anti-vivisectionists

"I have dozens of well-authenticated anecdotes of cats who are very expert at fishing. I have, myself, watched a cat by the banks of a stream, until I have seen him dive into the the water, and emerge almost immediately with a large in his mouth. Cats who fish, generally belong to s, or are bred and reared somewhere near a river. They not only catch fish of all sorts, but even s; often springing many feet off the bank after prey of this kind, and even diving under to secure it. In Scotland cats often attack and destroy large quantities of salmon in small streams, in the spawning season."

"Three days at , and up anchor again; our next place of call being . Every one has heard of the , who tried to beat the British but didn't, ... was caught and chained ... to a rock somewhere in the middle of the sea ... The rock was St. Helena, and a very beautiful rock it is too, hill and and thriving town, its mountain sides tilled and its s and s containing many a fertile little farm. It is the duty of every one who touches the shores of this far-famed island to make a pilgrimage to .... both sides of the road all the way to the tomb are strewn with , empty of course, and at the grave itself there are s of them; and the same is the case at every place which has visit4ed, or where English foot has ever trod."

"In general appearance the is an extremely large and powerful fellow, with a beautiful head and speaking countenance, in which sagacity is blended with nobility, and a body of great symmetry, combining, one might say, the agility of the with the strength of the ."

"When I was a little boy at school, floundering through Herodotus, and getting double doses of fum-fum daily for my Anabasis—for my old teacher, when he couldn't get enough Greek into one end of me, took jolly good care to put it in at the other—there was no man I had greater respect for than Alexander the Great, owing to his having done that business so neatly. I practiised afterwards on the dominie's tawse (i.e., the fum-fum strap); I tied a splendid knot on it, and then cut it through with a jackknife; but woe's me! the plaguy dominie caught me in the very act, and—and I had to take my meals standing for a week."

"Very few of the old s interfere with the duties of their assistants, but there be men who seem to think you have merely come to the service to learn, not to practise your profession, and therefore they treat as mere students, or at the best hobble-de-hoy doctors. Of this class was Dr. Gruff, a man whom I would back against the whole profession for , , , or ; but who, I rather suspect, never prescribed a dose of , , or in his life."

"Every child knows how fond cats are of hunting and catching mice, but no cat any respectability would think of confining her attention to mice alone. The very presence of a cat about a house will usually suffice to keep these destructive pests at bay; and if one should pop out of its hole, it knows, or ought to know, what to expect."

"Man by nature is not a carnivorous but a frugivorous animal, and … a diet composed of fruits, pulses, grains and nuts contains all that is necessary for the maintenance of Force and Caloric."

"Only the worshippers of the old world creed based on the maxim that 'might is right' could attempt to justify their position."

"The savage is not a sportsman, hunting is his business, not his amusement; his excuse is, that he acts from necessity."

"The sentiment that spares the sheep and the deer will not sacrifice men."

"Strange as it is, in this age of so-called humanity and enlightenment, that society, when brought face to face with the grave accusation of indifference to life, to the terrible wrongs inflicted on the harmless non-human races, is yet content to go on as before; it does not trouble itself in the slightest degree to stop the barbarisms and frightful sufferings inflicted upon what it is pleased to term 'the brutes' and 'the beasts;' it does not concern itself to enquire into the unquestionable atrocities practised in the rearing, transport and slaughter of the countless thousands of harmless victims who are daily sacrificed for the pleasures of the palate."

"Through her behind the scenes work and steady influence Alice Drakoules was seen as a 'spiritual mother' of the humanitarian movement"

"The passion for 'sport,' the killing and wounding industries, is no other than a relic of the past struggle for existence, destined to be regarded with horror under higher and happier civilization."

"As is the language, so is the idea."

"Picturing to yourselves all that is meant by the slaughter-house… I ask you if it is possible to reconcile the idea of it… with the idea of progress, of refinement, and of gentleness (or humanity)? In my opinion they are irreconcileable."

"Man at present has no just claim to regard himself as the worthy Head of the animal world."

"If, instead of being fed upon flesh food, a savage dog is given bread and vegetables, in a short space of time he becomes a changed being, gentle and docile."

"Vegetable substances contain all the elements necessary for the nourishment of man, and for the production of force and caloric."

"If we judge from the construction of the human body, the natural food of man is not flesh-meat, but fruits, roots, cereals, and vegetables; that, in a word, man is not carnivorous, but frugivorous."

"There are in London at this time thirty Vegetarian Restaurants, all doing a very good business; this will give you an idea of the hold which food reform already has in our country."

"The emancipation of woman should be accompanied by hostility towards deeds of violence, and by the spread of the instinct of pity and mercy. Let women discountenance every act of cruelty under whatever disguise, or upon whatever pretence, and it will become impossible, or at all events much rarer than now."

