step in humane progress, and so long as the kreophagist does not
absurdly claim that it is a _final_ step, his case against the
anthropophagist is a sure one; but if, while denouncing
anthropophagy as a barbarism of the past, he refuses to see that
flesh-eating must also, in turn, be replaced by a more humane
diet, he lays himself open to a raking fire of criticism.
Observe, for example, in view of the historical facts of
cannibalism, the absolute helplessness of Sir Henry Thompson's
position, when, as an objection to vegetarianism, he argues that
"the very idea of _restricting_ our resources and supplies is a
step backwards, a distinct reversion to the rude and distant
savagery of the past, a sign of decadence rather than of
advance." It is true that mankind has, on the whole, largely
extended its resources; but it is none the less true that, while
it has acquired many new foods, it has abandoned certain old
ones. It has advanced, in short, as already stated, by a process
not of omnivorism, but of eclecticism, which implies not only
acceptance, but rejection—a fact which knocks Sir Henry
Thompson's reasoning to atoms.
The power which has condemned cannibalism is that growing
instinct of humaneness which makes it impossible for men to prey
on their fellow-beings when once recognised as such. A notable
passage in one of Olive Schreiner's works may be quoted in
illustration:
"In those days, which men reck not of now, man, when
he hungered, fed on the flesh of his fellow-man and
found it sweet. Yet even in those days it came to pass
that there was one whose head was higher than her
fellows and her thought keener, and as she picked the
flesh from a human skull she pondered. And so it came to
pass that the next night, when men were gathered round
the fire ready to eat, she stole away, and when they
went to the tree where the victim was bound, they found
him gone. And they cried one to another, 'She, only
she, has done this, who has always said, I like not the
taste of man-flesh; men are too like me: I cannot eat
them.' Into the heads of certain men and women a new
thought had taken root; they said, 'There is something
evil in the taste of human flesh.' And ever after, when
the flesh-pots were filled with man-flesh, these stood
aside, and half the tribe ate human flesh and half not;
then, as the years passed, none ate."[53]
Footnote 53:
"Trooper Peter Halket."
A strange comment this on the Andrew Wilson formula, that we
should eat "that which is likest to our own composition!" For
what if we have begun to recognise that the lower animals also
are related to us by a close bond of kinship? From our knowledge
of the past we form our judgment of the future, and see, with
Thoreau, that "it is part of the destiny of the human race, in
its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely
as the savage tribes left off eating each other when they came
in contact with the more civilised."[54]
Footnote 54:
Walden, "Higher Laws."
VEGETARIANISM AS RELATED TO OTHER REFORMS
It is sometimes held by the champions of vegetarianism that
reform of diet is the starting-point and foundation-stone of all
other reform—a panacea for the ills and maladies of the world.
This over-estimate on the part of a few enthusiasts of an
unpopular cause is due, presumably, to a revolt from the
contrary extreme of depreciation; for a little thought must
show us that, in the complexity of modern life, there is no
such thing as a panacea for social ailments, and that, as
there is no royal road to knowledge, so there is no royal
road to reform. It is impossible for vegetarianism to solve
the social question, unless by alliance with various other
reforms that are advancing _pari passu_—so interlocked and
interdependent are all these struggles towards freedom. It has
been well said that, "By humanitarians, socialists, vegetarians,
anti-vivisectionists, teetotalers, land-reformers, and all such
seekers of human welfare, this must be borne in mind—that each
of their particular efforts is but a detail of the whole work of
social regeneration, and that we cannot rightly understand and
direct our own little piece of effort unless we know it, and
pursue it, as part of the great whole."[55]
Footnote 55:
The _New Charter_, "The Humanitarian View."
Still more mistaken, on the other hand, is that common prejudice
against food reform which would exclude it altogether from the
dignity of propagandism, and would limit it to the personal
practice of individuals. "There can be no objection," says Dr.
