The Creed of Kinship

Henry S. Salt

Publisher: Constable & Co., London; E. P. Dutton & Co., New York
Published: 1935
Length: 115

Summary

The Creed of Kinship is synthesis of Henry Salt’s whole creed as a rebel and reformer, which might be expressed as the gospel of kinship. It is at once a challenge to existing conventional standards, and a defence of heterodox belief. He feels that no partial or one-sided attack upon cruelty, ignorance and superstition is sufficient, but that the true reformer must attack on all sides and harmonise his beliefs into a coherent whole.

Brief, clear overview of humanitarian, based on kinship view of evolved life forms, with consideration of war, poverty, women’s rights, prison reform, theory of punishment, flogging, animal rights, experiments on animals, vegetarianism, hunting, fishing. Shows Salt’s humanitarian vitally concerned with both humans and animals, human rights and animal rights. This vital, wise and courageous book should prove of great interest at the present time, when men’s thoughts are turned towards the criticism of existing institutions.

The book, in fact, is a statement in new form, of the principles of the Humanitarian League. In its last chapter, “One Who Understands,” a personal example is given, from the poet Shelley, of how the faith and conscience of a future age may be partly anticipated.

The dust jacket of the Constable edition features Albrecht Dürer’s famous Young Hare from 1502.

Content

Preface
Kinship a Reality
Between Man and Man
Sex Questions
How Crime Will Cease
Between Nation and Nation
When Wars Will Cease
Two Similar Pastimes
Between Human and Sub-Human
Sacerdotalist and Scientist
Man’s Mistake
The Sanctity of Life
Our Relations With Animals
A Free Religion
The Sentimentalists
Sensibility
Civilisation: A Phase
One Who Understood
Index

What the Critics Said

“With a persuasive simplicity fortified by irrefragable logic, Mr. Salt, the octogenarian founder of the Humanitarian Society, expounds his views on social injustice, the treatment of criminals, war, vivisection, diet, and man’s relationship with the lower animals.”—John o’ London’s Weekly

“One of the kindliest men living, Henry S. Salt, put his philosophy on paper. In this quiet, wise book, his is a voice worth listening to.”—Daily Herald