Enforcing his teaching that the principles and mainspring of all moral action must be justice and love, Schopenhauer maintains that the real influence of these first of virtues is tested, especially, by the conduct of men to other animals:—
“Another proof that the moral motive, here proposed, is, in fact, the true one, is, that in accordance with it the lower animals themselves are protected. The unpardonable forgetfulness in which they have been iniquitously left hitherto by all the [popular] moralists of Europe is well known. It is pretended that the [so-called] beasts have no rights. They persuade themselves that our conduct in regard to them has nothing to do with morals, or (to speak in the language of their morality) that we have no duties towards ‘animals:’ a doctrine revolting, gross, and barbarous, peculiar to the west, and which has its root in Judaism. In Philosophy, however, it is made to rest upon a hypothesis, admitted in the face of evidence itself, of an absolute difference between man and ‘beast.’ It is Descartes who has proclaimed it in the clearest and most decisive manner: and, in fact, it was a necessary consequence of his errors. The Cartesian-Leibnitzian-Wolfian philosophy, with the assistance of entirely abstract notions, had built up the ‘rational psychology,’ and constructed an immortal anima rationalis: but, visibly, the world of ‘beasts,’ with its very natural claims, stood up against this exclusive monopoly—this brevet of immortality decreed to man alone—and, silently, Nature did what she always does in such cases—she protested. Our philosophers, feeling their scientific conscience quite disturbed, were forced to attempt to consolidate their ‘rational psychology’ by the aid of empiricism. They, therefore, set themselves to work to hollow out between man and ‘beast’ an enormous abyss, of an immeasurable width; by this they would wish to prove to us, in contempt of evidence, an impassable difference. It was at all these efforts that Boileau already laughed:—
‘Les animaux ont-ils des Universités?
Voit-on fleurir chez eux les Quatre Facultés?’
In accordance with this theory, ‘beasts’ would have finished with no longer knowing how to distinguish themselves from the external world, with having no more consciousness of their own existence than of mine. Against these intolerable assertions one remedy only was needed. Cast a single glance at an animal, even the smallest, the lowest in intelligence. See the unbounded egoism of which it is possessed. It is enough to convince you that ‘beasts’ have thorough consciousness of their ego, and oppose it to the world—to the non-ego. If a Cartesian found himself in the claws of a Tiger, he would learn, and in the most evident way possible, whether the Tiger can distinguish between the ego and the non-ego. To these sophisms of the philosophers respond the sophisms of the people. Such are certain idiotisms, notably those of the German, who, for eating, drinking, conception, birth, death, corpse (when ‘beasts’ are in question), has special terms; so much would he fear to employ the same words as for men. He thus succeeds in dissimulating, under this diversity of terms, the perfect identity of things.
“The ancient languages knew nothing of this sort of synonymy, and they simply called things which are the same by one and the same name. These artificial ideas, then, must needs have been an invention of the priesthood [prétraille] of Europe, a lot of sacrilegious people who knew not by what means to debase, to vilipend the eternal essence which lives in the substance of every animated being. In this way they have succeeded in establishing in Europe those wicked habits of hardness and cruelty towards ‘beasts,’ which a native of High Asia could not behold without a just horror. In English we do not find this infamous invention; that is owing, doubtless, to the fact that the Saxons, at the moment of the conquest of England, were not yet Christians. Nevertheless, the pendent of it is found in this particularity of the English language: all the names of animals there are of the neuter gender: and, as a consequence, when the name is to be represented by the pronoun, they use the neuter it, absolutely as for inanimate objects. Nothing is more shocking than this idiom, especially when the primates are spoken of—the Dog, for example, the Ape, and others. One cannot fail to recognise here a dishonest device (fourberie) of the priests to debase [other] animals to the rank of things. The ancient Egyptians, for whom Religion was the unique business of life, deposed in the same tombs human mummies and those of the Ibis, &c.; but in Europe it would be an abomination, a crime, to inter the faithful Dog near the place where his master lies; and yet it is upon this tomb sometimes that, more faithful and more devoted than man ever was, he has awaited death.
“If you wish to know how far the identity between ‘beast’ and man extends, nothing will conduct to such knowledge better than a little Zoology and Anatomy. Yet what are we to say when an anatomical bigot is seen at this day (1839) to be labouring to establish an absolute, radical, distinction between man and other animals; proceeding so far in enmity against true Zoologists—those who, without conspiracy with the priesthoods, without platitude, without tartuferie, permit themselves to be conducted by Nature and Truth—as to attack them, to calumniate them!
“Yet this superiority [of man over other mammals of the higher species] depends but upon a more ample development of the brain—upon a difference in one part of the body only; this difference, besides, being but one of quantity. Yes, man and other animals are, both as regards the moral and the physical, identical in kind, without speaking of other points of comparison. Thus one might well recall to them—these Judaising westerns, these menagerie-keepers, these adorers of ‘reason’—that if their mother has given suck to them, Dogs also have theirs to suckle them. Kant fell into this error, which is that of his time and of his country: I have already brought the reproach against him. The morality of Christianity has no regard for ‘beasts;’ it is therein a vice, and it is better to avow it than to eternise it. We ought to be all the more astonished at it, because this morality is in striking accord with the moral codes of Brahmanism and of Buddhism.
“Between pity towards ‘beasts’ and goodness of soul there is a very close connexion. 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 have the same source.... That [better section of the] English nation, with its greater delicacy of feeling, we see it taking the initiative, and distinguishing itself by its unusual compassion towards other species, giving from time to time new proofs of it—this compassion, triumphing over that ‘cold superstition’ which, in other respects, degrades the nation, has had the strength to force it to fill up the chasm which Religion had left in morality. This Chasm is, in fact, the reason why in Europe and in N. America, we have need of societies for the protection of the lower animals. In Asia the Religions suffice to assure to ‘beasts’ aid and protection (?), and there no one thinks of Societies of that kind. Nevertheless in Europe, also, from day to day [rather by intervals of decades] is being awakened the feeling of the Rights of the lower animals, in proportion as, little by little, disappear, vanish, the strange ideas of man’s domination over [other] animals, as if they had been placed in the world but for our service and enjoyment, for it is thanks to those ideas that they have been treated as Things.
“Such are, certainly, the causes of that gross conduct, of that absolute want of regard, of which Europeans are guilty towards the lower animals; and I have shown the source of those ideas, which is in the Old Testament, in section 177 of the second volume of my Parerga.”[282]