Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes

Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes is an 1824 book by Lewis Gompertz, an early animal rights advocate and vegan. In the book, Gompertz lays out a moral framework for the treatment of and obligations towards humans and other animals, arguing against the consumption of meat, milk, eggs, silk and leather, denouncing vivisection and arguing for aiding animals suffering in the wild. Reception One contemporary reviewer called the structuring of the book "puzzling", yet felt that Gompertz laid out "excellent principles, as applied to all points of a public nature" and that the "tendency of most of the author's proposals and observations is humane and laudable"; they concluded that despite certain faults in the book's judgements, that it deserved the "attention of magistrates and men in power". Legacy In 1839, the astronomer and naturalist T. Forster published a treatise addressed to Gompertz, titled Philozoia, or Moral Reflections on the actual condition of the Animal Kingdom, and the means of improving the same. Henry S. Salt included Gompertz's book in his bibliography of animal rights, within his 1892 work Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress.