J. Howard Moore

“ Let us be consistent, for we have but one life to live. We are striving for the amelioration of this suffering world. Let us be economical. Let us not with one hand pour oil upon its agonies and with the other inflict gashes. Let us vow allegiance to the principles of universal courtesy and love, whether to the lone worm wandering in the twilight of consciousness, the feathered forms of the fields and forest, the heifer of the meadows, the simple savage on the banks of the gladed river, the political slaves whom men call wives, or the economic exiles of industry. ”

“ The same spirit of sympathy and fraternity that broke the black man's manacles and is today melting the white woman's chains will tomorrow emancipate the workingman and the heifer, and as the ages bloom and the great wheels of the centuries grind on, the same spirit of leaven shall banish Selfishness from the earth and convert the planet finally into one unbroken and unparalleled spectacle of Peace, Justice and Solidarity. ”

“ There is, in fact, but one crime in the universe and all varieties of impropriety whatsoever are aspects or phases of this crime. It is the crime of exploitation—the suppression of the interests, lives, or welfares of some beings for the whim or convenience of others—the neglect to recognize the equal or the approximately equal rights of all to life, consideration and happiness—the crime of doing to others as you would that others would not do to you. ”

“ It is no holiday matter to emancipate one's self from an old, inveterate slavery. It is a task so formidable that few do it without help. It requires a courage and an iconoclasm greater than most possess to make heroic initiatives. But after a reform is accomplished and its principles become matters of course, there are then few persons without the ability to look back and wonder why idiots are so much like men.
Men are somnambulistic. Stupefied by the long night of instinct out of which it arose, the human mind is only half awake. ”

“ In the ideal universe the life and happiness of no being are contingent upon the suffering and death of any other. And the fact that in this universe of ours life and happiness have been and are today so largely maintained by the infliction of indescribable misery and extinction, is the most pathetic, the most stupendous, and the most sickening contemplation that ever invaded human mind. ”

“ It is simply the expansion of ethics to suit the biological revelations of Charles Darwin. Evolution has taught us the kinship of all creatures. The ancient hiatus between man and the other animals has been effectually sewed up. Biology teaches us, if it teaches us anything, that there is a solidarity of the sentient world. Man is simply one of a series of sentients, differing in degree but not in kind from the creatures below and around him. The ox he enslaves and slays and the poor reptile that wriggles in his pathway are his brothers, partaking of his nature and sharing his destiny. ”

“ Rich men give millions to museums or universities, when they would know, if they had the talent to stop and think, that the thousands who make their wealth work like wretches from morning till night and suffocate in garrets and feed on garbage, in order that they may be munificent. Human beings preach as the cardinal of morality that they should act upon others as they would be pleased to have others act upon them, and then take the most sensitive and beautiful beings all palpitating with life, and chop them into fragments with a composure that would do honor to the managers of an inferno. ”

“ And the honest ox and the faithful dog have no rights today, because they were made to be murdered.
I am a vegetarian because I believe in justice. There is injustice in the universe, because there are beings in it who monopolize its sweets and opportunities. They want their own pleasures and also the pleasures of others. They shuffle upon others their bitters, and at the same time rob them of their sweets. Others live, not as ends, but as means and conveniences. ”

“ Holy days, days above all others when it seems men's minds would be bent on compassion, are farces of gluttony and ferocity. Unfeeling ruffians cowardly shoot down defenceless birds or prowl the country in rival squads massacreing every living creature that is not able to escape them—and for no higher or humaner purpose than just to see who can kill the most! This is egoism unparalleled on the face of the earth. No species of animal except man plunges to such depths of atrocity. ”

“ Whether we realize it or not the doctrine that on mankind's account all the rest of the animal world came into being and that all non-human beings are mere hunks devoid of all psychic qualities found in man, is a doctrine not one whit more sagacious than the old geocentric theory of the universe. ”

“ Thousands of innocent and helpless souls are caught up and carried by unfeeling emissaries into foul dungeons and there doomed by ghoulish clowns of science to the most protracted, useless, and damning victimizations. It is enough almost to make villains weep—the cold-blooded manner in which human beings cut the throats, dash out the brains, and discuss the flavor of their victims at their cannibalistic feasts. ”

“ I believe I should neglect to suppress the interests and lives of non-human beings for identically the same reason that I should neglect to suppress the interests and lives of human beings. The exploitation of birds and quadrupeds for human whim or convenience is an offense not different in kind from the offenses denounced in human statutes as robbery and murder. And the same logic which impels abstinence from one of these offenses impels everyone who has the power to be consistent to refrain from all of them. ”

“ I look back over the ages of this world—not the ages of human history simply, for the history of the human species is but a little section, the remembered chapter, in the history of the evolutions which have been performed by mundane life. I look back to the beginning of life on this planet—back 50,000,000 of years ago, when the first protoplasmic specks sprawled in primeval seas. Life originated in the sea fifteen hundred thousand human generations ago. ”

“ It is encouraging to know, however, that life in its highest forms, that is, as represented by the most cultured aggregates of the human species, is evolving rapidly and irrepressibly toward the ideal, that is, toward a social state in which the interests and life of each individual being are more and more equally precious. What are civilization and morality? What do we mean by ethical progress? The growth of consideration for others—nothing more—simply cessation of, or abstinence from, exploitation. ”

“ After ages of evolution it crept out upon the continents, subsequently entered the forests, climbed and clambered among the trees, became endowed with perpendicularity and hands, descended and walked upon the soil, invented agriculture, built cities and states—and here we are. Human civilization is but the van, the hither terminus, of an evolutional process which had its beginning away back in the protoplasm of primeval slime. The philosopher is the remote posterity of the meek and lowly monad. ”

