Precis Paragraph 9

Kindness to animals is no unworthy exercise of benevolence. We hold that the life of brutes perishes with their breath and that they are never to be clothed again with consciousness. The inevitable shortness then of their existence should plead for them touchingly. The insects on the surface of the water, poor, ephemeral things, who would needlessly abridge their dancing pleasures of today? Such feeling we should have towards the whole animate creation. To those animals over which we are masters for however short a time; we have positive duties to perform. This seems too obvious to be insisted upon; but there are persons who act as though they thought they could buy the right of ill-treating any of God’s creatures. We should never in any way consent to the ill treatment. of animals because the fear of ridicule, or some other fear, prevents our interfering. As to there being anything really trifling in any act of humanity, however slight, it is a moral blindness to suppose so. The few moments in the course of each day which a man, absorbed in some worldly pursuit, may carelessly expend in kind words or trifling charities to those around him, and kindness to an animal is one of these, are perhaps, in the sight of Heaven. The only time that he has lived to any purpose worthy of recording. (224 words)