Beast, Animal, Brute. People use beast in contradistinction to man; thus one says: "man has a soul, but some philosophers do not concede that beasts have any at all." [1] Brute is a term of contempt applied to beasts and to man only in a bad sense. He surrenders himself to all the fury of his inclinations like a brute . Animal is a generic term suitable to all organic and living beings: the animal lives, acts, and moves by itself, etc. If we consider the animal as thinking, wanting, acting, reflecting, etc., then the sense of the word would be restricted to the human race. If we consider the animal to be limited in all the functions that indicate intelligence and will, but seem to have them in common with the human race, then it is restricted to the beast . If we consider the beast in its lowest depths of stupidity, released from the laws of reason and honesty according to which we must regulate our conduct, then we call it a brute. We do not know if beasts are governed by the general laws of motion or by a particular impulse. Both of these opinions present difficulties. If they act out of a particular impulse, if they think, if they have a soul, etc., then what is that soul? We cannot suppose that it is material in nature, but could it be spiritual? To declare that they do not have souls and do not think would reduce animals to the level of machines, which we hardly seem any more authorized to do than to maintain that a man whose speech we do not hear is an automaton. The argument based on the perfection of their works is strong, for it would seem, if we judge from their first steps, that they should go rather far. Nevertheless, they all stop at the same point, which is almost the character of machines. But the argument based on the uniformity of their productions does not appear quite as well-founded to me. The nests of swallows and the dwellings of beavers do not resemble each other any more than do the houses of men. If a swallow places its nest in an angle, the only circumference will be the arc covered between the sides of the angle. On the other hand, if the nest is set against a wall, it will measure half a circumference. If you dislodge beavers from their homes, and they go settle in another location, as it is not possible for them to find the same piece of ground, there will necessarily be variety in the techniques they use and the dwellings they construct.

However that may be, one cannot imagine that beasts have a much more intimate relationship with God than the other parts of the material world, otherwise, which one of us would dare to lay a hand on them and shed their blood without any qualms? Who would be able to kill a lamb with an easy conscience? The feelings they have, whatever their nature, are only useful in communicating with each other or with other creatures. With the incentive of pleasure they conserve their own being; and with the same incentive, they conserve their species. I have said incentive of pleasure for lack of a more precise expression, for if beasts were capable of the same feeling which we call pleasure, to cause them any harm would be an act of unprecedented cruelty. They have their own natural laws because they are united by common needs, interests, etc., but they do not have any positive ones because they are not united by any intellectual understanding. However, they do not seem to follow their natural laws in an invariable manner; and plants which we assume have neither understanding nor feeling are even more subject to these laws.

Beasts do not have the supreme advantage of human beings. However, they have some that we do not have: they do not have our hopes, but they do not have our fears. They suffer death as we do, but it is without knowing it. Most of them take better care of themselves and do not misuse their passions as much as we do, See the articles Soul and Animal.

1. The Cartesian mechanists denied the beasts a soul, while some philosophers granted them a sensitive but not an intellectual soul. There were even a few thinkers, including the Encyclopedists, who believed that beasts were endowed with a spiritual but mortal soul. One of the main issues at stake in this eighteenth-century debate was the absolute and divine superiority of man. Although "the eighteenth century was not unique in expressing concern for brute suffering, it was unique in developing an active movement against cruelty to animals" (Hester Hastings, Man and Beast in French Thought of the Eighteenth Century [Baltimore, 1936], p. 175; see also Leonora Cohen Rosenfield, From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine: Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie [New York, 1941]).