double sense of _spiritual_ and _carnal_. See Tertullian's
treatise, "Against the Carnal-Minded" (Psychicos).
It will be objected, no doubt, that the injurious effect of
flesh food on morals has never been scientifically proved,[34]
nor indeed is it possible that absolute proof should be
forthcoming until vegetarianism is widely enough practised to
furnish data for comparison; there are, however, certain very
marked indications that can hardly be overlooked. In the first
place, as already stated, there is the immemorial belief,
especially prominent in the usage of monastic orders, but
scarcely less so in all systems of hygienic or spiritual
exercise—amounting, in short, to a practical consensus of
mankind—that a stimulating or excessive diet is harmful to
sobriety and self-control; as evidenced by the far greater
amount of crime rife among luxurious town-dwellers than
among frugal peasants. Secondly, there is the fact, too well
attested to be challenged, that flesh-eating and alcoholism are
closely allied, and that the drink-crave dies a natural death
when a stimulating diet is withdrawn; from which it may be
further realised that the excitation caused by flesh food must
necessarily, in many cases, act injuriously on the nerve-system
and contribute powerfully to the vicious habits which moralists
deplore.
Footnote 34:
Even cannibalism—such is the complexity of the human
character—is not always _directly_ demoralising. "This
unnatural practice," says Captain Burrows in his "Land of the
Pigmies," 1899, "stands by itself, seeming not in any way to
affect or retard the development of the better emotions."
"The deepest, truest, and most general causes of prostitution in
all great cities," says Dr. Kingsford, "must be looked for in
the luxurious and intemperate habits of eating and drinking
prevalent among the rich and well-to-do. The chief element of
this luxury is the use of flesh and alcohol, which mistaken
notions of hygiene and therapeutics tend to press more and more
upon all classes of men and women. Abolish kreophagy and its
companion vice, alcoholism, and more, a thousandfold, will be
done to abolish prostitution than can be achieved by any other
means soever as long as these two evil influences flourish. The
young man of the present day, accustomed from childhood to
frequent and copious meals of flesh, and from early youth to
the use of all manner of fermented beverages and liqueurs,
carries about with him and fosters an increasingly disordered
appetite, which not infrequently assumes the character of true
disease."[35]
Footnote 35:
"The Perfect Way in Diet."
The evils of stimulating diet in the case of the young have been
emphasized by such well-known authorities as Dr. George Keith
and Sir B. W. Richardson. Here is a significant passage from the
writings of the former:
"I have done much for many years privately, whenever I
had the opportunity, to impress on fathers and mothers
the danger to their sons and daughters from exciting
prematurely their natural desires and passions; but
custom and fashion have so powerful a hold, especially
in the higher circles of society, that I have frequently
had to feel that my efforts were in vain.... The
existence of bad habits at schools is well known to the
masters, and they take what measures they can for their
prevention. Even when they know the truth, the strength
of custom and habit so imperatively demands a full diet
for the growing youth that they are obliged to fall in
with the customs of the day. But few of them are aware
of the main cause of the evil, and the last thing most
would dream of as a remedy is a simpler diet."[36]
Footnote 36:
"Fads of an Old Physician," chap. xiv.
So, too, Sir B. W. Richardson:
"In all my long medical career, extending over forty
years, I have rarely known a case in which a child has
not preferred fruit to animal food. I say it without the
least prejudice, as a lesson learnt from simple
experience, that the most natural diet for the young,
after the natural milk diet, is fruit and wholemeal
bread, with milk and water for drink. The desire for
this same mode of sustenance is often continued into
after years, as if the resort to flesh were a forced and
artificial feeding, which required long and persistent
habit to establish its permanency as a part of the
system of every-day life."[37]
Footnote 37:
"Foods for Man."
