[I]f animals may be rendered liable to judicial punishment for injuries done to man, one would naturally infer that they should also enjoy legal prot… - Edward Payson Evans

In the higher organisms the higher faculties predominate, and in the lower organisms the lower faculties: but in all of them, from the highest to the lowest, the action is the resultant of impulses of sensation, perception, conception, and thought variously combined and inextricably blended.

Ethnocentric geography, which caused each petty tribe to regard itself as the centre of the earth, and geocentric astronomy, which caused mankind to regard the earth as the centre of the universe, are conceptions that have been gradually outgrown and generally discarded—not, however, without leaving distinct and indelible traces of themselves in human speech and conduct. But this is not the case with anthropocentric psychology and ethics, which treat man as a being essentially different and inseparably set apart from all other sentient creatures, to which he is bound by no ties of mental affinity or moral obligation. Nevertheless, all these notions spring from the same root, having their origin in man's false and overweening conceit of himself as the member of a tribe, the inhabitant of a planet, or the lord of creation.

It is through the portal of spiritual kinship, erected by modern evolutional science, that beasts and birds [...] enter into the temple of justice and enjoy the privilege of sanctuary against the wanton or unwitting cruelty hitherto authorized by the assumptions and usurpations of man.