Chapter XXXIII: Oswald. 1730-1793

Amongst the less known prophets of the new Reformation the author of the _Cry of Nature_--one of the most eloquent appeals to justice and right feeling ever addressed to the conscience of men--deserves an honourable place. Of the facts of his life we have scanty record. He was a native of Edinburgh. At an early age he entered the English army as a private soldier, but his friends soon obtained for him an officer’s commission. He went to the East Indies, where he distinguished himself by his remarkable courage and ability. He did not long remain in the military life; and, having sold out, he travelled through Hindustan to inform himself of the principles of the Brahmin and Buddhist religions of the peninsula, whose dress as well as milder manners he assumed upon his return to England.

During his stay in this country he uniformly abstained from all flesh meats, and so great, we are told, was his abhorrence of the Slaughter-House, that, to avoid it or the butcher’s shop, he was accustomed to make a long _détour_. His children were brought up in the same way. In 1790, like some others of the more enthusiastic class of his countrymen, he espoused the cause of the Revolution, and went to Paris. By introducing some useful military reforms he gained distinction amongst the Republicans, and he received an important post. He seems to have fallen, with his sons, fighting in La Vendée for the National Cause.

The author, in his preface, tells us that--

“Fatigued with answering the inquiries and replying to the
objections of his friends with respect to the singularity of his
mode of life, he conceived that he might consult his ease by
making, once for all, a public apology for his opinions.... 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,[199] 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 goodwill towards men will also embrace, in a
wide circle of benevolence, the lower orders of life.

“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 lower animal world, will, in the hour of distress,
convey to the author’s soul a consolation which the tooth of
calumny will not be able to empoison.”

A noble and true inspiration nobly and eloquently used! The arguments, by which he attempts to reach the better feeling of his readers, are drawn from the deepest source of morality. Having given a beautiful picture of the tempting and alluring character of Fruits, he exclaims in his poetic-prose:--

“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 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 odours 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 appetites speed along those lovely scenes and alight
in the loathsome sink of putrefaction to devour the remains of
other creatures, to load with cadaverous rottenness a wretched
stomach?”

He repeats Porphyry’s appeal to the consideration of human interests themselves--

“And is not the human race itself highly interested to prevent the
habit of spilling blood? For, will the man, habituated to violence,
be nice to distinguish the vital tide of a quadruped from that
which flows from a creature with two legs? Are the dying struggles
of a Lamb less affecting than the agonies of any animal whatever?
Or, will the ruffian who beholds unmoved the supplicatory looks
of innocence itself, and, reckless of the Calf’s infantine cries,
pitilessly plunges in her quivering side the murdering knife, will
he turn, I say, with horror from human assassination?

‘What more advance can mortals make in sin,
So near perfection, who with blood begin?
Deaf to the calf who lies beneath the knife,
Looks up, and from the butcher begs her life.
Deaf to the harmless kid who, ere he dies,
All efforts to procure thy pity tries,
And imitates, in vain, thy children’s cries.
Where will he stop?’

“From the practice of slaughtering an innocent animal of another
species to the murder of man himself the steps are neither many nor
remote. This our forefathers perfectly understood, who ordained
that, in a cause of blood, no butcher should be permitted to sit in
jury....

“But from the nature of the very human heart arises the strongest
argument in behalf of the persecuted beings. Within us there
exists a rooted repugnance to the shedding of blood, a repugnance
which yields only to Custom, and which even the most inveterate
custom can seldom entirely overcome. Hence the ungracious task of
shedding the tide of life (for the gluttony of the table) has, in
every country, been committed to the lowest class of men, and their
profession is, in every country, an object of abhorrence.

“They feed on the carcass without remorse, because the dying
struggles of the butchered victim are secluded from their
sight--because his cries pierce not their ears--because his
agonising shrieks sink not into their souls. But were they forced,
with their own hands, to assassinate the beings whom they devour,
who is there among us who would not throw down the knife with
detestation, and, rather than embrue his hands in the murder of
the lamb, consent for ever to forego the accustomed repast? What
then shall we say? Vainly planted in our breast is this abhorrence
of cruelty--this sympathetic affection for innocence? Or do
the feelings of the heart point to the command of Nature more
unerringly than all the elaborate subtlety of a set of men who, at
the shrine of science, have sacrificed the dearest sentiments of
humanity?”

This eloquent vindicator of the rights of the oppressed of the non-human races here addresses a scathing rebuke to the torturers of the vivisection-halls, as well as to those who abuse Science by attempting to enlist it in the defence of slaughter.

“You, the 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--you, who dig for knowledge in
the depths of the dunghill, and who expect to discover Wisdom
enthroned amid the fragments of mortality and the abhorrence of
the senses--you, that with cruel violence interrogate trembling
Nature, who plunge into her maternal bosom the butcher-knife, and,
in quest of your nefarious science, delight to scrutinise the
fibres of agonising beings, you dare also to violate the human
form, and holding up the entrails of men, you exclaim, ‘Behold the
bowels of a carnivorous animal!’ Barbarians! to these very bowels
I appeal against your cruel dogmas--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.

