Nov. 1, 2024
Animal Rights is 2,000 Years Old
The player is loading ...
Patrick explores the ancient roots of animal rights, tracing them back over 2,000 years. He shares his passion for history and philosophy through readings from influential philosophers, scientists, and artists who advocated for kindness toward animals. Patrick challenges the common belief that animal rights began in the 1970s, offering a broader perspective on the longstanding tradition of compassion for animals throughout history.
Learn more about In Behalf of Animals, contact us, leave us a review and follow here: www.inbehalfofanimals.org
1
00:00:07,760 --> 00:00:11,565
Hello and welcome to In Behalf of Animals. I am Patrick Botuelo.
2
00:00:12,265 --> 00:00:16,017
You know, I have had a lifelong love of history and philosophy,
3
00:00:16,201 --> 00:00:19,353
so naturally, when I became a vegan animal rights activist,
4
00:00:19,409 --> 00:00:22,177
I was immensely interested in what the great thinkers,
5
00:00:22,321 --> 00:00:25,657
the philosophers, the scientists, the artists through the
6
00:00:25,681 --> 00:00:29,257
ages had to say on the subject. What I learned may be
7
00:00:29,281 --> 00:00:32,345
of surprise to many of you. In fact, I'd hazard
8
00:00:32,385 --> 00:00:35,897
a guess that most people, including perhaps most vegans,
9
00:00:36,041 --> 00:00:39,685
think of animal rights as a late 20th century construct,
10
00:00:39,985 --> 00:00:43,557
something that was born with Peter Singer's animal liberation in 1975,
11
00:00:43,670 --> 00:00:47,005
or maybe PETA's founding in 1980.
12
00:00:48,145 --> 00:00:52,001
But the truth is, practically all arguments for the adoption
13
00:00:52,033 --> 00:00:55,993
of an ethical vegan lifestyle, including on environmental grounds,
14
00:00:56,049 --> 00:01:00,475
have existed and been promulgated for centuries, even millennia.
15
00:01:02,335 --> 00:01:05,235
So today I'd like to share a few of my favorite passages.
16
00:01:05,615 --> 00:01:08,635
I find them fascinating, and I hope that you will too.
17
00:01:09,095 --> 00:01:12,783
Also, as an aside, it's nice to know we modern vegans are in pretty good
18
00:01:12,839 --> 00:01:16,355
company. Just a few notes before we start.
19
00:01:16,735 --> 00:01:20,296
The word vegetarian was not widely used till the 19th century,
20
00:01:20,370 --> 00:01:23,887
and the word vegan not coined till 1944. But there
21
00:01:23,911 --> 00:01:27,635
can be no mistaking what writers prior to these dates were talking about.
22
00:01:28,565 --> 00:01:32,277
Also, my first selected writer references Pythagoras,
23
00:01:32,341 --> 00:01:35,825
a Greek philosopher who lived some 2500 years ago.
24
00:01:36,365 --> 00:01:39,477
It is thought by many that Pythagoras was a vegetarian,
25
00:01:39,621 --> 00:01:43,429
and in fact, prior to coinage of that word, those who eschewed
26
00:01:43,477 --> 00:01:47,261
meat in England were called Pythagoreans. Unfortunately,
27
00:01:47,333 --> 00:01:50,305
however, there are no surviving writings from Pythagoras,
28
00:01:50,965 --> 00:01:54,805
and finally, I have stopped short of the 20th century as I plan on presenting
29
00:01:54,885 --> 00:01:57,105
those arguments in a later episode.
30
00:01:58,895 --> 00:02:03,047
So I begin with Plutarch. Plutarch was a Greek philosopher
31
00:02:03,111 --> 00:02:06,420
who lived and wrote in the first century A.D.
32
00:02:06,540 --> 00:02:10,435
so we're talking almost 2,000 years ago.
33
00:02:11,095 --> 00:02:13,595
Please contemplate that as you're listening.
34
00:02:14,735 --> 00:02:19,235
The following comes from his essay on the eating of animal flesh.
35
00:02:20,775 --> 00:02:21,795
He writes,
36
00:02:23,945 --> 00:02:27,297
can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining
37
00:02:27,361 --> 00:02:30,833
from flesh? For my part, I rather wonder
38
00:02:30,889 --> 00:02:34,137
both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind
39
00:02:34,201 --> 00:02:37,857
the first man who did so touched his mouth to gore and
40
00:02:37,881 --> 00:02:40,605
brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature?
41
00:02:41,145 --> 00:02:44,737
He who set forth tables of dead stale bodies and
42
00:02:44,761 --> 00:02:48,641
ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed
43
00:02:48,673 --> 00:02:51,265
and cried, moved and lived.
44
00:02:52,045 --> 00:02:55,485
How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit
45
00:02:55,605 --> 00:02:59,265
and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb?
46
00:02:59,925 --> 00:03:02,505
How could his Nose, endure the stench.
47
00:03:04,405 --> 00:03:08,573
Plutarch then went on to address a criticism that remains to this day,
48
00:03:08,749 --> 00:03:12,373
namely, that veganism is a luxury and that we vegans, especially in
49
00:03:12,389 --> 00:03:16,705
the west, are pampered and privileged and have our heads in the sand.
50
00:03:17,265 --> 00:03:21,161
Most people, the argument goes, have no choice but to consume animal parts
51
00:03:21,193 --> 00:03:24,385
and products. Once again, please bear in mind that these
52
00:03:24,425 --> 00:03:27,205
words were written some 2000 years ago.
53
00:03:29,265 --> 00:03:32,545
Or would everyone declare that the reason for those who first
54
00:03:32,625 --> 00:03:36,485
instituted flesh eating was the necessity of their poverty?
55
00:03:37,185 --> 00:03:41,129
But you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution
56
00:03:41,177 --> 00:03:45,795
of shedding blood? You who have such a superfluity of necessities,
57
00:03:46,415 --> 00:03:50,155
why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you?
58
00:03:50,895 --> 00:03:54,151
You call serpents and panthers and lions savage,
59
00:03:54,303 --> 00:03:58,183
but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughter, leave them no room
60
00:03:58,239 --> 00:04:02,175
to outdo you in cruelty. For their slaughter is their
61
00:04:02,215 --> 00:04:05,835
living, yours is a mere appetizer.
62
00:04:07,375 --> 00:04:10,939
Plutarch went on to say, it is certainly not
63
00:04:10,987 --> 00:04:14,435
lions and wolves that we eat out of self defense. On the
64
00:04:14,475 --> 00:04:17,907
contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures
65
00:04:17,971 --> 00:04:20,295
without stings or teeth to harm us.
66
00:04:20,595 --> 00:04:24,387
Creatures that, I swear, nature appears to have produced for the
67
00:04:24,411 --> 00:04:27,995
sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing
68
00:04:28,035 --> 00:04:31,283
abashes us, not the flower like tinting of
69
00:04:31,299 --> 00:04:34,507
the flesh, not the cleanliness of their habits or
70
00:04:34,531 --> 00:04:37,855
the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches.
71
00:04:38,605 --> 00:04:42,025
No, for the sake of a little flesh, we deprive them of sun,
72
00:04:42,365 --> 00:04:46,053
of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled
73
00:04:46,109 --> 00:04:49,725
by birth and being. Then we go on to assume
74
00:04:49,765 --> 00:04:53,945
that when they utter cries and squeaks, their speech is inarticulate,
75
00:04:54,365 --> 00:04:57,189
that they do not. Begging for mercy,
76
00:04:57,357 --> 00:05:01,189
entreating, seeking justice. Each one of them say,
77
00:05:01,357 --> 00:05:04,591
I do not ask to be spared in case of necessity.
78
00:05:04,773 --> 00:05:08,067
Only spare me your arrogance. Kill me to
79
00:05:08,091 --> 00:05:10,815
eat, but not to please your palate.
80
00:05:12,435 --> 00:05:14,415
Oh, the cruelty of it.
81
00:05:16,435 --> 00:05:19,947
Then, anticipating the modern argument that man is designed for
82
00:05:19,971 --> 00:05:23,851
eating meat, Plutarch wrote these words, and once again I remind
83
00:05:24,043 --> 00:05:25,695
2000 years ago.
