snowdrift, vegetarianism has to plough its way before it can
emerge into the field of free discussion, there is none perhaps
more inveterate than the common appeal to "Nature." A typical
instance of the remarkable misuse of logic which characterises
such argument may be seen in the anecdote related by Benjamin
Franklin, in his "Autobiography," of the incident which induced
him to return, after years of abstinence, to a flesh diet. He
was watching some companions sea-fishing, and observing that
some of the fish caught by them had swallowed other fish, he
concluded that, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we may
not eat you"—a confusion of ichthyology and morals which is
ludicrous enough as narrated by Franklin, but not essentially
more foolish than the attempt so frequently made by flesh-eaters
to shuffle their personal responsibility on to some supposed
"natural law."
But let the carnivorous anthropologist speak for himself:
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Now, understand me! I think this
vegetarianism is well enough as a sentiment; I fully
appreciate your aspiration. But you have overlooked the
fact that it is contrary to the laws of Nature. It is
beautiful in theory, but impossible in practice.
VEGETARIAN: Indeed! That puts me in an awkward position,
as I have been practising it for twenty years.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: It is not the individual that I am
speaking of, but the race. A man may practise it
perhaps; but mankind cannot do so with impunity.
VEGETARIAN: And why?
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Because, as the poet says, "Nature is
one with rapine." It is natural to kill. Do you dare to
impugn Nature?
VEGETARIAN: Not at all. What I dare to impugn is your
incorrect description of Nature. There is a great deal
more in Nature than rapine and slaughter.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: What? Do not the beasts and birds prey
on one another? Do not the big fish eat the little fish?
Is it not all one universal struggle for existence, one
internecine strife?
VEGETARIAN: No; that is just what it is not. There are
_two_ principles at work in Nature—the law of
competition and the law of mutual aid. There are
carnivorous animals and non-carnivorous, predatory races
and sociable races; and the vital question is—to which
does man belong? You obscure the issue by these vague
and meaningless appeals to the "laws of Nature," when,
in the first place, you are quoting only part of
Nature's ordinance, and, secondly, have not yourself the
least intention of conforming even to that part.
ANTHROPOLOGIST: I beg your pardon. In what do I not
conform to Nature?
VEGETARIAN: Well, are you in favour of cannibalism, let
us say, or the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes?
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Good gracious, my dear sir! I must
entreat you——
VEGETARIAN: Exactly! You are horrified at the mere
mention of such things. Yet these habits are as easily
justified as flesh-eating, if you take "Nature" as your
model, without specifying _whose_ nature? The nature of
the conger and the dog-fish, or the nature of civilised
man? Pray tell me _that_, Mr. Anthropologist, and then
our conversation may not be wholly irrelevant.
The idea that the Darwinian doctrine of the "struggle of life"
justifies any barbarous treatment of inferior races is ridiculed
by so distinguished an authority as Prince Kropotkin, who points
out that Darwin does _not_ teach this. "He proves that there is
a struggle for existence in order to put a check on the
inordinate increase of species. But this struggle is not to be
understood in a crude and exclusive sense; there is a law of
competition, but there is also—what is still more important—a
law of mutual aid, and as soon as the scientist leaves his
laboratory, and comes out into the open woods and meadows, he
sees the importance of this law. Only those animals who are
mutually helpful are really fitted to survive; it is not the
strong, but the co-operative species that endure."[8] So, too,
with reference to the strange notion that a guide for human
conduct may be deduced from some particular animal instinct,
taken at haphazard from its surroundings, a timely warning is
addressed to such crude reasoners by Professor J. Arthur
Thomson: "What we must protest against is that one-sided
interpretation, according to which individualistic competition
is Nature's sole method of progress.... The precise nature
of the means employed and ends attained must be carefully
considered, when we seek from the records of animal evolution
support or justification for human conduct."[9]
Footnote 8:
_Humane Science Lectures_: Summary of address given by Prince
Kropotkin at Essex Hall, November 17, 1896.
Footnote 9:
"Study of Animal Life."
