{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_49949/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_49949","id":"gutenberg_49949","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49949","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Nutrition","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Vegetarianism"],"text":"------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n THE\n LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n UNIFORM WITH THE PRESENT VOLUME.\n\n\n =IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE=, or Fulness\n of Peace, Power, and Plenty. By RALPH\n WALDO TRINE. 105th Thousand. 3s. 6d. net.\n\n =WHAT ALL THE WORLD'S A-SEEKING.=\n By RALPH WALDO TRINE. 35th Thousand in\n England and America. 3s. 6d. net.\n\n =THE UNIVERSAL KINSHIP.= By J. HOWARD\n MOORE. Interpreting the kinship between\n man and the subhuman races, and showing\n there is a relationship\u2014physical, psychical,\n and ethical\u2014between all species of animals,\n whether they swim, fly, crawl, or walk.\n 4s. 6d. net.\n\n =MIND POWER.= By ALBERT B. OLSTON.\n Third English Edition. 4s. 6d. net.\n\n =One of the most striking books of the age.=\n\n =THE CONQUEST OF DEATH.= By HELEN\n WILMANS. 3s. 6d. net.\n\n =LIMITLESS MAN.= By HELEN WILMANS.\n 262 pp., 3s. 6d. net.\n\n =THE WILL TO BE WELL.= By CHARLES\n BRODIE PATTERSON. 3s. 6d. net.\n\n =DOMINION AND POWER.= Studies in\n Spiritual Science. By CHARLES BRODIE\n PATTERSON. 3s. 6d. net.\n\n =THE FOOD OF THE FUTURE.= A Summary\n of Arguments in Favour of a Non-Flesh Diet.\n By C. W. FORWARD. With Preface by\n ERNEST BELL. 1s. 6d. net.\n\n =THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM.= By\n HENRY S. SALT. 1s. 6d. net.\n\n * * * * *\n\n LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n THE\n LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM\n\n\n _ESSAYS AND DIALOGUES_\n\n\n BY\n HENRY S. SALT\n\n AUTHOR OF\n \"ANIMALS' RIGHTS, CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO SOCIAL PROGRESS\"\n\n _SECOND EDITION, REVISED_\n\n LONDON\n GEORGE BELL AND SONS\n YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET\n 1906\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n THE MORALIST AT THE SHAMBLES.\n\n\n Where slaughter'd beasts lie quivering, pile on pile,\n And bare-armed fleshers, bathed in bloody dew,\n Ply hard their ghastly trade, and hack and hew,\n And mock sweet Mercy's name, yet loathe the while\n The lot that chains them to this service vile,\n Their hands in hideous carnage to imbrue:\n Lo, there!\u2014the preacher of the Good and True,\n The Moral Man, with sanctimonious smile!\n \"Thrice happy beasts,\" he murmurs, \"'tis our love,\n Our thoughtful love that sends ye to the knife\n (Nay, doubt not, as ye welter in your gore!);\n For thus alone ye earned the boon of life,\n And thus alone the Moralist may prove\n His sympathetic soul\u2014by eating more.\"\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n PREFACE\n\n\nIn preparing this \"Logic of Vegetarianism\" for a new edition, I have\ncarefully re-read a sheaf of press opinions which greeted the first\nappearance of the book some seven years ago, with the hope of profiting\nby any adverse criticism which might point out arguments that I had\noverlooked. In this, however, I have been disappointed, for, apart from\na few such objections as that raised in all seriousness by the\n_Spectator_\u2014that I had not done justice to the great problem of what\nwould become of the Esquimaux\u2014the only definite complaint which I can\nfind is that the representatives of flesh-eating whom I have introduced\nin the dialogues are deliberately made to talk nonsense. \"It is easy,\"\nsaid one critic, \"to confute an opponent if you have the selection of\nthe arguments and the framing of the replies.\"\n\nI ought not, perhaps, to have expected that the assurance given in my\nintroductory chapter (p. 2) as to the authenticity of the\nanti-vegetarian pleadings would shield me from this charge; indeed, the\n_Vegetarian Messenger_, in a friendly review of the book, expressed\ndoubt as to the policy of using dialogue at all, because, as it\nremarked, \"the arguments against vegetarianism are often so silly that\nit looks as if the author had set up a man of straw in order to demolish\nhim.\" Yet, as the _Messenger_ itself added, \"there is not an argument\nagainst vegetarianism quoted in this volume which we have not, time\nafter time, seen seriously brought forward by our opponents.\" Surely it\nwould be a strange thing if food reformers had to avoid any terse\npresentment of their adversaries' reasoning for the very fact of its\nimbecility!\n\nAnd there is this further question. If I have failed to include in my\nselection the effective arguments against vegetarianism, where and what\nare they? Looking through those cited in the press notices, I can\ndiscover none that seem to be formidable; but rather than again be\nsuspected of unfair suppression, let me frankly quote the following\nspecimens of the beef-eater's philosophy:\n\n \"The proof that man should eat meat is that he always has done\n so, does now, and always will.\"\n\nAnd again:\n\n \"Nobody will want to make out that he (the advocate of\n vegetarianism) is wrong, but folk will just go on suiting\n themselves as before. Shelley and Thoreau, Wagner and Edward\n FitzGerald, were vegetarians, but, then, Wellington and\n Gladstone partook of the roast beef of Old England, and were\n none the worse.\"\n\nThere is a sublime simplicity about these statements which is most\nimpressive, but I cannot think that any wrong is done to the case\nagainst vegetarianism by not including them in a discussion which\npurports to be a logical one.\n\n H. S. S.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n CONTENTS\n\n\n PAGE\n\n PREFACE v\n\n INTRODUCTORY 1\n\n WHY \"VEGETARIAN\"? 4\n\n THE _RAISON D'\u00caTRE_ OF VEGETARIANISM 9\n\n THE PAST AND PRESENT OF VEGETARIANISM 13\n\n STRUCTURAL EVIDENCE 18\n\n THE APPEAL TO NATURE 24\n\n THE HUMANITARIAN ARGUMENT 29\n\n PALLIATIONS AND SOPHISTRIES 35\n\n THE CONSISTENCY TRICK 41\n\n THE DEGRADATION OF THE BUTCHER 47\n\n THE \u00c6STHETIC ARGUMENT 51\n\n THE HYGIENIC ARGUMENT 57\n\n DIGESTION 62\n\n CONDITIONS OF CLIMATE 67\n\n FLESH MEAT AND MORALS 71\n\n THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT 77\n\n DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES 83\n\n BIBLE AND BEEF 89\n\n THE FLESH-EATER'S KITH AND KIN 95\n\n VEGETARIANISM AS RELATED TO OTHER 101\n REFORMS\n\n CONCLUSION 109\n\n INDEX 115\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n THE\n LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM\n\n\n\n\n INTRODUCTORY\n\n\nIt is the special purpose of this book to set forth in a clear and\nrational manner the logic of vegetarianism. To the ethical, the\nscientific, and the economic aspects of the system much attention has\nalready been given by well-accredited writers, but there has not as yet\nbeen any organised effort to present the _logical_ view\u2014that is, the\ndialectical scope of the arguments, offensive and defensive, on which\nthe case for vegetarianism is founded. I am aware that mere logic is not\nin itself a matter of first-rate importance, and that a great humane\nprincipal, based on true natural instinct, will in the long-run have\nfulfilment, whatever wordy battles may rage around it for a time;\nnevertheless, there is no better method of hastening that result than to\nset the issues before the public in a plain and unmistakable light. I\nwish, therefore, in this work, to show what vegetarianism is, and (a\nscarcely less essential point) what vegetarianism is _not_.\n\nFor though, owing to the propaganda carried on for the last fifty years,\nthere has been an increasing talk of vegetarianism, and a considerable\ndiscussion of its doctrines, there are still very numerous\nmisunderstandings of its real aims and meaning. In this, as in other\nphases of the great progressive movement of which vegetarianism is a\npart, to give expression to a new idea is to excite a host of blind and\nangry prejudices. The champions of the old are too disdainful to take\ncounsel with the champions of the new; hence they commonly attribute to\nthem designs quite different from those which they really entertain, and\nunconsciously set up a straw man for the pleasure of pummelling him with\ncriticism. Devoid always of a sense of sympathy, and mostly of a sense\nof humour, they absurdly exaggerate the least vital points in their\nadversaries' reasoning, while they often fail to note what is the very\ncore of the controversy. It is therefore of great concern to\nvegetarianism that its case should be so stated as to preclude all\npossibility of doubt as to the real issues involved. If agreement is\nbeyond our reach, let us at least ascertain the precise point of our\ndisagreement.\n\nWith a view to this result, it will be convenient to have recourse now\nand then to the form of dialogue, so as to bring into sharper contrast\nthe _pros_ and _cons_ of the argument. Nor will these conversations be\naltogether imaginary, for, to avoid any suspicion of burlesquing the\ncounter-case of our opponents by a fanciful presentment, I shall\nintroduce only such objections to vegetarianism as have actually been\ninsisted on\u2014the stock-objections, in fact, which crop up again and again\nin all colloquies on food reform\u2014with sometimes the very words of the\nflesh-eating disputant. It is not my fault if some of these objections\nappear to be foolish. I have often marvelled at the reckless way in\nwhich those who would combat new and unfamiliar notions step forth to\nthe encounter, unprovided with intellectual safeguards, and trusting\nwholly to certain ancient generic fallacies, which, if we may judge from\ntheir appearance in all ages and climates, are indigenous in the human\nmind. Many of the difficulties which the flesh-eater to-day propounds to\nthe vegetarian are the same, _mutatis mutandis_, as those which have at\nvarious times been cast in the teeth of the reformer by the apologists\nof every cruel and iniquitous custom, from slave-holding to the suttee.\n\nTo show the unreality of these sophisms, by clearing away the\nmisconceptions upon which they rest, and to state the creed of\nvegetarianism as preached and practised by its friends rather than as\nmisapprehended by its foes\u2014such is the object of this work. To make\n\"conversions,\" in the ordinary sense, is not my concern. What we have to\ndo is to discover who are flesh-eaters by ingrained conviction, and who\nby thoughtlessness and ignorance, and to bring over to our side from the\nlatter class those who are naturally allied to us, though by accident\nranged in opposition. And this, once more, can only be done by making\nthe issues unmistakable.\n\nIncidentally, I hope these pages may suggest to our antagonists that\nvegetarians, perhaps, are not the weak brainless sentimentalists that\nthey are so often depicted. It is, to say the least of it, entertaining\nwhen a critic who has just been inquiring (for example) \"what would\nbecome of the animals\" if mankind were to desist from eating them, goes\non to remark of vegetarians that \"their hearts are better than their\nheads.\" Alas, we cannot truthfully return the compliment by saying of\nsuch a philosopher that his head is better than his heart! It cannot be\ntoo strongly stated that the appeal of vegetarianism, as of all humane\nsystems, is not to heart alone, nor to brain alone, but to brain and\nheart combined, and that if its claims fail to win this double judgment\nthey are necessarily void and invalid. The test of logic, no less than\nthe test of feeling, is deliberately challenged by us; for it is only by\nthose who can think as well as feel, and feel as well as think, that the\ndiet question, or indeed any great social question, can ever be brought\nto its solution.\n\n\n\n\n WHY \"VEGETARIAN\"?\n\n\nThe term \"vegetarian,\" as applied to those who abstain from all flesh\nfood, but not necessarily from such animal products as eggs, milk, and\ncheese, appears to have come into existence over fifty years ago, at the\ntime of the founding of the Vegetarian Society in 1847. Until that date\nno special name had been appropriated for the reformed diet system,\nwhich was usually known as the \"Pythagorean\" or \"vegetable diet,\" as may\nbe seen by a reference to the writings of that period. Presumably, it\nwas felt that when the movement grew in volume, and was about to enter\non a new phase, with an organised propaganda, it was advisable to coin\nfor it an original and distinctive title. Whether, from this point of\nview, the name \"vegetarian\" was wisely or unwisely chosen is a question\non which there has been some difference of opinion among food reformers\nthemselves, and it is possible that adverse criticism would have been\nstill more strongly expressed but for the fact that no better title has\nbeen forthcoming.\n\nOn the whole, the name \"vegetarian\" seems to be fairly serviceable, its\ndisadvantage being that it gives occasion for sophistry on the part of\ncaptious opponents. In all controversies such as that of which\nvegetarianism is the subject there are verbalists who cannot see beyond\nthe outer shell of a word to the thing which the word signifies, and who\ndelight to chop logic and raise small obstacles, as thus:\n\n VERBALIST: Why \"vegetarian\"?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Why not \"vegetarian\"?\n\n VERBALIST: How can it be consistent with vegetarianism to\n consume, as you admit you do, milk, butter, cheese, and eggs,\n all of which are choice foods from the animal kingdom?\n\n VEGETARIAN: That entirely depends on what is meant by\n \"vegetarianism.\"\n\n VERBALIST: Well, surely its meaning is obvious\u2014a diet of\n vegetables only, with no particle of animal substance.\n\n VEGETARIAN: As a matter of fact, such is not, and has never\n been, its accepted meaning. The question was often debated in\n the early years of the Vegetarian Society, and it was always\n held that the use of eggs and milk was _not_ prohibited. \"To\n induce habits of abstinence from the flesh of animals (fish,\n flesh, fowl) as food\" was the avowed aim of vegetarianism, as\n officially stated on the title-page of its journal.\n\n VERBALIST: But the word \"vegetarian\"\u2014what other meaning can it\n have than that which I have attributed to it?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Presumably those who invented the word were the best\n judges of its meaning, and what they meant by it is proved\n beyond a doubt by the usage of the Society.\n\n VERBALIST: But had they a right thus to twist the word from its\n natural derivation?\n\n VEGETARIAN: If you appeal to etymology, that raises another\n question altogether, and here, too, you will find the\n authorities against you. No one has a better right to speak on\n this matter than Professor J. E. B. Mayor, the great Latin\n scholar, and he states that, looking at the word etymologically,\n \"vegetarian\" cannot mean \"an eater of vegetables.\" It is derived\n from _vegetus_, \"vigorous,\" and means, strictly interpreted,\n \"one who aims at vigour.\" Mind, I am not saying that the\n originators of the term \"vegetarian\" had this meaning in view,\n but merely that the etymological sense of the word does not\n favour your contention any more than the historical.\n\n VERBALIST: Well, what _does_ \"vegetarian\" mean, then? How do you\n explain it yourself?\n\n VEGETARIAN: A \"vegetarian\" is one who abstains from eating the\n flesh of animals, and whose food is _mainly_ derived from the\n vegetable kingdom.\n\nThe above dialogue will show the absurdity and injustice of charging\nvegetarians, as the late Sir Henry Thompson did, with \"equivocal terms,\nevasion\u2014in short, untruthfulness,\" because they retain a title which was\noriginally invented for their case. The statement that vegetarians have\n_changed_ the meaning of their name, owing to inability to find adequate\nnourishment on purely vegetable diet, is founded on similar ignorance of\nthe facts. Here are two specimens of Sir Henry Thompson's inaccuracy. In\n1885 he wrote:\n\n \"It is high time that we should be spared the obscure language,\n or rather the inaccurate statement, to which milk and egg\n consumers are committed, in assuming a title which has for\n centuries belonged to that not inconsiderable body of persons\n whose habits of life confer the right to use it.\"[1]\n\nFootnote 1:\n\n _Nineteenth Century_, May, 1885.\n\nObserve that Sir Henry Thompson was then under the impression that the\nname \"vegetarian\" (invented in 1847) was \"centuries\" old! Nor, names\napart, was he any more accurate as regards the practice itself, for it\ncan be proved on the authority of a long succession of writers, from the\ntime of Ovid to the time of Shelley, that the use of milk and its\nproducts has been from the first regarded as compatible with the\nPythagorean or \"vegetable\" diet. The fact that some individual\nabstainers from flesh have also abstained from all animal substances is\nno justification of the attempt to impose such stricter abstinence on\nall vegetarians on peril of being deprived of their name.\n\nThirteen years later Sir Henry Thompson's argument was entirely changed.\nHis assertion of the _antiquity_ of the name \"vegetarian\" was quietly\ndropped; in fact, its _novelty_ was now rather insisted on.\n\n \"They (the \"vegetarians\") emphatically state that they no longer\n rely for their diet on the produce of the vegetable kingdom,\n differing from those who originally adopted the name at a date\n by no means remote.\"[2]\n\nFootnote 2:\n\n _Ibid._, June, 1898.\n\nBut our critic was again absolutely mistaken. There is no\ndifference whatever between the diet of those who adopted the\nname at the date by no means remote and that of those who bear\nit now. Now, as then, there are some few vegetarians who abjure\nall that is of the animal, but the rule of the Society now, as\nthen, is that the use of eggs and milk is permissible. At the\nthird annual meeting, held in 1850, it was stated by one of the\nspeakers that \"the limits within which the dietary of the\nVegetarian Society was restricted excluded nothing but the flesh\nand blood of animals.\"\n\nTo avoid any possible misunderstanding, let me repeat that it is\nno part of the case for vegetarianism to defend the _name_\n\"vegetarian\" in itself; it may be a good name or a bad one. What\nwe defend is our right to the title, an indefeasible historical\nclaim which is not to be upset by any such unfounded and\nself-contradictory assertions as those quoted.\n\nBut it may be said that even if the title is historically\ngenuine, it would be better to change it, as it evidently leads\nto misunderstanding. We should be perfectly willing to do this,\nbut for two difficulties: first, that no other satisfactory\ntitle has ever been suggested, and secondly that, as the word\n\"vegetarian\" has now a recognised place in the language, it\nwould scarcely be possible to get rid of it; at any rate, the\nsubstitute, to have the least chance of success, would have to\nbe very terse, popular, and expressive. Take, for example, the\nname \"flesh-abstainer,\" or \"akreophagist,\" proposed by Sir Henry\nThompson. The obvious objection to such terms is that they are\nmerely _negative_, and give the notion that we are abstinents\nand nothing more. We do not at all object to the use of the term\n\"flesh-abstainer\" as explanatory of \"vegetarian,\" but we do\nobject to it as a substitute, for as such it would give undue\nprominence to our disuse of flesh food, which, after all, is\nmerely one particular result of a general habit of mind. Let us\nstate it in this way: Our view of life is such that flesh-eating\nis abhorrent and impossible to us; but the mere fact that this\nabstinence attracts the special attention of flesh-eaters, and\nbecomes the immediate subject of controversy, does not make it\nthe sum and substance of our creed. We hold that in a rational\nand humanised society there could be no question at all about\nsuch a practice as flesh-eating; the very idea of it would be\ninsufferable. Therefore we object to be labelled with a negative\nterm which only marks our divergence from other persons' diet;\nwe prefer something that is positive and indicative of our own.\nAnd until we find some more appropriate title, we intend to make\nthe best of what we have got.\n\nThe whole \"Why 'vegetarian'?\" argument is, in fact, a\ndisingenuous one. The practical issue between \"vegetarians\" and\nflesh-eaters has always been perfectly clear to those who wished\nto understand it, and the attempt made by the verbalists to\ndistract attention from the _thing_ in order to fasten it on the\n_name_ is nothing but sophistical. Of this main practical issue,\nand of the further distinction between the \"vegetarian\" or\nflesh-abstaining diet and the purely vegetable diet, I will\nspeak in the following chapter.\n\n\n\n\n THE _RAISON D'\u00caTRE_ OF VEGETARIANISM\n\n\nBehind the mere name of the reformed diet, whatever name be\nemployed (and, as we have seen, \"vegetarian\" at present holds\nthe field), lies the far more important reality. What is the\n_raison d'\u00eatre_, the real purport of vegetarianism? Certainly\nnot any _a priori_ assumption that all animal substances, as\nsuch, are unfit for human food; for though it is quite probable\nthat the movement will ultimately lead us to the disuse of\nanimal products, vegetarianism is not primarily based on any\nsuch hard-and-fast formula, but on the conviction, suggested in\nthe first place by instinctive feeling, but confirmed by reason\nand experience, that there are certain grave evils inseparable\nfrom the practice of flesh-eating. The aversion to flesh food is\nnot chemical, but moral, social, hygienic. Believing as we do\nthat the grosser forms of diet not only cause a vast amount of\nunnecessary suffering to the animals, but also react most\ninjuriously on the health and morals of mankind, we advocate\ntheir gradual discontinuance; and so long as this protest is\nsuccessfully launched, the mere name by which it is called is a\nmatter of minor concern. But here on this practical issue, as\nbefore on the nominal issue, we come into conflict with the\nsuperior person who, with a smile of supercilious compassion,\ncannot see _why_ we poor ascetics should thus afflict ourselves\nwithout cause.\n\n SUPERIOR PERSON: But why, my dear sir\u2014why should you\n refuse a slice of roast beef? What is the difference\n between roasting an ox and boiling an egg? In the latter\n case you are eating an animal in embryo\u2014that is all.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Do you not draw any distinction between the\n lower and the higher organisation?\n\n SUPERIOR PERSON: None whatever. They are chemically\n identical in substance.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Possibly; but we were talking, not of\n chemistry, but of morals, and an egg is certainly not\n morally identical with an ox.\n\n SUPERIOR PERSON: How or where does the moral phase of\n food-taking enter the science of dietetics?\n\n VEGETARIAN: At a good many points, I think. One of them\n is the question of cannibalism. Allow me to read you a\n passage from the \"Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica\": \"Man being\n by nature {?} carnivorous as well as frugivorous, and\n human flesh being not unfit for human food, the question\n arises why mankind generally have not only avoided it,\n but have looked with horror on exceptional individuals\n and races addicted to cannibalism. It is evident on\n consideration that both emotional and religious motives\n must have contributed to bring about this prevailing\n state of mind.\"\n\n SUPERIOR PERSON: Of course. Why read me all that?\n\n VEGETARIAN: To show you that what you call \"the moral\n phase of food-taking\" has undoubtedly affected our diet.\n The very thought of eating human flesh is revolting to\n you. Yet human flesh is chemically identical with animal\n flesh, and if it be true that to boil an egg is the same\n thing as to roast an ox, it follows that to butcher\n an ox is the same thing as to murder a man. Such is\n the logical position in which you have placed yourself\n by ignoring the fact that all life is not _equally_\n valuable, but that the higher the life the greater the\n responsibility incurred by those who destroy it.\n\nOr it may be that the superior person, instead of denying that\nmorals affect dietetics, himself poses as so austere a moralist\nas to scorn the wretched half-measure of merely abstaining from\nflesh food while still using animal products. The result is in\neither case the same. The all-or-nothing argument is sometimes\nput forward in this fashion:\n\n SUPERIOR PERSON: Well, as far as the right or wrong of\n the question is concerned, I would not care to be a\n vegetarian at all, unless I were a thorough one. What\n can be the good of forswearing animal food in one form\n if you take it in another?\n\n VEGETARIAN: But surely it is rational to deal with the\n worst abuses first. To insist on an all-or-nothing\n policy would be fatal to any reform whatsoever.\n Improvements never come in the mass, but always by\n instalment; and it is only reactionists who deny that\n half a loaf is better than no bread.\n\n SUPERIOR PERSON: But in this case I understand that\n it is quite possible to be consistent. There are\n individuals, are there not, who live upon a purely\n vegetable diet, without using milk or eggs? Now,\n those are the people whose action one can at least\n appreciate and respect.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Quite so. We fully admit that they are in\n advance of their fellows. We regard them as pioneers,\n who are now anticipating a future phase of our movement.\n\n SUPERIOR PERSON: You admit, then, that this extreme\n vegetarianism is the more ideal diet?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Yes. To do more than you have undertaken to\n do is a mark of signal merit; but no discredit attaches\n on that account to those who have done what they\n undertook. We hold that \"the first step,\" as Tolstoy has\n expressed it, is to clear one's self of all complicity\n in the horrible business of the slaughter-house.\n\n SUPERIOR PERSON: Well, I must repeat that, were I to\n practise any form of asceticism, I should incline to\n that which does not do things by halves.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Of course. That is invariably the sentiment\n of those who do not do things at all.\n\nAsceticism! such is the strange idea with which, in many minds,\nour principles are associated. It would be impossible to take a\nmore erroneous view of modern vegetarianism; and it is only\nthrough constitutional or deliberate blindness to the meaning of\nthe movement that such a misconception can arise. How can we\nconvey to our flesh-eating friends, in polite yet sufficiently\nforcible language, that their diet is an abomination to us, and\nthat our \"abstinence,\" far from being ascetic, is much more\nnearly allied to the joy that never palls? Is the farmer an\nascetic because, looking over into his evil-smelling pigsty, he\nhas no inclination to swill himself from the same trough as the\nswine? And why, then, should it be counted asceticism on our\npart to refuse, on precisely the same grounds, to eat the swine\nthemselves? No; our opponents must clearly recognise, if they\nwish to form any correct notion of vegetarianism, that it\nis based, not on asceticism, but \u00e6stheticism; not on the\nmortification, but the gratification of the higher pleasures.\n\nWe conclude, then, that the cause which vegetarians have at\nheart is the outcome, not of some barren academic formula, but\nof a practical reasoned conviction that flesh food, especially\nbutchers' meat, is a harmful and barbarous diet. Into the\ndetails of this belief we need not at present enter; it has been\nsufficient here to show that such belief exists, and that the\ngood people who can see in vegetarianism nothing but a whimsical\n\"fad\" have altogether failed to grasp its true purport and\nsignificance. The _raison d'\u00eatre_ of vegetarianism is the\ngrowing sense that flesh-eating is a cruel, disgusting,\nunwholesome, and wasteful practice, and that it behoves humane\nand rational persons, disregarding the common cant about\n\"consistency\" and \"all-or-nothing,\" to reform their diet to what\nextent and with what speed they can.\n\n\n\n\n THE PAST AND PRESENT OF\n VEGETARIANISM\n\n\nBut, it may be said, before entering on a consideration of\nthis reformed diet, for which such great merits are claimed by\nits exponents, the practical man is justified in asking for\ncertain solid assurances, since busy people cannot be expected\nto give their time to speculations which, however beautiful in\nthemselves, may prove at the end to be in conflict with the\nhard facts of life. And the first of these questions is, What\nis the historic basis of vegetarianism? In what sense is it an\nold movement, and in what sense a new one? Has it a past which\nmay serve in some measure to explain its present and guarantee\nits future?\n\nSuch questions have been dealt with fully from time to time in\nvegetarian literature.