KEYWORDS: Abolition, animals, dress reform, food, labor rights, race, religion, slavery, socialism, women's rights.

 

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen):

The text is divided into three parts: "Physical Kinship," "Psychical Kinship," and "Ethical Kinship." Moore is well aware that humans are one of many other forms of animal life; but he maintains some human exceptionalism by conditioning this belief with another belief that humans are the “most highly evolved of animals,” but still animals (5).

“Preface”: “The Universal Kinship means the kinship of all the inhabitants of the planet Earth. … But since man is the most gifted and influential of animals, and since his relationship with other animals is more important and more reluctantly recognised than any other, the chief purpose of these pages is to prove and interpret the kinship of the human species with the other species of animals” (vii).

The Physical Kinship: “Man has not a spark of so-called ‘divinity’ about him. In important respects he is the most highly evolved of animals; but in origin, disposition, and form he is no more ‘divine’ than the dog who laps his sores, the terrapin who waddles over the earth in a carapace, or the unfastidious worm who dines on the dust of his feet. … He is a pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking, death-dreading organism, differing in particulars, but not in kind, from the pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking, death-dreading organism below and around him” (5).

“The resemblances, homologies, and metamorphoses existing everywhere among animal forms are, therefore, evidence of the most logical forms and are therefore, evidence of the most logical consanguinities. It is all so perfectly plain. The structure of organic beings have come about as a result of the action and reaction of environment upon these structures” (97). “Man is simply one portion of the immense enterprise. … Man is not a god, nor in any imminent danger of becoming one. He is not a god, nor in any imminent danger of becoming one. He is not a celestial star-babe dropped down among mundane matters for a  time and endowed with possibilities and the anatomy of a deity. He is a mammal of the order of primates, not so lamentable when we think of the hyena and the serpent, but an exceedingly discouraging vertebrate compared with what he ought to be” (100, 101). “He walks on his hind-limbs like the ape; he eats herbage and suckles his young like the ox; he slays his fellows and fills himself with their blood like the crocodile and the tiger; he grows old and dies … He cannot exceed the winds like the hound, nor dissolve his image in the mid-day blue like the eagle. … Poor, pitiful, glory-hunting hideful! Born into a universe which he creates when he comes into it, and clinging, like all his kindred, to a clod that knows him not, he drives on in the preposterous storm of the atoms, as helpless to fashion his fate as the sleep that pelts him, and lost absolutely in the somnambulism of his own being” (101).

The Psychical Kinship: “Man has set himself up as the supreme judge and executive of the world, and he has not hesitated to award himself the lion’s share of everything. He has ransacked his fancy for adjectives with which to praise himself, and driven his inventive faculties to the verge of distraction in search of justification for his crimes upon those around him ... It was an easy matter, therefore, for man … to convince himself that all other animals were made for him, that they were made without feeling or intelligence, and that hence he was justified in using in any way he chose the conveniences so generously provided by an eccentric providence” (106). “The supposition [of the human-animal divide] is a relic of the rapidly dwindling vanity of anthropocentrism, and is perpetuated from age to age by human selfishness and conceit” (108).

“[I]t is not necessary to be learned in Darwinian science in order to know that non-human beings have souls. … No human being with a conscientious desire to learn the truth can associate intimately day after day with these people … without realising that they are almost unknown by human beings, that they are constantly and criminally misunderstood, and that they are in reality beings actuated by substantially the same impulses and terrorised by approximately the same experiences as we ourselves” (146). “I am not one of those who regard the evidence for the post-mortem existence of the human soul as being either abundant or conclusive. But of one thing I am positive, and that is, that there are the same grounds precisely for believing in the immortality of the bird and the quadruped as there are for the belief in human immortality” (161). Speaking of his childhood dog: “Well, I know Fido could feel and think, that he loved and feared and longed and dreaded and dreamed and hated and grieved and sympathised and reasoned and rejoiced – in short, that he was moved by about the same passions and considerations as human beings usually are. He gave the same evidence of it precisely as a human being does” (164).

Moore writes, admiringly and extensively, on the mating habits, fearlessness, and songs of many types of birds, before writing that “these are the beings whose bones men jest over at their feasts, and brutes shoot for pastime on human holidays. Much has been said of the sorrow of birds for their deceased mates, but not too much. For the avian soul may be smothered by the gloom and loneliness that come upon the heart, when the great light of love and companionship has gone out, quite as completely as the soul of a bereaved human” (182).

"The Elements of Human and Non-Human Mind Compared”: “The chief powers of the mind of man are sensation, memory, emotion, imagination, volition, instinct, and reason. All of these faculties are found in non-human beings, some of them developed to a much higher degree than they are in man, and some of them to a much lower” (196). “Men are not all gentle men and humane, and not-men are not all inhumane. … 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 a pigment, nor by their composition, which is clay. There are philanthropists in feathers and patricians in fur, just are there are cannibals in the pulpit and saurians among the money-changers” (233). “Instead of the highest, man is in some respects the lowest, of the animal kingdom. Man is the most unchaste, the most drunken, the most selfish and conceited, the most miserly, the most hypocritical, and the most bloodthirsty of terrestrial creatures. Almost no animals, except man, kill for the mere sake of killing” (239). “There are no millionaires – no professional, legalised, lifelong kleptomaniacs – among the birds and quadrupeds” (240).