Contrast with this wise and weighty advice the dietetic habits
actually prevalent among the youth of our well-to-do classes,
where we see not only a strong tendency to over-eating, but a
rooted and active conviction that flesh is the _summum bonum_ of
food. The fatted calf is rivalled by the fatted schoolboy; the
cramming of Strasburg geese itself is not more disgusting than
the cramming which makes _pâté de foie gras_ of the moral fibre
of the young. When we find even the _Eton College Chronicle_
raising a protest against the diet of boyish athletes, we may be
sure the evil is a crying one:
"He [the boy in training] takes a lot of exercise, and
finds he has a good appetite. For breakfast he has a
chop every morning; we have known some who had two. He
also has heard porridge is nourishing, and that this is
why Scotchmen are so hardy and brawny. He acts upon this
information. For dinner he makes a point of having two
good helpings of meat 'to get his weight up,' while
for tea, besides having a plate of eggs and chicken,
or something of that kind, he winds up with a large
allowance of marmalade."
Nor is it only among schoolboys that over-eating is rampant, for
the tables of the wealthy are everywhere loaded with flesh meat,
and the example thus set is naturally followed, first in the
servants' hall, and then, as far as may be, in the homes of the
working classes. To consume much flesh is regarded as the sign
and symbol of well-being—witness the popular English manner of
keeping the festival of Christmas. "We interknit ourselves with
every part of the English-speaking world," said the journal
of the Cosme colony, in Paraguay, describing a Christmas
celebration, "by the most sacred ceremony of over-eating."
A nice moral bond of union, truly, between colonies and
motherland! What is likely to be the effect on the national
character of such patriotic gorging?
We come back, then, to the point that though it is not
absolutely true that "man is what he eats," there is,
nevertheless, a large element of truth in the saying, and the
vegetarian has just ground for suspecting that beefy meals are
not infrequently the precursors of beefy morals. Carnalities of
one kind are apt to lead to carnalities of another, and fleshly
modes of diet to fleshly modes of thought. "Good living,"
unfortunately, is a somewhat equivocal term.
THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT
"The oftener we go to the vegetable world for our food," says
Sir B. W. Richardson, "the oftener we go to the first, and
therefore the _cheapest_ source of supply." The case for
vegetarianism would by no means be complete without a statement
of the economic view, though precedence is necessarily given
to the motives of humanity and healthfulness, the higher
considerations to which the idea of economy must be subservient.
If it were proved that flesh food is essential to the real
interests of the race, and that there is no moral objection to
the use of it, the greater outlay would be justified by the
value of the result; but if such proof is not forthcoming (and
it has been the object of the preceding chapters to show that it
is not), it is obvious that the comparative cost of a flesh diet
and a vegetarian diet becomes a question of high importance to
mankind. What, then, are the facts?
They are so plain as to be positively beyond dispute, and it
is a cause for marvel what Dr. J. Burney Yeo can have meant
in describing vegetarianism as "a scheme of diet which we
believe to be utterly impracticable on an extensive scale,
and irreconcilable with the existing state of civilised man,
not so much on strictly physiological grounds as _on general
economical considerations_."[38] If it be in accordance with
"general economical considerations" to pay threepence for
what can be procured for a penny, then only does Dr. Yeo's
statement become intelligible.
Footnote 38:
"Food in Health and Disease."
For the very first fact that demands notice in this comparison
of foods, is that not only does butchers' meat, pound for pound,
cost about three times the price of the cereals and pulses, but
that it is under the further disadvantage of containing a much
larger percentage of water—that is to say, in purchasing flesh,
you have to buy the water, and buy it dirty, while in purchasing
seeds and grains you do not buy the water, but add it clean. The
following passage from Sir B. W. Richardson's "Foods for Man"
puts the case succinctly:
"If we make an analysis of the primest joints of animal
food, legs of mutton, sirloin of beef, rump steak, veal
cutlet, pork chop, we find as much as 70 to 75 per cent.
of water.... Oatmeal contains 5 or 6 per cent.; good
wheaten flour, barley meal, beans and peas, 14; rice,
15; and good bread, 40 to 45 of water. Taking, then,
the value of foods as estimated by their solid value,
there are, it will be observed, a great many kinds of
vegetable foods which are incomparably superior to
animal."
