Animal Rights History »» J. Todd Ferrier

On Behalf of the Creatures, "A Plea for Humaneness"

A PLEA FOR HUMANENESS

[page 91] IN this paper I wish to examine the plea for a fleshless diet on humane and moral grounds. History, science, social and national economies all attest the value of a fruitarian regimen but even if they did not, there is this higher plea which should command our attention. There can be no doubt that the best apostle of natural living is the man who is convinced of its humane and moral necessity. The moral and humane side of it underlies our ascent to the Divine Life or our descent to lower planes of existence, according to our attitude.

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The fact that we have had to establish societies for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals speaks for itself, and implies social conditions which ought not to disgrace our Twentieth Century civilisation. And the further fact that great efforts are being put forth to make it unlawful to practice the diabolical inquisition of vivisection, testifies to the sad truth that the cultivation of humane feeling has received a rude check, and that Mark Antony's words, read in another light, are true to-day—

"0 judgment ! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason!"

For what mean these vices in the midst of our communities to-day? The child is father of the man. What the child is, the man or woman becomes. So we are [page 92]driven back to foundations. A cruel nature in man or woman dates backwards. The ugly figure, as well as the most beautiful, which grows out of the marble as the result of chisel and mallet, was first in the sculptor's mind. And the cruelty we hear of and see (though it is but a grain of the bushel that is harvested every day) is the output of the evil influences that have been at work from childhood. To attain to the tartarean possession of a cruel spirit means a long process, not a few acts. That some children are born cruel speaks for itself of an inevitable heritage. How that heritage was built up may be difficult to understand by those who do not trouble themselves to look below the surface of life, and who seek refuge from all those difficulties and terrible apparent inequalities, in the crude theory of physical heredity. But to all serious souls who will get back to the cause of things, the answer will be found in the past history of the soul which comes back to earth still morally blind and spiritually dwarfed.

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There are some remarkable words of Scripture which have had a verification equally remarkable in the history of individuals, families, and communities, and which bear out this statement. These have too often been misinterpreted, and the charge of injustice implied against the Source of all compassion and goodness. Whereas the great truth they enunciate is what nature herself will teach us, viz: that effects have causes; that all actions have effects; and no effects exist without a cause. Every moral thought, feeling, or action brings [page 93] its own reward; and every immoral thought, feeling, or act has its natural consequence from which there is no escape, though there may be redemption through a complete moral change.

The words are these:—

"And the Lord passed by and proclaimed The Lord, The Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious; slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin: and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation."—(Exodus xxxiv, 6, 7.)

These words are burdened with a divine and solemn message for this age. Looking back into history we see how they have stamped their truth upon the generations of men. We can trace the physical effects of wrongdoing, the moral paralysis that has overtaken nations and individuals, as the issue of impure and selfish feeling. And we may see, if we will, that much of the inhumanity which exists, and which would be much more visible and terrible in its effects but for the fear which the law creates, dates back to the failure to apprehend the Sacredness of all Life, whether in man or beast ; and to our insensate manner of living upon flesh, and our cruel sports.

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Our own great metaphysician, Locke, saw this; and in his "Thoughts on Education," spoke of the scandalous neglect of parents and teachers to impress upon children that the fundamental law of morality was "humaneness," [page 94] and that there could be no morality without it. He writes :—

"This tendency to cruelty should be watched in them, and, if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts will, by degrees, harden their hearts even towards men. And, they who delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Children should from the beginning be brought up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting any living creature." ("Thoughts on Education," pp. 96, 97.)

The advice is timely and fraught with wisdom. But how can parents and teachers humanely influence children when they themselves are not truly humane? To a really thoughtful child it would seem a strange thing to have enforced the humane lesson, whilst probably at the next meal the remains of some poor creature—bird or beast—would garnish the table. Let us be consistent and not convert to truth the satire of Rousseau when he called us a nation of blustering hypocrites.

