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A Reasonable Plea for the Animal Creation
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A Reasonable Plea for the Animal Creation
A Reasonable Plea for the Animal Creation: Being a Reply to a Late Pamphlet, Intituled, A Dissertation on the Voluntary Eating of Blood, &c. is a 1746 treatise by English writer and architectural theorist Robert Morris. Written in response to a contemporaneous pamphlet defending the consumption of animal flesh, the work offers a sustained philosophical argument against meat-eating, grounded in natural law, moral reasoning, and a belief in the divinely ordained immutability of a plant-based diet.
Presented as a preface, a letter to General Foliot, and a series of nine letters addressed to a friend, the treatise systematically challenges scriptural and secular justifications for killing animals. It argues that humans have no natural right to destroy living beings and affirms the rational and moral status of animals. Though largely overlooked for more than two centuries, the work has been recognised by modern scholars as part of an eighteenth-century tradition of ethical vegetarian thought. It was republished in 2005 in the journal Organization & Environment with an introductory article by Carol J. Adams.
Robert Morris (1703–1754) was an English writer on architecture whose published works contributed significantly to eighteenth-century British architectural theory. Born in Twickenham, he produced several influential treatises, including Lectures on Architecture (1734–36), An Essay on Harmony (1739), and The Art of Architecture (1742), promoting site-specific design, geometric proportion, and the ideals of Palladianism. Though not widely read in his lifetime, his writings now form one of the most coherent contemporary commentaries on British architecture of the period. In addition to architectural texts, Morris anonymously authored poems, moral essays, and professional pamphlets, and worked as a surveyor on various projects.
In 1745, Robert Morris encountered a pamphlet titled A Dissertation on the Voluntary Eating of Blood, which addressed a topic he had long contemplated. Expecting the author to oppose both the consumption of blood and animal flesh, Morris was disappointed to find that the pamphlet defended meat-eating based on a post-Flood interpretation of Genesis. Morris, by contrast, believed that the original plant-based diet ordained in Genesis was eternally unchangeable. Motivated to respond, he began drafting a rebuttal by the end of that year, leading to the publication of A Reasonable Plea for the Animal Creation in 1746.
The treatise is divided into four parts: an introductory letter to General Foliot, a preface explaining the work's origins, a series of nine letters originally written to a friend between 1737 and 1738, and a concluding reply to A Dissertation on the Voluntary Eating of Blood. The central portion consists of Morris' recovered letters, which present a systematic argument against the consumption of animal flesh.
Morris maintains that eating animals is contrary to "the nature and reason of things", and asserts that the original human diet, as described in Genesis 1:29, was composed solely of plant-based foods and was made immutable by divine command. He disputes interpretations of scripture that claim a post-Flood licence to eat meat, and argues that no natural right exists to take animal life. He supports this by noting the absence of predatory anatomical features in humans and characterising practices such as butchery and cooking as artificial inventions rather than natural necessities.
Throughout the letters, Morris challenges common justifications for meat-eating, including appeals to animal predation, domestication, and health. He suggests that diseases in animals are the result of human-imposed confinement and unnatural feeding practices. Drawing on classical sources such as Pythagoras and Plutarch, he argues that animals possess reason and sensitivity, and appeals to the Golden Rule to advocate ethical restraint.
Morris deliberately avoids theological debates and instead grounds his argument in natural law and moral reasoning, referring to this as the "light of Nature". His letters explore broader themes of justice, property, sentience, and human exceptionalism within a cosmological framework that affirms the interrelatedness of all life.
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A Reasonable Plea for the Animal Creation
A Reasonable Plea for the Animal Creation: Being a Reply to a Late Pamphlet, Intituled, A Dissertation on the Voluntary Eating of Blood, &c. is a 1746 treatise by English writer and architectural theorist Robert Morris. Written in response to a contemporaneous pamphlet defending the consumption of animal flesh, the work offers a sustained philosophical argument against meat-eating, grounded in natural law, moral reasoning, and a belief in the divinely ordained immutability of a plant-based diet.
Presented as a preface, a letter to General Foliot, and a series of nine letters addressed to a friend, the treatise systematically challenges scriptural and secular justifications for killing animals. It argues that humans have no natural right to destroy living beings and affirms the rational and moral status of animals. Though largely overlooked for more than two centuries, the work has been recognised by modern scholars as part of an eighteenth-century tradition of ethical vegetarian thought. It was republished in 2005 in the journal Organization & Environment with an introductory article by Carol J. Adams.
Robert Morris (1703–1754) was an English writer on architecture whose published works contributed significantly to eighteenth-century British architectural theory. Born in Twickenham, he produced several influential treatises, including Lectures on Architecture (1734–36), An Essay on Harmony (1739), and The Art of Architecture (1742), promoting site-specific design, geometric proportion, and the ideals of Palladianism. Though not widely read in his lifetime, his writings now form one of the most coherent contemporary commentaries on British architecture of the period. In addition to architectural texts, Morris anonymously authored poems, moral essays, and professional pamphlets, and worked as a surveyor on various projects.
In 1745, Robert Morris encountered a pamphlet titled A Dissertation on the Voluntary Eating of Blood, which addressed a topic he had long contemplated. Expecting the author to oppose both the consumption of blood and animal flesh, Morris was disappointed to find that the pamphlet defended meat-eating based on a post-Flood interpretation of Genesis. Morris, by contrast, believed that the original plant-based diet ordained in Genesis was eternally unchangeable. Motivated to respond, he began drafting a rebuttal by the end of that year, leading to the publication of A Reasonable Plea for the Animal Creation in 1746.
The treatise is divided into four parts: an introductory letter to General Foliot, a preface explaining the work's origins, a series of nine letters originally written to a friend between 1737 and 1738, and a concluding reply to A Dissertation on the Voluntary Eating of Blood. The central portion consists of Morris' recovered letters, which present a systematic argument against the consumption of animal flesh.
Morris maintains that eating animals is contrary to "the nature and reason of things", and asserts that the original human diet, as described in Genesis 1:29, was composed solely of plant-based foods and was made immutable by divine command. He disputes interpretations of scripture that claim a post-Flood licence to eat meat, and argues that no natural right exists to take animal life. He supports this by noting the absence of predatory anatomical features in humans and characterising practices such as butchery and cooking as artificial inventions rather than natural necessities.
Throughout the letters, Morris challenges common justifications for meat-eating, including appeals to animal predation, domestication, and health. He suggests that diseases in animals are the result of human-imposed confinement and unnatural feeding practices. Drawing on classical sources such as Pythagoras and Plutarch, he argues that animals possess reason and sensitivity, and appeals to the Golden Rule to advocate ethical restraint.
Morris deliberately avoids theological debates and instead grounds his argument in natural law and moral reasoning, referring to this as the "light of Nature". His letters explore broader themes of justice, property, sentience, and human exceptionalism within a cosmological framework that affirms the interrelatedness of all life.
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