The Ethical Kinship: “Human beings are not children of the sun, sojourning for a season on this spheroid of clay, and needing only pinions to be angels. Human nature did not come, pure and shining, down from the glittering gods. It came out of the jungle. … Civilised men and women are troglodytes with a veneering of virtue” (245).

“The Ethics of Human Beings toward Non-Human Beings”: “But, except by occasional individuals here and there whose emotions are more civilised than the rest, or whose conceptions are more ample and clear, ethical relations are not extend by human beings beyond the bounds of their own species. Non-human millions are outsiders. … They belong to the same class of existences as the waves of the sea and the weeds of the field. They are not considered living beings at all, as human beings are, who are here in the world to enjoy life and all that life holds that is dear to a living being. They are looked upon as mere things – mere moving, multiplying objects, without the slightest equity in the world in which they find themselves. They may be set upon, beaten, maimed, starved, assassinated, eaten, insulted, deceived, imprisoned, robbed, tormented, skinned alive, shot down for pastime, cut to pieces out of curiosity, or compelled to undergo any other enormity or victimisation anybody can think of or is disposed to visit upon them ... It is enough almost to make knaves shudder, the cold-blooded and business-like manner in which we cut their throats, dash out their brains, and discuss their flavor at our cannibalistic feasts” (273-274). All other beings “are commodities” (274): “Even for a tooth or a feather or a piece of skin to wear on human vanity, forests are depopulated and the land filled with the dead and dying” (275)

“The provincialism of Jews towards non-Jews, of Greek toward non-Greeks, of Romans toward non-Romans, of Moslems toward non-Moslems, and of Caucasians toward non-Caucasians, is not one thing and the provincialism of human beings toward non-human beings another. They are all manifestations of the same thing. The fact that these various acts are performed by different individuals and upon different individuals, and are performed at different times and places, does not invalidate the essential sameness of their natures. … There is, in fact, but one great crime in the universe, and most of the instances of terrestrial wrong-doing are instances of this crime. It is the crime of exploitation – the considering by some beings of themselves as ends, and of others as their means – the refusal to recognise the equal, or the approximately equal, rights of all to life and its legitimate rewards – the crime of acting toward others as one would that others would not act toward him” (276-277).

“The practice human beings have to-day – the practice of those (relatively) broad and emancipated minds who are large enough to rise above the petty prejudices and ‘patriotisms’ of the races and corporations of men, and are able to view ‘the world as their country’ (the world of human beings, of course) – the practice such minds have of estimating conduct solely with reference to its effects upon the human species of animals is a practice which, while infinitely broader and more nearly ultimate than that of the savage – belongs logically in the same category with it. The partially emancipated human being who extends his own moral sentiments to all the members of his own species, but denies to all other species the justice and humanity he accords to his own, is making on a larger scale the same ethical mess of it as the savage. The only consistent attitude, since Darwin established the unity of life (and the attitude we shall assume, if we ever become really civilised), is the attitude of universal gentleness and humanity” (278-79).

“The creophagist and the hunter exemplify the same somnambulism, are the authors of the same kind of conduct, and belong literally in the same category of offenders, as the cannibal and the slave-driver. To take the life of an ox for his muscles, or to kill a sheep for his skin is murder, and those who do these things or cause them to be done are murderers just as actually as highwaymen are who blow off the heads of hapless wayfarers for their guineas” (281-282). Moore contends that the most popular pastimes among savage humans are fighting and eating, or watching other beings fight, hence bull fights, cock fights, hunting, greased pig chases (where the “winner” is able to catch and butcher the pig), and butchering contests, “in which a band of professional cutthroats compete to see who can kill, skin, and eviscerate the largest number of their fellow-beings in a given time” (288-289).

“Analyse the reasons for being considerate toward men, any variety of men, and you will find the same reasons to exist for being considerate toward all men. And analyse the reasons for being altruistic toward men – … and you will find the same reasons to exist for being altruistic toward those who are not men” (291-292). Moore extends the ideas of right and wrong to animals, who can feel pain and pleasure just the same as humans. Thus, the truly moral man is he who is humane to “all beings...to all that have the misfortune to feel and mourn” (294). “If to do good is to generate welfare, then to cause welfare to a horse, a bird, a butterfly, or a fish, is to do good just as truly as to cause welfare to men” (296).

“We have a set of words and phrases which we use in speaking of ourselves, and another very different set for other beings. The very same things are called by different names with wholly different connotations depending on whether it is a man that is referred to or some other being” (302). “We perpetuate our blindness by the use of words” (302).

Moore argues that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are largely to blame for promoting anthropocentrism: *** “Everything was made for man – including women. Intrinsically, they [every plant and animal on earth] were meaningless. They had significance only as they served the human species” (314, 315). Instead, Moore argues that the earth, the universe, and everything on earth was not made for humanity, but evolved: “They are our ancestors” (317).

Moore concludes that if humanity had really understood Darwin’s theories, our culture would not still be based on outdated traditions (320). The ancient scholars who taught the “doctrine of Universal Kinship” include Plutarch, Buddha, Pythagoras, Shelley, Tolstoy (322-323). “All beings are ends; no creatures are means. All beings have not equal rights, neither have all men; but all have rights” (324). Moore’s final rule is basically to do unto all others, all living beings, as you would do unto yourself.