OF ANIMALS
It will be seen from the foregoing chapters that the Erewhonians are a
meek and long-suffering people, easily led by the nose, and quick to
offer up common sense at the shrine of logic, when a philosopher arises
among them, who carries them away through his reputation for especial
learning, or by convincing them that their existing institutions are
not based on the strictest principles of morality.
The series of revolutions on which I shall now briefly touch shows this
even more plainly than the way (already dealt with) in which at a later
date they cut their throats in the matter of machinery; for if the
second of the two reformers of whom I am about to speak had had his
way—or rather the way that he professed to have—the whole race would
have died of starvation within a twelve-month. Happily common sense,
though she is by nature the gentlest creature living, when she feels
the knife at her throat, is apt to develop unexpected powers of
resistance, and to send doctrinaires flying, even when they have bound
her down and think they have her at their mercy. What happened, so far
as I could collect it from the best authorities, was as follows:-
Some two thousand five hundred years ago the Erewhonians were still
uncivilised, and lived by hunting, fishing, a rude system of
agriculture, and plundering such few other nations as they had not yet
completely conquered. They had no schools or systems of philosophy, but
by a kind of dog-knowledge did that which was right in their own eyes
and in those of their neighbours; the common sense, therefore, of the
public being as yet unvitiated, crime and disease were looked upon much
as they are in other countries.
But with the gradual advance of civilisation and increase in material
prosperity, people began to ask questions about things that they had
hitherto taken as matters of course, and one old gentleman, who had
great influence over them by reason of the sanctity of his life, and
his supposed inspiration by an unseen power, whose existence was now
beginning to be felt, took it into his head to disquiet himself about
the rights of animals—a question that so far had disturbed nobody.
All prophets are more or less fussy, and this old gentleman seems to
have been one of the more fussy ones. Being maintained at the public
expense, he had ample leisure, and not content with limiting his
attention to the rights of animals, he wanted to reduce right and wrong
to rules, to consider the foundations of duty and of good and evil, and
otherwise to put all sorts of matters on a logical basis, which people
whose time is money are content to accept on no basis at all.
As a matter of course, the basis on which he decided that duty could
alone rest was one that afforded no standing-room for many of the
old-established habits of the people. These, he assured them, were all
wrong, and whenever any one ventured to differ from him, he referred
the matter to the unseen power with which he alone was in direct
communication, and the unseen power invariably assured him that he was
right. As regards the rights of animals he taught as follows:-
“You know, he said, “how wicked it is of you to kill one another. Once
upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing,
but also eating their relations. No one would now go back to such
detestable practices, for it is notorious that we have lived much more
happily since they were abandoned. From this increased prosperity we
may confidently deduce the maxim that we should not kill and eat our
fellow-creatures. I have consulted the higher power by whom you know
that I am inspired, and he has assured me that this conclusion is
irrefragable.
“Now it cannot be denied that sheep, cattle, deer, birds, and fishes
are our fellow-creatures. They differ from us in some respects, but
those in which they differ are few and secondary, while those that they
have in common with us are many and essential. My friends, if it was
wrong of you to kill and eat your fellow-men, it is wrong also to kill
and eat fish, flesh, and fowl. Birds, beasts, and fishes, have as full
a right to live as long as they can unmolested by man, as man has to
live unmolested by his neighbours. These words, let me again assure
you, are not mine, but those of the higher power which inspires me.
“I grant,” he continued, “that animals molest one another, and that
some of them go so far as to molest man, but I have yet to learn that
we should model our conduct on that of the lower animals. We should
endeavour, rather, to instruct them, and bring them to a better mind.
To kill a tiger, for example, who has lived on the flesh of men and
women whom he has killed, is to reduce ourselves to the level of the
tiger, and is unworthy of people who seek to be guided by the highest
principles in all, both their thoughts and actions.
“The unseen power who has revealed himself to me alone among you, has
told me to tell you that you ought by this time to have outgrown the
barbarous habits of your ancestors. If, as you believe, you know better
than they, you should do better. He commands you, therefore, to refrain
from killing any living being for the sake of eating it. The only
animal food that you may eat, is the flesh of any birds, beasts, or
fishes that you may come upon as having died a natural death, or any
that may have been born prematurely, or so deformed that it is a mercy
to put them out of their pain; you may also eat all such animals as
have committed suicide. As regards vegetables you may eat all those
that will let you eat them with impunity.”
