vin NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS 347 



all men, as potential tiger-meat. Men are as 

 much the " gratuitous offering " of nature to tigers 

 for their subsistence, or part subsistence, as fruits 

 are to men. But any one tiger has no more 

 natural right of property in men than any other 

 tiger. All tigers are free to eat any man they 

 can seize : and, if two tigers are sneaking along 

 through the jungle on opposite sides of a foot- 

 path, their rights to the villager, who, travelling 

 thereby, fondly imagines he is going home, arc 

 equal. So that we may safely enunciate the con- 

 clusion that all tigers have an equal natural right 

 to eat all men. 



I think it would be difficult to object to this 

 argument on purely logical grounds ; and the 

 conclusions to which we are forced appear startling 

 enough ; but here we stop. If the advocate of the 

 " rights of tigers " attempts to drive us into the 

 further admission that, as tigers have a right to eat 

 men, it is wrong of men to put obstacles in the 

 way of their having their rights by refusing to be 

 eaten, we protest against the doctrine, not on the 

 low and selfish ground of mere personal interest, 

 but because, however plausible, it is a patent 

 fallacy. The champion of the " rights of tigers " 

 has, in fact, made a convenient, though unwarrant- 

 able, jump from one sense of the word " right " to 

 another from " natural right " to " moral right." 

 No doubt, he who hinders or refuses to admit a 

 moral right is morally wrong unjust, or, if you 



