THE RIGHTS OF ANIMALS 207 



the sympathetic motives beyond the stage which has been 

 attained in the life below the human grade is to be accounted 

 for in the fact that no sooner are laws formed than they 

 become in a way sacred. If they be cast in the religious 

 mould their sanctity may be such that they are almost be- 

 yond the reach of modification ; even when they are secular 

 the reverence for the wisdom of the forefathers naturally 

 leads men to regard them as the ark of safety. Thus it 

 has come about that the codification of the ancient sym- 

 pathies, won by experience in the pre-human time and in 

 the early life of man, has led to the institution of a barrier 

 which makes further advance a matter of difficulty one 

 which, in the case of most peoples, binds them firmly to 

 the past, arresting their sympathetic development at a point 

 which it had attained when their laws were framed. This 

 is, indeed, the position of nearly all the peoples except those 

 of our own Aryan race. 



When the conditions of a people are fortunately such 

 that they may continue their sympathetic growth, they pro- 

 ceed to carry onward the process of sympathetic enlargement, 

 modifying their laws to suit the gains in understanding which 

 come with this growth. It may be noticed that the develop- 

 ment takes place most readily where the rules of conduct 

 are embodied in statute law ; for this law, being the evident 

 result of human action, is manifestly alterable in a way that 

 cannot be taken when the prescriptions are supposed to rest 

 on divine commands. Under such conditions of statute law 

 men are freer to advance than they can possibly be where 

 the rules of action are in the form of revered precepts, 

 such as guide the peoples who are accustomed to base their 

 action on the books which they esteem as sacred. Endowed 