"English coarseness is well known," he writes in his "Confessions." "I know that the English boast loudly of their Humanity, and of the good disposition of their nation, which they term 'good nature'; but it is in vain for them to proclaim this far and wide. Nobody repeats it after them."

It is quite likely that most of us would as strongly repudiate the assertion as Edward Gibbon did. Yet there is no doubt a vein of truth underneath it. For [page 95] some of our own honoured writers have said things quite as strong. In the latter part of the eighteenth century Oliver Goldsmith ran tilt against the degrading habits of his time. He lifted the English custom of cruel sport and flesh-eating into unfavourable light when he compared it with the pure and simple and humane living of the Buddhist. Under the title "The Citizen of the World" he wrote to the "Public Ledger"; and in one of these letters he says:—

"The better sort here pretend to the utmost compassion for animals of every kind; to hear them speak, a stranger would be apt to imagine they could hardly hurt the gnat that stung them. They seem so tender, and so full of pity, that one would take them for the harmless friends of the whole creation, the protectors of the meanest insect or reptile that was privileged with existence. And yet (would you believe it?) I have seen the very men who have thus boasted of their tenderness, at the same time devour the flesh of six different animals tossed up in a fricassee. Strange contrariety of conduct. They pity, and they eat the objects of their compassion!… Man was born to live with innocence and simplicity, but he has deviated from nature; he was born to share the bounties of heaven, but he has monopolised them; he was born to govern the 'brute creation,' but he has become their tyrant. Hail, 0 ye simple, honest Brahmins of the East! Ye inoffensive friends of all that were born to happiness as well as you! You never sought a short-lived pleasure from the miseries of other creatures! You never studied the tormenting arts of ingenious redinement; [page 96] you never surfeited upon a guilty meal! How much more purified and refined are all your sensations than ours!" (Letter xv.)

However sad and humiliating it may be, yet it is nevertheless true that, as a nation, we are not to be named in the same breath with the Brahmins. For, though our civilisation (as we judge it) may seem so much higher; and though our religion in its spirit is the most positive and humane of all faiths; and though it holds out to the whole creation—man and beast alike—the great hope of ultimate redemption; yet in our habits and customs and the practice of our faith, we are, as a people, twenty-five centuries behind the Brahminical religion.

I know it is a serious charge to make. But is it true? Who doubts it? What reverence have we for any life but our own? Though the law protects life (man's life) from death, yet is not the irreverence for life, irrespective of the individual, made manifest in all the great labour battles, in the acute suffering resulting from impoverishment occasioned by the brute forces of men? What do the great money-makers (with a few noble exceptions) care for the sacredness of life? They cannot spill blood without punishment, but they can wear down and grind out the energy of body and soul to fill their treasuries, without a passing thought of true brotherly regard for those who so slave for them. There is no genuine respect and reverence for life in society; nor indeed in the religious centres. Life is only valued for what it can produce [page 97] and what service it can render us: how far it may enrich our store or be a source of accommodating fellowship to us—not for the sacred mystery of what it is in itself, and the purpose for which it may have come into the world not for the experiences through which it is passing, and the divine potentialities latent within its consciousness.

Alas ! the spirit of the Inquisition still lives. It has only changed its methods and venues. For their gain and sordid pleasure men put their fellowmen on the rack; and when they cannot do that, they turn to the animals. I do not wish to be too hard upon my countrymen. I have no desire to unnecessarily accuse them of thoughtless selfishness and cruelty. But surely no one conversant with the commercial habits, the social customs, and the class and money-worship of the present day, will deny that these things are so! It is better for us to face the truth, even should it make our moral rheumatism twinge ; for the truth alone can make us whole and free.

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Now, as behind all effects there are causes; so is it true of our commercial and social conditions. The lack of true reverence for human life has had its origin in our failure to apprehend the sacredness of all life. The cruel sport of hunting, coursing, bird-shooting, without any necessity whatever, is perfectly legal when carried out according to the statute; but I cannot but regard it as morally criminal; and I think most humane men and women will consider it such if only they will reflect seriously about it. Nor will they fail to see that most [page 98] of the cankerous evils which are eating up the richest life of the nation may be traced back to the barbaric customs and habits of the people, present and past.

