Читать книгу Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress онлайн

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The second and not less fruitful source of modern inhumanity is to be found in the “Cartesian” doctrine—the theory of Descartes and his followers—that the lower animals are devoid of consciousness and feeling; a theory which carried the “religious” notion a step further, and deprived the animals not only of their claim to a life hereafter, but of anything that could, without mockery, be called a life in the present, since mere “animated machines,” as they were thus affirmed to be, could in no real sense be said to live at all! Well might Voltaire turn his humane ridicule against this most monstrous contention, and suggest, with scathing irony, that God “had given the animals the organs of feeling, to the end that they might not feel!” “The theory of animal automatism,” says Professor Romanes, “which is usually attributed to Descartes, can never be accepted by common sense.” Yet it is to be feared that it has done much, in its time, to harden “scientific” sense against the just complaints of the victims of human arrogance and oppression.[11]