84
00:05:27,875 --> 00:05:31,555
We declare then that it is absurd for them to say that the practice of
85
00:05:31,595 --> 00:05:35,225
flesh eating is based on nature. For that man
86
00:05:35,265 --> 00:05:38,793
is not naturally carnivorous is in the first place obvious
87
00:05:38,849 --> 00:05:42,833
from the structure of his body. A man's frame is in no way
88
00:05:42,889 --> 00:05:45,765
similar to those creatures who were made for flesh eating.
89
00:05:46,105 --> 00:05:49,345
He has no hooked beak or sharp nails or jagged
90
00:05:49,385 --> 00:05:52,657
teeth. If you declare that you
91
00:05:52,681 --> 00:05:56,361
are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself
92
00:05:56,433 --> 00:05:59,045
what you want to eat. Do it, however,
93
00:05:59,395 --> 00:06:03,195
only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver
94
00:06:03,275 --> 00:06:05,135
or Cudgel or axe,
95
00:06:05,835 --> 00:06:09,451
rather. Just as wolves and bears and lions themselves
96
00:06:09,523 --> 00:06:12,555
slay what they eat, so you are to fell an ox with your
97
00:06:12,595 --> 00:06:15,267
fangs, or a boar with your jaws,
98
00:06:15,451 --> 00:06:17,975
or tear a lamb or hare to bits,
99
00:06:19,035 --> 00:06:22,495
fall upon it and eat it, still living, as animals do.
100
00:06:23,235 --> 00:06:26,651
But if you wait for what you want to eat to be
101
00:06:26,683 --> 00:06:30,451
dead, if you have qualms about enjoying the flesh while life is
102
00:06:30,483 --> 00:06:33,971
still present, why do you continue, contrary to
103
00:06:34,003 --> 00:06:36,975
nature, to eat what possesses life,
104
00:06:40,115 --> 00:06:43,859
even when it is lifeless and dead? However, no one eats the flesh just
105
00:06:43,907 --> 00:06:47,251
as it is. Men boil and roast it, altering it by
106
00:06:47,283 --> 00:06:50,955
fire and drugs, recasting and diverting and smothering with
107
00:06:50,995 --> 00:06:54,631
countless condiments, the taste of gore, so that the palate may be
108
00:06:54,663 --> 00:06:57,835
deceived and accept what is foreign to it.
109
00:06:59,975 --> 00:07:03,335
Plutarch then closes with a reference to the Pythagorean idea
110
00:07:03,375 --> 00:07:06,155
that souls simply switch bodies after death.
111
00:07:06,455 --> 00:07:10,115
Transmigration, it is called. He writes,
112
00:07:10,735 --> 00:07:14,799
for what sort of dinner is not costly for which a living creature loses
113
00:07:14,847 --> 00:07:18,115
its life? Do we hold life cheap?
114
00:07:18,945 --> 00:07:22,057
I do not yet go so far as to say that it may well be
115
00:07:22,081 --> 00:07:26,337
the life of your mother or father, or some friend or child, as Empedocles
116
00:07:26,401 --> 00:07:29,601
declared. Yet it does at least
117
00:07:29,673 --> 00:07:32,721
possess some perception, hearing,
118
00:07:32,913 --> 00:07:36,089
seeing, imagination, intelligence,
119
00:07:36,257 --> 00:07:39,617
which every last creature receives from nature, to enable
120
00:07:39,681 --> 00:07:43,365
it to acquire what is proper for it and to evade
121
00:07:43,705 --> 00:07:47,633
what is not. In other words,
122
00:07:47,729 --> 00:07:51,433
says Plutarch, it is wholly irrelevant if the animal, or at
123
00:07:51,449 --> 00:07:54,285
least his soul, was a human in a past life.
124
00:07:54,625 --> 00:07:57,321
Their lives matter just as they are.
125
00:07:57,513 --> 00:08:00,793
They merit moral consideration simply by dint of their
126
00:08:00,849 --> 00:08:04,217
sentience. In short, the other thinking,
127
00:08:04,321 --> 00:08:08,177
feeling beings with whom we share the planet have intrinsic
128
00:08:08,281 --> 00:08:08,925
value.
129
00:08:12,875 --> 00:08:17,091
My next selection comes from Porphyry, a Greek philosopher who
130
00:08:17,163 --> 00:08:20,635
lived a mere 1700 years ago. This comes from
131
00:08:20,675 --> 00:08:23,895
his essay on abstinence from Animal Food.
132
00:08:26,195 --> 00:08:30,083
To destroy other things through luxury and for the enjoyment of pleasure
133
00:08:30,139 --> 00:08:34,139
is perfectly savage and unjust. And the abstinence
134
00:08:34,227 --> 00:08:37,491
from these neither diminishes our life nor our living.
135
00:08:37,563 --> 00:08:40,977
Happily, to deliver animals to be slaughtered
136
00:08:41,001 --> 00:08:44,457
and cooked, and thus be filled with murder, not for
137
00:08:44,481 --> 00:08:47,697
the sake of nutriment and satisfying the wants of nature,
138
00:08:47,841 --> 00:08:51,297
but making pleasure and gluttony the end of such conduct
139
00:08:51,481 --> 00:08:54,805
is transcendentally iniquitous and dire.
140
00:08:56,385 --> 00:08:59,865
Porphyry, then, speaks to the nonsense of plant sentience,
141
00:08:59,945 --> 00:09:04,085
a nonsense that, as we modern vegans well know, remains to this day.
142
00:09:04,635 --> 00:09:08,443
Plant sentience is, in my opinion, but a cynical attempt to neutralize
143
00:09:08,499 --> 00:09:12,495
the animal rights message. He writes.
144
00:09:13,155 --> 00:09:17,011
To compare plants, however, with animals is doing violence to
145
00:09:17,043 --> 00:09:20,899
the order of things. For the latter are naturally sensitive
146
00:09:20,947 --> 00:09:24,627
and adapted to feel pain, to be terrified and hurt,
147
00:09:24,771 --> 00:09:27,495
on which account also they may be injured,
148
00:09:28,195 --> 00:09:31,535
but the former are entirely destitute of sensation,
149
00:09:32,205 --> 00:09:35,829
and in consequence of this, nothing foreign or
150
00:09:35,877 --> 00:09:39,637
evil or hurtful or injurious can befall
151
00:09:39,701 --> 00:09:40,305
them.
152
00:09:42,925 --> 00:09:46,585
Both of the preceding writings come from classical antiquity,
153
00:09:46,965 --> 00:09:50,493
but then, notably, there came a centuries long drought,
154
00:09:50,629 --> 00:09:55,225
at least in the public sphere. On the subject of ethical vegetarianism,
155
00:09:56,165 --> 00:09:59,485
the most obvious explanation for this is the rise and
156
00:09:59,525 --> 00:10:03,227
subsequent dominance of Christianity with its core tenet that
157
00:10:03,291 --> 00:10:06,755
only humans have souls, and thus only humans
158
00:10:06,795 --> 00:10:10,635
are entitled to moral consideration. But around
159
00:10:10,675 --> 00:10:14,075
the 18th century, the ethical case for animal rights begins to
160
00:10:14,115 --> 00:10:17,339
return. One theory for this rebirth of sorts
161
00:10:17,387 --> 00:10:21,083
is an almost visceral backlash against the Cartesian,
162
00:10:21,179 --> 00:10:24,395
Named after the 17th century French philosopher,
163
00:10:24,555 --> 00:10:28,415
scientist, and importantly Catholic Rene Descartes
164
00:10:28,735 --> 00:10:31,475
notion that animals are mere automatons,
165
00:10:31,975 --> 00:10:35,831
machines with no soul. Descartes argued
166
00:10:35,903 --> 00:10:38,959
animals are impervious to pain and incapable
167
00:10:39,007 --> 00:10:42,303
of true suffering, and thus any kind of grisly
168
00:10:42,359 --> 00:10:45,835
thing could be done to them with complete moral impunity.
169
00:10:47,015 --> 00:10:50,503
One of the first to take up the counter to this was the Dutch English
170
00:10:50,559 --> 00:10:53,315
philosopher, Bernard Mandeville.
171
00:10:53,785 --> 00:10:56,881
This comes from the second edition of his the Fable of the
172
00:10:56,913 --> 00:11:00,405
bees, published in 1723.
