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THE PALGRAVE HANDBOOK
OF PRACTICAL ANIMAL ETHICS

Edited by
Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey
The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series

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

Priscilla Cohn
Pennsylvania State University
PA, USA

Associate Editor
Clair Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
Oxford, UK
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14421
Andrew Linzey · Clair Linzey
Editors

The Palgrave Handbook of


Practical Animal Ethics

Section Editors
Lisa Johnson
Thomas I. White
Mark H. Bernstein
Kay Peggs
Editors
Andrew Linzey Clair Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
Oxford, UK Oxford, UK

The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series


ISBN 978-1-137-36670-2 ISBN 978-1-137-36671-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-36671-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952825

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018


The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does
not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective
laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or
omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: Cover photograph © Harry Borden 2017

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
part of Springer Nature
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
For Jake Linzey,
practical and artistic genius,
and to Loki the friendly wolf,
moral exemplars of the human–animal bond
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 USA, 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 jour-
nal 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.
vii
viii    Series Editors’ Preface

“Animal ethics” is the new term for the academic exploration of the moral
status of the nonhuman—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 pose,
both conceptually and practically, to traditional understandings of human–
animal relations.
The series is needed for three reasons: (i) to provide the texts that will
service the new university courses on animals; (ii) to support the increasing
number of students studying and academics researching in animal-related
fields; and (iii) 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 ethi-
cal positions on animals;
• publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accomplished, schol-
ars; 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 mis-
sion 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.oxfordanimalethics.com
and to contact us with new book proposals for the series.

General Editors
Andrew Linzey
Priscilla Cohn
Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Palgrave Macmillan for commissioning this work and espe-
cially to editors Brendan George, Esme Chapman, and April James for their
support and encouragement. Also, we would like to thank Veeramanikandan
Kalyanasundaram, his colleagues (Katrin Liepold, Balaji Varadharaju, Sridevi
Purushothaman), and the Production Team for their painstaking and expert
help with the text. This book would have been impossible without the assis-
tance of the four section editors, Lisa Johnson, Mark H. Bernstein, Thomas I.
White, and Kay Peggs, who have worked diligently in compiling the sections
and selecting the chapters. Our debt to them is considerable. Our heartfelt
thanks go to Stephanie Ernst for her wise and exemplary copyediting, which
has vastly improved the text. Special thanks to Jo Linzey for putting up with
Andrew and Clair during this drawn-out process. Our thanks also to Toby,
whose barking punctuated the editing of this volume, and to Rufus the cat,
whose paws are responsible for any typos in the text.

ix
Contents

1 Introduction: The Challenge of Animal Ethics 1


Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey

Section I The Ethics of Control

2 Introduction: The Ethics of Control 25


Lisa Johnson

3 Animal Justice as Non-Domination 33


Valéry Giroux and Carl Saucier-Bouffard

4 Rethinking the Ethic of Human Dominance 53


Grace Clement

5 Chain of Fools: The Language of Power 71


Les Mitchell

6 Our Moral Duties to Ill and Aging Companion Animals 95


Faith Bjalobok

7 Speciesism and the Ideology of Domination in the Italian


Philosophical Tradition 109
Leonardo Caffo

xi
xii   Contents

8 Bioengineering, Animal Advocacy, and the Ethics of Control 125


Jodey Castricano

Section II The Ethics of Captivity

9 Introduction: The Ethics of Captivity 147


Thomas I. White

10 Incarceration, Liberty, and Dignity 153


Lori Gruen

11 Speciesism and Zoos: Shifting the Paradigm,


Maintaining the Prejudice 165
Elizabeth Tyson

12 Elephants in Captivity 181


Catherine Doyle

13 The Marine Mammal Captivity Issue: Time


for a Paradigm Shift 207
Lori Marino

14 Whales, Dolphins and Humans: Challenges in Interspecies


Ethics 233
Thomas I. White

Section III The Ethics of Killing

15 Introduction: The Ethics of Killing 249


Mark H. Bernstein

16 Religious Slaughter: Science, Law, and Ethics 255


Jordan Sosnowski

17 Fishing for Trouble: The Ethics of Recreational Angling 277


Max Elder

18 What Is Morally Wrong with Killing Animals


(if This Does not Involve Suffering)? 303
Carlos Naconecy
Contents   xiii

19 Killing Animals—Permitted by God? The Role of Christian


Ethics in (Not) Protecting the Lives of Animals 315
Kurt Remele

20 Smoke and Mirrors: An Analysis of Some Important


Conceptions Used to Justify Hunting 333
Priscilla N. Cohn

21 Comparing the Wrongness of Killing Humans


and Killing Animals 349
Mark H. Bernstein

Section IV The Ethics of Causing Suffering

22 Introduction: The Ethics of Causing Suffering 365


Kay Peggs

23 Animal Suffering Matters 373


Kay Peggs

24 Human Duties, Animal Suffering, and Animal Rights:


A Legal Reevaluation 395
Darren Sean Calley

25 Suffering Existence: Nonhuman Animals and Ethics 419


Kay Peggs and Barry Smart

26 Suffering of Animals in Food Production: Problems


and Practical Solutions 445
Akisha Townsend Eaton

27 Suffering for Science and How Science Supports the End of


Animal Experiments 475
Aysha Akhtar

28 The Ethics of Preservation: Where Psychology and


Conservation Collide 493
Mark J. Estren
xiv   Contents

29 Bullfighting: The Legal Protection of Suffering 511


Lidia de Tienda Palop

30 Free-Roaming Animals, Killing, and Suffering:


The Case of African Elephants 525
Kai Horsthemke

31 The Dog that is Willing to Die: The “Ethics”


of Animal Fighting 545
Randall Lockwood

Index 569
Notes on Contributors

Aysha Akhtar, M.D., M.P.H. is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal
Ethics; a double board-certified neurologist and preventive medicine special-
ist, US Food and Drug Administration; and a lieutenant commander, US
Public Health Service. She writes in her individual capacity. Her publica-
tions include Animals and Public Health: Why Treating Animals Is Critical to
Human Welfare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); “Animals and Public Health;
The Complexity of Animal Awareness” in The Global Guide to Animal
Protection, edited by Andrew Linzey (University of Illinois Press, 2013);
and “The New Laboratories for Deadly Viruses” in Rethink Food, edited by
S. Castle and A.-L. Goodman (Two Skirts Production, 2014).
Mark H. Bernstein, Ph.D. (section editor), is the Joyce and Edward E.
Brewer chair in applied ethics at Purdue University. He is one of the found-
ing fellows of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and a consultant editor
to the Journal of Animal Ethics. He specializes in animal ethics and more spe-
cifically in the issues of animals’ moral status and the extent, scope and con-
tent of human obligations to nonhuman animals. He has published three
books on animal ethics: On Moral Considerability (Oxford University Press,
1998), Without a Tear (University of Illinois Press, 2004), and The Moral
Equality of Humans and Animals (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Faith Bjalobok, Ph.D. graduated summa cum laude from Chatham
University with a B.A. in philosophy. She also graduated from Indiana
University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude with a master’s in crimi-
nology. She earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Duquesne
University. Her academic interest is in applied ethics, specifically animal

xv
xvi    Notes on Contributors

rights, environmental ethics, health care ethics and theories of justice.


Dr. Bjalobok is currently an adjunct professor at Duquesne University,
where she teaches philosophy of law, biomedical ethics, philosophy of ani-
mals and philosophy of technology. She is also employed by Waynesburg
University, where she teaches both as an adjunct at the undergraduate
level and as a facilitator in the M.B.A. programme. Dr. Bjalobok is a fel-
low of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and a judge for the BBB Torch
Awards (ethics in the workplace). She recently had three articles published
in The Global Guide to Animal Protection (University of Illinois Press,
2013). She has also had various articles published by the Pennsylvania Bar
Institute’s Animal Law Conference, including “A Commitment to Justice Is
a Commitment to Ending Animal Violence” (2011). In addition to her aca-
demic interests, Dr. Bjalobok runs the Fluffyjean Fund for Felines, a low- or
no-cost TNVRc (trap-neuter-vaccinate-return to cat keeper) programme for
colony cats.
Leonardo Caffo, Ph.D. received his doctorate in philosophy from the
University of Turin in Italy. He is a research member of LabOnt: Laboratory
for Ontology at the University of Turin. He is a columnist for Huffington
Post Italia, codirector of Animot and founder of Gallinae in Fabula Onlus,
Animal Studies: Rivista italiana di antispecismo and Rivista Italiana di
Filosofia Analitica Jr. His most recent publications include Il maiale non fa
la rivoluzione (Sonda, 2013); Naturalism and Constructivism in Metaethics
(Cambridge Scholars, 2014); Only for Them (Mimesis International, 2014);
A come Animale (Bompiani, 2014) and An Art for the Other (Lantern Books,
2015). He is currently working on realism, animal studies and cognition,
applied ethics, and philosophy of anarchism and architecture (in both ana-
lytic and continental traditions).
Darren Sean Calley, Ph.D. is a senior lecturer in the School of Law at
the University of Essex. He is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal
Ethics, a fellow of the European Group for Animal Law Studies, a mem-
ber of the Association of Lawyers for Animal Welfare, and a senior fellow
of the Higher Education Academy. His recent publications include Market
Denial and International Fisheries Regulation: The Targeted and Effective Use
of Trade Measures against the Flag of Convenience Fishing Industry (Martinus
Nijhoff, 2011); “Developing a Common Law of Animal Welfare: Offences
Against Animals and Offences Against Persons Compared” (Crime, Law
and Social Change, 2011); and “The International Regulation of the Food
Market: Precedents and Challenges” in The Ethics of Consumption, edited by
Röcklinsberg and Sandin (Wageningen Academic, 2013). The predominant
Notes on Contributors    xvii

