its fruits—and those on condition that we left as good for others.rnThe moral doctrine that recent cnironmentalists have attributedrn(no doubt correctly) to the natie peoples whom Europeanrncolonists despised and conquered was actually one thatrnthose same Europeans held. The Minister of the British Crownrnwho recently quoted Ruskin in support of the Rio summit onrnenvironmentalism might as easily have quoted Jefferson,rnLocke, or Leviticus. We had no “right” to destroy the land, norrndeny it to other creatures who had as great a need of it as we.rnNor could we have any “right” to treat nonhuman creaturesrncruelly. “You bought [the horse] with your mone, it is true,rnand he is your property; but, whether you are apprised of it orrnnot, you bought him with a condition necessarily annexed tornthe bargain. You could not purchase the right to use him withrncruelty and injustice. Of whom could von purchase such arnright? Who could make such a conveyance?” Ownership, inrnEnglish and other law, has neer conveyed a legal right to do exactlyrnas we please with what we oyvn, and there were plenty ofrnrulings in our history to dictate some decent treatment for creaturesrnthat were our “property” (as being things that we couldrnbuy and sell). “The righteous man has a care for his beast, butrnthe tender mercies of the wicked are cruel,” so the Book ofrnProverbs dictated. Even when the wicked did nothing “againstrnthe law” in beating their dogs, their horses (or their wives andrnchildren—since it took a long time to remember that suchrnthings were also human), what they did would meet with publicrndisapproval.rnFor though the surface doctrine was the Stoic one, that nonhumanrncreatures could not be treated “unjustly,” the traditionrnwas clear that certainly thev could. “You shall not muzzle thernfjx that treads out the corn” (Deuteronomy 25:4); “you shallrnnot yoke ox and ass together” (Deuteronomy 22T0). Bothrnthese commands mean more than what they simply say: thernclear implication is that the animals who yvork and suffer for usrnshall not be refused their pay, nor put to yvork in ways that dornnot suit their natures. Everyone understood that there was,rnafter all, a sort of bargain with domestic creatures—as almostrneveryone in Britain now condemns the present treatment ofrn(male) calves surplus to the requirements of the dairy industry.rnThe bargain was not an explicit, verbal one, but neither was thernhypothetical bargain that we human citizens yvere said to havernstruck. There are very few cases of any explicit bargain at thernroot of any human state (Locke can identify only such occasionsrnas those bargains between desperate ruffians, aA/a thernfounders of Rome, that enabled them to seize a territory andrnmake a state). The point about contract talk is simply to directrnour attention to the advantages we individually gain from keepingrnthe present peace. The peace is one that should be kept (itrnis a real peace), if all of us can gain from it. Similarly with ourrndomestic creatures: our bargain is that we look after them. Thernword of the Lord to Ezekiel:rnProphesy, man, against the shepherds of Israel; prophesyrnand say to them, YDU shepherds, these are the words ofrnthe Lord God: How I hate the shepherds of Israel whorncare only for themselves! Should not the shepherd carernfor the sheep? You consume the milk, wear the wool,rnand slaughter the fat beasts, but you don’t feed thernsheep. You have not encouraged the weary, tended thernsick, bandaged the hurt, recovered the straggler, orrnsearched for the lost; and even the strong you have drivenrnwith ruthless severity…. I will dismiss those shepherds:rnthey shall care only for themselves no longer; I will rescuernmy sheep from their jaws, and thev shall feed on them nornlonger (Ezekiel 34:1-10).rnI acknowledge, of course, that the words refer to the rulers ofrnIsrael: but the metaphor makes no sense, in its context, unlessrnreal shepherds were really meant to care for sheep.rnThere were also rules for our relation with the wild. You shallrnnot take both mother and young from any nest (Deuteronomyrn22:6, Leviticus 22:28), nor plough up all the fields so as to denyrnfood to the poor, the stranger, or the wild things in your countryrn(Leviticus 19:9, 23:22, 25:6). If we do, the story went, wernwould be thrown out of the land: we enjo it only on conditionrnthat we do not take it wholly for oursehes. “The whole worldrnhas rest and is at peace; it breaks into cries of joy. The pinesrnthemselves and the cedars of Lebanon exult over ou: since ournhae been laid low, they say no man comes up to fell us” (Isaiahrn14:7-8). The land shall have the sabbaths we denied to itrn(Leviticus 26:34).rnI mention these commands, these tacit bargains, not to exaltrnone moral and religious tradition over all. Similar injunctionsrncan be found elsewhere, and it is important that those whorncampaign for international change should hnd the appropriaternseeds for ecological and humanitarian change within the customsrnof the relevant country. My purpose is at once to answerrnthe common claim that Christian or Jewish tradition is “environmentall}’rnunfriendly,” and to lay out the processes that havernled us, in the settled West, from one moral code to another.rnThe contract society eliminated, or strove to eliminate, manyrnfailings of status society. It did not wholly eliminate its merits,rnbut the nonhuman suffered more as a result than need havernhappened. The older tradition included many duties of carernand forbearance to the nonhuman, duties that could be rationalizedrnas products of a sort of bargain quite as easily as liberal,rnhuman rights.rnThe next great shift in moral sensibility, which has alsornproved to be double-edged, introduced the notion thatrnpain was, as such, an evil. We ought not to cause such evil, andrnmabe ought to take steps to prevent it. Until the 18th ecntur-,rnmoralists probably took it as their task to show that pain wasrnnot an evil, or not one that decent people minded much about.rnIt \’as wrong to betray one’s friends and country, wrong to stealrnor to murder; greed, ill temper, and unchastity were wrong.rnPossibly it yvas yvrong to rejoice in the undeserved suffering ofrnothers; it might also be wrong to regret their deserved suffering.rnThose moralists who then began to insist that pain was after allrnan eil, something that should not exist, and perhaps that it wasrnthe only real evil, were vulnerable to the charge that they wererntaking on the mind of brutes. Brutes, after all, felt pain: if painrnwere an eil, or the main or real evil, then we ought (absurdity!)rnto take their pain into account in reckoning on right actions. Ifrnbrutes’ pains mattered to these moralists, it must be becauserntliev were themselves brutish, cowardly, and licentious. Thernmoral school that came to be called “utilitarians” played an importantrnpart in pressing for legislation to regulate the treatmentrnof both domesticated and wild animals. If they could suffer,rnthen we ought to treat them gently, and protect them againstrnwhat injuries we could. It is unfortunate that “utilitarian” argumentsrnare now taken to be those that turn on quantifiable,rnhuman advantage: save the whales because they might be usefulrnlater! The founders of the school would have been appalledrn14/CHRONICLESrnrnrn