[3] I can here do no more than epitomise\nthe answers. Vegetarianism, regarded simply as a practice and\nwithout relation to any principle, is of immemorial date; it\nwas, in fact, as physiology shows us, the original diet of\nmankind, while, as history shows us, it has always been the diet\nof the many, as flesh food has been the diet of the few, and\neven to this day it is the main support of the greater part of\nthe world's inhabitants. Numberless instances might be quoted in\nproof of these assertions; it is sufficient to refer to the\npeople of India, China, and Japan, the Egyptian fellah, the\nBedouin Arab, the peasantry of Russia and Turkey, the labourers\nand miners of Chili and other South American States; and, to\ncome nearer home, the great bulk of the country folk in Western\nEurope and Great Britain. The peasant, here and all the world\nover, has been, and still is, in the main a vegetarian, and must\nfor the most part continue so; and the fact that this diet has\nbeen the result, not of choice, but of necessity, does not\nlessen the significance of its perfect sufficiency to maintain\nthose who do the hard work of the world. Side by side with the\ntendency of the wealthier classes to indulge more and more in\nflesh food has been the undisputed admission that for the\nworkers such luxuries were unneeded.\n\nFootnote 3:\n\n As in \"The Perfect Way in Diet,\" by Dr. Anna Kingsford; and\n \"Strength and Diet,\" by the Hon. R. Russell.\n\nDuring the last half-century, however, as we all know, the\nunhealthy and crowded civilisation of great industrial centres\nhas produced among the urban populations of Europe a craving for\nflesh food, which has resulted in their being fed largely on\ncheap butchers' meat and offal; while there has grown up a\ncorresponding belief that we must look almost entirely to a\nflesh diet for bodily and mental vigour. It is in protest\nagainst this comparatively new demand for flesh as a necessity\nof life that vegetarianism, as a modern organised movement, has\narisen.\n\nSecondly, if we look back for examples of deliberate abstinence\nfrom flesh\u2014that is, of vegetarianism practised as a _principle_\nbefore it was denoted by a name\u2014we find no lack of them in the\nhistory of religious and moral systems and individual lives.\nSuch abstinence was an essential feature in the teaching of\nBuddha and Pythagoras and is still practised in the East on\nreligious and ceremonial grounds by Brahmins and Buddhists. It\nwas inculcated in the humanitarian writings of great \"pagan\"\nphilosophers, such as Plutarch and Porphyry, whose ethical\nprecepts, as far as the treatment of the lower animals is\nconcerned, are still far in advance of modern Christian\nsentiment. Again, in the prescribed regimen of certain religious\nOrders, such as Benedictines, Trappists, and Carthusians, we\nhave further unquestionable evidence of the disuse of flesh\nfood, though in such cases the reason for the abstinence is\nascetic rather than humane. When we turn to the biographies of\nindividuals, we learn that there have been numerous examples of\nwhat is now called \"vegetarianism\"\u2014not always consistent,\nindeed, or continuous in practice, yet sufficiently so to prove\nthe entire possibility of the diet, and to remove it from the\ncategory of generous aspiration into that of accomplished\nfact.[4]\n\nFootnote 4:\n\n See the list of names cited in Mr. Howard Williams's \"Ethics\n of Diet,\" a biographical history of the literature of humane\n dietetics from the earliest period to the present day.\n\nBut granting that there is historic basis for the vegetarian\nsystem, the question is asked whether, on ethnological evidence,\nit does not appear that the dominant races have been for the\nmost part carnivorous, and the subject races vegetarian\u2014a line\nof argument which always appeals strongly to the patriotic\nBriton.\n\n PATRIOT: Come, now; it is all very well to talk of\n philosophers and poets, and I have no doubt you can\n point to such names among the founders of your creed,\n but what I ask is, Were the founders of the British\n Empire vegetarians? Were any great empires ever founded\n by vegetarians? Was Julius C\u00e6sar a vegetarian? Was\n Wellington a vegetarian? Can you give me any instance of\n vegetarianism as a fighting force?\n\n VEGETARIAN: As regards the rank and file of conquering\n armies, there are many such instances, both in ancient\n and modern history. The diet of the Roman soldier was\n not that of a flesh-eater, and the Roman Empire was\n assuredly not won by virtue of flesh-eating, but by\n the hardihood which could subsist on simple rations of\n wheat, oil, and wine. So, too, the armies which built\n up the earlier empires of Egypt and Assyria were, for\n the most part, vegetarian. That is to say, while the\n rulers and wealthy classes of fighting nations have been\n carnivorous, the bulk of the soldiery, drawn from the\n frugal peasant class, has been unaccustomed to such\n luxuries. The idea that the flesh-eating races have\n everywhere subjugated the vegetarians is quite illusory.\n\n PATRIOT: But surely in India the flesh-eating Mohammedan\n has always conquered the vegetarian Hindu?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Not by any means always. It took him\n centuries of fierce fighting to do so, with all the\n advantages of religious fanaticism on his side, as\n against an enemy weakened by internal dissension and an\n enervating climate. But that Mohammedanism does not\n depend on flesh food for its fighting qualities may be\n seen from the case of that special ally and favourite of\n yours, the Turk. Let me read you what the _Standard_\n said of him some twenty years back: \"From the day of his\n irruption into Europe, the Turk has always proved\n himself to be endowed with singularly strong vitality\n and energy. As a member of a warlike race, he is without\n equal in Europe in health and hardiness. He can live and\n fight when soldiers of any other nationality would\n starve. His excellent physique, his simple habits, his\n abstinence from intoxicating liquors, and his normal\n vegetarian diet, enable him to support the greatest\n hardships, and to subsist on the scantiest and simplest\n food.\" Have I said enough to show you that vegetarianism\n _may_ be a fighting force?\n\nIt will be objected, perhaps, that when food reformers claim\nthese fighting qualities for their diet they are proving just a\nlittle too much for their principles, as, for example, in the\nreference to the sanguinary Turk as a practical vegetarian. If\nthe outcome of vegetarian diet is to be war and massacre, how is\nthe system any better than that which it fain would supersede?\nThis brings us back to the starting-point of the present\nchapter, the distinction between what may be called the old and\nthe new vegetarianism. We have seen that, so far as the\ncommon practice is concerned, abstinence from flesh food is\nas old as history itself, and that rarer instances may be\ncited of practice and principle combined; but when we regard\nvegetarianism as a propagandist movement, a conscious endeavour\nto benefit not merely the individual man, but human society\nitself, we have to recognise that it is a _new_ movement.\nFrom a mere habit of the many, or piety of the few, it has\nbecome a reasoned principle, an organised system, with a name\nand nomenclature of its own: in vulgar language, it is an\n-_ism_, and, like other kindred -_isms_, a part of the great\nhumanitarian impulse of the past hundred years.\n\nThe significance of this distinction is considerable. Modern\n\"vegetarianism\" is the same, yet not the same, as the \"flesh\nabstinence\" that dates from earlier times\u2014the same in so far as\nthe actual dietary is concerned, and in some fewer cases the\nsame in principle, but different altogether in the spirit by\nwhich that principle is informed; and for this reason it would\nbe ridiculous to judge vegetarianism as a whole by the character\nof those races who happen to have been abstainers from flesh,\nand who are merely quoted as proving the physical sufficiency of\nthe diet. In a word, ethnical vegetarianism and ethical\nvegetarianism are two very different things.\n\nIt has also to be remembered that the modern vegetarian\nappeals not to humane instinct only, but to physiological\nfacts, and that the movement has now become to a very large\nextent a scientific and hygienic one, thus again differing\nwidely from the merely empirical and unconscious vegetarianism\nof earlier times. These several aspects of the system will be\nreviewed in succeeding chapters; it is enough here to repeat\nthat vegetarianism as a practice is immemorial, as a precept\nis of great antiquity, but as an organised cult is one of the\nnew revolutionary forces of modern times.\n\n\n\n\n STRUCTURAL EVIDENCE\n\n\nWe have seen, then, that vegetarianism, though new as a\npropagandist doctrine, has its historical record; but if we wish\nthoroughly to understand its origin, we must go back beyond\nhistory to the more ancient and more durable evidence of the\norganic structure of Man. Here we come in conflict with what is,\nperhaps, the strangest of the many strange prejudices that\noppose the humane diet\u2014the superstition, so common among the\nuneducated, and connived at, if not shared, by some of the\n\"scientific\" themselves, that the verdict of comparative anatomy\nis fatal to the vegetarian claims. So far is this from being the\ncase that the great naturalists, from Linn\u00e6us onward, give\nimplicit judgment to the contrary, by classing mankind with the\nfrugivorous family of the anthropoid apes. Thus Sir Richard Owen\nsays:\n\n \"The apes and monkeys, which man most nearly resembles\n in his dentition, derive their staple food from fruits,\n grain, the kernels of nuts, and other forms in which the\n most sapid and nutritious tissues of the vegetable\n kingdom are elaborated; and the close resemblance\n between the quadrumanous and the human dentition shows\n that man was, from the beginning more especially adapted\n 'to eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.'\"[5]\n\nFootnote 5:\n\n \"Odontography,\" chap. x., p. 471, 1840-1845. This sentence is\n quoted only for what it is worth\u2014viz., as proving that, in\n Owen's opinion, man was originally frugivorous. If the whole\n passage in \"Odontography\" be studied, it will be seen that\n Owen cannot fairly be cited as a vegetarian authority,\n because, after alluding to the fact that the apes occasionally\n eat insects, eggs, and young birds, he sums up in favour of\n what he calls \"the frugivorous and mixed regimen of the\n quadrumana and man.\" This point I have dealt with later in the\n chapter.\n\nAnd here is the more recent verdict of Sir Benjamin Richardson:\n\n \"On the whole, I am bound to give judgment on the\n evidence of the teeth rather in favour of the vegetarian\n argument. It seems fairest of fair to read from nature\n that the teeth of man were destined\u2014or fitted, if the\n word destined is objected to\u2014for a plant or vegetable\n diet, and that the modification due to animal food,\n by which some change has been made, is practically an\n accident or necessity, which would soon be rectified if\n the conditions were rendered favourable to a return\n to the primitive state.... By weighing the facts that\n now lie before us, the inference is justified that, in\n spite of the very long time during which man has been\n subjected to an animal diet, he retains in preponderance\n his original and natural taste for an innocent diet\n derived from the first-fruits of the earth.\"[6]\n\nFootnote 6:\n\n \"Foods for Man,\" _Longman's Magazine_, 1888.\n\nYet, in spite of such testimony, and more of an equally\nauthoritative kind, it is quite a common thing for some\nflesh-eating \"scientist\" to allege against vegetarianism the\nconformation of the human teeth or stomach.\n\n SCIENTIST: But our teeth, my good friend, our teeth!\n What can be the use of your talking about vegetarianism,\n when we both of us carry in our mouths a proof of the\n necessity of flesh-eating.\n\n VEGETARIAN: But surely you do not hold the popular\n fallacy that man's canine teeth class him among the\n carnivora?\n\n SCIENTIST: They prove at least that he is an eater of\n flesh as well as of vegetables. Why else has he got such\n teeth?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Why has a gorilla got such teeth? \"For the\n purpose of combat and defence,\" Owen tells us, not of\n food. And if a gorilla, with \"canines\" much more\n developed than man's, is a frugivorous animal, why must\n man with less developed \"canines\" be carnivorous?\n\n SCIENTIST: Well, well; let us turn to the digestive\n organs, then. Look at the immense difference between the\n human stomach and that of the true herbivora. How can\n mankind get the required nutriment from herbs, when we\n have not the necessary apparatus for doing so?\n\n VEGETARIAN: But it has never been argued by us, nor is\n it in any way essential to our argument, that mankind is\n _herbivorous_. What have the herbivora to do with the\n question?\n\n SCIENTIST: I have seen them quoted in your books as\n instances of strength and endurance\u2014\u2014\n\n VEGETARIAN: To dispel the illusion that there is no\n chemical nutriment in anything but flesh food; but that\n is quite a different thing from asserting that man is\n himself herbivorous. The point at issue is simple. You\n charge vegetarians with flying in the face of Nature. We\n show you, from your own authorities, that the structural\n evidence, whatever that may be worth (it was you who\n first appealed to it), pronounces man to have been\n originally neither carnivorous, nor herbivorous, but\n _frugivorous_. If you think otherwise, what do you make\n of the apes?\n\nThe close similarity that exists between the structure of man\nand that of the anthropoid apes is the hard fact that cannot be\nevaded by the apologists of flesh-eating. In the conformation\nalike of brain, of hands, of teeth, of salivary glands, of\nstomach, we have indisputable proof of the frugivorous origin of\nman\u2014indeed, it is not seriously questioned by any recognised\nauthority, that man was a fruit-eater in the early stages of his\ndevelopment. As far as comparative anatomy throws light on the\ndiet question, mankind and the apes are, so to speak, \"in the\nsame box,\" and he who would disprove the frugivorous nature of\nman, must also disprove the frugivorous nature of the anthropoid\napes, a predicament of which the more intelligent of our\nopponents are keenly aware. And this brings us to the second\nbranch of the subject of this chapter.\n\nWhatever his original structure, it is argued, man has extended his\nresources in the matter of food, and has long been \"omnivorous,\" while\nhis middle position between the carnivora and herbivora indicates that\nhe is naturally suited for a \"mixed diet.\" _Omnivorous_, it will be\nnoted, is the blessed word that is to bring comfort to flesh-eaters,\nand the inconvenient apes, whom the naturalists class as frugivorous,\nhave somehow to be dragged in under the category of \"omnivorous.\" But,\nfirst, a word about the meaning of this saving term.\n\nNow, I wish to make it plain that vegetarians are not wedded to\nany _a priori_ theory that the lines of dietetic development are\nstringently limited by the original structure of man. If the\nflesh-eater appeals, as he so often does, to physical structure,\nwith the intent of attributing carnivorous instincts to mankind,\nwe confront him with an array of scientific opinion which\nquickly makes him wish he had let the subject alone; and if he\ninsists on the \"evolutional\" rather than the \"natural\" aspect\nof the problem, we are equally ready to meet him on this\nnewer ground. But we decline to fall victims to the rather\ndisingenuous quibble that lurks in the specious application to\nmankind of the term \"omnivorous.\"\n\nFor what, in the present connection, does the word \"omnivorous\"\nmean? It cannot, obviously, mean that man should, like the\nhog, eat _everything_, for, if so, it would sanction not\nonly flesh-eating, but cannibalism, and we should have to\nclass mankind (so Professor Mayor has wittily remarked) as\n_hominivorous_! It must mean, presumably, that man is fitted to\neat not _everything_, but _anything_\u2014vegetable food or animal\nfood\u2014implying that he is eclectic in his diet, free to choose\nwhat is good and reject what is bad, without being bound by any\noriginal law of nature.[7] To the name \"omnivorous,\" used not\nin the hoggish sense, but in this rational sense, and not\nexcluding, as the scientists would absurdly make it exclude, the\nforce of _moral_ and other considerations, the vegetarian need\nraise no objection. Man is \"omnivorous,\" is he? He may select\nhis own diet from the vegetable and animal kingdoms? Well and\ngood: that is just what we have always advised him to do, and we\nare prepared to give reasons, moral and hygienic, why, in\nmaking the selection, he should omit the use, not of all\nanimal products, but of flesh. The scientists cannot have\nit _both_ ways. They cannot dogmatise on diet as a thing\nsettled by comparative anatomy, and _also_ assert that man is\n\"omnivorous\"\u2014_i.e._, free to choose what is best.\n\nFootnote 7:\n\n It has been well shown by Dr. J. Oldfield, in the _New Century\n Review_, October 1898, that \"omnivorism\" in the hoggish sense,\n is _not_ characteristic of progressive mankind. \"The higher we\n go in the scale of life, the more we find _selection_ taking\n the place of omnivorism. The more complex the organism, the\n greater its selective capacity. 'Selection,' then, rather than\n 'omnivorism,' should be the watch-cry of the human race\n evolving upward.\"\n\nBut let us return to our monkeys.\n\n SCIENTIST: You just now quoted the gorilla as a\n frugivorous animal, but, on further consideration, I\n cannot admit him to be so. He is omnivorous\u2014like man. I\n have Sir Richard Owen's authority for it.\n\n VEGETARIAN: What! Does the ape rush upon the antelopes,\n and rend them with those canine teeth of his? How\n horrible!\n\n SCIENTIST: Not exactly that; but it was stated by Sir\n Henry Thompson that \"Sally,\" the large chimpanzee once\n so popular in the Zoological Gardens, was not\n infrequently supplied with animal food.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Well, and how does that prove that the\n chimpanzee is not naturally frugivorous? I should\n imagine that any one of us, if placed in a cage, and\n stared at all the year round by a throng of gaping\n visitors, might be liable to aberrations. Even a\n vegetarian might do the same.\n\n SCIENTIST: But in their wild state also the baboons are\n known to prey on lizards, young birds, eggs, etc., when\n they can get them. Perhaps you were not aware of this\n when you called the apes frugivorous?\n\n VEGETARIAN: I was quite aware of it, and in view of the\n exceedingly small importance of these casual pilferings\n as compared with their staple diet, I maintain that they\n _are_, for all practical purposes, frugivorous. Indeed,\n so far from this mischievous penchant of the apes being\n an argument against vegetarianism, it is most suggestive\n as explaining how the early savages may have passed,\n almost by accident at first, from a frugivorous to a\n mixed diet.\n\n SCIENTIST: Well, at any rate, it indicates that apes\n have a tendency to become omnivorous.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Yes, if you like to express it so; and it\n is still more evident that men have that tendency. But\n the question is whether the tendency is rightly\n interpreted as giving a sanction to _flesh-eating_. For\n flesh-eating, as we use the term, means the breeding,\n destroying, and devouring of highly-organised mammals,\n and is a very different thing from the egg and lizard\n hunting in which the monkeys sometimes indulge. If you\n would confine your flesh-eating to a few insects and\n nestlings, you would have a better right to quote the\n example of the apes.\n\nHas flesh-eating been a necessary step in man's progress?\nWithout access to the flesh-pots, it has been asked, would not\nthe race have remained in the groves with the orangs and the\ngorillas? I do not see that vegetarians need concern themselves\nto answer such speculations, which, interesting though they are,\ndo not bear closely on the present issue. For though, as we have\nseen, the testimony of the past is in favour of a frugivorous\norigin, the problem of the present is one which we are free to\nsolve without prejudice, and whether the past use of flesh food,\nby a portion of the world's inhabitants, has helped or hindered\nthe true development of man is a matter for individual judgment.\nWe may have our own opinion about it. But what we are concerned\nto prove is that flesh-eating can offer no advantages to us\n_now_.\n\n\n\n\n THE APPEAL TO NATURE\n\n\nOf the many dense prejudices through which, as through a\nsnowdrift, vegetarianism has to plough its way before it can\nemerge into the field of free discussion, there is none perhaps\nmore inveterate than the common appeal to \"Nature.\" A typical\ninstance of the remarkable misuse of logic which characterises\nsuch argument may be seen in the anecdote related by Benjamin\nFranklin, in his \"Autobiography,\" of the incident which induced\nhim to return, after years of abstinence, to a flesh diet. He\nwas watching some companions sea-fishing, and observing that\nsome of the fish caught by them had swallowed other fish, he\nconcluded that, \"If you eat one another, I don't see why we may\nnot eat you\"\u2014a confusion of ichthyology and morals which is\nludicrous enough as narrated by Franklin, but not essentially\nmore foolish than the attempt so frequently made by flesh-eaters\nto shuffle their personal responsibility on to some supposed\n\"natural law.\"\n\nBut let the carnivorous anthropologist speak for himself:\n\n ANTHROPOLOGIST: Now, understand me! I think this\n vegetarianism is well enough as a sentiment; I fully\n appreciate your aspiration. But you have overlooked the\n fact that it is contrary to the laws of Nature. It is\n beautiful in theory, but impossible in practice.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Indeed! That puts me in an awkward position,\n as I have been practising it for twenty years.\n\n ANTHROPOLOGIST: It is not the individual that I am\n speaking of, but the race. A man may practise it\n perhaps; but mankind cannot do so with impunity.\n\n VEGETARIAN: And why?\n\n ANTHROPOLOGIST: Because, as the poet says, \"Nature is\n one with rapine.\" It is natural to kill. Do you dare to\n impugn Nature?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Not at all. What I dare to impugn is your\n incorrect description of Nature. There is a great deal\n more in Nature than rapine and slaughter.\n\n ANTHROPOLOGIST: What? Do not the beasts and birds prey\n on one another? Do not the big fish eat the little fish?\n Is it not all one universal struggle for existence, one\n internecine strife?\n\n VEGETARIAN: No; that is just what it is not. There are\n _two_ principles at work in Nature\u2014the law of\n competition and the law of mutual aid. There are\n carnivorous animals and non-carnivorous, predatory races\n and sociable races; and the vital question is\u2014to which\n does man belong? You obscure the issue by these vague\n and meaningless appeals to the \"laws of Nature,\" when,\n in the first place, you are quoting only part of\n Nature's ordinance, and, secondly, have not yourself the\n least intention of conforming even to that part.\n\n ANTHROPOLOGIST: I beg your pardon. In what do I not\n conform to Nature?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Well, are you in favour of cannibalism, let\n us say, or the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes?\n\n ANTHROPOLOGIST: Good gracious, my dear sir! I must\n entreat you\u2014\u2014\n\n VEGETARIAN: Exactly! You are horrified at the mere\n mention of such things. Yet these habits are as easily\n justified as flesh-eating, if you take \"Nature\" as your\n model, without specifying _whose_ nature? The nature of\n the conger and the dog-fish, or the nature of civilised\n man? Pray tell me _that_, Mr. Anthropologist, and then\n our conversation may not be wholly irrelevant.\n\nThe idea that the Darwinian doctrine of the \"struggle of life\"\njustifies any barbarous treatment of inferior races is ridiculed\nby so distinguished an authority as Prince Kropotkin, who points\nout that Darwin does _not_ teach this. \"He proves that there is\na struggle for existence in order to put a check on the\ninordinate increase of species. But this struggle is not to be\nunderstood in a crude and exclusive sense; there is a law of\ncompetition, but there is also\u2014what is still more important\u2014a\nlaw of mutual aid, and as soon as the scientist leaves his\nlaboratory, and comes out into the open woods and meadows, he\nsees the importance of this law. Only those animals who are\nmutually helpful are really fitted to survive; it is not the\nstrong, but the co-operative species that endure.\"[8] So, too,\nwith reference to the strange notion that a guide for human\nconduct may be deduced from some particular animal instinct,\ntaken at haphazard from its surroundings, a timely warning is\naddressed to such crude reasoners by Professor J. Arthur\nThomson: \"What we must protest against is that one-sided\ninterpretation, according to which individualistic competition\nis Nature's sole method of progress.... The precise nature\nof the means employed and ends attained must be carefully\nconsidered, when we seek from the records of animal evolution\nsupport or justification for human conduct.\"[9]\n\nFootnote 8:\n\n _Humane Science Lectures_: Summary of address given by Prince\n Kropotkin at Essex Hall, November 17, 1896.\n\nFootnote 9:\n\n \"Study of Animal Life.\"\n\nIt may be said, however, that though man is fitted to co-operate\npeacefully with his fellows, he is not bound by any such ties of\nbrotherhood to the lower animals, and that it is \"natural\" that\nhe should prey on the non-human races, even if it be not natural\nthat he should seek pleasure at the cost of his fellow-man. But,\nin reality, Nature knows no such bridgeless gulf between the\nhuman and the non-human intelligence; and it is impossible, in\nthe light of modern science, to draw any such absolute line of\ndemarcation between man and \"the animals\" as in the now\ndiscredited theory of Descartes. We are learning to get rid of\nthese \"anthropocentric\" delusions, which, as has been pointed\nout by Mr. E. P. Evans, \"treat man as a being essentially\ndifferent and inseparably set apart from all other sentient\ncreatures, to which he is bound by no ties of mental affinity or\nmoral obligation\"; whereas, in fact, \"man is as truly a part and\nproduct of Nature as any other animal, and this attempt to set\nhim up as an isolated point outside of it is philosophically\nfalse and morally pernicious.\"[10]\n\nFootnote 10:\n\n \"Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology.\"\n\nThe talk, then, about Nature being \"one with rapine\" is a mere\nform of special pleading, which will not stand examination in\nthe full light of fact. If man is determined to play the part of\ntiger among his less powerful fellow-beings, he will have to go\nelsewhere than to Nature to obtain a warrant for his deeds, for\nas far as the indications of Nature carry weight, they suggest\nthat man, by his physical structure and his compassionate\ninstincts, belongs unmistakably to the sociable, and not the\npredatory tribes; and that by constituting himself a \"beast of\nprey\" on a vast artificial scale, he is doing the greatest\npossible wrong to nature (_i.e._, to _his own_ nature) instead\nof conforming to it. Our innate horror of bloodshed\u2014a horror\nwhich only long custom can deaden, and which, in spite of past\ncenturies of violence, is so powerful at the present time\u2014is\nproof that we are not naturally adapted for a sanguinary diet;\nand, as has often been pointed out, it is only by delegating to\nothers the detested work of slaughter, and by employing\ncookery to conceal the uncongenial truth, that thoughtful\npersons can tolerate the practice of flesh-eating. If Nature\npointed us to such a diet, we should feel the same instinctive\nappetite for raw flesh as we now feel for ripe fruit, and a\nslaughter-house would be more delightful to us than an orchard.\nIt is not Nature, but custom, that is the guardian deity of the\nflesh-eater.\n\nBut we have not quite exhausted the appeal to Nature; we have\nstill to speak of the common objection to vegetarianism that \"it\nis necessary to take life.\"\n\n ANTHROPOLOGIST: I have a most important argument to put\n before you. Must you not face the fact that, in this\n imperfect world, it is necessary to take life? How can\n it be immoral to do what necessity imposes?\n\n VEGETARIAN: We do not say that it is immoral to\n \"take life,\" but that it is immoral to take life\n _unnecessarily_. It is not immoral, for instance, to\n destroy rats and mice, because it is necessary to do\n so. It _is_ immoral to kill animals for the table,\n because it is _not_ necessary to do so. Did you ever\n tread on a beetle?\n\n ANTHROPOLOGIST: Yes, by accident. I could not help it. I\n am a most humane man.