We find accordingly, when we turn from this analysis to the
actual charges at restaurants, that, whereas a good vegetarian
dinner may be got for a shilling, it is necessary to pay fully
three times that sum for an equivalent in flesh food. It would
be waste of time to argue further that vegetarianism, whatever
its other advantages and disadvantages to the individual, is
much more _economical_ than flesh-eating.[39]
Footnote 39:
See the chapter on "Values of Foods," pp. 93, 94, in "Strength
and Diet," by the Hon. R. Russell.
But here we are met by the difficulty that the well-to-do, on
the one hand, are not easily influenced by the motive of
economy, while the poor, on the other hand, are naturally
suspicious of the gospel of "thrift," so often preached to them
by the predatory classes who do not practise it themselves;
and it must be admitted that it is perfectly useless for
philanthropical persons to preach food-thrift to the poor,
unless by their own method of living they are testifying to the
truth of what they preach.
It is sometimes said that vegetarianism is an "inconvenient"
diet, which means no more than that the adoption of any new
system gives trouble at first, though it may save trouble
afterwards. When once adopted, vegetarianism is, of course,
a far more convenient, because a simpler and cleaner diet
than the ordinary one, as is testified by those who have had
personal experience of both. "Having been my own butcher and
scullion," says Thoreau, "as well as the gentleman from whom
the dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually
complete experience. The practical objection to animal food
in my case was its uncleanness, and besides, when I had
caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed
not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and
unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread
or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble
and filth."[40]
Footnote 40:
Walden, "Higher Laws."
The assertion that the cheapening of food would cause the
lowering of wages is true only as an answer to the exaggerated
claims sometimes made by vegetarians, that their system would
of itself solve the whole problem of employment. It would not
do so; and if there were no force but vegetarianism in the
field it is doubtful whether the adoption of the cheaper diet
would in the long run bring any economical advantage to the
workers, though it would still benefit them morally and
physically. This, however, does not detract from the real
strength of the vegetarian argument; for with labour now
organised and resolute, and yearly growing in power and
intelligence, there is no likelihood that the workers' thrift
would become the capitalists' profit; on the contrary, it
would clearly add to the resources of labour. To assert that
the working classes should maintain the cruel and wasteful
practice of flesh-eating merely to "keep up wages" is pure
nonsense, for the same reasoning would justify the maintenance
of drink, or any other extravagant and useless habit.
What is true for the individual and the class is true also for
the community, and unless flesh food can be shown to be
necessary for human progress, the continuance of pastoralism,
to the detriment and neglect of agriculture, is a criminal
waste of the national resources. In this Malthusian age of
over-population scares and emigration schemes it is well to
recollect that a remedy lies close to hand if we would but use
it. "Not only is the earth not yet a quarter peopled," says
Mr. W. R. Greg, "but even the inhabited portion is scarcely
yet a quarter cultivated. In many countries the soil is barely
scratched. Even in England it is not made to yield, on the
average, more than one-half its capacity."[41] And in the same
work he points out that "the amount of human life sustainable
on a given area, and therefore throughout the chief portion of
the habitable globe, may be almost indefinitely increased by a
substitution _pro tanto_ of vegetable for animal food.... A
given acreage of wheat will feed at least _ten_ times as many
men as the same acreage employed in growing mutton."
Footnote 41:
Appendix to "Enigmas of Life."
In view of the great complexity of the land question, the
variety of the causes that have led to the depression of
agriculture, and the difficulty of forecasting accurately what
would be the result of the adoption of any particular reform by
any one nation, considered apart from the rest, vegetarians will
do wisely in not claiming too much for the system they advocate.
