I admit it as an axiom, that every animal has more right to the use of its own body than others have to use it. - Lewis Gompertz

Y: I suppose you also deem it a crime to drink, as you destroy myriads of animals in the water of every draught?
Z: I consider this an evil, but not a crime, because I do not cause or wish them to be there, and would assist them to escape if possible. They have no more claim to the water than I have; and we know so little of the nature of these animals, that we are not even sure that they die when the water is drunk; the very fact of their being there is concealed from us, and but for the microscope we should never have known it. I however consider it wrong to waste water in anyway which may injure the animalcula.

The slaying of animals for the most trifling purposes is defended on the ground, that if not done, they would be too numerous, and consequently troublesome to man, and unhappy in themselves; while the promotion of their increase is defended on the assumption, that we are then the authors of much happiness. But let us apply a cautious ear to such reasoning. If the promoting the increase of animals is being the author of increased happiness, destroying them must be positive evil. For our own parts, we prefer neutrality as much as possible on these points, because we know not whether the life of animals generally, abound most with pleasure or pain. We confess that in our view of the question, pain seems to predominate; and the more so the more the numbers of animals are increased; indeed, we neither approve the promoting of the increase of animals, nor of destroying them.

Suppose it were so; so much, then, the better, as we should not want then to show that the soul could become torpid and recover; because, then, it would never be torpid> and, consequently, would be immortal, which is all we want to prove. And this opinion, I believe, is that of the majority of thinking persons, but unfortunately mixed up with divers principles, not orthodox, some of them acknowledging a soul m man, but not in any other living being; others going one step further, and admitting a soul in other animals too, but imagining that it is a different sort of soul to that of man, instead of considering that one soul is similar to another, and that all the difference between one individual and another is corporeal,—the organization of the body or brain, by its variations, alone producing, it would appear, all the varieties of character, without any variation of soul, to which conclusion we are led by the fact that we cannot produce any thought or feeling in the mind but through the instrumentality of the body; and it seems only on the bodily organs, and physical agents upon them, that every perfection and defect of mind depends; an idiot, a philosopher, and a mouse, appearing to have quite similar souls, the difference only being in the organs of sense, which act upon the souls, and are in themselves different. No person can deny that different sensations are produced by bodily causes; why, then, must we look to something else to produce them—namely, to variations of the soul ? Bodily causes are enough, and we are not driven to seek for further causes. The soul is always, if I am correct, the same. It does not grow, it does not decay; and is as perfect in an infant as In a man—the improvement and growth of mind being only of the corporeal part.