Volume 1

A philosophical and practical treatise on horses : and on the moral duties of man towards the brute creation: comprehending the choice, management, purchase, and sale of every description of the horse; the improved method of shoeing: medical prescriptions and surgical treatment in all known diseases / by John Lawrence.

  • Lawrence, John, 1753-1839.
Date:
1810
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A philosophical and practical treatise on horses : and on the moral duties of man towards the brute creation: comprehending the choice, management, purchase, and sale of every description of the horse; the improved method of shoeing: medical prescriptions and surgical treatment in all known diseases / by John Lawrence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    115/654 (page 89)
    stretch of the human imagination, to provide them witii quarters more suitable to the ap- parent inferiority of their condition. For my own part, I do not hoM good with these fanciful speculations in terra i7icognita futurd; which, I conceive, have ever had the worst po^jsible effect upon the morals and happiness of mankind. Provided we take a just and generous care of the bodies of our horses in the present world, our duty, I apprehend, is performed ; we may very safely confide their souls in the next, to the good keeping of all- suflScient nature. If by the term instinct, we mean to convey any other idea than that of an inferior degree of reason, we have only contrived a veil to obscure the face of truth. The law of Nature Jias placed the whole animal creation in a state of slavery to the Imman race ; or rather, superior intelligence possesses a natural and inherent right to domination. This is not the language of pious fraud, or the apology for an abuse; reason e\idently discovers the necessity of such a dispensation in the constitution of the mundane system. The slightest inspec- tion into the existing order of things will convince us, that the present was intended for a life of labour, industry, and pain; and that inferior aiiiinals could by no other means