Does Man Overestimate Himself? (1907)
AUTHOR: Moore, J. Howard
PUBLICATION: “Does Man Overestimate Himself?” The Herald of the Golden Age Vol. XI no. 6 (April 1907): 121.
https://archive.org/details/heraldofgoldenapr1907exetuoft/page/121/mode/1up
KEYWORDS: animals, capitalism, morality
Bergh, Henry. “An Address”
---. “The Cost of Cruelty”
---. “Editor, Forest and Stream”
---. “Fashionable Slaughter”
Fiske, Minnie Maddern. The Darkest Stain on American Civilization
Freshel, Emarel. “Letter”
Lovell, Mary Frances. “Address on Humane Education”
---. “Ostrich Plumes”
---. “The Wearing of Egret Plumes”
---. The New Ethics
---. “The Unconscious Holocaust”
---. The Universal Kinship
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Palmetto-Leaves
---. “Rights of Dumb Animals”
Trine, Ralph Waldo. Every Living Creature
Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Book of Animals
---. The Pains of Lowly Life
White, Caroline Earle.
SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):
In this short article, Moore posits animals as morally superior to humans in many ways, including “simplicity of life, straightforwardness, humility, art, economy, brotherly love, and cheerfulness.” Thus, the dog serves as a model of forgiveness and the bower-bird as that of chastity, while the horse “is a better exemplar of the sermon on the Mount, than many church-goers, in spite of the creeds and interdictions of men.” Humans do not compare well:
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 its neighbours, glorifies war and tramples under foot the most sacred principles of morality in its treatment of its non-human kindred, is a cold hard-hearted brute in spite of the fact that it is cunning and vainglorious, and towers about on its hinders (121).
Animals also tend to surpass humans physically, in terms of motion and movement and, particularly, the use of the senses, so that “[i]nstead 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.” He is also the only being that kills “for the mere sake of killing.” For Moore, this predilection goes hand in hand with capitalist accumulation, another feature that sets humans (negatively) apart from other animals:
No animal, except man, habitually seeks wealth purely out of an insane impulse to accumulate. And no animal, except man, gloats over accumulations that are of no possible use to him, that are an injury and abomination, and in whose acquisition he may have committed irreparable crimes upon others. There are no millionaires – no professional, legalised, lifelong kleptomaniacs – among the birds and quadrupeds (121).