173
00:11:03,265 --> 00:11:06,505
When a creature has given such convincing and
174
00:11:06,545 --> 00:11:10,121
undeniable proofs of the terrors upon him and the
175
00:11:10,153 --> 00:11:13,657
pains and agonies he feels, is there a follower of
176
00:11:13,681 --> 00:11:16,961
Descartes so inured to blood as not to
177
00:11:16,993 --> 00:11:20,241
refute by his commiseration the philosophy of
178
00:11:20,273 --> 00:11:24,277
that vain reasoner? I have
179
00:11:24,301 --> 00:11:28,021
often thought, if it was not for this tyranny which custom
180
00:11:28,093 --> 00:11:31,989
usurps over us, that men of any tolerable good nature could
181
00:11:32,037 --> 00:11:36,025
never be reconciled to the killing of so many animals for their daily food,
182
00:11:36,325 --> 00:11:39,653
as long as the bountiful earth so plentifully provides them
183
00:11:39,709 --> 00:11:42,025
with varieties of vegetable dainties.
184
00:11:43,245 --> 00:11:46,741
But in such perfect animals as sheep and oxen,
185
00:11:46,893 --> 00:11:50,599
in whom the heart, the brain and nerves differ so little from
186
00:11:50,647 --> 00:11:54,207
ours, and in whom the separation of the spirits from the
187
00:11:54,231 --> 00:11:58,455
blood, the organs of sense, and consequently feeling itself,
188
00:11:58,615 --> 00:12:01,075
are the same as they are in human creatures,
189
00:12:01,655 --> 00:12:05,527
I cannot imagine how a man not hardened in blood and massacre
190
00:12:05,671 --> 00:12:09,599
is able to see a violent death and the pangs of it without
191
00:12:09,687 --> 00:12:13,231
concern, some people
192
00:12:13,343 --> 00:12:16,775
are not to be persuaded to taste of any creatures they have daily
193
00:12:16,855 --> 00:12:19,595
seen and been acquainted with while they were alive.
194
00:12:20,185 --> 00:12:24,169
Others extend their scruple no further than to their own poultry,
195
00:12:24,297 --> 00:12:27,445
and refuse to eat what they fed and took care of themselves.
196
00:12:28,425 --> 00:12:31,665
Yet all of them will feed heartily and without remorse
197
00:12:31,705 --> 00:12:35,257
on beef, mutton, and fowls when they are bought in
198
00:12:35,281 --> 00:12:38,169
the market. In this behavior,
199
00:12:38,217 --> 00:12:41,885
methinks, there appears something like a consciousness of guilt.
200
00:12:42,465 --> 00:12:46,361
It looks as if they endeavored to save themselves from the invitation of a
201
00:12:46,393 --> 00:12:50,625
crime by removing the cause of it as far as they can from themselves.
202
00:12:50,965 --> 00:12:54,629
And I can discover in it some strong remains of primitive pity
203
00:12:54,677 --> 00:12:58,053
and innocence, which all the arbitrary power of
204
00:12:58,109 --> 00:13:01,445
custom and the violence of luxury have not yet
205
00:13:01,485 --> 00:13:04,765
been able to conquer. We are born
206
00:13:04,805 --> 00:13:08,045
with a repugnancy to the killing and consequently
207
00:13:08,085 --> 00:13:09,505
the eating of animals.
208
00:13:12,245 --> 00:13:16,425
Here Mandeville turns to an inconvenient logic. On animal suffering.
209
00:13:16,985 --> 00:13:20,857
He writes, everybody knows that surgeons
210
00:13:20,921 --> 00:13:24,945
in the cure of dangerous wounds and fractures, the extirpation
211
00:13:25,025 --> 00:13:28,553
of limbs and other dreadful operations, are often compelled to
212
00:13:28,569 --> 00:13:31,873
put their patients to extraordinary torments and
213
00:13:31,889 --> 00:13:35,625
that the more desperate and calamitous cases occur to them, the more
214
00:13:35,665 --> 00:13:39,393
the outcries and bodily sufferings of others must become familiar
215
00:13:39,449 --> 00:13:43,889
to them. For this reason our English law
216
00:13:44,017 --> 00:13:47,497
allows them not to be of any jury upon life and death,
217
00:13:47,641 --> 00:13:51,521
as supposing that their practice itself is sufficient to harden
218
00:13:51,633 --> 00:13:55,025
and extinguish in them that tenderness without which
219
00:13:55,105 --> 00:13:58,393
no man is capable of setting a true value upon the lives of
220
00:13:58,409 --> 00:14:02,085
his fellow creatures. Now,
221
00:14:02,545 --> 00:14:06,697
if we ought to have no concern for what we do to brood beasts,
222
00:14:06,881 --> 00:14:10,725
and there was not imagined to be any cruelty in killing them,
223
00:14:11,365 --> 00:14:13,989
why should of all callings butchers,
224
00:14:14,157 --> 00:14:17,065
and only they jointly with surgeons,
225
00:14:17,405 --> 00:14:20,525
be excluded from being jurymen by the
226
00:14:20,565 --> 00:14:21,465
same law?
227
00:14:24,485 --> 00:14:27,853
Next comes Percy Shelley, the famous English
228
00:14:27,909 --> 00:14:31,518
poet who lived a brief 30 years from 1792
229
00:14:31,643 --> 00:14:35,597
to 1822. This comes from a vindication of
230
00:14:35,661 --> 00:14:39,685
natural diet. Shelley writes.
231
00:14:40,625 --> 00:14:44,337
Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugivorous
232
00:14:44,401 --> 00:14:47,765
animals in everything and carnivorous in nothing.
233
00:14:48,225 --> 00:14:51,721
He has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey,
234
00:14:51,833 --> 00:14:55,565
nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fiber.
235
00:14:56,265 --> 00:14:59,745
A mandarin of the first class with nails 2
236
00:14:59,785 --> 00:15:03,721
inches long, would probably find them alone inefficient to hold
237
00:15:03,793 --> 00:15:05,085
even a hair.
238
00:15:07,125 --> 00:15:11,669
It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation
239
00:15:11,797 --> 00:15:16,021
that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion,
240
00:15:16,213 --> 00:15:19,421
and that the sights of its bloody juices and raw horror does
241
00:15:19,453 --> 00:15:22,345
not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.
242
00:15:23,405 --> 00:15:26,949
Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive
243
00:15:26,997 --> 00:15:30,285
experiment on its fitness. And, as Plutarch
244
00:15:30,325 --> 00:15:33,793
recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth,
245
00:15:33,969 --> 00:15:36,561
and, plunging his head into its vitals,
246
00:15:36,753 --> 00:15:40,553
slake his thirst with the steaming blood. When,
247
00:15:40,609 --> 00:15:44,297
fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible
248
00:15:44,361 --> 00:15:47,945
instincts of nature that would rise in judgment against it and say
249
00:15:48,105 --> 00:15:50,925
nature formed me for such work as this,
250
00:15:51,385 --> 00:15:54,805
then and then only would he be consistent.
251
00:15:57,715 --> 00:16:00,755
Next comes Richard Wagner, one of the
252
00:16:00,795 --> 00:16:05,415
great composers who lived from 1813 to 1883.
253
00:16:05,915 --> 00:16:09,255
This comes from an essay he wrote called Fellow Suffering.
254
00:16:11,875 --> 00:16:16,095
Recently, while I was in the street, my eye was caught by a poulterer's shop.
255
00:16:16,875 --> 00:16:20,099
I stared unthinkingly at his piled up wares,
256
00:16:20,267 --> 00:16:23,645
neatly and appetizingly laid out, when I became
257
00:16:23,685 --> 00:16:27,205
aware of a man at the side busily plucking a hen while
258
00:16:27,245 --> 00:16:30,725
another man was just putting his hand into a cage,
259
00:16:30,885 --> 00:16:34,345
where he seized a live hen and tore its head off.
260
00:16:35,765 --> 00:16:39,069
The hideous scream of the animal and the pitiful,
261
00:16:39,117 --> 00:16:42,685
weaker sounds of complaint that it made while being overpowered
262
00:16:42,845 --> 00:16:45,225
transfixed my soul with horror.
263
00:16:46,245 --> 00:16:49,397
Ever since then I have been unable to rid myself of
264
00:16:49,421 --> 00:16:52,873
this impression. It is dreadful to see how
265
00:16:52,929 --> 00:16:56,369
our lives, which on the whole remain addicted to pleasure,
266
00:16:56,537 --> 00:17:00,205
rest upon such a bottomless pit of the cruelest misery.
267
00:17:01,345 --> 00:17:04,633
This has been so self evident to me from the very beginning
268
00:17:04,769 --> 00:17:08,485
and has become even more central to my thinking as my sensibility
269
00:17:08,865 --> 00:17:10,125
has increased.