theme of his research is the manner in which the law can minimize and—in
theory—bring to an end the exploitation of animals. Much of his research
has focused on how trade measures and restrictions on the access to market
of “goods” and “products” can be used to prevent the worst excesses of ani-
mal exploitation. In addition, his research focuses on how the theories of
animal protection can be applied in law.
Jodey Castricano, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the faculty of crea-
tive and critical studies at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan,
where she teaches in the English and cultural studies programs. In English,
her specializations are nineteenth-century literature (gothic) and cultural
and critical theory. In the case of the latter, her primary area of expertise
and ethical concern is in posthumanist philosophy and critical animal stud-
ies with extended work in ecocriticsm, ecofeminism and ecotheory. The
author of Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing and
Gothic Subjects: Literature, Film, Psychoanalysis (University of Wales Press,
forthcoming), she has published essays in critical animal studies and is a
contributing editor to Animal Subjects: An Ethical Reader in a Posthuman
World (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008). A second collection of
essays, Animal Subjects: 2.0, was also published in 2016 by Wilfred Laurier
University Press. Professor Castricano’s research aims to call into question
the epistemological and ontological boundaries that divide the animal king-
dom from humanity, focusing on the medical, biological, cultural, philo-
sophical and ethical concerns between nonhuman animals and humans.
Grace Clement, Ph.D. is a professor of philosophy at Salisbury University
in Maryland and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She has
written the book Care, Autonomy, and Justice: Feminism and the Ethic of Care
(Westview, 1996) as well as a number of articles on moral relations between
humans and other animals. Her current research is primarily in ethics and
focuses on questions of moral status, moral boundaries and moral methods
in animal ethics.
Priscilla N. Cohn, Ph.D. is a professor emeritus from Penn State
University and is presently an advisor to the Càtedra Ferrater Mora de
Pensament Contemporani, University of Girona, and the associate director
of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. For four years, Cohn was the direc-
tor of the Complutense University Summer School Courses in El Escorial.
Dr. Cohn is presently a coeditor of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics
Series and an editor of the Journal of Animal Ethics. She was on the editorial
board of the Edwin Mellen Press, the Van Gorum Press (the Netherlands)
xviii    Notes on Contributors

and Routledge Press. She was an advisor for the Denver Wildlife Research
Center (US Department of Agriculture) and for a special edition of the
journal Teorema. She has given numerous radio and TV interviews in the
USA and Spain, including for Animals Today and ARZone. Among her com-
mendations are Royal Honours from Queen Sophia of Spain. Dr. Cohn
has published over fifty chapters and scholarly articles as well as columns in
newspapers. Included among her seven books are Etica aplicada: Del aborto
a violencia (Alianza Editorial, first edition, 1981; enlarged edition, 1988;
editions del Prado, 1994); Contraception in Wildlife (Edwin Mellen Press,
1996); and Ethics and Wildlife (Edwin Mellen, 1999).
Lidia de Tienda Palop, Ph.D. is a researcher at the University of Valencia.
She holds degrees in both philosophy and law and received her Ph.D. in
philosophy from the University of Valencia. She has published various arti-
cles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters in academic books, includ-
ing “How to Evaluate Justice?” in Applied Ethics: Old Wine in New Bottles?,
“Measuring Nussbaum’s Capabilities List” in The Capabilities Approach on
Social Order and “La noción plural de sujeto de justicia” in Daimon. Her
main areas of research are the philosophy of emotions, the capabilities
approach and animal ethics. She is deeply interested in examining the epis-
temological role of compassion in relation to justice for especially vulnerable
groups, in particular nonhuman animals.
Catherine Doyle is the director of science, research and advocacy for the
Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS), which cares for elephants and
other exotic animals at three sanctuaries in California. She holds an MS
in anthrozoology from Canisius College, where her research focused on
keeper–elephant relationships. She is currently conducting the first long-
term behavioral study of female African elephants living in a US sanctuary.
Catherine also conducts advocacy efforts for PAWS, providing expert testi-
mony at government hearings on legislation concerning captive animals and
educating the public about the use of “wild” animals for display, for enter-
tainment, and as exotic “pets”, as well as the conservation of threatened and
endangered species. She has published essays and lectured on the ethics of
keeping elephants in captivity.
Max Elder has a B.A. in philosophy from Kenyon College in Gambier,
Ohio, where he was the recipient of the Virgil C. Aldrich Prize awarded
for dedication to, and excellence in, the study of philosophy. He spent a
year studying philosophy and animal ethics at Mansfield College, Oxford
University, and was also a committee member of the Oxford University
Notes on Contributors    xix

Animal Ethics Society. He has worked as a policy analyst intern at the


International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), where he focused on the
source of lion meat sold in the USA as well as noise pollution in the ocean
and its effect on whale communication and migration. He has multiple pub-
lications in the Journal of Animal Ethics covering topics such as the fish-pain
debate, the use of fish during the Persian New Year, and a book review of
Timothy Pachirat’s Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the
Politics of Sight. He is interested in questions about normativity, the way
humanity views animals, and the philosophy of religion.
Mark J. Estren, Ph.D. is a psychologist, herpetologist and reptile educa-
tor in Fort Myers, Florida. He holds doctorates in psychology and English
(University at Buffalo) and an M.S. in journalism (Columbia University).
He is the author of six books, including Statins: Miraculous or Misguided?
(Ronin, 2013) and Healing Hormones: How to Turn On Natural Chemicals
to Reduce Stress (Ronin, 2013), and the editor of and/or a contributor to
numerous others.
Valéry Giroux, Ph.D. is the coordinator of the Centre for Research
in Ethics (CRE) housed at the Université de Montréal. A member of the
Quebec Bar, Dr. Giroux has a master of laws degree, with a thesis on the
reform of the Canadian criminal code dealing with cruelty to animals, and
a doctorate in philosophy, with a dissertation on the importance of grant-
ing fundamental individual legal rights to all sentient beings. Dr. Giroux
has given many presentations on animal ethics and taught a seminar on
that subject at the Université de Sherbrooke. Her publications include “Des
droits légaux fondamentaux pour tous les êtres sensibles” [Fundamental legal
rights for all sentient beings] (Klesis, 2010) and “Du racisme au spécisme:
l’esclavagisme est-il moralement justifiable?” [From racism to speciesism: can
slavery be morally justifiable?] (Argument, 2007). She has published a book
chapter on the right of animals to liberty (Autrement, 2015) and a book on
the legal status of animals (L’Âge d’Homme, 2016).
Lori Gruen, Ph.D. is a professor of philosophy, feminist, gender and sex-
uality studies, and environmental studies at Wesleyan University, where she
also coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. Her work lies at the intersection
of ethical theory and practice, with a particular focus on issues that impact
those often overlooked in traditional ethical investigations (e.g. women,
people of color and nonhuman animals). She has published extensively on
topics in animal ethics, ecofeminism and practical ethics more broadly. She
has published eight books, including Ethics and Animals: An Introduction
xx    Notes on Contributors

(Cambridge University Press, 2011); The Ethics of Captivity (Oxford


University Press, 2014); and Entangled Empathy (Lantern Books, 2015).
Kai Horsthemke, Ph.D. teaches philosophy of education at KU Eichstätt-
Ingolstadt in Germany. He is also a visiting professor in the School of
Education at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and a fellow
at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, UK. He is the author of The Moral
Status and Rights of Animals (Porcupine Press, 2010), Animals and African
Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and the co-editor of the first two editions
of Education Studies (Oxford University Press Southern Africa, 2013 and
2016, respectively).
Lisa Johnson, Ph.D., J.D. (section editor), is an associate professor at the
University of Puget Sound, where she teaches environmental law and ani-
mal law. She is also a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She is
the author of “The Religion of Ethical Veganism” (Journal of Animal Ethics,
2015); Environmental Law with F. Powell (Cengage, 2015); and Power,
Knowledge, Animals, which is a contribution to the Palgrave Macmillan
Animal Ethics Series, edited by Andrew Linzey and Priscilla Cohn. She
is a member of the Washington State Board of Bar Examiners. She serves
as a consultant editor for the Journal of Animal Ethics. Her current area of
research is focused on the status of ethical veganism as a religion in the USA.
Andrew Linzey, Ph.D., D.D., Hon.D.D. (editor), is director of the Oxford
Centre for Animal Ethics, an honorary research fellow at St Stephen’s
House, Oxford, and a member of the Faculty of Theology in the University
of Oxford. He is a visiting professor of animal theology at the University
of Winchester and a professor of animal ethics at the Graduate Theological
Foundation, Indiana. He is the author or editor of more than twenty books,
including Animal Theology (SCM Press/University of Illinois Press, 1994);
Why Animal Suffering Matters (Oxford University Press, 2009); and The
Global Guide to Animal Protection (University of Illinois Press, 2013). In
2001, he was awarded a D.D. (doctor of divinity) degree by the archbishop
of Canterbury in recognition of his “unique and massive pioneering work at
a scholarly level in the area of the theology of creation with particular refer-
ence to the rights and welfare of God’s sentient creatures”. This is the highest
award that the archbishop can bestow on a theologian, and the first time, it
has been awarded for theological work on animals.
Clair Linzey (editor) is the deputy director of the Oxford Centre for
Animal Ethics. She holds an M.A. in theological studies from the University
of St Andrews and an M.T.S from Harvard Divinity School. She is currently
Notes on Contributors    xxi

