64 Teachings of Thomas Huxlet 



VI. 



Teachings Concerning Individual Rights, 



NATURAL AND POLITICAL EIGHTS. 



r All living things are endowed with certain 

 natural rights peculiar to themselves but shared 

 to a greater or less extent by kindred species. 

 They have the right to live, thrive, grow, form 

 themselves into colonies, beget new species, and 

 to pursue and kill their prey. These rights are 

 truly of the inalienable sort because they are 

 the expressions of general processes in Nature. 

 The anatomy of beasts of prey shows a morph- 

 ology well adapted to the slaying and tearing 

 to pieces of the animals upon which they feed. 

 For instance, the tiger is possessed of sharp 

 claws, powerful muscles, large jaws, strong 

 teeth and a certain native quickness and alert- 

 ness. It has a right, therefore, to carry on a 

 sort of internecine warfare because of the 

 structure of its body, the necessity for survival 

 and the hereditary instinct of its kind. More- 

 over it has the same right to eat man as it has 

 to eat other animals. But man making use 



