Reviews
The Duty of Mercy
by Humphry Primatt
Edited by Richard Ryder
(Centaur Press: Kinship Library, 1992)
This is an excellent book, a reprint of the one first published in
the 1770's. It was found recently in the Bodleian Library by the editor.
It is a Christian treatise, based on biblical texts about the
Christian duty to "leave animals unmolested and at liberty to perform
the tasks, and answer the ends, for which God was pleased to create
them." The author's impressive biblical scholarship combines with a
clear and easy to read style making this an enjoyable book.
Like Andrew Linzey, the author offers us God as our model of our
relationship with animals, and he explains how many biblical texts tell
us what this model is - e.g. his use of the story of Balaam and his Ass
as a lesson from God about how God can speak to us through animals.
The author uses the argument of not causing pain to animals, but like
all who use this, lands in the cul-de-sac of 'unnecessary pain', the
meaning of which the vivisectors and the hunters of today use to defend
their actions. The author adds additional protection in the phrase
"unmerited and unnecessary pain", but the problem of meaning remains.
The argument for rights is well done, in Chapter 2, using the
biblical revelation that God's breath - i.e. spirit - is the source of
all animal life, human and non-human. The human role of dominion he
defines admirably as the duty to give animals food, rest and tender
usage. The reverse of this, that the sin of humans is the cause of the
evils, natural and moral, in the World (p118), picks up the theme of
Paul in chapter 8 of Romans.
The author stops short of vegetarianism, accepting that we can eat
flesh. To defend this he has to argue, unconvincingly, that killing an
animal when done quickly, does not cause it pain or fear as does
cruelty.
Emphasis is put on the excellence of the gift of reason that humans
uniquely have; so the author gives other animals a subservient role and
fails to see that the non-human creation has much to teach humans, and
would if humans would cease to blind themselves by their intellectual
brilliance. The literal reading of the Noah story reflects the author's
predating modern biblical scholarship. That is a minor irritation in an
enlightening, enjoyable book.
Reviewed by Dr Robert Hamilton in The Vegan (Winter 1992)
Reproduced with thanks.
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