pursuing a doctorate at the University of St Andrews on the ecological theol-


ogy of Leonardo Boff with special consideration of the place of animals. She
is associate editor of the Journal of Animal Ethics and associate editor of the
Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. She is also director of the Annual
Oxford Animal Ethics Summer School.
Randall Lockwood, Ph.D. is senior vice president for anti-cruelty spe-
cial projects at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals and affiliate assistant professor in small animal clinical sciences at
the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine. He is co-editor
of Cruelty to Animals and Interpersonal Violence (Purdue University Press,
1998) and co-author of Forensic Investigation of Animal Cruelty: A Guide for
Veterinary and Law Enforcement Professionals (Humane Society Press, 2006),
and Animal Cruelty and Freedom of Speech: When Worlds Collide (Purdue
University Press, 2014). He regularly trains law enforcement and veterinary
professionals on the investigation and prosecution of animal cruelty.
Lori Marino, Ph.D. is the founder and executive director of the Kimmela
Center for Animal Advocacy and is a neuroscientist and expert in animal
behavior and intelligence. She is internationally known for her work on the
evolution of brains and intelligence in dolphins and whales and in compar-
ison with primates. In 2001, she co-authored a groundbreaking study offer-
ing the first conclusive evidence for mirror self-recognition in bottlenose
dolphins (Reiss and Marino, 2001), after which she decided against further
research with captive animals. She has also published numerous empirical
and review papers on human–nonhuman animal relationships, including the
psychological and philosophical bases of animal exploitation and, more spe-
cifically, critiques of dolphin-assisted therapy and other captivity issues.
Les Mitchell, Ph.D. is the director of the Hunterstoun Centre of the
University of Fort Hare, a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
and a member of ICAS Africa. He has published articles in a range of aca-
demic journals as well as contributing chapters to a number of books relat-
ing to animals. His research interests include critical realism, ethics and
nonhuman animals, discourses, power, genocide, moral disengagement, rele-
vant education, open education, and alternatives to violence.
Carlos Naconecy, Ph.D. is a Brazil-based philosopher, independent
researcher and author. He is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
and director of the animal ethics department of the Brazilian Vegetarian
Society. Naconecy received his doctorate in philosophy from the Pontificia
Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. His
xxii    Notes on Contributors

thesis was titled “The Life Ethic: Moral Biocentrism and the Concept of
Bio-Respect”. Previously, he gained a master of philosophy degree at the
same university with a thesis on contemporary environmental ethics and a
bachelor’s degree in philosophy at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande
do Sul, which included a dissertation on the moral status of nonhuman ani-
mals. In 2006, he obtained a grant from the Brazilian governmental funding
agency to become a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Naconecy has presented papers in Brazil, Peru, the United Arab Emirates,
India, Portugal, and Cambridge. In addition to his scholarship, he has made
numerous appearances in popular media on the topic of applied ethics in
Brazil. His publications include a book (in Portuguese) titled Ethics and
Animals (Edipucrs, 2006). His areas of interests are animal ethics and envi-
ronmental ethics.
Kay Peggs, Ph.D. (section editor), is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for
Animal Ethics and honorary professor at Kingston University. She is a mem-
ber of the advisory board of the Palgrave Macmillan Series on Animal Ethics
and is a consultant editor of the Journal of Animal Ethics. Her books include
Animals and Sociology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Experiments, Animal
Bodies and Human Values (Ashgate, 2015), and the major reference work
Critical Social Research Ethics with Barry Smart and Joseph Burridge (SAGE,
forthcoming). Her research approaches issues associated with discrimination
and power from a range of social perspectives. She is particularly interested
in exploring what social perspectives (such as critical sociology, standpoint
sociology and feminism) have to offer to the study of oppressions related to
species. Her current research interests include the human/nonhuman divide,
intersectionality and complex inequalities, and social ethics and moral con-
sideration. She is also a research methods specialist. Dr. Peggs is a member of
the British, American and International Sociological Associations.
Kurt Remele, D.Theol is an associate professor of ethics and social thought
in the department of Catholic theology at Karl-Franzens-University in Graz,
Austria, where he has taught since 1992. He was a Fulbright scholar at the
Catholic University of America in Washington, DC (2003), and a visiting
professor at the University of Minnesota (2007) and at Gonzaga University
in Spokane, Washington (2011–12). His doctoral dissertation dealt with the
ethics of civil disobedience (Ziviler Ungehorsam, Aschendorff, 1992). His
postdoctoral habilitation dissertation, for which he received the Leopold
Kunschak-Award and the Kardinal Innitzer-Award, examined the rela-
tion of psychotherapeutic self-actualization to the common good (Tanz um
das goldene Selbst?, Styria, 2001). For a considerable time, one of his main
Notes on Contributors    xxiii

research interests has been animal ethics, in particular animal protection and
religion; he has chapters, for example, in the books Tierrechte. Eine interd-
isziplinäre Herausforderung (Harald Fischer, 2007) and Tier—Mensch—Ethik
(LIT, 2011). He has voiced his concern for animals in numerous lectures
and newspaper articles, on the radio and on TV. He is a fellow of the Oxford
Centre for Animal Ethics. His book Die Wiirde des Tieresist unantastbar Eine
neue Christlicne Tierethik (Bntzon Bercker Verlag) was published in 2016.
Carl Saucier-Bouffard is a professor in the humanities department at
Dawson College in Montreal, Canada, where he teaches courses in environ-
mental and animal ethics. He is an associate fellow of the Oxford Centre for
Animal Ethics. He won a British Chevening scholarship to the University
of Oxford, gaining an M.Phil. in political theory in 2007. His M.Phil. dis-
sertation examined the different modes of political communication used
by Peter Singer and Martin Luther King Jr. in delineating the boundaries
of the moral community. He subsequently completed a research intern-
ship at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at
Stanford University in 2008, where he provided research assistance for two
of Professor Clayborne Carson’s publications. His main research interests are
the moral status of nonhuman animals and the social movements working
towards the expansion of our sphere of moral consideration, including the
animal rights movement. He is the author of an article on the legal rights of
great apes published in The Global Guide to Animal Protection (University of
Illinois Press, 2013). In his efforts to educate the public about the impor-
tance of making ethical food choices, Saucier-Bouffard co-launched the
Quebec Meatless Mondays campaign in 2010. He has also coproduced edu-
cational videos on issues relevant to animal ethics, which can be found on
Vimeo and YouTube.
Barry Smart, Ph.D. is a professor of sociology at the University of
Portsmouth. His editorial work includes membership of the editorial advi-
sory board of Open Access Books in Sociology published by Versita; the
associate editorial board of Theory, Culture and Society; and the international
advisory boards of the Journal of Classical Sociology, the European Journal of
Social Theory, and the International Journal of Japanese Sociology. Barry is a
member of the American and International Sociological Associations. His
books include Facing Modernity: Ambivalence, Reflexivity and Morality (Sage,
1999); Consumer Society: Critical Issues and Environmental Consequences
(Sage, 2010); and the major reference work Observation Methods with Kay
Peggs and Joseph Burridge (SAGE, 2013). His areas of research interest and
expertise include classical and contemporary social thought, critical theory,
xxiv    Notes on Contributors

fiscal sociology and economic transformation of modernity, cultural and


economic analyses of consumption, environmental consequences of con-
sumerism, and social and historical analyses of sport.
Jordan Sosnowski, J.D. received her law degree from Monash University.
She was awarded a B.A. from the University of Queensland, having majored
in philosophy and English literature and studied animal law as a visiting stu-
dent at Bond University. She is currently undertaking her Ph.D. in animal
law at the Australian National University. In 2012, Jordan was awarded first
prize in the NSW Young Lawyers Animal Law Essay Competition and was
admitted as an Australian lawyer to the Supreme Court of New South Wales
in 2013. Jordan’s research and publication topics include free-range labelling
and consumer-law rights, international law and whaling in the Antarctic,
and empathy in the human and animal rights movements. She currently
works as advocacy director for Australia for Dolphins, a non-profit organiza-
tion working to better protect small cetaceans from cruelty through the legal
system.
Akisha Townsend Eaton, O.F.S, J.D. is an associate fellow of the Oxford
Centre for Animal Ethics and a consultant editor of the Journal of Animal
Ethics. In her professional capacity, she is the senior policy and legal resource
advisor to World Animal Net and an independent animal protection legis-
lative attorney. She advocates for animal protection interests at the United
Nations and has drafted successful animal protection legislation at the local,
state and federal levels. Her former roles include positions as assistant legis-
lative counsel at the Humane Society of the USA and as an animal welfare
fellow in the US Senate. She is an active subcommittee chair and former
law-student vice chair in the Animal Law Committee of the American Bar
Association’s Tort, Trial and Insurance Practice Section. She received her
juris doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center and her BA from
Stanford University with distinction. She is currently a candidate for the
Secular Franciscan Order and was named a Young Adult Eco-Justice Fellow
by the National Council of Churches. Her research has been published in
the Journal of Animal Ethics.
Elizabeth Tyson is a doctoral candidate at the School of Law in the
University of Essex. Her research addresses the efficacy of regulatory licens-
ing regimes as a means of guaranteeing effective animal protection in the
UK. The research considers the growing concern that animal welfare law in
the UK is held up as an example for other countries to follow despite its
practical inadequacy. She obtained her bachelor of laws (Hons) from the
Notes on Contributors    xxv

