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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1837-1901] Victorian Age » Pere Girard

Pere Girard

The Mother Tongue

Humanity to Animals

[1840-1848] Père Girard [Jean Baptiste], The Mother Tongue [1st published in French as Cours educatif de langue maternelle [1840-8] trans. by Viscount Ebrington (London, 1847; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks).

This too must find a place here. Nevertheless, it is to be hoped that our pupils will have been cured at home of that thoughtlessness which takes pleasure in plucking out the feathers of a little bird, or breaking the claws of an insect, &c.: those are barbarous pastimes, though children are hardly aware of the pain they inflict by them on sentient beings. And, indeed those of riper years are not blameless in this matter; for men often remorselessly deprive a poor animal of its freedom, and detain it in captivity contrary to its nature; and will treat horses and beasts of burden as if they were insensible to hunger, to fatigue, and to blows. (236)

Of course of language will therefore say to the pupils that animals are capable of feeling pleasure and pain like ourselves; that their organization resembles our own, and that they too require food and rest; that they hold their lives under the same goodness which upholds us in being; that, although the animal is not the child of God, like man, yet nevertheless he is the object of God's providential care; that the Creator has given animals for our use, but not for us to be their tormentors; that if we would be the children of God, we must feel kindly towards all who draw the breath of life. (236)