Burney Yeo, "to individuals adopting any kind of diet which they
may find answer their needs and minister to their comfort; it is
only when they attempt to enforce what they practise on others
that they must expect to encounter rational opposition."[56]
Unfortunately, we have learnt by bitter experience that
_rational_ opposition is the last thing we can expect to
encounter—as, indeed, is made sufficiently evident by Dr. Yeo's
argument. For how could individual vegetarians have ever heard
of the new diet except for the propaganda? And why have
vegetarians, as a body, less right than teetotalers, socialists,
or any other propagandists, not to "enforce," but to _advocate_
their philosophy of diet with the view of ultimately influencing
public opinion? This professional attempt to class vegetarianism
as an idiosyncrasy, and not a system, is as irrational as it is
insincere, and what its insincerity is may be seen from the fact
that, though we are told at one moment that "there can be no
objection" to individual practice of the diet, yet whenever
individuals do attempt to practise it, they meet with the
strongest possible objection from the doctors themselves!
Footnote 56:
"Foods in Health and Disease."
Thus it comes about that in this progressive age, and even
among those who label themselves "progressives," vegetarianism
is so frequently regarded as a mere whim and crotchet, with no
practical bearing on the forward movement of to-day. It is a
marvel that so many "advanced" journals, which have a good
word for a host of worthy causes that are fighting an uphill
battle against monopoly and injustice—social reform, land
reform, law reform, prison reform, hospital reform, and a
hundred more—are dumb as death, or speak only to sneer, when
the subject is food reform; and thus lead their readers to
suppose that, whereas on all other matters there has been a
great change of feeling during the past half-century, on the
one matter of diet there has been no sort of progress! Yet
they might easily learn, if they made serious inquiry, that
the reformed dietetics, so far from being the outcome of mere
sentiment about animals, have a past record based as surely on
moral and scientific reasoning as that of any cause included
in the progressive programme. Vegetarianism is, in truth,
_progressiveness in diet_; and for a progressive to scout such
ideas as valueless and Utopian is to play the part (as far as
diet is concerned) of a reactionist. What is the meaning of
this strange discrepancy? It must mean, we fear, that to a
large number of our social reformers the reform of other
persons is a much more congenial battle cry than the reform of
one's self. _Hinc illæ lacrymæ._ They call vegetarianism
"impracticable" for the strange reason that, unlike most
_isms_, it asks them to do something individually which they
know they _could_ do—if they wished! It is impracticable
because it does not suit them to practise it.
REFORMER: Let me entreat you; give up this fanciful
scheme of vegetarianism and come and work for social
reform.
VEGETARIAN: Social reform without food reform! Is not
that rather a lame and lop-sided business?
REFORMER: Not at all. When we have so many things to do
we must do the most important ones first.
VEGETARIAN: And what are the most important?
REFORMER: Well, there is international peace and
arbitration. You will admit that our first duty is to
avoid unnecessary bloodshed.
VEGETARIAN: Ah, I see! And the habit of _living_ by
bloodshed doesn't come within your scope!
REFORMER: Then there is the land question, and the need
of relieving the congestion of our crowded cities by the
revival of agriculture.
VEGETARIAN: So, of course, you can't attend to a
diet-system which would bring people back to the land!
REFORMER: There is also the temperance problem—the
terrible evils of the drink crave.
VEGETARIAN: Which would disappear for the most part if
we left off eating flesh.
REFORMER: And the welfare of animals—for to that also I
devote myself. We need some stringent legislation for
the better prevention of cruelty.
VEGETARIAN: We do. But as such legislation would leave
your reformers dinnerless, don't you think you should
revise your dietary meantime? Your reforms are
excellent, I grant you; but what of _self-reform_? Does
not reform, like charity, begin at home?
REFORMER: Well, well; to everyone his taste—reform or
self-reform. I prefer the former; you the latter, I
suppose.
VEGETARIAN: No; that is just where you are mistaken. I
prefer both at once.
Reform _and_ self-reform, not reform _or_ self-reform—that is
the true key to the solution of the social question. The work
that we can do ourselves is the most wholesome condiment for the
work that we can only do through society. And here let me
express the hope that, as a matter of policy, vegetarians will
stand aloof from all "philanthropic" schemes of _vicarious_ food
reform in prisons, reformatories, and workhouses; for there is
no surer way of making a principle unpopular than by forcing it
on the poor and helpless, while carefully avoiding it one's
self. Philanthropists, if they be philanthropists, will practise
what they preach; by their practice we shall know them.