Strauss, in his "Der Alte and Der Neue Glaube," bears out my contention. He says: "Criminal history shows us how many torturers of men, and murderers, have first been torturers of the lower animals. The manner in which a nation in the aggregate treats animals, is one chief measure of its civilisation. The Latin races, as, we know, come forth badly from this examination, we Germans not half well enough. Buddhism has done more in this direction than Christianity." ("The Old and the New Faith," p.282.)

If Strauss had said, "Christianity as presented by its adherents," we should agree with him. The religion of Jesus would do more than any other faith to elevate humanity and touch sympathetically the animal world, if it had a chance. But its genius has been lost in materialised forms, and through the gross or carnal living of those who confess it. The spirit of true Christianity is loving. It loves the whole scope of the Father's revelation of Himself in a varied, sentient creation. It does not, it cannot, stop short at man, any more than at one's most intimate friends; but it must pass out to embrace those races that are capable of responding to our sympathy, though they seem so far beneath us in the scale of evolution. And this aspect of the Christian faith must be taught the young, so that it shall form a distinctive element in their education. Much of the indifference, apathy, and even cruelty which we see has its origin in [page 99] the false education given the young concerning the rights of animals, and their duty towards them.

How worthy of record are these words of Jean Paul Richte, which he wrote a century ago when dealing with the theory of education!

"Love is the hemisphere of the moral heaven. Yet is the sacred being of love little established. Love is an inborn, if differently distributed, force and heat of the heart. There are cold and warm-blooded souls, as there are animals. As for the child, so for the lower animal, love is an essential impulse; and this central fire, in the form of compassion, often pierces its earth-crust; but only in few cases. Under proper education (the education that makes love the basis and end of true being) the child learns to regard all animal life as sacred: in brief, they impart to him the feeling of a Hindu in place of the heart of a Cartesian philosopher. It is a question of something more even than compassion for other animals ; but this, also, is in question. Why is it that it has so long been observed that the cruelty of the child to the lower animals presages cruelty to men, just as the Hebrew sacrifice of animals foreshadowed that of a man? It is for himself only that the undeveloped man can experience pain and suffering, which speak to him with the native tone of his own experience. Consequently, the inarticulate cry of a tortured animal comes to him just as some strange, amusing sound of the air; and yet he sees there life, conscious movement, which distinguish them from inanimate substances. Thus he sins against his own life, whilst he sunders it from the rest, as though [page 100] it were a piece of machinery. Let life be to him sacred, even that which may be wanting in reasoning faculties. Because the heart beats under a covering of hair, feathers, or wings, is it, therefore, to be of no account?" ("Levana, oder Erzichungsehre")

