'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.'--Matt. ix., 7.

'It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth.'--Romans xiv., 21.

'Wherefore, if meat maketh my brother to stumble I will eat no flesh for evermore, that I make not my brother stumble.'--1 Cor. viii., 13.

The verse from Isaiah is no fanciful stretch of poetic imagination. The writer, no doubt, was picturing a condition of peace and happiness on earth, when discord had ceased and all creatures obeyed Nature and lived in harmony. It is not absurd to suppose that someday the birds and beasts may look upon man as a friend and benefactor, and not the ferocious beast of prey that he now is. In certain parts of the world, at the present day--the Galapagos Archipelago, for instance--where man has so seldom been that he is unknown to the indigenous animal life, travellers relate that birds are so tame and friendly and curious, being wholly unacquainted with the bloodthirsty nature of man, that they will perch on his shoulders and peck at his shoe laces as he walks.

It may be said that Jesus did not specifically forbid flesh-food. But then he did not specifically forbid war, sweating, slavery, gambling, vivisection, c.o.c.k and bull fighting, rabbit-coursing, trusts, opium smoking, and many other things commonly looked upon as evils which should not exist among Christians. Jesus laid down general principles, and we are to apply these general principles to particular circ.u.mstances.

The sum of all His teaching is that love is the most beautiful thing in the world; that the Kingdom of Heaven is open to all who really and truly love. The act of loving is the expression of a desire to make others happy. All beings capable of experiencing pain, who have nervous sensibilities similar to our own, are capable of experiencing the effect of our love. The love which is unlimited, which is not confined merely to wife and children, or blood relations and social companions, or one's own nation, or even the entire human race, but is so comprehensive as to include all life, human and sub-human; such love as this marks the highest point in moral evolution that human intelligence can conceive of or aspire to.

Eastern religions have been more explicit than Christianity about the sin of killing animals for food.

In the _Laws of Manu_, it is written: 'The man who forsakes not the law, and eats not flesh-meat like a bloodthirsty demon, shall attain goodness in this world, and shall not be afflicted with maladies.'

'Unslaughter is the supreme virtue, supreme asceticism, golden truth, from which springs up the germ of religion.' _The Mahabharata._

'_Non-killing_, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence, and non-receiving, are called Yama.' _Patanjalis' Yoga Aphorisms._

'A Yogi must not think of injuring anyone, through thought, word or deed, and this applies not only to man, but to all animals. Mercy shall not be for men alone, but shall go beyond, and embrace the whole world.'

_Commentary of Vivekananda._

'Surely h.e.l.l, fire, and repentance are in store for those who for their pleasure and gratification cause the dumb animals to suffer pain.' _The Zend Avesta._

Gautama, the Buddha, was most emphatic in discountenancing the killing of animals for food, or for any other unnecessary purpose, and Zoroaster and Confucius are said to have taught the same doctrine.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: See _Sartor Resartus_, Book I., chap. xi.: Book III., chap.

vii. Also an article by Prof. W. P. Montague, Ph.D.: 'The Evidence of Design in the Elements and Structure of the Cosmos,' in the _Hibbert Journal_, Jan., 1904.]

IV

THE aeSTHETIC POINT OF VIEW

St. Paul tells us to think on whatsoever things are pure and lovely (Phil. iv., 8). The implication is that we should love and worship beauty. We should seek to surround ourselves by beautiful objects and avoid that which is degrading and ugly.

Let us make some comparisons. Look at a collection of luscious fruits filling the air with perfume, and pleasing the eye with a harmony of colour, and then look at the gruesome array of skinned carca.s.ses displayed in a butcher's shop; which is the more beautiful? Look at the work of the husbandman, tilling the soil, pruning the trees, gathering in the rich harvest of golden fruit, and then look at the work of the cowboy, branding, castrating, terrifying, butchering helpless animals; which is the more beautiful? Surely no one would say a corpse was a beautiful object. Picture it (after the axe has battered the skull, or the knife has found the heart, and the victim has at last ceased its dying groans and struggles), with its ghastly staring eyes, its blood-stained head or throat where the sharp steel pierced into the quivering flesh; picture it when the body is opened emitting a sickening odour and the reeking entrails fall in a heap on the gore-splashed floor; picture this sight and ask whether it is not the epitome of ugliness, and in direct opposition to the most elementary sense of beauty.