270
00:17:13,065 --> 00:17:16,285
I'll close today with some words from Anna Kingsford.
271
00:17:17,015 --> 00:17:20,903
Anna was an extraordinary woman who, alas, most people have
272
00:17:20,919 --> 00:17:24,719
never heard of. She became a medical doctor at a time
273
00:17:24,847 --> 00:17:28,075
1880, when such a thing was practically unheard of.
274
00:17:28,495 --> 00:17:31,415
She was also an author and women's rights activist,
275
00:17:31,495 --> 00:17:34,035
and, of course, an ethical vegetarian.
276
00:17:34,815 --> 00:17:38,555
This first passage comes from a letter she wrote a year before
277
00:17:39,175 --> 00:17:43,081
graduating medical school. In it, she describes the
278
00:17:43,113 --> 00:17:46,321
effects the dog experiments then being conducted there had
279
00:17:46,353 --> 00:17:49,929
on her. It should be noted that while a med student,
280
00:17:50,057 --> 00:17:53,761
Anna was the only one in her school who refused to participate in these
281
00:17:53,793 --> 00:17:57,809
experiments. This passage also helps explain
282
00:17:57,897 --> 00:18:00,725
her unrelenting animal rights activism.
283
00:18:03,265 --> 00:18:06,497
Anna writes, I have found
284
00:18:06,561 --> 00:18:10,793
my hell here in the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, a hell
285
00:18:10,849 --> 00:18:14,641
more real and awful than any I have yet met with elsewhere,
286
00:18:14,833 --> 00:18:18,485
and one that fulfills all the dreams of the medieval monks.
287
00:18:20,225 --> 00:18:23,753
The idea that it was so came strongly upon me one day when I
288
00:18:23,769 --> 00:18:27,153
was sitting in the Musee of the school with my head in my hands,
289
00:18:27,329 --> 00:18:31,425
trying vainly to shut out of my ears the piteous shrieks
290
00:18:31,465 --> 00:18:34,545
and cries which floated incessantly towards me up the
291
00:18:34,585 --> 00:18:38,535
private staircase. Every now and then,
292
00:18:38,955 --> 00:18:42,655
as a scream more heart rending than the rest reached me,
293
00:18:42,955 --> 00:18:46,499
the moisture burst out on my forehead and on the palms of my
294
00:18:46,547 --> 00:18:49,923
hands, and I prayed, oh God,
295
00:18:50,059 --> 00:18:53,675
take me out of this hell. Do not suffer me to remain
296
00:18:53,715 --> 00:18:55,135
in this awful place.
297
00:18:58,875 --> 00:19:02,675
But then Anna explains why it's not enough to be against just
298
00:19:02,755 --> 00:19:06,355
one particular form of animal cruelty, in this case animal
299
00:19:06,475 --> 00:19:10,915
experimentation or just one particular form of injustice.
300
00:19:12,015 --> 00:19:16,247
These passages come from addresses animate to the British Vegetarian
301
00:19:16,311 --> 00:19:16,995
Society.
302
00:19:20,095 --> 00:19:23,903
I always speak with the greatest delight and satisfaction in the presence
303
00:19:23,959 --> 00:19:27,195
of my friends, the members of the Vegetarian Society.
304
00:19:27,775 --> 00:19:32,007
With them I am quite at my ease. I have no reservation,
305
00:19:32,111 --> 00:19:34,115
I have no dissatisfaction.
306
00:19:35,295 --> 00:19:38,439
This is not the case when I speak for my friends, the anti
307
00:19:38,487 --> 00:19:41,791
vivisectionists or the advocates of freedom for
308
00:19:41,823 --> 00:19:45,847
women. I always feel that such of these
309
00:19:45,911 --> 00:19:50,095
as are not abstainers from flesh food have unstable ground
310
00:19:50,175 --> 00:19:53,735
under their feet. And it is my great regret that
311
00:19:53,775 --> 00:19:57,143
when helping them in their good works, I cannot openly
312
00:19:57,199 --> 00:20:00,555
and publicly maintain what I so ardently believe,
313
00:20:01,175 --> 00:20:04,559
that the vegetarian movement is the bottom and basis
314
00:20:04,607 --> 00:20:07,967
of all other movements toward purity,
315
00:20:08,151 --> 00:20:10,755
freedom, justice and happiness.
316
00:20:13,055 --> 00:20:16,679
In our own era of so called intersectionality,
317
00:20:16,847 --> 00:20:19,835
Anna, words ring loud and true.
318
00:20:20,375 --> 00:20:24,455
What I hear is that if you are against any form of oppression and discrimination,
319
00:20:24,535 --> 00:20:28,069
you should be against all of them. Reason and
320
00:20:28,117 --> 00:20:31,893
compassion demand it. And as Anna suggests,
321
00:20:31,989 --> 00:20:34,145
veganism should be the baseline.
322
00:20:35,965 --> 00:20:39,213
Anna went on, people talk to
323
00:20:39,229 --> 00:20:42,813
me sometimes about peace conventions and ask me to join societies
324
00:20:42,869 --> 00:20:46,101
for putting down war. I always say you are beginning
325
00:20:46,133 --> 00:20:48,865
at the wrong end and putting the cart before the horse.
326
00:20:49,205 --> 00:20:53,439
If you want people to leave off fighting like beasts of prey,
327
00:20:53,637 --> 00:20:57,019
predators, that is, you must first get them to leave
328
00:20:57,067 --> 00:20:59,975
off living like beasts of prey.
329
00:21:01,755 --> 00:21:03,855
And finally Anna said this.
330
00:21:05,275 --> 00:21:09,027
Mr. Ruskin has said that the criterion of a beautiful action or
331
00:21:09,051 --> 00:21:12,547
of a noble thought is to be found in song. And that
332
00:21:12,571 --> 00:21:16,815
an action about which we cannot make a poem is not fit for humanity.
333
00:21:17,475 --> 00:21:20,615
Did he ever apply this test to flesh eating?
334
00:21:21,325 --> 00:21:24,981
Many a lovely poem, many a beautiful picture
335
00:21:25,173 --> 00:21:28,597
may be made about gardens and fruit gathering and the
336
00:21:28,621 --> 00:21:32,141
bringing home of the golden produce of harvest, or the burden
337
00:21:32,173 --> 00:21:35,505
of the vineyards with groups of happy boys and girls.
338
00:21:36,565 --> 00:21:40,053
But I defy anyone to make beautiful verse or to
339
00:21:40,069 --> 00:21:44,101
paint beautiful pictures about slaughterhouses running with streams of
340
00:21:44,133 --> 00:21:47,541
steaming blood and terrified struggling animals fell
341
00:21:47,573 --> 00:21:51,663
to the ground with poleaxes, or of
342
00:21:51,679 --> 00:21:55,919
a butcher's stall hung round with rows of gory corpses and
343
00:21:55,967 --> 00:21:59,679
folks in the midst of them, bargaining with the ogre who keeps the place
344
00:21:59,727 --> 00:22:03,303
for legs and shoulders and thighs and heads
345
00:22:03,439 --> 00:22:04,995
of the murdered creatures.
346
00:22:08,815 --> 00:22:12,127
As I mentioned at the beginning, in a future episode we'll get into the
347
00:22:12,151 --> 00:22:15,359
20th century and perhaps cover a few of the older writers
348
00:22:15,447 --> 00:22:18,679
not presented today. Thank you for listening.
349
00:22:18,807 --> 00:22:22,295
I truly hope you found this as interesting and provocative as
350
00:22:22,335 --> 00:22:23,115
I do,
351
00:22:25,135 --> 00:22:28,315
for on Behalf of Animals, this has been Patrick Bottuel.
352
00:22:50,505 --> 00:22:54,281
Hey Nicole here from In Behalf of Animals.
353
00:22:54,433 --> 00:22:57,697
We hope you love our show as much as you love
354
00:22:57,761 --> 00:23:01,137
animals. And if you do, can you take a quick action to
355
00:23:01,161 --> 00:23:04,921
help amplify their voices? Simply follow our podcast and
356
00:23:04,953 --> 00:23:08,427
write us a five star review on Apple Podcasts,
357
00:23:08,561 --> 00:23:11,463
Spotify and wherever you are listening right now.