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It ought to make all who profess evangelical Christianity ashamed that the finest and most compassionate souls have not been within their own borders, but rather amongst those whose deepest thoughts have aroused the suspicion of heresy. Evangelical Christianity, as people understand it, has absolutely failed to kindle the Divine Compassion, and to realise itself in a great fire of sacred devotion to all life. Had it kindled such a fire and aroused such a devotion, do my readers imagine that the feelingless vivisector could have carried on his diabolical business, from which he has not even learnt how to cure one solitary disease? Can they for a moment dream that the cruel sports of hunting and shooting the dumb creatures could have been perpetrated, and that the very "Children of the Kingdom" should have been amongst the foremost in the inhuman practice ? Can they suppose the continuation of that terrible fungus—the abattoir, with all its foul smells and heart-rending mysteries, side by side with the undefiled and compassionate religion of Jesus? Yea, can the thought be reconciled, that shambles may be reared upon the blood of sentient creatures, and draw their chief support from members of the Christian Temples, with the ideals for which those Temples stand? For are not these latter [page 101] the symbols of purity, humanity, peace, joy? How comes it that Churches can so complacently shelter these dens of murderous vice and woe? Do the people who stand within the gates of the temple week by week, worshipping the Giver of all true life and the destroyer of none, praying for His compassion to be vouchsafed to them and theirs—do they realise that because there is a dearth of humane compassion and tender reverence for all life, and men think more of their appetites than of the creatures whose life is taken to gratify their physical lusts—I say, do they realise that in order to so gratify their eating lusts no fewer than 1,000,000 animals are sacrificed every day, or nearly 1,000 for every minute? Can they gauge the terrible sufferings that must ensue to these creatures in their death-pangs? How many of them have watched the processes from the grazing ground to the public market where prime English or Colonial beef and mutton are exposed for sale? If they followed the patient, silent creatures step by step till they passed through the "House of death"(which is a veritable hell), and saw the sundered parts like dumb mouths pleading for compassion, methinks there would soon be a humane and moral revolution in the world!

One is forced to repeat the lament of Cowper in "The Task" (though, alas ! he still followed the eating customs of his day, believing that man was carnivorous through his fall, and not seeing the great ethical possibilities underlying self-denial in this direction, and absolute purity in diet):—

[page 102] "Earth groans beneath the burden of a war
Waged with defenceless innocence, while he,
Not satisfied to prey on all around,
Adds tenfold bitterness of death by pangs,
Needless, and first torments, ere he devours.

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Witness the patient ox, with stripes and yells,
Driven to the slaughter, goaded, as he runs,
To madness; while the savage at his heels
Laughs at the frantic sufferer's fury.

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Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too. The spring-time of our years
Is soon dishonoured and defiled in most,
By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand
To check them. But alas none sooner shoots,
If unrestrained, into luxuriant growth,
Than cruelty, most devilish of them all.
Mercy to him that shows it, is the rule
And righteous limitation of its act,
By which Heaven moves in pardoning guilty man
And he that shows none, being ripe in years,
And conscious of the outrage he commits,
Shall seek it, and not find it, in his turn."

("The Task," 1818 Ed., Vol. ii. Book vi., pp. 183, 184, 191.)

And when we think of the awful pain and unspeakable suffering meted out to the animal in those dens of infamy from which all human compassion is shut out under the plea of human good, one remembers Milton's description of the self-created abode of the deceiving serpent, as an apt picture of the scientific physiological laboratory where lives are done to death:—

A dungeon, horrible on all sides round,
As one great furnace flam'd, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
[page 103] Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end."

("Paradise Lost," Book I. Lines 61-67.)

But someone will answer me by the excuses which are the "stock-in-trade" of those who seem most anxious to palliate their own inhumanity. The man who measures everything by the yard, and values things by the weight of gold they bring, or by his own convenience, argues that the animals are only " chattels," that they feel not, and that if they are not killed and eaten, we shall be overrun with them—arguments that are not worth the paper on which they are written. Space and time alone prevent me from going into the matter at any length; but it is enough to recognise the fact that we have upset the whole balance of nature by our unnatural habits and customs. Animals of sport are bred and preserved for the purpose; and the million creatures whose lives every day are done to death to supply the market with flesh for food—what of them? Are they not bred- and grazed for the purpose?

In this country we do not eat frogs like our French neighbours; nor horses, as some of them do. Nor do we kill the thrushes, the blackbirds, the linnets, the finches. Yet our country is not overrun by any of them. If we let nature alone, we will find her methods superior to ours. She keeps the balance perfectly. In the case of oxen, sheep, pig, game, etc., we have interfered till the equipoise of nature is gone ; or rather, there is no [page 104] room for it. What happens in the case of the horse and the birds I have named, would also be experienced in the natural balancing of living creatures which we kill for food.