‘Mollissima corda
Humano generi dare se Natura fatetur,
Quæ _lachrymas_ dedit: hæc nostri pars optima sensus.’[200]

“Had Nature intended man to be an animal of prey, would she have
implanted in his breast an instinct so adverse to her purpose?...
Would she not rather, in order to enable him to brave the piercing
cries of anguish, have wrapped his ruthless heart in ribs of brass,
and with iron entrails have armed him to grind, without shadow of
remorse, the palpitating limbs of agonising life? But has Nature
winged the feet of men with fleetness to overtake the flying prey?
And where are his fangs to tear asunder the beings destined for
his food? Does the lust of carnage glare in his eye-balls? Does he
scent from afar the footsteps of his victim? Does his soul pant for
the feast of blood? Is the bosom of men the rugged abode of bloody
thoughts, and from the den of Death rush forth, at sight of other
animals, his rapacious desires to slay, to mangle, and to devour?

“But come, men of scientific subtlety, approach and examine with
attention this dead body. It was late a playful Fawn, who skipping
and bounding on the bosom of parent Earth, awoke in the soul of
the feeling observer a thousand tender emotions. But the butcher’s
knife has laid low the delight of a fond mother, and the darling
of Nature is now stretched in gore upon the ground. Approach, I
say, men of scientific subtlety, and tell me, does this ghastly
spectacle whet your appetite? But why turn you with abhorrence?
Do you then yield to the combined evidence of your senses, to
the testimony of conscience and common sense; or with a show of
rhetoric, pitiful as it is perverse, will you still persist in your
endeavour to persuade us that to murder an innocent being is not
cruel nor unjust, and that to feed upon a corpse is neither filthy
nor unfitting?”

Amid the dark scenes of barbarism and cold-blooded indifferentism to suffering innocence, there are yet the glimmers of a better nature, which need but the life-giving impulse of a true religion and philosophy:--

“And yet those channels of sympathy for inferior animals, long--a
very long--custom has not been able altogether to stifle. Even now,
notwithstanding the narrow, joyless, and hard-hearted tendency of
the prevailing superstitions; even now we discover, in every corner
of the globe, some good-natured _prejudice_ in behalf of [certain
of] the persecuted animals; we perceive, in every country, certain
privileged animals, whom even the ruthless jaws of gluttony dare
not to invade. For, to pass over unnoticed the vast empires of
India and of China, where the lower orders of life are considered
as relative parts of society, and are protected by the laws and
religion of the natives,[201] the Tartars abstain from several
kinds of animals; the Turks are charitable to the very dog, whom
they abominate; and even the English peasant pays towards the
_red-breast_ an inviolable respect to the rights of hospitality.

“Long after the perverse practice of devouring the flesh of animals
had grown into inveterate habit among peoples, there existed still
in almost every country, and of every religion, and of every sect
of philosophy, a wiser, a purer, and more holy class of men who
preserved by their institutions, by their precepts, and by their
example, the memory of primitive innocence [?] and simplicity. The
Pythagoreans abhorred the slaughter of any animal life; Epicurus
and the worthiest part of his disciples bounded their delights with
the produce of their garden; and of the first Christians several
sects abominated the feast of blood, and were satisfied with the
food which Nature, unviolated, brings forth for our support....

“Man, in a state of nature, is not, apparently, much superior to
other animals. His organisation is, without doubt, extremely happy;
but then the dexterity of his figure is counterpoised by great
advantages in other beings. Inferior to the Bull in force, and in
fleetness to the Dog, the _os sublime_, or erect front, a feature
he bears in common with the Monkey, could scarcely have inspired
him with those haughty and magnificent ideas which the pride of
human refinement thence endeavours to deduce. Exposed, like his
fellow-creatures, to the injuries of the air, urged to action by
the same physical necessities, susceptible of the same impressions,
actuated by the same passions, and equally subject to the pains of
disease and to the pangs of dissolution, the simple savage never
dreams that his nature was so much more noble, or that he drew his
origin from a purer source or more remote than the other animals in
whom he saw a resemblance so complete.

“Nor were the simple sounds by which he expressed the singleness
of his heart at all fitted to flatter him into that fond sense
of superiority over the beings whom the unreasoning insolence of
cultivated ages absurdly styles _mute_. I say absurdly styles
_mute_; for with what propriety can that name be applied, for
example, to the little sirens of the groves, to whom Nature has
granted the strains of ravishment--the soul of song? Those charming
warblers who pour forth, with a moving melody which human ingenuity
vies with in vain, their loves, their anxiety, their woes. In
the ardour and delicacy of his amorous expressions, can the most
impassioned, the most respectful, human lover surpass the ‘glossy
kind,’ as described by the most beautiful of all our poets?

“And, indeed, has not Nature given to almost every being 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 which speak to the soul with a feeling which
words are feeble to convey?”

The whole of the little book of which the above extracts are properly representative, breathes the spirit of a true religion. We shall only add that it exhibits almost as much learning and valuable research as it exhibits justness of thought and sensibility--enriched, as it is, by copious illustrative notes.[202]