Open University in 2006. Elizabeth is the former director of the Captive


Animals’ Protection Society (CAPS), a leading animal protection charity
in the UK whose work focuses specifically on ending the use of animals in
the entertainment industry, with a major focus on the circus and zoo indus-
tries. She sits on the board of the primate conservation charity Neotropical
Primate Conservation and is a member of the Management Committee of
the Palestinian Animal League, based in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Thomas I. White, Ph.D. (section editor), is the Conrad N. Hilton profes-
sor in business ethics and director of the Center for Ethics and Business at
Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. Professor White
received his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University and is the
author of six books: Right and Wrong (Prentice Hall, 1988); Discovering
Philosophy (Prentice Hall, 1991); Business Ethics (Macmillan, 1993); Men
and Women at Work (Career Press, 1994); In Defense of Dolphins: The
New Moral Frontier (Blackwell, 2007); and Socrates Comes to Wall Street
(Pearson, 2015). He also has authored numerous articles on topics rang-
ing from sixteenth-century Renaissance humanism to business ethics and
environmental ethics. His primary research focuses on the philosophical
implications—especially the ethical implications—of scientific research
on cetaceans. Professor White is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal
Ethics, has served as US ambassador for the United Nations’ Year of the
Dolphin programme and is one of the authors of the “Declaration of Rights
for Cetaceans: Whales and Dolphins”. He is also a scientific advisor to the
Wild Dolphin Project, the research organization supporting Dr. Denise
Herzing’s long-term study of a community of Atlantic spotted dolphins in
the Bahamas.
1
Introduction: The Challenge of Animal Ethics

Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey

In Brigid Brophy’s novel Hackenfeller’s Ape, a scientist called Professor


Clement Darrelhyde faces a dilemma. He has moral qualms about the treat-
ment of apes in his laboratory, including one ape in particular, called Percy,
who is to be used in a rocket experiment. The following dialogue with his
colleague—called Post—illustrates Darrelhyde’s concern:

“My dear fellow,” Post began. “I had no idea you took it so seriously. But you
must adapt yourself to life. You must accept things.”

“Accept what things?”

Post shrugged. “You should know. The oldest adage in natural history—nature
red in tooth and claw.”

Darrelhyde did not answer.

A. Linzey · C. Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, Oxford, UK
e-mail: director@oxfordanimalethics.com
C. Linzey
e-mail: depdirector@oxfordanimalethics.com

© The Author(s) 2018 1


A. Linzey and C. Linzey (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics,
The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-36671-9_1
2    A. Linzey and C. Linzey

“Correct me if I am wrong,” Post continued, “but isn’t that how Evolution


works? The strong exploiting the weak all the way up the line?”

The Professor examined himself. His Evolutionary belief had itself been evolv-
ing in these last months. It no longer seemed to him that Evolution proceeded
by strengthening the strong: rather it used as its vessel the weak and inade-
quate, as though they possessed some special felicity that was more fertile than
strength.1

That developed evolutionary sense, what might be termed “moral evolu-


tion,” is the subject of this handbook. It was indeed unusual in 1953 (when
Brophy’s book was first published) for experimental scientists to include ani-
mals within their moral purview, even more so to risk a distinguished aca-
demic reputation as Darrelhyde did. But since the 1950s, a great deal has
changed about the world, not least of all our moral attitudes toward ani-
mals. Once a neglected topic on the periphery of moral concern, the “animal
movement” (for want of a better term) now has taken root in almost every
country in the world.
Brophy knew what she was doing, of course. She was a committed anti-
vivisectionist or, in more modern terms, was opposed in principle to using
animals in harmful research. Darrelhyde’s words represent her own thoughts.
She was a convinced atheist (a patron of the British Humanist Association),
a fellow believer in evolution, and also a patron of the National Anti-
Vivisection Society. And her role in the emergence of the modern animal
movement was not insignificant.
Her 1965 Sunday Times article titled “The Rights of Animals”2 brought
the issue to public prominence after years of neglect. Although there were
certainly other important voices, such as Justus George Lawler,3 her fame
and skill as a writer made people sit up and take notice. But it was the 1971
book Animals, Men and Morals: An Enquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-
Humans,4 edited by three Oxford graduate students, to which she contrib-
uted, that really put animals on the intellectual agenda. It was later dubbed
by Peter Singer as “a manifesto for an Animal Liberation movement.”5

1B. Brophy, Hackenfeller’s Ape (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1968), 46–47.


2B. Brophy, “The Rights of Animals,” in Animal Rights: A Historical Anthology, ed. A. Linzey and P. B.
Clarke (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 156–62.
3J. G. Lawler, “The Rights of Animals,” Anglican Theological Review, April 1965.

4S. Godlovitch, R. Godlovitch, and J. Harris, eds., Animals, Men and Morals: An Enquiry into the

Maltreatment of Non-Humans (London: Victor Gollancz, 1971).


5P. Singer, “Animal Liberation,” New York Review of Books, April 5, 1973.
1 Introduction: The Challenge of Animal Ethics     3

The book was one result of the so-called Oxford Group, composed largely
of students and academics. The term “Oxford Group,”6 coined by Richard
D. Ryder, is something of a misnomer since the various individuals never
met all together and had no plan, strategy, or program as such. But it was a
time of intellectual ferment, and from that rather unlikely collection of peo-
ple (philosophers, a sociologist, a psychologist, and a theologian) emerged
a cluster of pioneering books, including Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation,7
Richard D. Ryder’s Victims of Science,8 Andrew Linzey’s Animal Rights:
A Christian Assessment,9 and Stephen R. L. Clark’s The Moral Status of
Animals.10
The title of Brophy’s 1965 article, “The Rights of Animals,” became the
title of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal’s (here-
after “RSPCA”) symposium held at Trinity College in Cambridge in 1977,
organized by Linzey (then, with Ryder, a council member of the RSPCA).
Both Ryder and Linzey were members of the RSPCA Reform Group that
sought to change the society’s policies in a progressive direction and, not
least of all, to move the society on from its tacit support for foxhunting. The
symposium brought together most of the emerging thinkers and intellectuals
concerned with animal protection and provided a catalyst for change. The
“Declaration against Speciesism” signed by 150 people at the conclusion of
the symposium set the intellectual scene for subsequent decades:

Inasmuch as we believe that there is ample evidence that many other species
are capable of feeling, we condemn totally the infliction of suffering upon our
brother animals, and the curtailment of their enjoyment, unless it be necessary
for their own individual benefit.
We do not accept that a difference of species alone (any more than a dif-
ference in race) can justify wanton exploitation or oppression in the name of
science or sport, or for food, commercial profit or other human gain.
We believe in the evolutionary and moral kinship of all animals and we
declare our belief that all sentient creatures have rights to life, liberty and the
quest for happiness.

6R. D. Ryder, Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes Towards Speciesism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989),
5ff.
7P. Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (London: Jonathan Cape,

1976).
8R. D. Ryder, Victims of Science: The Use of Animals in Research (London: Davis-Poynter, 1975).

9A. Linzey, Animal Rights: A Christian Assessment (London: SCM Press, 1976).

10S. R. L. Clark, The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).
4    A. Linzey and C. Linzey

We call for the protection of these rights.11

Brophy’s contribution to the symposium, interestingly enough, was titled


“The Darwinist’s Dilemma.” She explained the origin of her 1965 article by
saying she intended to deliberately associate the case for animals with that
“clutch of egalitarian or libertarian ideas which have sporadically ... come
to the rescue of other oppressed classes, such as slaves, or homosexuals or
women.” And she invoked the notion of rights specifically because they are
“a matter of respect and justice, which are constant and can be required of
you by force of argument; they are not a matter of love, which is capricious
and quite involuntary.”12
Then she turned directly to her dilemma or (as she later called it)
“conundrum”:

When I feed the pigeons, I shut my cat out of the room. This is a small
infringement of his rights, imposed on him by me by main force. I think it
justified, in the interest of the pigeons’ rights, because if I didn’t he would
surely have one of my plump, peanut-fed pigeons for his lunch.
If I lunched on the pigeon, I should think myself immoral. If you do
so, I must in all honesty say I think you immoral. But I don’t think my cat
immoral. I think him amoral. The whole dimension of morality doesn’t apply
to him, or scarcely applies to him.
Here then is the conundrum. Am I setting up my species as morally supe-
rior to the cat species? Have I torn down the old class barrier only to rebuild it
in moral terms?13

Brophy here delineates one important feature of animal ethics: it concerns


humans’ treatment of animals and not the treatment of animals by other
animals. “Do animals really need ethics?” is a usual, if erroneous, comment
sometimes made by those who are new to the subject—erroneous because
it muddles (as many commentators still do) the realm of nature with the
realm of morality. Nature is not a moral textbook either for animals or for

11D. Paterson and R. D. Ryder, eds., Animals’ Rights—A Symposium (London: Centaur Press, 1979),

viii.
12B. Brophy, “A Darwinist’s Dilemma,” in Animals’ Rights—A Symposium, ed. D. Paterson and R. D.

