ery man has a destiny appointed for him by his Creator,
and which he is to work out by his own acts, he must have the means
given him to do so. For to assign a person a task and not to give him
the means of accomplishing it would be absurd. Therefore the Creator
wants him to have those means, and forbids every one to deprive him of
those means. Here is the foundation of rights. Every man, in virtue of
the Creator's will, has certain advantages or claims to advantages
assigned him which no other man may infringe. Those advantages and
claims constitute his rights, guaranteed him by the Creator; and all
other men have the _duty_ imposed on them to respect those rights. Thus
rights and duties are seen to be correlative and inseparable; the rights
lodged in one man beget duties in other men. The same Creator that
assigns rights to one man lays upon all others duties to respect those
rights, that thus every free being may have the means of working out its
Heaven-appointed destiny.

Thus it is apparent that rights and duties suppose free beings, persons;
now an irrational animal is not a person; it is not a free being, having
a destiny to work out by its free acts; it is therefore incapable of
having duties. Duties are matters of conscience; therefore they cannot
belong to the brute animal; for it has no conscience. And, since rights
are given to creatures because of the duties incumbent on them, brute
animals are incapable of having rights. When a brute animal has served
man's purpose, it has reached its destiny.

III. But it is entirely different with man: there is what we may call an
infinite distance between man and brute. Every man is created directly
for the honor and service not of other men, but of God Himself: by
serving God man must work out his own destiny--eternal happiness. In
this respect all men are equal, having the same essence or nature and
the same destiny. The poor child has as much right to attain eternal
happiness as the rich child, the infant as much as the gray-bearded
sire. Every one is only at the beginning of an endless existence, of
which he is to determine the nature by his own free acts. In this
infinite destiny lies the infinite superiority of man over the brute
creation.

That all men are equal in their essential rights is the dictate of
common-sense and of sound philosophy. This truth may not flatter kings
and princes; but it is the charter of human rights, founded deeper and
broader in natu