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The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics
Series

Series Editors
Andrew Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, Oxford, UK

Clair Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, Oxford, UK

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our
treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range
of other scholars have followed from historians to social scientists.
From being a marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in
ethics and in multidisciplinary inquiry. This series will explore the
challenges that Animal Ethics poses, both conceptually and practically,
to traditional understandings of human-animal relations. Specifically,
the Series will:
provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out
ethical positions on animals;
publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accomplished,
scholars;
produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary
in character or have multidisciplinary relevance.
For further information or to submit a proposal for consideration,
please contact Amy Invernizzi, amy.invernizzi@palgrave-usa.com.
More information about this series at http://​www.​palgrave.​com/​
gp/​series/​14421
Editors
Augusto Vitale and Simone Pollo

Human/Animal Relationships in
Transformation
Scientific, Moral and Legal Perspectives
Editors
Augusto Vitale
Center for Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health, Istituto Superiore
di Sanità , Rome, Italy

Simone Pollo
Department of Philosophy, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy

ISSN 2634-6672 e-ISSN 2634-6680

The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series
ISBN 978-3-030-85276-4 e-ISBN 978-3-030-85277-1
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85277-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive

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Preface
Ethics of Human/Animal Relationships is a growing field of academic
research and a topic for public discussion and regulatory interventions
from law-makers, government and private institutions (such as
scientific societies and farming industries). In our societies
human/animal relationships are in transformation and understanding
the nature of this process is crucial for all those who believe that the
enlargement of moral and legal recognition to non-human animals is
part of contemporary civilization and moral/political progress.
Understanding the nature of this process means analysing and critically
discussing the philosophical/scientific/legal concepts and arguments
embedded in it. This book aims at contributing to such analysis by
means of collecting ideas and reflections from leading experts in the
fields from different disciplinary approaches and theoretical/scientific
perspectives. Scopes of this book are both depicting the state of the art
of the transformation of Human/Animal Relationships and presenting
ideas to foster this process. In pursuing those aims the approach of this
book is plural in a double meaning. First, contributors are plural in
their backgrounds and expertise in order to provide a rich
interpretation of the questions at stake. Second, plurality regards the
subject matter of the various analyses: Human/Animal Relationships
(and transformations affecting them) are not a monolith. Animal
species are many and different and human interactions with them are
equally many and different. The various contributions to the book move
from the awareness of the great variety of human/animal relationships
in order to foster the theoretical debate and the public discussion about
the scientific and ethical reasons underlying the changes in our
approaches to animals, a fact that nowadays irreversibly characterizes
our societies.
Augusto Vitale
Simone Pollo
Rome, Italy
Series Editors’ Preface
This is a new book series for a new field of inquiry: Animal Ethics.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of
our treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a
range of other scholars have followed, from historians to social
scientists. From being a marginal issue, animals have become an
emerging issue in ethics and in multidisciplinary inquiry.
In addition, a rethink of the status of animals has been fuelled by a
range of scientific investigations which have revealed the complexity of
animal sentiency, cognition and awareness. The ethical implications of
this new knowledge have yet to be properly evaluated, but it is
becoming clear that the old view that animals are mere things, tools,
machines or commodities cannot be sustained ethically.
But it is not only philosophy and science that are putting animals on
the agenda. Increasingly, in Europe and the United States, animals are
becoming a political issue as political parties vie for the “green” and
“animal” vote. In turn, political scientists are beginning to look again at
the history of political thought in relation to animals, and historians are
beginning to revisit the political history of animal protection.
As animals grow as an issue of importance, so there have been more
collaborative academic ventures leading to conference volumes, special
journal issues, indeed new academic animal journals as well. Moreover,
we have witnessed the growth of academic courses, as well as
university posts, in Animal Ethics, Animal Welfare, Animal Rights,
Animal Law, Animals and Philosophy, Human-Animal Studies, Critical
Animal Studies, Animals and Society, Animals in Literature, Animals
and Religion—tangible signs that a new academic discipline is
emerging.
“Animal Ethics” is the new term for the academic exploration of the
moral status of the non-human, an exploration that explicitly involves a
focus on what we owe animals morally, and which also helps us to
understand the influences—social, legal, cultural, religious and political
—that legitimate animal abuse. This series explores the challenges that
Animal Ethics poses, both conceptually and practically, to traditional
understandings of human-animal relations.
 The series is needed for three reasons: (1) to provide the texts that
will service the new university courses on animals, (2) to support the
increasing number of students studying and academics researching in
animal related fields and (3) because there is currently no book series
that is a focus for multidisciplinary research in the field.
Specifically, the series will
provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out
ethical positions on animals,
publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accomplished,
scholars, and
produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary
in character or have multidisciplinary relevance.
The new Palgrave Macmillan Series on Animal Ethics is the result of
a unique partnership between Palgrave Macmillan and the Ferrater
Mora Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. The series is an integral part of
the mission of the Centre to put animals on the intellectual agenda by
facilitating academic research and publication. The series is also a
natural complement to one of the Centre’s other major projects, the
Journal of Animal Ethics. The Centre is an independent “think tank” for
the advancement of progressive thought about animals, and is the first
Centre of its kind in the world. It aims to demonstrate rigorous
intellectual enquiry and the highest standards of scholarship. It strives
to be a world-class centre of academic excellence in its field.
We invite academics to visit the Centre’s website www.​
oxfordanimalethi​cs.​com and to contact us with new book proposals for
the series.
Andrew Linzey
Clair Linzey
Oxford, UK
Acknowledgements
This book originates from a workshop held at the Lorentz Center, at the
University of Leiden, in September 2017. During that event, we
gathered together with colleagues from different areas of research and
different contexts to discuss animal welfare and human/animal
relationships. Those five days of stimulating discussions made possible
the project of this book and among the contributors of this book many
participated in the workshop. We would really like to thank the staff of
the Lorentz Center for their kindness, mixed with a level of impeccable
professionalism. Without the relaxed and inspiring environment
provided by the Lorentz Center, this book would have never been even
thought of.
Contents
1 Introduction
Simone Pollo and Augusto Vitale
Part I Philosophy and Ethics of Human Animal/Relationships
2 Darwinian Biology and the New Understanding of Animals
Simone Pollo
3 Animal Detection and Its Role in Our Attitude towards Other
Species
Giorgio Vallortigara
4 The Moral Value of Animal Sentience and Agency
Federico Zuolo
5 Affective Animal Ethics: Reflective Empathy, Attention and
Knowledge Sub Specie Aeternitatis
Elisa Aaltola
Part II Transformations in General Scenarios
6 Perceiving Animals Through Different Demographic and Cultural
Lenses
Pim Martens and Bingtao Su
7 Animal Welfare in Context:​Historical, Scientific, Ethical, Moral
and One Welfare Perspectives
E. Anne McBride and Stephen Baugh
8 The Two Sides of the Human-Animal Bond:​Reflections on Using
and Abusing Animals
Jan L. M. Vaarten and Nancy De Briyne
9 A Proposal for a Multi-Dimensional Profile of the Animal
Researcher
Augusto Vitale
10 The Two Sides of the Non-Human-Animal Bond:​Reflections on
Using and Abusing Companion Animals
Michał Piotr Pręgowski, Karin Hediger and Marie-José Enders-
Slegers
Part III Transformations in Cases and Contexts
11 Farms, Landscapes, Food and Relationships
Pasqualino Santori and Clemens Driessen
12 Biotechnologies and Animals:​The Impact of Genetic
Engineering on Human-Animal Relationships
Susanna Pietropaolo
13 Coexisting with Wild Nonhuman Primates in a Brazilian
Semiarid Habitat
Noemi Spagnoletti
14 Companionship and Wellbeing:​Benefits and Challenges of
Human-Pet Relationships
Marta Borgi and Francesca Cirulli
15 Human-Wildlife Coexistence in the Urban Domain:​Promoting
Welfare Through Effective Management, Responsibility and the
Recognition of Mutual Interest
Oliver Adrian Wookey
Part IV Recognising Transformations
16 Political Representation of Animals’ Voices
Robert Garner
17 Animal Law:​What Is Left to be Said by the Law About Animals
Marita Giménez-Candela
List of Figures
Fig.​3.​1 Schematic representation of some of the stimuli used to
document predispositions for static and dynamic features typical of
animate objects shown by visually naïve vertebrates at birth (mainly
humans and chicks but evidence is also available for monkeys, see
Rosa-Salva et al.​2020 for details).​For each pair of stimuli, the preferred
stimulus featuring the predisposed trait and a control one are shown.​
From above, stimuli used to test the preference for hen-like objects (a
stuffed junglefowl-like hen versus a scrambled version of a similar
specimen) in newborn chicks.​In the following rows a pair of similar
stimuli obtained from stuffed chick models; a stuffed duck with her
wings occluded compared to a similar exemplar with the head region
occluded; a schematic face-like stimulus and a non-face control image.​
The last stimulus pair evokes similar preferences in human newborns
and newly hatched chicks.​The first two images of the second panel
depict a point light display of a walking hen and a control stimulus with
random motion of the same points of light (the silhouette of the hen is
added for illustrative purposes).​In the following two rows a schematic
representation of a speed changing stimulus and its speed-constant
control; an object that always moves in the direction of its main body
axis and its control stimulus.​In the last row, on the left the sequence of
movement of a self-propelled red object hitting and putting in motion a
non-self-propelled purple object (the sequence has to be read from
above to below).​In this case, chicks preferentially imprint on the red
objects.​On the right, both objects appear self-propelled and chicks
display no preferences between the two.​Human newborns show
similar preferences for self-propelled objects as well.​(See for complete
references Rosa-Salva et al.​2021)

Fig.​7.​1 Extensive sheep hill-farming (courtesy of Gary Farrell)

Fig.​7.​2 Intensive feedlot system for beef cattle (from Addison 2012)
Fig.​13.​1 Study area showing the 49 households present.​(Image
courtesy of Alison Howard)

Fig.​13.​2 Sex and age classes of interviewed.​W=​woman; M=​man

Fig. 13.3 Interviewed income (N = 71)

List of Tables
Table 6.​1 Background details of the respondents

Table 6.​2 Summary of multivariate analysis of the effects of ethical

idealism, ethical relativism, gender, and age on public attitudes toward
animals (measured by Animal Attitude Scale [AAS] and Animal Issue
Scale [AIS])

Table 6.​3 Important variables influencing the Animal Issue Scale (AIS)
score in the Netherlands

Table 6.​4 Important variables influencing the Animal Attitudes Scale

(AAS) score in the Netherlands

Table 13.​1 Characteristics of the 36 houses belonging to respondents

Notes on Contributors
Elisa Aaltola
is a philosopher, specialized in animal and environmental ethics, moral
psychology. She works at the University of Turku and is researching the
influence of emotions on our treatment of non-human animals and
nature. Aaltola has written numerous articles, together with a number
of Finnish monographs and edited volumes. In English, she has also
written the books “Varieties of Empathy: Moral Psychology and Animal
Ethics” (2018) and “Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture” (2012),
and edited the volume “Animal Ethics and Philosophy: Questioning the
Orthodoxy” (2014) with John Hadley. Her English blog can be found at
www.​philosophyhounds​.c​ om.

Stephen Baugh
, BSc (Hons) BVM&S MRCVS SFHEA, is an experienced companion
animal veterinary surgeon and an academic. Baugh is Principal
Lecturer in Animal Health and Welfare at Harper Adams University and
Programme Manager for a suite of animal courses. Baugh has taught
animal health, welfare and animal ethics to undergraduate and
postgraduate students studying Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary
Bioscience, Clinical Animal Behaviour, Veterinary Nursing, Veterinary
Pharmacy, Veterinary Physiotherapy, Applied Zoology and Agriculture.
Baugh has published in peer-reviewed journals and veterinary
professional journals and has contributed chapters to academic books
in the areas of animal health, welfare and animal ethics.

Marta Borgi
is a researcher at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome, Italy. She
received her PhD in Animal Behaviour from the University of Florence,
studying children’s attitudes towards animals and human response to
infantile features in pets. Her research focuses on the effect of human-
animal interactions on human health and well-being, particularly in the
context of animal-assisted therapeutic programmes. She is also
conducting research for the development of reliable methods for
evaluating animal welfare during animal-assisted interventions.

