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〈가〉 The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.

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The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor.

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It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate.

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What else is it that should trace the insuperable line?

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Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse?

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But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old.

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But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail?

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The question is not, Can they reason?

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nor Can they talk?

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but, Can they suffer?

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〈나〉 In this passage, Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital characteristic that entitles a being to equal consideration.

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The capacity for suffering ― or more strictly, for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness ― is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language or for higher mathematics.

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Bentham is not saying that those who try to mark ‘the insuperable line’ that determines whether the interests of a being should be considered happen to have selected the wrong characteristic.

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〈다〉 The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way.

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It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a child.

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A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer.

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Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare.

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A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because it will suffer if they are treated in this way.

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〈라〉 If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration.

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No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that the suffering be counted equally with the like suffering ― in so far as rough comparisons can be made ― of any other being.

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If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account.

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This is why the limit of sentience (using the term as a convenient, if not strictly accurate, shorthand for the capacity to suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others.

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To mark this boundary by some characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary way.

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Why not choose some other characteristic, like skin colour?