“Had Nature intended man to be an animal of prey, would she have implanted in his breast an instinct so adverse to her purpose?... Would she not rather, in order to enable him to brave the piercing cries of anguish, have wrapped his ruthless heart in ribs of brass, and with iron entrails have armed him to grind, without shadow of remorse, the palpitating limbs of agonising life? But has Nature winged the feet of men with fleetness to overtake the flying prey? And where are his fangs to tear asunder the beings destined for his food? Does the lust of carnage glare in his eye-balls? Does he scent from afar the footsteps of his victim? Does his soul pant for the feast of blood? Is the bosom of men the rugged abode of bloody thoughts, and from the den of Death rush forth, at sight of other animals, his rapacious desires to slay, to mangle, and to devour?
“But come, men of scientific subtlety, approach and examine with attention this dead body. It was late a playful Fawn, who skipping and bounding on the bosom of parent Earth, awoke in the soul of the feeling observer a thousand tender emotions. But the butcher’s knife has laid low the delight of a fond mother, and the darling of Nature is now stretched in gore upon the ground. Approach, I say, men of scientific subtlety, and tell me, does this ghastly spectacle whet your appetite? But why turn you with abhorrence? Do you then yield to the combined evidence of your senses, to the testimony of conscience and common sense; or with a show of rhetoric, pitiful as it is perverse, will you still persist in your endeavour to persuade us that to murder an innocent being is not cruel nor unjust, and that to feed upon a corpse is neither filthy nor unfitting?”
Amid the dark scenes of barbarism and cold-blooded indifferentism to suffering innocence, there are yet the glimmers of a better nature, which need but the life-giving impulse of a true religion and philosophy:—
“And yet those channels of sympathy for inferior animals, long—a very long—custom has not been able altogether to stifle. Even now, notwithstanding the narrow, joyless, and hard-hearted tendency of the prevailing superstitions; even now we discover, in every corner of the globe, some good-natured prejudice in behalf of [certain of] the persecuted animals; we perceive, in every country, certain privileged animals, whom even the ruthless jaws of gluttony dare not to invade. For, to pass over unnoticed the vast empires of India and of China, where the lower orders of life are considered as relative parts of society, and are protected by the laws and religion of the natives,[201] the Tartars abstain from several kinds of animals; the Turks are charitable to the very dog, whom they abominate; and even the English peasant pays towards the red-breast an inviolable respect to the rights of hospitality.
“Long after the perverse practice of devouring the flesh of animals had grown into inveterate habit among peoples, there existed still in almost every country, and of every religion, and of every sect of philosophy, a wiser, a purer, and more holy class of men who preserved by their institutions, by their precepts, and by their example, the memory of primitive innocence [?] and simplicity. The Pythagoreans abhorred the slaughter of any animal life; Epicurus and the worthiest part of his disciples bounded their delights with the produce of their garden; and of the first Christians several sects abominated the feast of blood, and were satisfied with the food which Nature, unviolated, brings forth for our support....
“Man, in a state of nature, is not, apparently, much superior to other animals. His organisation is, without doubt, extremely happy; but then the dexterity of his figure is counterpoised by great advantages in other beings. Inferior to the Bull in force, and in fleetness to the Dog, the os sublime, or erect front, a feature he bears in common with the Monkey, could scarcely have inspired him with those haughty and magnificent ideas which the pride of human refinement thence endeavours to deduce. Exposed, like his fellow-creatures, to the injuries of the air, urged to action by the same physical necessities, susceptible of the same impressions, actuated by the same passions, and equally subject to the pains of disease and to the pangs of dissolution, the simple savage never dreams that his nature was so much more noble, or that he drew his origin from a purer source or more remote than the other animals in whom he saw a resemblance so complete.
“Nor were the simple sounds by which he expressed the singleness of his heart at all fitted to flatter him into that fond sense of superiority over the beings whom the unreasoning insolence of cultivated ages absurdly styles mute. I say absurdly styles mute; for with what propriety can that name be applied, for example, to the little sirens of the groves, to whom Nature has granted the strains of ravishment—the soul of song? Those charming warblers who pour forth, with a moving melody which human ingenuity vies with in vain, their loves, their anxiety, their woes. In the ardour and delicacy of his amorous expressions, can the most impassioned, the most respectful, human lover surpass the ‘glossy kind,’ as described by the most beautiful of all our poets?
“And, indeed, has not Nature given to almost every being the same spontaneous signs of the various affections? Admire we not in other animals whatever is most eloquent in man—the tremor of desire, the tear of distress, the piercing cry of anguish, the pity-pleading look—expressions which speak to the soul with a feeling which words are feeble to convey?”
The whole of the little book of which the above extracts are properly representative, breathes the spirit of a true religion. We shall only add that it exhibits almost as much learning and valuable research as it exhibits justness of thought and sensibility—enriched, as it is, by copious illustrative notes.[202]