It may be said, however, that though man is fitted to co-operate
peacefully with his fellows, he is not bound by any such ties of
brotherhood to the lower animals, and that it is "natural" that
he should prey on the non-human races, even if it be not natural
that he should seek pleasure at the cost of his fellow-man. But,
in reality, Nature knows no such bridgeless gulf between the
human and the non-human intelligence; and it is impossible, in
the light of modern science, to draw any such absolute line of
demarcation between man and "the animals" as in the now
discredited theory of Descartes. We are learning to get rid of
these "anthropocentric" delusions, which, as has been pointed
out by Mr. E. P. Evans, "treat man as a being essentially
different and inseparably set apart from all other sentient
creatures, to which he is bound by no ties of mental affinity or
moral obligation"; whereas, in fact, "man is as truly a part and
product of Nature as any other animal, and this attempt to set
him up as an isolated point outside of it is philosophically
false and morally pernicious."[10]
Footnote 10:
"Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology."
The talk, then, about Nature being "one with rapine" is a mere
form of special pleading, which will not stand examination in
the full light of fact. If man is determined to play the part of
tiger among his less powerful fellow-beings, he will have to go
elsewhere than to Nature to obtain a warrant for his deeds, for
as far as the indications of Nature carry weight, they suggest
that man, by his physical structure and his compassionate
instincts, belongs unmistakably to the sociable, and not the
predatory tribes; and that by constituting himself a "beast of
prey" on a vast artificial scale, he is doing the greatest
possible wrong to nature (_i.e._, to _his own_ nature) instead
of conforming to it. Our innate horror of bloodshed—a horror
which only long custom can deaden, and which, in spite of past
centuries of violence, is so powerful at the present time—is
proof that we are not naturally adapted for a sanguinary diet;
and, as has often been pointed out, it is only by delegating to
others the detested work of slaughter, and by employing
cookery to conceal the uncongenial truth, that thoughtful
persons can tolerate the practice of flesh-eating. If Nature
pointed us to such a diet, we should feel the same instinctive
appetite for raw flesh as we now feel for ripe fruit, and a
slaughter-house would be more delightful to us than an orchard.
It is not Nature, but custom, that is the guardian deity of the
flesh-eater.
But we have not quite exhausted the appeal to Nature; we have
still to speak of the common objection to vegetarianism that "it
is necessary to take life."
ANTHROPOLOGIST: I have a most important argument to put
before you. Must you not face the fact that, in this
imperfect world, it is necessary to take life? How can
it be immoral to do what necessity imposes?
VEGETARIAN: We do not say that it is immoral to
"take life," but that it is immoral to take life
_unnecessarily_. It is not immoral, for instance, to
destroy rats and mice, because it is necessary to do
so. It _is_ immoral to kill animals for the table,
because it is _not_ necessary to do so. Did you ever
tread on a beetle?
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Yes, by accident. I could not help it. I
am a most humane man.
VEGETARIAN: Of course. But supposing that you wished to
murder someone, would you think yourself justified in
doing so because you had trodden on beetles—because, in
fact, sometimes it is "necessary to take life?"
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Certainly not. How can you suspect me of
being so immoral? There is a great difference between
taking the life of a beetle by accident and of a man by
design. There are _degrees_ of responsibility, you know.
VEGETARIAN: Ah! you have got your answer, then.
How is it, we wonder, that rational beings can commit themselves
to such irrational arguments as this appeal to what is called
"Nature" but is in reality only an isolated section of Nature,
viewed apart from the rest? Let Benjamin Franklin himself supply
the answer. For in narrating that incident of the cod-fish to
which I have alluded, he humorously hints that his philosophical
conclusion, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we may not
eat you," was not uninfluenced by the fact that he had been "a
great lover of fish" in early life, and that the fish smelt
"admirably well" as it came out of the frying-pan; and he sagely
adds that one of the advantages to man of being a "reasonable
creature" is that he can find or make a "reason" for anything he
has a mind to do. Such is the logic of the flesh-eater, in which
the wish is father to the thought, and mixed thinking leads by a
convenient process to a mixed diet.
