The great sage of Samos, whom Aristotle hailed as the father of philosophy, gives the most important speech in the poem. But the author of the famous Theorem forsakes the opportunity to proclaim that mathematics is the foundation of nature. Instead, Ovid’s Pythagoras denounces the killing of animals for food and asserts the sanctity of all life forms.
“What evil they contrive, how impiously they prepare to shed human blood itself, who rip at a calf’s throat with the knife, and listen unmoved to its bleating, or can kill a kid goat to eat, that cries like a child, or feed on a bird, that they themselves have fed! How far does that fall short of actual murder? Where does the way lead on from there?”
Where indeed. To hell, perhaps? That’s what John Milton thought. Milton’s God advises Adam that animals have the power of cognition and indeed they “reason not contemptibly.”
Crusty Robert Burns tells a frightened field mouse:
I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge expressed similar fraternal sentiments to a donkey chained in a field:
Poor Ass! thy master should have learnt to show Pity –
best taught by fellowship of Woe!
For much I fear me that He lives like thee,
Half famished in a land of Luxury!
How askingly its footsteps hither bend!
It seems to say, “And have I then one friend?”
Innocent foal! thou poor despised forlorn!
I hail thee Brother — spite of the fool’s scorn!
And fain would take thee with me, in the Dell
Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell …
Lord Byron objected to angling, saying it inflicted unnecessary pain on trout, and ridiculed Izaak Walton for debasing poetry in promotion of this “cruel” hobby. His Lordship would, no doubt, have been outraged by the inane past-time of “catch-and-release” fishing.
Byron’s arch-nemesis William Wordsworth wrote a stunning poem titled “Hart-Leap Well,” tracking the last moments in the life a mighty stag chased “for thirteen hours” to its death by a horse-riding knight and his hounds. The ballad closes with a stark denunciation of hunting for sport:
“This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell;
His death was mourned by sympathy divine.
“The Being, that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care
For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.
...
“One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,
Taught both by what she [ie. Nature’ shows, and what conceals;
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”
The great, though mad, naturalist-poet John Clare openly worshipped “the religion of the fields,” while William Blake, the poet of revolution, simply said:
For every thing that lives is Holy,
Life delights in life.
And, finally, there is the glorious precedent of Geoffrey Chaucer, who reveals himself to be an animal liberationist. In the “General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer describes the Prioress as a woman who cannot abide the abuse of animals.
But for to speken of hir conscience,
She was so charitable and so pious
She wolde wepe, if that she sawe a mous
Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.
Of smaule houndes hadde she that she fedde
With rosted flessh, or milk and wastel-breed.
But soore wepte she if oon of hem were deed,
Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte;
And al was conscience and tender herte.
Later in the remarkable “Tale of the Manciple,” Chaucer goes all the way, arguing forcefully against the caging of wild songbirds. The English language’s first great poet concludes that no matter how well you treat the captives, the birds desire their freedom:
“Taak any bryd, and put it in a cage,
And do al thyn entente and thy corage
To fostre it tendrely with mete and drynke,
Of alle deyntees that thou kanst bithynke;
And keepe it al so clenly as thou may,
Although his cage of gold be nevere so gay,
Yet hath this bryd, by twenty thousand foold,
Levere in a forest that is rude and coold
Goon ete wormes, and swich wrecchednesse;
For evere this bryd wol doon his bisynesse
To escape out of his cage, whan he may.
His libertee this brid desireth ay.”
It would take the philosophers nearly six hundred years to catch up with Chaucer’s enlightened sentiments. In 1975, the Australian Peter Singer published his revolutionary book Animal Liberation. Singer demolished the Cartesian model that treated animals as mere machines. Blending science and ethics, Singer asserted that most animals are sentient beings, capable of feeling pain. The infliction of pain was both unethical and immoral. He argued that the progressive credo of providing “the greatest good for the greatest number” should be extended to animals and that animals should be liberated from their servitude in scientific labs, factory farms, circuses and zoos.
A quarter century after the publication of Animal Liberation, Peter Singer revisited the great taboo of bestiality in an essay titled “Heavy Petting.” Expressing sentiments that would have shocked Grand Inquisitor Boguet, Singer argued that sexual relations between humans and animals should not automatically be considered acts of abuse. According to Singer, it all comes down to the issue of harm. In some cases, Singer suggested, animals might actually feel excitement and pleasure in such inter-species couplings. Even for the most devoted animal rights advocates this might be taking E. O. Wilson’s concept of biophilia a little too literally.
In Fear of the Animal Planet, historian Jason
