解放军文职招聘考试Kindness to Animals

 Kindness to Animals

It is man's nature to live together in families and tribes, and cities and nations, and therefore men have learned to prize those qualities in each other which make social life happiest and best. Of these qualities one of the most important is sympathy—fellow-feeling. If a man had no fellow-feeling, we should call him " in­human" ; he would be no true man. We think so much of this quality that we call a kind man "humane"—that is, man-like in his conduct, first to other men, and af­terwards to all living things.

If you are cruel to animals, you are not likely to be kind and thoughtful to men; and if you are thought­ful towards men, you are not likely to be cruel and thoughtless towards animals. This is why the wise man of old wrote, " The merciful man is merciful to his beast."

What a pleasure it is also to be loved by our pets or domestic animals; and to feel that we are caring for them and are deserving of their love; or to watch the ways of wild creatures, and gradually to make friends with them!

Treating animals kindly does not mean that we must never inflict any pain on them. We ourselves are trained by pains as well as by pleasures; so, too, pun­ishment is sometimes needed to train our dogs and horses to obey us. We endure pain at the hands of the sur­geon, to cure some wound or to heal some disease; so too, animals must submit to be doctored.

We send out our bravest men to face wounds, sickness, and death, for the good of the nation; so, too, we let our horses share the risk of battle. For sim­ilar reasons, we cannot hesitate to destroy dangerous creatures like wolves and tigers and poisonous snakes; but to destroy them cruelly only shows senseless feroci­ty. It is no excuse to say that these animals deserve to be treated cruelly on account of their own cruelty; they are not really cruel, for they tear and kill not from love of unkindness, but because they must do so in order to live.