But at least it must be admitted that vegetarianism would tend
to bring about, in some form or other, that much-desired _return
to the land_, which, in the present congested state of our
cities and busy centres, is felt to be the best hope of
stanching a dangerous wound. The town is at present draining the
life of the country, and the tide of emigration is still further
sapping the national strength; but if men's thoughts could be
turned back from commerce to agriculture, if a healthy love of
the soil, of fruit-growing, of market-gardening, could be
substituted for the insane thirst for the feverish atmosphere of
the town, it is evident that a great step would have been taken
towards the cure of the disease. "If the towns renounced
flesh-eating," says Professor Newman, "we should see in a single
generation, even without improved land-tenure, a tide of
migration set the other way—from towns into the country. Rustic
industry would be immensely developed. All motive for the
expatriation of our robustest youth would, for a long time yet,
be removed, and the country might be enormously enriched, not in
an upper stratum of great fortunes, but down to the bottom of
the community."[42]
Footnote 42:
"Essays on Diet," p. 55.
So, too, Max Nordau, in some notable passages of his
_Conventional Lies of our Civilisation_:
"If the soil of Europe were cultivated like that of
Belgium, it could support a population of 1,950 millions
much more completely and abundantly than the 360
millions it now supports so poorly.... Cultivation of
the soil is the despised child of our civilisation.
It hardly takes one forward stride where manufacture
takes a hundred.... Experience teaches us that man's
labour as a general thing can nowhere be employed in a
more lucrative way than in agriculture. If a man should
work over his field with the shovel and spade instead
of the plough, he would find that a plot of ground of
incredibly small size would be sufficient to support
him."
There is yet another peril that would be lessened in proportion
to the increase of vegetarianism—the dependence of this country
on the importation of food from abroad. "At present," says Mr.
W. E. A. Axon, "probably one-half of the population is dependent
upon a foreign supply. That England should be, and is, the
last country in the world to desire a Chinese wall for the
exclusion of foreign commodities, need not blind us to the fact
that there may be grave national dangers in the soil of
the country providing food for about half its people. A
nation of vegetarians would create such a demand that rural
England would be, if not a cornfield, yet a vast orchard and
market-garden."[43]
Footnote 43:
_Manchester Vegetarian Lectures_, "Vegetarianism and National
Economy." For a clear statement of the present shocking
neglect of agriculture in this country, see "Fields,
Factories, and Workshops," by P. Kropotkin, 1899, where it is
shown that _two-thirds_ of our food-supply is now imported
from abroad.
Enough has now been said to show that the habit of flesh-eating,
involving as it does the sacrifice of vast tracts of land to the
grazing of cattle, and the consequent starving of agriculture,
is far too costly to be justified, in the face of an extending
civilisation, unless by a much clearer proof of its necessity
than any which its advocates have essayed; in fact, it only
remains possible, on its present large scale, through the
temporary use of huge pasture-grounds in remote semi-civilised
regions which will not always be available. For pastoralism
belongs rightly to another and earlier phase of the world's
economics, and as civilisation spreads it becomes more and more
an anachronism, as surely as flesh-eating, by a corresponding
change, becomes an anachronism in morals.[44] It seems,
generally speaking, that the foods which are the costliest in
suffering are also the costliest in price, whereas the wholesome
and harmless diet to which Nature points us is at once the
cheapest and most humane.
Footnote 44:
Against the sea fisheries, it may be noted, the same objection
cannot be raised, as they do not diminish, but supplement the
produce of the soil.
DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES
We have next to deal with a special class of irregular foemen,
the guerillas and Bashi-Bazouks of the flesh-eater's army, whose
game it is to waylay and harass the vegetarian movement by a
small fire of doubts and difficulties as to what the future has
in store. The alarmists they are, whose apprehensive minds are
concerned not so much with the rightness or wrongness of the
system, as with the anxieties of "what would happen" if the
triumph of vegetarianism should be won; and so gloomy are their
forebodings as to suggest a probable collapse of the whole
fabric of society, if once that great prop and mainstay of
civilisation—the habit of eating dead animals—should be
disloyally undermined.
