The Universal KinshipMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
The Universal Kinship
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Evolution; Human beings; Sociology
Let us be candid. Men are not all gentle men and humane, and not-men
are not all inhuman. There are reptiles in broadcloth, and there are
warm and generous hearts among those peoples who have so long
suffered from human prejudice and ferocity. Let us label beings by
what they are—by the souls that are in them and the deeds they
do—not by their colour, which is pigment, nor by their
composition, which is clay. There are philanthropists in feathers
and patricians in fur, just as there are cannibals in the pulpit and
saurians among the money-changers. The golden rule may sometimes be
more religiously observed in the hearts and homes of outcast
quadrupeds than in the palatial lairs of bipeds. The horse, who
suffers and serves and starves in silence, who endures daily wrongs
of scanty and irregular meals, excessive burdens and mangled flanks,
who forgets cruelty and ingratitude, and does good to them that
spitefully use him, and submits to crime without resistance,
misunderstanding without murmur, and insult without resentment, is a
better Christian, a better exemplar of the Sermon on the Mount, than
many church-goers, in spite of the creeds and interdictions of men.
And the animal who goes to church on Sundays, wearing the twitching
skins and plundered plumage of others, and wails long prayers and
mumbles meaningless rituals, and gives unearned guineas to the
missionary, and on week-days cheats and impoverishes his neighbours,
glorifies war, and tramples under foot the most sacred principles of
morality in his treatment of his non-human kindred, is a cold,
hard-hearted _brute_, in spite of the fact that he is cunning and
vainglorious, and towers about on his hinders.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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