animals

. . . every tree near our house had a name of its own and a special identity. This was the beginning of my love for natural things, for earth and sky, for roads and fields and woods, for trees and grass and flowers; a love which has been second only to my sense of enduring kinship with birds and animals, and all inarticulate creatures.

The practice of intensive manuring emerged as the dominant mark of the Chinese system. All human and animal nitrogenous wastes were carefully husbanded in large terra-cotta vats where they were aged, and then ladled into irrigation ditches. Every 2,000 pounds of night soil provided 12.7 pounds of nitrogen, 4 pounds of potassium, and 1.7 pounds of phosphorus. Ashes were added to this compost from any kind of fire.

It was said that the 'brutes' cannot reason. Only persons who do not themselves reason about the subject, with the facts before them, can any longer occupy such a position. The evidence of reasoning power is overwhelming for the upper rank of animals, and yearly the downward limits are being extended the more the inferior tribes are studied.

An act of violence against nature should be judged as severely as that against society or another person. The turning over of a stone, the unnecessary felling of a tree, or the slaughter of an animal is a crime to be weighed in judgment against the wants and needs of the person and the values of his society.

Love of animals is a universal impulse, a common ground on which all of us may meet. By loving and understanding animals, perhaps we humans shall come to understand each other.

What is the use of this fuss about morality when the issue only involves a horse? The first and most difficult teaching of civilisation concerns man's behaviour to his inferiors. Make humanity gentle or reasonable toward animals, and strife or injustice between human beings would speedily terminate.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as well as that of his fellowman, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

Killing an animal to make a coat is a sin. It wasn't meant to be and we have no right to do it. A woman gains status when she refuses to see anything killed to be put on her back. Then she's truly beautiful!

The purpose of seasonal festivals is periodically to revive the topocosm. Gaster coined this word from the Greek - topo for place and cosmos for world order. Topocosm means "the world order of a particular place." The topocosm is the entire complex of any given locality conceived as a living organism, not just the human community but the total community - the plants, animals and soils of the place. The topocosm is not only the actual and present living community but also that continuous entity of which the present community is but the current manifestation.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals - and the most silly.