RIGHTS OF VEGETABLES
Let me leave this unhappy story, and return to the course of events
among the Erewhonians at large. No matter how many laws they passed
increasing the severity of the punishments inflicted on those who ate
meat in secret, the people found means of setting them aside as fast as
they were made. At times, indeed, they would become almost obsolete,
but when they were on the point of being repealed, some national
disaster or the preaching of some fanatic would reawaken the conscience
of the nation, and people were imprisoned by the thousand for illicitly
selling and buying animal food.
About six or seven hundred years, however, after the death of the old
prophet, a philosopher appeared, who, though he did not claim to have
any communication with an unseen power, laid down the law with as much
confidence as if such a power had inspired him. Many think that this
philosopher did not believe his own teaching, and, being in secret a
great meat-eater, had no other end in view than reducing the
prohibition against eating animal food to an absurdity, greater even
than an Erewhonian Puritan would be able to stand.
Those who take this view hold that he knew how impossible it would be
to get the nation to accept legislation that it held to be sinful; he
knew also how hopeless it would be to convince people that it was not
wicked to kill a sheep and eat it, unless he could show them that they
must either sin to a certain extent, or die. He, therefore, it is
believed, made the monstrous proposals of which I will now speak.
He began by paying a tribute of profound respect to the old prophet,
whose advocacy of the rights of animals, he admitted, had done much to
soften the national character, and enlarge its views about the sanctity
of life in general. But he urged that times had now changed; the lesson
of which the country had stood in need had been sufficiently learnt,
while as regards vegetables much had become known that was not even
suspected formerly, and which, if the nation was to persevere in that
strict adherence to the highest moral principles which had been the
secret of its prosperity hitherto, must necessitate a radical change in
its attitude towards them.
It was indeed true that much was now known that had not been suspected
formerly, for the people had had no foreign enemies, and, being both
quick-witted and inquisitive into the mysteries of nature, had made
extraordinary progress in all the many branches of art and science. In
the chief Erewhonian museum I was shown a microscope of considerable
power, that was ascribed by the authorities to a date much about that
of the philosopher of whom I am now speaking, and was even supposed by
some to have been the instrument with which he had actually worked.
This philosopher was Professor of botany in the chief seat of learning
then in Erewhon, and whether with the help of the microscope still
preserved, or with another, had arrived at a conclusion now universally
accepted among ourselves—I mean, that all, both animals and plants,
have had a common ancestry, and that hence the second should be deemed
as much alive as the first. He contended, therefore, that animals and
plants were cousins, and would have been seen to be so, all along, if
people had not made an arbitrary and unreasonable division between what
they chose to call the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
He declared, and demonstrated to the satisfaction of all those who were
able to form an opinion upon the subject, that there is no difference
appreciable either by the eye, or by any other test, between a germ
that will develop into an oak, a vine, a rose, and one that (given its
accustomed surroundings) will become a mouse, an elephant, or a man.
He contended that the course of any germ’s development was dictated by
the habits of the germs from which it was descended and of whose
identity it had once formed part. If a germ found itself placed as the
germs in the line of its ancestry were placed, it would do as its
ancestors had done, and grow up into the same kind of organism as
theirs. If it found the circumstances only a little different, it would
make shift (successfully or unsuccessfully) to modify its development
accordingly; if the circumstances were widely different, it would die,
probably without an effort at self-adaptation. This, he argued, applied
equally to the germs of plants and of animals.
He therefore connected all, both animal and vegetable development, with
intelligence, either spent and now unconscious, or still unspent and
conscious; and in support of his view as regards vegetable life, he
pointed to the way in which all plants have adapted themselves to their
habitual environment. Granting that vegetable intelligence at first
sight appears to differ materially from animal, yet, he urged, it is
like it in the one essential fact that though it has evidently busied
itself about matters that are vital to the well-being of the organism
that possesses it, it has never shown the slightest tendency to occupy
itself with anything else. This, he insisted, is as great a proof of
intelligence as any living being can give.
“Plants,” said he, “show no sign of interesting themselves in human
affairs. We shall never get a rose to understand that five times seven
are thirty-five, and there is no use in talking to an oak about
fluctuations in the price of stocks. Hence we say that the oak and the
rose are unintelligent, and on finding that they do not understand our
business conclude that they do not understand their own. But what can a
creature who talks in this way know about intelligence? Which shows
greater signs of intelligence? He, or the rose and oak?
