C. S. Lewis and Animal Experimentation Michael J

Article C. S. Lewis and Animal Experimentation Michael J. Gilmour Michael J. Gilmour C. S. Lewis is one of those rare Christian thinkers giving careful attention to the place of nonhuman animals in theology and the religious life. We fi nd this career-long concern for animal well-being across diverse genres, and also in his public opposition to vivisection. This article proposes a particular link between Lewis’s refl ections on animal cruelty and wartime, and identifi es certain theological assumptions informing his ideas. he Christian tradition is curiously about Nineveh … in which there are ambivalent about animals and their more than a hundred and twenty thou- place in theology and ethics. This T sand persons … and also many animals?” is somewhat surprising given the New (Jonah 4:11). Testament’s high view of nonhuman sen- tient life, as is evident in Jesus’s remarks So why, in light of this, does Christianity about donkeys and sparrows (Luke 13:15; largely ignore animal ethics? Why are the Matt. 10:29), and the Pauline tradition’s vast majority of churches silent regarding repeated use of the inclusive ta panta unnecessary, human-caused animal pain? (“all things,” Col. 1:15–20; cf. Rom. 8:18– There is not space here to do justice to such 23) when speaking of the eschatological important questions though the views hope of restoration in Christ. To be sure, of certain highly infl uential theologians there are passages appearing to indicate contribute to Christianity’s tendency indifference toward animals and animal toward anthropocentrism. Augustine and suffering (Mark 5:1–20; 1 Cor. 9:9–10), but Thomas Aquinas, to name just two, argue it is not so obvious that these and other that humans have no moral obligations texts devalue nonhuman creation as so to irrational animals, views owing much often supposed.1 to questionable assumptions about the On the whole, the New Testament meaning of the imago dei and the “domin- affi rms the priestly view that all cre- ion” language of Genesis 1:26–28.2 Yet, ation, including its endlessly diverse despite the enormous sway of thinkers creatures of water, sky, and land, are such as Aquinas and many others who “good” (Gen. 1:20–25). And not only are ignore animals or minimize their impor- they good, but also proper treatment tance for the religious life, there are a of those animals is a moral obligation few—a very few—who celebrate them, imposed on the people of God in the and bring a robust understanding of Torah and elsewhere (e.g., Exod. 23:4–5, “love thy neighbor” to questions about 10–12; Num. 22:27–34; Deut. 5:13–14; 22:4, animal well-being. C. S. Lewis is among 6–7, 10; Prov. 12:10). That God cares for them. the well-being of animal life is unam- biguous: “And should I not be concerned A Soldier and a Poet Michael Gilmour earned his PhD at McGill University and teaches Lewis rarely mentions his experiences New Testament at Providence University College in Manitoba, Canada. on the battlefi elds of World War I, but He is also a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. on one occasion he recalls an incident 254 Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith Michael J. Gilmour that apparently lingered in memory for almost forty “God send you peace and delight thereof, years before he put pen to paper. And all green meat of the waste you love, Until the great German attack came in the Spring “And guard you well from violent men [of 1918] we had a pretty quiet time. Even then they Who’d put you back in the shafts again.”5 attacked not us but the Canadians on our right, Here a sense of kinship, however mysterious; here merely “keeping us quiet” by pouring shells into an awareness that human-caused suffering of animal our line about three a minute all day. I think it was life is an undeserved affront to decency; and here a that day I noticed how a greater terror overcomes moment of interspecies harmony. A mouse feels no a less: a mouse that I met (and a poor shivering terror for a terrifi ed soldier; a donkey welcomes a mouse it was, as I was a poor shivering man) made tickle of the ear from one not inclined to hurt him, no attempt to run from me.3 to place him in the shafts again. The scene shows remarkable tenderness for the plight of a suffering animal, and it is certainly not the So what do mice and donkeys have to do with sol- only time we fi nd such empathy in his work. diers and poets? And what is more, do humans have moral responsibilities to nonhuman creatures? Lewis Consider a poem published only a year after that contemplates these and related questions in a variety encounter