358
00:23:11,599 --> 00:23:15,095
It helps new listeners discover the show to learn more about
359
00:23:15,175 --> 00:23:18,511
how they can join our community and help animals
360
00:23:18,583 --> 00:23:22,535
too. Thank you for listening and remember to be their voice
361
00:23:22,655 --> 00:23:23,895
every chance you get.
00:00:07,760 --> 00:00:11,565
Hello and welcome to In Behalf of Animals. I am Patrick Botuelo.
2
00:00:12,265 --> 00:00:16,017
You know, I have had a lifelong love of history and philosophy,
3
00:00:16,201 --> 00:00:19,353
so naturally, when I became a vegan animal rights activist,
4
00:00:19,409 --> 00:00:22,177
I was immensely interested in what the great thinkers,
5
00:00:22,321 --> 00:00:25,657
the philosophers, the scientists, the artists through the
6
00:00:25,681 --> 00:00:29,257
ages had to say on the subject. What I learned may be
7
00:00:29,281 --> 00:00:32,345
of surprise to many of you. In fact, I'd hazard
8
00:00:32,385 --> 00:00:35,897
a guess that most people, including perhaps most vegans,
9
00:00:36,041 --> 00:00:39,685
think of animal rights as a late 20th century construct,
10
00:00:39,985 --> 00:00:43,557
something that was born with Peter Singer's animal liberation in 1975,
11
00:00:43,670 --> 00:00:47,005
or maybe PETA's founding in 1980.
12
00:00:48,145 --> 00:00:52,001
But the truth is, practically all arguments for the adoption
13
00:00:52,033 --> 00:00:55,993
of an ethical vegan lifestyle, including on environmental grounds,
14
00:00:56,049 --> 00:01:00,475
have existed and been promulgated for centuries, even millennia.
15
00:01:02,335 --> 00:01:05,235
So today I'd like to share a few of my favorite passages.
16
00:01:05,615 --> 00:01:08,635
I find them fascinating, and I hope that you will too.
17
00:01:09,095 --> 00:01:12,783
Also, as an aside, it's nice to know we modern vegans are in pretty good
18
00:01:12,839 --> 00:01:16,355
company. Just a few notes before we start.
19
00:01:16,735 --> 00:01:20,296
The word vegetarian was not widely used till the 19th century,
20
00:01:20,370 --> 00:01:23,887
and the word vegan not coined till 1944. But there
21
00:01:23,911 --> 00:01:27,635
can be no mistaking what writers prior to these dates were talking about.
22
00:01:28,565 --> 00:01:32,277
Also, my first selected writer references Pythagoras,
23
00:01:32,341 --> 00:01:35,825
a Greek philosopher who lived some 2500 years ago.
24
00:01:36,365 --> 00:01:39,477
It is thought by many that Pythagoras was a vegetarian,
25
00:01:39,621 --> 00:01:43,429
and in fact, prior to coinage of that word, those who eschewed
26
00:01:43,477 --> 00:01:47,261
meat in England were called Pythagoreans. Unfortunately,
27
00:01:47,333 --> 00:01:50,305
however, there are no surviving writings from Pythagoras,
28
00:01:50,965 --> 00:01:54,805
and finally, I have stopped short of the 20th century as I plan on presenting
29
00:01:54,885 --> 00:01:57,105
those arguments in a later episode.
30
00:01:58,895 --> 00:02:03,047
So I begin with Plutarch. Plutarch was a Greek philosopher
31
00:02:03,111 --> 00:02:06,420
who lived and wrote in the first century A.D.
32
00:02:06,540 --> 00:02:10,435
so we're talking almost 2,000 years ago.
33
00:02:11,095 --> 00:02:13,595
Please contemplate that as you're listening.
34
00:02:14,735 --> 00:02:19,235
The following comes from his essay on the eating of animal flesh.
35
00:02:20,775 --> 00:02:21,795
He writes,
36
00:02:23,945 --> 00:02:27,297
can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining
37
00:02:27,361 --> 00:02:30,833
from flesh? For my part, I rather wonder
38
00:02:30,889 --> 00:02:34,137
both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind
39
00:02:34,201 --> 00:02:37,857
the first man who did so touched his mouth to gore and
40
00:02:37,881 --> 00:02:40,605
brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature?
41
00:02:41,145 --> 00:02:44,737
He who set forth tables of dead stale bodies and
42
00:02:44,761 --> 00:02:48,641
ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed
43
00:02:48,673 --> 00:02:51,265
and cried, moved and lived.
44
00:02:52,045 --> 00:02:55,485
How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit
45
00:02:55,605 --> 00:02:59,265
and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb?
46
00:02:59,925 --> 00:03:02,505
How could his Nose, endure the stench.
47
00:03:04,405 --> 00:03:08,573
Plutarch then went on to address a criticism that remains to this day,
48
00:03:08,749 --> 00:03:12,373
namely, that veganism is a luxury and that we vegans, especially in
49
00:03:12,389 --> 00:03:16,705
the west, are pampered and privileged and have our heads in the sand.
50
00:03:17,265 --> 00:03:21,161
Most people, the argument goes, have no choice but to consume animal parts
51
00:03:21,193 --> 00:03:24,385
and products. Once again, please bear in mind that these
52
00:03:24,425 --> 00:03:27,205
words were written some 2000 years ago.
53
00:03:29,265 --> 00:03:32,545
Or would everyone declare that the reason for those who first
54
00:03:32,625 --> 00:03:36,485
instituted flesh eating was the necessity of their poverty?
55
00:03:37,185 --> 00:03:41,129
But you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution
56
00:03:41,177 --> 00:03:45,795
of shedding blood? You who have such a superfluity of necessities,
57
00:03:46,415 --> 00:03:50,155
why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you?
58
00:03:50,895 --> 00:03:54,151
You call serpents and panthers and lions savage,
59
00:03:54,303 --> 00:03:58,183
but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughter, leave them no room
60
00:03:58,239 --> 00:04:02,175
to outdo you in cruelty. For their slaughter is their
61
00:04:02,215 --> 00:04:05,835
living, yours is a mere appetizer.
62
00:04:07,375 --> 00:04:10,939
Plutarch went on to say, it is certainly not
63
00:04:10,987 --> 00:04:14,435
lions and wolves that we eat out of self defense. On the
64
00:04:14,475 --> 00:04:17,907
contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures
65
00:04:17,971 --> 00:04:20,295
without stings or teeth to harm us.
66
00:04:20,595 --> 00:04:24,387
Creatures that, I swear, nature appears to have produced for the
67
00:04:24,411 --> 00:04:27,995
sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing
68
00:04:28,035 --> 00:04:31,283
abashes us, not the flower like tinting of
69
00:04:31,299 --> 00:04:34,507
the flesh, not the cleanliness of their habits or
70
00:04:34,531 --> 00:04:37,855
the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches.
71
00:04:38,605 --> 00:04:42,025
No, for the sake of a little flesh, we deprive them of sun,
72
00:04:42,365 --> 00:04:46,053
of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled
73
00:04:46,109 --> 00:04:49,725
by birth and being. Then we go on to assume
74
00:04:49,765 --> 00:04:53,945
that when they utter cries and squeaks, their speech is inarticulate,
75
00:04:54,365 --> 00:04:57,189
that they do not. Begging for mercy,
76
00:04:57,357 --> 00:05:01,189
entreating, seeking justice. Each one of them say,
77
00:05:01,357 --> 00:05:04,591
I do not ask to be spared in case of necessity.
78
00:05:04,773 --> 00:05:08,067
Only spare me your arrogance. Kill me to
79
00:05:08,091 --> 00:05:10,815
eat, but not to please your palate.
80
00:05:12,435 --> 00:05:14,415
Oh, the cruelty of it.
81
00:05:16,435 --> 00:05:19,947
Then, anticipating the modern argument that man is designed for
82
00:05:19,971 --> 00:05:23,851
eating meat, Plutarch wrote these words, and once again I remind
83
00:05:24,043 --> 00:05:25,695
2000 years ago.
84
00:05:27,875 --> 00:05:31,555
We declare then that it is absurd for them to say that the practice of
85
00:05:31,595 --> 00:05:35,225
flesh eating is based on nature. For that man
86
00:05:35,265 --> 00:05:38,793
is not naturally carnivorous is in the first place obvious
87
00:05:38,849 --> 00:05:42,833
from the structure of his body. A man's frame is in no way
88
00:05:42,889 --> 00:05:45,765
similar to those creatures who were made for flesh eating.