“And when we call plants stupid for not understanding our business, how
capable do we show ourselves of understanding theirs? Can we form even
the faintest conception of the way in which a seed from a rose-tree
turns earth, air, warmth and water into a rose full-blown? Where does
it get its colour from? From the earth, air, &c.? Yes—but how? Those
petals of such ineffable texture—that hue that outvies the cheek of a
child—that scent again? Look at earth, air, and water—these are all the
raw material that the rose has got to work with; does it show any sign
of want of intelligence in the alchemy with which it turns mud into
rose-leaves? What chemist can do anything comparable? Why does no one
try? Simply because every one knows that no human intelligence is equal
to the task. We give it up. It is the rose’s department; let the rose
attend to it—and be dubbed unintelligent because it baffles us by the
miracles it works, and the unconcerned business-like way in which it
works them.
“See what pains, again, plants take to protect themselves against their
enemies. They scratch, cut, sting, make bad smells, secrete the most
dreadful poisons (which Heaven only knows how they contrive to make),
cover their precious seeds with spines like those of a hedgehog,
frighten insects with delicate nervous systems by assuming portentous
shapes, hide themselves, grow in inaccessible places, and tell lies so
plausibly as to deceive even their subtlest foes.
“They lay traps smeared with bird-lime, to catch insects, and persuade
them to drown themselves in pitchers which they have made of their
leaves, and fill with water; others make themselves, as it were, into
living rat-traps, which close with a spring on any insect that settles
upon them; others make their flowers into the shape of a certain fly
that is a great pillager of honey, so that when the real fly comes it
thinks that the flowers are bespoke, and goes on elsewhere. Some are so
clever as even to overreach themselves, like the horse-radish, which
gets pulled up and eaten for the sake of that pungency with which it
protects itself against underground enemies. If, on the other hand,
they think that any insect can be of service to them, see how pretty
they make themselves.
“What is to be intelligent if to know how to do what one wants to do,
and to do it repeatedly, is not to be intelligent? Some say that the
rose-seed does not want to grow into a rose-bush. Why, then, in the
name of all that is reasonable, does it grow? Likely enough it is
unaware of the want that is spurring it on to action. We have no reason
to suppose that a human embryo knows that it wants to grow into a baby,
or a baby into a man. Nothing ever shows signs of knowing what it is
either wanting or doing, when its convictions both as to what it wants,
and how to get it, have been settled beyond further power of question.
The less signs living creatures give of knowing what they do, provided
they do it, and do it repeatedly and well, the greater proof they give
that in reality they know how to do it, and have done it already on an
infinite number of past occasions.
“Some one may say,” he continued, “‘What do you mean by talking about
an infinite number of past occasions? When did a rose-seed make itself
into a rose-bush on any past occasion?’
“I answer this question with another. ‘Did the rose-seed ever form part
of the identity of the rose-bush on which it grew?’ Who can say that it
did not? Again I ask: ‘Was this rose-bush ever linked by all those
links that we commonly consider as constituting personal identity, with
the seed from which it in its turn grew?’ Who can say that it was not?
“Then, if rose-seed number two is a continuation of the personality of
its parent rose-bush, and if that rose-bush is a continuation of the
personality of the rose-seed from which it sprang, rose-seed number two
must also be a continuation of the personality of the earlier
rose-seed. And this rose-seed must be a continuation of the personality
of the preceding rose-seed—and so back and back _ad infinitum_. Hence
it is impossible to deny continued personality between any existing
rose-seed and the earliest seed that can be called a rose-seed at all.
“The answer, then, to our objector is not far to seek. The rose-seed
did what it now does in the persons of its ancestors—to whom it has
been so linked as to be able to remember what those ancestors did when
they were placed as the rose-seed now is. Each stage of development
brings back the recollection of the course taken in the preceding
stage, and the development has been so often repeated, that all
doubt—and with all doubt, all consciousness of action—is suspended.
“But an objector may still say, ‘Granted that the linking between all
successive generations has been so close and unbroken, that each one of
them may be conceived as able to remember what it did in the persons of
its ancestors—how do you show that it actually did remember?’
“The answer is: ‘By the action which each generation takes—an action
which repeats all the phenomena that we commonly associate with
memory—which is explicable on the supposition that it has been guided
by memory—and which has neither been explained, nor seems ever likely
to be explained on any other theory than the supposition that there is
an abiding memory between successive generations.’
