Henry David Thoreau Advocated “Leaving Off Eating Animals”

Henry David Thoreau was an American poet, writer, philosopher and naturalist, who for a period of time, lived in a log cabin near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. It was there he wrote the book, Walden, where he reflected on simple living and his natural surroundings. In the chapter “Higher Laws” he writes, “No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child.” Thoreau reasons that an animal suffers like a child suffers and feels the same pain, and asks his readers to consider the suffering of all sentient creatures.

Thoreau appeals to man’s use of self-control, empathy and reason to access our higher selves. Later in the chapter Higher Laws, Thoreau writes,

“Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came into contact with the more civilized.”