Brute animal

“ One with a strong stomach and a hard head may be able to tolerate much of the unconscious and undeliberate cruelty and torture of the world that is perpetrated in hot blood and stupidity. I have such a stomach and head. But what turns my head and makes my gorge rise, is the cold-blooded, conscious, deliberate cruelty and torment that is manifest behind ninety- nine of every hundred trained-animal turns. Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its perfect flower in the trained-animal world. ”

“ I am asking you, you cursed murderers, crows sitting on carrion, wretched, imbecile animals, before the whole word. For you are animals. What did you kill my brother for? If you had a face, I would give you a blow upon it, but you have no face, you have only the snout of a wild beast. You pretend that you are men, but I see claws under your gloves and the flat skull of an animal under your hat; hidden beneath your clever conversation I hear insanity rattling its rusty chains. ”

“ There is a species of cruelty to animals, happily, I believe, very rare. I refer to that which induces a person to treat harshly and unkindly some dumb creature for the simple reason that it belongs to an enemy. Whatever of harm an animal’s master may have done me, it, at all events, is guiltless of evil. ”

“ Sad as it is, we cannot conceal the fact that in spite of our companionship with flowers we have not risen very far above the brute. Scratch the sheepskin and the wolf within us will soon show his teeth. It has been said that man at ten is an animal, at twenty a lunatic, at thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at fifty a criminal. Perhaps he becomes a criminal because he has never ceased to be an animal. Nothing is real to us but hunger, nothing sacred except our own desires. Shrine after shrine has crumbled before our eyes; ”

“ I tell you these things, my children, not to lessen in your eyes the undeniable superiority of man, but to inspire in you a fellow feeling for animals that are formed like us, suffer as we do, and are far too often the victims of our stupid cruelty. Whoever needlessly causes an animal to suffer commits a barbarous act, an inhuman act, inasmuch as he inflicts torture on flesh like our own ”

“ Now he is about the worst dreaded of all the smaller creatures which wear either fur or feathers, shunned and hated by all his kindred, just because of his bad reputation. First, because of his cruel manner of dealing with his prey, for he just yearns to kill any young bird, or small stray animal which happens to cross his evil trail merely for the sake of the kill, and he does it so craftily that he will usually leave a mere pin-prick of a wound, perhaps, in his victim’s neck to show just how it died. But always before he leaves he’ll make sure to suck every drop of blood from its small body. ”

“ They were animals, then, and not natives, who had made the inroad, for surely the latter would have left nothing behind.
But if animals, or some single terrible animal, then what had become of my comrades? A ferocious beast would surely have destroyed them and left their remains. It is true that there was that one hideous pool of blood, which told of violence. Such a monster as had pursued me during the night could have carried away a victim as easily as a cat would a mouse. ”

“ Hence on the principles of his rude philosophy the primitive hunter who slays an animal believes himself exposed to the vengeance either of its disembodied spirit or of all the other animals of the same species, whom he considers as knit together, like men, by the ties of kin and the obligations of the blood feud, and therefore as bound to resent the injury done to one of their number. ”

“ Your countrymen, who gather themselves in dozens, protected by horses and dogs, to hunt a timid fox, call us cruel because we fight the bull—because our toreadors risk their lives every moment that they are in the ring, fighting a savage, maddened animal five times larger and stronger than themselves. ”

“ I have invoked the public conscience against wanton destruction and its inevitable accompaniment of cruelty. I know, further, that man is generally cruel and a bully towards other animals. And, as an extreme evolutionist, I believe all animals are alike in kind, however much they may differ in degree. But I don't think clean sport cruel. It does not add to the sum total of cruelty under present conditions. Wild animals shun pain and death as we do. But under Nature they never die what we call natural deaths. They starve or get killed. ”