Ryder (London: Centaur Press, 1979), 63–72.


13Ibid., 68.
1 Introduction: The Challenge of Animal Ethics     5

humans. We shall return to this point later. But for now, the key thing is to
grasp that humans are moral agents in a way that animals cannot be. Even
if, as some have claimed, animals have moral sense or are capable of some
forms of altruism, they are not moral agents responsible for their actions.14
This means that animal ethics are essentially human ethics, and their remit is
human actions, individually or collectively, intentionally or half-intention-
ally, toward animals. That does not mean, of course, that animal ethicists
are indifferent to the sum total of suffering and death in the natural world,
and if there are ways to alleviate that death and suffering, caused through
human or even sometimes natural agency, then animal ethicists should be
in the forefront of championing them. But animal ethicists, whether they
be Darwinian or religious, cannot change the natural world as we experi-
ence it with its complex biological systems of parasitism and predation. Like
Brophy, we have to conclude that although we cannot change the (natural)
world, we can change ourselves—and that is the moral point.
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that sensitivity to animals is a
post-1970s phenomenon. There have been ethical voices for animals as far
back as the pre-Socratics. However, that sensitivity has been characterized
by moments of intellectual advancement and social embodiment. One good
example of the latter was the foundation in 1824 of the RSPCA, which pio-
neered legislation and sought to enforce it through a system of inspectors.
And probably the best example of intellectual advancement was the move-
ment from the 1970s.

II

How then should we characterize animal ethics? We collect here some of


the essential elements. For clarity, we need to begin with what animal ethics
rejects, which can be classified under three headings.15
The first is anthropocentrism. By “moral anthropocentrism,” we mean
the assumption that human needs, wants, or desires should have absolute or
near absolute priority in our moral calculations. As already noted, there have

14See A. Linzey, Why Animal Suffering Matters: Philosophy, Theology, and Practical Ethics (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2009), 22–25.


15The following sections on anthropocentrism and instrumentalism come from A. Linzey and

C. Linzey, eds., Normalising the Unthinkable: The Ethics of Using Animals in Research (Oxford Centre for
Animal Ethics, March 2015), which has subsequently been published in A. Linzey and C. Linzey, eds.,
The Ethical Case Against Animal Expereiments (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2018).
6    A. Linzey and C. Linzey

been thinkers who have challenged moral anthropocentrism in almost every


age, but such ideas have often lacked any organizational or institutional
backing and have therefore had limited social influence.
Perhaps the most obvious example of moral anthropocentrism stems from
the perceived relation between justice and friendship. Aristotle was clear that
there could be no friendship between the ruler and the ruled—“for where
there is nothing in common to ruler and ruled,” he writes, “there is not
friendship either, since there is no justice.”16 Aristotle provides examples of
how there is no justice between humans and inanimate (“lifeless”) objects,
since “each case is benefited by that which uses it.” He further explains
that “neither is there friendship towards a horse or an ox, nor to a slave qua
slave.”17 Aristotle avers that perhaps owners and slaves can be friends insofar
as they can “share a system of law or be a party to agreements” and inso-
far as they are humans, but animals are not obviously included within those
stipulations.18
St. Thomas Aquinas develops this line of thought by proposing that char-
ity (which is defined as a kind of friendship) extends only to God and fel-
low humans. We cannot have friendship with “irrational animals.” He does
stipulate that “we can love irrational creatures out of charity” but only “if
we regard them as good things for others ”—namely, “as we wish for their
preservation, to God’s honour and man’s use.”19 Put more simply, animals are
considered “irrational,” and because of their lack of reason, humans cannot
be friends with them, and neither can animals in themselves deserve justice or
charity. This Aristotelian-Thomist core, despite various challenges, remains
at the heart of much philosophical and theological thought about animals.
The obvious weakness of moral anthropocentrism is that it fails to take
account of the interests of animals, or if it accepts that animals have interests,
it denies that these interests have any moral weight. Unsurprisingly, Albert
Schweitzer likened the history of Western philosophy to that of a person
who cleans the kitchen floor, only to find that the dog comes in and muddies
it with paw prints.20 The problem of how to square obligations to humans

16Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics,” in The Works of Aristotle, trans. W. D. Ross (London: Oxford

University Press, 1915), vol. 9, 1161a–b.


17Ibid., original emphasis.

18Ibid.

19T. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, ed. the English Dominican Fathers (New York: Benzinger Brothers,

1918), part 1, question 65.3, our emphases.


20A. Schweitzer, Civilisation and Ethics, trans. C. T. Campion (London: Allen and Unwin, 1923), 119.
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was an artistic enthusiasm; he was captivated by his own skill in
persuasion. And whenever, for a moment, this interest in his own
artistry waned, there came on him afresh the feeling of deep
weariness, and a desire only to rest and sleep and be friends with
everybody.
At last he persuaded her. It had taken from nine o'clock until
midnight. He was utterly tired out when he had finished. Yet there
seemed to be no tiredness in her, only a happiness that she could
now take and caress him as her own. She could not understand how,
now that they had made their reconciliation, he should not be eager
to cement it by endearments. Instead of which he lit a cigarette and
said that he was hungry.
While she busied herself preparing a small meal he found himself
watching her continually as she moved about the room, and
wondering, in the calmest and most aloof manner, whether he was
really glad that he had won. Eventually he decided that he was. She
was his wife and he loved her. If they were careful to avoid
misunderstandings no doubt they would get along tolerably well in
the future. The future! The vision came to him again of the term that
was in front of him; a vision that was somehow frightening.
Yet, above all else, he was tired—dead tired.
The last thing she said to him that night was a soft, half-
whimpered: "Kenneth, I believe you do want Clare."
He said sleepily, and without any fervour: "My dear, I assure you I
don't."
And he fell asleep wondering very vaguely what it would be like to
want Clare, and whether it would ever be possible for him to do so.

CHAPTER TWO

I
Term began on the Wednesday in the third week in January.
Once again, the first few days were something of an ordeal.
Constant anticipations had filled Speed's mind with apprehensions;
he was full of carefully excogitated glooms. Would the hostility of the
Masters be more venomous? Would the prefects of his own house
attempt to undermine his discipline? Would the rank and file try to
"rag" him when he took preparation in the Big Hall? Somehow, all his
dreams of Millstead and of Lavery's had turned now to fears; he had
slipped into the position when it would satisfy him merely to avoid
danger and crush hostility. No dreams now about Lavery's being the
finest House in Millstead, and he the glorious and resplendent
captain of it; no vision now of scouring away the litter of mild
corruptions and abuses that hedged in Lavery's on all sides; no
hopes of a new world, made clean and wholesome by his own
influence upon it. All his desire was that he should escape the pitfalls
that were surrounding him, that he should, somehow, live through
the future without disaster to himself. Enthusiasm was all gone.
Those old days when he had plunged zestfully into all manner of
new things, up to his neck in happiness as well as in mistakes—
those days were over. His one aim now was not to make mistakes,
and though he did not know it, he cared for little else in the world.
That first night of term he played the beginning-of-term hymn in
the chapel.

"Lord, behold us with Thy blessing,


Once again assembled here ..."

The words fell on his mind with a sense of heavy, unsurmountable


gloom. He looked into the mirror above his head and saw the choir-
stalls and the front rows of the pews; the curious gathering of
Millsteadians in their not-yet-discarded vacation finery; Millsteadians
unwontedly sober; some, perhaps, a little heart-sick. He saw Ervine's
back, as he read the lesson from the lectern, and as he afterwards
stood to pronounce the Benediction. "The grace of God, which
passeth—um—understanding, and the—um—fellowship of the—um
—the Holy Spirit ..."
He hated that man.
He thought of the dark study and Potter and the drawing-room
where he and Helen had spent so many foolish hours during the
summer term of the year before.
Foolish hours? Had he come to the point when he looked back
with scorn upon his courtship days? No, no; he withdrew the word
"foolish."
" ... rest upon—um—all our hearts—now and—um—for ever—um
—Ah—men.... I would—um, yes—be glad—if the—um—the—the
new boys this term—would stay behind to see me—um, yes—to see
me for a moment...."
Yes, he hated that man.
He gathered his gown round him and descended the ladder into
the vestry. A little boy said "Good-evening, Mr. Speed," and shook
hands with him. "Good-evening, Robinson," he said, rather quietly.
The boy went on: "I hope you had a nice Christmas, sir." Speed
started, checked himself, and replied: "Oh yes, very nice, thanks.
And you too, I hope." "Oh yes, sir," answered the boy. When he had
gone Speed wondered if the whole incident had been a subtle and
ironical form of "ragging." Cogitation convinced him that it couldn't
have been; yet fear, always watching and ready to pounce, would
have made him think so. He felt really alarmed as he walked back
across the quadrangle to Lavery's, alarmed, not about the Robinson
incident, which he could see was perfectly innocent, but because he
was so prone to these awful and ridiculous fears. If he went on
suspecting where there was no cause, and imagining where there
was no reality, some day Millstead would drive him mad. Mad—yes,
mad. Two boys ran past him quickly and he could see that they
stopped afterwards to stare at him and to hold some sort of a
colloquy. What was that for? Was there anything peculiar about him?
He felt to see if his gown was on wrong side out: no, that was all
right. Then what did they stop for? Then he realised that he was
actually speaking that sentence out aloud; he had said, as to some
corporeal companion: What did they stop for? Had he been
gibbering like that all the way across the quadrangle? Had the two
boys heard him talking about going mad? Good God, he hoped not!
That would be terrible, terrible. He went in to Lavery's with the sweat
standing out in globes on his forehead. And yet, underfoot, the
ground was beginning to be hard with frost.
Well, anyway, one thing was comforting; he was getting along
much better with Helen. They had not had any of those dreadful,
pathetic scenes for over a fortnight. His dreams of happiness were
gone; it was enough if he succeeded in staving off the misery. As he
entered the drawing-room Helen ran forward to meet him and kissed
him fervently. "The first night of our new term," she said, but the
mention only gave a leap to his anxieties. But he returned her
embrace, willing to extract what satisfaction he could from mere
physical passion.