THE HUMANITARIAN ARGUMENT
It will have been noted that the anti-vegetarian arguments which
have so far come under review have been mainly such as are based
on purely _materialistic_ grounds, as if the question were
wholly one for doctors and scientists to decide; and it has been
shown that, even thus, there is no sort of warrant for the
supercilious dismissal of vegetarianism as a theory condemned in
advance by some superior tribunal. But the question is not one
for the _ipse dixit_ of the specialist. It is also a moral
question of very great moment, and this fact gives a new
significance to such unwilling admissions as that made by the
_British Medical Journal_, that "man can obtain from vegetables
the nutriment necessary for his maintenance in health"—_i.e._,
from vegetables only, much more, therefore, from a vegetable
diet with the addition of eggs and milk. The practicability of
vegetarianism being thus fully granted, it is impossible to
pretend that moral considerations are not relevant to the
controversy, and that in forming an opinion on the vexed problem
of diet we should not give due weight to the promptings of
humaneness.
People often talk as if the humanitarian plea were some fanciful
external sentiment that has been illogically thrust into the
discussion; whereas in truth it is one of the innermost facts of
the situation which no sophistry can escape. Our humane
instincts are unalterably implanted in us, and we cannot deny
them if we would; to be _human_ is to be _humane_. "There is
something in human nature," says an old writer,[11] "resulting
from our very make and constitution, which renders us obnoxious
to the pains of others, causes us to sympathise with them,
and almost comprehends us in their case. It is grievous to
see or hear (and almost to hear of) any man, or even any
animal whatever, in torture." And now that modern science has
demonstrated the close kinship that exists between human and
non-human, the greater is the repulsion that we feel at any
wanton ill-usage of animals.
Footnote 11:
Wollaston, "Religion of Nature," 1759.
This is now so generally admitted that the point in dispute
is not so much the duty of humaneness, as some particular
application of that duty, as in the present case to the
slaughter of animals for food. What have humane people to say to
the tremendous mass of animal suffering inflicted, in the
interests of the table, on highly-organised and sensitive
animals closely allied to mankind? By the unthinking, of course,
these sufferings, being invisible, are almost wholly overlooked,
while the deadening power of habit prevents many kindly persons
from exercising, where their daily "beef" and "mutton" are
concerned, the very sympathies which they so keenly manifest
elsewhere; yet it can hardly be doubted that, if the veil of
custom could be lifted, and if a clear knowledge of what is
involved in "butchery" could be brought home, with a sense of
personal responsibility, to everyone who eats flesh, the
attitude of society towards the vegetarian movement would be
very different from what it is now. If it be true that "hunger
is the best sauce," it may also be said that the _bon vivant's_
most indispensable sauce is _ignorance_—ignorance of the
horrible and revolting circumstances under which his juicy steak
or dainty cutlet has been prepared.
BON VIVANT: What is this? "Vegetarian" you call
yourself?
VEGETARIAN: And you? You are a _bon vivant_. You "live
well," I understand.
BON VIVANT: Not ashamed of enjoying a good dinner, but
not greedy, I hope.
VEGETARIAN: Nor cruel, I suppose?
BON VIVANT: Cruel! I subscribe regularly to the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
VEGETARIAN: And _eat_ them.
BON VIVANT: Why not? A speedy painless death is no
cruelty, is it?
VEGETARIAN: While you are finishing that choice beef
steak, I will tell you something of the speedy painless
death of steak-producing animals. It may serve as an aid
to digestion, like a musical accompaniment.
BON VIVANT: Oh, you won't spoil my digestion. Fire away!
VEGETARIAN: Let us suppose, then, that our friend (on
your plate there) hails from Ireland, and at one of
the fair grounds, of which there are several thousand
in that island paradise, he meets the first agent in
his euthanasia—the drover. "On such occasions," says
the Report of the late Departmental Committee on the
Inland Transit of Cattle, "animals already, perhaps,
exhausted and foot-sore from a walk of many miles, stand
for hours on the hard road, bewildered by the beating
they receive and their unaccustomed surroundings.... It
was repeatedly asserted by responsible witnesses that
many of the drovers are brutally harsh." So ferocious is
the treatment that in many cases, when the animals are
slaughtered, the hide, as butchers testify, simply falls
off the back, and is worthless even for use as leather.