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Of course. But supposing that you wished to\n murder someone, would you think yourself justified in\n doing so because you had trodden on beetles\u2014because, in\n fact, sometimes it is \"necessary to take life?\"\n\n ANTHROPOLOGIST: Certainly not. How can you suspect me of\n being so immoral? There is a great difference between\n taking the life of a beetle by accident and of a man by\n design. There are _degrees_ of responsibility, you know.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Ah! you have got your answer, then.\n\nHow is it, we wonder, that rational beings can commit themselves\nto such irrational arguments as this appeal to what is called\n\"Nature\" but is in reality only an isolated section of Nature,\nviewed apart from the rest? Let Benjamin Franklin himself supply\nthe answer. For in narrating that incident of the cod-fish to\nwhich I have alluded, he humorously hints that his philosophical\nconclusion, \"If you eat one another, I don't see why we may not\neat you,\" was not uninfluenced by the fact that he had been \"a\ngreat lover of fish\" in early life, and that the fish smelt\n\"admirably well\" as it came out of the frying-pan; and he sagely\nadds that one of the advantages to man of being a \"reasonable\ncreature\" is that he can find or make a \"reason\" for anything he\nhas a mind to do. Such is the logic of the flesh-eater, in which\nthe wish is father to the thought, and mixed thinking leads by a\nconvenient process to a mixed diet.\n\n\n\n\n THE HUMANITARIAN ARGUMENT\n\n\nIt will have been noted that the anti-vegetarian arguments which\nhave so far come under review have been mainly such as are based\non purely _materialistic_ grounds, as if the question were\nwholly one for doctors and scientists to decide; and it has been\nshown that, even thus, there is no sort of warrant for the\nsupercilious dismissal of vegetarianism as a theory condemned in\nadvance by some superior tribunal. But the question is not one\nfor the _ipse dixit_ of the specialist. It is also a moral\nquestion of very great moment, and this fact gives a new\nsignificance to such unwilling admissions as that made by the\n_British Medical Journal_, that \"man can obtain from vegetables\nthe nutriment necessary for his maintenance in health\"\u2014_i.e._,\nfrom vegetables only, much more, therefore, from a vegetable\ndiet with the addition of eggs and milk. The practicability of\nvegetarianism being thus fully granted, it is impossible to\npretend that moral considerations are not relevant to the\ncontroversy, and that in forming an opinion on the vexed problem\nof diet we should not give due weight to the promptings of\nhumaneness.\n\nPeople often talk as if the humanitarian plea were some fanciful\nexternal sentiment that has been illogically thrust into the\ndiscussion; whereas in truth it is one of the innermost facts of\nthe situation which no sophistry can escape. Our humane\ninstincts are unalterably implanted in us, and we cannot deny\nthem if we would; to be _human_ is to be _humane_. \"There is\nsomething in human nature,\" says an old writer,[11] \"resulting\nfrom our very make and constitution, which renders us obnoxious\nto the pains of others, causes us to sympathise with them,\nand almost comprehends us in their case. It is grievous to\nsee or hear (and almost to hear of) any man, or even any\nanimal whatever, in torture.\" And now that modern science has\ndemonstrated the close kinship that exists between human and\nnon-human, the greater is the repulsion that we feel at any\nwanton ill-usage of animals.\n\nFootnote 11:\n\n Wollaston, \"Religion of Nature,\" 1759.\n\nThis is now so generally admitted that the point in dispute\nis not so much the duty of humaneness, as some particular\napplication of that duty, as in the present case to the\nslaughter of animals for food. What have humane people to say to\nthe tremendous mass of animal suffering inflicted, in the\ninterests of the table, on highly-organised and sensitive\nanimals closely allied to mankind? By the unthinking, of course,\nthese sufferings, being invisible, are almost wholly overlooked,\nwhile the deadening power of habit prevents many kindly persons\nfrom exercising, where their daily \"beef\" and \"mutton\" are\nconcerned, the very sympathies which they so keenly manifest\nelsewhere; yet it can hardly be doubted that, if the veil of\ncustom could be lifted, and if a clear knowledge of what is\ninvolved in \"butchery\" could be brought home, with a sense of\npersonal responsibility, to everyone who eats flesh, the\nattitude of society towards the vegetarian movement would be\nvery different from what it is now. If it be true that \"hunger\nis the best sauce,\" it may also be said that the _bon vivant's_\nmost indispensable sauce is _ignorance_\u2014ignorance of the\nhorrible and revolting circumstances under which his juicy steak\nor dainty cutlet has been prepared.\n\n BON VIVANT: What is this? \"Vegetarian\" you call\n yourself?\n\n VEGETARIAN: And you? You are a _bon vivant_. You \"live\n well,\" I understand.\n\n BON VIVANT: Not ashamed of enjoying a good dinner, but\n not greedy, I hope.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Nor cruel, I suppose?\n\n BON VIVANT: Cruel! I subscribe regularly to the Society\n for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.\n\n VEGETARIAN: And _eat_ them.\n\n BON VIVANT: Why not? A speedy painless death is no\n cruelty, is it?\n\n VEGETARIAN: While you are finishing that choice beef\n steak, I will tell you something of the speedy painless\n death of steak-producing animals. It may serve as an aid\n to digestion, like a musical accompaniment.\n\n BON VIVANT: Oh, you won't spoil my digestion. Fire away!\n\n VEGETARIAN: Let us suppose, then, that our friend (on\n your plate there) hails from Ireland, and at one of\n the fair grounds, of which there are several thousand\n in that island paradise, he meets the first agent in\n his euthanasia\u2014the drover. \"On such occasions,\" says\n the Report of the late Departmental Committee on the\n Inland Transit of Cattle, \"animals already, perhaps,\n exhausted and foot-sore from a walk of many miles, stand\n for hours on the hard road, bewildered by the beating\n they receive and their unaccustomed surroundings.... It\n was repeatedly asserted by responsible witnesses that\n many of the drovers are brutally harsh.\" So ferocious is\n the treatment that in many cases, when the animals are\n slaughtered, the hide, as butchers testify, simply falls\n off the back, and is worthless even for use as leather.\n I hope your steak is nice and tender?\n\n BON VIVANT: But why are not the brutal drovers punished\n for it?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Perhaps because it is not for themselves\n that they are driving. Then there is the journey in the\n railway-trucks, and we learn on good authority (Report\n of the Liverpool S.P.C.A.) that \"the animals have\n frequently gone twenty to twenty-four hours without food\n at the time they are driven on the boats.\" As for the\n delights of the sea-transit, you have read, I suppose,\n of what happens in cattle-ships?\n\n BON VIVANT: Well, of course, in stormy weather there may\n be accidents\u2014\u2014\n\n VEGETARIAN: No, I am speaking of the ordinary scenes of\n the cattle traffic, and say nothing of the occasions\n (not so rare, either) when the boats come into port with\n blood pouring from their scuppers\u2014\u2014\n\n BON VIVANT: Thank you, thank you! that is enough!\n\n VEGETARIAN: We find it stated, in the Report of the\n Committee of Inquiry into the Irish Cattle Transit, that\n \"the damage sustained by cattle is very serious, and\n that the principal portion of that damage is due to\n their treatment during shipment, while on shipboard, and\n on debarkation.\" On landing there is more thrashing and\n tail-twisting, another railway journey, and then\u2014the\n slaughterman. You have visited a slaughter-house, of\n course?\n\n BON VIVANT: No, really, I must protest\u2014\u2014\n\n VEGETARIAN: Ah, then it should interest you! The\n drover's task accomplished, the butcher's begins.\n Yard by yard and foot by foot, with chains fastened\n to his horns and sharp goads applied to his flanks,\n the struggling animal is dragged into the dark,\n blood-stained shed, where he is lucky indeed if he\n be killed by the first blow of the pole-axe\u2014\u2014\n\n BON VIVANT: Shameful! I do not believe you. It cannot\n be.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Then many well-known eye-witnesses must have\n strangely perjured themselves. Dr. Dembo, for example,\n says: \"Cases in which several blows are required are\n very frequent. On my first visit to the Deptford\n slaughtering yards I found that the number of blows\n struck was five and more,\" and he goes on to describe a\n case which he saw in London, when _twelve minutes_\n elapsed before the animal\u2014\u2014\n\n BON VIVANT: Stop! I will hear no more.\n\n VEGETARIAN: You will hear no more\u2014but will you _eat_\n more? It is on _you_, not on the brutal drover or\n slaughterman, that the responsibility falls. For this is\n the \"speedy and painless\" way in which animals must be\n slaughtered that _you_ may live well.\n\n\"I will hear no more.\" That, said or implied, is the most common\nand the most insuperable argument by which the vegetarian is\nconfronted. It is the one great stronghold of flesh-eating which\nremains from age to age impregnable. For how can even truth\nconvince the deaf and the blind? The horrors of the journey by\nsea and journey by rail, of the savage drover's goad and the\nclumsy butcher's pole-axe\u2014if the ordinary man and woman,\nunimaginative and unfeeling though they are, could see or\neven hear of these things, the end of the controversy would\nbe nearer. By the few flesh-eaters who have made inquiry,\naccidental or conscientious, into the facts of the cattle\ntraffic and butchering trade, it is not denied that fearful\ncruelties are committed. Thus the _Meat Trades Journal_, which\nis not a sentimental paper, remarks of the sea and land transit,\nthat \"our cattle, sheep, and pigs are carried by sea and rail\nwith the minimum care and maximum cost; they are bundled and\nshunted about as if they were iron.\"[12] Again, Dr. T. P. Smith,\nwriting in opposition to vegetarianism, allows that the\nindictment of the slaughter-house \"hits a grievous blot on our\nmuch-vaunted civilization.\"[13] There is a mass of printed\ntestimony to the same effect, which can be confirmed, as often\nas confirmation is needed, by a visit to the shambles. But that\nis a visit which the ordinary man will neither undertake himself\nnor hear of from the mouths of others.\n\nFootnote 12:\n\n December 29, 1898.\n\nFootnote 13:\n\n _Fortnightly Review_, November, 1895.\n\nMuch also might be said of certain special cruelties, such as\nthose involved in the supply of white veal or _p\u00e2t\u00e9 de foie\ngras_, and other so-called delicacies; but it is unnecessary to\ndwell on such refinements of torture, because it is the ordinary\nevery-day aspects of flesh-eating that are here under debate. It\nis a terrible fact that the very prevalence of the habit serves,\nmore than anything else, to conceal its full import; and thus a\nlarge number of people, who, in any other department of life,\nwould indignantly refuse to profit by the cruel usage of\nanimals, are (without knowing, or at least without recognising\nit) dependent for their daily food on the continued and\nsystematic infliction of sufferings which, in their magnitude\nand frequency, surpass all other cruelties whatsoever of which\nanimals are the victims.\n\nThese horrors, as I have said, are not realised by those who are\npersonally responsible for them. Or, rather, they are not\n_directly_ realised; for indirectly it is evident enough that\nthe more sensitive conscience of mankind is far from easy about\nthe morality of butchering, and would show still greater\nuneasiness but for the quieting assurance that flesh food is a\nstrict necessity of existence. This sense of compunction has\nfound at least partial expression in many non-vegetarian works,\nas, for example, in Michelet's \"Bible of Humanity.\" \"Life\u2014death!\nThe daily murder which feeding upon animals implies\u2014those hard\nand bitter problems sternly placed themselves before my mind.\nMiserable contradiction! Let us hope that there may be another\nglobe in which the base, the cruel fatalities of this one may be\nspared to us!\"\n\nNow, in view of these facts and these feelings, we have a right\nto press the advocates of flesh-eating for some more explicit\nand coherent statement than they have hitherto accorded us of\ntheir attitude towards the ethics of the diet question. If, as\nthe scientists themselves admit, there is no such \"cruel\nfatality\" as that which Michelet pictured, and if flesh-eating\nis not to be regarded as necessary, but only as expedient, then\nit is in the highest degree unreasonable to rule out _humane_\nconsiderations from their due share in the settlement of this\nmany-sided problem. The _British Medical Journal_ has said that\n\"there is not a shadow of doubt that the use of animals for food\ninvolves a vast amount of pain.\" The same paper has said that\n\"man can obtain from vegetables the nutriment necessary for his\nmaintenance in health.\" Can it be doubted, that if the average\nEnglishman were made aware of these two facts, he would at least\nthink vegetarianism worthy of a serious trial? To ask, as a\nsuperior person of science has asked (not merely in these\ndialogues, but in actual debate), \"How or where does the moral\nphase of food-taking enter the science of dietetics?\" or to take\nrefuge in the common saying that \"one man's food is another\nman's poison,\" is simply irrelevant. For diet, like other social\nquestions, has its moral aspect, which claims no less and no\nmore than its due importance; and it is because the \"scientific\"\nantagonists of vegetarianism have overlooked this fact that\ntheir judgments have hitherto been so warped, illogical, and\nunscientific.\n\n\n\n\n PALLIATIONS AND SOPHISTRIES\n\n\nIt is instructive to note the desperate shifts and subterfuges to which\nour antagonists have recourse when they find themselves face to face\nwith the humanitarian impeachment of the slaughter-house. If one-half\nof the popular prejudices were true, it might be supposed that, in the\ndiscussion of so \"fanciful\" and \"Utopian\" a theory as vegetarianism\nit would be its supporters who would take refuge in metaphysical\nquibblings and sophistries, while its opponents would hold sternly\nto the hard facts of life. But no! for when butchery is the theme we\nfind the exact opposite to be the case, and it is the flesh-eaters,\nthose level-headed deriders of the sentimental, who suddenly became\nenamoured of the imaginary _what-might-be_ and the hypothetical\n_what-would-otherwise-have-been_, and are disposed to turn their\nattention to anything rather than to the unpalatable _what-is_.\n\nNow, when the apologists of any form of cruelty are reduced to the\nplea that it is \"no worse\" than some _other_ barbarous habit, the\npresumption is that they are in a very bad plight indeed. Yet we\nfrequently hear it said that the fate of animals slaughtered for the\ntable is \"no worse\" than that of other animals\u2014those perhaps that are\nused for purposes of draught or burden\u2014a quite pointless comparison,\nbecause, even if the statement be true, the one act of injustice can\nobviously be no excuse for the other. Or it may be that the mortality\nof man himself, and his liability to disease and accident, are alleged\nin mysterious justification of his carnivorous habits, the suffering of\nthe animals being represented as brief and momentary in contrast with\nthe pathetic human death-bed\u2014an argument which reached its culminating\npoint in Mr. W. T. Stead's delightful assertion that of all kinds\nof death he would himself prefer \"the mode in which pigs are killed\nat Chicago,\" which mode, as he incautiously let out, he did _not_\ngo to see when he visited that city. I do not think we need further\ndiscuss such remarkable preference; it will be time enough to do so\nwhen we hear of Mr. Stead's lamented self-immolation in the Chicago\npig-shambles.\n\nBut it is said that domesticated animals owe a deep debt of\ngratitude to mankind (only to be repaid in the form of beef and\nmutton), because, by being brought within the peaceful fold of\ncivilisation, they have been spared all the harrowing fears and\nanxieties of their wild natural life. This, however, is a\nfallacy to which the great naturalists give no sort of sanction;\nfor it is obvious that, though the life of a wild animal is\nliable to more sudden perils than that of our tame \"livestock,\"\nit is not on that account a less happy one, but, on the\ncontrary, is spent throughout in a manner more conducive to the\nhighest health and happiness. Thus, Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace\nsays: \"The poet's picture of nature red in tooth and claw, is a\npicture the evil of which is read into it by our imagination,\nthe reality being made up of full and happy lives, usually\nterminated by the quickest and least painful of deaths.\" And Mr.\nW. H. Hudson: \"I take it that in the lower animals misery can\nresult from two causes only\u2014restraint and disease\u2014consequently,\nthat animals in a state of nature are not miserable. They are\nnot hindered or held back.... As to disease, it is so rare in\nwild animals, or in a large majority of cases so quickly proves\nfatal, that, compared with what we call disease in our own\nspecies, it is practically non-existent. The 'struggle for\nexistence,' in so far as animals in a state of nature are\nconcerned, is a metaphorical struggle; and the strife, short and\nsharp, which is so common in nature, is not misery, although it\nresults in pain, since it is pain that kills or is soon\nout-lived.\"\n\nLet us proceed, then, to the great sophistical paradox that it\nis better for the animals themselves to be bred and slaughtered\nthan not to be bred at all\u2014that most comfortable doctrine which\nof late years has been a veritable city of refuge, or grand old\numbrella, to the conscientious flesh-eater under stress of the\nvegetarian bombardment. Hither flock the members of the learned\nprofessions, academies, and ethical societies, and fortify their\nsouls anew with this subtle metaphysic of the larder.\n\n SOPHIST: Of all the arguments for vegetarianism, none,\n in my opinion, is so weak as the argument from humanity.\n The pig has a stronger interest than anyone in the\n demand for bacon.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Indeed? And is that the view the pig himself\n takes of it?\n\n SOPHIST: It is the view _I_ take of it, speaking in the\n interests of the pig. For where would the pig be if we\n did not eat pork? He would be non-existent; he would be\n no pig at all.\n\n VEGETARIAN: And would he be any the _worse_ for that?\n\n SOPHIST: Yes, for he would lose the joy of life. And not\n the pig alone, but all animals that are bred for human\n food. Their death is the little price they necessarily\n pay for the inestimable boon of existence.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Now, let me first point out to you that it\n is not only flesh-eating that would be justified by\n this argument. Vivisection, pigeon-shooting, slavery,\n cannibalism, any treatment whatsoever of animals or of\n mankind where they are specially bred for the purpose,\n might be similarly shown to be a kindness. Do you really\n mean that?\n\n SOPHIST: I assume, of course, that the life is a happy\n one, and the death as painless as possible.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Neither of which conditions is in reality\n fulfilled! For the wretched creatures that are bred\n and fed for the shambles have none of the true joys of\n life, but from the first are mere animated beef, pork,\n and mutton, while their death is nothing better than a\n prolonged and clumsy massacre.\n\n SOPHIST: But it need not be so. It is a mere question of\n police and proper supervision. It should be imperative\n on all those who confer life on animals to ensure\n absolute painlessness for the last moment.\n\n VEGETARIAN: It \"_should_ be\"! So it seems that this\n remarkable kindness of yours is, by your own showing,\n not an actual but a hypothetical benefit. The animals\n fulfil their part of the compact by being killed and\n eaten, and you _might_ fulfil your part by killing them\n painlessly\u2014only you _don't_! Are you serious in talking\n this stuff?\n\n SOPHIST: This \"stuff\"? Let me remind you, sir, that\n I have the authority of such eminent philosophers as\n Sir Henry Thompson, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Professor D.\n G. Ritchie, and Dr. Stanton Coit. Do you call their\n academical reasoning \"stuff\"?\n\n VEGETARIAN: What else can it be called? For, as a matter\n of fact, quite apart from the conditions, good or bad,\n under which the animals live and die, it is a pure\n fallacy to say that it is a _kindness_ to bring them\n into existence.\n\n SOPHIST: How so, if life is pleasant?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Because it is impossible to compare\n existence with non-existence. Existence may, or may not,\n be pleasant; but non-existence is neither pleasant nor\n unpleasant\u2014it is nothing at all. It cannot, therefore,\n be an _advantage_ to be born, though, when once you\n _are_ born, the good and the evil are comparable. The\n whole question is a post-natal, not a prenatal one; it\n begins at birth.\n\n SOPHIST: Well, but supposing you were an animal, would\n you not prefer\u2014\u2014\n\n VEGETARIAN: Oh, that is a very old question. You will\n find it all in Hansard. It was asked by Sir Herbert\n Maxwell when he defended the sport of pigeon-shooting in\n the Debates of 1883. \"He wanted to ask the hon. member\n whether, if he were a blue-rock, he would rather accept\n life under the condition of his life being a short and\n happy one, and violently terminated, or whether he would\n reject life at all upon such terms.\"\n\n SOPHIST: Hear, hear! That is just what I say.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Then you had better think over Mr. W. E.\n Forster's reply, which puts the case in a nut-shell. He\n said that Sir Herbert Maxwell \"made one very amusing\n appeal, by asking him [the member who introduced the\n Bill] to put himself in the position of a blue-rock. But\n this would be difficult, for the position was not a\n blue-rock in existence, but a blue-rock before it was\n born.\" Whereat the House laughed, and sophistry was for\n the moment disconcerted.\n\nBut for the moment only; for there have since sprung up many\nother professors of this metaphysic of the larder, though none\nof them, with the exception of Dr. Stanton Coit, have had the\nhardihood to expound their theory in detail\u2014a wise reticence,\nperhaps, when it is seen how Dr. Coit fared in his conscientious\nbut humourless essay on \"The Bringing of Sentient Beings into\nExistence.\"\n\n \"If the motive,\" he opined, \"that might produce the\n greatest number of the happiest cattle would be the\n eating of beef, then beef-eating, so far, must be\n commended. And while, heretofore, the motive has not\n been for the sake of cattle, it is conceivable that,\n if vegetarian convictions should spread much further,\n love for cattle would (if it be not psychologically\n incompatible) blend with the love of beef in the minds\n of the opponents of vegetarianism. With deeper insight,\n new and higher motives may replace or supplement old\n ones, and perpetuate but ennoble ancient practices.\"[14]\n\nFootnote 14:\n\n The _Ethical World_, May 7, 1898.\n\nThe \"Ox in a Tea-cup,\" be it observed, may henceforth become the\nemblem of the concentrated humanity of the ethical societies!\n\n \"But we frankly admit,\" continues Dr. Coit, \"that it\n is a question whether the love of cattle, intensified\n to the imaginative point of individual affection for\n each separate beast, would not destroy the pleasure\n of eating beef, and render this time-honoured custom\n psychologically impossible. _We surmise that bereaved\n affection at the death of a dear creature would destroy\n the flavour._\"[15]\n\nFootnote 15:\n\n _Ibid._\n\nWhat a picture is conjured up by the sentence I have italicised\u2014the\nbereaved moralist, knife and fork in hand, swayed in different\ndirections by the call of duty and the scruples of affection! And\nthen Dr. Coit goes on to express a fear that mankind, if they adopted\nvegetarianism, might become \"less powerful in thought\"! I respectfully\nsubmit that, in view of the arguments quoted, there is not the smallest\npossibility of _that_.\n\nThe plea that animals might be killed painlessly is a very\ncommon one with flesh-eaters, but it must be pointed out\nthat _what-might-be_ can afford no exemption from moral\nresponsibility for _what-is_. By all means let us reform the\nsystem of butchery as far as it can be reformed\u2014that is, by the\ntotal abolition of those foul dens of torture known as \"private\nslaughter-houses,\" and by the substitution of municipal\nabattoirs, equipped with the best modern appliances, and under\nefficient supervision; for there is no doubt that the sum of\nanimal suffering may thus be greatly lessened. There will be no\nopposition from the vegetarian side to such reform as this;\nindeed, it is in a large measure through the personal efforts of\nvegetarians that the subject has attracted attention, whereas\nthe very people who make this prospective improvement an excuse\nfor their present flesh diet are seldom observed to be doing\nanything practical to carry it into effect. But when all is said\nand done, it remains true that the reform of the slaughter-house\nis at best a palliative, a temporary measure which will\nmitigate, but cannot possibly amend, the horrors of butchery;\nfor it is but too evident that, under our complex civilisation,\nwhen the town is so far aloof from the country, and pastoralism\ncan only be carried on in districts remote from the busy crowded\ncentres, it is impossible to transport and slaughter vast\nnumbers of large and highly-sensitive animals in a really humane\nmanner. More barbarous, or less barbarous, such slaughtering may\nundoubtedly be, according to the methods employed, but the\n\"humane\" slaughtering, so much bepraised of the sophist, is an\nimpossibility in fact and a contradiction in terms.\n\n\n\n\n THE CONSISTENCY TRICK\n\n\nIt is certain, then, that the practice of flesh-eating involves\na vast amount of cruelty\u2014a fact which cannot be lessened or\nevaded by any quibbling subterfuges. But, before we pass on to\nanother phase of the food question, we must deal more fully with\nthat very common method of argument (alluded to in an earlier\nchapter) which may be called the Consistency Trick\u2014akin to that\nknown in common parlance as the _tu quoque_, or \"you're\nanother\"\u2014the device of setting up an arbitrary standard of\n\"consistency,\" and then demonstrating that the vegetarian\nhimself, judged by that standard, is as \"inconsistent\" as other\npersons. Whether we plead guilty or not guilty to this ingenious\nindictment depends altogether on the meaning assigned to the\nterm \"consistency.\"\n\nFor, as anyone who tries to do practical work in the world will rapidly\ndiscover, there is a true and there is a false ideal of consistency.\nTo pretend that in our complex modern society, where responsibilities\nare so closely interwoven, it is possible for any individual to\ncultivate \"a perfect character,\" and stand like a Sir Galahad above his\nfellows\u2014this is the false ideal of consistency which it is the first\nbusiness of a genuine reformer to put aside; for no human being can do\nany solid work without frequently convicting himself of inconsistencies\nwhen consistency is stereotyped into a formula. On the other hand,\nthere is a true duty of consistency, which regards the spirit rather\nthan the letter, and prompts us not to grasp foolishly at the ideal,\nlike a child crying for the moon, but to push steadily _towards_ the\nideal by a faithful adherence to the right line of reform, and by\never keeping in view the just proportion and relative value of all\nmoral actions. Let it be remembered that it is this latter consistency\nalone that has any interest for the vegetarian. His purpose is not to\nexhibit himself as a spotless Sir Galahad of food reformers, but to\ntake certain practical steps towards the humanising of our barbarous\ndiet system.\n\nHerein will be found the answer to a class of questions frequently\nput to vegetarians, as to how they find it \"consistent with their\nprinciples\" to use this or that form of food or animal substance. It\ndepends entirely on what their principles are. If their aspirations\nwere of the Sir Galahad order, some of the \"posers\" would indeed be\nformidable; but as they do _not_ aim at moral perfection, but merely\nat rational progress, the charge of inconsistency hurtles somewhat\nharmlessly over their heads. But here let the consistency man have his\nsay:\n\n CONSISTENCY MAN: But what I want to know is this\u2014how you\n can think it consistent to use milk and eggs?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Consistent with what?\n\n CONSISTENCY MAN: Why, with your own principles, of\n course.