Moreover, what effect has the work of a slayer of animals upon his personal character and refinement? Can anyone imagine a sensitive-minded, finely-wrought _aesthetic_ nature doing anything else than revolt against the cold-blooded murdering of terrorised animals? It is significant that in some of the States of America butchers are not allowed to sit on a jury during a murder trial. Physiognomically the slaughterman carries his trade-mark legibly enough. The butcher does not usually exhibit those facial traits which distinguish a person who is naturally sympathetic and of an aesthetic temperament; on the contrary, the butcher's face and manner generally bear evidence of a life spent amid scenes of gory horror and violence; of a task which involves torture and death.

A plate of cereal served with fruit-juice pleases the eye and imagination, but a plate smeared with blood and laden with dead flesh becomes disgusting and repulsive the moment we consider it in that light. Cooking may disguise the appearance but cannot alter the reality of the decaying _corpse_; and to cook blood and give it another name (gravy) may be an artifice to please the palate, but it is blood, (blood that once coursed through the body of a highly sensitive and nervous being), just the same. Surely a person whose olfactory nerves have not been blunted prefers the delicate aroma of ripe fruit to the sickly smell of mortifying flesh,--or fried eggs and bacon!

Notice how young children, whose taste is more or less unperverted, relish ripe fruits and nuts and clean tasting things in general. Man, before he has become thoroughly accustomed to an unnatural diet, before his taste has been perverted and he has acquired by habit a liking for unwholesome and unnatural food, has a healthy appet.i.te for Nature's sun-cooked seeds and berries of all kinds. Now true refinement can only exist where the senses are uncorrupted by addiction to deleterious habits, and the nervous system by which the senses act will remain healthy only so long as it is built up by pure and natural foods; hence it is only while man is nourished by those foods desired by his unperverted appet.i.te that he may be said to possess true refinement.

Power of intellect has nothing whatever to do _necessarily_ with the _aesthetic instinct_. A man may possess vast learning and yet be a boor.

Refinement is not learnt as a boy learns algebra. Refinement comes from living a refined life, as good deeds come from a good man. The nearer we live according to Nature's plan, and in harmony with Her, the healthier we become physically and mentally. We do not look for refinement in the obese, red-faced, phlegmatic, gluttonous sensualists who often pa.s.s as gentlemen because they possess money or rank, but in those who live simply, satisfying the simple requirements of the body, and finding happiness in a life of well-directed toil.

The taste of young children is often cited by vegetarians to demonstrate the liking of an unsophisticated palate, but the primitive instinct is not wholly atrophied in man. Before man became a tool-using animal, he must have depended for direction upon what is commonly termed instinct in the selection of a diet most suitable to his nature. No one can doubt, judging by the way undomesticated animals seek their food with unerring certainty as to its suitability, but that instinct is a trustworthy guide. Granting that man could, in a state of absolute savagery, and before he had discovered the use of fire or of tools, depend upon instinct alone, and in so doing live healthily, cannot _what yet remains_ of instinct be of some value among civilized beings? Is not man, even now, in spite of his abused and corrupted senses, when he sees luscious fruits hanging within his reach, tempted to pluck them, and does he not eat them with relish? But when he sees the grazing ox, or the wallowing hog, do similar gustatory desires affect him? Or when he sees these animals lying dead, or when skinned and cut up in small pieces, does this same natural instinct stimulate him to steal and eat this food as it stimulates a boy to steal apples and nuts from an orchard and eat them surrept.i.tiously beneath the hedge or behind the haystack?

