Ten Years Gone

I began this blog 10 years ago today. The time has gone fast. Although I rarely post anything substantive, I did so for many years, so the blog still serves a useful purpose. Here are the posts from November 2003. On the first day of each month, from now on, I will link to the posts for that month 10 years earlier. I hope you enjoy the flashback.

Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) on Animal Rights

Nor is it true that the worth of an animal's life, any more than of a man's, can be measured simply by the amount of "agreeable sensation," a fallacy often put forward by those who cage animals in menageries, on the plea that they are there well tended and saved from the struggle for existence. To live one's own natural life, to realize one's self, is the true moral purpose of man and animal equally, and the wrong done by the unnecessary cramping and thwarting of animal individuality, as in the turning of an active intelligent being into a prisoner or pet, cannot really be compensated by the gift of any material "comforts." Compare the life of the wild bison with that of the stall-fed ox, or that of the sheepdog with the pampered pug, and the moral can hardly be overlooked. An animal has his proper work to do in the world, his own life to live, as surely as a man; and those who scoff at this idea, and deny individuality to animals, should remember that there was a time, under the Greek and Roman civilization, when it was held to be doubtful whether a slave, in like manner, had any claim to be regarded as a person.

(Henry S. Salt, "The Rights of Animals," International Journal of Ethics 10 [January 1900]: 206-22, at 209 [italics in original])

Statistics

This blog had 1,785 visits during October, which is an average of 57.5 visits per day. A year ago, the average was 89.8.