II

An hour later he was dining in the Masters' Common-Room. He


would have avoided the ordeal but for the unwritten law which
ordained that even the housemasters should be present on the first
night of term. Not that there was anything ceremonial about the
proceedings. Nothing happened that did not always happen, except
the handshaking and the disposition to talk more volubly than usual.
Potter arched his long mottled neck in between each pair of diners in
exactly the same manner as heretofore; there was the same
unchanged menu of vegetable soup, undercooked meat, and a very
small tart on a very large plate.
But to Speed it seemed indeed as if everything was changed. The
room seemed different; seemed darker, gloomier, more chronically
insufferable; Potter's sibilant, cat-like stealthiness took on a degree
of sinisterness that made Speed long to fight him and knock him
down, soup-plates and all; the food tasted reminiscently of all the
vaguely uncomfortable things he had ever known. But it was in the
faces of the men around him that he detected the greatest change of
all. He thought they were all hating him. He caught their eyes
glancing upon him malevolently; he thought that when they spoke to
him it was with some subtle desire to insult him; he thought also, that
when they were silent it was because they were ignoring him
deliberately. The mild distaste he had had for some of them, right
from the time of first meeting, now flamed up into the most virulent
and venomous of hatreds. And even Clanwell, whom he had always
liked exceedingly, he suspected ever so slightly at first, though in a
little while he liked him as much as ever, and more perhaps, because
he liked the others so little.
Pritchard he detested. Pritchard enquired about his holiday, how
and where he had spent it, and whether he had had a good time;
also if Mrs. Speed were quite well, and how had she liked the visit to
Beachings Over. Somehow, the news had spread that he had taken
Helen to spend Christmas at his parents' house. He wondered in
what way, but felt too angry to enquire. Pritchard's questions stung
him to silent, bottled-up fury; he answered in monosyllables.
"Friend Speed has the air of a thoughtful man," remarked
Ransome in his oblique, half-sarcastic way. And Speed smiled at
this, not because it amused him at all, but because Ransome
possessed personality which submerged to some extent his own.
Finally, when Clanwell asked him up to coffee he declined,
courteously, but with a touch of unboyish reserve which he had
never previously exhibited in his relations with Clanwell. "I've got
such a lot of work at Lavery's," he pleaded. "Another night,
Clanwell...."
And as he walked across the quadrangle at half-past eight he
heard again those curious sounds that had thrilled him so often
before, those sounds that told him that Millstead had come to life
again. The tall blocks of Milner's and Lavery's were cliffs of yellow
brillance, from which great slanting shafts of light fell away to form a
patchwork on the quadrangle. He heard again the chorus of voices in
the dormitories, the tinkle of crockery in the basement studies, the
swish of water into the baths, the babel of miscellaneous busyness.
He saw faces peering out of the high windows, and heard voices
calling to one another across the dark gulf between the two houses.
It did not thrill him now, or rather, it did not thrill him with the beauty
of it; it was a thrill of terror, if a thrill at all, which came to him. And he
climbed up the flight of steps that led to the main door of Lavery's
and was almost afraid to ring the bell of his own house.
Burton came, shambling along with his unhappy feet and beaming
—positively beaming—because it was the beginning of the term.
"Once again, sir," he said, mouthing, as he admitted Speed. He
jangled his huge keys in his hand as if he were a stage jailer in a
stage prison. "I don't like the 'ockey term myself, sir, but I'd rather
have any term than the 'olidays."
"Yes," said Speed, rather curtly.
There were several jobs he had to do. Some of them he could
postpone for a day, or perhaps, even for a few days, if he liked, but
there was no advantage in doing so, and besides, he would feel
easier when they were all done. First, he had to deliver a little
pastoral lecture to the new boys. Then he had to chat with the
prefects, old and new—rather an ordeal that. Then he had to patrol
the dormitories and see that everything was in proper order. Then he
had to take and give receipts for money which anybody might wish to
"bank" with him. Then he had to give Burton orders about the
morning. Then he had to muster a roll-call and enquire about those
who had not arrived. Then, at ten-thirty, he had to see that all lights
were out and the community settled in its beds for slumber....
All of which he accomplished automatically. He told the new boys,
in a little speech that was meant to be facetious, that the one
unforgivable sin at Lavery's was to pour tea-leaves down the waste-
pipes of the baths. He told the prefects, in a voice that was harsh
because it was nervous, that he hoped they would all co-operate
with him for the good of the House. He told Burton, quite tonelessly,
to ring the bell in the dormitories at seven-thirty, and to have
breakfast ready in his sitting-room at eight. And he went round the
dormitories at half-past ten, turning out gases and delivering brusque
good-nights.
Then he went downstairs into the drawing-room of his own house
where Helen was. He went in smiling. Helen was silent, but he knew
from experience that silence with her did not necessarily betoken
unhappiness. Yet even so, he found such silences always unnerving.
To-night he wanted, if she had been in the mood, to laugh, to be jolly,
to bludgeon away his fears. He would not have minded getting
slightly drunk.... But she was silent, brooding, no doubt, happily, but
with a sadness that was part of her happiness.
As he passed by the table in the dimly-lit room he knocked over
the large cash-box full of the monies that the boys had banked with
him. It fell on to the floor with a crash which made all the wires in the
piano vibrate.
"Aren't you careless?" said Helen, quietly, looking round at him.
He looked at her, then at the cash-box on the floor, and said
finally: "Damn it all! A bit of noise won't harm us. This isn't a funeral."
He said it sharply, exasperated, as if he were just trivially enraged.
After he had said it he stared at her, waiting for her to say something.
But she made no answer, and after a long pause he solemnly picked
up the cash-box.

III

There came a January morning when he had a sudden and


almost intolerable longing to see Clare. The temperature was below
freezing-point, although the sun was shining out of a clear sky; and
he was taking five alpha in art drawing in a room in which the
temperature, by means of the steamiest of hot-water pipes, had
been raised to sixty. His desk was at the side of a second-floor
window, and as he looked out of it he could see the frost still white
on the quadrangle and the housemaids pouring hot water and ashes
on the slippery cloister-steps. He had, first of all, an urgent desire to
be outside in the keen, crisp air, away from the fugginess of heated
class-rooms; then faintly-heard trot of horses along the Millstead
lane set up in him a restlessness that grew as the hands of his watch
slid round to the hour of dismissal. It was a half-holiday in the
afternoon, and he decided to walk up to Dinglay Fen, taking with him
his skates, in case the ice should be thick enough. The thought of it,
cramped up in a stuffy class-room, was a sufficiently disturbing one.
And then, quite suddenly, there came into his longing for the fresh air
and the freedom of the world a secondary longing—faint at first, and
then afterwards stormily insurgent—a longing for Clare to be with
him on his adventures. That was all. He just wanted her company,
the tread of her feet alongside his on the fenland roads, her answers
to his questions, and her questions for him to answer. It was a
strange want, it seemed to him, but a harmless one; and he saw no
danger in it.
Dismissal-hour arrived, and by that time he was in a curious
ferment of desire. Moreover, his brain had sought out and discovered
a piece of casuistry suitable for his purpose. Had not Clare, on the
occasion of his last visit to her, told him plainly and perhaps
significantly that she would never tell anyone of his visit? And if she
would not tell of that one, why should she of any one—any one he
might care to make in the future? And as his only reason for not
visiting her was a desire to please Helen, surely that end was served
just as easily if he did visit her, provided that Helen did not know.
There could be no moral iniquity in lying to Helen in order to save her
from unhappiness, and anyway, a lie to her was at least as honest as
her subterfuge had been in order to learn from him of his last visit.
On all sides, therefore, he was able to fortify himself for the
execution of his desire.
But, said Caution, it would be silly to see her in the daytime, and
out-of-doors, for then they would run the risk of being seen together
by some of the Millstead boys, or the masters, and the affair would
pretty soon come to Helen's ears, along channels that would by no
means minimise it in transmission. Hence again, the necessity to see
Clare in the evenings, and at her house, as before. And at the
thought of her cosy little upstairs sitting-room, with the books and the
Persian rugs and the softly-shaded lamp, he kindled to a new and
exquisite anticipation.
So, then, he would go up to Dinglay Fen alone that afternoon,
wanting Clare's company, no doubt, but willing to wait for it happily
now that it was to come to him so soon. Nor did he think that there
was anything especially Machiavellian in the plans he had decided
upon.