“ Many wild-beast shows of the present hour are as cruel as were the gladiatorial games of Rome, and far less manly. I can imagine no possible argument which can be put forward for the license awarded to the travelling caravans which attend fairs and feasts all the world over, and which are hells of animal torture. What is called the taming of beasts is the most cruel, demoralising, and loathsome of pursuits; the horrible wickedness of its methods is known to all, and the appetite it awakens and stimulates in the public is to the last degree debasing. ”

“ For they count hunting the lowest, the vilest, and most abject part of butchery; and the other parts of it more profitable and more honest as bringing much more commodity, in that they (the butchers) kill their victims from necessity, whereas the hunter seeks nothing but pleasure of the seely [simple, innocent] and woful animal’s slaughter and murder. The which pleasure in beholding death, they say, doth rise in wild beasts, either of a cruel affection of mind or else by being changed, in continuance of time, into cruelty by long use of so cruel a pleasure. ”

“ What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness—a foul creature to be incontinently slain. ”

“ I would have liked to see the animal defend himself,—the dog bite the one who abused him, the horse, bleeding under the lash, trample on his torturer. But always the dumb beast endures his lot with the resignation of the subdued races. What an object of pity is the beast! ”

“ If they had been vicious, they were imprisoned in the bodies of vile brutes, there to do penance for several ages, at the expiration of which they returned again to animate men; but if they lived virtuously, some animal of a nobler kind, or even a human creature, was to be their lot. ”

“ E. Bell has written, “Dreadful are the revelations made by humane men, who, setting aside personal comfort and peace of mind, have endeavoured to sound the depths of animal agony and bloodshed. The process of flaying alive, and even of dismembering animals before the breath has left their bodies, is far from uncommon in private slaughter-houses.” ”

“ What need was there for such insults? But their cruelty was manifest in all they did, like hunters who vent their rage on the prey they have at length found, counting it a pleasure and festive sport, and showing how eager they were for cruelty. ”

“ For the animals and savages are isolate, each one in its own pristine self. The animal lifts its head, sniffs, and knows within the dark, passionate belly. It knows at once, in dark mindlessness. And at once it flees in immediate recoil or it crouches predatory, in the mysterious storm of exultant anticipation of seizing a victim ”

“ This may well give pause to the devourer of flesh, to the man who calls the murder of animals `sport,' and most of all to the vivisector; the man who kills or tortures an animal may be inflicting unspeakable suffering upon a human being.
I have little doubt that the possibility for a material-minded man of this uncanny blunder is at least part of the rationale of the belief of various tribes that certain creatures must never be killed “lest one should unawares be dispossessing the spirit of an ancestor. ”

“ When, therefore, a predatory animal does such violence to its nature as to eat a man, the shock, which according to conventional ideas always attends great crime, unhinges its mind. A kind of madness ensues. ”

“ They then attack the wingless body with ruthless violence, biting at it like a hungry cat at a slice of meat, or perhaps more like a herd of wolves at their prey: they soon deprive it of life, haul it to the nest, drag it up the side, and literally tumble it into one of the holes. ”

“ Such barbarism could not be indulged in, much less be regarded as sport, but from sheer thoughtlessness in the best; while, under almost any circumstances, the destruction of animal life will, by the true gentleman, be regarded as a painful necessity. ”

“ I think they give rise to the utmost cruelty to the creatures hunted and shot, to the horses and dogs employed; and to witness torture inflicted on unoffending animals cannot but have a debasing effect on the human mind. ”

“ Any human being also, by reason of like faults, might hereafter be reduced to the same dumb state,—might be reborn as a reptile, a fish, a bird, or a beast of burden. The consequence of wanton cruelty to any animal might cause the perpetrator of that cruelty to be reborn as an animal of the same kind, destined to suffer the same cruel treatment. ”

“ While the eating of animal food thus stimulates propensity, and unbalances the higher and lower natures, the act of slaughtering animals blunts moral sentiment, and is revolting to the most ennobling instincts and sympathies of human nature. Children invariably shrink with horror at sight of butchery—as do all persons whose native sympathies have not been habitually violated, blunted and crushed. ”