To the so-called ethical, no less than to the political, school
of thought the question of vegetarianism is unwelcome, obtruding
as it does on the polite wordiness of learned discussion with an
issue so coarsely downright: "You are a member of an ethical
society—do you live by butchery?" But the ethics of diet are the
very last subject with which a cultured ethical society would
concern itself, and the attitude of the modern "ethicist"
towards the rights of animals is still that of the medieval
schoolman. The ethicist does not wish to forego his beef and
mutton, so he frames his ethics to avoid the danger of such
mishap, and while he talks of high themes with the serene wisdom
of a philosopher the slaughter-houses continue to run blood. We
surmise that the royal founder and archetype of ethical
societies was that learned but futile monarch referred to in the
epitaph:
Here lies our mutton-loving king,
Whose word no man relies on:
He never _said_ a foolish thing,
And never _did_ a wise one.
So, too, throughout the whole field of hygiene, temperance, and
plain living, to ignore vegetarianism is to ignore one of the
most potent influences for self-restraint. One is reluctant to
quote the late Sir Henry Thompson in any matter that tends to
the praise of vegetarianism, in view of the extreme irritability
which that distinguished scientist exhibited as regards his
sacred text, with which you could never take the liberty of
assuming that, when it distinctly said one thing, it did not
mean the opposite; yet he _did_ say that "a proportion amounting
at least to more than one-half of the disease which embitters
the middle and latter part of life, among the middle and upper
classes of the population, is due to avoidable errors in
diet."[57] If this be so, it is obvious that diet reform (of
some sort) is very urgently needed; and I submit that it would
be difficult to frame any intelligible scheme of diet reform in
which vegetarian principles should play no part, embracing, as
they do, all the best features of temperance and frugality. What
is the use of for ever preaching about the avoidance of luxuries
and stimulants, if you rule out of your system the one dietary
which makes stimulants and luxuries impossible? The relation of
vegetarianism to temperance, of the food question to the drink
question, is that of the greater which includes the less.
Footnote 57:
_Nineteenth Century_, May, 1885.
But it is when we turn from philanthropy to zoophily, and to the
questions more particularly affecting the welfare of animals,
that the importance of vegetarianism, in spite of the stubborn
attempts of the old-fashioned "animal lovers" to overlook it, is
most marked. Here, again, I do not share the extreme vegetarian
view that food reform is the _foundation_ of other reforms, for
I think it can be shown that all cruelties to animals, whether
inflicted in the interests of the dinner-table, the laboratory,
the hunting-field, or any other institution, are the outcome of
one and the same error—the blindness which can see no unity and
kinship, but only difference and division, between the human and
the non-human race. This blindness it is—this crass denial of a
common origin, a common nature, a common structure, and common
pleasures and pains—that has alone hardened men in all ages of
the world, civilised or barbarous, to inflict such fiendish
outrages on their harmless fellow-beings; and to remove this
blindness we need, it seems to me, a deeper and more radical
remedy than the reform of sport, or of physiological methods, or
even of diet alone. The only real cure for the evil is the
growing sense that the lower animals are closely akin to us, and
have rights.
And here we see the inevitable logic of vegetarianism, if our
belief in the rights of animals is ever to quit the stage of
theory and enter the stage of fact; for just as there can be no
human rights where there is slavery, so there can be no animal
rights where there is eating of flesh. "To keep a man, slave or
servant," says Edward Carpenter, "for your own advantage merely,
to keep an animal that you may _eat_ it, is a lie; you cannot
look that man or animal in the face." I am not saying that it
is not a good thing that, quite apart from food reform,
anti-vivisectionists should be denouncing the doings of "the
scientific inquisition," while humanitarians of another school
are exposing the horrors of sport, for cruelty is a many-headed
monster, and there must at times be a concentration of energy on
a particular spot; but I do say that any reasoned principle of
kindness to animals which leaves vegetarianism outside its scope
is, in the very nature of things, foredoomed to failure.[58]
Footnote 58:
Take, for example, the rule to which some bird-lovers bind
themselves, to wear no feathers but those of birds killed for
food. One is reminded of Thomas Paine's epigram: "They pity
the plumage, but forget the dying bird."