"The immense work which is executed by oxen, horses, mules, elephants, and camels, is convincing proof of the strength-giving properties of vegetable food."

"May the benevolent system spread to every corner of the globe; may we learn to recognize and to respect in other animals the feelings which vibrate in ourselves; may we be led to perceive that those cruel repasts are not more injurious to the creatures whom we devour than they are hostile to our health, which delights in innocent simplicity, and destructive of our happiness, which is wounded by every act of violence, while it feeds as it were on the prospect of well-being, and is raised to the highest summit of enjoyment by the sympathetic touch of social satisfaction."

"Disgusted with continual scenes of slaughter and desolation, pierced by the incessant shrieks of suffering innocence, and, shocked by the shouts of persecuting brutality, the humane mind averts abhorrent from the view, and, turning her eyes to Hindostan, dwells with heart-felt consolation on the happy spot, where mercy protects with her right hand the streams of life, and every animal is allowed to enjoy in peace the portion of bliss which nature prepared it to receive."

"Ye sons of modern science, who court not wisdom in her walks of silent meditation in the grove, who behold her not in the living loveliness of her works, but expect to meet her in the midst of obscenity and corruption; ye who dig for knowledge in the depth of the dunghill, and who hope to discover wisdom enthroned amid the fragments of mortality, and the abhorrence of the senses; ye that with ruffian violence interrogate trembling nature, who plunge into her maternal bosom the butcher knife, and, in quest of your nefarious science, the fibres of agonizing animals, delight to scrutinize; ye dare also to violate the human form august; and, holding up the entrails of man, ye exclaim: behold the bowels of a carnivorous animal!—Barbarians! to these very bowels I appeal against your cruel dogmas; to these bowels, fraught with mercy, and entwined with compassion; to these bowels which nature hath sanctified to the sentiments of pity and of gratitude; to the yearnings of kindred, to the melting tenderness of love!"

"Fatigued with answering the enquiries, and replying to the objections of his friends, with respect to the singularity of his mode of life, the Author of this performance conceived that he might consult his ease by making, once for all, a public apology for his opinions. Those who despise the weakness of his arguments will nevertheless learn to admit the innocence of his tenets, and suffer him to pursue, without molestation, a system of life that is more the result of sentiment than of reason, in a man who imagines that the human race were not made to live scientifically, but according to nature."

"At all events, the pleasing persuasion that his work may have contributed to mitigate the ferocities of prejudice, and to diminish in some degree the great mass of misery which oppresses the animal world, will in the hour of distress convey to the Author's heart a consolation which the tooth of calumny will not be able to impoison."

"And, indeed, has not nature given, to almost every creature, the same spontaneous signs of the various affections? Admire we not in other animals whatever is most eloquent in man, the tremor of desire, the tear of distress, the piercing cry of anguish, the pity-pleading look, expressions that speak the soul with a feeling which words are feeble to convey?"

"The Author is very far from entertaining a presumption that his slender labours (crude and imperfect as they are now hurried to the press) will ever operate an effect on the public mind—and yet, when he considers the natural bias of the human heart to the side of mercy, and observes on all hands the barbarous governments of Europe giving way to a better system of things, he is inclined to hope that the day is beginning to approach when the growing sentiment of peace and good-will towards men will also embrace, in a wide circle of benevolence, the lower orders of life."

"But here the sons of science sport with the sentiments of mercy; and why, with a malicious grin, demands the modern sophist, why then is man furnished with the canine, or dog-teeth, except that nature meant him carnivorous?—Fallacious argument! Is the fitness of an action to be determined purely by the physical capacity of the agent? Because nature, kindly provident, has bestowed upon us a superabundance of animal vigour, does it follow that we ought to abuse, by habitual exertions, an excess of force, evidently granted to guard our existence on occasions of dire distress? In cases of extreme famine we destroy and devour each other; but from thence will any one pretend to prove, that man was made to feed upon his fellow men?"

"The butcher's knife hath laid low the delight of a fond dam, & the darling of Nature is now stretched in gore upon the ground."

"But far other is the fate of animals: for, alas! when they are plucked from the tree of Life, suddenly the withered blossoms of their beauty shrink to the chilly hand of Death. Quenched in his cold cold grasp expires the lamp of their loveliness, and struck by the livid blast of loathed putrefaction, their comely limbs are involved in ghastly horror. Shall we leave the living herbs to seek, in the den of death, an obscene aliment?—Insensible to the blooming beauties of Pomona, unallured by the fragrant fume that exhale from her groves of golden fruits, unmoved by the nectar of Nature, by the ambrosia of innocence, shall the voracious vultures of our impure appetite speed across the lovely scenes and alight in the loathsome sink of putrefaction to devour the funeral of other creatures, to load with cadaverous rottenness, a wretched stomach?"