89
00:05:46,105 --> 00:05:49,345
He has no hooked beak or sharp nails or jagged
90
00:05:49,385 --> 00:05:52,657
teeth. If you declare that you
91
00:05:52,681 --> 00:05:56,361
are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself
92
00:05:56,433 --> 00:05:59,045
what you want to eat. Do it, however,
93
00:05:59,395 --> 00:06:03,195
only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver
94
00:06:03,275 --> 00:06:05,135
or Cudgel or axe,
95
00:06:05,835 --> 00:06:09,451
rather. Just as wolves and bears and lions themselves
96
00:06:09,523 --> 00:06:12,555
slay what they eat, so you are to fell an ox with your
97
00:06:12,595 --> 00:06:15,267
fangs, or a boar with your jaws,
98
00:06:15,451 --> 00:06:17,975
or tear a lamb or hare to bits,
99
00:06:19,035 --> 00:06:22,495
fall upon it and eat it, still living, as animals do.
100
00:06:23,235 --> 00:06:26,651
But if you wait for what you want to eat to be
101
00:06:26,683 --> 00:06:30,451
dead, if you have qualms about enjoying the flesh while life is
102
00:06:30,483 --> 00:06:33,971
still present, why do you continue, contrary to
103
00:06:34,003 --> 00:06:36,975
nature, to eat what possesses life,
104
00:06:40,115 --> 00:06:43,859
even when it is lifeless and dead? However, no one eats the flesh just
105
00:06:43,907 --> 00:06:47,251
as it is. Men boil and roast it, altering it by
106
00:06:47,283 --> 00:06:50,955
fire and drugs, recasting and diverting and smothering with
107
00:06:50,995 --> 00:06:54,631
countless condiments, the taste of gore, so that the palate may be
108
00:06:54,663 --> 00:06:57,835
deceived and accept what is foreign to it.
109
00:06:59,975 --> 00:07:03,335
Plutarch then closes with a reference to the Pythagorean idea
110
00:07:03,375 --> 00:07:06,155
that souls simply switch bodies after death.
111
00:07:06,455 --> 00:07:10,115
Transmigration, it is called. He writes,
112
00:07:10,735 --> 00:07:14,799
for what sort of dinner is not costly for which a living creature loses
113
00:07:14,847 --> 00:07:18,115
its life? Do we hold life cheap?
114
00:07:18,945 --> 00:07:22,057
I do not yet go so far as to say that it may well be
115
00:07:22,081 --> 00:07:26,337
the life of your mother or father, or some friend or child, as Empedocles
116
00:07:26,401 --> 00:07:29,601
declared. Yet it does at least
117
00:07:29,673 --> 00:07:32,721
possess some perception, hearing,
118
00:07:32,913 --> 00:07:36,089
seeing, imagination, intelligence,
119
00:07:36,257 --> 00:07:39,617
which every last creature receives from nature, to enable
120
00:07:39,681 --> 00:07:43,365
it to acquire what is proper for it and to evade
121
00:07:43,705 --> 00:07:47,633
what is not. In other words,
122
00:07:47,729 --> 00:07:51,433
says Plutarch, it is wholly irrelevant if the animal, or at
123
00:07:51,449 --> 00:07:54,285
least his soul, was a human in a past life.
124
00:07:54,625 --> 00:07:57,321
Their lives matter just as they are.
125
00:07:57,513 --> 00:08:00,793
They merit moral consideration simply by dint of their
126
00:08:00,849 --> 00:08:04,217
sentience. In short, the other thinking,
127
00:08:04,321 --> 00:08:08,177
feeling beings with whom we share the planet have intrinsic
128
00:08:08,281 --> 00:08:08,925
value.
129
00:08:12,875 --> 00:08:17,091
My next selection comes from Porphyry, a Greek philosopher who
130
00:08:17,163 --> 00:08:20,635
lived a mere 1700 years ago. This comes from
131
00:08:20,675 --> 00:08:23,895
his essay on abstinence from Animal Food.
132
00:08:26,195 --> 00:08:30,083
To destroy other things through luxury and for the enjoyment of pleasure
133
00:08:30,139 --> 00:08:34,139
is perfectly savage and unjust. And the abstinence
134
00:08:34,227 --> 00:08:37,491
from these neither diminishes our life nor our living.
135
00:08:37,563 --> 00:08:40,977
Happily, to deliver animals to be slaughtered
136
00:08:41,001 --> 00:08:44,457
and cooked, and thus be filled with murder, not for
137
00:08:44,481 --> 00:08:47,697
the sake of nutriment and satisfying the wants of nature,
138
00:08:47,841 --> 00:08:51,297
but making pleasure and gluttony the end of such conduct
139
00:08:51,481 --> 00:08:54,805
is transcendentally iniquitous and dire.
140
00:08:56,385 --> 00:08:59,865
Porphyry, then, speaks to the nonsense of plant sentience,
141
00:08:59,945 --> 00:09:04,085
a nonsense that, as we modern vegans well know, remains to this day.
142
00:09:04,635 --> 00:09:08,443
Plant sentience is, in my opinion, but a cynical attempt to neutralize
143
00:09:08,499 --> 00:09:12,495
the animal rights message. He writes.
144
00:09:13,155 --> 00:09:17,011
To compare plants, however, with animals is doing violence to
145
00:09:17,043 --> 00:09:20,899
the order of things. For the latter are naturally sensitive
146
00:09:20,947 --> 00:09:24,627
and adapted to feel pain, to be terrified and hurt,
147
00:09:24,771 --> 00:09:27,495
on which account also they may be injured,
148
00:09:28,195 --> 00:09:31,535
but the former are entirely destitute of sensation,
149
00:09:32,205 --> 00:09:35,829
and in consequence of this, nothing foreign or
150
00:09:35,877 --> 00:09:39,637
evil or hurtful or injurious can befall
151
00:09:39,701 --> 00:09:40,305
them.
152
00:09:42,925 --> 00:09:46,585
Both of the preceding writings come from classical antiquity,
153
00:09:46,965 --> 00:09:50,493
but then, notably, there came a centuries long drought,
154
00:09:50,629 --> 00:09:55,225
at least in the public sphere. On the subject of ethical vegetarianism,
155
00:09:56,165 --> 00:09:59,485
the most obvious explanation for this is the rise and
156
00:09:59,525 --> 00:10:03,227
subsequent dominance of Christianity with its core tenet that
157
00:10:03,291 --> 00:10:06,755
only humans have souls, and thus only humans
158
00:10:06,795 --> 00:10:10,635
are entitled to moral consideration. But around
159
00:10:10,675 --> 00:10:14,075
the 18th century, the ethical case for animal rights begins to
160
00:10:14,115 --> 00:10:17,339
return. One theory for this rebirth of sorts
161
00:10:17,387 --> 00:10:21,083
is an almost visceral backlash against the Cartesian,
162
00:10:21,179 --> 00:10:24,395
Named after the 17th century French philosopher,
163
00:10:24,555 --> 00:10:28,415
scientist, and importantly Catholic Rene Descartes
164
00:10:28,735 --> 00:10:31,475
notion that animals are mere automatons,
165
00:10:31,975 --> 00:10:35,831
machines with no soul. Descartes argued
166
00:10:35,903 --> 00:10:38,959
animals are impervious to pain and incapable
167
00:10:39,007 --> 00:10:42,303
of true suffering, and thus any kind of grisly
168
00:10:42,359 --> 00:10:45,835
thing could be done to them with complete moral impunity.
169
00:10:47,015 --> 00:10:50,503
One of the first to take up the counter to this was the Dutch English
170
00:10:50,559 --> 00:10:53,315
philosopher, Bernard Mandeville.
171
00:10:53,785 --> 00:10:56,881
This comes from the second edition of his the Fable of the
172
00:10:56,913 --> 00:11:00,405
bees, published in 1723.
173
00:11:03,265 --> 00:11:06,505
When a creature has given such convincing and
174
00:11:06,545 --> 00:11:10,121
undeniable proofs of the terrors upon him and the
175
00:11:10,153 --> 00:11:13,657
pains and agonies he feels, is there a follower of
176
00:11:13,681 --> 00:11:16,961
Descartes so inured to blood as not to
177
00:11:16,993 --> 00:11:20,241
refute by his commiseration the philosophy of
178
00:11:20,273 --> 00:11:24,277
that vain reasoner? I have
179
00:11:24,301 --> 00:11:28,021
often thought, if it was not for this tyranny which custom
180
00:11:28,093 --> 00:11:31,989
usurps over us, that men of any tolerable good nature could
181
00:11:32,037 --> 00:11:36,025
never be reconciled to the killing of so many animals for their daily food,
182
00:11:36,325 --> 00:11:39,653
as long as the bountiful earth so plentifully provides them
183
00:11:39,709 --> 00:11:42,025
with varieties of vegetable dainties.
