PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 49 



of the rattle-snake as of a "generous" and "magnanimous" 

 creature '° — thereby unwittingly stimulating Coleridge's poetic 

 imagination — it was partly because he believed that as a matter 

 of simple justice man owed all animals humane treatment. All 

 animal creation is peaceably disposed "towards mankind, whom 

 they seem to venerate," ^^ why cannot mankind reciprocate? 



The history of man's attitude towards animals merits a sepa- 

 rate study. Here it is but necessary to point out the obvious fact 

 that man's treatment of animals follows man's philosophical 

 attitude towards them. It is also quite obvious that no move- 

 ment starts suddenly in a certain year, decade, or even century, 

 without having roots in a previous period. What is commonly 

 designated as the humanitarian impulse of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury can be traced here and there in the writings of earlier 

 centuries. Is Montaigne, for instance, less humanitarian than 

 Thomson ?^^ It is nevertheless true that the impulse toward 

 justice for the weak and oppressed, including animals, becomes 

 more widespread in the eighteenth century and grows into what 

 historians call a movement. By the time Bartram writes his plea 

 for the Negro, the Indian, and the animal kingdom thousands 

 of similar pleas are heard all around him. On this one point of 

 the humane treatment of animals it is well to remember that 

 the atmosphere in which Bartram moved, from his childhood 

 on, prepared him for the championing of the views he held. 



Bartram's father, in spite of his enthusiasm for all phases of 

 natural science, was not a zoologist. He confessed that " As for 

 the animals and insects, it is very few that I touch of choice, 

 and most with uneasiness. Neither can I behold any of them, 

 that have not done me a manifest injury, in their agonizing 

 mortal pains without pity." ^^ William Bartram testified that 

 when he was with his father in the Catskill Mountains, a rattle- 

 snake almost bit him, and John Bartram pleaded with their 

 guide to spare the life of the snake.^* The importance of the 



»" Travels, 264. " Ibid., 268. 



'' For a treatment of Montaigne's contribution to the conception of a people 

 good by nature, see Gilbert Chinard: L'Exotisme Americain dans la Litterature 

 Franfaise au XVI Steele. Paris, 1911. Chapitre IX. 



" " Sketch of John and William Bartram." Popular Science Monthly, XL, 834. 



"Travels, 270. 