It is difficult to understand how anyone who has studied animals could come to the conclusion that they do not feel; and more difficult still to understand how any man who professes to have been moved by the compassion of God could believe and teach that we need not consider the feelings of the other species, as they are only things— "mere chattels." Yet men do believe such things, and teach them. And when we realise how much the doctrine is held in "high places," it is not to be wondered at that cruelty abounds, and our fellow-creatures are made to pass through the fire of unspeakable suffering as sacrifices to the Moloch of human lust and scientific insanity.

That the Church which has given the world some of the finest saints should directly teach inhumanity to the lower races, will no doubt amaze many of my readers. But it is only too sadly true. Here is a quotation from the Moral Philosophy of the late Professor of Ethics at the famous Jesuit centre, Stonyhurst College:

"It is wanton cruelty to vex and annoy a brute beast for sport. This is unworthy of man, and disposes him to inhumanity towards his own species. Yet, the converse is not to be relied upon: there have been cruel men who have made pets of the brute creation. But there is no shadow of evil resting on the practice of causing [page 105] pain to ‘brutes’ in sport, where the pain is not the sport itself, but an incidental concomitant of it. Much more in all that conduces to the sustenance of man may we give pain to 'brutes,' as also in the pursuit of science. Nor are we bound to any anxious care to make this pain as little as may be. 'Brutes' are things in our regard. So far as they are useful to us, they exist for us, not for themselves; and we do right in using them unsparingly for our need and convenience, though not for our wantonness. If then, any special case of pain to a brute creature be a fact of considerable value for observation in biological science or the medical art, no reasoned considerations of morality can stand in the way of man making the experiment, yet so that even in the quest of science he be mindful of mercy." ("Moral Philosophy," by Joseph Rickaby, S.J. Pt.ch. v., par. 3.)

Surely it requires but little effort of a sympathetic mind to see the absolute fallaciousness and absurdity of the position taken up by this teacher of moral philosophy. No man can be merciful in any action by which he violates the fundamental moral laws of God. To torture animals merely to find out how much they can endure, what poisons most affect them, and to what extent; to hold them by cruel instruments in order to cut and expose the very nerve-centres of their life; to see how often they can stand boiling water going over them, or being forced into their stomachs—no man with a merciful heart could do such diabolical things and come before the public smiling as a humanitarian apologist and apostle of true scientific progress. And how a teacher[page 106] of high order can instil into the mind of young men such illogical, corrupt, and inhuman philosophy, is one of those strange contradictions we at times meet with in the religious world.

Then in the Catholic Dictionary for 1897, the Romish Church shows its approval of Rickaby's teaching, and is indeed more arrogant, if possible, in its assumption of man's absolute right to do as he likes with the races under him. It assumes, by what process of reasoning or intuitive gift we know not, that animals have no souls, and this lack on their part determines the morality of man's action towards them. But we will let the writer speak for himself.

"As their souls operate through matter, so they spring from matter and perish with it. They are not created by God (what a commentary upon Gen. I !), but are derived with their bodies from their parents by natural generation. Without matter they are utterly incapable of operation, and therefore of existence; for nothing can exist unless it acts in some way or other. Hence, their soul is extinguished with the dissolution of the body.

"These philosophic principles determine the morality which regulates the conduct of man to the brutes. As the lower animals have no duties, since they are destitute of free will—without which the performance of duty is impossible—so they have no rights, for right and duty are co-relative terms. The brutes are made for man, who has the same right over them which he has over plants and stones. He may kill them for his food; and if it is lawful to destroy [page 107] for food, and this without strict necessity, it must also be lawful to put them to death, or to inflict pain on them, for any good or reasonable end, such as the promotion of man's knowledge, health, etc.; or even for the purpose of recreation." ("Catholic Dictionary," 1897. Article, " Lower Animals." )

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It is indeed pitiful in the extreme to find a community with a great religious history teaching such corrupt and arrogant doctrines; and, were it not so pitiful, it would be ludicrous. Happily, there are not a few within her own borders who would repudiate such a presentation of their faith and its teaching concerning the animal kingdom.

