Lewis Gompertz: Other

Lewis Gompertz was Early animal rights activist. Explore interesting quotes on other.
Lewis Gompertz: 18   quotes 1   like

“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)

Understanding , Personality , Knowledge , Animals

“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.

Animals

“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

Imagination , Painting , Suffering , Nature

“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

Time , Personality , Future , Pleasure