The Four Stages of Cruelty

The Four Stages of Cruelty.

I was only a teenager when I was first made aware of William Hogarth’s engravings entitled the Four Stages of Cruelty. Each engraving depicts a different stage in the life of a central character named Tom Nero.

In the first engraving Nero is a child and he seen torturing a dog. Then in each subsequent engraving Nero is seen as a man beating a horse, becoming a thief, seducing an innocent woman, and finally committing murder. In the final engraving Nero is hung and then his body is taken down and dissected and mutilated by surgeons in the anatomical theater.

Published in 1551 they were issued by Hogarth as a warning against immoral behavior.

For me they made left an indelible impression on my brain and psyche that I hold to this day. Cruelty to an animal is no different then cruelty to another human being. The act of cruelty is abhorrent regardless to the creature’ significance upon which the cruelty is perpetuated. Suffering is suffering and to cause any living creature to suffer deliberately is repugnant and in my worldview evil.

I am going to be writing about many varied issues and topics and I intend to offer both insightful analysis and put forth actual solutions that are both pragmatic and realistic.

I do not expect everyone, or even anyone to accept what I will be saying on faith but I do want to establish the foundation that underlies my positions and ultimately my beliefs on the subjects of which I will be writing.

I am not interested in some esoteric debate over whether animals feel pain and if so do they feel it like we do. That ship has sailed.

(Descartes assertion that animals were mere machines (though splendid ones) and their cries of distress when being tortured were equivalent to the sounds of machines improperly functioning, was absolutely ludicrous when he stated it and is ludicrous now).

Animals feel, hurt, fear, and suffer as deeply and poignantly as humans do and in some case perhaps more so. The best example I ever heard that absolutely illustrated the absurdity of any educated individual trying to desperately hold to some notion that animals do not feel pain, went as follows.

If you light a match and put the flame close to a philodendron the leaf may curl away from the stimulus of the heat. If you hold the same flame close to the fur or skin of a simple field mouse the animal will struggle to escape the heat. But, and this is the telling point, if you come back a day later and stand two feet away and light the match, the mouse upon seeing the flame will struggle to escape, the philodendron’s leaf will not react. Mice have the capacity of cognition, plants do not.

The subject of cruelty and its stages will be an important one as I address future issues on this blog.