I hope your steak is nice and tender?
BON VIVANT: But why are not the brutal drovers punished
for it?
VEGETARIAN: Perhaps because it is not for themselves
that they are driving. Then there is the journey in the
railway-trucks, and we learn on good authority (Report
of the Liverpool S.P.C.A.) that "the animals have
frequently gone twenty to twenty-four hours without food
at the time they are driven on the boats." As for the
delights of the sea-transit, you have read, I suppose,
of what happens in cattle-ships?
BON VIVANT: Well, of course, in stormy weather there may
be accidents——
VEGETARIAN: No, I am speaking of the ordinary scenes of
the cattle traffic, and say nothing of the occasions
(not so rare, either) when the boats come into port with
blood pouring from their scuppers——
BON VIVANT: Thank you, thank you! that is enough!
VEGETARIAN: We find it stated, in the Report of the
Committee of Inquiry into the Irish Cattle Transit, that
"the damage sustained by cattle is very serious, and
that the principal portion of that damage is due to
their treatment during shipment, while on shipboard, and
on debarkation." On landing there is more thrashing and
tail-twisting, another railway journey, and then—the
slaughterman. You have visited a slaughter-house, of
course?
BON VIVANT: No, really, I must protest——
VEGETARIAN: Ah, then it should interest you! The
drover's task accomplished, the butcher's begins.
Yard by yard and foot by foot, with chains fastened
to his horns and sharp goads applied to his flanks,
the struggling animal is dragged into the dark,
blood-stained shed, where he is lucky indeed if he
be killed by the first blow of the pole-axe——
BON VIVANT: Shameful! I do not believe you. It cannot
be.
VEGETARIAN: Then many well-known eye-witnesses must have
strangely perjured themselves. Dr. Dembo, for example,
says: "Cases in which several blows are required are
very frequent. On my first visit to the Deptford
slaughtering yards I found that the number of blows
struck was five and more," and he goes on to describe a
case which he saw in London, when _twelve minutes_
elapsed before the animal——
BON VIVANT: Stop! I will hear no more.
VEGETARIAN: You will hear no more—but will you _eat_
more? It is on _you_, not on the brutal drover or
slaughterman, that the responsibility falls. For this is
the "speedy and painless" way in which animals must be
slaughtered that _you_ may live well.
"I will hear no more." That, said or implied, is the most common
and the most insuperable argument by which the vegetarian is
confronted. It is the one great stronghold of flesh-eating which
remains from age to age impregnable. For how can even truth
convince the deaf and the blind? The horrors of the journey by
sea and journey by rail, of the savage drover's goad and the
clumsy butcher's pole-axe—if the ordinary man and woman,
unimaginative and unfeeling though they are, could see or
even hear of these things, the end of the controversy would
be nearer. By the few flesh-eaters who have made inquiry,
accidental or conscientious, into the facts of the cattle
traffic and butchering trade, it is not denied that fearful
cruelties are committed. Thus the _Meat Trades Journal_, which
is not a sentimental paper, remarks of the sea and land transit,
that "our cattle, sheep, and pigs are carried by sea and rail
with the minimum care and maximum cost; they are bundled and
shunted about as if they were iron."[12] Again, Dr. T. P. Smith,
writing in opposition to vegetarianism, allows that the
indictment of the slaughter-house "hits a grievous blot on our
much-vaunted civilization."[13] There is a mass of printed
testimony to the same effect, which can be confirmed, as often
as confirmation is needed, by a visit to the shambles. But that
is a visit which the ordinary man will neither undertake himself
nor hear of from the mouths of others.
Footnote 12:
December 29, 1898.
Footnote 13:
_Fortnightly Review_, November, 1895.
Much also might be said of certain special cruelties, such as
those involved in the supply of white veal or _pâté de foie
gras_, and other so-called delicacies; but it is unnecessary to
dwell on such refinements of torture, because it is the ordinary
every-day aspects of flesh-eating that are here under debate. It
is a terrible fact that the very prevalence of the habit serves,
more than anything else, to conceal its full import; and thus a
large number of people, who, in any other department of life,
would indignantly refuse to profit by the cruel usage of
animals, are (without knowing, or at least without recognising
it) dependent for their daily food on the continued and
systematic infliction of sufferings which, in their magnitude
and frequency, surpass all other cruelties whatsoever of which
animals are the victims.
