It has already been stated that David Hartley was the friend of Dr. Cheyne, whom he attended in his last illness, and he numbered amongst his acquaintances some of the most eminent personages of the day. His character appears to have been singularly amiable and disinterested. His theology is, for the most part, of unsuspected orthodoxy. The following sentences reveal the bias of his mind in the matter of kreophagy:—
“With respect to animal diet, let it be considered that taking away the lives of [other] animals in order to convert them into food, does great violence to the principles of benevolence and compassion. This appears from the frequent hard-heartedness and cruelty found among those persons whose occupations engage them in destroying animal life, as well as from the uneasiness which others feel in beholding the butchery of [the lower] animals. It is most evident, in respect to the larger animals and those with whom we have a familiar intercourse—such as Oxen, Sheep, and domestic Fowls, &c.—so as to distinguish, love, and compassionate individuals. They resemble us greatly in the make of the body in general, and in that of the particular organs of circulation, respiration, digestion, &c.; also in the formation of their intellects, memories, and passions, and in the signs of distress, fear, pain, and death. They often, likewise, win our affections by the marks of peculiar sagacity, by their instincts, helplessness, innocence, nascent benevolence, &c., &c., and, if there be any glimmering of hope of an hereafter for them—if they should prove to be our brethren and sisters in this higher sense, in immortality as well as mortality—in the permanent principle of our minds as well as in the frail dust of our bodies—this ought to be still further reason for tenderness for them.
“This, therefore, seems to be nothing else,” he concludes, “than an argument to stop us in our career, to make us sparing and tender in this article of diet, and put us upon consulting experience more faithfully and impartially in order to determine what is most suitable to the purposes of life and health, our compassion being made, by the foregoing considerations in some measure, a balance to our impetuous bodily appetites.”[154]
Dr. Hartley is not the only theologian who has suggested the possibility or probability of a future life for all or some of the non-human races. This question we must leave to the theologians. All that we here remark is, that Hartley is one of the very few amongst his brethren who have had the consistency and the courage of their opinions to deduce the inevitable inference.
XXIII.
CHESTERFIELD. 1694–1773.
NOTWITHSTANDING his strange self-deception as to the “general order of nature,” by which he attempted (sincerely we presume) to silence the better promptings of conscience, the remarkably strong feeling expressed by Lord Chesterfield gives him some right to notice here. His early instinctive aversion for the food which is the product of torture and murder is much better founded, we shall be apt to believe, than the fallacious sophism by which he seems eventually to have succeeded in stifling the voices of Nature and Reason in seeking refuge under the shelter of a superficial philosophy. At all events his example is a forcible illustration of Seneca’s observation that the better feelings of the young need only to be evoked by a proper education to conduct them to a true morality and religion.[155]
As it is we have to lament that he had not the greater light (of science) of the present time, if, indeed, the “deceitfulness of riches” would not have been for him, as for the mass of the rich or fashionable world, the shipwreck of just and rational feeling.
Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield, succeeded to the family title in 1726. High in favour with the new king—George II.—he received the appointment of Ambassador-extraordinary to the Court of Holland in 1728, and amongst other honours that of the knighthood of the Garter. In 1745 he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in which post, during his brief rule, he seemed to have governed with more success than some of his predecessors or successors. He was soon afterwards a Secretary of State: ill-health obliged him to relinquish this office after a short tenure. He wrote papers for The World—the popular periodical of the time—besides some poetical pieces, but he is chiefly known as an author by his celebrated Letters to his Son, which long served as the text-book of polite society. It contains some remarks in regard to the relations of the sexes scarcely consonant with the custom, or at least with the outward code of sexual morals of the present day. His sentiments upon the subject in question are as follow:—
“I remember, when I was a young man at the University, being so much affected with that very pathetic speech which Ovid puts into the mouth of Pythagoras against the eating of the flesh of animals, that it was some time before I could bring myself to our college mutton again, with some inward doubt whether I was not making myself an accomplice to a murder. My scruples remained unreconciled to the committing of so horrid a meal, till upon serious reflection I became convinced of its legality[156] from the general order of Nature which has instituted the universal preying [of the stronger] upon the weaker as one of her first principles: though to me it has ever appeared an incomprehensible mystery that she, who could not be restrained by any want of materials from furnishing supplies for the support of her numerous offspring, should lay them under the necessity of devouring one another.[157]
“I know not whether it is from the clergy having looked upon this subject as too trivial for their notice, that we find them more silent upon it than could be wished; for as slaughter is at present no branch of the priesthood, it is to be presumed that they have as much compassion as other men. The Spectator has exclaimed against the cruelty of roasting lobsters alive, and of whipping pigs to death, but the misfortune is the writings of an Addison are seldom read by cooks and butchers. As to the thinking part of mankind, it has always been convinced, I believe, that however conformable to the general rule of nature our devouring animals may be, we are nevertheless under indelible obligation to prevent their suffering any degree of pain more than is absolutely unavoidable.