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Or do you mean with your idea of my\n principles? The two things are not always identical, you\n know.\n\n CONSISTENCY MAN: You condemn flesh-eating because of the\n suffering it causes, but it seems to have escaped your\n notice that the use of milk and eggs is also responsible\n for much. It is strange that it has never occurred to\n you\u2014\u2014\n\n VEGETARIAN: My good sir, it has occurred to us years\n and years ago. The question is as old as the movement\n itself. The cock-and-bull argument, I presume?\n\n CONSISTENCY MAN: I ask, what would become of the\n cockerels and bull-calves under a vegetarian _r\u00e9gime_?\n At present your supply of milk and eggs is easy enough,\n because the young males are killed and eaten by us\n carnivorous sinners. But are you not, to a certain\n extent, participators in the deed?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Yes, frankly, to a certain extent (a very\n limited extent) I think we are. We are content to get\n rid of the worst evils first.\n\n CONSISTENCY MAN: But is one sort of killing worse than\n another?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Immeasurably worse. Even if it were\n necessary under the vegetarian system, to destroy some\n of the calves at birth, as the superfluous young of\n domestic animals are now destroyed, it would be\n ridiculous to compare such restricted killing of\n new-born creatures with the present wholesale butchery\n of full-grown and highly-sentient animals in the\n slaughter-house.\n\n CONSISTENCY MAN: You say \"if\" it were necessary, but is\n there any doubt of it?\n\n VEGETARIAN: It is not by any means so certain as you\n suppose that the slaughter of calves would be\n unavoidable. Vegetarians use milk sparingly\u2014far more so\n than flesh-eaters\u2014and a limited amount of milk is\n obtainable without killing the calf. Nor is there any\n reason, as Professor Newman has pointed out, why a\n number of oxen should not be employed as formerly in\n working the land. But I do not wish to take refuge in\n future possibilities. I prefer to take the bull-calf\n argument \"by the horns,\" and admit that, under present\n conditions, we are indirectly responsible. Call it\n inconsistency, if you like. If it be inconsistency not\n to postpone the abolition of the greater cruelties until\n we also abolish the minor ones, we are willing to be\n called inconsistent.\n\nIt may be noted, in passing, that the zeal with which\nflesh-eaters urge this counter-charge of \"inconsistency\"\nis designed, unconsciously perhaps, to hide an important\nadmission\u2014viz., that where eggs and milk are used there\nis no necessity for butchers' meat, or, in other words,\nthat vegetarianism is a perfectly feasible diet. \"Eggs and\nmilk,\" says Dr. T. P. Smith, when objecting to their use by\nvegetarians, \"contain a much larger quantity of nutritive\nmaterial than an equal amount of meat, for which, therefore,\nthey may easily serve as substitutes.\"[16] If this be granted,\nthe rest is a mere battle of words.\n\nFootnote 16:\n\n _Fortnightly Review_, November, 1895.\n\nBut the cock-and-bull argument, with which may be linked the\nobjection to the use of leather, is only one of many departments\nof the consistency trick. Another favourite method of convicting\nvegetarians of inconsistency is to start from the false\nassumption that vegetarianism is the same thing as Brahminism,\nand that any destruction of even the lowliest forms of life is\ntherefore reprehensible. \"As for the argument based on the\ncruelty of slaughter-houses,\" says Mr. W. T. Stead, \"I don't see\nthat it bears upon the question, unless you take the extreme\nHindoo doctrine as to the wickedness of taking sentient life,\neven in the shape of lice and adders.\" That is to say, the\nterrible and quite unnecessary cruelties inflicted on the most\nhighly-organised and harmless animals in the cattle-ship and\nslaughter-house do not even \"bear upon\" the morality of diet,\nunless we also abstain from killing the most noxious and\nlowly-organised forms! Of the same nature is the foolish\n\"when-you-drink-a-glass-of-water\" fallacy, which argues that, as\nwe necessarily swallow minute organisms in drinking, we need\nhave no scruples as to the needless butchery of a cow or a\nsheep. The savages who in the good old times used to eat their\ngrandfathers and grandmothers might have justified their\ndietetic habits on precisely similar grounds.\n\nNor is it only insects and \"vermin\" on whose behalf the\nconsistency man is concerned, for plants also have life, and\ntherefore if the vegetarian holds that \"it is immoral to take\nlife\" (which he does _not_), he must be inconsistent in\neating vegetables. As an instance of a common but strange\nmisunderstanding of the vegetarian principle on this subject, I\nmust here quote a passage from the \"Science Jottings\" of Dr.\nAndrew Wilson. Note the triumphant tone of the unscientific\nscientist as he rushes to his absurd conclusion:\n\n \"I have not yet finished with the food faddist. Suppose\n I find a vegetarian who, more consistent than the run of\n his fellows, will not touch, taste, nor handle milk,\n eggs, cheese, or any animal product whatever. I think it\n is still possible to show him that he is infringing the\n code he lives by, in so far as its pretensions with the\n sacredness of life are concerned. Plants, no less than\n animals, are living things. Their tissues contain living\n protoplasm, which is the essential physical basis of\n life everywhere.... I am afraid that the consistent\n vegetarian must no longer kill a cabbage if he is to\n live up to the standard of morals he sets up as a kind\n of fetish in his diet regulations; and to lay low the\n lettuce, or pluck the apple from its bough, is really a\n direct infringement of the code which maintains that\n you have no right to kill any living thing for food.\n Really this is a monstrous doctrine when all is said and\n done.\"[17]\n\nFootnote 17:\n\n _Illustrated London News_, May 14, 1898.\n\nIt _is_ a monstrous doctrine; and what are we to think of a man\nof science who attributes such absurdities to vegetarians, and\nthereupon holds them up to public contempt as inconsistent, when\nby making inquiry he might at once have learnt that the blunder\nwas on his own side? Once more, then, be it stated that it\nis not the mere \"taking of life,\" but the taking of life\n_unnecessarily_ that the vegetarian deprecates, and that no\ncriticism of vegetarianism can be of any relevance if it ignores\nthe fact that all forms of life are not of equal value, but that\nthe higher the sensibility of the animal, and the closer his\naffinity to ourselves, the stronger his claim on our humaneness.\n\nBefore leaving this question of \"consistency,\" as affected by\nthe _gradations_ of our duty of humaneness to animals, a few\nwords may be said on the practice of fish-eating. It was\nhumorously suggested by Sir Henry Thompson, who, as I have\nproved in the second chapter of this work, wrote in complete\nignorance of the facts and dates of the vegetarian movement,\nthat, as vegetarians have \"added\" milk and eggs to their diet\nsince their society was founded (a statement quite devoid of\ntruth), they may perhaps still further enlarge their dietary so\nas to include fish. Here, again, Sir H. Thompson only showed his\nunfamiliarity with the subject, for his novel proposition was in\nfact an old one, which has been debated and rejected by the\nVegetarian Society in its adherence to its original rule of\nexcluding fish, flesh, and fowl, and nothing else, from its\ndietary. So far, then, as organised vegetarianism is concerned,\nthose who eat fish are not within the pale of membership;\nbut looked at from the purely _humane_ standpoint, it must\nbe admitted that there is an immense difference between\nflesh-eating and fish-eating, and that those unattached food\nreformers, not few in number, who for humane reasons abstain\nfrom flesh, but feel justified in eating fish, hold a perfectly\nintelligible position. And I would further note that the very\nfact of there having been some disposition, wise or unwise,\nwithin the vegetarian ranks to recognise the comparative\nharmlessness of fish-eating, corroborates what I have asserted\nthroughout\u2014that the _raison d'\u00eatre_ of vegetarianism has\nnot been a pedantic hard-and-fast crusade against \"animal\"\nsubstances, but a practical desire to abolish the horrors of the\nslaughter-house.\n\nThis, then, is our parting word to the professors of the\nConsistency Trick. If they had charged us with the _real_\ninconsistency\u2014that is, with sacrificing the spirit to the\nletter by overlooking graver cruelties while denouncing minor\nones\u2014we should have been fully prepared to meet so serious an\naccusation. But as they have not done this, but have merely\ntwitted us with not attempting everything at once, and with\nallowing the subordinate evil to wait until the central evil has\nbeen grappled with, we cheerfully admit the impeachment\u2014coming\nas it does (such is the humour of the situation) from those who\nare themselves desirous of perpetuating _both_ kinds of\nsuffering, the greater and the smaller alike! We beg to assure\nthem that we would much rather be inconsistently humane than\nconsistently cruel.\n\n\n\n\n THE DEGRADATION OF THE BUTCHER\n\n\nBut this question of butchery is not merely one of kindness or\nunkindness to animals, for by the very facts of the case it is a\n_human_ question of no slight importance, affecting as it does\nthe social and moral welfare of those more immediately concerned\nin it. Of all recognised occupations by which in civilised\ncountries a livelihood is sought and obtained, the work which is\nlooked upon with the greatest loathing (next to the hangman's)\nis that of the butcher\u2014as witness the opprobrious sense which\nthe word \"butcher\" has acquired. Owing to the instinctive horror\nof bloodshed, which is characteristic of all normal civilised\nbeings, the trade of doing to death countless numbers of\ninoffensive and highly-organised creatures amid scenes of\nindescribable filth and ferocity is delegated\u2014in the large\ntowns, at any rate\u2014to a pariah class of \"slaughtermen,\" who are\nthus themselves made the victims of a grievous social wrong.\n\"I'm only doing your dirty work. It's such as _you_ makes such\nas _us_,\" is said to have been the remark of a Whitechapel\nbutcher to a flesh-eating gentleman who remonstrated with him\nfor his brutality; and the remark was a perfectly just one. To\ndemand a product which can only be procured at the cost of the\nintense suffering of the animal and the deep degradation of the\nbutcher, and by a process which not one flesh-eater in a hundred\nwould himself under any circumstances perform or even witness,\nis conduct as callous, selfish, and unsocial as could well be\nimagined.\n\nFor butchery, as Sir Benjamin Richardson used to point out,\nis essentially a \"dangerous trade.\" It not only deadens\nand destroys the moral sympathies, but it has the physical\neffect of straining the nerves and weakening the heart of the\nslaughterman, and thus naturally induces a tendency to have\nrecourse to drink. How often, too, in reading of some murderous\ncrime, has one seen it stated that the criminal was a butcher;\nas, for instance, in the Austrian \"ripper\" case, when, as the\npapers stated, a woman of the \"unfortunate\" class was killed by\na young butcher of herculean frame, by whom it is supposed a\nprevious victim had also been slaughtered. To have accustomed\none's self to a total disregard for the pleading terror of\nsensitive animals and to a murderous use of the knife is a\nterrible power for society to put into the hands of its lowest\nand least responsible members.\n\nThe blame must ultimately fall on society itself, and not on the\nindividual slaughterman. No one had a better knowledge of this\nsubject than the late Mr. H. F. Lester, and this is his opinion:\n\n \"We must take into consideration the fact that the ranks\n of slaughtermen are habitually made up from persons\n in whom one could hardly expect to find the sentiment\n of pity strongly developed; yet, even among these, there\n is a certain air of dissatisfaction with the work they\n are compelled to do, and a mixture of insolence and\n shamefacedness, of swagger and evident dislike of\n inspection, which makes one think they know their trade\n is a nasty one, only bearable from lack of other\n employment and from the good wages earned. But there are\n plenty of men engaged in this work of killing animals\n for food who are much too good for the business. These\n will tell you openly that they dislike the job, but\n 'people will have meat,' and if they were to give it up,\n someone else would step into the work.\"[18]\n\nFootnote 18:\n\n \"Behind the Scenes in Slaughter-houses.\"\n\nAgain, subordinate to the actual butchery, there are certain\ndisgusting, if not dangerous, occupations, such as that of the\nwomen who work in or near the cattle markets at the malodorous\ntask of \"preparing animal entrails for commercial uses,\" of\nwhich process the following account has been given:[19] \"The\nwomen's share in the ugly business begins when the greasy, slimy\nintestinal skins come to them for the scraping off of all fat\nand substance still attaching to them. They are washed, twisted\nup, dressed with salt, and are ready for the sausage-makers, on\nwhose behalf they have been thus prepared.\" The journalistic\ncomment is, that \"in an ideal world men would not permit women\nto do work from which every instinct of refinement and even\ndecency shrinks,\" but that all is over-ruled by \"the demands of\npresent-day cheapness.\" This, as things go, is undeniable; but\nit would be well that conscientious flesh-eaters should at least\nrealise what their diet imposes on other people.\n\nFootnote 19:\n\n _Daily Telegraph_, July 19, 1897.\n\nThat, however, is just what they are mostly determined _not_ to\nrealise, doubtless from a subconscious apprehension that, if\nonce they begin to look into this unsavoury subject, they\nmay be pushed to the verge of certain awkward conclusions.\nNothing is more significant than the extreme unwillingness of\nphilanthropists and members of ethical societies, who debate\nalmost every problem under the sun, to give serious attention to\nthe question of butchery\u2014a reluctance which may be taken as one\nof the strongest possible tributes to the pertinence of\nvegetarianism. This is said to be especially true of the\nphilanthropists of Chicago\u2014that great centre of the killing\ntrade. \"No one who goes to Chicago,\" says an eye-witness,\n\"should fail to see the shambles. They are the most wicked\nthings in creation. They are sickening beyond description. The\nmen in them are more brutes than the animals they slaughter.\nMissions and institutes have been built in the respectable parts\nof the city from the profits, and the employees of the shambles\nhave been left to go straight down to the devil.... It is the\nduty of everyone interested in social questions, of everyone\nwhose demands necessitate this kind of labour, to wade through\nthis filth to see these poor wretches at work.\"[20]\n\nFootnote 20:\n\n _New Age_, November 25, 1897.\n\nAnd so they go their ways, the philanthropist to build \"homes,\"\nthe ethical folk to talk learnedly, and the social reformer to\nconcoct schemes for the amelioration of the human race. Yet,\nmeantime, these very persons are themselves perpetuating, by\ntheir mode of living, the evil conditions which they profess to\nbe anxious to remove, and condemning the pariah slaughterman to\na life of sheer bestiality. \"The meat-eater,\" says Mr. Lester,\n\"accepts the results of this man's demoralisation of character.\nPious and professed Christians are content to allow the deep\ndegradation of the nature of a whole class of men, set apart to\ndo the nation's dirty work of slaughtering, without an apparent\nthought of the baseness of their conduct.\"\n\nHere, as I said at the outset, is a distinctively _human_\nquestion, and one which cannot be evaded, even by those slippery\nreasoners who would shuffle out of the duty of humaneness to\nanimals by pretending (in the face of evolutionary science) that\nthere is no bond of consanguinity between the animals and\nmankind. By no possible sophistry can \"educated\" people be\njustified in placing this heavy burden of butchery on the hands\nof their social \"inferiors.\" The vivisector and the sportsman\nhave at least the courage to do their own devilries; and the\nwork even of the hardened agents of \"murderous millinery\" and\nthe fur-trade is diversified to some extent by travel and\nadventure. But the slaughterman's task is one of unrelieved,\nunmitigated brutality, involving the constant and systematic\ndoing of deeds that are inhuman in themselves, degrading to the\nrough men who do them, and trebly disgraceful to the polite\nladies and gentlemen at whose behest they are done.\n\n\n\n\n THE \u00c6STHETIC ARGUMENT\n\n\nClosely connected with the humane argument is the \u00e6sthetic\nargument, the two being, in fact, twin branches of the same\nstem. For \"humane,\" as the Latin shows, has the double meaning\nof \"gentle\" and \"refined\"; so that \"humanity,\" in the original\nconception of the term, implies not only a moral regard for the\nrights of our fellow-beings, but also an \u00e6sthetic appreciation\nof what is beautiful and pure. Culture and good-breeding,\ntogether with justice and compassion, are the characteristics of\nhumane man; and the fact that this twofold sense of the word has\nbeen well-nigh forgotten in the education of the modern\n\"gentleman\" may serve to explain why there is often such a\ngrievious lack of gentleness in persons who claim to be\nrefined. Our _liter\u00e6 humaniores_ are a mere academic course of\nbook-learning, the _humane_ element being altogether left out of\naccount; and to such bathos has this divorce of gentleness and\nrefinement carried us that, in some quarters, a \"professor of\nhumanity\" is\u2014a teacher of Latin grammar.\n\nWe are prepared, then, to find that the \u00e6sthetic or artistic\nfaculty of the present day is deplorably narrow in its scope,\nand is so ignorant of the true relationship of humanity and\nart that it actually prides itself on omitting from its ken\nall humane considerations, while it diligently searches for\nthe beautiful and the picturesque, as if beauty were a thing\ndetached from the realities of every-day life! The bare idea\nthat there is an \u00e6sthetic side to the diet question, beyond\nthe mere delicacies of cookery and embellishments of the\ndining-table, would be scouted as ridiculous by ninety-nine\nout of a hundred of our artists or literary men; for the very\nforce of habit which has made them so quick to resent the\nleast technical flaw in their special departments of work, has\nleft them blindly indifferent to the hideous and revolting\naspects of flesh-eating. To these \u00e6sthetes, so-called, the\nsight of an ugly house, for example, is a sore trouble and\ngrievance, but the slaughter-house, with all its gruesome\ndoings, is a matter of supreme unconcern\u2014nay, rather a thing\nto be indirectly patronised and defended. I have known a case\nwhere an \u00e6sthetic lady, of great personal culture, and the\ncentre of a polished circle, stained the floor of her charming\nsuburban villa with bullock's blood brought from the shambles\nin a bucket.\n\nYet the \u00e6sthete does not usually vindicate his carnivorous diet\nand its appurtenances with the old unhesitating heartiness of\nthe barbarian; he is somewhat ashamed of himself\u2014unconsciously,\nperhaps\u2014in these latter days, even as the cannibal is ashamed\nwhen the discussion turns upon \"long pig.\" Like all the\napologists of flesh-eating, in their respective spheres, he is\nshifty and evasive in his defences, and is not too proud, in his\nmoment of extremity, to have recourse to the \"consistency\ntrick,\" and to try to trip up his vegetarian persecutor with the\nretort of \"You're another.\" From which signs of grace it may be\nsurmised that the \u00e6sthete, in spite of his brave exterior, is\nnot quite at ease in his dietetic philosophy, and that the\nproducts of butchery are, in a very real sense, the \"skeleton in\nthe cupboard\" (the larder cupboard) of literature and art.\n\n \u00c6STHETE: Pray, why do you address yourself to _me_ in\n that significant manner?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Because I understand that you cultivate\n the artistic sense. You love to have beautiful things\n about you, do you not? So you must needs wish to be a\n vegetarian.\n\n \u00c6STHETE: I love beautiful things, certainly. Art is my\n vocation. But what has vegetarianism to do with it?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Have the arrangements of the dinner-table\n nothing to do with it\u2014the cloth, the silver, the\n glasses, the dessert, the flowers?\n\n \u00c6STHETE: A great deal, obviously. There is much art in\n dining well.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Yet the meats that are served at the\n table have nothing to do with it! Is not that rather\n contradictory?\n\n \u00c6STHETE: I did not say that. The cookery is an essential\n point, of course.\n\n VEGETARIAN: But what of the meat\u2014the thing cooked? What\n _is_ it? What _was_ it? And how did it come to be on\n your plate?\n\n \u00c6STHETE: I never think of such questions. So long as it\n is nice, I am content. It must satisfy my taste, that is\n all.\n\n VEGETARIAN: But are you sure that it _does_ satisfy your\n taste in the same way that other things do? I think not,\n for you have never put it to the trial. In no other\n branch of art do you take things wholly on trust, but\n you try them by the standard of an independent and\n educated intelligence. In diet, and in diet only, you\n \"shut your eyes and open your mouth,\" as the children\n say, and never distinguish between a real innate liking\n and the liking that is merely traditional.\n\n \u00c6STHETE: _De gustibus non est disputandum._\n\n VEGETARIAN: About genuine tastes, I admit, disputation\n is idle. But the proverb is not true of the sham tastes\n to which I refer. There is a great deal to be discussed\n about _them_.\n\n \u00c6STHETE: But I assure you my liking for a ham-sandwich\n is a genuine taste.\n\n VEGETARIAN: With full knowledge of the pig-sty and the\n pig-sticker. Do not the antecedents of your ham-sandwich\n cause you a feeling of disgust?\n\n \u00c6STHETE: Oh, well, if you persist in thinking about it,\n _all_ feeding causes disgust. Don't you think there is\n something gross in the whole process of ingestion?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Then why not gorge on carrion at once? The\n moment you adopt the \"in for a penny, in for a pound\"\n attitude, you sacrifice the whole art of living.\n\n \u00c6STHETE: But what of the processes on which\n vegetarianism itself depends? You talk of the filth of\n the slaughter-house; but how about the filth of market\n gardening? To watch the soil being manured, if we let\n our thoughts dwell upon it, is enough to spoil all\n appetite for the produce of the garden. The more\n delicious the asparagus or the strawberries, the more we\n ought to loathe them.\n\n VEGETARIAN: There I disagree with you entirely. There\n is nothing in the least disgusting, to me, at any rate\n (and I speak from personal experience), in the manuring\n of the soil or in any agricultural process\u2014on the\n contrary, there is much that is wholesome and cheering\n in this chemistry of nature. The healthy mind takes a\n delight in gardening, just as it regards slaughtering\n with abhorrence. If you want to see the contrast between\n the effects of the two professions on those who practise\n them, compare the face of the typical slaughterman with\n that of the typical gardener. It is as remarkable as the\n contrast between a butcher's and a fruiterer's shop.\n\n \u00c6STHETE: Well, it is no use talking about it; our views\n of life are different. You are a social reformer and\n agitator, and agitation is fatal to the tranquility of\n art. I am an artist, and do not care a straw for social\n reform. My creed is expressed in Keats's couplet:\n\n Beauty is truth, truth beauty\u2014that is all\n Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Yes, but it is possible that Keats's meaning\n is somewhat deeper than you imagine. It is not your\n creed that I quarrel with, but your own misunderstanding\n and misuse of it. That the oneness of truth and beauty\n is knowledge sufficient, I admit; but my complaint is\n that you do _not_ really know it, and therefore I regard\n your \u00e6stheticism\u2014the \u00e6stheticism that makes clean the\n outside of the cup and the platter, and the outside\n only\u2014as mere vandalism in masquerade.\n\nNor is even the outside of the \u00e6sthetic platter free from\noffence, for there is nothing more hideous to the eye (not to\nmention the mind) than the \"scorched corpses,\" as Bernard Shaw\ncalls them, that are displayed on polite dinner-tables when the\ndish-covers are removed. \"Among the customs at table that\ndeserve to be abolished,\" wrote Leigh Hunt, \"is that of serving\nup dishes that retain a look of life in death\u2014codfish with their\nstaring eyes, hares with their hollow countenances, etc. It is\nin bad taste, an incongruity, an anomaly; to say nothing of its\neffect on morbid imaginations.\" Perhaps, however, the most\nmorbid imagination, or lack of imagination, is that of the\npersons who are _not_ disgusted by these ugly sights.\n\nArt and humanity, then, are but two branches of the same stock:\nthe true humanist and the true artist are own brethren. To the\nartistic temperament, in particular, vegetarianism has the\nsurest right of appeal; for the \u00e6stheticism which can prate of\ntruth and beauty, while it battens like a ghoul on bloodshed and\nsuffering, has abnegated its own principles, and has ceased to\nbe artistic. How would it be possible for the scenes that are\nhourly enacted in slaughter-houses to be tolerated for a moment\nin a community which had any real artistic consciousness? Yet\nwhat \"\u00e6sthetic\" protest, except from vegetarians, is ever raised\nagainst them? Take, for example, the following extract from some\nnotes descriptive of the Chicago meat factories:\n\n \"Slithered over bloody floor. Nearly broke neck in gore\n of old porker. Saw few hundred men slicing pigs, making\n hams, sausages, and pork chops. Whole sight not\n edifying; indeed, rather beastly. Next went to\n cattle-killing house. Cattle driven along gangway and\n banged over head with iron hammer. Fell stunned; then\n swung up by legs, and man cuts throats. Small army of\n men with buckets catching blood; it gushed over them in\n torrents\u2014a bit sickening. Next to sheep slaughter-house.\n More throat-cutting\u2014ten thousand sheep killed a day\u2014more\n blood. Place reeks with blood; walls and floor splashed\n with it; air thick, warm, offensive. 'Yes,' said guide,\n 'Armour's biggest slaughter-house in the world. There's\n no waste; we utilise everything\u2014everything except the\n squeak of the pigs. We can't can that.' Went and drank\n brandy.\"[21]\n\nFootnote 21:\n\n From a series of letters contributed to the _Nottingham\n Guardian_ by Mr. J. F. Fraser, author of \"America at Work.\"\n\nIt is much to be regretted that it is not found possible, in\nthis enterprising establishment, to \"can\" the squeak, as well as\nthe flesh, of the pig; for such a phonographic effect might\nsuggest certain novel thoughts to the refined ladies and\ngentlemen who contentedly regale themselves on ham-sandwiches at\npolite supper-tables. For imagine what the result would be, in\nstudio and boudoir, dining-room and drawing-room, if the\ndeath-cries of the slaughter-house could be but once uncanned\nand brought to hearing. \"The groans and screams of this poor\npersecuted race,\" as De Quincey said of cats, \"if gathered into\nsome great echoing hall of horrors, would melt the heart of the\nstoniest.\" But far vaster and more impressive would be the\nworld-wide hall of horrors which should contain the bitter cry\nof the victims of the butcher. Would that it were possible thus\nto compel the \u00e6sthetic flesh-eater to \"face the music\" of his\nmisdeeds!\n\nAnd, remember, it is not only at the big slaughtering centres\nthat these ugly trades are carried on, nor are they there,\nperhaps, at their ugliest; but every town and every village has\nits private torture-dens where the same carnage is performed the\nyear round on a smaller scale and in a clumsier manner, and\neverywhere the butcher's shop presents the same ghastly\nspectacle of quartered carcases hanging a-row, and gloated over\nby \"shopping\" women. One would think it incredible that any\nlover of the beautiful could doubt that the national sense of\nbeauty must be seriously impaired by these disgusting and\ndegrading sights. But enough of the subject! Were we to dwell\ntoo long on it, we should be tempted to exclaim, as was said of\nanother kind of iniquity, \"While these things are being done,\nbeauty stands veiled, and music is a screeching lie.