Moon -- Fiction; Science fiction, French -- Translations into English; Space flight to the moon -- Fiction
"Well, and because it cannot complain, may we therefore justly do it
all the Wrong which it cannot hinder? If I find a Wretch bound Hand
and Foot, may I lawfully kill him, because he cannot defend himself?
so far from that, that his Weakness would aggravate my Cruelty. And
though this wretched Creature be poor, and destitute of all the
advantages which we have, yet it deserves not Death; and when of all
the Benefits of a Being it hath only that of Encrease, we ought not
cruelly to snatch that away from it. To massacre a Man, is not so
great Sin, as to cut and kill a Cabbage, because one day the Man will
rise again, but the Cabbage has no other Life to hope for: By putting
to death a Cabbage, you annihilate it; but in killing a Man, you make
him only change his Habitations Nay, I'll go farther with you still:
since God doth equally cherish all his Works, and hath equally divided
the Benefits betwixt Us and Plants, it is but just we should have an
equal Esteem for Them as for our Selves. It is true we were born first,
but in the Family of God there is no Birthright. If then the Cabbage
share not with us in the inheritance of Immortality, without doubt
that Want was made up by some other Advantage, that may make amends
for the shortness of its Being; may be by an universal Intellect, or
a perfect Knowledge of all things in their Causes; and it's for that
Reason, that the wise Mover of all things hath not shaped for it Organs
like ours, which are proper only for a simple Reasoning, not only weak,
but many times fallacious too; but others, more ingeniously framed,
stronger, and more numerous, which serve to manage its Speculative
Exercises. You'll ask me, perhaps, when ever any Cabbage imparted those
lofty Conceptions to us? But tell me, again, who ever discovered to
us certain Beings, which we allow to be above us; to whom we bear no
Analogy nor Proportion, and whose Existence it is as hard for us to
comprehend, as the Understanding and Ways whereby a Cabbage expresses
its self to its like, though not to us, because our senses are too dull
to penetrate so far.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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