Very different is it with true carnivora. The gorge of a cat, for instance, will rise at the smell of a mouse, or a piece of raw flesh, but not at the aroma of fruit. If a man could take delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still living body apart with his teeth, sucking the warm blood, one might infer that Nature had provided him with carnivorous instinct, but the very _thought_ of doing such a thing makes him shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his 'mouth water,' and even in the absence of hunger he will eat fruit to gratify taste. A table spread with fruits and nuts and decorated with flowers is artistic; the same table laden with decaying flesh and blood, and maybe entrails, is not only inartistic--it is disgusting.

Those who believe in an all-wise Creator can hardly suppose He would have so made our body as to make it necessary daily to perform acts of violence that are an outrage to our sympathies, repulsive to our finer feelings, and brutalising and degrading in every detail. To possess fine feelings without the means to satisfy them is as bad as to possess hunger without a stomach. If it be necessary and a part of the Divine Wisdom that we should degrade ourselves to the level of beasts of prey, then the humanitarian sentiment and the aesthetic instinct are wrong and should be displaced by callousness, and the endeavour to cultivate a feeling of enjoyment in that which to all the organs of sense in a person of intelligence and religious feeling is ugly and repulsive. But no normally-minded person can think that this is so. It would be contrary to all the ethical and aesthetic teachings of every religion, and antagonistic to the feelings of all who have evolved to the possession of a conscience and the power to distinguish the beautiful from the base.

When one accustomed to an omnivorous diet adopts a vegetarian regime, a steadily growing refinement in taste and smell is experienced. Delicate and subtle flavours, hitherto unnoticed, especially if the habit of thorough mastication be practised, soon convince the neophyte that a vegetarian is by no means denied the pleasure of gustatory enjoyment.

Further, not only are these senses better attuned and refined, but the mind also undergoes a similar exaltation. Th.o.r.eau, the transcendentalist, wrote: 'I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.'

V

ECONOMICAL CONSIDERATIONS

There is no doubt that the yield of land when utilized for pasturage is less than what it will produce in the hands of the agriculturist. In a thickly populated country, such as England, dependent under present conditions on foreign countries for a large proportion of her food supply, it is foolish, considering only the political aspects, to employ the land for raising unnecessary flesh-food, and so be compelled to apply to foreign markets for the first necessaries of life, when there is, without doubt, sufficient agricultural land in England to support the entire population on a vegetable regimen. As just said, a much larger population can be supported on a given acreage cultivated with vegetable produce than would be possible were the same land used for grazing cattle. Lieut. Powell quotes Prof. Francis Newman of University College, London, as declaring that--

100 acres devoted to sheep-raising will support 42 men: proportion 1.

100 acres devoted to dairy-farming will support 53 men: proportion 1-1/4.

100 acres devoted to wheat will support 250 men: proportion 6.

100 acres devoted to potato will support 683 men: proportion 16.

To produce the same quant.i.ty of food yielded by an acre of land cultivated by the husbandman, three or four acres, or more, would be required as grazing land to raise cattle for flesh meat.

Another point to note is that agriculture affords employment to a very much larger number of men than cattle-raising; that is to say, a much larger number of men are required to raise a given amount of vegetable food than is required to raise the same amount of flesh food, and so, were the present common omnivorous customs to give place to vegetarianism, a very much more numerous peasantry would be required on the land. This would be physically, economically, morally, better for the nation. It is obvious that national health would be improved with a considerably larger proportion of hardy country yeomen. The percentage of poor and unemployed people in large cities would be reduced, their labor being required on the soil, where, being in more natural, salutary, harmonious surroundings the moral element would have better opportunity for development than when confined in the unhealthy, ugly, squalid surroundings of a city slum.

It is not generally known that there is often a decided _loss_ of valuable food-material in feeding animals for food, one authority stating that it takes nearly 4 lbs. of barley, which is a good wholesome food, to make 1 lb. of pork, a food that can hardly be considered safe to eat when we learn that tuberculosis was detected in 6,393 pigs in Berlin abattoirs in one year.