\"\n\n\n\n\n THE HYGIENIC ARGUMENT\n\n\nThe humane and the \u00e6sthetic aspects of vegetarianism are constantly\ndescribed by the advocates of flesh-eating as \"sentimental,\" and if it\nbe sentimental to have regard for the sufferings of animals and the\nbeauty of our own surroundings, the charge will be gladly admitted;\nbut there is also, independent of all considerations of humanity, a\ndistinctly hygienic movement towards the disuse of flesh food, on the\nground that such diet is not only barbarous but unwholesome. It is\nheld that flesh food is in itself a stimulant, and that incidentally\nit is very liable to transmit disease, while vegetarianism, on the\ncontrary, is a simple, natural, less inflammatory diet, which from the\nearliest times has been known and practised by a few wise persons as\ncontaining the secret of health. In Germany, especially, the system of\n\"natural living\" has attracted much attention, and the propaganda of\nfood reform is there mainly on those lines; in England less so, but\nhere, too, there are a number of vegetarians who are hygienists first\nand humanitarians afterwards, and all humanitarians are to some extent\nhygienists, so that it is ridiculous, in any serious criticism of\nvegetarianism, to leave out of sight, as some of our opponents do, this\nessential part of the system.\n\nThere is, in fact, a considerable scientific literature on the\nsubject, a train of thought and experience handed down from\nCornaro and Gassendi, through their successors Cheyne, Hartley,\nLambe, Abernethy, and others, to such modern authorities as Sir\nBenjamin Richardson and Dr. Alexander Haig; yet so little known\nis this testimony that it might be imagined, from the nervous\napprehension with which the abandonment of flesh flood is\nregarded, that vegetarianism were some new and hazardous\nexperiment, whereon he who enters carries his life in his hands.\nThis ignorance of the long-standing claims of vegetarianism to a\nscientific basis is the result of the indifference and prejudice\nthat have always made dietetics the most unpopular of studies,\nthose who are in health not caring to give more than a passing\nthought to the hygienic quality of their food, while those who\nare sick are naturally suspicious of change or over-ruled by\nmedical advisers.\n\nYet the moment impartial inquiry is made into the comparative\nbenefits and perils of the two modes of living, certain\nundeniable facts begin to appear, of which the first and most\nobvious, though not the most important, perhaps, are the\n_incidental_ dangers of flesh-eating. Many, indeed, and\nunsuspected by the ordinary man who takes a \"good meat dinner,\"\nare the ills that flesh is heir to, especially in the diet of\nthe poor; for, as Professor F. W. Newman pointed out, \"where the\npopulation is dense, the poorer classes, if they eat flesh-meat\nat all, are sure to get a sensible portion of their supply in\nan unwholesome state.\" This assertion is no mere piece of\nvegetarian polemics; it rests on the authority of more than\none Royal Commission, the latest of which has insisted, in\nthe Tuberculosis Report of 1898, that \"so long as private\nslaughter-houses are permitted to exist, so long must inspection\nbe carried out under conditions incompatible with efficiency.\"\nThere is, in fact, no genuine inspection of the meat killed in\nprivate slaughter-houses, nor is the case (at present) much\nbetter in public ones, and it is notorious that a large amount\nof tuberculous flesh, examined and rejected under their more\ncareful scrutiny by the Jews, is thought good enough to be sold\nfor the use of the \"Gentiles.\" It would be easy to quote\nofficial figures to show the prevalence of the mischief, but it\nis not necessary here to do so, because the facts are not\ndenied.[22] The cause of the disease thus prevalent among cattle\nmust be sought partly in the excessive demand for flesh food,\nand the consequent high price of meat, which is a great\ntemptation to graziers to breed from immature stock; partly,\ntoo, in the unhealthy system of stall-feeding and cramming, and\nlast, but not least, in the rough treatment to which animals are\nexposed during their transit by sea and rail\u2014an evil which is\nrecognised by butchers no less than by humanitarians.\n\nFootnote 22:\n\n See the official facts and figures cited in \"Tuberculosis,\" by\n Dr. J. Oldfield, 1892.\n\nMoreover, in addition to the dangers which flesh-eaters incur of\ndiseases contagious and parasitic, there is the risk of eating\ndecomposed meat under the title of \"table delicacies.\" Here, as\none instance out of many, is an extract from a London daily\npaper.\n\n Some exemplary fines were inflicted when summonses\n connected with the seizure of 13 tons of rotten pigs'\n livers came on for hearing. A company promoter, trading\n as manufacturer of table delicacies, was fined \u00a3100,\n including costs, for the possession of forty-four\n barrels of the livers, which were deposited for the\n purpose of being converted into human food in the shape\n of meat-extracts, soups, and other table delicacies.\n The magistrate characterised the condemned goods as\n \"absolute filth.\"\n\nThe bearing of such facts on the public health is obvious. \"The\nshocking revelations,\" it has been said, \"as to the potted meat\ntrade of London, clearly give us the key-note to the terrible\nweekly statistics of fevers and other diseases in the poorer\ndistricts of London and big towns generally. Putrid sheep's\nhearts\u2014putrid meat of unknown origin\u2014anything from horse to pug\ndog\u2014slimy livers, reeking lights that would poison even a Fleet\nStreet cat, and moribund hams from diseased pigs are the\nfoundation of our table delicacies. Ugh! it is enough to make a\nman forswear anything 'potted' for ever.\"[23]\n\nFootnote 23:\n\n _Reynolds's Newspaper_, March 19, 1899.\n\nBut, though these and similar facts are indisputable, and though\nso great an authority as Sir B. W. Richardson has stated that,\n\"in respect to the propagation of disease, it seems just to\ndeclare that the danger is much less and much more easily\npreventable on the vegetarian than on the animal diet,\" the\nflesh-eaters, strong or weak as they may happen to be, even to\nthe sickliest valetudinarian that ever sipped his Liebig, are\nmuch more afraid of being infected with vegetarian principles\nthan with the poisons of the murdered ox, and would venture on\nevery drug in the Pharmacop\u0153ia rather than on a pure and simple\ndiet. Yet more than a hundred and fifty years ago so eminent a\nphysician as Dr. George Cheyne, then in a hale old age, had\nwritten as follows:\n\n \"My regimen at present is milk, with tea, coffee,\n bread-and-butter, mild cheese, salads, fruits and seeds\n of all kinds, with tender roots (as potatoes, turnips,\n carrots), and, in short, everything that has not life,\n dressed or not, as I like, in which there is as much or\n a greater variety than in animal foods, so that the\n stomach need never be cloyed. I drink no wine nor any\n fermented liquors, and am rarely dry, most of my food\n being liquid, moist, or juicy. Only after dinner I drink\n either coffee or green tea, but seldom both in the same\n day, and sometimes a glass of soft small cider. The\n thinner my diet, the easier, more cheerful and lightsome\n I find myself; my sleep is also the sounder, though\n perhaps somewhat shorter than formerly under my full\n animal diet; but, then, I am more alive than ever I\n was.\"[24]\n\nFootnote 24:\n\n The \"Author's Case.\"\n\nThe close connection of vegetarianism with temperance,\nsimplicity, and general hardihood has been discovered by many\nthousands of persons since Dr. Cheyne recorded it, and has\nhad its latest illustration in the doings of vegetarian\nathletes, whose remarkable achievements in cycling matches and\nlong-distance walks have shown once more that flesh-eating is\nnot by any means a necessary condition of physical prowess. It\ncannot be mere accident that vegetarians are almost invariably\nabstainers from alcohol and tobacco, that, man for man, they eat\nmore sparingly, dress more lightly, live more naturally, and\nwork harder than flesh-eaters, and are far less subject to\nillnesses and ailments. It is notorious that in quite a number\nof diseases, especially those of the gouty class, a vegetarian\ndiet is prescribed by medical men, who use for _cure_ what\nthey scorn to use for _prevention_. In the works of Dr.\nAlexander Haig,[25] the most distinguished recent exponent of\nreformed diet, a close study has been made of the comparative\nwholesomeness and unwholesomeness of vegetable and animal foods,\nand to these writings, together with those of the other\nauthorities above-mentioned, I would refer any of my readers who\nmay be under the idea that vegetarianism has no medical support.\nThe doctors, of course, or those of them who study the history\nof their own profession, are well aware of the hollowness of\nthis common superstition, but they still continue to let an\nignorant public fondly hug the belief that vegetarianism is\na mere \"fad,\" a mushroom growth born of the follies and\nsentimentalities of a decadent and hypercivilised age.\n\nFootnote 25:\n\n \"Uric Acid as a Factor in the Causation of Disease. Diet and\n Foods Considered in Relation to Strength and Power of\n Endurance.\"\n\nIt is impossible in the limit of these pages, which are\nconcerned with the logical, not the medical view of\nvegetarianism, to discuss with any fulness the argument based on\nhygiene; but it may be stated as a matter, not of opinion, but\nof knowledge, that quite apart from all humane bias, there is a\nstrong case for the reformed regimen on the ground of its\nhealthfulness alone, and that a scientific statement of this\ncase may be found, by those who care to become acquainted with\nthe facts, in the published writings of a small, but not\ninconsiderable succession of medical authorities. Humanity and\nhygiene are the twin deities of food reform, and their paths,\nthough separate for the time, converge eventually to the same\nvegetarian goal.\n\n\n\n\n DIGESTION\n\n\nWe have seen that the scientific apologists of flesh-eating do not\nseriously rely on the old bogey of \"structural evidence,\" though\nthey have certainly not been over-anxious to dissociate their\ncause from whatever support has accrued to it through this too\ncommon misunderstanding. The same is true of that other widespread\nsuperstition, that meat alone \"gives strength\"\u2014_i.e._, that vegetarian\ndiet, as compared with a flesh diet, is deficient in flesh-forming\nconstituents\u2014an error which the medical faculty, as a whole, has\nsecretly fostered and encouraged, though in face of the existence of\nthe elephant and rhinoceros and other mighty herbivora, its responsible\nspokesmen have, of course, not committed themselves to any such\nabsurdity. Except for the fact that thousands of ignorant persons are\nstill under the delusion that no adequate nourishment is to be found in\nthe vegetable kingdom, it would not be necessary to point out that, by\nthe admission of all authorities, the albuminoids, carbohydrates, oils,\nsalts, and other chemical food-properties, exist in vegetable no less\nthan in animal substances, and therefore that a vegetarian diet, even\nwithout the use of eggs and milk, has access to all the needed elements.\n\nThe professional, as distinct from the popular, objections to\nvegetarianism, are based nowadays on quite other arguments, as\nmay be seen from the suggestive admissions and assertions made\nin the following passage from the _British Medical Journal_:\n\n \"Man is undoubtedly in his anatomy most nearly allied to\n the higher apes, and these animals, though they show\n obvious tendencies to be omnivorous, are yet, in the\n main, eaters of nuts and fruits. But man is not a higher\n ape, and in the process of development to his present\n high status he has become omnivorous. It is true that he\n can obtain from vegetables the nutriment necessary for\n his maintenance in health, but he has learnt that _he\n can obtain what he wants at less cost of energy from\n a mixed diet_, and he is not likely to unlearn this\n lesson.\"[26]\n\nFootnote 26:\n\n _British Medical Journal_, June 4, 1898.\n\nIn the words that I have italicised we have the latest shibboleth of\ncarnivorous \"science\" in its changing treatment of the food question.\nVegetarianism is not \"impossible\" (as we used to be told it was)! Oh,\nno! life, and even healthy life, can really be maintained on a diet of\nvegetables (how many thousands of doctors have asserted the contrary!).\nBut the inferior _digestibility_ of vegetable food\u2014that is the trouble!\nThe poor vegetarians must put their digestive organs to so great a\nstrain, and must eat so large a bulk of food in order to get the\nrequisite nourishment. Why, then, says the chemist, should they thus\nover-tax their systems, when they could digest a few slices from a dead\nbody at so much less cost of energy?\n\nNow, if the chemist were a man of action, and not merely a man\nof study, the practical aspects of this question might at\nthe outset give him pause. Had he known vegetarians, lived\namong vegetarians, and talked with vegetarians, instead of\nregarding them theoretically, he would be aware that the\naverage vegetarian eats decidedly _less_ in bulk than the\naverage flesh-eater, and is seldom or never troubled with the\nindigestion that the flesh-eater dreads. So far from being\ncompelled to consume a greater bulk of food, it is the general\nexperience of those who have adopted vegetarianism that they eat\nmuch less under the new system than they did under the old, and\nit is a frequent marvel to them, when they dine with their\nformer messmates, to see the huge amounts that they devour.\n\nThere is the further consideration, entirely overlooked in the argument\nof the _British Medical Journal_, that \"vegetarianism,\" in the current\nsense of the word, is not a diet of vegetables only, but includes the\nuse of eggs, butter, cheese, and milk. For all which reasons the talk\nabout \"less cost of energy\" seems to have little practical bearing on\nthe subject under discussion, and it may be suspected that the chemical\nchimera is quite as fabulous as the phantom difficulties that have\npreceded it.\n\n CHEMIST: Now listen! I am a chemist, and I have no\n time to think or talk of anything sentimental. To\n all your views about vegetarian diet I have but one\n answer\u2014\"Hofmann's experiments.\"\n\n VEGETARIAN: So Hofmann's figures have settled this diet\n problem for all time?\n\n CHEMIST: Undoubtedly. For they prove that the human\n stomach can assimilate a greater percentage of animal\n than of vegetable substances; in other words, that it\n requires a greater exercise of digestive power to get an\n equal amount of nourishment from vegetables. What have\n you to say to that?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Obviously this\u2014that it is quite devoid\n of value unless we know _who_ were the persons\n experimented on. No statistics of the comparative\n digestibility of foods can be of practical use\n unless the habits and conditions of those who digest\n the foods are also noted. Custom and the personal\n element are all-important factors in the result.\n Many vegetable foods, nuts for example, are readily\n digested by vegetarians accustomed to their use,\n though almost universally found indigestible by\n flesh-eaters.\n\n CHEMIST: I cannot follow you into that. Let us keep\n clear of all such sentiment, if you please, and bear in\n mind the great precept which Dr. Andrew Wilson, in his\n application of Hofmann's figures, has laid down for our\n guidance, that \"animal matter, being likest to our own\n composition, is most easily and readily converted into\n ourselves.\"\n\n VEGETARIAN: With all due deference to the Andrew Wilson\n formula, may I ask what matter _is_ likest to our own?\n\n CHEMIST: Why, _animal_ matter, of course.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Yes, but _what_ animal matter?\n\n CHEMIST: Oh, we don't go into that.\n\n VEGETARIAN: But I do; and I beg you to observe that the\n \"matter likest to our own composition\" is _human_ flesh,\n so that according to the Andrew Wilson formula, we all\n ought to be cannibals, because for human beings human\n flesh must be the most digestible of foods.\n\n CHEMIST: Very likely it is so, though I do not approve\n of cannibalism.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Then allow me to read you a sentence\n from C. F. Gordon Cumming's book, \"At Home in Fiji.\"\n \"At every cannibal feast there was served a certain\n vegetable, also commonly used by the cannibal Maoris\n of New Zealand, which was considered as essential an\n adjunct as mint-sauce is to lamb or sage to goose.\n Its use, however, was prudential, as human flesh\n _was found to be highly indigestible_, and this herb\n acted as a corrective.\" Now I ask you if that does\n not logically dispose of the Andrew Wilson formula?\n\n CHEMIST: Nonsense, sir! I will not discuss cannibalism.\n You fail to see that some things, though logical enough,\n may not be expedient.\n\n VEGETARIAN: I am delighted to hear you say that. I beg\n you to remember it when you next talk of \"Hofmann's\n experiments.\" It is possible that flesh-eating, like\n cannibalism, is \"not expedient,\" when it is regarded\n from a wider standpoint than that of the chemical\n doctrinaire.\n\nNothing, indeed, could be more _un_scientific than the attitude\ntaken on this question by \"scientists\" of the Andrew Wilson\ntype. For, in the first place, as pointed out above, it is\nimpossible to arrive at any scientific conclusion as to the\ncomparative digestibility of vegetable and animal foods\nunless the conditions are equal\u2014that is, unless the persons\nexperimented on are equally accustomed to the food-stuffs they\nare invited to digest; and, secondly, there is the question of\nthe quality of the foods supplied, for as Dr. Oldfield has\nremarked, \"it is quite as unfair to judge of the digestibility\nof the proteid of the vegetable kingdom from one example of\nthe legumens as it would be to class all forms of flesh as\nindigestible because veal or lobster happens to be so.\" Against\nthe academic testimony of the Hofmann school of specialists we\nmay confidently set that of so distinguished a practical chemist\nas Sir B. W. Richardson, who, by his personal knowledge of\nvegetarians and vegetarianism, was peculiarly qualified to\njudge. \"From experimental observations which I have made, I am\nof opinion that the vegetable flesh-forming substances may be as\neasily digested, when they are presented to the stomach in\nproper form, as are the animal substances of like feeding\nquality.\"[27]\n\nFootnote 27:\n\n \"Foods of Man.\"\n\nThe true function of the chemist in his general relation to the\ndiet question is to help the coming dietary by transferring to\nthe vegetarian system some of the scientific attention that has\nhitherto been solely devoted to flesh meats. \"Men of practical\nscience,\" says Sir B. W. Richardson, \"ought to be at work\nassisting with their skill in bringing about that mighty\nreformation. We now know to a nicety the relation of the various\nparts of food needed for the construction of the living body,\nand there should be no difficulty, except the labour of\nresearch, in so modifying food from its prime source as to make\nit applicable to every necessity without the assistance of any\nintermediate animal at all.\" Why should not the chemist, instead\nof maintaining, like Mrs. Partington, a pettifogging and quite\nfutile opposition to the flowing tide, put himself in the\ncurrent of progress, and try to turn his special knowledge to\nthe furtherance of a noble end?\n\n\n\n\n CONDITIONS OF CLIMATE\n\n\nTo try to \"change the venue\" is sometimes the policy of\ndefendants in an action at law, and a similar device is adopted\nby those who would stave off the hearing of the vegetarian case.\n\"The tropics\" are the convenient limbo to which this uncongenial\nsubject is most frequently consigned; and it is with a proud\nsense of humour and self-assurance that the British Islander,\nwho objects to alien immigration and all foreign frivolities,\nwarns the vegetarian heresy to keep clear of his inhospitable\nclime. Such diet may be all very well, he thinks, for passive\nHindoos, but not for the hard-working inhabitants of this\ntemperate zone.\n\n BRITISH ISLANDER: Vegetarianism? No thank you; not\n _here_! All very nice in Africa and India, I dare say,\n where you can sit all day under a palm-tree and eat\n dates.\n\n VEGETARIAN: But I have not observed that when you\n visit Africa or India you practise vegetarianism.\n On the contrary, you take your flesh-pots with you\n everywhere\u2014even to the very places where you admit\n you don't need them, and where, as in India, they\n give the greatest offence to the inhabitants.\n\n BRITISH ISLANDER: Oh, well, it's no affair of theirs, is\n it, if I take my roast beef?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Yet you think it your affair to interfere\n with the cannibals when they take their roast man. And\n have you observed that it is in the tropical zone, not\n the temperate zone, that cannibalism is most rife?\n\n BRITISH ISLANDER: Why do you remind me of that?\n\n VEGETARIAN: To show you that all this talk about\n vegetarianism being \"a matter of climate\" is pure\n humbug. The use of flesh is a vicious habit everywhere,\n and nowhere a necessity, except where other food is not\n procurable.\n\n BRITISH ISLANDER: But do we not need more oil and fat in\n northern climates?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Undoubtedly; but these can be readily\n obtained without recourse to flesh.\n\n BRITISH ISLANDER: Then how do you account for the fact\n that northern races have been, to so great an extent,\n carnivorous?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Perhaps because in primitive times hunting\n and pasturage were less toilsome than agriculture. But I\n am not called on to \"account\" for such a fact. Their\n past addiction to flesh food no more proves the present\n utility of flesh-eating than their gross drinking habits\n prove the utility of alcohol.\n\n BRITISH ISLANDER: Can you quote any scientific authority\n for your contention?\n\n VEGETARIAN: There is one which is all the more valuable\n because it is an admission made by an opponent. Sir\n William Lawrence wrote: \"That men can be perfectly\n nourished, and that their physical and intellectual\n capabilities can be fully developed in any climate by a\n diet purely vegetable, has been proved by such abundant\n experience that it will not be necessary to adduce any\n formal arguments on the subject.\"[28] \"In any climate,\"\n mark! And a diet \"purely vegetable\"; whereas all _you_\n are asked to do is to forego the actual flesh foods, and\n not the animal products. But come now! Ask me the great\n question!\n\nFootnote 28:\n\n Rees's \"Encyclop\u00e6dia,\" Article, \"Man.\"\n\n BRITISH ISLANDER: What is that? There is only one other\n I had in mind. What would become of the Esquimaux?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Of course! I have always been profoundly\n touched by the disinterested concern of the Englishman\n (when vegetarianism looms ahead) for the future of that\n Arctic people. Well, perhaps the question of what\n ice-bound savages might do, or might not do, need\n scarcely delay the decision of civilised mankind. For\n that matter, what would become of the polar bears? If\n you cannot dissociate your habits from those of the\n Esquimaux, why don't you eat blubber? At least they have\n a better reason for eating blubber than some people have\n for eating beef\u2014they can get nothing else.\n\nThe dishonesty of the excuse that vegetarianism \"may be all very\nwell in the tropics\" is shown by the fact that Englishmen, when\nliving in the tropics, make precisely the contrary statement.\n\"You would be surprised,\" writes Mr. B. K. Adams, from Ceylon,\n\"if you knew how much prejudice and opposition there is\nhere. The most amusing part is that nearly everyone says, it\nis all very well being a vegetarian in England, in a cool\nclimate like that, but out here in this hot, depressing, and\nenervating climate, you must have meat, and some add alcoholic\nstimulant.\"[29]\n\nFootnote 29:\n\n _Vegetarian Messenger_, January, 1899.\n\nTwenty years ago, just the same \"climatic\" argument used to be\nput forward by the opponents of the temperance movement; it was\nimpossible _here_ to abstain from alcoholic drink, whatever it\nmight be elsewhere. We do not often meet with that argument now;\non the contrary, it is generally admitted that a disuse of\nalcohol brings with it an increased power of hardihood and\nendurance. As in drink, so in food. Those who fly to stimulants\nobtain a temporary sense of comfort at the cost of permanent\nvigour.\n\nBut granting that it is possible to support life on vegetarian\ndiet in northern climates, is it also possible, asks the\nconscientious doubter, to live at one's highest energy under\nsuch conditions? Look at the carnivorous Mr. Dash's career, it\nis said, as compared with that of the vegetarian Mr. So-and-So!\nWas not the greater public activity of the former attributable\nto his mixed diet? To which it may be replied that any such\npersonal comparison is necessarily useless, from lack of\nsufficient data as to the relative powers and opportunities of\nthe persons compared. It is obvious that a man whose convictions\nare unpopular will have far less opportunity of carrying his\nprinciples into action than one who is the mouthpiece of widely\ncurrent opinions, to the propagation of which he devotes,\nperhaps, an equal amount of ability. For this reason it is\nabsurd to suggest that vegetarians, or any other class of\nunpopular reformers, are living on a less active plane because\ntheir activities are not of the kind that commend themselves to\nthe man in the street\u2014or to that equally fallible person, the\nman in the study.\n\nThe whole notion that vegetarians are less able than\nflesh-eaters to endure a severe climate is a delusion; it is not\nonly untrue, but the contrary of the truth. \"No one surely\nsuggests,\" says Dr. Oldfield, \"that the English climate is too\ncold for a vegetarian dietary, when there is the experience of\nthe stalwart, hardy Scotch peasantry, in a climate far more\nrigorous, developing brain and muscle superior to the average\nEnglishman, and this upon a dietary which for generations has\nbeen so largely vegetarian that no one would dream of saying\nthat the small amount of flesh eaten by them could have had\nanything to do with the matter.\"[30]\n\nFootnote 30:\n\n _Nineteenth Century_, August, 1898.\n\nAnyone who is intimately acquainted with the vegetarian movement\nin this country will bear me out when I say that the average\nvegetarian is much less susceptible than the average flesh-eater\nto extremes of cold and heat, and can get through an English\nwinter in comparative comfort, without any of the \"wrapping up\"\nto which the mixed dietists are reduced. It is amusing, indeed,\nafter being asked that common question, \"Don't you feel the cold\nvery much, as you eat no meat?\" to observe one's questioner\nattired perhaps to face a moderate London winter like a German\nstudent for a duel\u2014a moving mass of scarves and furs and\novercoats, stoked up internally with plates of beef and cups of\nbovril, and shivering withal. \"Poor fellow!\" one thinks, \"it\nlooks as if _you_ were the person whose diet might be all very\nwell for those who live in the tropics, but not for the\nhard-working inhabitants of this northern clime.\"\n\nFLESH MEAT AND MORALS\n\n\"Man is what he eats,\" says the materialist in the German\nproverb. The body is built up of the food-stuffs which it\nassimilates, and it is reasonable to suppose that diet has thus\na determining influence on character. If this be true, the\nreflection is not a pleasant one for the flesh-eater. \"Animal\nfood,\" it has been said, \"containing as it does highly-wrought\norganic forces, may liberate within our system powers which we\nmay find it difficult or even impossible to dominate\u2014lethargic\nmonsters, foul harpies, and sad-visaged lemurs\u2014which may insist\non having their own way, building up an animal body not truly\nhuman.\"[31]\n\nFootnote 31:\n\n Edward Carpenter, \"The Art of Creation,\" \"Health a Conquest.\"\n\nBut here the idealist steps in with a different theory. Man is\nnot what he eats, but what he thinks and feels; it is not _what_\nwe eat, but _how_ we eat, that most vitally affects us. This is\nwell expressed in one of Thoreau's daring paradoxes: \"There is a\ncertain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions\nas if I think I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike\nat the root of the matter at once\u2014for the root is faith\u2014I am\naccustomed to answer such, that I can live on board-nails. If\nthey cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I\nhave to say.\"\n\nThere is, however, no real antagonism between these two\ntheories, for both may be to a great extent true, though neither\nwholly so. If mind affects matter, matter also affects mind; if\nspirit acts on food, food in its turn reacts on spirit. The one\ntruth that stands out clearly from a consideration of this\nsubject, and from the witness of common experience, is that a\ngross animal diet is inimical to the finer instincts, and that,\nas Thoreau says, \"every man who has ever been earnest to\npreserve his higher or more poetic faculties in the best\ncondition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal\nfood.