These horrors, as I have said, are not realised by those who are
personally responsible for them. Or, rather, they are not
_directly_ realised; for indirectly it is evident enough that
the more sensitive conscience of mankind is far from easy about
the morality of butchering, and would show still greater
uneasiness but for the quieting assurance that flesh food is a
strict necessity of existence. This sense of compunction has
found at least partial expression in many non-vegetarian works,
as, for example, in Michelet's "Bible of Humanity." "Life—death!
The daily murder which feeding upon animals implies—those hard
and bitter problems sternly placed themselves before my mind.
Miserable contradiction! Let us hope that there may be another
globe in which the base, the cruel fatalities of this one may be
spared to us!"
Now, in view of these facts and these feelings, we have a right
to press the advocates of flesh-eating for some more explicit
and coherent statement than they have hitherto accorded us of
their attitude towards the ethics of the diet question. If, as
the scientists themselves admit, there is no such "cruel
fatality" as that which Michelet pictured, and if flesh-eating
is not to be regarded as necessary, but only as expedient, then
it is in the highest degree unreasonable to rule out _humane_
considerations from their due share in the settlement of this
many-sided problem. The _British Medical Journal_ has said that
"there is not a shadow of doubt that the use of animals for food
involves a vast amount of pain." The same paper has said that
"man can obtain from vegetables the nutriment necessary for his
maintenance in health." Can it be doubted, that if the average
Englishman were made aware of these two facts, he would at least
think vegetarianism worthy of a serious trial? To ask, as a
superior person of science has asked (not merely in these
dialogues, but in actual debate), "How or where does the moral
phase of food-taking enter the science of dietetics?" or to take
refuge in the common saying that "one man's food is another
man's poison," is simply irrelevant. For diet, like other social
questions, has its moral aspect, which claims no less and no
more than its due importance; and it is because the "scientific"
antagonists of vegetarianism have overlooked this fact that
their judgments have hitherto been so warped, illogical, and
unscientific.
PALLIATIONS AND SOPHISTRIES
It is instructive to note the desperate shifts and subterfuges to which
our antagonists have recourse when they find themselves face to face
with the humanitarian impeachment of the slaughter-house. If one-half
of the popular prejudices were true, it might be supposed that, in the
discussion of so "fanciful" and "Utopian" a theory as vegetarianism
it would be its supporters who would take refuge in metaphysical
quibblings and sophistries, while its opponents would hold sternly
to the hard facts of life. But no! for when butchery is the theme we
find the exact opposite to be the case, and it is the flesh-eaters,
those level-headed deriders of the sentimental, who suddenly became
enamoured of the imaginary _what-might-be_ and the hypothetical
_what-would-otherwise-have-been_, and are disposed to turn their
attention to anything rather than to the unpalatable _what-is_.
Now, when the apologists of any form of cruelty are reduced to the
plea that it is "no worse" than some _other_ barbarous habit, the
presumption is that they are in a very bad plight indeed. Yet we
frequently hear it said that the fate of animals slaughtered for the
table is "no worse" than that of other animals—those perhaps that are
used for purposes of draught or burden—a quite pointless comparison,
because, even if the statement be true, the one act of injustice can
obviously be no excuse for the other. Or it may be that the mortality
of man himself, and his liability to disease and accident, are alleged
in mysterious justification of his carnivorous habits, the suffering of
the animals being represented as brief and momentary in contrast with
the pathetic human death-bed—an argument which reached its culminating
point in Mr. W. T. Stead's delightful assertion that of all kinds
of death he would himself prefer "the mode in which pigs are killed
at Chicago," which mode, as he incautiously let out, he did _not_
go to see when he visited that city. I do not think we need further
discuss such remarkable preference; it will be time enough to do so
when we hear of Mr. Stead's lamented self-immolation in the Chicago
pig-shambles.