Francesca Cirulli
is a senior researcher in the Center for Behavioural Sciences and Mental
Health at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome, Italy. She holds a PhD
in Neurobiology from Stanford University (USA). She investigates the
interaction between stress and energy metabolism in susceptibility to
mental disorders. She also works on human-animal interactions and
the role of animals in psychiatric rehabilitation. She is the past
President of the European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS) and
Treasurer of the Federation of Neuroscience Societies (FENS).

Nancy De Briyne
studied veterinary medicine in Ghent (Belgium). After working as a
veterinary practitioner in Belgium and the UK, she joined in 2000 the
Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE). In 2015, she became
diplomate of the European College of Animal Welfare and Behavioural
Medicine, subspecialty Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law. Within
FVE she works on animal welfare, veterinary medicines, education and
communication. Presently, she is Executive Director of the FVE. She
published in 2009 an overview of animal welfare teaching in veterinary
undergraduate education. She is the author of several publications on
animal welfare issues.

Clemens Driessen
is a more-than-human geographer working as an assistant professor in
the Cultural Geography group at Wageningen University, the
Netherlands. He is interested in the messy relations between plants,
animals, technologies and humans. Through collaborations with
scientists, farmers, artists, designers—and seeking to enlist voluntary
non-human involvement—he develops ambivalent interventions in a
variety of practices in agriculture and nature conservation. He has
initiated an effort to design video games for intensively farmed pigs to
play with humans, contributed to a documentary on back-bred
dedomesticated cattle, and was a collaborator on the Countryside
exhibition at the NY Guggenheim Museum.

Marie-José Enders-Slegers
is a clinical and health psychologist. Her field of interest is the human-
animal bond and animal-assisted interventions in health care and
education. Her research includes the development of the human-animal
bond, the meaning and effects of human-animal interactions and
animal-assisted interventions for vulnerable people. She is interested in
the link between domestic violence and animal abuse. She works as
Professor in Anthrozoology, Faculty of Psychology, Open University
Heerlen, the Netherlands, is President of IAHAIO, International
Association of Human Animal Interaction Organizations, is ISAZ fellow,
fellow of the Denver University. She is the author of many articles and
book chapters.

Robert Garner
(FRSA) is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Leicester.
He has published widely on the politics and philosophy of animal rights.
His books include The Oxford Group and the Emergence of Animal Rights
(with Yewande Okuleye) (2021), A Theory of Justice for Animals (2013)
and the Animal Rights Debate (with Gary Francione) (2010).

Marita Giménez-Candela
is Professor of Law at the Universitat Autò noma de Barcelona (UAB).
She is a Humboldt Scholar and a visiting professor at many universities
across the world. She has published an important number of articles,
papers and books about animal law, comparative law and Roman law.
She is the founder and chief editor of the www.​derechoanimal.​info
website. In 2009 she established, and has since managed both the
onsite and online Master in Animal Law and Society which is a pioneer
initiative in Europe. She is the Director of ICALP (International Center
for Animal Law and Policy). She manages two collections of books on
“Animals and the Law”. She is as well the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of
the, indexed by SCOPUS, Journal of Animal Law: dA. Derecho Animal
(Forum of Animal Law Studies, https://​revistes.​uab.​cat/​da/​index).

Karin Hediger
is a psychotherapist and researcher at the University of Basel,
Switzerland. She investigates the effects of animal-assisted
interventions and human-animal interactions. She is endowed chair of
Anthrozoology at the Open University in the Netherlands. She
completed her PhD in Rostock, Germany, in human-animal interaction
and holds certification in animal-assisted therapy, a diploma in equine-
assisted therapy and founded a centre for animal-assisted
psychotherapy. She is the President of the Institute for Interdisciplinary
Research on Human-Animal Relationship (IEMT), Secretary of the
International Society for Animal Assisted Therapy (ISAAT), Board
Member of the International Association of Human Animal Interaction
Organizations (IAHIAO).

Pim Martens
has a PhD in Applied Mathematics and Biological Sciences and is
Professor of “Sustainable Development” at Maastricht University (the
Netherlands); he is a member of the Dutch Royal Academy of Science’s
Planetary Health Committee. He has published over 120 journal papers
and has written and edited 12 books. Martens is founder of
AnimalWise, a “think and do tank” integrating scientific knowledge and
animal advocacy to bring about sustainable change in our relationship
with animals.

E. Anne McBride
has a degree in Psychology and a PhD in Animal Behaviour, both from
University College London and Certificate in Conservation from
Birkbeck, London. A Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the
University of Southampton, UK, she lectures on animal behaviour,
welfare and human-animal interactions nationally and internationally
and has published extensively on the same in journals, book chapters
and books. She has been awarded Honorary Membership of the UK
veterinary and veterinary nursing professions and, in 2021, was made
Fellow of the International Society for Anthrozoology.

Susanna Pietropaolo
has started her career studying behavioural neurobiology at the Italian
National Institute of health (ISS), in Rome. She has then obtained her
PhD at the ETH of Zurich after 5 years of extensive training in the
behavioural validation of mouse models of neuropsychiatric disorders.
She worked afterwards as a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of
Cognitive and Integrative Neuroscience (INCIA) at the University of
Bordeaux where she became assistant professor in 2012. Since then,
she has carried out research on genetic mouse models of
developmental disorders, with a special emphasis on Fragile X
syndrome and autism spectrum disorders.

Simone Pollo
is Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Department of
Philosophy at Sapienza Università di Roma. His research interests are
animal ethics, the biological foundations of morality and topics in
philosophy of biology such as the epistemology of evolutionary theory,
animal cognition and philosophical aspects of ethology. He is the author
also of two monographs (in Italian) on animal ethics: Umani e animali.
Questioni di etica (2016) and Manifesto per un animalismo democratico
(2021).

Michał Piotr Pręgowski

is a sociologist and assistant professor at the Warsaw University of
Technology, Poland. His research interests include social construction
of companion animals in the contemporary West, social contexts of
animal abuse, as well as cultural practices of commemorating deceased
animals. He has published four books, including edited monographs
Free Market Dogs: The Human-Canine Bond in Post-Communist Poland
(2016) and Companion Animals in Everyday Life. Situating Human-
Animal Engagement within Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Pasqualino Santori
is veterinarian, farmer and expert in bioethics. He is President of the
“Veterinary Bioethics Committee” (CBV now CBV-A) since 1997 and
President of the Institute of Bioethics for Veterinary and Agro-Food
(IBV-A) since 2018. He is Vice-president of the ethics committee for
animal testing (OpBA) of Tor Vergata University in Rome since 2008. He
has been member of the Italian National Bioethics Committee from
2002 to 2006 and member of the Scientific Committee of the Bioparco
(Zoo) of Rome from 2004 to 2013. He is the Director of the series
“Documents of Veterinary Bioethics Committee” (Turin, Italy).

Noemi Spagnoletti
is a PhD in Animal Biology. Her studies focused on ecology and
evolution of non-human primates’ behaviour, primates’ culture and
human-wildlife interactions. She was Young Talented Researcher and
post-doc at Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of
Psychology, University of Sã o Paulo (IP-USP) in Brazil and research
associate at the CNR Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies
(ISTC) in Rome, Italy. She co-edited the special issue “Primates in
anthropogenic habitats: implications for sustainable human-primate
coexistence”, International Journal of Primatology. Her research
interests are biodiversity conservation, human-wildlife coexistence and
gender equality in science.

Bingtao Su
is an associate professor in Shandong University, China. She received
her PhD degree from Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Su is
project leader of several projects including the Chinese National Social
Science Fund and some provincial and ministerial-level funds. These
funds are related to sustainable development, in the context of farm
animals’ ecological and carbon footprint, the environmental impacts of
food consumption and sustainable human-animal relationships.

Jan L. M. Vaarten
, DVM, was trained as a veterinarian. From 2003 until his retirement in
2020, he was Executive Director of the Federation of Veterinarians of
Europe (FVE), a federation of 46 national veterinary organizations in
39 European countries and representing around 350,000 European
veterinarians. From 2010 until 2020 he was Executive Secretary of the
World Veterinary Association (WVA), the global veterinary professional
organization. Both FVE and WVA are based in Brussels (Belgium). He is
chair of the Ethical Committee of the Royal Dutch Veterinary
Association and involved in research projects on animal health, animal
welfare and public health.

Giorgio Vallortigara
is Professor of Neuroscience at the Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences of
the University of Trento, Italy. His major research interest is the study
of the neural bases of cognition in a comparative and evolutionary
perspective. He has published more than 300 refereed papers. He is the
author of Born Knowing (2021) and with L.J. Rogers and R.J. Andrew of
Divided Brains (2013). He has been the recipient of several honours and
prizes, including the Geoffrey de St. Hilaire Prize for Ethology, and a
doctorate honoris causa from the University of Ruhr in Germany.

Augusto Vitale
holds a PhD in Behavioural Ecology from the University of Aberdeen
(Scotland). He is a researcher in animal behaviour at the Center for
Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health at the Istituto Superiore di
Sanità , Rome. He was President of the Italian Association of
Primatology, and is General Secretary for the European Federation of
Primatology. He collaborates with the EU Commission on the use of
NHP in laboratory research. He evaluates projects involving the use of
animal models for the Italian Ministry of Health. He has authored
several publications and book chapters on ethology and ethics of
research.

Oliver Adrian Wookey

holds a Masters in Animal Law and Society from the Universitat
Autò noma de Barcelona (UAB). Following an internship at the
Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, he continues to work as an
Editorial Secretary at the International Centre for Animal Law and
Policy (ICALP) based at the UAB, collaborating primarily by editing,
translating and contributing to the dA. Derecho Animal (Forum of
Animal Law Studies) journal.

Federico Zuolo
is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of
Genova (Italy). Before joining the University of Genova, he was
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow at the Universities of
Berlin and Hamburg, and research fellow at the University of Pavia. He
published a book on politics and animals (Animals, Political Liberalism
and Public Reason, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), and a number of articles
about respect, toleration, equality and animal ethics.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
A. Vitale, S. Pollo (eds.), Human/Animal Relationships in Transformation, The Palgrave
Macmillan Animal Ethics Series
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85277-1_1

1. Introduction
Simone Pollo1 and Augusto Vitale2
(1) Department of Philosophy, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome,
Italy
(2) Center for Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health, Istituto
Superiore di Sanità , Rome, Italy

Simone Pollo
Email: simone.pollo@uniroma1.it

Augusto Vitale (Corresponding author)