Now, at the outset, it should be said that the well-worn method
of trying to discredit new principles by "wanting to know"
beforehand exactly how everything will happen, is in many cases
a foolish and fraudulent device. There are, of course, certain
quite legitimate questions, as to the general scope and
practicability of any proposed reform, to which reformers must
be prepared to make answer before they can expect to prevail,
and to such questions vegetarians have a convincing reply; but
when the inquisition takes the form of asking for a present
explanation of future developments, and for a foreknowledge of
details which, in the very nature of things, are unknowable,
then it is well to make it clear from the beginning that we will
be no parties to any such waste of time. Reasonable foresight is
one thing, the gift of prophecy is another; and it is in no wise
the duty of those who are working towards a more or less distant
goal, to give a precise geometrical survey of their Promised
Land.
In the case of vegetarianism the answerable doubts and
difficulties fall mostly under two heads, relating first to the
alarming discomforts which the loss of flesh-food would entail
upon mankind, and secondly to the not less grievous straits to
which the animals themselves would be reduced under so misguided
a régime. Let us take the selfish view first, as containing,
perhaps, a modicum of real feeling, which can scarcely be found
in that suspicious concern for the animals. There are some folk,
it seems, over whose troubled minds there really _does_ hang,
like a nightmare, the alarmist's vision of a world impoverished
and dismantled by vegetarianism—a world _sans_ leather, _sans_
bone, _sans_ soap, _sans_ candles, _sans_ manure, _sans_
everything.
ALARMIST: But this is mere trifling. It is idle to
talk of the humanity, the wholesomeness, the economy
of a vegetarian diet, while you are overlooking the
disastrous consequences that stare you in the face. We
may perhaps be able, as you say, to exist without
meat, but what could we do without leather and the
other animal substances on which civilisation depends?
VEGETARIAN: Well, I suppose we should take care _not_ to
be without them, or something just as good.
ALARMIST: How could we do that, if there were no
carcases to supply us with hides, bone, and tallow?
In your devotion to an ideal you seem to forget that
if your principles prevailed, we might wake up some
fine morning to find ourselves confronted by the
dislocation of the boot trade, the bookbinding trade,
the harness trade, and a hundred others. Thousands of
men and women would be thrown out of work, and we should
soon have no boots, no portmanteaus, no soap, no
candles, no knife-handles. It would be a downright
relapse into barbarism.
VEGETARIAN: But, happily, your lurid picture is based on
the false assumption that vegetarianism would come about
by a sudden and instantaneous conversion. That is not
the way in which great changes are accomplished. They
are a matter of years and centuries, not of days and
weeks; and the "fine morning" you spoke of will be a
gradual morning of very extensive duration.
ALARMIST: Well, but that is only putting off the evil
day—it would come at last.
VEGETARIAN: But would not something else have also been
coming meantime? Would not the demand, in this as in all
other usages of life, have produced the corresponding
supply? There is no need, however, to speculate as to
what _would_ happen, because it is happening already.
ALARMIST: What is happening?
VEGETARIAN: The articles which you named are being
supplied in substitutes from the vegetable kingdom.
Slowly and tentatively at first, as is inevitable while
vegetarians are so few in numbers; but vegetarian boots,
vegetarian soap, and vegetarian candles are now in the
market, and as the movement spreads, the demand will be
proportionately greater. So pray do not alarm yourself
about the dislocation of trade, for the whole change,
great as it is, will come to pass imperceptibly, and
will never bring a moment's inconvenience to anyone.
Mankind, as it happens, is not so helpless, so
uninventive, so literally "hidebound," as to let its
progress be dependent on skins, bones, and guts.
There is a good deal of unintended humour, too, in some of the
difficulties that are alleged. Thus, vegetarians are often asked
how the land could be fertilised without the use of animal
manure, it being apparently forgotten that _ex nihilo nihil
fit_, and that animals can only return to the land in manure
what they have previously taken from it in food; also that by
our absurdly wasteful drainage system we are all the time
poisoning our seas and rivers with a mass of sewage which would
be amply sufficient for the soil. "Let the land," says Mr.
William Hoyle, "only receive, in the shape of manure, the sewage
and refuse from the teeming population of our towns and
villages, in addition to the other means which are applied to
it, and let it be properly drained and cultivated, and there is
hardly any limit to its power of production."[45]
Footnote 45:
"Our National Resources," 1889.