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In order to admire the goodness of God with the greatest force, we should endeavour to reach in imagination the improved state of the world, which it… - Lewis Gompertz
" "In order to admire the goodness of God with the greatest force, we should endeavour to reach in imagination the improved state of the world, which it seems probable will be effected in the course of time. What may not be expected from the genius of man, which appears to gain fresh powers from every new idea that he gains from his fellows, and fresh means from all the inventions which the united efforts of the whole species bring forth? It is the extent of combination which chiefly raises man above brutes; and to combination are we to look to mature the views of Providence in forming society, and in regulating the affairs of life. Then will every animal within the reach of man feel the effects of his power, by his increase of happiness instead of his misery, and then only may man boast of his being lord of the creation, for which he will be fitted.
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About Lewis Gompertz
(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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Additional quotes by Lewis Gompertz
But the reader must particularly observe, that by the word “ soul” I do not mean precisely the same thing as most persons do—the general opinion of believers in soul being that it is the spirit of the person unencumbered, and set free of the body in a more perfect state than in this life, with all the feelings and senses, and even more than when united to the body. But my meaning is very different. I look on it (as I have expressed) as a thing totally devoid of feeling or thought, excepting when it is operated on by the body, and that when not, is totally insensible, and cannot be perceived unconnected with the body by any mortal eye, but only by the Almighty.
Every animal possesses something which distinguishes it from all other animals; and this is what I understand by personal identity, or rather the identical self. This in every animal is perfectly distinct and indivisible, since the only knowledge we have of it is when it is entire; and divisibility of this is what we cannot conceive: but if indivisible, it must also be indestructible, and must always have existed. It is not possessed of any kind of consciousness: but no consciousness can, it appears, exist without it; as life itself seems to be composed of personal identity, and other essentials of the mind or body, and that it is the combination which produces consciousness.
Therefore, as a person cannot be in duplicates, it is plain, that the soul cannot be the product of mechanism. And every person knows that his self is only his self, and the same self at all times, without division, augmentation, or change of any kind, he knows it has an identity, and there* fore is not the effect of matter.
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