Email: augusto.vitale@iss.it

During the last decades human/non-human animals relationships have

been under increased interest of scientists and under growing scrutiny
of the general public. At the beginning of the 70s of twentieth century
the new field of animal ethics was established as a systematic
philosophical inquiry about the moral status of animals and the ethics
of various types of human/animal relationships. Also, thanks to the
work of leading scholars of animal ethics, animal advocacy activism
became a social phenomenon of growing importance, resurrecting from
the oblivion in which it rested during great part of the twentieth
century after its birth and flourishing during the nineteenth century. In
the last decades a greater awareness of the moral relevance of non-
human animals has brought legislators and scientists to promote
changes in the way humans and non-human animals interact in
different contexts, such as, animal companions, farming animals, animal
experimentation, animal-assisted interventions in health care and wild
animals threatened by human impact on ecosystems. Examples of this
developing situation are the increasing number of lawyers who
dedicate time and effort to deal with animal issues, the publication of
the Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used in
scientific procedures, as well as the growing urge in the field of animal-
assisted interventions for developing (mandatory) legislation,
procedures and best practices.
Animals are used in different contexts and interactions with
humans happen for a great variety of reasons. The use of animals in
scientific research, farming and animal-assisted intervention (AAI) has
significant effect on science and society, as well as it is the product of
scientific and societal dynamics. Two are the major conceptual and
practical issues at stake: the nature of the human/non-humans
relationships and the concepts of animal welfare. These two issues are
significantly connected: the ways we understand and regulate our
relationships with animals are based on the idea of what animals are,
what their welfare is and how human and animal welfare interconnect
and interdepend.
However, the very same term animal welfare could be intended in
very different ways, depending on the field of application. A question,
for example, is whether the concept of animal welfare employed in
biomedical research is defined in the same way in other contexts, such
as farming and relations with companion animals. The animal welfare
and, in the case of sentient species, how they are perceived by humans
should not be affected by the kind of utilisation the animal is subjected
to. However the perception of its welfare and then the way it is
measured and considered can vary depending on the context. Public
perception of suffering changes as well depending on the field of
application. Laboratory animals, for example, are thought to suffer
often, whereas pet animals are generally considered safe from
suffering, and their level of welfare very rarely compromised. As a
matter of fact, pets represent a very strong form of relationships
between humans and animals, and a very interesting case-study about
how people understand the differences between us and the other
animals.
The nature of our relationships with the other animals, how they
develop, and how they are influenced by internal (personal) and
external (cultural, societal) influences, and how they have changed with
time, are at the basis of this book. Although the topics of human/non-
human animal relationships and animal welfare have been discussed
since many years now, the aim of this book is to actually bring together
different ways of interacting with animals. The very idea is not to
simply put together views from different disciplines, but to provide a
framework in order to elaborate new concepts that aim at
incorporating all our different knowledge about animals. This book also
aims at being original in pairing the more common issue of non-human
moral/legal status to the topic of human/non-human relationships. In
fact, this book focuses on the different reasons and modalities of the
transformations that are taking place in the different contexts of
human/animal relationships. Furthermore, all the authors aim at
elaborating perspectives that move from a solid knowledge of the
empirical features of contexts and situations in which the different
human/animal relationships take place.
The first part, Philosophy and Ethics of Human Animal/Relationships,
aims at reconstructing the theoretical, both philosophical and scientific,
background of discussions and reflections about the changes and
developments of human/animal interactions. In the first essay,
Darwinian Biology and the New Understanding of Animals, Simone Pollo
tackles the issue of our understanding of non-human animals after the
revolution is provoked by Darwin’s evolutionary theory: the
development of Darwinian biology, especially the scientific study of
behaviour, provides new tools and concepts to understand non-human
animals. From ethological studies a new understanding of animals as
agents emerges and it could entail some important consequences for
the conceptualisation of animal welfare. The understanding of animals
is the topic also of Giorgio Vallortigara’s chapter, Animal Detection and
Its Role on Our Attitude Towards Other Species: from a scientific point of
view a distinction can be made in vertebrate brains between
mechanism aimed at recognising animate objects and distinguishing
them from inanimate ones. Such a distinction is intertwined with the
propensity to attribute mental states to animals, a key issue in the
interpretation of the nature of animal lives and our propensity to
anthropomorphise them. From the point of view of ethical reasoning
the question of which feature of a subject should be recognised as
relevant to attribute him/her/it a moral status is a crucial one: in his
chapter, The Moral Value of Animal Sentience and Agency, Federico
Zuolo deals with such a question and discusses the alternative between
sentience and agency as properties granting moral status. Such a
discussion raises the problem of how to combine moral status
recognition with the adoption of a basic principle of equality.
Recognition of moral relevance of animals is also the topic of Elisa
Aaltola’s essay, Affective Animal Ethics: Reflective Empathy, Attention
and Knowledge Sub Specie Aeternitatis, in which she offers a
perspective centred on human capacity to empathise with animals’
emotions. Rather than focusing on animals’ capacities and subsequent
moral status Aaltola stresses the importance of development and
perfectioning of humans’ reflective empathy in a holistic framework.
Essays of the second part, Transformations in General Scenarios, are
focused on some key ideas and facts involved in the contexts in which
the ongoing transformation of human/animal relationships takes place.
In Perceiving Animals Through Different Demographic and Cultural
Lenses Pim Martens and Bingtao Su empirically investigate the
correlation between public attitudes towards animals and ethical
ideologies, acknowledging the relevance of such correlation for
decision-making processes regarding animals and their uses by
humans. E. Anne McBride and Stephen Baugh in Animal Welfare in
Context: Historical, Scientific, Ethical, Moral and One Welfare Perspective
examine the plurality of meanings of animal welfare and how this
produces different definitions and practices of animals. The variety of
animal welfare approaches (and their link with human welfare) affects
the way human/animal interactions are understood and their reform is
conceived. Survival of the Fittest: When an Evolutionary Advantage
Becomes Such a Threat to the Welfare of Other, Non Human Animal
Species that It Threatens Our Own Species by Jan L.M. Vaarten and Nancy
De Briyne discuss the human “domination” of other species from an
evolutionary perspective. From this perspective Vaarten and De Briyne
present arguments for the role of veterinarians in improving
human/animal relationships in their professional practice and in
promoting a similar improvement in the general public. Use of animals
in research is the topic of A Proposal for a Multi-Dimensional Profile of
the Animal Researcher by Augusto Vitale. The chapter is focused on the
role of the scientist at the intersection of the different dimensions of
researches using animals. Awareness of such dimensions by
researchers could lead to more transparent and open attitudes towards
the public debate on ethical issues of animal experiments. Michał Piotr
Pręgowski, Karin Hediger and Marie-José Enders-Slegers in the chapter
The Two Sides of the Human-Animal Bond. Reflections on Using and
Abusing Companion Animals examines the variety and complexity of
interspecies relationships focusing on the human/animal bond,
especially in assisted interventions and contexts where animals serve
humans. The chapter unveils the reality of possible animal abuses
entailed in such contexts.
The third part Transformations in Cases and Contexts moves closer
to the specific contexts of human/animal interaction providing detailed
analyses and examinations of particular cases. Farms, Landscapes, Food
and Relationships by Clemens Driessen and Pasqualino Santori presents
an overview of understandings of the relations between farmers or
farm workers and the animals on their farm. Also the role of the
consumers of food products coming from the work of farmers is
discussed, questioning the role of society as whole for improving
quality of life of animals and of the humans involved in their care.
Susanna Pietropaolo in the chapter Biotechnologies and Animals: The
Impact of Genetic Engineering on Human-Animal Relationships
overviews the biotechnologies that mostly affect human attitudes and
approaches to animals. In particular genetic modifications of laboratory
animals are examined in bioethical and scientific terms evaluating their
advantages and limitations. Animals in wilderness and how humans
interact with them are the topic of Noemi Spagnoletti essay Coexisting
with Wild Non-Human Primates in a Brazilian Semiarid Habitat.
Interviews of people living in a Brazilian community coexisting with a
wild population of bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus)
provide important details on the framework in which a non-conflictual
relationship can take place. A different kind of relationship is examined
by Marta Borgi and Francesca Cirulli in Companionship and Wellbeing:
Benefits and Challenges of Human-Pet Relationships. Moving from the
current literature in the field of animal-assisted interventions Borgi and
Cirulli analyse the potential for domesticated animals for providing
emotional and physical opportunities to enrich the lives of many frail
subjects. Such relationships are examined from the concept of “One-
Health” and its application both to humans and animals. Another kind
of human/animal interaction with wild animals is examined in the last
chapter, Human-Wildlife Coexistence in the Urban Domain: Promoting
Welfare Through Effective Management, Responsibility and the
Recognition of Mutual Interest, by Oliver Adrain Wookey. The essay
examines the threats posed by humans to welfare of wild animals in
urban environments and proposes suggestions to improve
human/animal relationships in this context.
The fourth and final part, Recognising Transformations, examines
the two public dimensions in which animal status and transformations
of human/animal relationships are advocated and brought into
practice, politics and law. Robert Garner in the chapter Political
Representation of Animals’ Voices examines the “political turn” of animal
ethics, that is the growing interest of scholars for the issue of
representing animals in the political arena of democracy. The
“enfranchisement model” for animals’ representation is supported
against rival alternatives. The last chapter by Marita Candela, Animal
Law. What Is Left to Be Said by the Law About Animals, offers an
overview of the motives that have brought to the ongoing inclusion of
animals under the umbrella of law from their absence in legal systems.
The key notion for the “animal turn in legal studies” is animal sentience,
whose recognition fosters the de-objectification, the
constitutionalisation and the globalisation of animals.
Scholars and students at different levels will find in the book new
theoretical analyses contributing to the discussion in the fields of
animal ethics and animal studies. Common denominator of the chapters
is the effort to bring new ideas to the debate and to progress towards a
new and contemporary relationships between us and our fellow
animals.
Part I
Philosophy and Ethics of Human
Animal/Relationships
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
A. Vitale, S. Pollo (eds.), Human/Animal Relationships in Transformation, The Palgrave
Macmillan Animal Ethics Series
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85277-1_2

2. Darwinian Biology and the New

Understanding of Animals
Simone Pollo1
(1) Department of Philosophy, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome,
Italy

Simone Pollo
Email: simone.pollo@uniroma1.it

Keywords Charles Darwin – Evolutionary biology – Ethology – Animal

agency – Animal moral status

1 Premise
Together with the Copernican revolution the “Darwinian revolution” is
the scientific event that has most affected human civilization. On one
side Copernicus and Galilee removed the human being from the center
of the universe and proved the corruptible nature of the skies. On the
other side Charles Darwin irrevocably debunked the idea of teleology in
nature, proving the Homo sapiens (like any other organism) to be not
the outcome of a benevolent project but the result of a historical
process without purpose. The consequences of both those scientific
revolutions are enormous since they contributed in many intertwined
ways to the abandonment of traditional ideas deeply embedded in
human cultures (mostly Western, but not only).
In this chapter I will especially focus on one aspect of the influence
Darwinian revolution has had and is still having on human civilization,
whereby “civilization” must be understood to include the human
understanding of reality (human nature included), and moral/political
beliefs and practices. This aspect is the understanding by humans of
non-human animals and the moral beliefs about their moral status (and
the following practices and behaviors). This is an enormously wide and
articulated topic and its history dates back to Darwin himself when in
Notebook B he wrote:

If we choose to let conjecture run wild then animals our fellow

brethren in pain, disease death & suffering & famine; our slaves
in the most laborious work, our companion in our amusements,
they may partake, from our origin in one common ancestor we
may all be netted together. (Darwin 1987)

Using words like “fellow brethren,” “slaves,” and “companion”

Charles Darwin was pushing his thoughts beyond the borders of
scientific realms and he was entering into the territory of ethics
(assuming that clear borders between science and ethics exist).
My aim will not be to provide a detailed account and analysis of the
impact of Darwinian evolutionary biology on the understanding of non-
human animals and on the moral reflection on them. Rather I will focus
on one aspect of such impact. I will analyze how Darwinian revolution
produced a novel science in the framework of contemporary biology,
which is the scientific study of behavior or ethology (a more precise
definition will be provided later on). More precisely I will claim that the
birth of ethology may represent a “change of paradigm” in the scientific
understanding of animals affecting moral beliefs and practices. In a
nutshell, my claim is that the birth of ethology and its ongoing
development and flourishing represent a crucial part of that process of
transformation of the human/animal relationship ignited by Charles
Darwin’s revolutionary work. Such a process is still in progress and it
continues to be fueled by ethological research (mostly by study of non-
human cognition—as I will claim at the end of this work).
From a methodological point of view, I want to stress that my aim is
not a historical reconstruction of the birth and development of ethology
within the framework of life sciences and evolutionary biology.
Remarks from the history of science will be functional to the theoretical
argument but they shall not be understood as part of an effort to write
a chapter in the history of science. The aim of this chapter is rather to
elaborate a theoretical argument about the role and function of the
scientific study of behavior both in theoretical reflection (mostly about
ethics) and in ordinary human life (mostly in ordinary moral beliefs). In
a sense, what will follow should be understood as a contribution to a
“philosophy of ethology.” At present, such a definition seems to be
rarely used and when it is employed it seems mostly in reference to
philosophical discourses about “animality” spelled with the voice of
continental and hermeneutical philosophical tradition (Chrulew 2014).
On the contrary, my use of “philosophical ethology” must be
understood as embedded into the domain of the philosophy of biology
within the framework of philosophy in analytical tradition and style. In
this sense, philosophical ethology must be regarded as a part of
philosophy of biology rather than a self-standing and autonomous
domain of enquiry.

