The Christian defender is very apt to say that we are entitled to do anything we please to animals because they ‘have no souls’. But what does this mean? If it means that animals have no consciousness, then how is this known? They certainly behave as if the had, or at least the higher animals do. I myself am inclined to think that far fewer animals than is supposed have what we should recognize as consciousness. But that is only an opinion.
Unless we know on other grounds that vivisection is right we must not take the moral risk of tormenting them on a mere opinion. On the other hand, the statement that they ‘have no souls’ may mean that they have no moral responsibilities and are not immortal. But the absence of ‘soul’ in that sense makes the infliction of pain upon them not easier bur harder to justify, for it means that animals cannot deserve pain, nor profit morally by the discipline of pain, nor be recompensed by happiness in another life for suffering in this. … ‘Soullessness’, in so far as it is relevant to the question at all, is an argument against vivisection.
C.S. Lewis, 1898 – 1963, author and scholar. “Vivsection” excerpted in the first of two parts. With thanks to Rita Wing.
