The ethics of diet : a catena of authorities deprecatory of the practice of flesh-eating / by Howard Williams.
- Q15442840
- Date:
- 1883
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The ethics of diet : a catena of authorities deprecatory of the practice of flesh-eating / by Howard Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![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 pro- tested. 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 Universites ? Voit-on fleurir chez eux les Quatre Faculty's ?' 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 conscious- ness 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 [pretraille] 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 i 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 i 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 some- times 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.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21084324_0305.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