But outside the Church of Rome, as well as within it, there are thousands who would agree with Rickaby's philosophy. To all such I would heartily commend what another Pope teaches:

Nothing is foreign—parts relate to whole:
One all-extending, all-preserving soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least—
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
All served, all serving—nothing stands alone.

Has God, thou fool, worked solely for thy good, Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?

( "Essay on Man," III.)

If men were not so blind, so full of vain conceit, they would recognise the fact, attested by science and the sacred records, that in the scale of evolution man came last, that ere he appeared the various animals had uses [page 108] all their own. Out of their own joy the birds sing, the cattle low, and all nature takes part in the universal harmony. So the animals were made for themselves, for their own joy, to fulfil some worthier function in nature than provide sumptuous repasts for men and women who have reversed the order of nature in themselves, and grown into carnivorous animals.

In this connection how pertinent are the words of Smith in his excellent work on "Fruits and Farinacea":

"It is only pride and imbecility in man to imagine all things made for his sole use. There exist millions of suns and their revolving orbs which the eye of man has never perceived. Myriads of animals enjoy their pastime unheeded and unseen by him—many are injurious and destructive to him. All exist for purposes but partially known. Yet we must believe, in general, that all were created for their own enjoyment, for mutual advantage, and for the preservation of universal harmony in nature. If, merely because we can eat sheep pleasantly, we are to believe that they exist only to supply us with food, we may as well say that man was created solely for the various parasitical animals to feed on, because they do feed on him." (Ch. iv. )

No wonder men of fine mind and sensitive feeling have repudiated popular religion, when such things could be taught and practiced in its name! No wonder the doubts of a Paine and a Voltaire could be raised, and the pessimism of a Schopenhauer generated ! The genuine intuition and humaneness of these men was great. They were divine in their way. Give me a [page 109] Schopenhauer before a Rickaby; a humane Voltaire rather than the unchristian philosophy of a Whatley. In his "Foundations of Morality," Schopenhauer writes: —

"A pity, without limits, which unites us with all living beings—in that we have the most solid, the surest guarantee of morality. With that there is no need of casuistry. Whoso possesses it will be quite incapable of causing harm or loss to anyone, of doing violence to anyone, or doing ill in any way. But rather, he will have for all, long-suffering; he will aid the helpless with all his powers ; and each one of his actions will be marked with the stamp of justice and love. … Between pity towards ' beasts' and goodness of soul there is a very close connection. One might say without hesitation, when an individual is wicked in regard to them, that he cannot be a good man. One might also demonstrate that this pity and the social virtues (purity in food and habits) have the same source."

These words deserve to be written in letters of gold, so full of pure compassion are they; so resonant of the divine music of love ; so much do they pulsate with that spirit of life which we account the highest.

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Richard Wagner—known only to Society by his weird, grand music, but who was also one of the finest champions of the Cause for which I write—wrote in a like strain. In his "Kunst and Religion," he points out the heavy responsibility which rests upon Governments, societies, and leaders of religious thought for not putting forth more real effort to abolish the cyclopean curses of [page 110] experimental torture raised by those false-scientific would-be benefactors of mankind—the vivisectors; to put an end to the cruel practices of sport; and to labour for the absolute redemption of the people from all flesh-foods.

And if we go back to Voltaire, the most accomplished writer and the most distinguished humanitarian of the eighteenth century, and listen to his plea on behalf of our fellow-denizens of this earth, we will hear the music of heaven, though it come forth from an instrument upon which society in its ignorant conceit engraved the word, atheist. In his "Elements of the Philosophy of Newton," in which he discusses the humane views of the great scientist, he writes:—

"There is in man a disposition to compassion as generally diffused as his other instincts. Newton had cultivated this humanity, and he extended it to the lower animals. With Locke he was strongly convinced that God had given to them a proportion of ideas, and the same feelings which He has to us. He could not believe that God, who has made nothing in vain, would have given to them organs of feeling in order that they might have no feeling. He thought it a frightful inconsistency to believe that animals feel, and at the same time cause them to suffer. On this point his morality was in accord with his philosophy. Without humanity, a virtue that comprehends all virtues, the name of philosopher (or Christian) is little deserved."