184
00:11:43,245 --> 00:11:46,741
But in such perfect animals as sheep and oxen,
185
00:11:46,893 --> 00:11:50,599
in whom the heart, the brain and nerves differ so little from
186
00:11:50,647 --> 00:11:54,207
ours, and in whom the separation of the spirits from the
187
00:11:54,231 --> 00:11:58,455
blood, the organs of sense, and consequently feeling itself,
188
00:11:58,615 --> 00:12:01,075
are the same as they are in human creatures,
189
00:12:01,655 --> 00:12:05,527
I cannot imagine how a man not hardened in blood and massacre
190
00:12:05,671 --> 00:12:09,599
is able to see a violent death and the pangs of it without
191
00:12:09,687 --> 00:12:13,231
concern, some people
192
00:12:13,343 --> 00:12:16,775
are not to be persuaded to taste of any creatures they have daily
193
00:12:16,855 --> 00:12:19,595
seen and been acquainted with while they were alive.
194
00:12:20,185 --> 00:12:24,169
Others extend their scruple no further than to their own poultry,
195
00:12:24,297 --> 00:12:27,445
and refuse to eat what they fed and took care of themselves.
196
00:12:28,425 --> 00:12:31,665
Yet all of them will feed heartily and without remorse
197
00:12:31,705 --> 00:12:35,257
on beef, mutton, and fowls when they are bought in
198
00:12:35,281 --> 00:12:38,169
the market. In this behavior,
199
00:12:38,217 --> 00:12:41,885
methinks, there appears something like a consciousness of guilt.
200
00:12:42,465 --> 00:12:46,361
It looks as if they endeavored to save themselves from the invitation of a
201
00:12:46,393 --> 00:12:50,625
crime by removing the cause of it as far as they can from themselves.
202
00:12:50,965 --> 00:12:54,629
And I can discover in it some strong remains of primitive pity
203
00:12:54,677 --> 00:12:58,053
and innocence, which all the arbitrary power of
204
00:12:58,109 --> 00:13:01,445
custom and the violence of luxury have not yet
205
00:13:01,485 --> 00:13:04,765
been able to conquer. We are born
206
00:13:04,805 --> 00:13:08,045
with a repugnancy to the killing and consequently
207
00:13:08,085 --> 00:13:09,505
the eating of animals.
208
00:13:12,245 --> 00:13:16,425
Here Mandeville turns to an inconvenient logic. On animal suffering.
209
00:13:16,985 --> 00:13:20,857
He writes, everybody knows that surgeons
210
00:13:20,921 --> 00:13:24,945
in the cure of dangerous wounds and fractures, the extirpation
211
00:13:25,025 --> 00:13:28,553
of limbs and other dreadful operations, are often compelled to
212
00:13:28,569 --> 00:13:31,873
put their patients to extraordinary torments and
213
00:13:31,889 --> 00:13:35,625
that the more desperate and calamitous cases occur to them, the more
214
00:13:35,665 --> 00:13:39,393
the outcries and bodily sufferings of others must become familiar
215
00:13:39,449 --> 00:13:43,889
to them. For this reason our English law
216
00:13:44,017 --> 00:13:47,497
allows them not to be of any jury upon life and death,
217
00:13:47,641 --> 00:13:51,521
as supposing that their practice itself is sufficient to harden
218
00:13:51,633 --> 00:13:55,025
and extinguish in them that tenderness without which
219
00:13:55,105 --> 00:13:58,393
no man is capable of setting a true value upon the lives of
220
00:13:58,409 --> 00:14:02,085
his fellow creatures. Now,
221
00:14:02,545 --> 00:14:06,697
if we ought to have no concern for what we do to brood beasts,
222
00:14:06,881 --> 00:14:10,725
and there was not imagined to be any cruelty in killing them,
223
00:14:11,365 --> 00:14:13,989
why should of all callings butchers,
224
00:14:14,157 --> 00:14:17,065
and only they jointly with surgeons,
225
00:14:17,405 --> 00:14:20,525
be excluded from being jurymen by the
226
00:14:20,565 --> 00:14:21,465
same law?
227
00:14:24,485 --> 00:14:27,853
Next comes Percy Shelley, the famous English
228
00:14:27,909 --> 00:14:31,518
poet who lived a brief 30 years from 1792
229
00:14:31,643 --> 00:14:35,597
to 1822. This comes from a vindication of
230
00:14:35,661 --> 00:14:39,685
natural diet. Shelley writes.
231
00:14:40,625 --> 00:14:44,337
Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugivorous
232
00:14:44,401 --> 00:14:47,765
animals in everything and carnivorous in nothing.
233
00:14:48,225 --> 00:14:51,721
He has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey,
234
00:14:51,833 --> 00:14:55,565
nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fiber.
235
00:14:56,265 --> 00:14:59,745
A mandarin of the first class with nails 2
236
00:14:59,785 --> 00:15:03,721
inches long, would probably find them alone inefficient to hold
237
00:15:03,793 --> 00:15:05,085
even a hair.
238
00:15:07,125 --> 00:15:11,669
It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation
239
00:15:11,797 --> 00:15:16,021
that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion,
240
00:15:16,213 --> 00:15:19,421
and that the sights of its bloody juices and raw horror does
241
00:15:19,453 --> 00:15:22,345
not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.
242
00:15:23,405 --> 00:15:26,949
Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive
243
00:15:26,997 --> 00:15:30,285
experiment on its fitness. And, as Plutarch
244
00:15:30,325 --> 00:15:33,793
recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth,
245
00:15:33,969 --> 00:15:36,561
and, plunging his head into its vitals,
246
00:15:36,753 --> 00:15:40,553
slake his thirst with the steaming blood. When,
247
00:15:40,609 --> 00:15:44,297
fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible
248
00:15:44,361 --> 00:15:47,945
instincts of nature that would rise in judgment against it and say
249
00:15:48,105 --> 00:15:50,925
nature formed me for such work as this,
250
00:15:51,385 --> 00:15:54,805
then and then only would he be consistent.
251
00:15:57,715 --> 00:16:00,755
Next comes Richard Wagner, one of the
252
00:16:00,795 --> 00:16:05,415
great composers who lived from 1813 to 1883.
253
00:16:05,915 --> 00:16:09,255
This comes from an essay he wrote called Fellow Suffering.
254
00:16:11,875 --> 00:16:16,095
Recently, while I was in the street, my eye was caught by a poulterer's shop.
255
00:16:16,875 --> 00:16:20,099
I stared unthinkingly at his piled up wares,
256
00:16:20,267 --> 00:16:23,645
neatly and appetizingly laid out, when I became
257
00:16:23,685 --> 00:16:27,205
aware of a man at the side busily plucking a hen while
258
00:16:27,245 --> 00:16:30,725
another man was just putting his hand into a cage,
259
00:16:30,885 --> 00:16:34,345
where he seized a live hen and tore its head off.
260
00:16:35,765 --> 00:16:39,069
The hideous scream of the animal and the pitiful,
261
00:16:39,117 --> 00:16:42,685
weaker sounds of complaint that it made while being overpowered
262
00:16:42,845 --> 00:16:45,225
transfixed my soul with horror.
263
00:16:46,245 --> 00:16:49,397
Ever since then I have been unable to rid myself of
264
00:16:49,421 --> 00:16:52,873
this impression. It is dreadful to see how
265
00:16:52,929 --> 00:16:56,369
our lives, which on the whole remain addicted to pleasure,
266
00:16:56,537 --> 00:17:00,205
rest upon such a bottomless pit of the cruelest misery.
267
00:17:01,345 --> 00:17:04,633
This has been so self evident to me from the very beginning
268
00:17:04,769 --> 00:17:08,485
and has become even more central to my thinking as my sensibility
269
00:17:08,865 --> 00:17:10,125
has increased.
270
00:17:13,065 --> 00:17:16,285
I'll close today with some words from Anna Kingsford.