2 Humans and Animals: A Short History of

Everything
I anticipated that my aim would be to show the role of ethology as a
change of paradigm in the understanding of animals capable of
affecting and transforming actual relationships humans have with non-
human animals. In order to pursue such scope, a preliminary
recognition of how human beings understood animals before Darwin’s
revolution and the rise of ethology is required. It seems evident that
such a task cannot be analytically performed here. A detailed and
complete account of human understanding of animals before Darwin is
such a wide and articulated topic that it could not even be fully
addressed in a book. What can be done here is to highlight some key
ideas that have commonly characterized the human understanding of
animals in Western culture and civilization. More precisely these ideas
are some of those that have been deeply challenged by ethology and
whose questioning leaves room for change and transformation of
human/animal relationships. Before presenting those ideas three
general premises about human/animal relationships and the human
understanding of animals are required.
 When talking of human relationships with animals at least three
general premises have to be made. These premises help to set the
general framework for discussion and to avoid some common mistakes
that are usually made when talking about human/animal relationships
(not only in ordinary discourse and public debate, but also in more
refined theoretical discussion). The first premise regards the very
nature of the second term implied in the locution “human/animal
relationships,” that is “animal.” Animals are the organisms belonging to
the biological kingdom Animalia. About one million and a half currently
living animal species belong to that kingdom and an unknown number
of yet to be discovered and classified belong to it also (the total number
of species is a hard matter of scientific controversy: Mora et al. 2011).
“Animal” in “human/animal relationships” refers to such a huge
number of species (minus the Homo sapiens, that of course is also part
of the Animalia). This clarification is required as a premise in order to
keep in mind that talking of “animals” in theoretical analysis is always a
tremendous oversimplification. This oversimplification can be justified
and required to perform a general analysis like the one that will be
provided here, but the need to precisely identify the exact species
involved (or taxa or other appropriate taxonomic categories) should
never be forgotten when discussing specific contexts of human/animal
interaction. When labelling the enormous and astonishing variety of
organisms included in the kingdom Animalia as “animals” it should
never be forgotten that when we talk of “animals” we are talking of
forms of life that can be dramatically different among them regarding
their specific features, both behavioral and ecological.
Indeed, the specific contexts of human/animal interactions are the
topic of the second premises. “Animals” comprise a huge number of
living and different living organisms and, in a similar manner,
“relationships” include many different kinds of interactions humans
entertain with animals. Factory farming and lab experiments are the
most evident uses of animals by human beings (and the most debated
both in society and animal ethics), but many other types of interaction
happen and they can be of very different natures. Some of them can be
hardly recognized but they take place and affect a huge number of
animals (often jeopardizing their welfare and chances of survival) as in
the case of all human actions impacting ecosystems. Therefore, another
oversimplification has to be accepted but at the same time kept under
strict control: “relationships” can include very different kinds of
interactions (that is different scopes, various human attitudes, and
different outcomes for animals). What must never be forgotten is the
fact that all those different relationships are deeply intertwined with
past and present human forms of life and their evolution, both
biologically and culturally. For example, domesticating animals and
using them for food and work have represented—together with
agriculture—the turning point in human evolution leading the Homo
sapiens to the evolutionary “success” and the civilization we live in
(Diamond 1997). Therefore, any attempt to give detailed accounts of
human/animal relationships means describing the human form of life,
since animals (and relationships with them) are everywhere (Herzog
2010; Pollo 2016). Also, for the very same reason, efforts to transform
the real-world different types of human/animal relationships (i.e., the
use of animal for food) are characterized by the peculiar difficulty of
dealing with habits and practices so deeply embedded in human life. Of
course, this not a reason to drop such efforts if they are morally
justified (as a matter of fact a key feature of moral reflection is the
critique of tradition), but as something that has to be necessarily taken
into account in order to produce moral reflections (and calls to action)
compatible with real life and therefore likely to really produce some
effects and changes in real life.
The third and final premise regards human attitudes toward
animals and aims at debunking a commonplace about those attitudes. A
widespread idea (not just in ordinary opinions but also in theoretical
analyses) is the belief that before Charles Darwin the most common
view about animals (endorsed almost universally) was akin to the one
philosophically elaborated by Descartes, who regarded all animals as
soulless machines whose behaviors are just the outcome of finely
designed mechanisms (just like clocks). Reserving the soul just for
human beings Descartes drew an impassable border between animals
and humans (an ontological border whose moral consequence is the
limitation of any moral consideration just to humans) (Harrison 1992).
Descartes’ philosophical view about this border is the most well-known
and influential elaboration of the creationist view represented in the
biblical tale of the creation of the world and its living inhabitants.
Notwithstanding the deeply pervasive influence of Judeo-Christian
thought on Western culture, regarding that view as universally
accepted and endorsed seems to be a mistake. On one side, many
philosophers and scientists argued in favor of continuationist views
and, on the other side, in ordinary life, human beings interacted with
animals attributing them mental states such as intention and emotions.
This does not mean that the biblical/cartesian creationist view has not
been influential (and it continues to be so nowadays), since animals
have been mostly universally regarded as available means for human
purposes (Steiner 2005). Nonetheless, in real-life interactions (and
seldom in science and philosophy) animals were often regarded not as
mindless machines but as living beings with features analogous to
humans. In a sense, folk psychology anticipated cognitive ethology and
comparative psychology (Shipman 2011).

3 Ethology, Philosophy, and the Darwinian

Paradigm
Apparently, the last of the three premises I set out in the previous
paragraph seems to undermine the claim that represents the backbone
of this chapter, that is, the idea that Darwinian science of behavior
represents a paradigm shift in understanding animals. To clarify this
point I must specify what “paradigm shift” means here. As it is well-
known, the expression “paradigm shift” was introduced by Thomas
Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolution—one of the most
important contributions to twentieth-century epistemology and
philosophy of science (Kuhn 2012). Here I do not mean to endorse
Kuhn’s theory as a whole and to adopt his conceptual apparatus to
support my view. I use the notion of “paradigm shift” here just to stress
the incommensurability (another Kuhnian idea embedded in the
concept of “paradigm shift”) of pre-Darwinian biology with Darwinian
biology. For example, whereas teleology could make sense in biology
ante Darwin, it no longer has room in Darwinian evolutionary biology.
In the present context the incommensurability of ante Darwin biology
with the post one means that the Darwinian and ethological
understanding of animals relies upon scientific and theoretical grounds
that make such understanding discontinuous with respect to former
ideas and concepts. Furthermore, it allows the use of new concepts for
describing and understanding animals. Such concepts were not
commonly used before Darwin and ethology, or they were poorly and
improperly used.
Before trying to show the paradigm shift ethology produced in
understanding animals, some remarks must be made on the connection
between Darwin’s work and the scientific study of animal behavior. As
anticipated, my aim here is not to provide a historical reconstruction,
and therefore the following remarks could appear incomplete.
Nonetheless, my scope is just providing some key points about the
collocation of ethology within the framework of Darwinian
evolutionary biology. The first point that must be highlighted is the
novelty of ethology and its structural connection with the key ideas of
Darwinian theory and its subsequent developments. Of course, animal
behavior has always raised the interest and curiosity of human beings
and, therefore, one could legitimately ask whether it would be possible
to locate the birth of ethology before Darwin. This is an open question
for historians of science and here I just adhere to the view that warns
against the abuse of modern and contemporary definitions and labels
for research programs from the past. In a sense, for example, Aristotle
could be defined as the first ethologist because of his wide and
absolutely innovative scientific study of animals. Nonetheless, that
definition and calling his studies on animal life “ethology” (or
“biology”) appear to be mistakes. Ethology, like other modern and
contemporary fields of scientific enquiry, makes sense only within the
framework of modern biology (Cunningham 1999). This idea is well
expressed by Konrad Lorenz in his The Foundations of Ethology:

Ethology, the comparative study of behavior, is easy to define: it

is the discipline which applies to the behavior of animals and
humans all those questions asked and those methodologies used
as a matter of course in all the other branches of biology since
Charles Darwin’s time. (Lorenz 1981, p. 1)

The role of Darwin for the foundations of ethology is crucial, and

this role is not just limited to his theory, but also to the scientific
methods he employed to elaborate that revolutionary theory
(Burkhardt 2005). Stressing the necessary and essential role of
Darwin’s theory for the birth and the development of ethology allows to
the paradigm switch that this new young scientific discipline produces
in the understanding of animals to be fully recognized.
Darwin’s theory is the essential framework within which ethology
rose and continues to flourish, but at its very origins, different methods
and fields of inquiry can be found. As a matter of fact, another open
historiographical question regards the other cultural and scientific
sources constituting the basis upon which ethology has been built.
Today, ethology can be regarded at least as the outcome of the
hybridization of the classic study of behavior (Lorenz and Tinbergen)
and comparative psychology (and this hybridization is evident when
one looks at some methodological flaws caused by the influence of
comparative psychology: De Waal 2016). Putting aside these questions,
with “ethology” (or “scientific study of behavior”) I am referring to that
field of research organized around the classic four questions of
Tinbergen (Tinbergen 1963) plus the fifth introduced by Burghardt in
order to recognize animal minds among the legitimate topics of
ethology (Burghardt 1997, 2009).
Darwin’s heritage for ethology can particularly be appreciated by
looking at two of his fundamental works: The Descent of Man and The
Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. In both of them we can
recognize many of the key ideas that will flow into the research
program of ethology and its practice. One of these ideas is the
continuity of human behavior and non-human behavior. Biological
mechanisms underlying human and animal behaviors are the same.
Different capacities among animals (humans included) cannot be
regarded as substantial differences, but merely differences of degree of
analogous (or homologous) capacities and the outcome of different
evolutionary stories. Behaviors of humans and animals share the same
biological mechanisms and they are the product of evolutionary
histories. This well-known paragraph from The Descent of Man
perfectly summarizes those two ideas:

The following proposition seems to me in a high degree

probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with
well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral
 sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had
become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in
man. (Darwin 1981, pp. 71–2)
Human/animal continuationism and historicity also characterize
the capacity that has always been regarded as the most peculiar and
unique to humans: moral faculty. Human moral behavior has biological
causes and is a product of evolution like any other behavior of any
other animal. These ideas elaborated and developed by Charles Darwin
are the theoretical core of ethology and they represent key features of
that paradigm shift. More specifically, I will try to show how that
paradigm shift is evident in a new understanding of the concept of
agency both for humans and animals. In a nutshell, my idea is that
ethology dramatically contributed to the revision and advancement of
the notion of agency, making some interpretation of this notion
obsolete and unavailable. Here, a detailed analysis of the main
approaches and theories of agency is not possible (for a map see
Schlosser 2019). The task that can be pursued here is sketching some
ideas that, emerging from ethology, affect (or maybe should affect) the
notion of agency and its analysis. Such influence is what produces that
paradigm shift, and renders some notions of agency, and ideas
connected to such notions, no longer available.
First of all, a clarification of the reasons for linking ethology to the
scientific study and the philosophical analysis is required. These
reasons could be self-evident, but a brief remark could be useful
anyway. Traditionally, agency is defined as the capacity to initiate an
action, and action is defined as something that originates from the
subject. In general, an observer could consider a movement of my arm
an action if I am trying to grab a cup of coffee. The same observer, on
the contrary, could not regard another movement of an arm as an action
if it had been produced by an involuntary collision with an inattentive
passerby. In the first case, the movement is defined “active,” whereas
the second seems to be clearly “passive”. Ethological research aims at
scientifically understanding behaviors that are events that, at least
prima facie, appear to observers as actions or part of actions. Behaviors
are originated by the behaving organism and therefore they are actions.
Of course, some philosophical approaches to action and agency could
identify this conclusion as erroneous. Maybe we should have a theory of
action before labelling something as an action. Maybe by scratching on
the terrace door to let me know that he wants to go outside (and
looking at the street barking at passing dogs and howling at ambulance
sirens) my dog is not really acting; maybe he just behaves that way
because he is a finely programmed mechanism, as Descartes believed.
That kind of objection is no longer tenable from a naturalistic
approach to philosophical problems, especially after Darwin and within
the framework of Darwinian evolutionary biology. In brief, according to
a naturalized Darwinian approach to philosophical problems, concepts
and definition come after empirical observation, and they do not
precede experience, and are superimposed to it (for a presentation of
philosophical naturalism: Papineau 2020). Therefore, in other terms,
from a naturalized point of view, we should look at behavior to
elaborate a notion of agency, and not look for agency in behaviors. This
is a first aspect of the paradigm shift triggered by Darwin’s theory and
ethology (and in general by evolutionary biology as a whole): a solid
methodology embedded in a solid theoretical framework allows the
production of explanations of all the features of living beings (humans
included) recurring just in the empirical realm and from the bottom.
Obviously we can debate what “naturalism” precisely means and how it
should be “applied” in philosophy (De Caro 2004), but after Darwin,
non-naturalized philosophical analyses appear to be completely out of
date. This is another face of the paradigm shift caused by Darwin’s
theory: naturalism was the preferable option before evolutionary
theory also, but there was still room for some kind of non-naturalized
hypothesis (think, for example, about teleological explanations of life:
without Darwin’s explanation, intelligent design was still a viable
option, even if vulnerable to profound criticism: Hume 1990). After
Darwin, naturalism, variously declined, is the only acceptable option for
philosophical analysis (Dennett 1995).