"Every form of cruelty—whether it be trapping, hunting, the working of ponies in mines, or the practice of vivisection—casts a slur on humanity. These actions demand our attention if we are to make progress as a truly humane society."

"When considering the extent of an animal’s capacity for suffering, it is impossible to draw a distinct line between domestic animals and so-called vermin. Such a line is purely a matter of sentiment. The fact remains that all vertebrate animals are highly sensitive."

"I have observed cats and dogs, horses, cattle and sheep under every kind of pain, and I do unhesitatingly say that they suffer as we suffer."

"Much has also been said about the cruelties inflicted by animals upon one another. But I must emphasize that, in their original wild state, and with rare exceptions, animals kill only for food, not for the sake of killing. That is a prerogative peculiar to humankind."

"As to the actual intensity of pain felt by animals, let us take each of the five senses. When compared to humans, most of these senses are far more acutely and highly developed in animals. Additionally, animals possess other remarkable senses, such as the homing instinct and an awareness of their approaching death."

"While some animals are protected by law, far too many still remain outside the pale of such protection. And so, I ask: should not their capacity to suffer be the measure of their right to be protected? This is not a plea for charity but for justice—a right that must be claimed."

"There are paths to knowledge which must be forever closed to us, and the way of vivisection is one of those paths. It is made possible only because of our cowardice and fears."

"Yet, like all God’s wonderful gifts to us, this great gift of pain can be turned into a horrible curse. Just in proportion as God’s love provides the possibility of good, so our vice or ignorance makes the possibility of evil. The abuse of God’s gift of pain may be the cause of the most terrible of evils, and we call it cruelty."

"When we really understand what pain has to teach us, we shall in large measure have abolished suffering."

"I am quite convinced that within its limitations an animal has this higher life, and that it has not merely a 'blind life within the brain', but a very real one within the soul, with its own standard of right and wrong."

"Have you a right to torture animals for your pleasure? Have you a right to make their lives amid terror and misery in order to derive some measure of gratification from what are called the pleasures of the chase?"

"The whole field of experiments is not only saturated with suffering, but it is dogged with failure of results and vain and ceaseless repetition of experiments over and over again."

"The Golden Rule must be applied in our relations with the animal world, just as it must be applied in our relations with our fellow men, and no one can be a Christian man or woman until this finds embodiment in his or her life."

"There is no question that vivisection is, in many cases, inseparable from suffering and that suffering is inevitable to the pursuit of the practice; further, that the suffering which is caused is altogether a minor matter to some of the men who cause it. This the public has yet to realize. It has to understand that in assenting to and encouraging experiments on living animals it is giving its consent to possibilities of illimitable suffering."

"It is simply monstrous, this horrible savagery and somnambulism in which we grope. It is the climax of mundane infamy—the "paragon of the universe" dozing on the pedestal of his imagination and contemplating himself as an interstellar pet and all other beings as commodities. Let us startle ourselves, those of us who can, to a realization of the holocaust we are perpetrating on our feathered and fur-covered friends. For remember the same sentiment of sympathy and fraternity that broke the black man's manacles and is to-day melting the white woman's chains will to-morrow emancipate the sorrel horse and the heifer; and as the ages bloom and the great wheels of the centuries grind on, all the races of the earth shall become kind, and this age of ours, so bigoted and raw, shall be remembered in history as an age of insanity, somnambulism, and blood."

"We preach the Golden Rule with an enthusiasm that is well-nigh vehement, and then freckle the globe with huge murder-houses for the expeditious destruction of those who have as good a right to live as we have."

"The universe of things in the midst of which we discover ourselves, is to be managed and placated, in so far as it is to be managed and placated at all, by the observation and classification of its phenomena, by the ascertainment of its habits, and by ingenious and business-like manipulations of its tendencies, and in no other way."

"There is nothing more frightful to the philosopher than the unconscious tragedies of human reason. Men are somnambulists. Stupefied by the long night of instinct out of which it arose, the human mind is only half awake to the world of reality and duty. George Washington was the father of his country, and a great and good man, but he held human beings as slaves, and paid his hired help in Virginia whisky. It took Americans one hundred years to find out that "all men" includes Ethiopians; yet men who risked their lives in order to achieve personal and political liberty for black men, deliberately doom white women to a similar servitude. A rich man will give millions of dollars to a museum or a university, when he would know, if he had the talent to stop and think, that the thousands who make his wealth work like slaves from morning till night, and feed on garbage and suffocate in garrets, in order that he may be munificent."