271
00:17:17,015 --> 00:17:20,903
Anna was an extraordinary woman who, alas, most people have
272
00:17:20,919 --> 00:17:24,719
never heard of. She became a medical doctor at a time
273
00:17:24,847 --> 00:17:28,075
1880, when such a thing was practically unheard of.
274
00:17:28,495 --> 00:17:31,415
She was also an author and women's rights activist,
275
00:17:31,495 --> 00:17:34,035
and, of course, an ethical vegetarian.
276
00:17:34,815 --> 00:17:38,555
This first passage comes from a letter she wrote a year before
277
00:17:39,175 --> 00:17:43,081
graduating medical school. In it, she describes the
278
00:17:43,113 --> 00:17:46,321
effects the dog experiments then being conducted there had
279
00:17:46,353 --> 00:17:49,929
on her. It should be noted that while a med student,
280
00:17:50,057 --> 00:17:53,761
Anna was the only one in her school who refused to participate in these
281
00:17:53,793 --> 00:17:57,809
experiments. This passage also helps explain
282
00:17:57,897 --> 00:18:00,725
her unrelenting animal rights activism.
283
00:18:03,265 --> 00:18:06,497
Anna writes, I have found
284
00:18:06,561 --> 00:18:10,793
my hell here in the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, a hell
285
00:18:10,849 --> 00:18:14,641
more real and awful than any I have yet met with elsewhere,
286
00:18:14,833 --> 00:18:18,485
and one that fulfills all the dreams of the medieval monks.
287
00:18:20,225 --> 00:18:23,753
The idea that it was so came strongly upon me one day when I
288
00:18:23,769 --> 00:18:27,153
was sitting in the Musee of the school with my head in my hands,
289
00:18:27,329 --> 00:18:31,425
trying vainly to shut out of my ears the piteous shrieks
290
00:18:31,465 --> 00:18:34,545
and cries which floated incessantly towards me up the
291
00:18:34,585 --> 00:18:38,535
private staircase. Every now and then,
292
00:18:38,955 --> 00:18:42,655
as a scream more heart rending than the rest reached me,
293
00:18:42,955 --> 00:18:46,499
the moisture burst out on my forehead and on the palms of my
294
00:18:46,547 --> 00:18:49,923
hands, and I prayed, oh God,
295
00:18:50,059 --> 00:18:53,675
take me out of this hell. Do not suffer me to remain
296
00:18:53,715 --> 00:18:55,135
in this awful place.
297
00:18:58,875 --> 00:19:02,675
But then Anna explains why it's not enough to be against just
298
00:19:02,755 --> 00:19:06,355
one particular form of animal cruelty, in this case animal
299
00:19:06,475 --> 00:19:10,915
experimentation or just one particular form of injustice.
300
00:19:12,015 --> 00:19:16,247
These passages come from addresses animate to the British Vegetarian
301
00:19:16,311 --> 00:19:16,995
Society.
302
00:19:20,095 --> 00:19:23,903
I always speak with the greatest delight and satisfaction in the presence
303
00:19:23,959 --> 00:19:27,195
of my friends, the members of the Vegetarian Society.
304
00:19:27,775 --> 00:19:32,007
With them I am quite at my ease. I have no reservation,
305
00:19:32,111 --> 00:19:34,115
I have no dissatisfaction.
306
00:19:35,295 --> 00:19:38,439
This is not the case when I speak for my friends, the anti
307
00:19:38,487 --> 00:19:41,791
vivisectionists or the advocates of freedom for
308
00:19:41,823 --> 00:19:45,847
women. I always feel that such of these
309
00:19:45,911 --> 00:19:50,095
as are not abstainers from flesh food have unstable ground
310
00:19:50,175 --> 00:19:53,735
under their feet. And it is my great regret that
311
00:19:53,775 --> 00:19:57,143
when helping them in their good works, I cannot openly
312
00:19:57,199 --> 00:20:00,555
and publicly maintain what I so ardently believe,
313
00:20:01,175 --> 00:20:04,559
that the vegetarian movement is the bottom and basis
314
00:20:04,607 --> 00:20:07,967
of all other movements toward purity,
315
00:20:08,151 --> 00:20:10,755
freedom, justice and happiness.
316
00:20:13,055 --> 00:20:16,679
In our own era of so called intersectionality,
317
00:20:16,847 --> 00:20:19,835
Anna, words ring loud and true.
318
00:20:20,375 --> 00:20:24,455
What I hear is that if you are against any form of oppression and discrimination,
319
00:20:24,535 --> 00:20:28,069
you should be against all of them. Reason and
320
00:20:28,117 --> 00:20:31,893
compassion demand it. And as Anna suggests,
321
00:20:31,989 --> 00:20:34,145
veganism should be the baseline.
322
00:20:35,965 --> 00:20:39,213
Anna went on, people talk to
323
00:20:39,229 --> 00:20:42,813
me sometimes about peace conventions and ask me to join societies
324
00:20:42,869 --> 00:20:46,101
for putting down war. I always say you are beginning
325
00:20:46,133 --> 00:20:48,865
at the wrong end and putting the cart before the horse.
326
00:20:49,205 --> 00:20:53,439
If you want people to leave off fighting like beasts of prey,
327
00:20:53,637 --> 00:20:57,019
predators, that is, you must first get them to leave
328
00:20:57,067 --> 00:20:59,975
off living like beasts of prey.
329
00:21:01,755 --> 00:21:03,855
And finally Anna said this.
330
00:21:05,275 --> 00:21:09,027
Mr. Ruskin has said that the criterion of a beautiful action or
331
00:21:09,051 --> 00:21:12,547
of a noble thought is to be found in song. And that
332
00:21:12,571 --> 00:21:16,815
an action about which we cannot make a poem is not fit for humanity.
333
00:21:17,475 --> 00:21:20,615
Did he ever apply this test to flesh eating?
334
00:21:21,325 --> 00:21:24,981
Many a lovely poem, many a beautiful picture
335
00:21:25,173 --> 00:21:28,597
may be made about gardens and fruit gathering and the
336
00:21:28,621 --> 00:21:32,141
bringing home of the golden produce of harvest, or the burden
337
00:21:32,173 --> 00:21:35,505
of the vineyards with groups of happy boys and girls.
338
00:21:36,565 --> 00:21:40,053
But I defy anyone to make beautiful verse or to
339
00:21:40,069 --> 00:21:44,101
paint beautiful pictures about slaughterhouses running with streams of
340
00:21:44,133 --> 00:21:47,541
steaming blood and terrified struggling animals fell
341
00:21:47,573 --> 00:21:51,663
to the ground with poleaxes, or of
342
00:21:51,679 --> 00:21:55,919
a butcher's stall hung round with rows of gory corpses and
343
00:21:55,967 --> 00:21:59,679
folks in the midst of them, bargaining with the ogre who keeps the place
344
00:21:59,727 --> 00:22:03,303
for legs and shoulders and thighs and heads
345
00:22:03,439 --> 00:22:04,995
of the murdered creatures.
346
00:22:08,815 --> 00:22:12,127
As I mentioned at the beginning, in a future episode we'll get into the
347
00:22:12,151 --> 00:22:15,359
20th century and perhaps cover a few of the older writers
348
00:22:15,447 --> 00:22:18,679
not presented today. Thank you for listening.
349
00:22:18,807 --> 00:22:22,295
I truly hope you found this as interesting and provocative as
350
00:22:22,335 --> 00:22:23,115
I do,
351
00:22:25,135 --> 00:22:28,315
for on Behalf of Animals, this has been Patrick Bottuel.
352
00:22:50,505 --> 00:22:54,281
Hey Nicole here from In Behalf of Animals.
353
00:22:54,433 --> 00:22:57,697
We hope you love our show as much as you love
354
00:22:57,761 --> 00:23:01,137
animals. And if you do, can you take a quick action to
355
00:23:01,161 --> 00:23:04,921
help amplify their voices? Simply follow our podcast and
356
00:23:04,953 --> 00:23:08,427
write us a five star review on Apple Podcasts,
357
00:23:08,561 --> 00:23:11,463
Spotify and wherever you are listening right now.
358
00:23:11,599 --> 00:23:15,095
It helps new listeners discover the show to learn more about
359
00:23:15,175 --> 00:23:18,511
how they can join our community and help animals
360
00:23:18,583 --> 00:23:22,535
too. Thank you for listening and remember to be their voice
361
00:23:22,655 --> 00:23:23,895
every chance you get.