The slaying of animals and the eating of their flesh he denounces in no halting language in his "Princess of Egypt," "A Treaty upon Tolerance," and "The Principles of Action," and calls it in the last named work "the scandal of Christian civilisation."

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But beyond all this plea for humaneness towards the lower races, both on account of the very real fact that they feel like ourselves, and also because it ennobles us to ,be humane, I would advance this further reason, that they too are "living souls." The thought may shock some of my readers because they have never given •it serious consideration; but it is well worth earnest study. People, as a rule, are not conversant with the fact that the Story of Creation speaks of them as "living souls." "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is a living soul, I have given every green herb for meat."

How many of those who start out for a sport which takes the life from beautiful creatures, think that they are cruelly inflicting pain and death upon "living souls"? How many, I wonder, of the countless multitudes who devour the flesh of beast and bird, dream that by their barbarous customs and gorgon desires they have driven the souls out of the bodies which they eat? Think how we should feel as a race, if there were a species higher than ourselves in intelligence, to whom we were bound to render allegiance, but who could drive out our soul-life just when, they pleased, in order to feast upon our flesh? And yet Europe and America are doing this very thing at the rate of one million souls a day!

[page 112] I am well aware that to speak of animal ethics, animal moral consciousness, and animal potentialities to hosts of men and women, would be to talk to them in riddles. So many are wrapped up in their own importance and delights. Nevertheless animals have such qualities. Where did the bird learn its wonderful song, and the dog his faithfulness, and the horse his intelligence, and the ox his patience, if not in previous lives? These have meanings as deep and sacred in their way as have the mysteries of man's being. Even a Rousseau could recognise such a truth, and be led to eloquently discourse upon the powers of animals. In his "Discourse upon Inequality among Men," he wrote: —"Every animal (of the higher species) has ideas, since he has senses. He even combines his ideas up to a certain point, and man differs, in this respect, only in the more or less. Some philosophic writers have even advanced that there is more difference between this man and that man, than between this man and that (non-human) animal. It is not, therefore, intelligence so much as his quality of being a free agent which makes the difference." And has not Herbert Spencer emphasised the same truth in his eminent works, "Animal Ethics," "Sub-Human Justice," and "Conscience in Animals"?

In reading Michelet's beautiful book, "The Bird," translated by A. E., I was very much struck by the following passage which I quote because of its strong bearing on my argument on behalf of the immortality of the animal kingdom. In speaking of the process by which the birds have acquired so much, he says: —

[page 113] "An education so delicate, so varied, so complex, is it that of a machine, of a brute reduced to instinct? Who can refuse in this to acknowledge a soul?

"Open your eyes to the evidence. Throw aside your prejudices, your traditional and derived opinions. Preconceived ideas and dogmatic opinions apart, you cannot offend heaven by restoring a soul to the beast. How much grander the Creator's work if He has in them created persons, souls, wills, than if He has constructed machines!

"Dismiss your pride, and acknowledge a kindred in which there is nothing to make a devout mind ashamed. What are these? They are your brothers. What are the ? Embryo souls—souls especially set apart for certain functions of existence, candidates for the more general and more widely harmonic life to which the human soul has attained.

"When will they arrive thither? And how? God has reserved to Himself these mysteries.

"All that we know is this: that He summons them—them also—to mount higher and yet higher."

("The Bird," pp. 271, 2.)