“ But the crimes committed by the hominine species are the most insolent and extravagant in the universe. Non-human murderers are ruthless, but even serpents and hyenas do not exterminate for sport. A universe is, indeed, to be pitied whose dominating inhabitants are so unconscious, so irresponsible, and so ethically repulsive that they make life a commodity, mercy a disease, and systematic massacre a pastime and a profession.
I am a vegetarian because I believe in the golden rule. ”

“ I wish not happiness from others—only happiness out of the bosom of the great all which comes like the red flowers of the oleander.”
I am a vegetarian because it is logical and natural to be so. The vegetable world contains all the elements necessary to human sustenance, and in a much more prime condition than they are found in the diseased tissues of our mistreated servants. The belief that we can not have peach in our dimples and diamonds in our brains without dead bodies in our digestion is a belief having no foundation except ignorance. ”

“ This is not an ideal world, and if we are to judge of the universe by the clod we root and ride on, the whole thing is not a flattering affair. Our relations to our fellow men are not ideal, and from the nature of things they never can be. But we think we do amply when we do the best we can. The difference between him who attempts honestly and faithfully to do just the best he can and him who knows little and cares less is as great as the difference between January and June.
Enjoy and let others enjoy. Live and let live. ”

“ Our own happiness and that of our species are believed to be so much more important than that of others that we sacrifice without scruple the most sacred prerogatives of others in order that our own may be fastidiously trimmed. ”

“ And the disposition to exploit manifested by every animal that breathes, from philosopher to fish, is a disposition which has been implanted in the natures of living-beings by the necessities of evolution. The great task of reforming the universe, therefore, is the task of eliminating from the natures of its inhabitants the disposition to be inhospitable, egoistic, and merciless, which has been everywhere developed by evolution. ”

“ I am a vegetarian, therefore, because cannibalism is unnecessary. I can live just as well and be just as happy without drinking the blood of my fellows, and why should I slay them? Why should I not live and let live—especially when I can do it just as well as not? ”

“ It hasn’t been very long since all the Christian nations hunted their dusky brethren in Africa and sold and loaned and lashed them as we do the horse today. All these crimes are now matters of course to us. It is the same old story. We can see behind us but not around us. After so many centuries the solidarity of our species has dimly dawned on us, but we can not discern the solidarity of all the animal world. We go on daily committing crimes as horrible as those we execrate. ”

“ Industry and ingenuity in the beaver are just as genuine and just as commendable as the same qualities in man. The faithful dog who stood over the lifeless body of his master grieving for recognition and starting at every flutter of his garments till he himself died of starvation, was just as noble as if he had all his days walked on his hind legs and worn a cane. ”

“ The delusion that flesh is the most genuine source of human energy has become so fixed that it actually disturbs the respiration of nineteen out of twenty to be told that flesh compared with many foods is a dilute form of nutrition, and that more than half the inhabitants of the earth today are practical and prosperous vegetarians. There is no reason known to science or experience why human beings may not keep up as profitable and as interesting an existence without flesh as with it. ”

“ The vegetable world, in fact, is the natural storehouse and the only original storehouse from which animals may derive energy. No animal can produce protoplasm, which is the basis of all life and energy. This is a function of the plant, and of the plant only. All an animal can do is to take it after it is produced and burn it up. Animals are simply locomotives consuming the energy which plants slowly accumulate from the sun. ”

“ I am a vegetarian because I believe that present-day ethics is founded on that puerile, pre-Darwinian delusion that all other kinds of creatures and all worlds were created explicitly for the hominine species. Vegetarianism is the ethical corollary of evolution. ”

“ And I can but pity, not only the creatures whose throats are severed and whose skeletons are stripped, but the blind and reckless cannibals who perpetrate these crimes. When the whole earth teems with such a bewildering variety of beautiful and bloodless fruits, it seems so strange and so sad and so frightful that man should continue the barbarous, blood-sucking practices of the world's infancy. ”

“ And the Christian who goes to church on Sunday and wails long prayers and then goes home and stuffs his alimentary with the quivering vitals of his naive fellows, and through the week lashes the flanks of his overburdened horse till the strained tendons are ready to snap, is not less criminal because he is strategic, and his crimes are not less infernal because they have no penalty but his conscience and no judge but himself. ”

“ Every proposition that comes to our intelligence is thus accepted or dismissed, depending on the congeniality or uncongeniality of the subjective and the objective. It is impossible absolutely for mind, constituted as it is on the earth, to accept a proposition that is antagonistic to it. And when a proposition is presented to the mind, the only way in the world to win its acceptance is by coaxing and modifying the mind itself. ”

“ Instead of becoming the models and school-masters of the world in which they have outstripped, and striving to repair the clumsy natures and regulate the straying feet of those by means of whom they have been hoisted into distinction, they have become colossal pedants and assassins, proclaiming themselves the pets and gods of creation and teaching each other that other races are mere fixtures to furnish food and amusement for themselves. ”

“ The wild bird who takes her life in her wings to save her nestlings from the voracious serpent, and the mother bear away oil the Arctic snows who allows herself to be murdered in order to save her child, have just as genuine mother love and love just as sacred as that which burns in the breast of woman. ”

“ I do not eat my fellow creatures, for the same reason I do not enslave my brother and treat my sister as an appendage and otherwise monopolize the sweets and opportunities of the planet. There are on this ball billions of beings. They are my fellow creatures. So far as I can make out they have approximately the same right to existence and to the enjoyment of existence as I have. I do not want their pleasures and I do not want them to drink my sorrows. I want simply my own and I am perfectly content to rob no one. In the words of another, "I never want happiness that gives another pain. ”