usage of the lower animals through the length and breadth of the world. Perhaps the strangest of Mr. Chesterton’s charges against humanitarians was one which he made in his book _Orthodoxy_, that their trend is “to touch fewer and fewer things,” i.e. to abstain from one action after another until they are left in a merely negative position. He failed to see that while we certainly desire to touch fewer and fewer things with whip, hob-nailed boot, hunting-knife, scalpel, or pole-axe, we equally desire to get into touch with more and more of our fellow-beings by means of that sympathetic intelligence which tells us that they are closely akin to ourselves. Why, ultimately, do we object to such practices as vivisection, blood-sports, and butchery? Because of the cruelty inseparable from them, no doubt; but also because of the hateful narrowing of our own human pleasures which these barbarous customs involve. A recognition of the rights of animals implies no sort of disparagement of human rights: this indeed was clearly indicated in the sub-title of my book, _Animals’ Rights_ “considered in relation to social progress.”