Henry Salt is a man to whom I owe a debt which can never be repaid. He reached out and offered a helping hand to me at a time when I needed one more than I ever had before. For the wisdom of his words travelled through time as a bellwether chime. Yet I never knew him and he never knew me.
So let me tell you about this special man who was so prodigious he wrote over thirty books.
Few people are so unique that their ideas and ideals affects how a section of society actually feels. Henry Salt is just such a man. Salt lived by his principles with a pioneer spirit. He lived frugally as a prophet without honour in his own country as one who never sought personal profit. Salt was an ardent advocate for human and animal rights. His heart and mind combined to make him understand the kinship gulf between humans and animals was wafer-thin on matters that matter. Salt wrote Towards Democracy in 1883 where he explained: I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me.
Salt was in favour of equal treatment for people and advocated against all forms of animal abuse. Salt had a privileged education at Eton where he later became a teacher. As a young man he rejected his privileged position. Instead he followed a simple life-style in a cottage in Surrey where flowers, fauna and friends filled his days in ways that satisfied his restless mind. In 1892 Salt published his classic work, Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress, which analysed every aspect of animal abuse from abattoirs to zoos, from hunting to culinary taboos. Salt believed human rights and animal rights were related and accordingly in justice towards all sentient beings. His guiding principles were stated simply in two sentences:
We have to decide not whether the practice of fox-hunting, for example, is more, or less, cruel than vivisection, but whether all practices which inflict unnecessary pain on sentient beings are not incompatible with the higher instincts of humanity.
That man, to be truly man, must cease to abnegate his common fellowship with all living nature – and that the coming realization of human rights will inevitably bring after it the tardier but not less certain realization of the rights of the lower races.
Salt endorsed the prescient ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Significantly when Salt’s Animals’ Rights was reviewed by a Victorian suffragette, Edith Ward, in the aptly named Shafts Magazine [1892], she concentrated on the connection between the abuse of women by violent men and abuse of animals by all humans:
The case for the animal is the case of the woman. What is more likely to impress mankind with the necessity of justice for women than the awakening of the idea that justice was the right of even an ox or a sheep?
Salt founded the Humanitarian League in 1891 with the Fabian Society for reform of the poor law, prisons and the position of women as part of ‘a comprehensive doctrine of humaneness, to be applied to all sentient beings.’ Many of his friends were intellectuals from all around the world and included the American criminal attorney, Clarence Darrow, the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw and the Russian author, Count Leo Tolstoy. In turn each of those great men were influenced by Salt and wrote in support of his work. Salt became a vegetarian when the word was barely known let alone practised in the company of common carnivores. Despite his long-standing aristocratic position and power in Russian society, Tolstoy advocated vegetarianism as a result of Salt’s influence. He changed his life-style towards a simplicity similar to that enjoyed by Salt and joined the Humanitarian League.
Salt influenced Mahatma Gandhi who visited England and stayed with him in his cottage in Surrey. Gandhi learned the ‘civil disobedience’ principle from Salt which he then practised against the British throughout his life in India. Gandhi’s social stance influenced Martin Luther King to engage in civil disobedience against racism by the police and politicians in the Southern States. Salt’s influence turned full circle when King practised Gandhi’s stance to ignite the Civil Rights movement in Alabama following the bus boycott by the sparks of activist Rosa Parks in 1955.
Salt was often ridiculed for his beliefs, but he remained steadfast. His sardonic humour was evident in the title of his autobiography, Seventy Years Among Savages. In it he posed the primary question to all those whose action he opposed: ‘What appeal can be made to people whose first instinct, on seeing a beautiful animal, full of joyousness and vitality, is to hunt or eat it?’
The philosopher D. G. Ritchie criticised Salt as ‘we may be said to have duties of kindness towards the animals’ but it is ‘incorrect to represent these as strictly duties towards animals themselves, as if they had rights against us.’ Ritchie claimed Salt believed a tiger was similar to ‘a person’ and asked if as a result we should allow a tiger to eat us? Salt replied with barely disguised irony: ‘If we hold that a tiger has a right to be spared any unnecessary torture, are we compelled on that count to let him to eat us if he comes out of his cage? How would shooting the tiger…prove the tiger is not a “person”, inasmuch as murderers and human tigers are similarly treated under similar conditions? This “tiger” argument, to which Professor Ritchie was much addicted, is really very small game.’
After he became a vegetarian Salt asked a colleague who was a distinguished science teacher at Eton for his view on Salt’s new practice. Given his scientific training and intellect, Salt eagerly awaited his response. Salt openly disclosed his answer, without flinching from the truth, which was perhaps much less than Salt expected: ‘But don’t you think that animals were sent to us for food?’
Salt never knew how much his books affected society as he died in 1939. The crucial contemporary change came in 1975 when Peter Singer, an Australian moral philosopher, published Animal Liberation which has now become the ‘Bible’ of the animal rights movement. When Salt’s Animals’ Rights was re-published in 1980 Singer wrote the Preface. Singer analysed the same subject with a theme similar to Salt. To his defined credit Singer confirmed his literal and philosophical debt:
Every time I re-read Salt’s book – and I have now read it several times – I marvel at how he anticipates almost every point discussed in the contemporary debate over animal rights. Defenders of animals, myself included have been able to add relatively little to the essential case Salt outlined in 1892…
Salt figured that most people considered it was a human right to eat animals or wear them or both. For animals could not vote or understand language and owed no moral or legal duties to humans. They had no social contract or responsibility towards humans. However, Salt claimed a new-born baby and an insane person and a person in a coma does not owe such duties yet they have ‘rights’. It was akin to racism and sexism. It allowed humans to discriminate against animals by assuming a superiority much like a husband or a slave owner assumed that his wife or slave were his ‘property’.
Salt’s ideas are so cogent they later percolated through society in the 20th and into the 21st century. He understood a quintessential difference between ‘rights’ and ‘welfare’ is rights run with life itself. Salt’s decision to share his vision continues to shape societies all around the world as his work was and remains an animals’ Magna Carta. Salt explained the change which led to his vow:
I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and fur, or condemned for awhile to roam four-footed among the brambles. I caught the clinging mute glance of the prisoner, and swore that I would be faithful.
Salt somehow somewhere in some way reached out through his books to find my unknown rescuer. So where I started is where I end with Art Pepper as an unexpected friend. Art was an earnest student who filled his open mind with an in-depth study of moral philosophy and jurisprudence. Pepper concentrated on the complete works of Salt during his life and his influence up to date. Pepper was so taken with Salt’s ideas he became an active advocate for human and animal rights. He changed his eating habits, went on protest marches and wrote to politicians about their plight.
Pepper visited an auction intending to wave a banner and protest on behalf of those who at the end of their lives were for sale, just the same as when slaves and unwanted wives were sold. Like them I was paraded before the eager buyers. I had no control because I was old and useless to my owner. I was too weak and weary to carry out my owner’s donkey work. Knowing it was way too late I awaited my fate as a worn out horse only fit for the knacker’s yard ready to be turned into dog food.
Pepper looked at me. I looked at Pepper. Eyes were mesmerised in the moment. Much like Salt I can only guess that Pepper saw ‘the clinging mute glance of the prisoner‘ and decided to set me free. So as I was unwanted he bought me for a song. Since then he has let me live free in a grassy field near his caravan until I died naturally. It is true to tell that Pepper saved me from the knacker’s bell. Yet Pepper only learned of the author’s ideals that rights run with life itself because of the books. Hence in the event my life was saved from the grave by the bookish ghostly spirit of Henry Salt.