IV

But he saw her sooner than that evening.


Towards midday the clouds suddenly wrapped up the sky and
there began a tremendous snowstorm that lasted most of the
afternoon and prevented the hockey matches. All hope of skating
was thus dispelled, and Speed spent the afternoon in the drawing-
room at Lavery's, combining the marking of exercise-books with the
joyous anticipation of the evening. Then, towards four o'clock, the
sky cleared as suddenly as it had clouded over, and a red sun shone
obliquely over the white and trackless quadrangle. There was a
peculiar brightness that came into the room through the window that
overlooked the snow; a strange unwonted brightness that kindled a
tremulous desire in his heart, a desire delicate and exquisite, a
desire without command in it, but with a fragile, haunting lure that
was more irresistible than command. As he stood by the window and
saw the ethereal radiance of the snow, golden almost in the rays of
the low-hanging sun, he felt that he would like to walk across the
white meadows to Parminters. He wanted something—something
that was not in Millstead, something that, perhaps, was not in the
world.
He set out, walking briskly, facing the crisp wind till the tears came
into his eyes and rolled down his cold cheeks. Far beyond old
Millstead spire the sun was already sinking into the snow, and all the
sky of the west was shot with streams of pendulous fire. The stalks
of the tallest grasses were clotted with snow which the sun had tried
hard to melt and was now leaving to freeze stiff and crystalline; as
the twilight crept over the earth the wind blew colder and the film of
snow lately fallen made the path over the meadows hard and
slippery with ice.
Then it was that he met Clare; in the middle of the meadows
between Millstead and Parminters, at twilight amidst a waste of
untrod snow. Her face was wonderfully lit with the reflection of the
fading whiteness, that his mind reacted to it as to the sudden brink
was in her eyes.
He felt himself growing suddenly pale; he stopped, silent, without
a smile, as if frozen stiff by the sight of her.
And she said, half laughing: "Hello, Mr. Speed! You look unusually
grim...." Then she paused, and added in a different voice: "No—on
further observation I think you look ill.... Tell me, what's the matter?"
He knew then that he loved her.
The revelation came on him so sharply, so acidly, with such
overwhelming and uncompromising directness, that his mind reacted
to it as to the sudden brink of a chasm. He saw the vast danger of
his position. He saw the stupendous fool he had been. He saw, as if
some mighty veil had been pulled aside, the stream of tragedy
sweeping him on to destruction. And he stopped short, all the
manhood in him galvanised into instant determination.
He replied, smiling: "I'm feeling perfectly well, anyway. Beautiful
after the snowstorm, isn't it?"
"Yes."
It was so clear, so ominously clear that she would stop to talk to
him if he would let her.
Therefore he said, curtly: "I'm afraid it's spoilt all the chances of
skating, though.... Pity, isn't it? Well, I won't keep you in the cold—
one needs to walk briskly and keep on walking, doesn't one? Good
night!"
"Good night," she said simply.
Through the fast gathering twilight they went their several ways.
When he reached Parminters it was quite dark. He went to the
Green Man and had tea in the cosy little firelit inn-parlour with a huge
Airedale dog for company. Somehow, he felt happier, now that he
knew the truth and was facing it. And by the time he reached
Lavery's on the way home he was treating the affair almost jauntily.
After all, there was a very simple and certain cure for even the most
serious attack of the ailment which he had diagnosed himself as
possessing. He must not see Clare again. Never again. No, not even
once. How seriously he was taking himself, he thought. Then he
laughed, and wondered how he had been so absurd. For it was
absurd, incredibly absurd, to suppose himself even remotely in love
with Clare! It was unthinkable, impossible, no more to be feared than
the collapse of the top storey of Lavery's into the basement. He was
a fool, a stupid, self-analysing, self-suspecting fool. He entered
Lavery's scorning himself very thoroughly, as much for his cowardly
decision not to see Clare again as for his baseless suspicion that he
was growing fond of her.

CHAPTER THREE

Why was it that whenever he had had any painful scene with
Helen the yearning came over him to go and visit Clare, not to
complain or to confess or to ask advice, but merely to talk on the
most ordinary topics in the world? It was as if Helen drew out of him
all the strength and vitality he possessed, leaving him debilitated,
and that he craved the renewal of himself that came from Clare and
from Clare alone.
The painful scenes came oftener now. They were not quarrels;
they were worse; they were strange, aching, devitalising dialogues in
which Helen cried passionately and worked herself into a state of
nervous emotion that dragged Speed against his will into the
hopeless vortex. Often when he was tired after the day's work the
mere fervour of her passion would kindle in him some poignant
emotion, some wrung-out pity, that was, as it were, the last shred of
his soul; when he had burned that to please her he was nothing but
dry ashes, desiring only tranquillity. But her emotional resources
seemed inexhaustible. And when she had scorched up the last
combustible fragment of him there was nothing left for him to do but
to act a part.
When he realised that he was acting he realised also that he had
been acting for a long while; indeed, that he could not remember
when he had begun to act. Somehow, she lured him to it; made
insatiable demands upon him that could not be satisfied without it.
His acting had become almost a real part of him; he caught himself
saying and doing things which came quite spontaneously, even
though they were false. The trait of artistry in him made him not
merely an actor but an accomplished actor; but the strain of it was
immense. And sometimes, when he was alone, he wished that he
might some time break under it, so that she might find out the utmost
truth.
Still, of course, it was Clare that was worrying her. She kept
insisting that he wanted Clare more than he wanted her, and he kept
denying it, and she obviously liked to hear him denying it, although
she kept refusing to believe him. And as a simple denial would never
satisfy her, he had perforce to elaborate his denials, until they were
not so much denials as elaborately protestant speeches in which
energetically expressed affection for her was combined with subtle
disparagement of Clare. As time went on her demands increased,
and the kind of denial that would have satisfied her a fortnight before
was no longer sufficient to pacify her for a moment. He would say,
passionately: "My little darling Helen, all I want is you—why do you
keep talking about Clare? I'm tired of hearing the name. It's Helen I
want, my old darling Helen." He became eloquent in this kind of
speech.
But sometimes, in the midst of his acting an awful, hollow moment
of derision would come over him; a moment when he secretly
addressed himself: You hypocrite. You don't mean a word of all this!
Why do you say it? What good is it if it pleases her if it isn't true?
Can you—are you prepared to endure these nightly exhibitions of
extempore play-acting for ever? Mustn't the end come some day,
and what is to be gained by the postponement of it?
Then the hollow, dreadful, moment would leave him, and he would
reply in defence of himself: I love Helen, although the continual
protestation of it is naturally wearisome. If she can only get rid of the
obsession about Clare we shall live happily and without this
emotional ferment. Therefore, it is best that I should help her to get
rid of it as much as I can. And if I were to protest my love for her
weakly I should hinder and not help her.
Sometimes, after he had been disparaging Clare, a touch of real
vibrant emotion would make him feel ashamed of himself. And then,
in a few sharp, anguished sentences he would undo all the good that
hours of argument and protestation had achieved. He would
suddenly defend Clare, wantonly, obtusely, stupidly aware all the
time of the work he was undoing, yet, somehow, incapable of
stopping the words that came into his mouth. And they were not
eloquent words; they were halting, diffident, often rather silly. "Clare's
all right," he would say sometimes, and refuse to amplify or qualify. "I
don't know why we keep dragging her in so much. She's never done
us any harm and I've nothing against her."
"So. You love her."
"Love her? Rubbish! I don't love her. But I don't hate her—surely
you don't expect me to do that!"
"No, I don't expect you to do that. I expect you to marry her,
though, some day."
"Marry her! Good God, what madness you talk, Helen! I don't
want to marry her, and if I did she wouldn't want to marry me! And
besides, it happens that I'm already married. That's an obstacle, isn't
it?"
"There's such a thing as divorce."
"You can't get a divorce just because you want one."
"I know that."
"And besides, my dear Helen, who wants a divorce? Do you?"
"Do you?"
"Of course I don't."
"Kenneth, I know it seems to you that I'm terribly unreasonable.
But it isn't any satisfaction to me that you just don't see Clare. What I
want is that you shan't want to see her."
"Well, I don't want to see her."
"That's a lie."
"Well—well—what's the good of me telling you I don't want to see
her if you can't believe me?"
"No good at all, Kenneth. That's why it's so awful."
He said then, genuinely: "Is it very awful, Helen?"
"Yes. You don't know what it's like to feel that all the time one's
happiness in the world is hanging by a thread. Kenneth, all the time
I'm watching you I can see Clare written in your mind. I know you
want her. I know she can give you heaps that I can't give you. I know
that our marriage, was a tragic mistake. We're not suited to one
another. We make each other frightfully, frightfully miserable. More
miserable than there's any reason for, but still, that doesn't help.
We're misfits, somehow, and though we try ever so hard we shall
never be any better until we grow old and are too tired for love any
more. Then we shall be too disinterested to worry. It was my fault,
Kenneth—I oughtn't to have married you. Father wanted me to,
because your people have a lot of money, but I only married you
because I loved you, Kenneth. It was silly of me, Kenneth, but it's the
truth!"
"Ah!" So the mystery was solved. He softened to her now that he
heard her simple confession; he felt that he loved her, after all.
She went on, sadly: "I'm not going to stay with you, Kenneth. I'm
not going to ruin your life. You won't be able to keep me. I'd rather
you be happy and not have anything to do with me."
Then he began one of his persuasive speeches. The beginning of
it was sincere, but as he used up all the genuine emotion that was in
him, he drew more and more on his merely histrionic capacities. He
pleaded, he argued, he implored. Once the awful thought came to
him: Supposing I cried? Doubt as to his capacity to cry impressively
decided him against the suggestion.... And once the more awful
thought came to him: Supposing one of these times I do not succeed
in patching things up? Supposing we do agree to separate? Do I
really want to win all the time I am wrestling so hard for victory?
And at the finish, when he had succeeded once again, and when
she was ready for all the passionate endearments that he was too
tired to take pleasure in giving, he felt: This cannot last. It is killing
me. It is killing her too. God help us both....