So wisely and so well did the old prophet argue, and so terrible were
the threats he hurled at those who should disobey him, that in the end
he carried the more highly educated part of the people with him, and
presently the poorer classes followed suit, or professed to do so.
Having seen the triumph of his principles, he was gathered to his
fathers, and no doubt entered at once into full communion with that
unseen power whose favour he had already so pre-eminently enjoyed.
He had not, however, been dead very long, before some of his more
ardent disciples took it upon them to better the instruction of their
master. The old prophet had allowed the use of eggs and milk, but his
disciples decided that to eat a fresh egg was to destroy a potential
chicken, and that this came to much the same as murdering a live one.
Stale eggs, if it was quite certain that they were too far gone to be
able to be hatched, were grudgingly permitted, but all eggs offered for
sale had to be submitted to an inspector, who, on being satisfied that
they were addled, would label them “Laid not less than three months”
from the date, whatever it might happen to be. These eggs, I need
hardly say, were only used in puddings, and as a medicine in certain
cases where an emetic was urgently required. Milk was forbidden
inasmuch as it could not be obtained without robbing some calf of its
natural sustenance, and thus endangering its life.
It will be easily believed that at first there were many who gave the
new rules outward observance, but embraced every opportunity of
indulging secretly in those flesh-pots to which they had been
accustomed. It was found that animals were continually dying natural
deaths under more or less suspicious circumstances. Suicidal mania,
again, which had hitherto been confined exclusively to donkeys, became
alarmingly prevalent even among such for the most part self-respecting
creatures as sheep and cattle. It was astonishing how some of these
unfortunate animals would scent out a butcher’s knife if there was one
within a mile of them, and run right up against it if the butcher did
not get it out of their way in time.
Dogs, again, that had been quite law-abiding as regards domestic
poultry, tame rabbits, sucking pigs, or sheep and lambs, suddenly took
to breaking beyond the control of their masters, and killing anything
that they were told not to touch. It was held that any animal killed by
a dog had died a natural death, for it was the dog’s nature to kill
things, and he had only refrained from molesting farmyard creatures
hitherto because his nature had been tampered with. Unfortunately the
more these unruly tendencies became developed, the more the common
people seemed to delight in breeding the very animals that would put
temptation in the dog’s way. There is little doubt, in fact, that they
were deliberately evading the law; but whether this was so or no they
sold or ate everything their dogs had killed.
Evasion was more difficult in the case of the larger animals, for the
magistrates could not wink at all the pretended suicides of pigs,
sheep, and cattle that were brought before them. Sometimes they had to
convict, and a few convictions had a very terrorising effect—whereas in
the case of animals killed by a dog, the marks of the dog’s teeth could
be seen, and it was practically impossible to prove malice on the part
of the owner of the dog.
Another fertile source of disobedience to the law was furnished by a
decision of one of the judges that raised a great outcry among the more
fervent disciples of the old prophet. The judge held that it was lawful
to kill any animal in self-defence, and that such conduct was so
natural on the part of a man who found himself attacked, that the
attacking creature should be held to have died a natural death. The
High Vegetarians had indeed good reason to be alarmed, for hardly had
this decision become generally known before a number of animals,
hitherto harmless, took to attacking their owners with such ferocity,
that it became necessary to put them to a natural death. Again, it was
quite common at that time to see the carcase of a calf, lamb, or kid
exposed for sale with a label from the inspector certifying that it had
been killed in self-defence. Sometimes even the carcase of a lamb or
calf was exposed as “warranted still-born,” when it presented every
appearance of having enjoyed at least a month of life.
As for the flesh of animals that had _bona fide_ died a natural death,
the permission to eat it was nugatory, for it was generally eaten by
some other animal before man got hold of it; or failing this it was
often poisonous, so that practically people were forced to evade the
law by some of the means above spoken of, or to become vegetarians.