There was a time when people imagined this was the only world in the universe bearing a human freight, and that sun, moon, and stars sang together for our race's sole benefit And now that light has driven so dark a conceit out of their brain, men pride themselves that they are the gods of the earth, and dream in their vanity that all other creatures are for their sole use, to be used and abused at their lord's will. If men and women would only pause [page 114] to consider who the creatures are over whom, they have dominion, and. what might be their mission to earth; if they would only think deeply enough, and let their vision of life embrace the whole of those serviceable creatures who share the earth's threshold and its civilisation; —then they might indeed come to the knowledge that there are souls moving around them in forms other than: human; that perhaps they once moved there themselves; and that through inconsiderateness, selfishness, and cruelty they might fit themselves, as Nebuchadnezzar did, to go back again and become as they are. Life's experiences carry us through a hundred forms; for it is thus we gain our manifoldness. Our evolution is through the various animal forms till our life is crowned with the angel. But where men and women strangle the angelic-aspiring life, they fashion to themselves new animal forms, it may be a lower human, or non-human.

We are what we think; as we desire so do we become t By our thoughts, desires, and habits, we either ascend to the full divine dignity of our nature, or, we descend to suffer and learn.

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And now consider this as my concluded word here—Though all sacred records said not one word in favour of a non-flesh diet, yet should the humane question command our sympathy, for the Law of God engravern on the altar of a humane soul aspiring to the Divine, is of_more value than that written in a book. And though history failed to support my contention, yet for humane reasons we should abstain, because in our life we are writing that history which is for us the most important in the world [page 114] And though science had not come to our aid to show the value of fruitarian diet for the body, yet the claims of the sentient creatures who are to shelter beneath the wing of our sympathy should constrain us to cease living upon their flesh. And though the new regimen of diet failed in its economic promise, yet kindness should ever sway us in our attitude to these non-human souls, as well as for men. For above all things the Divine Man is humane towards all life, and the inhumane man is not on the high road to divinity.

But since the mystic records of the past enforce our argument; and since history has testified to the wisdom of our plea; and since science has sounded the warning note against flesh-eating, and advised frugivorous habits; and since the whole economic considerations, both personal and national, are clearly shown to find their solution in pure food and healthy purpose; and since the humane soul is the one that grows likest God, and the inhumane soul the one that most denies Him; and since we cannot be truly humane and yet kill the objects of our compassion in order to gratify our eating lusts, there is no other way left open for us, but the narrow way of righteous dealing towards the sub-human as towards the human. And we make it our mission—I mean the mission of the Order of the. Cross—to lift men up to that plane Of being where divine compassion reigns; for we are not mere vegetarian economists, as we attach less importance to the mere economic consideration than to the higher motives; but we are Spiritual Humanitarians, believing most profoundly that pure food will at last help to realize [page 116] that pure condition of body, through which alone the Divine can make itself manifest, and the soul attain to that perfection of being of which the noblest faiths have prophesied.

In concluding my plea for the animals on humanitarian grounds, I cannot do better than give my readers the following forceful words of one whose life was broken upon the wheel of the world by his own countrymen, who failed to appreciate his genius. I refer to Jean Antonie Gleizes. I quote from his work, "The New Existence," which was born of the French Revolution: "I have known a large number of good souls who offered up the most sincere wishes for the establishment of this doctrine of humaneness, who thought it just and true in its aspects, who believed in all that it announces; but who, in spite of so praiseworthy a disposition, dared not be the first to give the example. They waited this movement from minds stronger than their own.. Doubtless such are minds which give the impulse to the world; but is it necessary to await this movement when one is convinced of one's self? Is it permissible to temporise in a question of agony and torture for innocent beings whose sole crime is to have been born, and is it in a case like this that strength of mind should fail justice? No ! Well-doing is, happily, not so difficult. Ah ! what is your excuse, besides, pusillanimous souls? I blush for you at the miserable pretexts that keep you back. It would be necessary, say you, to separate one's self from the world; to renounce one's friends and neighbours. I see no such necessity; and I think, on the contrary, that [page 117] if you truly loved the world and your neighbours, you would hasten to give them an example which must have so powerful an influence upon their present happiness and upon their future destiny."