4 Animal Agency
From a naturalistic perspective rooted in contemporary biology,
according the status of agents to “persons”, mostly identified with
human beings, seems to no longer be a tenable view (Frankfurt 1971).
In general, if we recognize the presence of agency in human beings (at
least some human beings) then we should consider its presence (even
in different degrees) more likely in other animals, rather than its
absence. This kind of reasoning is the consequence of logic imposed by
Darwinian naturalism. The same logic also forces us to reconsider and
reframe the issue of intentionality and, in general, particular mental
states connected to agency and required by it. Identifying a particular
meaning of intentionality or some specific mental state (i.e., a particular
type of belief) to define what agency is appears to be a top-down
approach that is excluded by a bottom-up naturalistic methodology. A
more promising approach consists in sticking to the idea that agency is
basically met when something (or someone) initiates a course of action
by herself/himself/itself. According to this view, humans and animals
(the most part or maybe all of them) are capable of agency. For the
present purposes the question whether plants or artificial entities can
be agents is left aside.
Humans and animals are capable of agency and ethology provides
insights into its features. Clear consequences for the understanding of
human agency are derived from its Darwinian and ethological
understanding. The first has already been mentioned, and regards the
loss of uniqueness and specialness for human beings. Humans share the
capacities for agency (like emotions and thoughts—as we will see later
on) with other animals and, like animals, their agency is explained by
the Darwinian understanding of life. In particular, placing human
behavior within the frame of ethology requires the acknowledgement
that human behavior (and therefore agency) is also a product of
evolution, and can be explained by means of evolutionary forces.
Human behavior is not the product of a pure free will, nor is it just the
outcome of cultural development. Famously, sociobiology expanded its
aims to also understand human behavior, and this fact raised a huge
amount of controversy (Segerstrå le 2000). Beside this controversy, it is
without doubt that human behavior and agency are regulated by the
same mechanism explaining animals’ behavior. This fact does not
necessarily entail a reductionist account of human agency, but places
human and animal agencies on a continuum.
On one side, the evolutionary explanation abolishes the border
between humans and animals, and on the other side, ethology explains
the mechanism of agency and behavior of animals (and of humans). The
result is (or should be) the recognition of the agentive nature of
animals, and the fact that such nature is not categorically (or even
ontologically) different from the agentive nature of humans. From
ethological research we can affirm the nature of animals as agents and
understand how such agency works. A biologically informed concept of
agency joins human and animals and produces the paradigm shift. We
can appreciate the complexity of human behaviors and at the same time
recognize that animal behaviors are not ontologically separated from
that of humans. Consequences of this paradigm shift for the
understanding of human life are various and profound (and of course,
the consequences for moral ideas and beliefs too), but these
consequences are not the subject matter here (a good place to start
exploring the matter: Ruse 1986; Dennett 1995). The issue at stake
here is how humans understand animals.
The basic notion of agency and the Darwinian ethological
explanation lead to the recognition of animals as agents not
categorically different from humans. Nonetheless, the categorical
difference could be restored through adopting a not-so-basic and more
engaging notion of agency. Defining agency in terms of certain mental
states could reintroduce the barrier abolished by the basic concept. As
a matter of fact, in this case the development of ethological research
also provides evidence and arguments to dissolve the border. As it is
well-known, at its very beginning, ethology (in particular in Tinbergen’s
approach: Burkhardt 2005) excluded the mental states of animals from
its research programs. The reason of this exclusion was not personal
skepticism of ethologists toward the existence of animal minds, but
scientific skepticism of the possibility of making animal minds a proper
subject of scientific enquiry. Indeed, the initial suspicion of ethology
about the possibility of scientifically and rigorously investigating the
mental capacities of animals and their link with behaviors gradually
faded away. The founding of “cognitive ethology” by Donald Griffin
(Griffin 1976) adds a fifth question to Tinbergen’s classic four, and
enlarges the agenda of ethological research to animal minds. The fifth
question—already mentioned above—has been formulated by
Burghardt, and it substantially refers to the inquiry into the “private
experience” of animals; that is, their mental life (Burghardt 1997).
 Here there is no room to give even a brief account of the massive
and insightful achievements gained by cognitive ethology. A closer and
detailed look at cognitive ethology research would also show how a
more demanding and mentally focused concept of agency would be met
by a huge variety of animals (also by those commonly thought to be
driven by just automatic instincts, such as invertebrates, and not just
the smart cephalopods: Klein and Barron 2016; Godfrey-Smith 2016).
In general, cognitive ethology research testifies the diverse and
sophisticated capacities of animals to plan behaviors and to flexibly
adapt to social and environmental stimuli, meeting the criteria of
more articulated versions of the concept of agency. Cognitive capacities
of animals are sustained and accompanied by rich emotional lives, as
Darwin already clearly recognized and analytically studied.
Sophisticated emotional and cognitive capacities sustain the complex
and rich social lives of animals (and certainly those of social mammals).
The study of animals’ social lives reveals the agentive character of
members of many animal species: how could those sophisticated forms
of sociality be explained without acknowledging the capacity for agency
of the animals engaged in them? From cognitive ethological research
dealing with animals’ social lives, another important fact emerges: just
like humans animals have personality traits (and the methodology for
assessing them is substantially the same in both cases) (Carere and
Maestripieri 2013).
The recognition of personality in animals by means of ethological
studies strengthens the claim that animals are full-fledged agents.
Besides formal philosophical definitions, the concept of agency as it is
commonly understood in ordinary life seems to embed the idea that
agency corresponds also to a style of behaving and experiencing the
world. We recognize agency not just because of some basic features
characterizing behavior and its causes, but also because agents are
different among themselves, and we can differentiate one from another
through the different ways they act.

5 Beyond Sentience: Agency and Animals’ Moral

Status
Part of the general paradigm shift produced by Darwin’s theory and
Darwinian evolutionary biology consists in the new understanding of
animals as agents. As I have anticipated, this is a paradigm shift not
because humans consistently denied animal agency before Darwin’s
revolution. It is a paradigm shift because, thanks to evolutionary
biology and, in particular, to ethology, we must accept the idea that
there is just one kind of agency within Animalia, and humans do not
substantially differ from other animals in this respect. In conclusion, I
want to articulate a reflection about the consequence of such
understanding for our moral reflection on animals’ moral status and
human responsibilities toward them. The idea is that a full and
widespread understanding of animals as agents could promote further
transformations in human/animal relationships across the various
contexts within which they take place.
The turn in the philosophical and public debates on the treatment of
animals took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. On one
side, philosophers started to consistently regard animal capacities in
continuity with human ones. For example, even if he did not draw any
moral consequence, David Hume, in his Treatise of Human Nature,
affirmed that the very same passions at the core of human nature are
shared by animals. Furthermore, he also recognized that sympathy is a
principle operating in both humans and animals, which makes
communication of sentiments across the species barrier possible. Fifty
years later, in 1789 Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism,
made one of the statements that properly started the modern and
contemporary philosophical ethics debate on animals, in his Principles
of moral legislation. Bentham wrote: “The question is not Can they
reason? Nor, Can they talk? But Can they suffer?” (Bentham 2007). The
capacity of feeling pain and pleasure was identified by Bentham as the
criterion to have moral status independently from species membership.
The recognition of the relevance of suffering for moral
consideration is a key idea of the transformation of morality and law
that was ignited by Enlightenment. As a matter of fact, the
Enlightenment, commonly understood as the “age of reason,” also
produced that transformation, stressing the importance of the
emotional and sentimental life of individuals (Frazer 2010). That
change in the understanding of morality produced the recognition of
individual rights and inspired reforms such as the abolition of slavery
(Hunt 2007). Improvement of the treatment of animals became a topic
of public debate, and reforms of human/animal relationships were
demanded on the same grounds; that is, the growing repugnance for
suffering, also that experienced by animals (Ryder 2000a). Concern for
animal suffering led to the birth of the first protectionist movements
and bills against animal abuse (the United Kingdom pioneered in both
cases with the foundation of the SPCA, now the RSPCA, and the
promulgation of the Martin Act: Ryder 2000a).
In the nineteenth century, in parallel with the growing recognition
of the moral importance of animal suffering, Charles Darwin was
working on his theory. Especially in the second half of the twentieth
century, the appreciation of the moral significance of suffering and
Darwin’s theory finally met. The outcome of that meeting was the
founding idea of contemporary animal ethics: speciesism. Richard Ryder
used this word to label the moral prejudice of discriminating animals
because of their being members of species other than that of Homo
sapiens. To quote the opening statement of the leaflet written by R.
Ryder and introducing the concept of speciesism, that concept was
made possible because “Since Darwin, scientists have agreed that there
is no magical essential difference between human and other animals,
biologically-speaking” (Ryder 2000b). In the wake of Ryder, in Animal
Liberation (Singer 1975) firstly, and in Practical Ethics later (Singer
1979), Peter Singer elaborated the most articulated and influential
ethical theory to grant animal suffering equal consideration on the
basis of an antispeciesist stance. Singer’s theory is the most evident
display of the conjunction of the moral rebuttal of suffering and
Darwin’s view about the continuity between humans and animals, but
it can be said that, in general, contemporary concern for animals’ moral
status is mostly rooted in the same recognition of both of the moral
disvalue of suffering and of the untenability of a strong barrier between
human and non-human suffering.
The widespread importance of the notion of “sentience” as a moral
compass to guide the promotion and enforcement of forms of animal
protection and for the improvement of their welfare in different
contexts (farm, lab, companionships, etc.) is proof of the fact that the
recognition of the value of animal suffering is a part of our societies
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 A B 1, nous pouvons rattacher tout un côté des œuvres classées
en A 1 de la XXVIIe.
Est-il besoin que je fasse remarquer le petit nombre, mais la
terrible beauté des œuvres ci-dessus ? Est-il nécessaire d’indiquer
les variétés infinies du remords, selon : 1o la faute commise (pour
ce, énumérer tous les délits et crimes selon le code, — plus ceux-là
qui ne tombent pas sous le coup d’une loi ; la faute, d’ailleurs, sera,
à volonté, réelle, imaginaire, non voulue mais accomplie, voulue
mais non accomplie, — ce qui réserve le « dénouement heureux »,
— voulue et accomplie, préméditée ou non, avec ou sans complicité,
impulsions étrangères, raffinement, que sais-je !) ; 2o la nature plus
ou moins impressionnable et nerveuse du coupable ; 3o le milieu, les
circonstances, les mœurs qui préparent l’apparition du remords
(forme plastique, solide et religieuse chez les Grecs ; fantasmagories
énervantes de notre moyen-âge ; craintes pieuses pour l’autre vie,
dans les siècles récents ; déséquilibre logique des instincts sociaux
et par suite de la pensée, selon les indications de Zola, etc.).
Au Remords tient l’Idée fixe ; par sa tentation permanente, elle
rappelle d’autre part la Folie ou la Passion criminelle, et n’est, très
souvent, que le remords d’un désir, remords d’autant plus vivace
que le désir renaît sans cesse et l’alimente, s’y mêle et, grandissant
comme une sorte de cancer moral, pompe la vitalité entière d’une
âme, peu à peu, jusqu’au suicide, lequel n’est, presque toujours, que
le plus désespéré des duels. René, Werther, le maniaque du Cœur
révélateur et de Bérénice (celle d’Edgar Poe, j’entends) et surtout le
Rosmersholm d’Ibsen, en sont des portraits significatifs.
 XXXV e SITUATION
Retrouver

(Le Retrouvé — Le Retrouvant)