“Will any one bring an example of any living creature whose action we
can understand, performing an ineffably difficult and intricate action,
time after time, with invariable success, and yet not knowing how to do
it, and never having done it before? Show me the example and I will say
no more, but until it is shown me, I shall credit action where I cannot
watch it, with being controlled by the same laws as when it is within
our ken. It will become unconscious as soon as the skill that directs
it has become perfected. Neither rose-seed, therefore, nor embryo
should be expected to show signs of knowing that they know what they
know—if they showed such signs the fact of their knowing what they
want, and how to get it, might more reasonably be doubted.”
Some of the passages already given in Chapter XXIII were obviously
inspired by the one just quoted. As I read it, in a reprint shown me by
a Professor who had edited much of the early literature on the subject,
I could not but remember the one in which our Lord tells His disciples
to consider the lilies of the field, who neither toil nor spin, but
whose raiment surpasses even that of Solomon in all his glory.
“They toil not, neither do they spin?” Is that so? “Toil not?” Perhaps
not, now that the method of procedure is so well known as to admit of
no further question—but it is not likely that lilies came to make
themselves so beautifully without having ever taken any pains about the
matter. “Neither do they spin?” Not with a spinning-wheel; but is there
no textile fabric in a leaf?
What would the lilies of the field say if they heard one of us
declaring that they neither toil nor spin? They would say, I take it,
much what we should if we were to hear of their preaching humility on
the text of Solomons, and saying, “Consider the Solomons in all their
glory, they toil not neither do they spin.” We should say that the
lilies were talking about things that they did not understand, and that
though the Solomons do not toil nor spin, yet there had been no lack of
either toiling or spinning before they came to be arrayed so
gorgeously.
Let me now return to the Professor. I have said enough to show the
general drift of the arguments on which he relied in order to show that
vegetables are only animals under another name, but have not stated his
case in anything like the fullness with which he laid it before the
public. The conclusion he drew, or pretended to draw, was that if it
was sinful to kill and eat animals, it was not less sinful to do the
like by vegetables, or their seeds. None such, he said, should be
eaten, save what had died a natural death, such as fruit that was lying
on the ground and about to rot, or cabbage-leaves that had turned
yellow in late autumn. These and other like garbage he declared to be
the only food that might be eaten with a clear conscience. Even so the
eater must plant the pips of any apples or pears that he may have
eaten, or any plum-stones, cherry-stones, and the like, or he would
come near to incurring the guilt of infanticide. The grain of cereals,
according to him, was out of the question, for every such grain had a
living soul as much as man had, and had as good a right as man to
possess that soul in peace.
Having thus driven his fellow countrymen into a corner at the point of
a logical bayonet from which they felt that there was no escape, he
proposed that the question what was to be done should be referred to an
oracle in which the whole country had the greatest confidence, and to
which recourse was always had in times of special perplexity. It was
whispered that a near relation of the philosopher’s was lady’s-maid to
the priestess who delivered the oracle, and the Puritan party declared
that the strangely unequivocal answer of the oracle was obtained by
backstairs influence; but whether this was so or no, the response as
nearly as I can translate it was as follows:-
“He who sins aught
Sins more than he ought;
But he who sins nought
Has much to be taught.
Beat or be beaten,
Eat or be eaten,
Be killed or kill;
Choose which you will.”
It was clear that this response sanctioned at any rate the destruction
of vegetable life when wanted as food by man; and so forcibly had the
philosopher shown that what was sauce for vegetables was so also for
animals, that, though the Puritan party made a furious outcry, the acts
forbidding the use of meat were repealed by a considerable majority.
Thus, after several hundred years of wandering in the wilderness of
philosophy, the country reached the conclusions that common sense had
long since arrived at. Even the Puritans after a vain attempt to
subsist on a kind of jam made of apples and yellow cabbage leaves,
succumbed to the inevitable, and resigned themselves to a diet of roast
beef and mutton, with all the usual adjuncts of a modern dinner-table.
One would have thought that the dance they had been led by the old
prophet, and that still madder dance which the Professor of botany had
gravely, but as I believe insidiously, proposed to lead them, would
have made the Erewhonians for a long time suspicious of prophets
whether they professed to have communications with an unseen power or
no; but so engrained in the human heart is the desire to believe that
some people really do know what they say they know, and can thus save
them from the trouble of thinking for themselves, that in a short time
would-be philosophers and faddists became more powerful than ever, and
gradually led their countrymen to accept all those absurd views of
life, some account of which I have given in my earlier chapters. Indeed
I can see no hope for the Erewhonians till they have got to understand
that reason uncorrected by instinct is as bad as instinct uncorrected
by reason.