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" "Such animals as be wants, he will nourish on the dregs and refuse of his own food, and give this as a gift; while those which are useless to him are left in a state of starvation, and deprived of the shelter of the forests, cut down by man.
(1783/4 – 2 December 1861) was an English philosopher, writer, inventor, and social reformer. He was best known for his pioneering advocacy of the moral consideration of animals, early veganism, and opposition to animal exploitation. A founding member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (later the RSPCA), he later established the Animals' Friend Society to promote a more comprehensive ethical stance toward animals. His 1824 treatise, Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, offered one of the first systematic critiques of animal use, combining philosophical argument with proposals for social reform. He also supported causes including women's rights, anti-slavery, and the welfare of the poor. In addition to his activism, Gompertz was an accomplished mechanical inventor who sought to develop alternatives to animal labour.
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It seems that most animals produce many more offspring than can find food, but that their numbers are kept small by other animals who prey upon them, otherwise they would perish by famine: which of the two evils would be the greatest we do not pretend to determine, but as the former is the plan most adopted we must believe it to be the best.
The number of animals which can be brought into existence probably being limited, or the number destined to inhabit our globe probably being so; it appearing reasonable to think that no new animals are created by being born, nor destroyed by being killed, but that being born is merely becoming conscious, and death or sleep being only a loss or suspension of consciousness, [...] the identity never being destroyed.
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Besides destruction by design to obtain the bodies of animals for food, another extensive sacrifice of life is committed in the very act of obtaining vegetable food and other necessaries, every plant having many disputants* and the ground, and even much of the water we drink being the habitation of numerous animated beings, which may be destroyed by every stroke of the spade, or every drought; but this mode of destruction is of a less blameable character than any other to which blame may attach, because not done with design, but should be avoided when unnecessary. Indeed even vegetables themselves should not be injured unnecessarily; who would be bold enough to assert that they are not imdued with sensation, when their similitude to animals and their exquisite and complicated organizations seem to affirm that they live and feel? The sensitive plant which droops on being touched, being one instance in favour of the idea. Another instance being in the plant which devours flies, this plant keeping open till a fly settles in it and then closes and devours it.