C’est le Héros et la Nymphe de Kalidaça, la seconde partie de sa

Çakountala, et la Suite de l’histoire de Rama, par Bhavabouti, la
seconde partie aussi du Conte d’hiver et du Périclès de
Shakespeare ; c’était Thyeste à Sicyone, de Sophocle, et Alcméon à
Corinthe, d’Euripide ; c’est, encore, le dénouement du Père
Chasselas (M. Athis, 1886) et des Foulards rouges (M. Dornay,
1882) ; et c’est la Gardienne d’Henri de Régnier ; c’est la légendaire
intrigue des « voleuses d’enfants », et « histoires d’enfants trouvés »
et « séquestrations arbitraires », depuis le Masque de fer (sur lequel
Victor Hugo commença un drame, Les Jumeaux), depuis Richard
Cœur-de-Lion, jusqu’aux histoires récentes de prétendus fous
internés comme tels, et c’est de là qu’est partie tant de fois la double
explosion de la scène capitale et capiteuse : « Ma fille ! — Ma
mère ! »
A et C de la XIe ont aussi pour but de « Retrouver ».
D’autres fois il appartiendra à l’enfant, bel aventurier, de
découvrir son père, son parent, et de s’en faire reconnaître : ainsi
dans les « enfances Roland ».
 J’attribue à la solution invariablement heureuse et épithalamique
de nos drames édifiés sur cette Situation, et aux coïncidences dont
elle se saupoudrait trop généreusement, le dégoût qui finit par en
prendre le public. Car n’est-elle pas, au contraire, plus que la XIXe,
restée naturelle ? or, quelle n’a pas été la fécondité de cette XIXe,
dont notre XXXVe conserve cependant tout le charme et la variété
séductrice ?
 XXXVI e SITUATION
Perdre les siens

(Le Proche frappé — Le Proche spectateur — Le Bourreau)

Voici le Deuil. En longues files d’enterrements, vous les voyez

passer, les héros de cette donnée, venus sur terre pour l’y figurer
puisqu’ils sont hommes ; ils vont de la maison noire à la formidable
église et de là au cimetière, puis retournent au foyer pleurer… en
attendant de repartir pour un autre d’entre eux. C’est la majesté de
ce sublime tombeau de Philippe Pot, que nous avons au Louvre et
qui égale la statuaire grecque.
A — Impuissant, voir tuer ses enfants : — Niobé et Troïlus
d’Eschyle, Polyxène et Les Captives de Sophocle, une partie de son
Laocoon, Les Troyennes d’Euripide et de Sénèque. Autant de
réductions, sous une image saisissante, de notre vie : n’assistons-
nous pas, liés à un invisible poteau, à l’assassinat, à la torture des
nôtres par le bourreau qui nous domine ?
B — Deviner la mort d’un proche : — L’Intruse, les Sept
Princesses de Maeterlinck, le seul maître moderne de la XXXVIe et,
voyez, si puissant.
C — Apprendre la mort d’un allié : — partie du Rhésus
attribué à Euripide, Penthésilée, la Psychostase et la Mort d’Achille,
par Eschyle ; les Éthiopiens de Sophocle. Ici s’ajoute le difficile rôle
du messager de malheur, celui qui se courbe sous les imprécations
de Cléopâtre, dans Shakespeare.
Mais, incarnez dans une figure de tortionnaire le meurtre, abstrait
dans la plupart de ces exemples. A l’impuissance attaché, regardez
alors se débattre le malheureux rendu spectateur de l’agonie, et
implorer, et appeler, follement, dans le ciel ! La Victime, pendant ce
temps, réduite à rien, prie humblement, comme s’il y pouvait, celui
qui la voit et qui se désespère ! La haute et ricanante silhouette du
Bourreau assiste, et il affine et exaspère les douleurs, avec
dilettantisme…
Le Dante n’a rien su imaginer qui fût plus âpre en les cercles de
l’Enfer !
 Pour obtenir les nuances des 36 Situations, j’ai eu recours à des
procédés à peu près constants : par exemple, j’énumérais les liens,
sociaux ou de parenté, possibles entre les personnages ; ou bien, je
déterminais, pour ceux-ci, leur degré de conscience, de volonté libre
et de connaissance du but réel où ils vont. Et l’on a vu que, lorsqu’on
voulait altérer la clairvoyance normale dans l’un des deux
adversaires, il fallait principalement le remplacer par deux rôles, le
premier devenant l’aveugle instrument du second, élevé du même
coup jusqu’à une subtilité machiavélique, tant sa part d’action se
faisait, au contraire, purement intellectuelle ; de sorte que, diminuée
à l’excès chez l’un, la vision nette des choses s’augmentait en
proportion chez l’autre. — Un nouvel élément à modifier toutes les
situations est l’énergie des actes qui doivent en résulter : soit le
meurtre ; il se réduira à une blessure, un coup, une tentative, un
outrage, une intimidation, une menace, une parole trop vive, une
intention non suivie d’effet, une tentation, une pensée, un souhait, ou
à un droit lésé, à la destruction d’un objet chéri, à un refus de
secours, un manque de pitié, un abandon, un mensonge. Si l’on
veut, ce meurtre (de même, pour ses diminutifs) n’aura pas visé
l’objet de la haine en personne, mais un être qui soit aimé de celui-
ci. Ce meurtre, enfin, pourra être multiple et aggravé des
circonstances que la législation a prévues. — Troisième méthode
pour varier les données : à celui-ci ou à celui-là des deux
adversaires dont la lutte constitue notre drame, on substituera une
pluralité qu’un seul désir animera, mais dont chaque membre
rétractera ce désir sous un de ses divers jours. — Il n’est pas non
plus (je l’ai déjà laissé voir) de Situation qui ne soit susceptible d’être
combinée avec n’importe laquelle de ses voisines, que dis-je ? avec
deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six d’entre elles, et davantage ! Or, ces
combinaisons se feront de bien des sortes : 1er cas, les Situations se
développent successivement et logiquement l’une de l’autre ; 2e cas,
elles se disposent en un dilemme, au milieu duquel trébuche le
héros éperdu ; 3e cas, chacune appartient à un rôle ou groupe
spécial ; puis 4e, 5e, 6e cas, etc., elles sont représentées selon 2 ou
selon les 3 cas déjà énoncés à la fois : c’est-à-dire qu’une Situation
va, je suppose, englober d’abord les personnages ; ensemble, ils
s’en évadent ; — mais la plupart tombent, de là, dans quelque
position non moins critique, et tel même n’a plus qu’à opter entre
deux conduites également pénibles ; après des courses affolées
entre cette Charybde et cette Scylla, l’élan par lequel il leur échappe
le précipite, et, avec lui, le reste des acteurs, dans une suprême
Situation, sourdie des précédentes et qui, jaillie, les emporte en une
gerbe finale !… Bien entendu, ceci n’est qu’une combinaison entre
mille ; car je ne veux ni ne puis exposer à présent le système
complet qui continue cette étude des 36 Situations et au moyen
duquel je les fais se multiplier sans fin : c’est l’affaire d’un travail à
publier séparément, sur les lois de l’Invention littéraire.
A son tour, la Composition, — qui consiste à ordonner ces
Situations une fois précisées et, du même coup, les épisodes et les
figures mises en scène, — se déduira, d’une manière enfin un peu
neuve et sérieuse, de la même théorie des « Trente-Six ».
Considérant en effet que toute Situation dramatique naît d’un conflit
entre deux directions principales d’efforts (d’où, simultanément,
notre terreur devant la victorieuse et notre pitié pour la vaincue),
nous aurons, dès le lever du rideau, à choisir entre deux débuts : il
nous faudra décider lequel des deux adversaires préexiste, ce qui
nous amène infailliblement à faire du second la cause (innocente ou
responsable) du drame, puisque c’est son arrivée qui sera le signal
de la lutte ; le premier, qui s’offre surtout à notre observation, est le
Protagoniste qu’on trouvait déjà dans la tragédie toute lyrique,
descriptive et analytique de Thespis ; le second, l’obstacle survenu
ou rencontré, c’est l’Antagoniste, ce principe de l’action que nous
devons au génie objectif et homérique d’Eschyle [8] . Nous
imposerons donc à l’œuvre entière deux couleurs bien opposées,
selon que, dès le commencement, nous aurons attribué à celui-ci ou
à celui-là des partis la puissance la plus grande, les chances de
victoires les plus sérieuses.
[8] C’est du moins comment je m’explique le fameux
passage de La Poétique attribuant à Eschyle
l’introduction d’un deuxième personnage et à Sophocle
celle d’un troisième, alors que dans Eschyle et même
dans ses prédécesseurs un bien plus grand nombre
d’acteurs se montrent rassemblés. Évidemment, Aristote
compte pour un seul personnage les rôles, si nombreux
soient-ils, qui suivent une direction parallèle d’efforts ; et
pour lui, l’introduction du 2e personnage signifie la
représentation, également intéressante, de 2 individus ou
groupes adverses : ainsi, dans La Débâcle, où Zola a
peint une armée, un pays, notre philosophe n’aurait
discerné qu’un seul personnage et aurait vainement
cherché du second une ébauche, même aussi pâle que
celle apparaissant au travers du fantôme dans l’action,
encore archaïque, des Perses.