“ The dog will worry us by its fuss, its solicitation, its desire to be petted. The gnats or midges will stir in us an indignant hostility; since their tribe have been known to poison the blood of man. The human invader, above all; how loud and unpleasing his voice is! The eternal malice in the depths of our soul pounces upon this tendency of grass to be "a common weed," of gnats to bite, of dogs to bark, of shadows to flicker, of a man to have an evil temper, of a woman to have an atrocious shrewishness, or an appalling sluttishness ”

“ Cruelty, cruelty, cruelty—all is cruelty! Boys are beaten; oxen are stabbed till the blood bursts forth; happy, industrious, dung-collecting beetles are bitten in two by careless, happy, beetle-collecting dogs—everything is wicked and cruel. ”

“ Thus to the savage, who regards all living creatures as practically on a footing of equality with man, the act of killing and eating an animal must wear a very different aspect from that which the same act presents to us, who regard the intelligence of animals as far inferior to our own and deny them the possession of immortal souls. ”

“ Animals were formerly sacrificed with some decorum to the plea of necessity, but are now with unceremonious brutality destroyed, to gratify the unfeeling pride or wanton cruelty of men. Broad barefaced butchery occupies every walk of life; every element is ransacked for victims ”

“ Men, women, children, animals, were frequently bitten by mad dogs in those early days. It is strange, that so useless an animal was caressed, and allowed to come near your persons, when the malady to which they were so frequently liable, and from which there was no guarding, no cure, could be imparted to human beings. ”

“ On a sudden the furious animal would crawl on its belly, or rear in a manner that made us shriek with terror, then plunging forward again in his mad gallop he would dash through the taboun, and endeavour in every possible way to shake off his novel burden. ”

“ Blood-drinking bestiality, voracious appetites, hunger in search of prey, the armed instincts of nails and jaws which have for source and aim the belly, glare and smell out uneasily the impassive spectral forms straying beneath a shroud, erect in its vague and shuddering robe, and which seem to them to live with a dead and terrible life. These brutalities, which are only matter, entertain a confused fear of having to deal with the immense obscurity condensed into an unknown being. ”

“ What reason our domestic animals have for despising the human race! And with strange perversity we pick out the most inoffensive animals for slaughter. There might be an element of justice in preying upon beasts of prey, but we prefer to slay the harmless deer and cow and sheep. Is carnivorous flesh offensive? Then, why do we make our own flesh offensive by being carnivorous? ”

“ For example, the hawk, lion, and other rapacious animals of prey were kept in the houses of the great, for the purpose of inflicting punishment on other destructive animals, and not that men should partake of them: for eating flesh is not an innate quality in men, as whenever they slay animals for food, ferocity settles in their nature, and that aliment introduces Pg 75 habits of rapacity: whereas the true meaning of putting destructive animals to death, is the extirpation of wickedness. ”

“ Fast trust upon the hands which murder them.”
If the cruelty and injustice to animals are nothing to us, we have still another argument to offer—the brutalization of the men who slaughter that we may eat flesh. ”

“ How an animal so detestable and so universally hated should have continued to perpetuate itself, when every other species of savage beast on the face of the earth diminishes in an infinitely greater proportion, is a problem difficult to solve. ”

“ Afterwards, if in the course of his life, any one injure him, or any evil happen to him, he complains to that beast, and sacrifices to it for revenge. Hence it often comes, that those who have done the injury of which he complains are bitten, killed, or otherwise hurt by such animals. ”

“ How was it that those big, and perhaps bad-tempered, animals allowed themselves to be driven and beaten by that child, whereas they would have turned upon a dog double her size, and done their best to toss him over the chestnut trees? What is it that the brutes see below the surface of the human being to inspire them with such respect and fear of this biped, even when he or she has just crawled out of the cradle? ”