The most important note I believe the author makes in the Pre-1800 Overview is how a growing compassion for humans could not help but “overflow its original bounds and brush with pity the sufferings of other sentient beings” – specifically, “animals began to benefit from this exuberance of compassion”(384). A few times in this class we have discussed the relationship between our treatment of animals and both the antislavery movement and the Holocaust. My gut instinct throughout the class has been to reject such comparisons. I thought that the suggestion that animal suffering is as great as human suffering seemed not only outrageous, but also downright offensive. I also thought it to be a foolish use of history and a desperate attempt to somehow make animal suffering important to humans. This is perhaps why this quote stood out to me. It makes the relation between human suffering and animal suffering undeniable. Humanity is not limited to just the treatment of humans – it does and should extend to our treatment of animals as well. It is fascinating to me that although humans, much like me, often refuse to see the connection between animal and human suffering. If our compassion for animals grew just as our compassion for humans and specifically such movements as that of antislavery, then there is a parallel to be both drawn and then recognized.
Watching the violent treatment of animals throughout the film, “Earthlings,” brings this point home in my opinion. I don’t think I will ever be able to forget the voice of the man cursing and beating at the poor, helpless, elephant forced to do inane and unnatural tricks. Watching the video, I knew this man had no compassion and certainly no sense of ethics. I did not need to witness his interaction with humans to know that. I knew from the tone of his voice, the violent crack of his whip, and his abusive treatment of a helpless animal that this man was worse than the worst kind of beast – he was a man without humanity.
This image shows an elephant being led with a bullhook similar to that I saw the elephant be beaten by in the film "Earthlings."
In regards to my second question reading the Pre-1800 Overview, I was confused as to why, in an article that explicitly discusses the importance of human compassion towards animals, the author would so readily use the word “beast” throughout. Personally, I hate the word beast. I believe, much like the word “brute,” that it transforms a conscious being into a senseless creature. When he writes that “The very process of pushing blacks down toward the beasts tended to bring animals closer to humanity,” he suggests that “beasts” and “animals” are somewhat interchangeable. The irony of this, to me, is that the author points out how an animal lover grew to use the word “brute” because “animals were growing a bit too close for the comfort even of the animal lover”(387). But by this author using the word “beast” throughout the article, he is expressing to me a similar discomfort. When I looked up the word “beast” in the dictionary I saw two definitions: “Any nonhuman animal” and “the crude animal nature common to humans and the lower animals.” Although the author may have only been referring to the first definition, the second definition is what stuck in the back of my mind throughout the article.
Googling the word "Beast," this is one of the first images that showed up. Needless to say, there were no images of puppies, bunnies, or other animals largely deemed "cute" that showed up. Most of the images were a blend between humans and hairy, enormous animals. This, to me, suggests that the second definition I found seems to be the more widely understood use of the word "beast."I believe the word creates a wall between human and animal interaction. The suggestion of animals as “beasts,” to me, suggests that they are also without feeling.
Regardless of my issues with his word choice, however, I found these reading selections to be extremely enlightening. One of my favorite quotes that I read in Hopkin’s selected poems was from “God’s Grandeur” which reads “And all is scared with trade; bleared, smeated with toil; / And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell…” The importance, to me, is not in defining animal suffering as equal to human suffering or in making a distinction between beast, animal, and human, but rather to ensure that our “smudge” is one of compassion. These animals share our earth with us, sharing our scent and feeling our influence, as the poem suggests. If we are truly to be a humane society, then, we must acknowledge the importance of humane treatment of all living, feeling beings. We must, as noted by Locke, be “’tender to all sensible [i.e. sentient] creatures’”(384) or become the “crude” beasts that we so fear.
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