Aristote déjà nous apprit à distinguer entre la tragédie simple (où

la supériorité demeure du même côté jusqu’au bout, où, par
conséquent, il n’y a point de péripétie, de surprise) et la tragédie
implexe (tragédie à surprise, à péripétie), où cette supériorité passe
d’un camp dans l’autre. Les dramaturges ont, depuis, raffiné sur la
dernière : dans celles de leurs pièces dont l’action est peu
compliquée, ils doublent la péripétie, ce qui fait revenir
ingénieusement, à l’instant précédant le départ du spectateur, les
deux puissances en l’état exact où elles se trouvaient quand il entra
dans la salle ; dans leurs drames à action compliquée, ils triplent,
quadruplent, quintuplent la péripétie aussi longtemps que le leur
permettent leur imaginative et la patience d’un public débonnaire.
Ces vicissitudes de la lutte, voilà donc le premier moyen de varier un
sujet. Cela ne va pas, du reste, très loin, puisque nous ne pouvons,
avec la naïveté la plus extrême, recevoir, du drame ou de la vie, que
1.332 surprises. — 1.332 ? — Évidemment ; qu’est-ce qu’une
surprise un peu vive, sinon le passage d’un état de calme à une
Situation dramatique ou bien d’une Situation à une autre, ou à un
nouvel état de calme ? Faites la multiplication ; résultat : 1.332.
Demandons-nous à présent d’où proviennent ces vicissitudes et
ces inattendus déplacements de l’équilibre ? De quelque influence
apparemment, — influence partie d’un objet matériel, d’une
circonstance ou d’un troisième personnage. Sur ce Tiers Acteur, —
dont l’inauguration fut jadis le triomphe sophocléen — devait reposer
ce qu’on nomme l’intrigue ; à lui seul, il est l’imprévu, l’idéal convoité
des deux parts et le « milieu ambiant » ; fantastiquement, il s’est
morcelé et multiplié, par deux, par trois, par dix, par plus encore,
jusqu’à encombrer la scène, mais c’est toujours lui, le si
reconnaissable ; tels de ses fragments se sont faits « Impulseurs »,
tels « Objets disputés », tels « Instrumentaux », et ils se sont rangés,
qui du côté du Protagoniste, qui devers l’Antagoniste, ou bien,
courant çà et là, ils provoquaient cette « chute incessamment
évitée » qui s’appelle, pour les événements comme pour l’homme, la
marche ; et de la sorte, clairement ils évoquaient leur origine, — ce
Rôle-Lien (Jocaste des Sept contre Thèbes, Sabine d’Horace) sous
lequel le Tiers Acteur germa dans la tragédie eschylienne, mais sans
prendre encore une part positive à l’action. On concevra que
l’arrivée de ces figures de 2e plan, — renforcées par celles du fond,
Annonciateurs dont l’importance va du Tirésias au Messager de
l’Œdipe-roi, — du prophète au facteur, — Chœurs, Confidents,
Foules, Burlesques, Utilités, voire Figurants, modifie avec une
puissance singulière l’effet d’ensemble ; surtout si l’on réfléchit à
ceci : chacun d’eux, pris à part, a ses motifs pour agir, et le voilà
bientôt, à l’égard de ceux qui l’entourent, dans quelque situation
dramatique subordonnée sans doute à la dominante, mais réelle
néanmoins ; les sursauts de l’action générale l’affectent, lui, d’une
façon spéciale, et les conséquences, pour lui, de chaque péripétie,
de chaque effort, de chaque action et du dénouement, contribuent à
l’impression définitive sur le spectateur. Le Tiers Acteur est-il plus
particulièrement un Objet disputé, il faut tenir compte de son premier
et de son dernier possesseur, des diverses relations qu’il a
successivement avec eux, et de ses préférences. Se présente-t-il
comme Impulseur, il faut alors considérer (outre ses degrés de
conscience ou d’inconscience, de franchise ou de dissimulation, et
de volonté propre) la persévérance qu’il apporte à son œuvre, la
découverte qu’il peut faire, s’il fut inconscient, de son inconscience,
et s’il fut dissimulé celle qu’on fera de sa dissimulation (on, c’est-à-
dire soit un seul ou plusieurs des personnages, soit le spectateur).
Remarques qui s’appliquent aussi au rôle « Instrumental » ; et non
seulement ces remarques, mais celles qui concernaient « l’Objet »,
doivent être faites pour le Rôle-Lien.
J’ai déjà dit que ce dernier et la triple hypostase du Tiers Acteur
peuvent se reproduire à de nombreux exemplaires dans une même
pièce. En revanche, deux ou trois ou les quatre peuvent se fondre
en une seule figure : Lien-Instrumental, Objet-Impulseur, Instrument-
Lien-Objet, etc., combinaisons qui se présentent (telles, plus haut,
les combinaisons de situations) en ordres variables : tantôt le héros
qui réunit en lui ces divers rôles les joue simultanément, soit tous
vis-à-vis d’un individu ou groupe, soit un ou plusieurs de ces rôles
vis-à-vis d’un individu ou groupe et un autre rôle ou mélange de ces
rôles vis-à-vis de tel autre individu ou groupe ; tantôt ces rôles divers
seront successivement joués vis-à-vis du même individu ou groupe,
ou de plusieurs ; tantôt enfin le héros joue ces rôles simultanément
ici et successivement là.
Mais je ne puis ni ne veux, non plus, détailler en ces pages la
seconde partie de l’Art de Combiner, celle que nous nommons en
France, — d’un terme d’ailleurs si faible, l’a remarqué Gœthe, — la
« composition » : le jour où je l’exposerai, j’aurai soin de l’éclairer par
des exemples progressifs, tant historiques (je veux, par là, signifier :
pris à toutes les grandes sources existantes, théâtre, épopée,
roman, histoire, causes célèbres) que techniques, c’est-à-dire
produits, agencés exprès sous les yeux et en la collaboration du
lecteur. Ce que j’ai seulement voulu lui faire pressentir, c’est :
d’abord, qu’un unique travail crée, à la fois, les épisodes, ou actions
des personnages, et les personnages, car ceux-ci ne sont, à la
scène, que ce qu’ils font ; puis, comment invention et composition,
ces deux modes de l’Art de Combiner (et non d’imaginer ! mot
vide…) sortiront, très naturellement, par nos travaux à venir, de la
Théorie des 36 Situations.
Dès maintenant, j’offre (sans ironie aucune, très sérieusement)
aux auteurs dramatiques ainsi qu’à MM. les directeurs de théâtre Dix
Mille scénarios — totalement différents de ceux qui ont été mis à la
rampe, plus ou moins de fois, dans ces cinquante dernières années ;
ces scénarios seront, cela va sans dire, d’un caractère absolument
actuel. Je m’engage à livrer le mille en huit jours. La simple grosse
n’exigera que vingt-quatre heures. On peut faire prix pour une seule
douzaine. Écrire ou s’adresser 19, passage de l’Élysée des Beaux-
Arts, de 5 heures à 9 heures du matin. — Les données sont
détaillées acte par acte, et, au besoin, scène par scène.
… Mais je m’entends accuser, avec violence, de vouloir « détruire
l’imagination ». Phantasmophone ! monstricide ! destructeur de
prodiges !… Ces titres herculéens ne me couvrent d’aucune rougeur.
Une singulière histoire, vraiment, que celle de l’Imagination…
Nul, certes, aux temps classiques, ne s’en eût osé prévaloir. Loin de
là ! à peine avancée, toute nouveauté allait, vite et timidement,
s’appuyer à quelque autorité antique. De 1830 date l’avènement au
trône littéraire de cette « Faculté » charlatanesque et, paraît-il, à
jamais interdite à l’analyse ; les conséquences du nouveau régime
ne tardèrent pas à se montrer, et elles se laissent voir dans leur
délabrement final chez les derniers successeurs du romantisme
romanesque : crime mystérieux, puis erreur judiciaire commise par
l’éternel juge d’instruction au profil en « lame de couteau », suivie de
l’inévitable amour entre les enfants du meurtrier et de la victime ;
dans une chambrette, une délicate et pure ouvrière ; passant par là,
un jeune ingénieur idéalisant la casquette ; le voyou criminel mais
tendre ; deux « fins limiers » de police ; l’épisode de l’enfant volé,
avec voix du sang, und so weit ; et, pour clore, le suicide imposé au
coquin, sans oublier, par derrière, afin de soulager les cœurs
sensibles, au moins un double mariage d’amour, — voilà, bon an
mal an, ce que rapporte l’Imagination. Au reste, de tout le
romantisme dramatique (qui correspond si bien à l’école des
Carrache en peinture), Hugo seul avait créé ; grâce à quoi ? à un
procédé technique, patiemment appliqué dans les moindres
détails : l’antithèse de l’être et du paraître.
Énergiquement, la légende de l’Imagination fut, un instant, battue
en brèche par le positivisme ; il a protesté que cette soi-disant
faculté créatrice n’est que le kaléidoscope de nos souvenirs agités
au hasard. Mais pas assez il n’a insisté sur le résultat inévitablement
banal et monotone de ces agitations, tels de nos souvenirs, les
moins intéressants et les moins personnels précisément, se trouvant
répétés, dans notre cerveau, à mille exemplaires, et revenant sans
merci dans toutes les combinaisons dépourvues de méthode. Il
fallait le crier comme un tocsin : ces souvenirs, qui sont les lectures
innombrables des produits d’imitation de notre passé néo-classique
et romantique, enveloppent et noient jusqu’à l’observation sur nature
que signala, comme élément de rénovation, l’initiative des
Naturalistes ; ceux-ci même ont vu trop souvent la réalité à travers
des souvenirs livresques ; ils comptèrent trop sur l’innéité du
tempérament artistique, si vigoureux soit-il, en espérant qu’il
s’interposerait, seul et purifié de conventions, par un simple effort de
« volonté », entre la nature et l’œuvre à engendrer ; c’est ainsi que la
Bête humaine nous a répété l’erreur judiciaire, sous la forme
spéciale où elle est aussi fréquente dans les lettres qu’elle l’est peu
dans le fait ; c’est ainsi que le point de départ de l’Œuvre ne fut que
le contre-pied de la « thèse » des Goncourt et de Daudet ; c’est ainsi
que des réminiscences de Mme Bovary font dévier, vers elle, des
études de cas analogues, mais qui devraient en demeurer très
distincts ; — et qu’est apparue, dès la seconde génération
naturaliste, une nouvelle école de copie et de traditions.
 Tandis qu’au moyen de l’Art de Combiner, — renfermant le total
« des possibilités », leur encyclopédie et leur table de multiplication,
et formant comme « le traité des proportions de l’Événement », — la
vérité pourra être parcourue avec un regard vainqueur de tous les
fantômes du poncif (enfermés à leurs places respectives dans cette
nomenclature), — avec un regard libre, un regard hellène ! [9]
[9] Car les Grecs, dès une époque reculée, avaient
pris l’habitude de tout systématiser — à l’instar des aïeux
de l’Inde, — conduite que nous tînmes aussi jusqu’au
XIVe siècle. Vers elle nous nous étions instinctivement
retournés, attirés par Aristote, à l’âge classique, avec nos
théoriciens si injustement décriés depuis, si utiles et si
respectés de nos grands dramaturges. En ces jours de la
gloire française, la moindre réflexion poétique n’effarait
pas des paresses superstitieuses.

L’observation, la création, pour chaque écrivain, auront dès lors

un point de départ extérieur au monde du papier, un point de départ
qui leur soit personnel, original enfin, ce qui ne veut pas dire le
moins du monde plus invraisemblable, au contraire, puisque tant de
situations, d’allures aujourd’hui si invraisemblables, se sont
défigurées de la sorte justement aux mains de gens qui, ne sachant
comment faire neuf, compliquaient en s’empêtrant dans leurs
propres écheveaux.
Et surtout, l’invention d’une fable insolite (langage idéaliste), ou la
découverte d’un coin vierge (langage naturaliste) se trouvera
facilitée jusqu’à ne plus avoir aucune valeur. On n’ignore pas quelle
importance eut, dans le perfectionnement de l’art grec, le fait d’être
circonscrit à un petit nombre de légendes (Œdipe, Agamemnon,
Phèdre, etc.), que chaque poète devait à son tour reprendre sans
pouvoir éviter d’être comparé, pas à pas, à chacun de ses
devanciers, de sorte que le moins critique des spectateurs
appréciait, à coup sûr, la part de personnalité et de goût mise à
l’œuvre nouvelle ;… tout au plus cette tradition eut-elle pour
inconvénient de rendre l’originalité plus difficile. Par l’étude des 36
Situations et de ses conséquences, le même avantage s’obtiendra,
sans l’inconvénient signalé. — Et seule, désormais, prendra valeur
la Proportion.
Toutefois, qu’on me comprenne ! Par Proportion, je n’entends
nullement un recueil de formules compassées et rappelant aux
lettrés des souvenirs qui leur sont chers, — mais la mise en bataille,
sous les pieds de l’écrivain, de l’armée infinie des combinaisons
possibles, rangées selon leurs ressemblances, et comprenant le ban
des tentatives faites comme l’arrière-ban des tentatives inosées.
Alors, pour manifester la vérité ou la sensation que lui seul perçut
jusque-là, et encore difficilement, parmi le touffu des phénomènes et
dans des cas peu accentués, l’auteur n’aura qu’à se pencher ; et,
sans se livrer au hasard infructueux d’un vagabondage, par une
rapide revue de ce champ poétique, il élira celle des données et
ceux des détails les plus propres à ses desseins. Or, cette méthode,
ou, si l’on veut, cette liberté et cette puissance, il l’aura, non
seulement dans le choix, la limitation et la fécondation de son sujet,
mais dans son observation, dans sa méditation.
Et il ne courra pas plus de danger de fausser, par des idées
préconçues, la vue du réel que n’en court, par exemple, le peintre
dans l’application de ces lois, générales également et contrôlées de
même par une expérimentation quotidienne, — de ces lois sublimes
de la perspective !
La proportion, réalisable enfin dans le calme donné par la
possession complète de l’art de combiner, et reprenant le rang
suprême usurpé jadis par le simple « bon goût » et naguère par la
charlatanesque mais non moins pauvre « imagination », fera
reconnaître cette… chose un peu oubliée de l’art moderne, le
« beau » : celui-ci n’est pas, à mon sens, un prétendu choix distingué
dans la nature (le Discobole, Aristophane, etc., renversent les
palissades d’un tel parc à moutons) ; je préférerais dire que c’est la
peinture habile, directe, sans tâtonnements, sans que rien demeure
de superflu, d’oiseux ni de secondaire, du « coin de nature » vu.
Mais c’est plus encore.
Car les deux définitions, l’éclectique et la naturaliste, ne
concernent qu’une restreinte partie des arts et qu’un seul de leurs
côtés : ce petit nombre à qui l’imitation est ouverte (peinture,
littérature à personnages, et, à la rigueur, sculpture), et de celles-ci
le côté, encore, purement imitatif. Que signifient en effet nos deux
définitions (qui, l’une comme l’autre, reposent sur la reproduction de
la réalité, l’une pour en exalter l’importance et l’autre pour la lui
chicaner), si on les confronte avec : — la Musique, — la Poésie
didactique d’un Hésiode, — les incantations Védiques et
Mallarmiennes, — la véritable Statuaire, simplifiée et significatrice, à
grands coups de ciseau, comme celle du XIIIe siècle et celle de
Phidias, — l’Ornemental et le Décoratif, — la « beauté » d’une
Démonstration géométrique (l’Uranie ancienne), — l’Éloquence de
raisonnement, — l’Architecture enfin, cet art qui renaît à cette heure
dans le silence et l’oubli, cet art qui vient périodiquement réunir, et,
tel qu’une arche, sauver les autres, cet art qui va une fois de plus
nous enlever aux niaiseries prématurément séniles des dilettantes et
des sectaires [10] .
[10] Il est vrai que M. Joséphin Péladan diagnostique
de l’Architecture qu’elle est décédée en 1789 ! et, à sa
suite, l’ignare troupeau, qui de son verbe tire subsistance,
fait chorus. Le premier gavroche, levant son index,
démontrerait le contraire, en preuves visibles : à
commencer par notre Arc de Triomphe, qui vaut certes à
lui seul toute la construction du siècle dernier et ennoblit
l’ouest de Paris, — pour aboutir au récent et cyclopéen
travail du fer, soulevant dans les édifices, auxquels il est
encore intérieur, des salles comme la Bibliothèque, les
Halles, le Palais des Machines, et prêt déjà à éclore aux
surfaces en élégances et en énergies inconnues — sans
oublier, en passant, Mazas, MM. de l’ésotérisme !

