Western Religion and the Cruelty to Animals

Chris Bartzokas · Down to Earth Series · 11 pages

An eleven-page compilation with an abstract and train of thoughts at the front, editorial notes by Boris de Zirkoff, and closing sections of further reading — the last of which, headed “Vindication of the rights of brutes,” points to Thomas Taylor's book held complete elsewhere in this series. The file belongs with the animal-ethics group that runs through the section, including the three Plutarch pieces and the dietary files of batch 1.

The piece is framed as a reply to a correspondent who loves animals and asks how to gain more power to help them in their sufferings. The head-note states the answer the compilation defends — that the blame for this universal suffering falls upon western religion and early education, which is described as standing alone in its isolation as a monument of human selfishness, without one word in favour of or for the protection of the animal. The questions are then taken in turn. Why the noblest animals suffer most at the hands of men is answered by observation rather than argument: cities are torture places for whatever animals can be turned to use or amusement, and those are always the noblest. The question of why a harmless creature should be burnt alive or vivisected receives the doctrinal answer that suffering is the cause of knowledge, so that the incarnating entity gains experience even where the organism is tortured to death. A lighter section reports that frogs are under the protection of law in China, and awards the palm of superiority to the Chinese legal document over the English — the mellifluous and fatherly appeal of the philobatrachian Chinese being preferred to the dry and commaless twaddle of the British lawyer.

Read the full text (PDF, 1.0 MB, 11 pages)