Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth, is that of taking much pains to defend it; and no truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endow’d with thought and reason as well as men. The arguments are in this case so obvious, that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant.

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, London, 1739, bk. 1, pt. 3, sect. 16