A cette hauteur se tient en effet un principe plus large que le

naturalisme avec sa méthode expérimentale et que les idéalismes
qui lui livrent bataille : la Logique.
D’elle se réclame ce mien travail. On peut voir en lui d’ailleurs
une suite, si l’on veut, de l’observation naturaliste. N’est-il pas la
même œuvre, transportée du « coin de nature » au « tempérament »
jusqu’ici laissé en friche, l’expérience « préparée » sur le terrain des
déductions, selon qu’il est d’usage en astronomie ? N’est-ce pas, en
quelque sorte, le nettoyage de la vitre, la taille préalable de la lentille
par où le public verra ?…
Au moyen de cette logique, ou convenance, Viollet-le-Duc a fait
apprécier les merveilles de notre grand siècle, du Siècle XIII, —
substituant, pour ne citer que cela, à la candide admiration de 1830,
devant tel saint de pierre « si pittoresquement » juché sur la pointe
d’une ogive, cette explication profonde de bon constructeur : à savoir
qu’une pierre du poids et des dimensions exactes de ce saint était,
là, indispensable pour empêcher l’ogive d’éclater sous la double
pression latérale, — d’où la satisfaction instinctive de nos yeux.
C’est un grand malheur que la compréhension de cet âge
magnifique où un saint Louis présidait la multiple vie communale, et
dont le seul égal au monde fut le siècle où Périclès dirigeait, de la
métropole athénienne, un mouvement identique, que cette
compréhension, qui nous serait si utile, ait été horriblement
compromise dans le carnaval romantique : le livre de Notre-Dame de
Paris, admirable du reste à sa date, mais où le public croit tenir un
portrait de ce « moyen-âge » (l’appellation la plus absurde, entre
parenthèses !), le représente, par un choix bizarre, mort depuis
longtemps, — après la guerre de cent années qui nous anémia au
point que nous tombâmes, sans défense et passifs, sous la
domination de l’art national florentin, dit renaissant, puis des
diverses influences anciennes et étrangères pour quatre siècles ! Et,
jusqu’à cette minute même où j’écris, ç’a été pitié que de lire quoi
que ce fût de littéraire au sujet du passé le plus incomparable : hier,
un Renan parlait de l’art ogival comme un effort demeuré
impuissant ! (Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse) ou père d’œuvres
peu durables ! (Prière sur l’Acropole) ; demain, dans En route, qui va
paraître, un critique sagace aux questions contemporaines,
Huysmans, fera la plus stupéfiante salade avec les voûtes romanes,
la peinture des Primitifs, le plain-chant grégorien, salade dont la
recette infaillible est « la foi », bien entendu, et qui s’appelle le
« moyen-âge », naturellement, ce qui n’embrasse que dix siècles de
l’humanité, plus du tiers de son histoire authentique, trois époques
fort ennemies l’une de l’autre, des peuples très opposés, — quelque
chose d’équivalent à un mariage entre Alcibiade et Sainte-
Geneviève…
Le « moyen-âge », ou, pour parler plus proprement, les siècles
XII, XIII et XIV, ne furent aucunement fantaisistes et capricieux ; c’eût
été l’affaire d’une génération, comme sous Louis-Philippe. Il ne fut
pas davantage mystique, au sens du jour, qui prend pour le
monument le brouillard qui l’enveloppe à nos yeux. Son architecture
fut édifiée pierre par pierre, dessin à dessin, par les raisons les plus
pratiques. Dans sa sculpture, il n’y a jamais eu de naïf — que nous,
quand nous la croyions telle ; elle est réaliste bien plus que la nôtre,
et, si pour persister dans l’opinion contraire on se raccroche aux
formes étranges des gargouilles, nous dirons que, nées d’un
symbolisme frère de ceux d’Égypte et de Grèce, elles figurent les
analogies également ingénieuses et profondes, obscurément
remémorées plus tard par un Cornélius Agrippa, et d’où sont sorties
nos classifications naturelles, — qui peut-être un jour y retourneront.
Sur ce temps s’élevait le Thomisme, dernièrement remis en honneur
pour combattre le positivisme, et qui réalisa une si heureuse
harmonie entre l’aristotélisme et la foi, entre la science et
l’indispensable théologie ; car alors la raison était adorée au-dessus
de tout dans le syllogisme, et la « mysticité » se déduisait plus
patiemment que nos métaphysiques ; alors naissaient les sciences
naturelles, et, dans l’oreille des poètes, se choisissaient toutes les
lois sur lesquelles vit notre poésie, ces rythmes que nous en
sommes encore à voir au travers de Ronsard, cette Rime que nous
avons donnée à l’Europe en même temps que ta Voûte à Nervures,
ô petite ville de Saint-Denis, suzeraine oriflamme, barque-pilote de la
France ! Tout cela naissait et grandissait au sourire grave et doux de
la même sagesse qui s’appela, sur les bords de la mer Ionienne,
Athénè.
Vers un nouvel aspect de cette même logique appareille déjà
notre époque, maintenant que, bue l’antiquité avec les forces de
laquelle nous régnâmes une seconde fois sur l’Europe au XVIIe, et
bue avec l’influence germanique la dernière des grandes influences
étrangères, nous nous retournons sur la réalité, sur l’avenir ; ainsi,
quand chaque cité grecque eut absorbé les voisins cultes locaux
(ses « influences étrangères ») et les cultes d’Orient (l’antiquité
d’alors), se forma la plus belle des mythologies. C’est, du moins, à
un art purement logique, purement technicien, aux créations
d’ailleurs infiniment variées, que me semblent converger toutes nos
tendances littéraires. J’y vois partis Flaubert et Zola, ces âpres
précurseurs, non point par tel de leurs écrits, mais par l’ensemble, et
Ibsen et Strindberg, et tous ces écrivains volontairement oublieux de
leurs bibliothèques comme les Hellènes le furent des lettres
barbares ; là, va Maeterlinck, ayant réduit l’action au développement
d’une idée unique ; et Verlaine, délivrant des règles conventionnelles
et superstitieusement révérées le rythme vrai, qui se donne à lui-
même ses règles, Verlaine, faisant chanter à pleine voix les grandes
orgues du Vers, renouvelé avec la justesse d’oreille de ces
ménestrels créateurs des précédentes cadences ; là-bas tend aussi
Mallarmé, prince de l’ellipse, lorsqu’il aère la syntaxe, en expulsant
la nuée de nos petits mots parasites et nos loqueteuses formules,
imitées des décadences anciennes et exhumées, dirait-on, des
« traités de phraséologie » pour la préparation de la licence ; lorsqu’il
forge et incurve l’hyperbole d’un parler nouveau en proportion avec
le poids des idées qu’il doit porter ; en cette direction nous appelle
Moréas, à cette source de notre littérature, mais sans se dégager,
malheureusement, de l’italianisme de notre soi-disant renaissance et
sans s’élancer assez haut dans le passé ; et devers ce dernier
flottent jusqu’à nos plus récents mystiques, bien qu’incertains, peut-
être, parmi leurs brumes violettes, entre ces deux grèves, de dix
siècles distantes, la fin du monde romain et l’arrêt de notre culture
médiéviste ; oui, tous ceux-là, et d’autres non moins glorieux, me
paraissent aller au même but : après la destruction des formes
conventionnelles latines, accomplie en 1830 mais au profit des
passagères prépondérances saxonnes, l’abolition définitive de toute
autorité absolue, même de celle de la nature et de nos sciences, ses
actuelles interprètes ; puis l’édification, au-dessus de ces débris, de
la simple logique, d’un art uniquement technicien et capable, par ce
fait, de révéler un système harmonique inconnu, d’un art — artiste
en un mot.
… En littératures, en la dramatique qui particulièrement nous
occupe, l’examen des Proportions que j’ai annoncé plus haut et que
je rêve comme un Vignoles non seulement de tel théâtre, mais de
tous comparés entre eux, cet examen nous fera voir les diverses
« façons générales » de présenter une Situation quelconque :
chacune de ces « façons générales », contenant ainsi une espèce de
canon applicable à toute situation indifféremment, constituera pour
nous un « ordre » analogue aux ordres d’architecture, et qui, de
même, prendra place avec d’autres ordres dans un « système »
théâtral. Mais les systèmes, à leur tour, se rapprocheront sous des
rubriques plus générales dont les comparaisons nous fourniront
aussi maint sujet à réflexions. Dans ce qu’on pourrait nommer la
Féerie se rencontrent étrangement, par exemple, des systèmes
aussi éloignés d’origine que les drames de l’Inde, certaines des
« comédies » de Shakespeare (le Songe d’une Nuit d’été, la
Tempête), le genre fiabesque de Gozzi, Faust ; le Mystère réunit les
œuvres de la Perse, Job, Thespis et les pré-eschyliens, Prométhée,
le théâtre d’Ézéchiel le Tragique, de Saint-Grégoire de Nazianze, de
Hroswitha, de notre XIIIe siècle, les autos ; ici, la Tragédie grecque et
ses imitations de psychologues ; là, le Drame anglais, allemand, et
français de 1830 ; plus près, la Pièce, qui du fond de la Chine, par
Lope et Calderon, Diderot et Gœthe, enserre notre scène
d’aujourd’hui… On se rappelle combien, quand nous cataloguions la
production dramatique dans ses 36 données, la recherche assidue,
pour tout cas exceptionnel en l’une, des cas symétriques à établir
dans les 35 autres faisait surgir, sous nos pas, de sujets imprévus.
De même, quand nous aurons analysé ces ordres, systèmes et
groupes de systèmes, quand nous aurons mesuré avec minutie
leurs ressemblances et leurs différences, et que nous les aurons
classés en distributions multiples, où, tour à tour, selon les
questions, nous les aurons rapprochés et éloignés, — nous
remarquerons nécessairement que de nombreuses combinaisons
ont été oubliées ;… parmi elles, se choisira l’art nouveau.
 Puissé-je avoir posé la première, la plus obscure pierre
fondamentale de sa gigantesque citadelle ; là, vendangeant sous
ses pieds les âmes des poètes, la Muse s’élèvera devant l’auditoire
de nouveau rassemblé des vieux aèdes, devant ces peuples jadis
serrés autour d’Hérodote et de Pindare, et qu’on dispersa depuis
dans les poudreuses bibliothèques ou dans l’ignorance primitive ;
elle clamera… cette nouvelle langue, — mieux faite encore pour
eux, — la dramatique, trop haute pour que la comprenne, isolée, une
individualité, fût-elle la plus grande, un langage énorme en vérité,
non de mots, mais de frissons, tels que celui qu’on parle aux
armées, — et qui ne s’adresse qu’à toi, abstrait mais seul éternel,
seul dispensateur de gloire, âme des foules, délire du monde, ô
Bacchos ! Ce ne sera pas, sans doute, dans une de nos salonnières
et minuscules réductions en carton-pâte d’un demi-cirque romain,
coupées d’un rideau pourpre, mais sur une manière de montagne,
remplie d’air et de lumière, élevée grâce à l’expérience constructive
du moyen-âge et à notre conquête du fer, offerte à la nation par ceux
qui auront gardé jusque-là la vanité d’être riches, et où
tourbillonneraient ensemble nos vingt-deux entreprises de
représentations, quelque chose de mieux que cette salle de Chicago
où se réunissent pourtant dix mille personnes, de mieux que le
théâtre de Dionysos, lequel en contenait trente mille, de mieux
même que celui d’Éphèse où s’asseyaient, joyeux, cent cinquante
mille spectateurs, un immense orifice par où la terre embrasse le
ciel, et qui s’épanouisse comme un cratère !

FIN