"The well being of others is on an average as important as our own, and should as a general thing be appraised at the same value. If a certain amount of happiness is scheduled to fall to the lot of the earth, it makes absolutely no difference whether it falls on me, or on you, or on somebody a thousand miles away. It would serve the ends of absolute ethics quite as well if it fell on an insect or a horse as if it fell on a man. The only important thing from the standpoint of universal good is that the pleasure be experienced. It is not important what particular individual or species is the beneficiary. It might even go to another world, and be just as satisfactory to a universal well-wisher, who looked at Cosmos from the serene altitudes of pure reason, without any prejudices whatever one way or another in the matter. This is the ideal. It is a long, long way from our natures. But only in so far as we approximate this ideal do we rise above those imperfections of our being which have been ground out by the methods that have operated in the development of life on earth."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Activists from the United StatesAtheists from the United StatesPhilosophers from the United StatesAnimal rights activistsAnti-vivisectionists
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
pp. 54–55
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._Howard_Moore
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
J. Howard Moore
John Howard Moore (December 4, 1862 – June 17, 1916) was an American zoologist, philosopher, educator and social reformer. He advocated for the ethical consideration and treatment of animals and authored several articles, books, essays and pamphlets on topics including education, ethics, evolutionary biology, humanitarianism, utilitarianism and vegetarianism. He is best known for his work The Universal Kinship (1906), which advocated for a secular sentiocentric philosophy he called the doctrine
292 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by J. Howard Moore →
Related Quotes
"Well may we be dazed by the horrific metamorphosis. Dark days are upon us. The pendulum of civilization trembles, as …"
"We preach the Golden Rule with an enthusiasm that is well-nigh vehement, and then freckle the globe with huge murder-…"
"There is nothing more frightful to the philosopher than the unconscious tragedies of human reason. Men are somnambuli…"
"It is simply monstrous, this horrible savagery and somnambulism in which we grope. It is the climax of mundane infamy…"
"I sit here tonight in this great city and think back along the years. Life is so full and so different now – full of …"
"Religion is a strictly human infirmity. No other animal has it. It originated far back in the past, when the human wo…"
"It is a crime to start a child learning to read and write as soon as it is out of the cradle. We should get ideas bef…"
"I came to the conclusion out there on the Kansas prairies that the animals were not treated right by human beings. I …"
"Much of the vagueness of the human mind is due to the fact that the mind is largely composed of material derived seco…"
"I have just finished your little book on 'The Logic of Vegetarianism.' It is the best thing on this subject in existe…"