C.S. Lewis's theology of animals

Lewis goes on to make his well-known argument against experimentation, namely that it is vivisectionists-not anti-vivisectionistswho are the real sentimentalists. Noting that most vivisectors (in his day) have no theological background and are mostly naturalistic and Darwinian in orientation, he claims to have discovered a `very alarming fact':

The very same people who will most contemptuously brush aside any consideration of animal suffering if it stands in the way of "research" will also, in another context, most vehemently deny that there is any radical difference between man and the other animals. On the naturalistic view the beasts are at bottom just the same sort of thing as ourselves. Man is simply the cleverest of the anthropoids. All the grounds on which a Christian might defend vivisection are thus cut from under our feet. We sacrifice other species to our own not because our own has any objective metaphysical privilege over others but simply because it is ours. It may be very natural to have this loyalty to our own species, but let us hear no more from the naturalists about the "sentimentality" of anti-vivisectionists. If loyalty to our own species, preference for man simply because we are men, is not sentiment, then what is it? It may be a good sentiment or a bad one. But a sentiment it certainly is. Try to base it on logic and see what happens!

This reversal of the charge of sentimentality is coupled with a counter-charge that those who advocate experiments on animals logically imperil the status of human subjects as well. Lewis is ruthless in exposing the faulty logic of his antagonists:

(T)he most sinister thing about modern vivisection is this: If a mere sentiment can justify cruelty, why stop at a sentiment for the whole human race? There is also a sentiment for the white man against the black, for the Herrenvolk against the Non-Aryans, for "civilized" or "progressive" peoples against "savage" or "backward" peoples. Finally for our own country, party, or class against others. Once the old Christian idea of a total difference in kind between man and beast has been abandoned, then no argument for experiments on animals can be found which is not also an argument for experiments on inferior men. If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies or capitalists for the same reason.

What informs Lewis's uncompromising critique is his utter rejection of utilitarian justifications for cruelty. Cruelty even to animals is 'symptomatic' of a modern failure to recognise moral evil and marks the acceptance of secular utilitarianism as the common standard of right and wrong. He concludes: `The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as the animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements.'20