“Fatigued with answering the inquiries and replying to the objections of his friends with respect to the singularity of his mode of life, he conceived that he might consult his ease by making, once for all, a public apology for his opinions.... The author is very far from entertaining a presumption that his slender labours (crude and imperfect as they are now hurried to the press) will ever operate an effect on the public mind; and yet, when he considers the natural bias of the human heart to the side of mercy,[199] and observes, on all hands, the barbarous governments of Europe giving way to a better system of things, he is inclined to hope that the day is beginning to approach when the growing sentiment of peace and goodwill towards men will also embrace, in a wide circle of benevolence, the lower orders of life.

“At all events, the pleasing persuasion that his work may have contributed to mitigate the ferocities of prejudice, and to diminish, in some degree, the great mass of misery which oppresses the lower animal world, will, in the hour of distress, convey to the author’s soul a consolation which the tooth of calumny will not be able to empoison.”

“But far other is the fate of animals. For, alas! when they are plucked from the tree of Life, suddenly the withered blossoms of their beauty shrink to the chilly hand of Death. Quenched in his cold grasp expires the lamp of their loveliness, and struck by the livid blast of loathed putrefaction, their comely limbs are involved in ghastly horror. Shall we leave the living herbs to seek, in the den of death, an obscene aliment? Insensible to the blooming beauties of Pomona—unallured by the fragrant odours that exhale from her groves of golden fruits—unmoved by the nectar of Nature, by the ambrosia of innocence—shall the voracious vultures of our impure appetites speed along those lovely scenes and alight in the loathsome sink of putrefaction to devour the remains of other creatures, to load with cadaverous rottenness a wretched stomach?”

“And is not the human race itself highly interested to prevent the habit of spilling blood? For, will the man, habituated to violence, be nice to distinguish the vital tide of a quadruped from that which flows from a creature with two legs? Are the dying struggles of a Lamb less affecting than the agonies of any animal whatever? Or, will the ruffian who beholds unmoved the supplicatory looks of innocence itself, and, reckless of the Calf’s infantine cries, pitilessly plunges in her quivering side the murdering knife, will he turn, I say, with horror from human assassination?

“From the practice of slaughtering an innocent animal of another species to the murder of man himself the steps are neither many nor remote. This our forefathers perfectly understood, who ordained that, in a cause of blood, no butcher should be permitted to sit in jury....

“But from the nature of the very human heart arises the strongest argument in behalf of the persecuted beings. Within us there exists a rooted repugnance to the shedding of blood, a repugnance which yields only to Custom, and which even the most inveterate custom can seldom entirely overcome. Hence the ungracious task of shedding the tide of life (for the gluttony of the table) has, in every country, been committed to the lowest class of men, and their profession is, in every country, an object of abhorrence.

“They feed on the carcass without remorse, because the dying struggles of the butchered victim are secluded from their sight—because his cries pierce not their ears—because his agonising shrieks sink not into their souls. But were they forced, with their own hands, to assassinate the beings whom they devour, who is there among us who would not throw down the knife with detestation, and, rather than embrue his hands in the murder of the lamb, consent for ever to forego the accustomed repast? What then shall we say? Vainly planted in our breast is this abhorrence of cruelty—this sympathetic affection for innocence? Or do the feelings of the heart point to the command of Nature more unerringly than all the elaborate subtlety of a set of men who, at the shrine of science, have sacrificed the dearest sentiments of humanity?”

“You, the sons of modern science, who court not Wisdom in her walks of silent meditation in the grove—who behold her not in the living loveliness of her works, but expect to meet her in the midst of obscenity and corruption—you, who dig for knowledge in the depths of the dunghill, and who expect to discover Wisdom enthroned amid the fragments of mortality and the abhorrence of the senses—you, that with cruel violence interrogate trembling Nature, who plunge into her maternal bosom the butcher-knife, and, in quest of your nefarious science, delight to scrutinise the fibres of agonising beings, you dare also to violate the human form, and holding up the entrails of men, you exclaim, ‘Behold the bowels of a carnivorous animal!’ Barbarians! to these very bowels I appeal against your cruel dogmas—to these bowels which Nature hath sanctified to the sentiments of pity and of gratitude, to the yearnings of kindred, to the melting tenderness of love.

“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?”

“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?”