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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1785-1837] Romantic Age » Rev. Samuel Parr

Samuel Parr

Discourse on Education and Plans Pursued in Charity Schools

[1785] Samuel Parr, A Discourse On Education and On the Plans Pursued in Charity Schools, (1785), reprinted in vol. 2 of The Works of Samuel Parr, With Memoirs of His Life and Writings, by John Johnson (London, 1828; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks.)

Another passion arising from the activity of the mind, and from the love of superiority, is cruelty. Now, of the most venerable court of judicature that ever existed in Greece, it is recorded that a boy was once condemned by it to the loss of life for mischievously plucking out the eyes of a quail. Common sense and common humanity recoil at such extreme rigour, and yet the principle upon which punishment was appointed is certainly reasonable. Practices of this kind,though view by some person without horror, and even encouraged by direct approbation, extinguish, by degrees, compassion, and cherish tyranny; that is, they destroy the noblest, and strengthen the most detestable part of the human character. He that can look with rapture upon the agonies of an unoffending and unresisting animal will soon learn to view the sufferings of a fellow-creature with indifference; and in time he will acquire the power of viewing them even with triumph, if that fellow-creature should become the victim of his resentment, be it just or unjust. But the minds of children are open to impressions of every sort; and, indeed, wonderful is the facility with which a judicious instructor may habituate them to tender emotions. I have therefore always considered mercy to beings of an inferior species as a virtue which children are very capable of learning, but which is most difficult to be taught, if the heart has been once familiarized to spectacles of distress, and has been permitted either to behold the pangs of any living creature with cold insensitivity, or to inflict them with wanton barbarity. (142-143)