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I do not see what right one animal has to deprive another of its small importance, to prevent himself from losing more: if this theory be generally a… - Lewis Gompertz
" "I do not see what right one animal has to deprive another of its small importance, to prevent himself from losing more: if this theory be generally admitted, a young man might kill an old man, to save his own longer expectant life. And are we authorized to kill one animal for the benefit of another of its species? If they should overstock the world, it will then be time to begin to destroy them. It seems however more just that nature should take her course, and that man should be neutral till provoked. It is certainly easier for him to destroy others than to suffer inconvenience himself; but that does not make it right. We have not however at present any reason to complain of the too great fecundity of those animals we use for food, etc., and we even take great pains to produce them, not for their own enjoyment, but for the good and pleasure we derive by destroying and tormenting them.
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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
The plan by which Nature preserves, regulates and produces her beings, though continually before the eyes of mankind, enters little into their brains or hearts. Authors generally varnish over, or hide the unsightly parts of her system, and in their mistaken religious zeal, think they see the beauty while they are dwelling on the deformity; one minute they allude to the immense produce and destruction of animals for the support of each other, and then pass on into eulogies on the power and goodness of God, in having been the author of this destruction, by which means they state so much happiness and delight springs, and the only object of God being, as they would lead us to believe, the benefit of mankind.
Yet we are not always justified in concluding that the killing of animals causes a less number to exist; because some of them are carnivorous, and by being killed they can no longer kill others: while others are graminivorous, and when they can no longer eat up the fruits of the soil, other animals may live upon such fruits instead; still there is no justification of slaughter, as the identical lives are certainly thereby destroyed; and if such an excuse be admitted, it must apply by the same rule to the slaughter even of human beings. But however this may be, it is evident that by far the greatest number of animals live in terror and die by violence from their devourers, and the males also by the attacks of each other, besides pestilence, diseases, accidents and starvation, few living their natural time; while by means of many being sacrificed, a few are enabled to live like in a ship of short provision, though without an equitable casting of lots, but by the law of force over weakness; and this law not being confined to dumb animals, but ruling the lots of man as well as of animals, though its operations on human life may be more concealed, but here also population is kept in check by want of food and by warfare; among mankind itself justice is little more than a name, might being the chief law observed: here, too, the strong destroy and oppress the weak; some are enabled to live and multiply, while many starve and live in celibacy to prevent an overflow, which, notwithstanding, does arise: dispute and warfare then result in which some are destroyed and some preserved. But no person, however virtuous, can live in comfort without consuming more than his share. Such is the world we live in, however Pope may contend that "virtue alone is happiness below."
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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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