“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.”

“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!’”

“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:—

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]

“Vegetable fibrine and animal fibrine, vegetable albumen and animal albumen, differ at the most (hÖchstens) in form. If these principles in nourishment fail, the nourishment of the animal will be cut off; if they obtain them, then the grass-feeding animal gets the same principles in his food as those upon which the flesh-eater entirely depends. Vegetables produce in their organism the blood of all beings. So that when the flesh-eaters consume the blood and flesh of the vegetable-eaters, they take to themselves exactly and simply the vegetable principles.

“Vegetable Foods, in particular Corn of all kinds, and through these Bread, contain as much iron as the flesh of Oxen or as other kinds of flesh.

“Certain it is, that of three men, of whom the one has fed upon ox-flesh and bread, the other upon bread and cheese, the third upon potatoes, each considers it a peculiar hardship from quite different points of view; yet in fact the only difference between them is the action of the peculiar elements of each food upon the brain and nervous system. A Bear, who was kept in a zoological garden, displayed, so long as he had bread exclusively for nourishment, quite a mild disposition. Two days of feeding with flesh made him vicious, aggressive, and even dangerous to his attendant. It is well known that the vis irritabilis of the Hog becomes so excessive through flesh-eating that he will then attack a man.

“The flesh-eating man needs for his support an enormous extent of land, wider and more extensive even than the Lion and the Tiger. A nation of Hunters in a circumscribed territory is incapable of multiplying itself for that reason. The carbon necessary for maintaining life must be taken from animals, of whom in the limited area there can be only a limited number. These animals collect from the plants the elements of their blood and their organs, and supply them to the Indians living by the chase, who devour them unaccompanied by the substance (stoffen) which during the life of the animal maintained the life processes. While the Indian, by feeding upon a single animal, might contrive to sustain his life and health a certain number of days, he must, in order to gain for that time the requisite heat, devour five animals. His food contains a superfluity of nitrogenous substance. What is wanting to it during the greater portion of the year is the necessary quantity of carbon, and hence the inveterate inclination of flesh consumers for brandy.

“The practical illustration of agricultural superiority cannot be more clearly and profoundly given than in the speech of the North American Chief, which the Frenchman Crevecous has reported to us. The Chief, recommending to his tribe the practice of Agriculture, thus addressed it: ‘Do you not observe that, while we live upon Flesh, the white men live [in part] upon Grain? That Flesh takes more than thirty months to grow to maturity, and besides is often scarce? That each of these miraculous grains of corn, which they bury in the earth, gives back to them more than a hundredfold? That Flesh has four legs upon which to run away, and we have only two to overtake them? That the Corn remains and grows where the white men sow it; that the winter, which for us is a time of toilsome hunting, is for them the time of rest? Therefore have they so many children, and live so much longer than we. I say, then, to each one who hears me: Before the trees over our wigwams have died from old age, and the maples have ceased to supply us with sugar, the race of the corn-planter will have exterminated the race of the flesh-eater, because the hunters determine not to sow.’”[283]