with the mouse. Here again we fi nd Lewis of diverse contexts, but it is interesting to observe that contemplating the mysteries of animal life and its many of his most explicit and sustained statements kinship with humanity, building on the premise that on animals and animal ethics occur during times of all living things are offspring of “earth, our mother.” war and its immediate aftermath: the mouse incident The poem in question appears in Spirits in Bondage: of 1918; the donkey poem of 1919. Jump ahead to a A Cycle of Lyrics (1919), Lewis’s fi rst book. Though later confl ict and we have a chapter on animal suf- published a decade or so before his conversion to fering in The Problem of Pain (1940). In the 1943 novel Christianity, he still borrows a theological vocabu- Perelandra, we read of a demonic fi gure that rips lary to give expression to his thoughts. His narrator open frog-like creatures but leaves them alive to suf- says to a donkey, fer agonies. The description of “V-shaped” wounds “For, brother, the depth of your gentle eyes inevitably brings vivisection to mind: Is strange and mystic as the skies, The whole back had been ripped open in a sort … of V-shaped gash, the point of the V being a little “Can it be true, as the wise men tell, behind the head. Some thing had torn a widening That you are a mask of God as well[?]”4 wound backward … [Elwin Ransom] told himself In the story from Surprised by Joy, a terrifying German that a creature of that kind probably had very little bombardment reveals the common plight of a poor sensation. But it did not much mend matters. It shivering mouse and a poor shivering soldier in the was not merely pity for pain that had suddenly trenches of France. In the 1919 donkey poem, Lewis’s changed the rhythm of his heart-beats. The thing was an intolerable obscenity which affl icted him narrator wonders about commonalities among sen- with shame.6 tient beings, including a shared capacity for distress. The latter ponders: In his 1945 novel That Hideous Strength, the villains of the tale experiment on living animals, and in a 1947 In a fi eld where the dew lay cold and deep I met an ass, new roused from sleep. essay, Lewis articulates explicitly his impassioned opposition to vivisection. The timing is suggestive, I stroked his nose and I tickled his ears, though it is diffi cult to know what to make of it. And spoke soft words to quiet his fears. Perhaps for Lewis there is a connection between war … and cruelty to animals, a continuum between dis- “And do you rejoice in the dawn divine regard for nonhuman life and disregard for human With a heart that is glad no less than mine? life. Said differently, humanity at its worse dur- … ing the World Wars offers Lewis a fi tting occasion “What are the thoughts that grope behind, to contemplate the infl iction of horrifi c and wholly Down in the mist of a donkey mind? unnecessary cruelties toward other living things. … Volume 67, Number 4, December 2015 255 Article C. S. Lewis and Animal Experimentation Human-Caused Animal Suffering once, and still would be had Weston not killed it in 11 and Violence toward Other People an earlier experiment. Like Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, Weston also turns to a human The link between cruelty to animals in childhood subject as a replacement, but this time there is a par- and aggression in later life is well established in the ticularly dark implication in the scientist’s choice of present day. “Virtually every serial killer in recent victim. It is a boy earlier described by his mother as memory had a history of torturing and killing ani- “a little simple,” and by Weston himself as “inca- mals,” writes Holly Hazard of the Humane Society pable of serving humanity and only too likely to of the United States, and “the … Federal Bureau of propagate idiocy.” He is the kind of person, Weston Investigation (FBI) has added cruelty to animals as continues, “who in a civilized community would be one of the factors it uses in developing a profi le of automatically handed over to a state laboratory for behavior patterns in violent criminals.”7 Though experimental purposes.”12 Like the dog, the boy has I am not sure whether the statistical and scientifi c no intrinsic value for Weston, and only escapes the data in Lewis’s day supported the link, he was at scientist because the appropriately named Elwin least intuitively aware of a connection between the ill Ransom takes his place in that villain’s murderous treatment of vulnerable nonhumans and vulnerable scheme, in effect paying the price for the boy’s life.

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