\"[32] Plain living and high thinking are indissolubly\nconnected. Vegetarianism, as I have already shown, is not\nasceticism, but if it offer the moral advantages of asceticism\nwithout the drawbacks, is not that in its favour?\n\nFootnote 32:\n\n Walden, \"Higher Laws.\"\n\nBut there is a tendency among certain \"psychical\" authorities of\nthe present day to eschew the vegetarian doctrine as itself\n\"materialistic,\" and as attributing too much importance to the\nmere bodily functions of eating and digesting. \"What does it\nmatter about our diet,\" they say, \"whether it be animal or\nvegetable, flesh or fruit, so long as the spirit in which we\nseek it be a fit and proper one? The question of food is one for\ndoctors to decide; 'tis they who are concerned with the body,\nwhile we are concerned with the soul.\" I wish to show that this\nreasoning is nothing but a piece of charlatanry, and rests upon\na perversion of the philosophy that it claims to represent.\n\nFor though it is true, in a sense, that spirit can sanctify\ndiet, it is not true that a general sanction is thereby given to\nany diet whatsoever, no matter what cruelties may be caused by\nit, or who it be that causes them. We may grant that so long as\nno scruple has arisen concerning the morality of flesh-eating,\nor any other barbarous usage, such practices may be carried on\nin innocence and good faith, and therefore without personal\ndemoralisation to those who indulge in them. But from the moment\nwhen discussion begins, and an unconscious act becomes a\nconscious or semi-conscious one, the case is wholly different,\nand it is then impossible to plead that \"it does not matter\"\nabout one's food. On the contrary, it is a matter of vital\nimport if injustice be deliberately practised. To use flesh food\nunwittingly, by savage instinct, as the carnivora do, or, like\nbarbarous mankind, in the ignorance of age-long habit, is one\nthing; but it is quite another thing for a rational person to\nmake a sophistical defence of such habits when their iniquity\nhas been displayed, and _then_ to claim that he is absolved from\nguilt by the spirit in which he acted. The spirit that absolves\nis one of unquestioning faith, not of far-fetched sophistry. The\nwolf devours the lamb, and is no worse a wolf for it; but if he\nseek, as in the fable, to give quibbling excuses for his\nwolfishness, he becomes a byword for hypocrisy.\n\n PSYCHIC PHILOSOPHER: Why all this fuss about\n vegetarianism and what we eat? With the best intention,\n no doubt, you regard the matter from too low a plane.\n Has not the greatest of teachers himself told us that\n \"Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but\n that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a\n man\"?\n\n VEGETARIAN: You know well the text has not the meaning\n you put on it. It could as logically be made to excuse\n any swinishness whatsoever. Flesh-eating is not a mere\n ceremonial question of eating \"with unwashed hands,\" as\n that referred to in the text, but one that involves the\n gravest issues of right-doing and wrong-doing.\n\n PSYCHIC PHILOSOPHER: But to the pure all things are\n pure.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Possibly\u2014if we know who _are_ the pure.\n But the mere eating of impurities is scarcely proof\n sufficient.\n\n PSYCHIC PHILOSOPHER: I cannot take your view of the\n importance of this question. To me, as to the Indian\n yogis, the choice of food is a matter of indifference.\n\n VEGETARIAN: I doubt if your butcher's bill would bear\n out that assertion. If food is one of the \"indifferent\"\n things, why do you hold fast to your flesh meat, like a\n snarling dog to his bone?\n\nOur psychic philosopher, in truth, is a wolf in sheep's\nclothing\u2014a carnalist in psychical disguise.[33]\n\nFootnote 33:\n\n It is a curious fact that the Greek word _psychic_ had the\n double sense of _spiritual_ and _carnal_. See Tertullian's\n treatise, \"Against the Carnal-Minded\" (Psychicos).\n\nIt will be objected, no doubt, that the injurious effect of\nflesh food on morals has never been scientifically proved,[34]\nnor indeed is it possible that absolute proof should be\nforthcoming until vegetarianism is widely enough practised to\nfurnish data for comparison; there are, however, certain very\nmarked indications that can hardly be overlooked. In the first\nplace, as already stated, there is the immemorial belief,\nespecially prominent in the usage of monastic orders, but\nscarcely less so in all systems of hygienic or spiritual\nexercise\u2014amounting, in short, to a practical consensus of\nmankind\u2014that a stimulating or excessive diet is harmful to\nsobriety and self-control; as evidenced by the far greater\namount of crime rife among luxurious town-dwellers than\namong frugal peasants. Secondly, there is the fact, too well\nattested to be challenged, that flesh-eating and alcoholism are\nclosely allied, and that the drink-crave dies a natural death\nwhen a stimulating diet is withdrawn; from which it may be\nfurther realised that the excitation caused by flesh food must\nnecessarily, in many cases, act injuriously on the nerve-system\nand contribute powerfully to the vicious habits which moralists\ndeplore.\n\nFootnote 34:\n\n Even cannibalism\u2014such is the complexity of the human\n character\u2014is not always _directly_ demoralising. \"This\n unnatural practice,\" says Captain Burrows in his \"Land of the\n Pigmies,\" 1899, \"stands by itself, seeming not in any way to\n affect or retard the development of the better emotions.\"\n\n\"The deepest, truest, and most general causes of prostitution in\nall great cities,\" says Dr. Kingsford, \"must be looked for in\nthe luxurious and intemperate habits of eating and drinking\nprevalent among the rich and well-to-do. The chief element of\nthis luxury is the use of flesh and alcohol, which mistaken\nnotions of hygiene and therapeutics tend to press more and more\nupon all classes of men and women. Abolish kreophagy and its\ncompanion vice, alcoholism, and more, a thousandfold, will be\ndone to abolish prostitution than can be achieved by any other\nmeans soever as long as these two evil influences flourish. The\nyoung man of the present day, accustomed from childhood to\nfrequent and copious meals of flesh, and from early youth to\nthe use of all manner of fermented beverages and liqueurs,\ncarries about with him and fosters an increasingly disordered\nappetite, which not infrequently assumes the character of true\ndisease.\"[35]\n\nFootnote 35:\n\n \"The Perfect Way in Diet.\"\n\nThe evils of stimulating diet in the case of the young have been\nemphasized by such well-known authorities as Dr. George Keith\nand Sir B. W. Richardson. Here is a significant passage from the\nwritings of the former:\n\n \"I have done much for many years privately, whenever I\n had the opportunity, to impress on fathers and mothers\n the danger to their sons and daughters from exciting\n prematurely their natural desires and passions; but\n custom and fashion have so powerful a hold, especially\n in the higher circles of society, that I have frequently\n had to feel that my efforts were in vain.... The\n existence of bad habits at schools is well known to the\n masters, and they take what measures they can for their\n prevention. Even when they know the truth, the strength\n of custom and habit so imperatively demands a full diet\n for the growing youth that they are obliged to fall in\n with the customs of the day. But few of them are aware\n of the main cause of the evil, and the last thing most\n would dream of as a remedy is a simpler diet.\"[36]\n\nFootnote 36:\n\n \"Fads of an Old Physician,\" chap. xiv.\n\nSo, too, Sir B. W. Richardson:\n\n \"In all my long medical career, extending over forty\n years, I have rarely known a case in which a child has\n not preferred fruit to animal food. I say it without the\n least prejudice, as a lesson learnt from simple\n experience, that the most natural diet for the young,\n after the natural milk diet, is fruit and wholemeal\n bread, with milk and water for drink. The desire for\n this same mode of sustenance is often continued into\n after years, as if the resort to flesh were a forced and\n artificial feeding, which required long and persistent\n habit to establish its permanency as a part of the\n system of every-day life.\"[37]\n\nFootnote 37:\n\n \"Foods for Man.\"\n\nContrast with this wise and weighty advice the dietetic habits\nactually prevalent among the youth of our well-to-do classes,\nwhere we see not only a strong tendency to over-eating, but a\nrooted and active conviction that flesh is the _summum bonum_ of\nfood. The fatted calf is rivalled by the fatted schoolboy; the\ncramming of Strasburg geese itself is not more disgusting than\nthe cramming which makes _p\u00e2t\u00e9 de foie gras_ of the moral fibre\nof the young. When we find even the _Eton College Chronicle_\nraising a protest against the diet of boyish athletes, we may be\nsure the evil is a crying one:\n\n \"He [the boy in training] takes a lot of exercise, and\n finds he has a good appetite. For breakfast he has a\n chop every morning; we have known some who had two. He\n also has heard porridge is nourishing, and that this is\n why Scotchmen are so hardy and brawny. He acts upon this\n information. For dinner he makes a point of having two\n good helpings of meat 'to get his weight up,' while\n for tea, besides having a plate of eggs and chicken,\n or something of that kind, he winds up with a large\n allowance of marmalade.\"\n\nNor is it only among schoolboys that over-eating is rampant, for\nthe tables of the wealthy are everywhere loaded with flesh meat,\nand the example thus set is naturally followed, first in the\nservants' hall, and then, as far as may be, in the homes of the\nworking classes. To consume much flesh is regarded as the sign\nand symbol of well-being\u2014witness the popular English manner of\nkeeping the festival of Christmas. \"We interknit ourselves with\nevery part of the English-speaking world,\" said the journal\nof the Cosme colony, in Paraguay, describing a Christmas\ncelebration, \"by the most sacred ceremony of over-eating.\"\nA nice moral bond of union, truly, between colonies and\nmotherland! What is likely to be the effect on the national\ncharacter of such patriotic gorging?\n\nWe come back, then, to the point that though it is not\nabsolutely true that \"man is what he eats,\" there is,\nnevertheless, a large element of truth in the saying, and the\nvegetarian has just ground for suspecting that beefy meals are\nnot infrequently the precursors of beefy morals. Carnalities of\none kind are apt to lead to carnalities of another, and fleshly\nmodes of diet to fleshly modes of thought. \"Good living,\"\nunfortunately, is a somewhat equivocal term.\n\n\n\n\n THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT\n\n\n\"The oftener we go to the vegetable world for our food,\" says\nSir B. W. Richardson, \"the oftener we go to the first, and\ntherefore the _cheapest_ source of supply.\" The case for\nvegetarianism would by no means be complete without a statement\nof the economic view, though precedence is necessarily given\nto the motives of humanity and healthfulness, the higher\nconsiderations to which the idea of economy must be subservient.\nIf it were proved that flesh food is essential to the real\ninterests of the race, and that there is no moral objection to\nthe use of it, the greater outlay would be justified by the\nvalue of the result; but if such proof is not forthcoming (and\nit has been the object of the preceding chapters to show that it\nis not), it is obvious that the comparative cost of a flesh diet\nand a vegetarian diet becomes a question of high importance to\nmankind. What, then, are the facts?\n\nThey are so plain as to be positively beyond dispute, and it\nis a cause for marvel what Dr. J. Burney Yeo can have meant\nin describing vegetarianism as \"a scheme of diet which we\nbelieve to be utterly impracticable on an extensive scale,\nand irreconcilable with the existing state of civilised man,\nnot so much on strictly physiological grounds as _on general\neconomical considerations_.\"[38] If it be in accordance with\n\"general economical considerations\" to pay threepence for\nwhat can be procured for a penny, then only does Dr. Yeo's\nstatement become intelligible.\n\nFootnote 38:\n\n \"Food in Health and Disease.\"\n\nFor the very first fact that demands notice in this comparison\nof foods, is that not only does butchers' meat, pound for pound,\ncost about three times the price of the cereals and pulses, but\nthat it is under the further disadvantage of containing a much\nlarger percentage of water\u2014that is to say, in purchasing flesh,\nyou have to buy the water, and buy it dirty, while in purchasing\nseeds and grains you do not buy the water, but add it clean. The\nfollowing passage from Sir B. W. Richardson's \"Foods for Man\"\nputs the case succinctly:\n\n \"If we make an analysis of the primest joints of animal\n food, legs of mutton, sirloin of beef, rump steak, veal\n cutlet, pork chop, we find as much as 70 to 75 per cent.\n of water.... Oatmeal contains 5 or 6 per cent.; good\n wheaten flour, barley meal, beans and peas, 14; rice,\n 15; and good bread, 40 to 45 of water. Taking, then,\n the value of foods as estimated by their solid value,\n there are, it will be observed, a great many kinds of\n vegetable foods which are incomparably superior to\n animal.\"\n\nWe find accordingly, when we turn from this analysis to the\nactual charges at restaurants, that, whereas a good vegetarian\ndinner may be got for a shilling, it is necessary to pay fully\nthree times that sum for an equivalent in flesh food. It would\nbe waste of time to argue further that vegetarianism, whatever\nits other advantages and disadvantages to the individual, is\nmuch more _economical_ than flesh-eating.[39]\n\nFootnote 39:\n\n See the chapter on \"Values of Foods,\" pp. 93, 94, in \"Strength\n and Diet,\" by the Hon. R. Russell.\n\nBut here we are met by the difficulty that the well-to-do, on\nthe one hand, are not easily influenced by the motive of\neconomy, while the poor, on the other hand, are naturally\nsuspicious of the gospel of \"thrift,\" so often preached to them\nby the predatory classes who do not practise it themselves;\nand it must be admitted that it is perfectly useless for\nphilanthropical persons to preach food-thrift to the poor,\nunless by their own method of living they are testifying to the\ntruth of what they preach.\n\nIt is sometimes said that vegetarianism is an \"inconvenient\"\ndiet, which means no more than that the adoption of any new\nsystem gives trouble at first, though it may save trouble\nafterwards. When once adopted, vegetarianism is, of course,\na far more convenient, because a simpler and cleaner diet\nthan the ordinary one, as is testified by those who have had\npersonal experience of both. \"Having been my own butcher and\nscullion,\" says Thoreau, \"as well as the gentleman from whom\nthe dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually\ncomplete experience. The practical objection to animal food\nin my case was its uncleanness, and besides, when I had\ncaught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed\nnot to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and\nunnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread\nor a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble\nand filth.\"[40]\n\nFootnote 40:\n\n Walden, \"Higher Laws.\"\n\nThe assertion that the cheapening of food would cause the\nlowering of wages is true only as an answer to the exaggerated\nclaims sometimes made by vegetarians, that their system would\nof itself solve the whole problem of employment. It would not\ndo so; and if there were no force but vegetarianism in the\nfield it is doubtful whether the adoption of the cheaper diet\nwould in the long run bring any economical advantage to the\nworkers, though it would still benefit them morally and\nphysically. This, however, does not detract from the real\nstrength of the vegetarian argument; for with labour now\norganised and resolute, and yearly growing in power and\nintelligence, there is no likelihood that the workers' thrift\nwould become the capitalists' profit; on the contrary, it\nwould clearly add to the resources of labour. To assert that\nthe working classes should maintain the cruel and wasteful\npractice of flesh-eating merely to \"keep up wages\" is pure\nnonsense, for the same reasoning would justify the maintenance\nof drink, or any other extravagant and useless habit.\n\nWhat is true for the individual and the class is true also for\nthe community, and unless flesh food can be shown to be\nnecessary for human progress, the continuance of pastoralism,\nto the detriment and neglect of agriculture, is a criminal\nwaste of the national resources. In this Malthusian age of\nover-population scares and emigration schemes it is well to\nrecollect that a remedy lies close to hand if we would but use\nit. \"Not only is the earth not yet a quarter peopled,\" says\nMr. W. R. Greg, \"but even the inhabited portion is scarcely\nyet a quarter cultivated. In many countries the soil is barely\nscratched. Even in England it is not made to yield, on the\naverage, more than one-half its capacity.\"[41] And in the same\nwork he points out that \"the amount of human life sustainable\non a given area, and therefore throughout the chief portion of\nthe habitable globe, may be almost indefinitely increased by a\nsubstitution _pro tanto_ of vegetable for animal food.... A\ngiven acreage of wheat will feed at least _ten_ times as many\nmen as the same acreage employed in growing mutton.\"\n\nFootnote 41:\n\n Appendix to \"Enigmas of Life.\"\n\nIn view of the great complexity of the land question, the\nvariety of the causes that have led to the depression of\nagriculture, and the difficulty of forecasting accurately what\nwould be the result of the adoption of any particular reform by\nany one nation, considered apart from the rest, vegetarians will\ndo wisely in not claiming too much for the system they advocate.\nBut at least it must be admitted that vegetarianism would tend\nto bring about, in some form or other, that much-desired _return\nto the land_, which, in the present congested state of our\ncities and busy centres, is felt to be the best hope of\nstanching a dangerous wound. The town is at present draining the\nlife of the country, and the tide of emigration is still further\nsapping the national strength; but if men's thoughts could be\nturned back from commerce to agriculture, if a healthy love of\nthe soil, of fruit-growing, of market-gardening, could be\nsubstituted for the insane thirst for the feverish atmosphere of\nthe town, it is evident that a great step would have been taken\ntowards the cure of the disease. \"If the towns renounced\nflesh-eating,\" says Professor Newman, \"we should see in a single\ngeneration, even without improved land-tenure, a tide of\nmigration set the other way\u2014from towns into the country. Rustic\nindustry would be immensely developed. All motive for the\nexpatriation of our robustest youth would, for a long time yet,\nbe removed, and the country might be enormously enriched, not in\nan upper stratum of great fortunes, but down to the bottom of\nthe community.\"[42]\n\nFootnote 42:\n\n \"Essays on Diet,\" p. 55.\n\nSo, too, Max Nordau, in some notable passages of his\n_Conventional Lies of our Civilisation_:\n\n \"If the soil of Europe were cultivated like that of\n Belgium, it could support a population of 1,950 millions\n much more completely and abundantly than the 360\n millions it now supports so poorly.... Cultivation of\n the soil is the despised child of our civilisation.\n It hardly takes one forward stride where manufacture\n takes a hundred.... Experience teaches us that man's\n labour as a general thing can nowhere be employed in a\n more lucrative way than in agriculture. If a man should\n work over his field with the shovel and spade instead\n of the plough, he would find that a plot of ground of\n incredibly small size would be sufficient to support\n him.\"\n\nThere is yet another peril that would be lessened in proportion\nto the increase of vegetarianism\u2014the dependence of this country\non the importation of food from abroad. \"At present,\" says Mr.\nW. E. A. Axon, \"probably one-half of the population is dependent\nupon a foreign supply. That England should be, and is, the\nlast country in the world to desire a Chinese wall for the\nexclusion of foreign commodities, need not blind us to the fact\nthat there may be grave national dangers in the soil of\nthe country providing food for about half its people. A\nnation of vegetarians would create such a demand that rural\nEngland would be, if not a cornfield, yet a vast orchard and\nmarket-garden.\"[43]\n\nFootnote 43:\n\n _Manchester Vegetarian Lectures_, \"Vegetarianism and National\n Economy.\" For a clear statement of the present shocking\n neglect of agriculture in this country, see \"Fields,\n Factories, and Workshops,\" by P. Kropotkin, 1899, where it is\n shown that _two-thirds_ of our food-supply is now imported\n from abroad.\n\nEnough has now been said to show that the habit of flesh-eating,\ninvolving as it does the sacrifice of vast tracts of land to the\ngrazing of cattle, and the consequent starving of agriculture,\nis far too costly to be justified, in the face of an extending\ncivilisation, unless by a much clearer proof of its necessity\nthan any which its advocates have essayed; in fact, it only\nremains possible, on its present large scale, through the\ntemporary use of huge pasture-grounds in remote semi-civilised\nregions which will not always be available. For pastoralism\nbelongs rightly to another and earlier phase of the world's\neconomics, and as civilisation spreads it becomes more and more\nan anachronism, as surely as flesh-eating, by a corresponding\nchange, becomes an anachronism in morals.[44] It seems,\ngenerally speaking, that the foods which are the costliest in\nsuffering are also the costliest in price, whereas the wholesome\nand harmless diet to which Nature points us is at once the\ncheapest and most humane.\n\nFootnote 44:\n\n Against the sea fisheries, it may be noted, the same objection\n cannot be raised, as they do not diminish, but supplement the\n produce of the soil.\n\n\n\n\n DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES\n\n\nWe have next to deal with a special class of irregular foemen,\nthe guerillas and Bashi-Bazouks of the flesh-eater's army, whose\ngame it is to waylay and harass the vegetarian movement by a\nsmall fire of doubts and difficulties as to what the future has\nin store. The alarmists they are, whose apprehensive minds are\nconcerned not so much with the rightness or wrongness of the\nsystem, as with the anxieties of \"what would happen\" if the\ntriumph of vegetarianism should be won; and so gloomy are their\nforebodings as to suggest a probable collapse of the whole\nfabric of society, if once that great prop and mainstay of\ncivilisation\u2014the habit of eating dead animals\u2014should be\ndisloyally undermined.\n\nNow, at the outset, it should be said that the well-worn method\nof trying to discredit new principles by \"wanting to know\"\nbeforehand exactly how everything will happen, is in many cases\na foolish and fraudulent device. There are, of course, certain\nquite legitimate questions, as to the general scope and\npracticability of any proposed reform, to which reformers must\nbe prepared to make answer before they can expect to prevail,\nand to such questions vegetarians have a convincing reply; but\nwhen the inquisition takes the form of asking for a present\nexplanation of future developments, and for a foreknowledge of\ndetails which, in the very nature of things, are unknowable,\nthen it is well to make it clear from the beginning that we will\nbe no parties to any such waste of time. Reasonable foresight is\none thing, the gift of prophecy is another; and it is in no wise\nthe duty of those who are working towards a more or less distant\ngoal, to give a precise geometrical survey of their Promised\nLand.\n\nIn the case of vegetarianism the answerable doubts and\ndifficulties fall mostly under two heads, relating first to the\nalarming discomforts which the loss of flesh-food would entail\nupon mankind, and secondly to the not less grievous straits to\nwhich the animals themselves would be reduced under so misguided\na r\u00e9gime. Let us take the selfish view first, as containing,\nperhaps, a modicum of real feeling, which can scarcely be found\nin that suspicious concern for the animals. There are some folk,\nit seems, over whose troubled minds there really _does_ hang,\nlike a nightmare, the alarmist's vision of a world impoverished\nand dismantled by vegetarianism\u2014a world _sans_ leather, _sans_\nbone, _sans_ soap, _sans_ candles, _sans_ manure, _sans_\neverything.\n\n ALARMIST: But this is mere trifling. It is idle to\n talk of the humanity, the wholesomeness, the economy\n of a vegetarian diet, while you are overlooking the\n disastrous consequences that stare you in the face. We\n may perhaps be able, as you say, to exist without\n meat, but what could we do without leather and the\n other animal substances on which civilisation depends?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Well, I suppose we should take care _not_ to\n be without them, or something just as good.\n\n ALARMIST: How could we do that, if there were no\n carcases to supply us with hides, bone, and tallow?\n In your devotion to an ideal you seem to forget that\n if your principles prevailed, we might wake up some\n fine morning to find ourselves confronted by the\n dislocation of the boot trade, the bookbinding trade,\n the harness trade, and a hundred others. Thousands of\n men and women would be thrown out of work, and we should\n soon have no boots, no portmanteaus, no soap, no\n candles, no knife-handles. It would be a downright\n relapse into barbarism.\n\n VEGETARIAN: But, happily, your lurid picture is based on\n the false assumption that vegetarianism would come about\n by a sudden and instantaneous conversion. That is not\n the way in which great changes are accomplished. They\n are a matter of years and centuries, not of days and\n weeks; and the \"fine morning\" you spoke of will be a\n gradual morning of very extensive duration.\n\n ALARMIST: Well, but that is only putting off the evil\n day\u2014it would come at last.\n\n VEGETARIAN: But would not something else have also been\n coming meantime? Would not the demand, in this as in all\n other usages of life, have produced the corresponding\n supply? There is no need, however, to speculate as to\n what _would_ happen, because it is happening already.\n\n ALARMIST: What is happening?\n\n VEGETARIAN: The articles which you named are being\n supplied in substitutes from the vegetable kingdom.\n Slowly and tentatively at first, as is inevitable while\n vegetarians are so few in numbers; but vegetarian boots,\n vegetarian soap, and vegetarian candles are now in the\n market, and as the movement spreads, the demand will be\n proportionately greater. So pray do not alarm yourself\n about the dislocation of trade, for the whole change,\n great as it is, will come to pass imperceptibly, and\n will never bring a moment's inconvenience to anyone.\n Mankind, as it happens, is not so helpless, so\n uninventive, so literally \"hidebound,\" as to let its\n progress be dependent on skins, bones, and guts.\n\nThere is a good deal of unintended humour, too, in some of the\ndifficulties that are alleged. Thus, vegetarians are often asked\nhow the land could be fertilised without the use of animal\nmanure, it being apparently forgotten that _ex nihilo nihil\nfit_, and that animals can only return to the land in manure\nwhat they have previously taken from it in food; also that by\nour absurdly wasteful drainage system we are all the time\npoisoning our seas and rivers with a mass of sewage which would\nbe amply sufficient for the soil. \"Let the land,\" says Mr.\nWilliam Hoyle, \"only receive, in the shape of manure, the sewage\nand refuse from the teeming population of our towns and\nvillages, in addition to the other means which are applied to\nit, and let it be properly drained and cultivated, and there is\nhardly any limit to its power of production.\"[45]\n\nFootnote 45:\n\n \"Our National Resources,\" 1889.\n\nBut it is superfluous to spend time in answering such questions,\nfor their silliness is far in excess of their honesty. For years\nthe opponents of vegetarianism in the press had been asking,\n\"What should we do without leather?\" etc.; yet as soon as the\nsubstitutes for these articles began to be exhibited at the\nannual Vegetarian Congress, the note was changed, and the\nreporters remarked that the exhibition was \"not of much\ninterest,\" until we found the London correspondent of a big\nprovincial paper actually complaining that \"the crusade against\nmeat of every kind, _and even against leather_ (at this\nexhibition they have boots and shoes made of imitation leather),\nis carrying the reform a little too far.