Vegetarianism is an essential part of any true zoophily, and
the reason why it is not more generally recognised as such
is the same as that which excludes it from the plan of the
progressive—that it is so upsetting to the every-day habits
of the average man. Few of us, comparatively, care to murder
birds in "sport," and still fewer to cut up living animals
in the supposed interests of "science," but we have all been
taught to regard flesh food as a necessity, and it is a
matter, at first, of some effort and self-denial to rid
ourselves of complicity in butchering. Herein is at once the
strength and the weakness of the case for vegetarianism—the
strength as regards its logic, and the weakness as regards
its unpopularity—that it makes more direct personal demand
on the earnestness of its believers than other forms of
zoophily do; for which reason there is a widespread, though
perhaps unconscious, tendency among zoophilists to evade it.
Yet that such evasion is a blunder may be seen from the
outcry raised against it not by vegetarians only, but by the
vivisectionists and sportsmen themselves, who are quick to ask
the zoophilists why, if they are so eager for the well-being of
the animals, they do not desist from eating them—a question
which, however insincere in the mouths of some who propound it,
must at least be allowed to be logical. For it is simple truth
that though vivisection is a more refined and diabolical
torture, and sport a more stupidly wanton one, the _sum_ of
suffering that results from the practice of flesh-eating
is greater and more disastrous than either, and by being
so familiarly paraded in our streets is a cause of wider
demoralisation. When one thinks of the aimless and stunted life,
as well as the barbarous death, of the wretched victims of the
slaughter-house, bred as they are for no better purpose than to
be unnaturally fattened for the table, it makes one marvel that
so many kindly folk, keenly sensitive to the cruelties inflicted
elsewhere, should be utterly deaf and blind to the doings of
their family butcher. The zoophilist loves to quote the famous
lines of Coleridge:
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small.
But what kind of "love" is that which eats the object of its
affection? There are hidden rocks in that poetical passage which
a sense of humour should indicate to the pilot of zoophily.
Our position, therefore, is this—that while we make no exaggerated
claim for vegetarianism, as in itself a panacea for human ills and
animal sufferings, we insist on the rational view that reform of diet
is an indispensable branch of social organisation, and that it is idle
to talk of recognising "rights of animals" so long as we unconcernedly
_eat_ them. Vegetarianism is no more and no less than an essential
part in the highly complex engine which is to shape the fabric of a
new social structure, an engine which will not work if a single screw
be missing. The part without the whole is undeniably powerless; but so
also, as it happens, is the whole without the part.
CONCLUSION
The chief object of this work, as stated at the outset, has been
to prove the logical soundness of vegetarian principles, and the
hollowness of the hackneyed taunt, so often a makeshift for
reasoning, that vegetarians are a crew of mild brainless
enthusiasts whose "hearts are better than their heads." How far
I have been successful in this purpose it is for the reader to
judge; I trust it has, at least, been made plain that, if it is
logic that our friends are in need of, we are quite ready to
accommodate them, and that nothing will please us better than
a thorough intellectual sifting of the whole problem of
diet. Only it must be a _thorough_ sifting. The great foe of
vegetarianism, as of every other reform, is habit—that inert,
blind, dogged force which time called into being, and time only
can outwear—and it is this which lurks behind the flimsy
sophisms and excuses that the flesh-eater loves to set up, in
which, as a rule, though there is much show of controversy,
there is little real discussion. To those of our opponents who
honestly wish to grapple with the question of diet, and to
understand what vegetarianism means (whether they agree with it
or not), I submit that the following points have, at any rate,
been clearly set before them:
1. That the objections raised to the name "vegetarian"
are founded on sheer ignorance of the word's origin,
and calculated, if not designed, to distract attention
from the substance by fixing it on the shadow. It is
not nowadays seriously denied, by any responsible
authority, that a vegetable diet, _with the addition
of eggs and milk_, is quite adequate for nutriment;
but the method is this—to allow what is said (rightly
or wrongly) of the sufficiency of a _strictly_ vegetable
diet to be misunderstood by the public as referring
to "vegetarianism." Thus, Dr. J. Burney Yeo, in his
"Food in Health and Disease," first argues that
"vegetarians" have no right to their title, because they
consume animal products, and then proceeds to allege
various reasons against "a purely vegetable diet," which
by his own showing is not what vegetarianism represents.
This is a fair sample of flesh-eaters' logic.
