nd or conduct, with proper limits, it is necessary,
keeping these considerations in view, to ask how much we can reasonably
or profitably require of men, and, above all, never to lose that
sympathetic touch with others which renders us as keenly alive to their
difficulties as their errors, to their aspirations as their failure to
fulfil them.

I shall say nothing here of detraction, backbiting, or malicious
representation, because these are social vices which are too obvious and
too generally acknowledged to be of any service as illustrations of
those extensions or new applications of morality which I have in view in
the present chapter. I may, however, notice in passing, that the
invention or exaggeration of stories, which have a tendency to bring men
into ridicule or contempt, is a practice which, from the entertainment
it affords, is too easily tolerated by society, and usually fails to
meet with the reprobation it deserves.

I shall advert to only one other topic, namely, the treatment of the
lower animals. With rare exceptions, it is only of late that this
subject has been regarded as falling within the sphere of ethics, and it
is greatly to the credit of Bentham that he was amongst the first to
recognise its importance and to commend it to the consideration of the
legislator. That the lower animals, as sentient beings, have a claim on
our sympathies, and that, consequently, we have duties in respect of
them, I can no more doubt than that we have duties in respect to the
inferior members of our own race. But, at the same time, considering
their place in the economy of nature, I cannot doubt that man has a
right, within certain limits, to use them, and even to kill them, for
his own advantage. What these limits are is a question by no means
devoid of difficulty. There are those who maintain that we have no right
to kill animals for food, while there are those who, without maintaining
this extreme position, hold that we have no right to cause them pain for
the purposes of our own amusement, or even for the alleviation of human
suffering by means of the advancement of physiological and medical
science. It will be seen that the three questions here raised are the
legitimacy of the use of animal food, of field sports, and of
vivisection. As respects the first, I do not doubt that, considering
their relative places in the scale of being, man is morally justified in
sacrificing the lives of the lower animals to the mai