Preparación del sitio y construcción

In spite of the animal-baitings, the deployment of animals in shaming ceremonies and the numerous widespread massacres of cats and dogs, there were some voices raised in defence of animals during the sixteenth century. The most well-known pro-animal voice of the time belonged to Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) who made an eloquent case for animal concern in An Apology for Raymond Sebond:113

Of all creatures man is the most miserable and fraile, and therewithall the proudest and disdainfullest. Who perceiveth and seeth himselfe placed here amidst the filth and mire of the world, fast-tied and nailed to the worst, most senselesse, and drooping part of the world, in the vilest corner of the house, and farthest from heavens coape, with those crea- tures that are the worst of the three conditions . . . he selecteth and separateth himselfe from out the ranke of other creatures . . . How knoweth he by the vertue of his understanding the inward and secret motions of beasts? By what comparison from them to us doth he conclude the brutishnesse he ascribeth unto them? When I am playing with my cat, who knowes whether she have more sport in dallying with me than I have in gaming with her? We entertaine one another with mutuall apish trickes. If I have my houre to begin or to refuse, so hath she hers . . . The defect which hindreth the communication betweene them and us, why may it not as well be in us as in them? It is a matter of divination to guesse in whom the fault is that we understand not one another. For we understand them no more than they us. By the

same reason, may they as well esteeme us beasts as we them. It is no great marvell if we understand them not: no more doe we the Cornish, the Welch, or Irish . . . We have some meane understanding of their senses, so have beasts of ours, about the same measure. They flatter and faune upon us, they threat and entreat us, so doe we them. Touching other matters, we manifestly perceive that there is a full and perfect communication amongst them, and that not only those of one same kinde understand one another, but even such as are of different kindes . . . By one kinde of barking of a dogge, the horse knoweth he is angrie; by another voice of his, he is nothing dismaid. Even in beasts that have no voice at all, by the reciprocall kindnesse which we see in them, we easily inferre there is some other meane of entercommuni- cation: their jestures treat, and their motions discourse.

Silence also hath a way, Words and prayers to convay.

It is clear that Montaigne not only considered animals no more ‘brutish’ than humans, but also as participants in cross-species communication and capable of acts of kindness and reciprocity. However, Montaigne’s proposal that animals were bearers of communication skills and sensibility was drowned out in the next century by followers of a very different way of looking at animals.

Looking at Animals in Human History 9 6

In the Age of Enlightenment, we look at animals as philosophical and ethical subjects. There was more philosophical discussion about animals in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than at any other time in history before the 1970s. The discourse was fuelled in part by three rapidly spreading trends: the popularity of vivisection in the new experi- mental science, increasing urbanization and commodification of animals for food and labour, and the widespread availability of print media. In the arena of science, debate swirled primarily around the similarities and differences between humans and other animals in rationality and morality. Peter Harrison captured the polemic well in his observation that once Montaigne claimed that animals were more moral and rational than humans, in the next century René Descartes ‘not to be outdone, put forward the even more contentious counter-proposal that animals were not only neither rational nor moral but that they were not even conscious’.1

In Descartes’s words,

I cannot share the opinion of Montaigne and others who attribute understanding or thought to animals . . . all the things which dogs, horses, and monkeys are taught to perform are only expressions of their fear, their hope, or their joy [Descartes calls these qualities ‘passions’]; and consequently they can be performed without any thought. Now it seems to me very striking that the use of words, so defined, is something peculiar to human beings . . . there has never been known an animal so perfect as to use a sign to make other animals understand something which expressed no passion; and there is no human being so imperfect as not to do so, since even deaf-mutes invent special signs to express their thoughts. This seems to me a very strong argument to prove that the reason why animals do not speak as we do is not that they lack the organs but that they have no thoughts.2

Chapter 5