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Lewis Gompertz Quotes

Lewis Gompertz was an early animal rights advocate, a vegan, and a founding member in June 1824, of the English Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, later the RSPCA. He was the author of Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes and Fragments in Defence of Animals .Gompertz acted as the SPCA's second Honorary Secretary prior to resigning in 1833. However, the governing committee was made up of welfarists who objected to Gompertz' veganism, so they created a resolution that limited membership in the SPCA to Christians. Since Gompertz was a Jew, he was forced to resign. He went on to found the Animals' Friend Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He was opposed to humans intentionally using animals for human interests in any way.He died from bronchitis in Kennington, London, and was buried in the graveyard of the local church.

✵ 1783 – 2. December 1861
Lewis Gompertz photo
Lewis Gompertz: 9 quotes1 like

Famous Lewis Gompertz Quotes

“Every animal possesses something which distinguishes it from all other animals; and this is what I understand by personal identity, or rather the identical self. This in every animal is perfectly distinct and indivisible, since the only knowledge we have of it is when it is entire; and divisibility of this is what we cannot conceive: but if indivisible, it must also be indestructible, and must always have existed. Itis not possessed of any kind of consciousness: but no consciousness can, it appears, exist without it; as life itself seems to be composed of personal identity, and other essentials of the mind or body, and that it is the combination which produces consciousness.”

Lewis Gompertz

"Theorem I: Personal Identity, or Identical Self", Chapter 5, pp. 69–70
Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824)

“First, how do you prove that mankind is invested with the right of killing them, and that brutes have been created for the purpose you assert them to be? Secondly, it is to be observed that the flesh of man himself possesses the same nourishing and palatable qualities? And are we then to become cannibals for that reason?”

Lewis Gompertz

Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, edited by Peter Singer (Fontwell: Centaur Press, 1992), p. 84.

“I admit it as an axiom, that every animal has more right to the use of its own body than others have to use it.”

Lewis Gompertz

Quoted by Lawrence W. Baker in Animal Rights and Welfare: A Documentary and Reference Guide (2015), p. 38.

“Cruelty is cruelty under whatever colouring it may appear; and whether exercised on a man or on a fly, cruelty is still cruelty. It matters not whether the victim be furnished with two legs or with four, with wings, with fins, or with arms; where there is sensation, there is subject for cruelty, and in proportion to the degree of sensation will its action operate.”

Lewis Gompertz

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 11, pp. 149–150

“We should never admit of the propriety of the will or volition of one animal being the agent of another, unless we should perceive its own good to result from it, or that justice should require it.”

Lewis Gompertz

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 4, p. 68

“The force of custom or habits even proverbial; and accordingly we take advantage of the magnified representation in which we have been pleased to paint its effects, to veil our eyes from the sufferings of others, of mankind as well as of brutes; and whatever be their lots, if they suffer from over exertion, from being flogged, from exposure in danger, from want, from cold, from heat, etc., we lull our imagination with the idea that they do not feel those evils: custom we say is second nature.”

Lewis Gompertz

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 2, p. 53

“It is strange that philosophers first show how one animal supports itself by destroying another, and then enter into discussions on the apparent admirable order of things in their present state. But though this may be a necessary contrivance, and the only way in which life can be supported, it can never be a beautiful one, in our short sights, notwithstanding that something worse might be, were this not the case.”

Lewis Gompertz

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 2, pp. 49–50

“And though I cannot conceive how any person can shut his eyes to the general state of misery throughout the universe, I still think that it is for a wise purpose; that the evils of life, which could not properly be otherwise, will in the course of time be rectified, and the exquisite pleasures for which we are formed will be enjoyed in our progeny: also that we may ourselves become the inhabitants of the improved world, or of some other world improved in a like manner; and that even if the different species of all the present animals should become extinct, as indicated by what we have observed of the different bones in the several strata, the discoveries of the present time may enrich the future, unless every trace of them should be destroyed at once.”

Lewis Gompertz

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 2, p. 48

“Axiom 8. That the importance of any action is measured by the degree of pleasure or pain that it causes or prevents.”

Lewis Gompertz

Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824)

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