Grumpy Vegan

At a time when this painful subject is engrossing so large a share of public attention, no apology, I trust, is needed for the following attempt to formulate and classify some of the many fallacies, as they seem to me, which I have met with in the writings of those who advocate the practice. No greater service can be rendered to the cause of truth, in this fiercely contested field, than to reduce these shadowy, impalpable phantoms into definite forms, which can be seen, which can be grappled with, and which, when once fairly laid, we shall not need to exorcise a second time.

I begin with two contradictory propositions, which seem to constitute the two extremes, containing between them the golden mean of truth:—

1. That the infliction of pain on animals is a right of man, needing go justification.
2. That it is in no case justifiable.

The first of these is assumed in practice by many who would hardly venture to outrage the common feelings of humanity by stating it in terms. All who recognise the difference of right and wrong must admit, if the question be closely pressed, that, the infliction of pain is in some cases wrong. Those who deny it are not likely to be amenable to argument. For what common ground have we ? They must be restrained, like brute beasts, by physical force.

The second has been assumed by an Association lately formed for the total suppression of Vivisection, in whose manifesto it is placed in the same category with Slavery, as being an absolute evil, with which no terms can be made. I think I may assume that the proposition most generally accepted is an intermediate one, namely, that the infliction of pain is in some cases justifiable, but not in all.

The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898), English author, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. “Some Popular Fallacies About Vivisection” serialised on The Grumpy Vegan and available in full at the Animal Rights Library.

Now and again, if we scan the trivial news items on the second and third pages of a newspaper — the front pages are filled with men’s frightful deeds of glory — we may come across a few lines about a circus fire or poisoned elephants. Animals are only remembered when the few remaining specimens, the counterparts of the medieval jester, perish in excruciating pain, as a capital loss for the owner who neglected to afford them adequate fire protection in an age of concrete and steel. The tall giraffe and the elephant are oddities of which now even the shrewdest schoolboy would hardly feel the loss.

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, in the section, “Man and Animal” (p. 251), published in 1944.

To recognize that what we are now assuming are ideas that are, at heart, deeply contradictory, may force us to look for an alternative relation. But that alternative relation might force us to rethink more than just what we put on our plates; it might challenge a whole world view, and that is something we shy away from.

Erica Fudge, Animal, p. 46

Christmas is the season when people run out of money before they run out of friends.

Larry Wilde (?)