Dear Sir

I fear the intrusion, which I must be permitted still to regard it, of inviting your attention to a theory so crude and so antagonistic to both the interests and the prejudices of the age, as this of mine will appear, is but an illustration of the completeness of the one to which your name has been appended, embodied or, I ought to say immortalized, in the works to which I before alluded.¹ Surrounded by an atmosphere of strife, and commotion, and competition or, by the abscence of sympathetic or refining influences the action of environment upon an organism thus posited upon the earth’s surface, has resulted in a being developing that want of consideration which went the length of inflicting upon a fellow creature (that fellow creature being a kind and courteous gentleman) a long, and as it would doubtless appear to many, uninteresting manuscript.²

Thoughtlessness in combination with ignorance of the state of your health, which, from your own description of it, I do sincerely regret, must be my apology for this apparent heartlessness.

With your very kind permission, I will endeavour to give you a synopsis of my theory, or rather the manuscript of the materials of which it is composed, with its grasp and general tendency.

First assuming that no act can be performed without the expenditure of a certain amount of Force; no matter how small or trivial the act done or performed or, whether for the advancement of virtue, or the glorification of vice, as those terms are generally understood, a certain amount of energy is dissipated; but never lost, wasted or destroyed in the operation. Hence it follows that whatever the act which called forth this dissipation of energy, in fulfilment of the doctrine of its “Conservation” it will be followed by its “equivalent consequent” or, as “Draper” puts it, “human affairs present an unbroken chain, in which each fact is the offspring of some preceding fact, and the parent of some subsequent fact.”³ The inference derived from this hypothesis or I might say, fact—bearing in mind also, that “action and reaction are always equal”—is, that every action performed, whether for good or evil, using those terms only as they apply to their effects upon animal life, reacts, upon the actor; for good when the action has a beneficent influence upon animal existence; for evil when injury or mischief to any living organism is the result, and in the exact ratio to the good or evil acted or performed.

This assumption is contained in a short Introduction and Preface, wherein reasons are likewise given for the causes which led to this theory, and the employment of a rather unusual kind of literary machinery, namely, the very great difficulty of putting a subject, so uninteresting as that of our treatment of the inferior races of animals is, to the general, into a readable form. I have embodied my whole argument for and against this treatment in an Imaginary Lawsuit. It is brought by the Plaintiffs Fera Naturæ against the Defendants Homogenus and others to recover certain “right of common” in one of the planets called Earth, from which they have been wrongfully evicted. Each is assisted by counsel and I give a list of witnesses who are examined, with the nature of the Evidence it is the object to elicit.

Names of Witnesses and the nature of their Evidence⁴

which if established, raises doubts as to the justice of our present courses in relation to our treatment of animals.

No witnesses are examined for the defence, but with a view to impartiality I have imported into it, by putting in the mouth of counsel all that I can collect in justification or support of the present system.

In the Reply, on the part of the Plaintiffs, and as further corroborated in the summing up of the Judge, is contained the pith and marrow of the theory, in which my aim is, to show that from our treatment of the inferior animal world, effects are produced which may, and as I believe do exert a wonderfully active and powerful force on the well being of the human race. In fact that through this force or I may call it, agency, for all we can tell to the contrary, and for the lack of “a better reason” the catalogue of innumerable evils, troubles and afflictions, believed by most to be inseparable from human existence, is, to a very great extent referrable.

As a recognition of the equal right of animals to existence on the same terms as the lord of the manor or creation, would be too revolutionary for the present age or standard of “education”, and knowing what would be, under the circumstances, the line of procedure of modern juries composed of human beings, I have made them give this as their excuse for “finding for the Defendants”.

I am | Dear Sir | Your much obliged & humble Servant | J. F. Fisher

Charles Darwin Esq^r.