Animal Rights Quotes • Law • Humane Education • Historical Literature eBook Library: Free Full-Text eBooks • Primary Sources
Activists Against Cruelty to Animals: A » B » C » D » E » F » G » H » I » J » K » L » M » N » O » P » Q » R » S » T » U » V » W » X » Y » Z

Animal Rights History Timeline » [1660-1785] Enlightenment: » Samuel Jackson Pratt

Samuel Jackson Pratt

The Sublime and Beautiful of Scriptures

Supremacy of Man

[1777] Samuel Jackson Pratt, "Supremacy of Man," in The Sublime and Beautiful of Scriptures: Being Essays on Select Passages of Sacred Passages of Sacred Composition (1777; London, 1782; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks).

But though all things are in subjection, nothing was born to slavery. (40)

There is something inhospitable in thus exerting undue severity over the creatures or our convenience: they are fatted, indeed, to fall for our existence: they toil, refresh themselves a while, and toil again; or else they slumber and feed beneath our eye, and, as it were, plead eloquently for our guardianship. When we lead them to the last agony, ah! let it not be in triumph; nor, as one life is sacrificed for another, as the blood of an animal is shed for the support of man, let us not, in the mean time, render the little allotment of their existence more painful, by withholding from them that sympathy, to which whatever is delivered to our hands, has a right to claim from our hearts. (41)