"A man who has made a tolerable progress in humanity, will adopt, and ever bear in mind, the principle of increasing, as far as lies within his power, the quantity of pleasure in the world, and diminishing that of pain: he will establish this to himself as a constant and inviolable rule of action, and in carrying it into practice he will not overlook one created thing that is endowed with faculties capable of perceiving pleasure and pain. He will reflect on who it was that gave these faculties and remember that they were not given to be sported with. He will not esteem the meanest of animals beneath the notice of his humanity because, in the meanest of them, the wisdom and power of the all-benevolent Being are displayed. This is the Being without whom not a single sparrow shall fall to the ground and whose bounty feeds the young ravens that call upon him. His sensibility will be tremblingly alive to the sensations of all animated nature, and he will feel for everything that is capable of feeling: he will look upon pity, kindness, and mercy toward his own species as the weightier matters of humanity, but at the same time, he will consider the humane treatment of animals as more than the tithe of the anise and cummin of it. He will scrupulously do his duty in the former, and in the latter, he will not leave it undone."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Non-fiction authors from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomEducators from EnglandAnimal rights activistsClergy from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
pp. 200–201
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Young_(writer_and_theologian)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Thomas Young (writer and theologian)
(bapt. 29 December 1772 – 11 November 1835) was an English writer, theologian, educator, and Anglican clergyman. A Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, he served as a tutor, dean, and preacher before becoming Rector of Gilling East, Yorkshire, in 1813. He is best known for his 1798 work, An Essay on Humanity to Animals, one of the earliest theological defences of animal welfare, which argued from scripture and moral philosophy for the compassionate treatment and natural rights of animals. In ad
6 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Thomas Young (writer and theologian) →
Related Quotes
"In offering to the public a book on Humanity to Animals, I am sensible that I lay myself open to no small portion of …"
"Every single act of cruelty contributes something towards generating in the mind an habit of cruelty."
"[I]t is our duty to cultivate humanity towards animals […] not content merely to rescue animals from pain but to leav…"
"Animals are endued with a capability of perceiving pleasure and pain; and from the abundant provision which we percei…"
"[E]very experiment is cruel which gives pain to an animal, without having for its object the leading to some great an…"
"The more I thought about it, the more obsessed I became with the idea of a swimming journey. I started to dream ever …"
"From water level, I observed the mating joined in flight like refuelling aircraft, and the random progress of the clo…"
"It is through trees that we see and hear the wind: woodland people can tell the species of a tree from the sound it m…"
"Waterlog (1999), Roger's now-classic account of swimming through Britain, published twenty years ago this year, opens…"
"In 1973, Roger Deakin, a British writer and environmental activist, acquired a tumbledown sixteenth-century farmhouse…"