\" Our critics are hard\nto satisfy. We are going \"a little too far\" if we produce a\nsubstitute for leather; if we do not produce one, we are not\ngoing far enough.\n\nAnd now, with all becoming gravity, we turn to the second branch\nof our subject\u2014the disinterested inquiry as to \"what would\nbecome of the animals\" if we ceased to kill them for food. \"If\nthe life of animals,\" says Dr. Paul Carus, \"had to be regarded\nas sacred as human life, there can be no doubt about it that\nwhole industries would be destroyed, and human civilisation\nwould at once drop down to a very primitive condition. Many\nmillions would starve, and large cities would disappear from the\nface of the earth. But the brute creation would suffer too.\nThere might be a temporary increase of brute life, but certainly\nnot of happiness. Cattle would only be raised for draught-oxen\nand milk-kine, and they would not die the sudden death at the\nhands of the butcher, but slowly of old age or by disease.\"[46]\n\nFootnote 46:\n\n \"The Open Court,\" 1898.\n\nA pathetic picture, indeed! It does not for a moment occur\nto this sapient prophet of disaster that the adoption of\nvegetarianism will necessarily be gradual, and further that\nvegetarians do _not_ hold the life of animals to be \"as sacred\nas human life.\" To critics who do not even ascertain what\nthe system means before they reject it, and who ignore all\nconsideration of the degrees and relative sacredness of the\nvarious forms of life, vegetarianism must naturally seem to be a\nconfused jumble of thought\u2014the confusion, in reality, being\naltogether on their own side.\n\n ALARMIST: There is another aspect of this question, and\n a very grave one. If flesh-eating were abolished, what\n would become of the animals?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Yes, let us talk about that fearful\n contingency. You think they would be thrown out of\n employment, so to speak\u2014would find their careers cut\n short, or rather left long?\n\n ALARMIST: It is no joking matter. Would they not run\n wild in ever-increasing numbers, and perhaps overrun the\n land, or, if food failed them, lie dead and dying about\n our roadways and suburbs?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Before I relieve your anxiety on this point,\n may I just remark that this second difficulty seems\n to counterbalance the former one? If every suburban\n householder is likely to have a dead ox against his\n garden-gate, we evidently need not fear the failure\n of the leather and tallow trade. But once again you\n are mistaken. You have overlooked the fact that the\n breeding of animals is not free and unrestricted, but\n is kept within certain limits, and carefully regulated\n by man; so that if the demand for butchers' meat should\n gradually decline, there would be no more alarming\n result than a corresponding gradual decline in the\n supply from the breeder.\n\n ALARMIST: Well, I don't know. I sadly doubt whether\n things would balance themselves so comfortably.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Ah, you think that some neglected old\n porker, like Scott's \"Last Minstrel,\" would be left out\n in the cold.\n\n \"For, well-a-day! their date was fled,\n His tuneful brethren all were dead;\n And he, neglected and oppressed,\n Longed to be with them and at rest.\"\n\n But no; for look at the case of the donkey. We do\n not (knowingly) eat donkeys, yet a dead donkey is\n proverbially a rare sight. Nor are we overrun with\n donkeys\u2014at least, not in the sense referred to.\n\n ALARMIST: Yet I understand that in India, where there is\n a reluctance to kill animals, they are often in wretched\n plight.\n\n _Vegetarian_: True; but we were talking not of _killing_\n animals but of _eating_ them. Vegetarianism is not\n Brahminism; we would kill when necessary, whether for\n our own sake or the animals', but we would not breed\n them in vast numbers in order to kill, nor kill them in\n order to eat. Surely the distinction is a clear one?\n\nThe attitude of vegetarians towards this subject is indeed plain\nenough for those who wish to understand it. Regarding the\nslaughter of animals for food as cruel and unnecessary, they\nadvocate its discontinuance (a process which, if it comes about\nat all, will, as I have shown, be a gradual one, and will at no\npoint cause any sudden disruption of existing conditions), but\nthis does not commit them to the absurd belief that animal life,\nin all its various grades, is absolutely sacred and inviolable.\nMust we not suspect that the apologists of flesh-eating who make\nthese childish alarums and excursions are fain to do so from\nsome inner conviction of the weakness of their own case?\n\n\n\n\n BIBLE AND BEEF\n\n\n\"Bible and Beer\" is the title that is sometimes sarcastically\napplied to the political alliance between churchmen and\npublicans; and in like manner the dietetic alliance between the\n\"unco' guid\" and the butchers may be not inaptly designated as\nBible and Beef. When all else fails, the authority of Holy Writ\nis triumphantly cited by the bibliolatrous flesh-eater as the\ngreat court of appeal to which the food question must be\ncarried; and here at least, it is pleaded, there can be no doubt\nas to the verdict. \"It seems to me,\" wrote Dr. William Paley,\nmore than a hundred years ago, \"that it would be difficult to\ndefend this right [to the flesh of animals] by any arguments\nwhich the light and order of Nature afford, and that we are\nbeholden for it to the permission recorded in Scripture.\"[47]\n\nFootnote 47:\n\n \"Moral and Political Philosophy.\"\n\nIt is a far cry from the theologian of 1784 to the _Meat Trades'\nJournal_ of to-day, but from an editorial article we learn that\nthe organ of the butchering trade is animated by the same\nprofound sense of piety. \"The great Creator of all flesh,\" it\nsays, \"gave us the beasts of the field, not only for our food,\nbut for other purposes equally as essential to us. The grass\nmust be eaten by our flocks and herds, otherwise the fertility\nof the soil would vanish. It was a frightful punishment on the\nEgyptian [_sic_] King that he should be reduced to the level of\nthe beasts of the field and eat grass.\"[48]\n\nFootnote 48:\n\n November 19, 1892.\n\nNow, waiving the fact that grass is not precisely the diet that\nvegetarians adopt, and that it is, therefore, no reproach to\nvegetarianism if Nebuchadnezzar, not being a ruminant, found\nsuch a regimen distasteful, we must recognise that there is a\nwidespread idea among religious people that the lower animals\nwere \"sent\" us as food, and that the practice of flesh-eating\nhas the seal of biblical sanction. In meeting this prejudice,\nthere is a right line and a wrong line of reasoning, both of\nwhich have at different times been followed by vegetarian\nspeakers.\n\nThe wrong line is to attempt to answer the texts quoted as\nfavourable to flesh-eating by pitting against them other texts\nas favourable to vegetarianism\u2014a course which not only degrades\nthe Bible into a text-book for disputants,[49] but also\nsurrenders the most sacred claim of the reformed diet\u2014viz., its\nappeal not to this or to that textual authority, which some\nthinkers accept and others deny, but to the universal principle\nof humanity and justice.\n\nFootnote 49:\n\n As in the epigram,\n\n _Hic liber est in quo qu\u00e6rit sua dogmata quisque,\n Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua_:\n\n which may be freely rendered,\n\n This is the Book, to dogmatists well-known,\n Where each man dogma seeks, and finds\u2014his own.\n\nThe right line is to show, first, that it is wholly impossible,\nin the face of modern knowledge and evolutional science, to\nmaintain the old \"anthropocentric\" idea which regarded man as\nthe sum and centre of the universe, a monarch for whose special\nbenefit all else was created; and, secondly, that the ancient\nHebrew scriptures, whatever be their exact significance\nfor Christian readers (a matter with which we are not here\nconcerned), cannot be regarded as affording any clue to the\nsolution of modern problems which have arisen centuries later.\nIt would be no whit more absurd to argue that negro-slavery is\njustifiable because it was not condemned in the Bible than to\nclaim scriptural sanction for the cruelties of butchery because\nthe Jews were flesh-eaters. And, indeed, such arguments _have_\nbeen advanced by religious people in support of slavery; we\nread, for example, the following in John Woolman's journal: \"A\nfriend in company began to talk in support of the slave-trade,\nand said the negroes were understood to be the offspring of\nCain, their blackness being the mark which God set upon him\nafter he murdered Abel; that it was the design of Providence\nthey should be slaves, as a condition proper to the race of so\nwicked a man as Cain was.\"\n\nBut it is now time to introduce the textualist in person.\n\n TEXTUALIST: Well, sir, I understand that you advocate\n vegetarianism. What sort of a religion is that?\n\n VEGETARIAN: The real sort\u2014the sort that has to be\n _practised_ as well as preached.\n\n TEXTUALIST: If it is the real sort, the proof is easy.\n Show me the passages in the Book.\n\n VEGETARIAN: I beg to be excused. I do not bandy texts.\n\n TEXTUALIST: What? You can produce no verses in support\n of your religion? I thought vegetarians relied on what\n they call the \"Ten Best Texts,\" and here I stand ready\n to meet them with five-and-twenty better ones.\n\n VEGETARIAN: I am sorry to disappoint you, but I am not\n one of the text-quoting vegetarians. I regard all such\n methods of reasoning as wholly irrelevant. There is\n not the least doubt that the Jews were a flesh-eating\n people; indeed, the very idea of vegetarianism (that is,\n a deliberate and permanent disuse of flesh-food for\n moral and hygienic reasons) was wholly unknown to them.\n What, then, can be the use of hunting up Bible-texts\n which do not refer, one way or the other, to the point\n at issue?\n\n TEXTUALIST: But if it was unknown and unmentioned in the\n Bible, what hope for vegetarianism? It perishes like all\n else that is unscriptural.\n\n VEGETARIAN: The same hope as for the abolition of\n slavery, or any other humane cause that has had birth in\n our modern era. We live and learn.\n\n TEXTUALIST: But it is written, \"Rise, Peter, kill and\n eat.\" What is your answer to that?\n\n VEGETARIAN: It needs no answer, as you will see if you\n study the context.\n\n TEXTUALIST: Then you have not a single text to set\n against the injunction with which I confront you?\n\n VEGETARIAN: Not one\u2014unless it be, \"Answer not a fool\n according to his folly.\"\n\nTo repel texts with texts is a futility to which vegetarians as a\nbody have fortunately not committed themselves, because vegetarianism\nappeals, without reference to religion, to the common sentiment of\nhumaneness, and numbers amongst its adherents men of every nationality\nand creed. If biblical vegetarians have engaged in controversy with\nbiblical flesh-eaters, that is their own concern; and we may rest\nassured that the battle will be a sham one, as the firing is with blank\ncartridge on both sides.\n\nApart, however, from such irrational argument, there is a sense\nin which an appeal may be fairly made to the Bible, as to any\nother great ethnical scripture or world-literature\u2014that is, to\nthe spirit, as distinguished from the letter, the context as\ndistinguished from the text. That vegetarians, preaching and\npractising a doctrine of love and humaneness, should quote,\n\"Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed ... to you it\nshall be for meat,\" as indicating the ideal primitive diet, and\n\"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain,\" as\nprophetic of the ideal future, is just and appropriate, for such\npassages, though dealing with poetry rather than fact, are far\nmore suggestive than any textual evidence; and when we come to\nask what is the spirit of the New Testament towards such\ninstincts as that from which vegetarianism springs\u2014the desire to\nincrease the happiness and lessen the suffering of all sentient\nlife\u2014it is plain that here, at least, the vegetarian is on\nunassailable ground.\n\nBut the answer to the biblical flesh-eater lies still nearer at hand.\nFor the moment any attempt is made by him to ally the modern religious\nspirit with the maintenance of the slaughter-house, the incongruity\nof his position is revealed. Take \"grace before meat,\" for instance,\nand note the flat impiety of offering thanks to God over the body of\na fellow-being that has been cruelly slaughtered for the sake of our\n\"pleasures of the table.\" As Leigh Hunt has remarked: \"It is not\ncreditable to a thinking people that the two things they most thank\nGod for should be eating and fighting. We say grace when we are going\nto cut up lamb and chicken, and when we have stuffed ourselves with\nboth to an extent that an orang-outang would be ashamed of; and we\noffer up our best praises to the Creator for having blown and sabred\nhis 'images,' our fellow-creatures, to atoms, and drenched them in\nblood and dirt. This is odd. Strange that we should keep our most pious\ntransports for the lowest of our appetites and the most melancholy of\nour necessities; that we should never be wrought up into paroxysms of\nholy gratitude, but for bubble-and-squeak or a good-sized massacre!\"\n\nBut why, it may be asked, if the practice of flesh-eating is\nsuch as it is here described, do \"religious\" people acquiesce\nin it? Why indeed! except that, in these personal matters of\nevery-day life, the religionism of to-day, like the stoicism\nof old, has a tendency to respect the letter, but disregard\nthe spirit of its principles. The complaint which modern\nvegetarianism brings against the religious flesh-eaters is\nthat which the humaner philosophy made, centuries ago, against\nthe carnivorous stoics:\n\n \"Who is this censor who is so loud against the\n indulgence of the body and the luxuries of the kitchen?\n Why do they denounce pleasure as effeminate indulgence,\n and make so much fuss about it all? Surely it had been\n more logical if, while banishing from the table\n sweet-meats and perfumes, they had exhibited yet more\n indignation against the diet of blood! For as though all\n their philosophy merely regarded household accounts,\n they are simply interested in cutting down dinner\n expenses, so far as concerns the superfluous dainties of\n the table. They have no idea of deprecating what is\n murderous and cruel.\"[50]\n\nFootnote 50:\n\n Plutarch, \"On Flesh-Eating,\" quoted in \"The Ethics of Diet,\"\n by Howard Williams.\n\nAnd so is it nowadays with the champions of Bible and Beef, for,\nlike all formalists, they sacrifice the substance of religion to\nthe shadow, and while for ever quoting the sacred names of\njustice and loving-kindness, not only oppose those principles\nwhen in conflict with their own appetites, but actually base\ntheir opposition on the authority of their \"scripture.\" It would\nbe impossible to do the Bible a deadlier wrong than this; for\nwhether it be \"inspired\" or not, it is by universal consent a\ngreat literary monument, and those who profess to reverence it\nmost should be the last to wish to utilise it as a handbook for\nreactionists\u2014a store from which to draw irrelevant quotations\nfor obstructing the progress of reform.\n\n\n\n\n THE FLESH-EATER'S KITH AND KIN\n\n\nThere is nothing so pleasant as the reunion of long-separated\nkinsfolk, and it is the cheerful duty of this chapter to exhibit\nthe flesh-eater in what may be called his domestic relationship,\nto wit, his undoubted, but somewhat forgotten, connection with\nthe cannibal and the blood-sportsman. For, disguise it as he\nmay, he cannot altogether escape the fact that this kinship is a\nreal one. Kreophagist and anthropophagist, butcher and amateur\nbutcher, are but different branches of one and the same great\npredatory stock. The cannibal and the sportsman are the wicked\nuncles of the pious flesh-eater, unrespectable descendants from\na common ancestry, who have failed to adapt themselves to modern\nrequirements, and, like belated Royalists in a Commonweal, have\ncontinued to play the old privileged game when its date is\nover-past, an indiscretion which has caused them\u2014the cannibal\nespecially\u2014to be ignored as much as possible by their more\ncautious relatives. We are all familiar with that chapter of\n\"The Egoist\" (the \"Minor Incident showing an Hereditary\nAptitude in the Use of the Knife\"), in which the youthful Sir\nWilloughby Patterne, already an adept at \"cutting,\" is \"not at\nhome\" to his poor relation, the middle-aged unpresentable\nlieutenant of marines. \"Considerateness dismisses him on\nthe spot without parley.\" Even such is the attitude of the\nrespectable flesh-eater towards the bloodthirsty cannibal, and\nin a less extent also towards the devotee of murderous \"sport.\"\n\nBut to the student of the food question these antique types have\nno little interest, as a survival from an earlier and more\ninnocent phase of flesh-eating when the old brutality was as yet\nuntempered by the new spirit of humaneness. They exhibit\nkreophagy in its extreme logical form\u2014an anachronism, no doubt,\nand a _reductio ad absurdum_ in the present age\u2014but at least\nlogical, and, therefore, not to be overlooked by those who, in\ntheir hostility to food reform, are so fond of appealing to\nlogic.\n\nThe sportsman, for instance, is an old-world barbarian born into\na civilised era, a representative of the age when flesh-food\ncould only be obtained by the chase, and he is candid enough to\navow that he does his killing, not like the butcher, in order to\nearn a livelihood, but for the brutal reason that he _enjoys_\nit. \"The instincts of the primeval man,\" it has been well said,\n\"food-hunting, predatory, self-preserving, re-emerge in the\nmodern: moral sanctions are disregarded, the rights of inferior\nraces are forgotten, and the hunter feels himself, figuratively\nspeaking, naked, savage, bloodthirsty, and unashamed.\"[51] A\nbutcher he certainly is, but an amateur butcher only, for it can\nhardly be contended that the preserving of game increases the\nnational food-supply, in view of the fact that pheasants, hares,\nand even rabbits, are sold at a price far below their actual\ncost of production, and are thus a direct tax on the public\nresources. The blood-sportsman, then, is a member of the\ncarnivorous family by another line of descent, which has kept a\ntouch of the rank primitive wildness even to the present day;\nand this one thing alone can be said in his favour, that when he\nbutchers in sport, he at least does the butchery himself, and\ndoes not delegate the filthy task to others. He is his own\nslaughterman\u2014a mere and simple savage.\n\nFootnote 51:\n\n Robert Buchanan. Preface to J. Connell's \"The Truth about the\n Game Laws.\"\n\nCannibalism, again, is simply flesh-eating, free from those\nsentimental \"restrictions\" which Sir Henry Thompson and his\nfellow scientists deplore, and the cannibal's only fault, judged\nfrom the scientist's standpoint, is that he carries out the\nscientific doctrine not wisely but too well. For this reason\nevery lecture on vegetarianism ought to touch on cannibalism as\nillustrating a past chapter in the great history of diet\u2014a past\nchapter as regards the leading and so-called civilised nations,\nbut to this day a present and very instructive chapter in the\nworld's remoter regions, from which we may learn certain lessons\nas to the feelings, arguments, and fallacies that attend\nthe gradual process of transition from one dietetic habit\nto another. The flesh-eater generally affects to look on\ncannibalism as something monstrous and abnormal, a dreadful\nperversion of taste which has no connection with the civilised\nmeat-diet on which our welfare is supposed to depend; but the\nreal facts show that the truth is quite otherwise, and that the\nposition of the cannibal who is being proselytised to give up\nhis man-eating is in many ways analogous to that of the\nflesh-eater who is worried by the vegetarian propagandists. The\nglories of the old English roast beef may be instructively\ncompared with the glories of the old African roast man.\n\nIt is amusing to observe that the kreophagist who, on the one\nside, regards abstinence from flesh food as an absurd delusion\nis equally confident that cannibalism, on the other side, is an\nunpardonable infamy, forgetting that many of the excuses that\nare made for flesh-eating might be made with as much justice for\ncannibalism also. \"Prejudice is strange,\" says Professor\nFlinders Petrie. \"A large part of mankind are cannibals, and\nstill more, perhaps all, have been so, including our own\nforefathers, for Jerome describes the Atticotti, a British\ntribe, as preferring human flesh to that of cattle.... Does the\nutilitarian object? Yet one main purpose of the custom is\nutility; in its best and innocent forms it certainly gives the\ngreatest happiness to the greatest number.\"[52] Nor can it be\nheld that all cannibals are a specially degraded race, for\nLivingstone and later travellers quote well-authenticated\ninstances to show that tribes addicted to man-eating are\nsometimes more advanced, mentally and physically, than those\nwhich abstain from such diet; and as to the hygienic merits of\nthe regimen, does it not stand on record, in an old English\nballad, that Richard C\u0153ur de Lion was cured of a dangerous\nmalady by eating a Turk's head, which was served up to him as\nthe best substitute for pork? The kreophagist at present is able\nto pass unlimited censure on the cannibal, because the poor\nsavage has not the wit to argue with the civilised man; but if,\nin these days of University Extension schemes, such a person as\na scientific anthropophagist should ever make his appearance,\nwho can say that the position might not be somewhat reversed?\n\nFootnote 52:\n\n For interesting facts concerning cannibalism, see Professor W.\n M. Flinders Petrie's article, _Contemporary Review_, June\n 1897; \"The Fall of the Congo Arabs,\" by Captain Sidney L.\n Hinde, 1897; and \"The Land of the Pigmies,\" by Captain Guy\n Burrows, 1899.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Let me introduce you, gentlemen. You are\n blood-relations, I think, and should have much to say to\n each other. The Kreophagist\u2014the Anthropophagist.\n\n KREOPHAGIST: Good morning, uncle. But I cannot admit the\n relationship if it is true that you are addicted to the\n atrocious habit of cannibalism.\n\n ANTHROPOPHAGIST: How atrocious, nephew? If you eat one\n kind of flesh, why should you abstain from another? Are\n you aware that they are chemically identical? Pig or\n \"long pig\"\u2014where is the difference?\n\n KREOPHAGIST: Where is the difference? Can you ask me\n such a question?\n\n VEGETARIAN: It is uncommonly like the question you have\n been asking _me_!\n\n ANTHROPOPHAGIST: Your objection to human flesh is\n altogether a sentimental one. You are a food faddist. It\n is the universal law of nature that animals should prey\n on one another.\n\n KREOPHAGIST: It is not _my_ nature to eat my\n fellow-beings.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Why, that is the very same answer that I\n made to _you_!\n\n ANTHROPOPHAGIST: And pray, what would become of our\n paupers, criminals, lunatics, and sick folk, if we did\n not eat them? Would they not grow to a great residuum\n and overrun the land? And the missionaries, too\u2014are they\n not \"sent\" us as food? And what right have you to the\n name _omnivorous_, if you restrict your diet in this\n way? Why \"omnivorous\"?\n\nThe discontinuance of cannibalism marks, of course, an immense\nstep in humane progress, and so long as the kreophagist does not\nabsurdly claim that it is a _final_ step, his case against the\nanthropophagist is a sure one; but if, while denouncing\nanthropophagy as a barbarism of the past, he refuses to see that\nflesh-eating must also, in turn, be replaced by a more humane\ndiet, he lays himself open to a raking fire of criticism.\nObserve, for example, in view of the historical facts of\ncannibalism, the absolute helplessness of Sir Henry Thompson's\nposition, when, as an objection to vegetarianism, he argues that\n\"the very idea of _restricting_ our resources and supplies is a\nstep backwards, a distinct reversion to the rude and distant\nsavagery of the past, a sign of decadence rather than of\nadvance.\" It is true that mankind has, on the whole, largely\nextended its resources; but it is none the less true that, while\nit has acquired many new foods, it has abandoned certain old\nones. It has advanced, in short, as already stated, by a process\nnot of omnivorism, but of eclecticism, which implies not only\nacceptance, but rejection\u2014a fact which knocks Sir Henry\nThompson's reasoning to atoms.\n\nThe power which has condemned cannibalism is that growing\ninstinct of humaneness which makes it impossible for men to prey\non their fellow-beings when once recognised as such. A notable\npassage in one of Olive Schreiner's works may be quoted in\nillustration:\n\n \"In those days, which men reck not of now, man, when\n he hungered, fed on the flesh of his fellow-man and\n found it sweet. Yet even in those days it came to pass\n that there was one whose head was higher than her\n fellows and her thought keener, and as she picked the\n flesh from a human skull she pondered. And so it came to\n pass that the next night, when men were gathered round\n the fire ready to eat, she stole away, and when they\n went to the tree where the victim was bound, they found\n him gone. And they cried one to another, 'She, only\n she, has done this, who has always said, I like not the\n taste of man-flesh; men are too like me: I cannot eat\n them.' Into the heads of certain men and women a new\n thought had taken root; they said, 'There is something\n evil in the taste of human flesh.' And ever after, when\n the flesh-pots were filled with man-flesh, these stood\n aside, and half the tribe ate human flesh and half not;\n then, as the years passed, none ate.\"[53]\n\nFootnote 53:\n\n \"Trooper Peter Halket.\"\n\nA strange comment this on the Andrew Wilson formula, that we\nshould eat \"that which is likest to our own composition!\" For\nwhat if we have begun to recognise that the lower animals also\nare related to us by a close bond of kinship? From our knowledge\nof the past we form our judgment of the future, and see, with\nThoreau, that \"it is part of the destiny of the human race, in\nits gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely\nas the savage tribes left off eating each other when they came\nin contact with the more civilised.\"[54]\n\nFootnote 54:\n\n Walden, \"Higher Laws.\"\n\n\n\n\n VEGETARIANISM AS RELATED TO OTHER REFORMS\n\n\nIt is sometimes held by the champions of vegetarianism that\nreform of diet is the starting-point and foundation-stone of all\nother reform\u2014a panacea for the ills and maladies of the world.\nThis over-estimate on the part of a few enthusiasts of an\nunpopular cause is due, presumably, to a revolt from the\ncontrary extreme of depreciation; for a little thought must\nshow us that, in the complexity of modern life, there is no\nsuch thing as a panacea for social ailments, and that, as\nthere is no royal road to knowledge, so there is no royal\nroad to reform. It is impossible for vegetarianism to solve\nthe social question, unless by alliance with various other\nreforms that are advancing _pari passu_\u2014so interlocked and\ninterdependent are all these struggles towards freedom. It has\nbeen well said that, \"By humanitarians, socialists, vegetarians,\nanti-vivisectionists, teetotalers, land-reformers, and all such\nseekers of human welfare, this must be borne in mind\u2014that each\nof their particular efforts is but a detail of the whole work of\nsocial regeneration, and that we cannot rightly understand and\ndirect our own little piece of effort unless we know it, and\npursue it, as part of the great whole.\"[55]\n\nFootnote 55:\n\n The _New Charter_, \"The Humanitarian View.\"\n\nStill more mistaken, on the other hand, is that common prejudice\nagainst food reform which would exclude it altogether from the\ndignity of propagandism, and would limit it to the personal\npractice of individuals. \"There can be no objection,\" says Dr.\nBurney Yeo, \"to individuals adopting any kind of diet which they\nmay find answer their needs and minister to their comfort; it is\nonly when they attempt to enforce what they practise on others\nthat they must expect to encounter rational opposition.\"[56]\nUnfortunately, we have learnt by bitter experience that\n_rational_ opposition is the last thing we can expect to\nencounter\u2014as, indeed, is made sufficiently evident by Dr. Yeo's\nargument. For how could individual vegetarians have ever heard\nof the new diet except for the propaganda? And why have\nvegetarians, as a body, less right than teetotalers, socialists,\nor any other propagandists, not to \"enforce,\" but to _advocate_\ntheir philosophy of diet with the view of ultimately influencing\npublic opinion? This professional attempt to class vegetarianism\nas an idiosyncrasy, and not a system, is as irrational as it is\ninsincere, and what its insincerity is may be seen from the fact\nthat, though we are told at one moment that \"there can be no\nobjection\" to individual practice of the diet, yet whenever\nindividuals do attempt to practise it, they meet with the\nstrongest possible objection from the doctors themselves!