Reviews
The Kinship Library (Centaur Press)
Many readers will be surprised that two of the titles chosen to
launch the first publishing venture dedicated solely to the subject of
animal liberation were written more than 150 years ago. After all,
according to fashionable media opinion, is not animal rights a potent
symbol of disaffected youth in the late twentieth century: the product
of a generation with too much time and choice on its hands?
Apparently not. For one of the four books which open the new Kinship
Library is Humphry Primatt's, The Duty of Mercy, written
as long ago as 1776. Primatt, a Christian Doctor of Divinity, could well
be writing for a modern audience as he presents his case for kindness to
animals as a Christian duty. "Pain is pain", he argues, "whether it be
inflicted on man or beast; and the creature that suffers it, whether man
or beast, being sensible of the misery of it while it lasts, suffers
evil". It is a sad reflection of lack of progress in the church that
Primatt's belief that, "our love and mercy are not to be confined within
the circle of our own friends, acquaintance and neighbours; nor limited
to the more enlarged sphere of human nature... but are to be extended to
every object of the love and mercy of God", is still a matter of
contention with some Christian thinkers. As the current Bishop of
Salisbury remarks in a brave foreword to this new edition of The
Duty of Mercy, "as far as animals is concerned, Christianity has
on the whole the blackest record among religions".
For all Primatt's pioneering spirit, however, animals do not have
reason according to The Duty of Mercy and it is perfectly
acceptable to slaughter for food provided that, "when I kill him I ought
to despatch him suddenly; and with the least degree of pain". Indeed,
compared to Lewis Gompertz's Moral Inquiries on the Situation of
Man and of Brutes, first published in 1824, many of Primatt's
views appear positively conventional. Gompertz, a founder and early
Secretary of what was to become the RSPCA, must have been one of the
first practising vegans, refusing to drink milk because, "it was
evidently provided for the calf and not man". He even declined to cross
London by horse-drawn carriage - a principle which condemned him to
travelling everywhere by foot. Writing more than 30 years before Darwin
had established the physiological similarities between humans and
animals, Gompertz argues that animals have "reason" as well as
"instinct" and seeks to present a rational case for their release from
human tyranny. Despite some tortuous Victorian philosophising in support
of his treatise, Gompertz is emphatic in his assertion that it is, "a
crime for man to kill other animals for food", and also in his
opposition to hunting, the abuse of horses or even the wearing of wool
and silk.
Another vital aspect of Moral Inquiries is that like
most advocates of the rights of animals who have followed him, Gompertz
views the emancipation of animals from human exploitation as an
extension of the rights of humans. He argues as passionately for the
freedom of women and the humane treatment of prisoners and vagabonds as
for "scourged, scared and ill-treated" animals. His hatred is of cruelty
"under whatever colouring it may appear" and "whether the victim be
furnished with two legs or with four, with wings, with fins, or with
arms".
Eighty years after Moral Inquiries came The
Universal Kinship (1906) by American zoologist, J. Howard Moore.
More significantly, Moore's book was written fifty years after
Darwin had established his theory of evolution, so whereas Gompertz'
plea for equal consideration for other animals is based upon his "trust
in the goodness and power of the almighty", Moore mocks the biblical
version of creation and centres his argument on the belief that, "man is
not the pedestalled individual pictured by his imagination - towering
apart from and above all other things". He presents the human being as,
"a pain-shunning, pleasure seeking, death-dreading organism" who,
"belongs to the same evolutional process as the horse, the toad that
hops in the garden, the firefly that lights its twilight torch and the
bivalve that reluctantly feeds him".
As a scientist, Moore was decades ahead of his time, quoting numerous
examples of the sophisticated intelligence of non-human animal behaviour.
He marvels at the natural abilities of animals, both physical and
mental, and honours their rich emotional life. He also demonstrates
their ability to communicate and to form language, labelling those who
refuse to acknowledge such qualities as, "absurd".
Above all, he stresses the 'kinship' between people and non-human
animals. Like Lewis Gompertz, who believed that human mistreatment of
animals could be attributed to the fact that, "this still seems to be
the age of infancy" where humans cry 'baby-like' that "this is made for
me", Moore clung to the hope that social progress would be achieved and
that "the same spirit of sympathy and fraternity that broke the black
man's manacle and is today melting the white woman's chain will tomorrow
emancipate the working man and the ox."
Yet underlying the compelling poetic prose of The Universal
Kinship is a quiet despair at, this poor, suffering, ignorant,
fear-filled world". It was this that urged Moore, at the age of 54, to
walk into his beloved woods, "where the wild birds sing and the waters
go on and on", and kill himself by pistol shot.
E S Turner's All Heaven In A Rage is the most modern of
these titles. First published in 1964, it offers a fascinating piece of
social history, tracing the history of human savagery towards animals,
from the mass killings of the Roman amphitheatres through to the
formation of the RSPCA and the improved legislation that has resulted
over the past 150 years. Turner's style is far more detached than the
others in the series, his task being to record disinterestedly our
hideous cruelties and to pay tribute to the dissenting voices who have
protested against them. He is particularly skillful at demonstrating
human inconsistencies, from the nineteenth century campaigners who
"believed themselves to be humane" yet "hunted and shot", to the modern
age where "it can cost £50 to steal a thrush's egg, but subsidies have
been given for creating hedgeless prairies where no bird can rest".
All Heaven In A Rage confirms a historic truth that "those
who showed most concern for their fellow men tended to show most concern
for animals", and whilst it demonstrates that animal abuse is still
chillingly common, it also proves conclusively that progress is being
made. In a new Afterword to this edition, Turner points optimistically
to the fact that in the twenty-five years since his book first appeared
the defence of animals has inspired, "more impassioned pleading than it
had evoked for two thousand years".
The Kinship Library itself is the work of Jon Wynne-Tyson, whose
own contribution to humane education has already been considerable.
Author of the influential plea for vegetarianism, Food for a Future,
and editor of the highly acclaimed Extended Circle: A Dictionary
of Humane Thought, he has now developed The Kinship Library,
"to meet the growing demand for those concerned by the rising tide
of human and animal suffering and to offer works tracing the connection
between our often lamentable behaviour towards each other and our
thoughtless and cruel exploitation of non-human species". He hopes that
as well as stimulating new generations, these powerful voices from the
past will help to prove to doubting academics that the struggle for
animal protection is a serious subject with its own tradition of
inspired thought.
At the end of All Heaven In A Rage, E S Turner points
out that in recent years "the cause of animals has disturbed the calm of
company boardrooms, sown self-doubt in universities, driven airlines and
airports to show respect for their animal freight...and caused unwanted
rifts in bodies like the National Trust. As much as there still remains
to archive, it is a tribute to the likes of Primatt, Gompertz and Moore
that in the last two hundred years, animals have at least emerged
forever from the dark ages where human abuse could be excused on the
grounds that they are nothing more than machines without souls or
feelings.
Mark Gold
Reproduced from the Jun/Jul 1993 edition of Outrage
with thanks to Animal Aid
Return to Reviews