2. That the immediate aim of vegetarians is not that
which, under various forms, is so industriously
foisted on them—viz., a desire to attain at one step
to the millennium, by altogether ceasing to take the
life of animals, or by entire abstinence from animal
products—but rather it is a practical, intelligible,
though necessarily imperfect, attempt to humanise, as
far as may be, the present sanguinary diet system, by
the omission at least of its more loathsome and
barbarous features.
3. That vegetarianism, if once admitted to be
practicable, offers certain positive benefits of the
utmost value, humane, æsthetic, hygienic, social,
economic; while, on the other hand, the denials that
have hitherto been made of its practicability, on the
plea of structure, laws of nature, climate, digestion,
and so forth, are far too weak and illogical to bear the
test of criticism. There _may_, of course, be some
conclusive reason against vegetarianism, but if so, why
is its production delayed?
4. That in the greater number of the arguments brought
against vegetarianism, the importance of the _moral_
aspect of the question is studiously kept out of sight.
Thus, Sir Henry Thompson, in his _Nineteenth Century_
article of 1885, while admitting the possibility of
abstaining from flesh foods, gave judgment on the whole
in favour of a moderate use of them—but without allowing
the smallest weight to humane or moral considerations.
Writing on the same subject in 1898, he so far repaired
this oversight as to argue that it is really kinder
to eat animals than not to do so, because otherwise
they would not be bred at all! That is the amount of
attention the moral side of vegetarianism receives from
its opponents, a great humane issue being set aside by a
sophism more suited for a Savoy comedy than for serious
discussion.
But there is the further question—and as far as these chapters
are concerned, the final question—why, if vegetarianism is part
and parcel of a genuine "progressive" movement, does it not more
rapidly progress? "Why so little _result_ from your propaganda?"
is the frequent sneer of the flesh-eater, and the vegetarian
himself is sometimes fain to be down-hearted at the seeming
slowness of his advance. Does vegetarianism progress? Yes and
no, according to the expectations, reasonable or unreasonable,
that its supporters have been cherishing. If we have fondly
hoped to witness, in the future, the triumph of the humaner
living, it must be allowed that the actual rate of progress is
extremely disheartening; but if, on the contrary, we work under
a rational understanding that a widespread change of diet, like
any other radical change, is a matter not of years but of
centuries, then we shall not find in the slow growth of our
movement any reason for dissatisfaction. Revolution in personal
habits, be it remembered, is even more difficult than revolution
in political forms, and needs a greater time for its fulfilment,
and, looked at in this light, vegetarianism has made as much
progress during the past half-century as any other cause which
aims at so far-reaching a change.
But what of the many individual failures, it is asked, among
those who make trial of vegetarianism? Taking the circumstances
into account, the failures cannot be regarded as numerous; for
in every such movement there are half-hearted people who are
impelled by motives of restlessness and curiosity, rather than
of real conviction, and in view of the personal obstacles that
beset the path of the vegetarian it is not surprising that in
food reform, as in drink reform, there are a certain number of
backsliders. In an ordinary household every possible influence,
social and domestic, is brought to bear on the heretic who
abstains from flesh foods. Anxious relatives and indignant
friends adjure him to remember the duty he owes to himself and
to his family, and urge him for the sake of those dear to him,
if not for his own, to return to that great sacramental bond
of union between man and man—the eating of our non-human
fellow-beings. Is he smitten by one of the numberless ailments
that are the stock-in-trade of the physician, and of which
flesh-eaters are daily the victims in every part of the
world? The doctor looks wise, shakes his head, and informs
a sorrowing circle that it is the direct result of "his
vegetarianism." Above all, the fear of ridicule, acting on the
natural unwillingness of mankind to venture along unknown paths,
is a strong deterrent; for there are still many persons to whom
the idea of abstinence from butchers' meat is positively a
matter for merriment, and it seems fated that vegetarianism,
like every new principle, must be a target for such shafts.
Well, so be it! We know that the struggle will be a long one,
and if vegetarianism has got to run the blockade of Noodledom,
and a huge amount of foolish talk must perforce be fired off,
the sooner the battle commences, and the sooner it is concluded,
the better for all concerned. And ridicule, as the flesh-eater
will learn, is a weapon which can be wielded by more parties
than one.