II

One day he realised that he was a failure. He had had some


disciplinary trouble with the fifth form and had woefully lost his
temper. There had followed a mild sort of scene; within an hour it
had been noised all over the school, so that he knew what the boys
and Masters were thinking of when they looked at him. It was then
that the revelation of failure came upon him.
But, worst of all, there grew in him wild and ungovernable hates.
He hated the Head, he hated Pritchard, he hated Smallwood, he
hated, most intensely of all, perhaps, Burton. Burton was too familiar.
Not that Speed disliked familiarity; it was rather that in Burton's
familiarity he always diagnosed contempt. He wished Burton would
leave. He was getting too old.
They had a stupid little row about some trivial affair of house
discipline. Speed had found some Juniors playing hockey along the
long basement corridor. True that they were using only tennis balls;
nevertheless it seemed to Speed the sort of thing that had to be
stopped. He was not aware that "basement hockey" was a time-
honoured custom of Lavery's, and that occasional broken panes of
glass were paid for by means of a "whip round." If he had known that
he would have made no interference, for he was anxious not to
make enemies. But it seemed to him that this extempore hockey-
playing was a mere breach of ordinary discipline; accordingly he
forbade it and gave a slight punishment to the participators.
Back in his room there came to him within a little while, Burton,
eagerly solicitous about something or other.
"Well, what is it, Burton?" The mere sight of the shambling old
fellow enraged Speed now.
"If you'll excuse the libutty, sir. I've come on be'alf of a few of the
Juniors you spoke to about the basement 'ockey, sir."
"I don't see what business it is of yours, Burton."
"No, sir, it ain't any business of mine, that's true, but I thought
perhaps you'd listen to me. In fact, I thought maybe you didn't know
that it was an old 'ouse custom, sir, durin' the 'ockey term. I bin at
Millstead fifty-one year come next July, sir, an' I never remember an
'ockey term without it, sir. Old Mr. Hardacre used to allow it, an' so
did Mr. Lavery 'imself. In fact, some evenings, sir, Mr. Lavery used to
come down an' watch it, sir."
Speed went quite white with anger. He was furiously annoyed with
himself for having again trod on one of these dangerous places; he
was also furious with Burton for presuming to tell him his business.
Also, a slight scuffle outside the door of the room suggested to him
that Burton was a hired emissary of the Juniors, and that the latter
were eavesdropping at that very moment. He could not give way.
"I don't know why you think I should be so interested in the habits
of my predecessors, Burton," he said, with carefully controlled voice.
"I'm sure it doesn't matter to me in the least what Hardacre and
Lavery used to do. I'm housemaster at present, and if I say there
must be no more basement hockey then there must be no more.
That's plain, isn't it?"
"Well, sir, I was only warning you—"
"Thanks, I don't require warning. You take too much on yourself,
Burton."
The old man went suddenly red. Speed was not prepared for the
suddenness of it. Burton exclaimed, hardly coherent in the midst of
his indignation: "That's the first time I've bin spoke to like that by a
housemaster of Lavery's! Fifty years I've bin 'ere an' neither Mr.
Hardacre nor Mr. Lavery ever insulted me to my face! They were
gentlemen, they were!"
"Get out!" said Speed, rising from his chair quickly. "Get out of
here! You're damnably impertinent! Get out!"
He approached Burton and Burton did not move. He struck Burton
very lightly on the shoulder. The old man stumbled against the side
of the table and then fell heavily on to the floor. Speed was
passionately frightened. He wondered for the moment if Burton were
dead. Then Burton began to groan. Simultaneously the door opened
and a party of Juniors entered, ostensibly to make some enquiry or
other, but really, as Speed could see, to find out what was
happening.
"What d'you want?" said Speed, turning on them. "I didn't tell you
to come in. Why didn't you knock?"
They had the answer ready. "We did knock, sir, and then we
heard a noise as if somebody had fallen down and we thought you
might be ill, sir."
Burton by this time had picked himself up and was shambling out
of the room, rather lame in one leg.
The days that followed were not easy ones for Speed. He knew
he had been wrong. He ought never to have touched Burton. People
were saying "Fancy hitting an old man over sixty!" Burton had told
everybody about it. The Common-Room knew of it. The school
doctor knew of it, because Burton had been up to the Sick-room to
have a bruise on his leg attended. Helen knew of it, and Helen rather
obviously sided with Burton.
"You shouldn't have hit an old man," she said.
"I know I shouldn't," replied Speed. "I lost my temper. But can't
you see the provocation I had? Am I to put up with a man's
impertinence merely because he's old?"
"You're getting hard, Kenneth. You used to be kind to people, but
you're not kind now. You're never kind now."
In his own heart he had to admit that it was true. He had given up
being kind. He was hard, ruthless, unmerciful, and God knew why,
perhaps. Yet it was all outside, he hoped. Surely he was not hard
through and through; surely the old Speed who was kind and gentle
and whom everybody liked, surely this old self of his was still there,
underneath the hardness that had come upon him lately!
He said bitterly: "Yes, I'm getting hard, Helen. It's true. And I don't
know the reason."
She supplied the answer instantly. "It's because of me," she said
quietly. "I'm making you hard. I'm no good for you. You ought to have
married somebody else."
"No, no!" he protested, vehemently. Then the old routine of
argument, protest, persuasion, and reconciliation took place again.

III
He made up his mind that he would crush the hardness in him,
that he would be the old Speed once more. All his troubles, so it
seemed to him, were the result of being no longer the old Speed. If
he could only bring to life again that old self, perhaps, after sufficient
penance, he could start afresh. He could start afresh with Lavery's,
he could start afresh with Helen; most of all perhaps, he could start
afresh with himself. He would be kind. He would be the secret,
inward man he wanted to be, and not the half-bullying, half-cowardly
fellow that was the outside of him. He prayed, if he had ever prayed
in his life, that he might accomplish the resuscitation.
It was a dark sombrely windy evening in February; a Sunday
evening. He had gone into chapel with all his newly-made desires
and determinations fresh upon him; he was longing for the quiet
calm of the chapel service that he might cement, so to say, his
desires and resolutions into a sufficiently-welded programme of
conduct that should be put into operation immediately. Raggs was
playing the organ, so that he was able to sit undisturbed in the
Masters' pew. The night was magnificently stormy; the wind shrieked
continually around the chapel walls and roof; sometimes he could
hear the big elm trees creaking in the Head's garden. The preacher
was the Dean of some-where-or-other; but Speed did not listen to a
word of his sermon, excellent though it might have been. He was too
busy registering decisions.
The next day he apologized to Burton, rather curtly, because he
knew not any other way. The old man was mollified. Speed did not
know what to say to him after he had apologized; in the end half-a-
sovereign passed between them.
Then he summoned the whole House and announced equally
curtly that he wished to apologize for attempting to break a
recognised House custom. "I've called you all together just to make a
short announcement. When I stopped the basement hockey I was
unaware that it had been a custom in Lavery's for a long while. In
those circumstances I shall allow it to go on, and I apologize for the
mistake. The punishments for those who took part are remitted.
That's all. You may go now."
With Helen it was not so easy.
He said to her, on the same night, when the house had gone up to
its dormitories: "Helen, I've been rather a brute lately. I'm sorry. I'm
going to be different."
She said: "I wish I could be different too."
"Different? You different? What do you mean?"
"I wish I could make you fond of me again." He was about to
protest with his usual eagerness and with more than his usual
sincerity, but she held up her hand to stop him. "Don't say anything!"
she cried, passionately. "We shall only argue. I don't want to argue
any more. Don't say anything at all, please, Kenneth!"
"But—Helen—why not?"
"Because there's nothing more to be said. Because I don't believe
anything that you tell me, and because I don't want to deceive myself
into thinking I do, any more."
"Helen!"
She went on staring silently into the fire, as usual, but when he
came near to her she put her arms round his neck and kissed him. "I
don't believe you love me, Kenneth. Goodness knows why I kiss
you. I suppose it's just because I like doing it, that's all. Now don't
say anything to me. Kiss me if you like, but don't speak. I hate you
when you begin to talk to me."
He laughed.
She turned on him angrily, suddenly like a tiger. "What are you
laughing at? I don't see any joke."
"Neither do I. But I wanted to laugh—for some reason. Oh, if I
mustn't talk to you, mayn't I even laugh? Is there nothing to be done
except kiss and be kissed?"
"You've started to talk. I hate you now."
"I shouldn't have begun to talk if you'd let me laugh."
"You're hateful."

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