“What humiliation, what disgrace for us all, that it should be necessary for one man to exhort other men not to be inhuman and irrational towards their fellow-creatures!
Do they recognise, then, no mind, no soul in them—have they not feeling, pleasure in existence, do they not suffer pain? Do their voices of joy and sorrow indeed fail to speak to the human heart and conscience—so that they can murder the jubilant lark, in the first joy of his spring-time, who ought to warm their hearts with sympathy, from delight in bloodshed or for their ‘sport,’ or with a horrible insensibility and recklessness only to practise their aim in shooting! Is there no soul manifest in the eyes of the living or dying animal—no expression of suffering in the eye of a deer or stag hunted to death—nothing which accuses them of murder before the avenging Eternal Justice?... Are the souls of all other animals but man mortal, or are they essential in their organisation? Does the world-idea (Welt-Idee) pertain to them also—the soul of nature—a particle of the Divine Spirit? I know not; but I feel, and every reasonable man feels like me, it is in miserable, intolerable contradiction with our human nature, with our conscience, with our reason, with all our talk of humanity, destiny, nobility; it is in frightful (himmelschreinder) contradiction with our poetry and philosophy, with our nature and with our (pretended) love of nature, with our religion, with our teachings about benevolent design—that we bring into existence merely to kill, to maintain our own life by the destruction of other life.... It is a frightful wrong that other species are tortured, worried, flayed, and devoured by us, in spite of the fact that we are not obliged to this by necessity; while in sinning against the defenceless and helpless, just claimants as they are upon our reasonable conscience and upon our compassion, we succeed only in brutalising ourselves. This, besides, is quite certain, that man has no real pity and compassion for his own species, so long as he is pitiless towards other races of beings.”[279]
L.
SCHOPENHAUER. 1788–1860.
THE chief interpreter of Buddhistic ideas in Europe, and whose bias in this direction is exercising so remarkable an influence upon contemporaneous thought, in Germany in particular, was born at Dantzig, the son of a wealthy merchant of that city. His mother, herself distinguished in literature, was often the centre of the most eminent persons of the day at Weimar. At a very early age devoted to the philosophies of Plato and of Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer studied at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin. His course of studies, both scientific and literary, was, even for a German, unusually severe and searching; and his acquirements were encyclopædic in their range. Unlike most German students, it is worth noting, he was addicted neither to beer-drinking nor to duelling.
His most important writings are: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (“The World as Will and Representation”), 2 vols; Die Grundprobleme der Ethik (“The Ground-Problems of Ethics”); Parerga und Paralipomena (“Incidental and Neglected Subjects”), 2 vols; Das Fundament der Moral (“The Foundation of Morality”), 1840.
The peculiar characteristics of his philosophy are uncompromising opposition to the hollow doctrines of easy-going Optimism—an antagonism which, indeed, assumes the form of an exaggerated Pessimism—and (what especially distinguishes him from most systematisers and formularisers of morals) his making Compassion the principal, and, indeed, the exclusive source of moral action; and it is his vindication of the rights of the subject species, in marked contrast with the silence, or even positive depreciation and contempt for them, on the part of ordinary moralists, which will always entitle him to take exceptionally high rank among reformers of Ethical systems, in spite of his exaggerations and short-comings in other respects. Dr. David Strauss (Der Alte und der Neue Glaube) thus writes of his claims on these grounds:—
“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 the other species, is one chief measure of its real 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; and Schopenhauer more than all ancient and modern philosophers together. The warm sympathy with sentient nature, which pervades all the writings of Schopenhauer, is one of the most pleasing aspects of his thoroughly intellectual, though often unhealthy and unprofitable, philosophy.”
This, it is necessary to add, plainly is written in ignorance of the numerous writings of earlier and contemporaneous humanitarian dietists, to whom, of course, is due a higher, because more consistent and more logical, position than even Schopenhauer can claim, who, from ignorance of the physical and moral arguments of anti-kreophagy (it reasonably may be presumed), at the same time that he established the rights of the subject species on the firmest basis, and included them as an essential part of any moral code, yet, with a strange, but too common, inconsistency, did not perceive that to hand over the Cow, the Ox, or the Sheep, &c., to the butcher, is in most flagrant violation of his own ethical standard. While, then, the author of the Foundation of Morality cannot claim the highest place, absolutely; outside the ranks of anti-kreophagistic writers, a high rank may properly be conceded to him as one of the most eminent moralists who, short of entire emancipation, have done most to vindicate the position of the innocent non-human races.[280] Especially has he denounced the horrible outrage upon the commonest principles of justice by the pseudo-scientific torturers of the physiological laboratory.[281] It is thus that he lays the foundations of morality:—
“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 any one, of doing violence to any one, of 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 of love. Try to affirm: ‘this man is virtuous, only he knows no pity,’ or rather: ‘he is an unjust and wicked man: nevertheless, he is compassionate.’ The contradiction is patent to everyone. Each one to his taste: but for myself, I know no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus, of old used in closing their public spectacles (just as the English of to-day end with a prayer for their king). They said: ‘May All that have life be delivered from suffering!’”