High School Ethics (1912)

AUTHOR: Moore, J. Howard

PUBLICATION: High School Ethics. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1912.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b297002&view=1up&seq=9

This is the first volume of what was projected to be a four-volume textbook for high school ethics.

KEYWORDS: animals, animal welfare, education, evolution, fashion reform, food, Temperance, women's rights, vivisection

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

This volume is part of a projected “four-year's course in High School Ethics” based on lessons Moore gave at the Crane Technical High School (vii). The book touches on a plethora of ethical themes, ranging from the ethics of school life to that of sport, from the rights of women (including a section on “The Feminist Movement”) to the role of habit and the ideal character (including a short section on Temperance and intemperance). Moore emphasizes early that the discipline of “[e]thics includes a knowledge of the right and the wrong ways of acting toward non-human beings as well as human beings” (9). Indeed, animal ethics assumes a pivotal role, with separate chapters devoted to pets, birds, and the exploitation of animals for human needs. While Moore mentions animal ethics in some of the other sections – vehemently arguing against hunting in the chapter on sports, for example – the summary below  focuses on the discussions of ethical veganism.

According to Moore, “the most important question” concerning the welfare of companion animals is whether “the surrounding of pets resemble the surroundings of their natural state” (53). While he concedes that, given favorable circumstances, pets “may be better off than they would be under the open sky,” Moore insists that they usually “are not happy. Their life is little more than the anguish of captivity. Existence is shortened to a mere fraction of what it would be naturally, and deprived of most of the joys that sweeten it in the natural state” (54). “It is selfish,” he notes, “to put a being in prison and keep it there to languish and suffer merely to afford us some slight amusement from time to time. Indeed, if we are civilized, we will not have the power to derive pleasure from the martyrdom of others” (55). Pets should have enough food, air, exercise, companionship (if they are social animals), and clean surroundings. The main source of suffering for pets is human ignorance, the “lack of scientific information of those who keep them” (59). Moore notes that “the caging of such active animals as birds is a great cruelty” (62). But he also notes that a “new spirit of Humanitarianism is coming rapidly into the world – a spirit of Universal Kindness and Kinship” (64). Moore criticizes the “travelling menagerie” in the strongest of terms, calling it “a relic of barbarism” and “a mere aggregation of prolonged crucifixions” (67, 68). Having instructed his readers in the needs and joys of guinea-pig lives, he notes that it “makes me feel almost as if I wanted to put bombs under some of our institutions when I read that 'the principal use thus far found for guinea-pigs is as subjects for vivisection, being extensively used for this purpose, because cheap and non-resistant'” (73).

In general, when it comes to human exploitation of animals, Moore insists that “[w]e are responsible not only for what we do ourselves, but also for what others do for us” (74-75). “We have no right,” he continues, “to eat whatever is set before us nor to wear whatever is offered for sale in shop windows, without inquiring into the biography of what we eat and wear. It may be that our agents have perpetrated wrongs in procuring these things for us. And, if so, it is our duty as enlightened and responsible members of society to discourage these wrongs by refusing to share in the proceeds” (75). He then presents several accounts of such wrongs, beginning with the terrors of seal hunting: “When the seals arrive at the killing grounds they are separated into detachments of 100 or 150, and then clubbed and stabbed to death. 'If struck violently and squarely on the head,' writes an eye-witness, 'a single stroke is enough. Sometimes the seals are struck so hard that the crystalline lenses of their eyes fly out of the orbital sockets like hailstones or little pebbles, and frequently struck me in the face or elsewhere as I stood near by watching a gang at work'” (76-77). Moore also dwells on “the cold-blooded butchery” of the hunt for ivory (80), chamois skin that is “used for protecting watches, cleaning pens, and for ornamental book-bindings” (78), egret plumes, pearls, and tortoiseshell used for “making fancy combs and other articles of commerce” (86), and the cruelty involved in the manufacturing of leather, furs that involving “days of suffering and terror” (83), toilet sponges, silk, and foie gras. His account of the maltreatment of turtles during the “shelling process” is particularly gruesome:

The turtles are caught either in nets in the water or by stealing upon them when they are asleep on the shore and turning them on their backs. The shelling process is often conducted in a very cruel manner. The creatures are firmly pegged to the ground; then a bunch of dried leaves or grass is spread over their backs and set on fire. The fire causes the plates to loosen or curl up so they can be removed with a large blade.

The turtle has a strong hold on life, and can endure more mistreatment than almost any other animal. But these great sea-creatures often perish from this baking of the spinal cord and nerves. Those that survive are thrown back into the sea to grow another layer of plates. Sometimes boiling water is used instead of fire (86).

The chapter on “Birds” is largely a eulogy: Moore calls them “supremely emotional and artistic,” “the most beautiful and engaging of all earthly beings,” “incomparable musicians,” and “ardent lovers” (163, 164), dwelling extensively on their capacity for language, memory, education, and conjugal love.