As to the comparative cost of a vegetarian and omnivorous diet, it is instructive to learn that it is proverbial in the Western States of America that a Chinaman can live and support his family in health and comfort on an allowance which to a meat-eating white man would be starvation. It is not to be denied that a vegetarian desirous of living to eat, and having no reason or desire to be economical, could spend money as extravagantly as a devotee of the flesh-pots having a similar disposition. But it is significant that the poor of most European countries are not vegetarians from choice but from necessity. Had they the means doubtless they would purchase meat, not because of any instinctive liking for it, but because of that almost universal trait of human character that causes men to desire to imitate their superiors, without, in most cases, any due consideration as to whether the supposed superiors are worthy of the genuflection they get. Were King George or Kaiser Wilhelm to become vegetarians and advocate the non-flesh diet, such an occurrence would do far more towards advancing the popularity of this diet than a thousand lectures from "mere" men of science. Carlyle was not far wrong when he called men "clothes worshippers." The uneducated and poor imitate the educated and rich, not because they possess that att.i.tude of mind which owes its existence to a very deep and subtle emotion and which is expressed in worship and veneration for power, whether it be power of body, power of rank, power of mind, or power of wealth. The poor among Western nations are vegetarians because they cannot afford to buy meat, and this is plain enough proof as to which dietary is the cheaper.

Perhaps a few straightforward facts on this point may prove interesting.

An ordinary man, weighing 140 lbs. to 170 lbs., under ordinary conditions, at moderately active work, as an engineer, carpenter, etc., could live in comfort and maintain good health on a dietary providing daily 1 lb. bread (600 to 700 grs. protein); 8 ozs. potatoes (70 grs.

protein); 3 ozs. rice, or barley, or macaroni, or maize meal, etc. (100 grs. protein); 4 ozs. dates, or figs, or prunes, or bananas, etc., and 2 ozs. sh.e.l.led nuts (130 grs. protein); the cost of which need not exceed 10c. to 15c. per day; or in the case of one leading a more sedentary life, such as clerical work, these would be slightly reduced and the cost reduced to 8c. to 12c. per day. For one shilling per day, luxuries, such as nut b.u.t.ter, sweet-stuffs, and a variety of fruits and vegetables could be added. It is hardly necessary to point out that the housewife would be 'hard put to' to make ends meet 'living well' on the ordinary diet at 25c. per head per day. The writer, weighing 140 lbs., who lives a moderately active life, enjoys good health, and whose tastes are simple, finds the cost of a cereal diet comes to 50c. to 75c. per week.

The political economist and reformer finds on investigation, that the adoption of vegetarianism would be a solution of many of the complex and baffling questions connected with the material prosperity of the nation.

Here is a remedy for unemployment, drink, slums, disease, and many forms of vice; a remedy that is within the reach of everyone, and that costs only the relinquishing of a foolish prejudice and the adoption of a natural mode of living plus the effort to overcome a vicious habit and the denial of pleasure derived from the gratification of corrupted appet.i.te. Nature will soon create a dislike for that which once was a pleasure, and in compensation will confer a wholesome and beneficent enjoyment in the partaking of pure and salutary foods. Whether or no the meat-eating nations will awake to these facts in time to save themselves from ruin and extinction remains to be seen. Meat-eating has grown side by side with disease in England during the past seventy years, but there are now, fortunately, some signs of abatement. The doctors, owing perhaps to some prescience in the air, some psychical foreboding, are recommending that less meat be eaten. But whatever the future has in store, there is nothing more certain than this--that in the adoption of the vegetable regimen is to be found, if not a complete panacea, at least a partial remedy, for the political and social ills that our nation at the present time is afflicted with, and that those of us who would be true patriots are in duty bound to practise and preach vegetarianism wheresoever and whensoever we can.