This last alternative was so little to the taste of the Erewhonians,
that the laws against killing animals were falling into desuetude, and
would very likely have been repealed, but for the breaking out of a
pestilence, which was ascribed by the priests and prophets of the day
to the lawlessness of the people in the matter of eating forbidden
flesh. On this, there was a reaction; stringent laws were passed,
forbidding the use of meat in any form or shape, and permitting no food
but grain, fruits, and vegetables to be sold in shops and markets.
These laws were enacted about two hundred years after the death of the
old prophet who had first unsettled people’s minds about the rights of
animals; but they had hardly been passed before people again began to
break them.
I was told that the most painful consequence of all this folly did not
lie in the fact that law-abiding people had to go without animal
food—many nations do this and seem none the worse, and even in
flesh-eating countries such as Italy, Spain, and Greece, the poor
seldom see meat from year’s end to year’s end. The mischief lay in the
jar which undue prohibition gave to the consciences of all but those
who were strong enough to know that though conscience as a rule boons,
it can also bane. The awakened conscience of an individual will often
lead him to do things in haste that he had better have left undone, but
the conscience of a nation awakened by a respectable old gentleman who
has an unseen power up his sleeve will pave hell with a vengeance.
Young people were told that it was a sin to do what their fathers had
done unhurt for centuries; those, moreover, who preached to them about
the enormity of eating meat, were an unattractive academic folk, and
though they over-awed all but the bolder youths, there were few who did
not in their hearts dislike them. However much the young person might
be shielded, he soon got to know that men and women of the world—often
far nicer people than the prophets who preached abstention—continually
spoke sneeringly of the new doctrinaire laws, and were believed to set
them aside in secret, though they dared not do so openly. Small wonder,
then, that the more human among the student classes were provoked by
the touch-not, taste-not, handle-not precepts of their rulers, into
questioning much that they would otherwise have unhesitatingly
accepted.
One sad story is on record about a young man of promising amiable
disposition, but cursed with more conscience than brains, who had been
told by his doctor (for as I have above said disease was not yet held
to be criminal) that he ought to eat meat, law or no law. He was much
shocked and for some time refused to comply with what he deemed the
unrighteous advice given him by his doctor; at last, however, finding
that he grew weaker and weaker, he stole secretly on a dark night into
one of those dens in which meat was surreptitiously sold, and bought a
pound of prime steak. He took it home, cooked it in his bedroom when
every one in the house had gone to rest, ate it, and though he could
hardly sleep for remorse and shame, felt so much better next morning
that he hardly knew himself.
Three or four days later, he again found himself irresistibly drawn to
this same den. Again he bought a pound of steak, again he cooked and
ate it, and again, in spite of much mental torture, on the following
morning felt himself a different man. To cut the story short, though he
never went beyond the bounds of moderation, it preyed upon his mind
that he should be drifting, as he certainly was, into the ranks of the
habitual law-breakers.
All the time his health kept on improving, and though he felt sure that
he owed this to the beefsteaks, the better he became in body, the more
his conscience gave him no rest; two voices were for ever ringing in
his ears—the one saying, “I am Common Sense and Nature; heed me, and I
will reward you as I rewarded your fathers before you.” But the other
voice said: “Let not that plausible spirit lure you to your ruin. I am
Duty; heed me, and I will reward you as I rewarded your fathers before
you.”
Sometimes he even seemed to see the faces of the speakers. Common Sense
looked so easy, genial, and serene, so frank and fearless, that do what
he might he could not mistrust her; but as he was on the point of
following her, he would be checked by the austere face of Duty, so
grave, but yet so kindly; and it cut him to the heart that from time to
time he should see her turn pitying away from him as he followed after
her rival.
The poor boy continually thought of the better class of his
fellow-students, and tried to model his conduct on what he thought was
theirs. “They,” he said to himself, “eat a beefsteak? Never.” But they
most of them ate one now and again, unless it was a mutton chop that
tempted them. And they used him for a model much as he did them. “He,”
they would say to themselves, “eat a mutton chop? Never.” One night,
however, he was followed by one of the authorities, who was always
prowling about in search of law-breakers, and was caught coming out of
the den with half a shoulder of mutton concealed about his person. On
this, even though he had not been put in prison, he would have been
sent away with his prospects in life irretrievably ruined; he therefore
hanged himself as soon as he got home.