439
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_48
Chapter 48
The Mind of a Chicken
48.1 Bougeant and Hildrop
In 1739, Father Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant’s earlier referenced animal rights
treatise in English (Chap. 35) would, by its incandescent language and embellished
theories, serve to force him into a celebrated retreat: he had for his own safety to
evacuate Paris to the Pays de la Loire, a sub-prefecture of the South-Sarthe, where
he remained the rest of his life in heretical hideaway. Ovid had endured a similar
exile from Rome in 8 AD for his own alleged zoological/poetic heresies in the
Metamorphoses, although there may be additional reasons for his banishment by
Augustus. Bougeant’s book contained an analytical version of Ovid by positing not
only the normal intermingling of God and humans, humans and animals, but the
sheer apotheosis inherent to A Philosophical Amusement Upon the Language of
Beasts and Birds
1
—a most delicate, 66-page essay that illuminates an informed and
common-sense reality about every over creature sharing the earth with humans, to
their express dismay. He knew in his heart that the animal world, by any spiritual or
intellectual reckoning, must be perceived in an altogether different realm than their
terrible condition at the hands of man had allowed. Bougeant volunteered that they
exceeded us; our species was inferior to their great diversity and power of intellect
and soul. He invokes the word “amusement” only in so much as he felt compelled
to lessen the blow upon readers, as if to imply, that being said we should not be too
surprised or threatened. But what Bougeant actually had in mind was a re-stating of
principles that had been espoused by great saints and theologians for thousands of
years, but never in so terse and forceful a way.
Bougeant engenders a social contract with animals 23 years before Jean-Jacques
Rousseau would publish his own Social Contract. Both men would revitalize the
1 Written originally in French by Father Bougeant, a famous Jesuit; Now confined at La Fleche on
Account of his Work, Printed for T. Cooper, at the Globe in Paternoster Row, 1739. Price One
Shilling.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_48
Chapter 48
The Mind of a Chicken
48.1 Bougeant and Hildrop
In 1739, Father Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant’s earlier referenced animal rights
treatise in English (Chap. 35) would, by its incandescent language and embellished
theories, serve to force him into a celebrated retreat: he had for his own safety to
evacuate Paris to the Pays de la Loire, a sub-prefecture of the South-Sarthe, where
he remained the rest of his life in heretical hideaway. Ovid had endured a similar
exile from Rome in 8 AD for his own alleged zoological/poetic heresies in the
Metamorphoses, although there may be additional reasons for his banishment by
Augustus. Bougeant’s book contained an analytical version of Ovid by positing not
only the normal intermingling of God and humans, humans and animals, but the
sheer apotheosis inherent to A Philosophical Amusement Upon the Language of
Beasts and Birds
1
—a most delicate, 66-page essay that illuminates an informed and
common-sense reality about every over creature sharing the earth with humans, to
their express dismay. He knew in his heart that the animal world, by any spiritual or
intellectual reckoning, must be perceived in an altogether different realm than their
terrible condition at the hands of man had allowed. Bougeant volunteered that they
exceeded us; our species was inferior to their great diversity and power of intellect
and soul. He invokes the word “amusement” only in so much as he felt compelled
to lessen the blow upon readers, as if to imply, that being said we should not be too
surprised or threatened. But what Bougeant actually had in mind was a re-stating of
principles that had been espoused by great saints and theologians for thousands of
years, but never in so terse and forceful a way.
Bougeant engenders a social contract with animals 23 years before Jean-Jacques
Rousseau would publish his own Social Contract. Both men would revitalize the
1 Written originally in French by Father Bougeant, a famous Jesuit; Now confined at La Fleche on
Account of his Work, Printed for T. Cooper, at the Globe in Paternoster Row, 1739. Price One
Shilling.