\n\nFootnote 56:\n\n \"Foods in Health and Disease.\"\n\nThus it comes about that in this progressive age, and even\namong those who label themselves \"progressives,\" vegetarianism\nis so frequently regarded as a mere whim and crotchet, with no\npractical bearing on the forward movement of to-day. It is a\nmarvel that so many \"advanced\" journals, which have a good\nword for a host of worthy causes that are fighting an uphill\nbattle against monopoly and injustice\u2014social reform, land\nreform, law reform, prison reform, hospital reform, and a\nhundred more\u2014are dumb as death, or speak only to sneer, when\nthe subject is food reform; and thus lead their readers to\nsuppose that, whereas on all other matters there has been a\ngreat change of feeling during the past half-century, on the\none matter of diet there has been no sort of progress! Yet\nthey might easily learn, if they made serious inquiry, that\nthe reformed dietetics, so far from being the outcome of mere\nsentiment about animals, have a past record based as surely on\nmoral and scientific reasoning as that of any cause included\nin the progressive programme. Vegetarianism is, in truth,\n_progressiveness in diet_; and for a progressive to scout such\nideas as valueless and Utopian is to play the part (as far as\ndiet is concerned) of a reactionist. What is the meaning of\nthis strange discrepancy? It must mean, we fear, that to a\nlarge number of our social reformers the reform of other\npersons is a much more congenial battle cry than the reform of\none's self. _Hinc ill\u00e6 lacrym\u00e6._ They call vegetarianism\n\"impracticable\" for the strange reason that, unlike most\n_isms_, it asks them to do something individually which they\nknow they _could_ do\u2014if they wished! It is impracticable\nbecause it does not suit them to practise it.\n\n REFORMER: Let me entreat you; give up this fanciful\n scheme of vegetarianism and come and work for social\n reform.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Social reform without food reform! Is not\n that rather a lame and lop-sided business?\n\n REFORMER: Not at all. When we have so many things to do\n we must do the most important ones first.\n\n VEGETARIAN: And what are the most important?\n\n REFORMER: Well, there is international peace and\n arbitration. You will admit that our first duty is to\n avoid unnecessary bloodshed.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Ah, I see! And the habit of _living_ by\n bloodshed doesn't come within your scope!\n\n REFORMER: Then there is the land question, and the need\n of relieving the congestion of our crowded cities by the\n revival of agriculture.\n\n VEGETARIAN: So, of course, you can't attend to a\n diet-system which would bring people back to the land!\n\n REFORMER: There is also the temperance problem\u2014the\n terrible evils of the drink crave.\n\n VEGETARIAN: Which would disappear for the most part if\n we left off eating flesh.\n\n REFORMER: And the welfare of animals\u2014for to that also I\n devote myself. We need some stringent legislation for\n the better prevention of cruelty.\n\n VEGETARIAN: We do. But as such legislation would leave\n your reformers dinnerless, don't you think you should\n revise your dietary meantime? Your reforms are\n excellent, I grant you; but what of _self-reform_? Does\n not reform, like charity, begin at home?\n\n REFORMER: Well, well; to everyone his taste\u2014reform or\n self-reform. I prefer the former; you the latter, I\n suppose.\n\n VEGETARIAN: No; that is just where you are mistaken. I\n prefer both at once.\n\nReform _and_ self-reform, not reform _or_ self-reform\u2014that is\nthe true key to the solution of the social question. The work\nthat we can do ourselves is the most wholesome condiment for the\nwork that we can only do through society. And here let me\nexpress the hope that, as a matter of policy, vegetarians will\nstand aloof from all \"philanthropic\" schemes of _vicarious_ food\nreform in prisons, reformatories, and workhouses; for there is\nno surer way of making a principle unpopular than by forcing it\non the poor and helpless, while carefully avoiding it one's\nself. Philanthropists, if they be philanthropists, will practise\nwhat they preach; by their practice we shall know them.\n\nTo the so-called ethical, no less than to the political, school\nof thought the question of vegetarianism is unwelcome, obtruding\nas it does on the polite wordiness of learned discussion with an\nissue so coarsely downright: \"You are a member of an ethical\nsociety\u2014do you live by butchery?\" But the ethics of diet are the\nvery last subject with which a cultured ethical society would\nconcern itself, and the attitude of the modern \"ethicist\"\ntowards the rights of animals is still that of the medieval\nschoolman. The ethicist does not wish to forego his beef and\nmutton, so he frames his ethics to avoid the danger of such\nmishap, and while he talks of high themes with the serene wisdom\nof a philosopher the slaughter-houses continue to run blood. We\nsurmise that the royal founder and archetype of ethical\nsocieties was that learned but futile monarch referred to in the\nepitaph:\n\n Here lies our mutton-loving king,\n Whose word no man relies on:\n He never _said_ a foolish thing,\n And never _did_ a wise one.\n\nSo, too, throughout the whole field of hygiene, temperance, and\nplain living, to ignore vegetarianism is to ignore one of the\nmost potent influences for self-restraint. One is reluctant to\nquote the late Sir Henry Thompson in any matter that tends to\nthe praise of vegetarianism, in view of the extreme irritability\nwhich that distinguished scientist exhibited as regards his\nsacred text, with which you could never take the liberty of\nassuming that, when it distinctly said one thing, it did not\nmean the opposite; yet he _did_ say that \"a proportion amounting\nat least to more than one-half of the disease which embitters\nthe middle and latter part of life, among the middle and upper\nclasses of the population, is due to avoidable errors in\ndiet.\"[57] If this be so, it is obvious that diet reform (of\nsome sort) is very urgently needed; and I submit that it would\nbe difficult to frame any intelligible scheme of diet reform in\nwhich vegetarian principles should play no part, embracing, as\nthey do, all the best features of temperance and frugality. What\nis the use of for ever preaching about the avoidance of luxuries\nand stimulants, if you rule out of your system the one dietary\nwhich makes stimulants and luxuries impossible? The relation of\nvegetarianism to temperance, of the food question to the drink\nquestion, is that of the greater which includes the less.\n\nFootnote 57:\n\n _Nineteenth Century_, May, 1885.\n\nBut it is when we turn from philanthropy to zoophily, and to the\nquestions more particularly affecting the welfare of animals,\nthat the importance of vegetarianism, in spite of the stubborn\nattempts of the old-fashioned \"animal lovers\" to overlook it, is\nmost marked. Here, again, I do not share the extreme vegetarian\nview that food reform is the _foundation_ of other reforms, for\nI think it can be shown that all cruelties to animals, whether\ninflicted in the interests of the dinner-table, the laboratory,\nthe hunting-field, or any other institution, are the outcome of\none and the same error\u2014the blindness which can see no unity and\nkinship, but only difference and division, between the human and\nthe non-human race. This blindness it is\u2014this crass denial of a\ncommon origin, a common nature, a common structure, and common\npleasures and pains\u2014that has alone hardened men in all ages of\nthe world, civilised or barbarous, to inflict such fiendish\noutrages on their harmless fellow-beings; and to remove this\nblindness we need, it seems to me, a deeper and more radical\nremedy than the reform of sport, or of physiological methods, or\neven of diet alone. The only real cure for the evil is the\ngrowing sense that the lower animals are closely akin to us, and\nhave rights.\n\nAnd here we see the inevitable logic of vegetarianism, if our\nbelief in the rights of animals is ever to quit the stage of\ntheory and enter the stage of fact; for just as there can be no\nhuman rights where there is slavery, so there can be no animal\nrights where there is eating of flesh. \"To keep a man, slave or\nservant,\" says Edward Carpenter, \"for your own advantage merely,\nto keep an animal that you may _eat_ it, is a lie; you cannot\nlook that man or animal in the face.\" I am not saying that it\nis not a good thing that, quite apart from food reform,\nanti-vivisectionists should be denouncing the doings of \"the\nscientific inquisition,\" while humanitarians of another school\nare exposing the horrors of sport, for cruelty is a many-headed\nmonster, and there must at times be a concentration of energy on\na particular spot; but I do say that any reasoned principle of\nkindness to animals which leaves vegetarianism outside its scope\nis, in the very nature of things, foredoomed to failure.[58]\n\nFootnote 58:\n\n Take, for example, the rule to which some bird-lovers bind\n themselves, to wear no feathers but those of birds killed for\n food. One is reminded of Thomas Paine's epigram: \"They pity\n the plumage, but forget the dying bird.\"\n\nVegetarianism is an essential part of any true zoophily, and\nthe reason why it is not more generally recognised as such\nis the same as that which excludes it from the plan of the\nprogressive\u2014that it is so upsetting to the every-day habits\nof the average man. Few of us, comparatively, care to murder\nbirds in \"sport,\" and still fewer to cut up living animals\nin the supposed interests of \"science,\" but we have all been\ntaught to regard flesh food as a necessity, and it is a\nmatter, at first, of some effort and self-denial to rid\nourselves of complicity in butchering. Herein is at once the\nstrength and the weakness of the case for vegetarianism\u2014the\nstrength as regards its logic, and the weakness as regards\nits unpopularity\u2014that it makes more direct personal demand\non the earnestness of its believers than other forms of\nzoophily do; for which reason there is a widespread, though\nperhaps unconscious, tendency among zoophilists to evade it.\n\nYet that such evasion is a blunder may be seen from the\noutcry raised against it not by vegetarians only, but by the\nvivisectionists and sportsmen themselves, who are quick to ask\nthe zoophilists why, if they are so eager for the well-being of\nthe animals, they do not desist from eating them\u2014a question\nwhich, however insincere in the mouths of some who propound it,\nmust at least be allowed to be logical. For it is simple truth\nthat though vivisection is a more refined and diabolical\ntorture, and sport a more stupidly wanton one, the _sum_ of\nsuffering that results from the practice of flesh-eating\nis greater and more disastrous than either, and by being\nso familiarly paraded in our streets is a cause of wider\ndemoralisation. When one thinks of the aimless and stunted life,\nas well as the barbarous death, of the wretched victims of the\nslaughter-house, bred as they are for no better purpose than to\nbe unnaturally fattened for the table, it makes one marvel that\nso many kindly folk, keenly sensitive to the cruelties inflicted\nelsewhere, should be utterly deaf and blind to the doings of\ntheir family butcher. The zoophilist loves to quote the famous\nlines of Coleridge:\n\n He prayeth best who loveth best\n All things both great and small.\n\nBut what kind of \"love\" is that which eats the object of its\naffection? There are hidden rocks in that poetical passage which\na sense of humour should indicate to the pilot of zoophily.\n\nOur position, therefore, is this\u2014that while we make no exaggerated\nclaim for vegetarianism, as in itself a panacea for human ills and\nanimal sufferings, we insist on the rational view that reform of diet\nis an indispensable branch of social organisation, and that it is idle\nto talk of recognising \"rights of animals\" so long as we unconcernedly\n_eat_ them. Vegetarianism is no more and no less than an essential\npart in the highly complex engine which is to shape the fabric of a\nnew social structure, an engine which will not work if a single screw\nbe missing. The part without the whole is undeniably powerless; but so\nalso, as it happens, is the whole without the part.\n\n\n\n\n CONCLUSION\n\n\nThe chief object of this work, as stated at the outset, has been\nto prove the logical soundness of vegetarian principles, and the\nhollowness of the hackneyed taunt, so often a makeshift for\nreasoning, that vegetarians are a crew of mild brainless\nenthusiasts whose \"hearts are better than their heads.\" How far\nI have been successful in this purpose it is for the reader to\njudge; I trust it has, at least, been made plain that, if it is\nlogic that our friends are in need of, we are quite ready to\naccommodate them, and that nothing will please us better than\na thorough intellectual sifting of the whole problem of\ndiet. Only it must be a _thorough_ sifting. The great foe of\nvegetarianism, as of every other reform, is habit\u2014that inert,\nblind, dogged force which time called into being, and time only\ncan outwear\u2014and it is this which lurks behind the flimsy\nsophisms and excuses that the flesh-eater loves to set up, in\nwhich, as a rule, though there is much show of controversy,\nthere is little real discussion. To those of our opponents who\nhonestly wish to grapple with the question of diet, and to\nunderstand what vegetarianism means (whether they agree with it\nor not), I submit that the following points have, at any rate,\nbeen clearly set before them:\n\n 1. That the objections raised to the name \"vegetarian\"\n are founded on sheer ignorance of the word's origin,\n and calculated, if not designed, to distract attention\n from the substance by fixing it on the shadow. It is\n not nowadays seriously denied, by any responsible\n authority, that a vegetable diet, _with the addition\n of eggs and milk_, is quite adequate for nutriment;\n but the method is this\u2014to allow what is said (rightly\n or wrongly) of the sufficiency of a _strictly_ vegetable\n diet to be misunderstood by the public as referring\n to \"vegetarianism.\" Thus, Dr. J. Burney Yeo, in his\n \"Food in Health and Disease,\" first argues that\n \"vegetarians\" have no right to their title, because they\n consume animal products, and then proceeds to allege\n various reasons against \"a purely vegetable diet,\" which\n by his own showing is not what vegetarianism represents.\n This is a fair sample of flesh-eaters' logic.\n\n 2. That the immediate aim of vegetarians is not that\n which, under various forms, is so industriously\n foisted on them\u2014viz., a desire to attain at one step\n to the millennium, by altogether ceasing to take the\n life of animals, or by entire abstinence from animal\n products\u2014but rather it is a practical, intelligible,\n though necessarily imperfect, attempt to humanise, as\n far as may be, the present sanguinary diet system, by\n the omission at least of its more loathsome and\n barbarous features.\n\n 3. That vegetarianism, if once admitted to be\n practicable, offers certain positive benefits of the\n utmost value, humane, \u00e6sthetic, hygienic, social,\n economic; while, on the other hand, the denials that\n have hitherto been made of its practicability, on the\n plea of structure, laws of nature, climate, digestion,\n and so forth, are far too weak and illogical to bear the\n test of criticism. There _may_, of course, be some\n conclusive reason against vegetarianism, but if so, why\n is its production delayed?\n\n 4. That in the greater number of the arguments brought\n against vegetarianism, the importance of the _moral_\n aspect of the question is studiously kept out of sight.\n Thus, Sir Henry Thompson, in his _Nineteenth Century_\n article of 1885, while admitting the possibility of\n abstaining from flesh foods, gave judgment on the whole\n in favour of a moderate use of them\u2014but without allowing\n the smallest weight to humane or moral considerations.\n Writing on the same subject in 1898, he so far repaired\n this oversight as to argue that it is really kinder\n to eat animals than not to do so, because otherwise\n they would not be bred at all! That is the amount of\n attention the moral side of vegetarianism receives from\n its opponents, a great humane issue being set aside by a\n sophism more suited for a Savoy comedy than for serious\n discussion.\n\nBut there is the further question\u2014and as far as these chapters\nare concerned, the final question\u2014why, if vegetarianism is part\nand parcel of a genuine \"progressive\" movement, does it not more\nrapidly progress? \"Why so little _result_ from your propaganda?\"\nis the frequent sneer of the flesh-eater, and the vegetarian\nhimself is sometimes fain to be down-hearted at the seeming\nslowness of his advance. Does vegetarianism progress? Yes and\nno, according to the expectations, reasonable or unreasonable,\nthat its supporters have been cherishing. If we have fondly\nhoped to witness, in the future, the triumph of the humaner\nliving, it must be allowed that the actual rate of progress is\nextremely disheartening; but if, on the contrary, we work under\na rational understanding that a widespread change of diet, like\nany other radical change, is a matter not of years but of\ncenturies, then we shall not find in the slow growth of our\nmovement any reason for dissatisfaction. Revolution in personal\nhabits, be it remembered, is even more difficult than revolution\nin political forms, and needs a greater time for its fulfilment,\nand, looked at in this light, vegetarianism has made as much\nprogress during the past half-century as any other cause which\naims at so far-reaching a change.\n\nBut what of the many individual failures, it is asked, among\nthose who make trial of vegetarianism? Taking the circumstances\ninto account, the failures cannot be regarded as numerous; for\nin every such movement there are half-hearted people who are\nimpelled by motives of restlessness and curiosity, rather than\nof real conviction, and in view of the personal obstacles that\nbeset the path of the vegetarian it is not surprising that in\nfood reform, as in drink reform, there are a certain number of\nbacksliders. In an ordinary household every possible influence,\nsocial and domestic, is brought to bear on the heretic who\nabstains from flesh foods. Anxious relatives and indignant\nfriends adjure him to remember the duty he owes to himself and\nto his family, and urge him for the sake of those dear to him,\nif not for his own, to return to that great sacramental bond\nof union between man and man\u2014the eating of our non-human\nfellow-beings. Is he smitten by one of the numberless ailments\nthat are the stock-in-trade of the physician, and of which\nflesh-eaters are daily the victims in every part of the\nworld? The doctor looks wise, shakes his head, and informs\na sorrowing circle that it is the direct result of \"his\nvegetarianism.\" Above all, the fear of ridicule, acting on the\nnatural unwillingness of mankind to venture along unknown paths,\nis a strong deterrent; for there are still many persons to whom\nthe idea of abstinence from butchers' meat is positively a\nmatter for merriment, and it seems fated that vegetarianism,\nlike every new principle, must be a target for such shafts.\nWell, so be it! We know that the struggle will be a long one,\nand if vegetarianism has got to run the blockade of Noodledom,\nand a huge amount of foolish talk must perforce be fired off,\nthe sooner the battle commences, and the sooner it is concluded,\nthe better for all concerned. And ridicule, as the flesh-eater\nwill learn, is a weapon which can be wielded by more parties\nthan one.\n\nFor, to be frank, the dietists of the old-fashioned kreophagist school\nhave talked, and are talking, a great deal of downright nonsense in\ntheir tirades against vegetarianism, and the only reason why they have\nnot been more widely brought to book is that they speak in orthodox\nquarters where no reply is permitted. The oracle, of course, must not\nbe answered or criticised. So far as they have condescended to state a\ncase against food reform, it is a case which would be laughed out of\ncourt, as a string of quibbles and absurdities, in any open discussion;\nfor the specialist, that most humourless of persons, is apt to forget\nthat the moment he quits the ground on which he has made himself a\nmaster (and such ground has very narrow limitations) he is no longer\ninfallible, and that if he thinks to exorcise modern feeling by the\nrepetition of ancient formulas, he will only make himself ridiculous.\nAnd as a matter of pure humour, apart from humanity, which is the more\ncomical\u2014the man who can live in simple affluence on a supply of food\nwhich is as little costly to himself as it is burdensome to others, or\nhe who cannot be content unless he gluts an ogreish appetite on animals\nslaughtered for his larder, and then pharisaically pretends that he has\ndone them a kindness by eating them? It is custom, and custom alone\u2014the\nthraldom of that \"ceaseless round of mutton and beef to which the dead\nlevel of civilisation reduces us\"[59]\u2014that prevents civilised men from\nseeing the essential silliness of maintaining the diet of savages.\n\nFootnote 59:\n\n Richard Jefferies, \"Field and Hedgerows.\"\n\nThat a percentage of those who make trial of vegetarianism\nshould return to their former habit is in accordance with what\nalways happens in the fight between the new and the old, and at\nthe utmost\u2014that is, in the rare cases where such trial has been\na genuine one\u2014proves only that a change of diet is much more\ndifficult for some persons than it is for others, a fact which\nall rational food reformers have recognised. But from the force\nof _affirmative_ testimony there is no escape, when, as in the\ncase of vegetarianism successfully practised, and yielding the\nbest results, the instances are drawn from every rank and\ntemperament, and are amply sufficient in number to prove the\nexperience trustworthy. It is idle to go on asserting that a\nthing cannot be done, when you are face to face with some\nthousands of people who not only have done it, but are happier\nand healthier in consequence.\n\nWith the question of the right choice of food, and how to adopt\nvegetarianism, I am not here concerned; such information is\nreadily accessible in current vegetarian literature. But it must\nbe said in conclusion\u2014and this is the thought which, above all\nothers, I would leave in the mind of the reader\u2014that the surest\nwarrant of success in the reform of diet is a sincere belief in\nthe moral rightness of the cause. The _spirit_ in which one\ntakes up vegetarianism is the main factor in the result. It is\nuseless to look for any absolute proof in such matters\u2014the proof\nis in one's self\u2014for those, at least, who have heart to feel,\nand brain to ponder, the cruelty and folly of flesh-eating. It\nis an issue where logic is as wholly on the one side as habit is\nwholly on the other, and where habit is as certainly the shield\nof barbarism as logic is the sword of humaneness.\n\n\n\n\n INDEX\n\n\n Adams, B. K., quoted, 68, 69\n\n \u00c6sthete, the, 51-54\n\n Alarmist, the, 84-89\n\n \"All-or-Nothing\" argument, 10-12 See Consistency\n\n Animals, what would become of them? 86, 87\n\n Animal products, use of, 5, 6, 42, 43, 109, 110\n\n Anthropoid apes, 18-22\n\n Anthropologist, the, 24-28\n\n Anthropophagist, the, 95-98\n\n Asceticism, 11, 72\n\n Athletics, vegetarian, 60\n\n Axon, W. E. A., quoted, 81\n\n\n Bible and Beef, 89\n\n Bon Vivant, the, 30-32\n\n Brahminism, 43, 44, 87\n\n British Islander, the, 67, 68\n\n _British Medical Journal_, quoted, 29, 34, 62, 63\n\n Buchanan, Robert, quoted, 96\n\n Butchery, effect on character, 47-50\n\n\n Canine teeth, argument from, 19\n\n Cannibalism, 10, 64, 65, 73 (note);\n its relation to flesh-eating, 95-97\n\n Carnalist, the, 73\n\n Carpenter, Edward, quoted, 71 (note), 106\n\n Cartesian theory, 26\n\n Carus, Dr. Paul, quoted, 86\n\n Cattle transit, 31\n\n Chemical argument, 9, 10\n\n Chemist, the, 64-66\n\n Cheyne, Dr., quoted, 60\n\n Chicago shambles, 35, 36, 49, 55\n\n Climate, argument from, 67-70\n\n \"Cock-and-Bull\" argument, 42, 43\n\n Coit, Dr. Stanton, quoted, 39\n\n Consistency, true and false. See \"All-or-Nothing,\" 41-46\n\n Cramming system, 75, 76\n\n\n Darwinian theory, 25, 26\n\n Dembo, Dr., quoted, 32\n\n De Quincey, quoted, 55\n\n Digestibility of foods, 62-65\n\n Diseased flesh, 58, 59\n\n Drover, the, 31\n\n\n Economy of vegetarian diet, 77, 78\n\n Esquimaux, what would become of them? 68\n\n \"Ethics of Diet,\" 15 (note), 93\n\n Ethical Societies, attitude towards Vegetarianism, 39, 104\n\n\n Fish-eating, 45, 46, 82 (note)\n\n Flinders Petrie, Professor, quoted, 97\n\n Franklin, Benjamin, 24, 28\n\n Fraser, J. F., quoted, 55\n\n Frugivorous nature of Man, 18-22\n\n\n Gordon-Cumming, C. F., quoted, 65\n\n Grace before meat, 92, 93\n\n Greg, W. R., quoted, 79, 80\n\n\n Habit, influence of, 109, 113\n\n Haig, Dr. A., 60, 61\n\n Herbivora, the, 20, 62\n\n Hofmann's Experiments, 64, 65\n\n Hudson, W. H., quoted, 36\n\n Humanity, synonymous with culture, 51, 54\n\n Hunt, Leigh, quoted, 54, 93\n\n Hygienic Aspect of Vegetarianism, 57, 58\n\n\n Keith, Dr. G., quoted, 75\n\n Kingsford, Dr. Anna, 13 (note), quoted, 74\n\n Kropotkin, Prince, quoted, 25, 26, 81 (note)\n\n\n Land question, the, 80\n\n Lawrence, Sir William, quoted, 68\n\n Leather, what should we do without? 84-86\n\n Lester, H. F., quoted, 48, 50\n\n Life, relative value of, 10, 27, 28, 42\n\n Logic, uses of, 1, 109\n\n\n \"Man is what he eats,\" 71\n\n Manure question, 85\n\n Maxwell, Sir H., 38\n\n Mayor, Rev. Professor J. E. B., 5, 21\n\n _Meat Trades Journal_, quoted, 32, 89\n\n \"Metaphysic of the larder,\" 37-39\n\n Michelet, Jules, quoted, 33, 34\n\n Monastic orders, vegetarian diet of, 14, 74\n\n Moral aspect of diet question, 10, 34, 72-74, 110\n\n\n Nature, argument from, 24-28\n\n Newman, Professor F. W., quoted, 58, 80\n\n Nordau, Max, quoted, 81\n\n\n Oldfield, Dr. J., quoted, 21 (note), 65, 70\n\n Omnivorism, 20, 21, 99\n\n Owen, Sir Richard, quoted, 18\n\n\n Paley, Dr. William, quoted, 89\n\n Patriot, the, 15, 16\n\n Philanthropist, the, 84, 108\n\n Plutarch, 14, 93\n\n Progressive movement, relation of Vegetarianism towards, 102,\n 103\n\n Psychic philosopher, the, 72, 73\n\n \"Pythagorean diet,\" the same as Vegetarianism, 4, 6\n\n\n Reform and self-reform, 104\n\n Reformer, the, 103, 104\n\n Richardson, Sir B. W., quoted, 19, 47, 57, 59, 65, 66, 75, 77,\n 78\n\n Rights of animals, 110\n\n Ritchie, Professor D. G., 51\n\n Roman soldiery, diet of, 15\n\n Russell, Hon. R., quoted, 13 (note), 78 (note)\n\n\n Schreiner, Olive, quoted, 99\n\n Scientist, the, 19-23\n\n Shaw, G. Bernard, quoted, 54\n\n Slaughter-house, the, 32;\n reform of, 39, 40\n\n Slaughterman's work, effect on character, 47-50\n\n Slavery, justified by Bible texts, 90, 91\n\n Smith, Dr. T. P., quoted, 33, 43\n\n Sophist, the, 37, 38\n\n Sport, in relation to flesh-eating, 95, 96\n\n Stead, W. T., 35, 36, 43, 44\n\n Stephen, Leslie, 38\n\n Superior Person, the, 9-11\n\n\n Temperance Movement, 69\n\n Tertullian, _Contra Psychicos_, 73 (note)\n\n Textualist, the, 91\n\n Thompson, Sir Henry, 5-7, 45, 96, 99, 105, 110\n\n Thomson, J. Arthur, quoted, 26\n\n Thoreau, quoted, 71, 72, 79, 100\n\n Tuberculosis, danger of, 58\n\n Turkish soldiery, diet of, 16\n\n\n \"Vegetarian,\" the name, origin, 4;\n objections urged against it, 4-8, 109, 110;\n why retained, 7, 8\n\n Vegetarianism, misunderstandings of, 1, 2;\n grades of, 6, 11;\n its real purpose, 9-12, 110;\n a moral principle, 9, 10, 29, 47, 73, 74, 110;\n relation to other reforms, 101-108;\n individual failures and successes, 111, 112, 116;\n \"inconvenience\" of, 78\n\n Vegetarian Society, its founding and principles, 4, 5, 45\n\n Verbalist, the, 4, 5\n\n\n Wages question, in relation to Vegetarianism, 79\n\n Wallace, Dr. Alfred R., quoted, 36\n\n Wilson, Dr. Andrew, 44, 45, 64, 65, 100\n\n Wollaston's \"Religion of Nature,\" 29, 30\n\n Women's work at Deptford, 48\n\n Woolman, John, quoted, 90, 91\n\n\n Yeo, Dr. J. Burney, quoted, 77, 101, 102, 110\n\n\n Zoophily, as related to Vegetarianism, 105-107\n\nBILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS GUILDFORD\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n FOOTNOTES:\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n Transcriber\u2019s Note\n\n\n1. Punctuation and capitalization have been normalized.\nVariations in hyphenation have been retained as they were in the\noriginal publication. Index, Anthropophogist changed to\nAnthropophagist.\n\n2. Italicized words and phrases are presented\nby surrounding the text with _underscores_.\n\n3. This book uses = signs to begin and end Bold type.","title":"The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":38123}