Chapter 2

'The Greek boatmen are exceedingly abstemious. Their food consists of a small quantity of black bread, made of unbolted rye or wheatmeal, and a bunch of grapes, or raisins, or some figs. They are astonishingly athletic and powerful; and the most nimble, active, graceful, cheerful, and even merry people in the world. Judge Woodruff, of Connecticut.'

'From the day of his irruption into Europe the Turk has always proved himself to be endowed with singularly strong vitality and energy. As a member of a warlike race, he is without equal in Europe in health and hardiness. His excellent physique, his simple habits, his abstinence from intoxicating liquors, and his normal vegetarian diet, enable him to support the greatest hardships, and to exist on the scantiest and simplest food.'

'The Spaniards of Rio Salada in South America,--who come down from the interior, and are employed in transporting goods overland,--live wholly on vegetable food. They are large, very robust, and strong; and bear prodigious burdens on their backs, travelling over mountains too steep for loaded mules to ascend, and with a speed which few of the generality of men can equal without incumbrance.'

'In the most heroic days of the Grecian army, their food was the plain and simple produce of the soil. The immortal Spartans of Thermopylæ were, from infancy, nourished by the plainest and coarsest vegetable aliment: and the Roman army, in the period of their greatest valour and most gigantic achievements, subsisted on plain and coarse vegetable food. When the public games of Ancient Greece--for the exercise of muscular power and activity in wrestling, boxing, running, etc.,--were first instituted, the athletæ in accordance with the common dietetic habits of the people, were trained entirely on vegetable food.'

Dr. Kellogg, an authority on dietetics, makes the following answer to those who proclaim that those nations who eat a large amount of flesh-food, such as the English, are the strongest and dominant nations: "While it is true that the English nation makes large use of animal food, and is at the same time one of the most powerful on the globe, it is also true that the lowest, most miserable classes of human beings, such as the natives of Australia, and the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, subsist almost wholly upon flesh. It should also be borne in mind that it is only within a single generation that the common people of England have become large consumers of flesh. In former times and when England was laying the foundation of her greatness, her sturdy yeomen ate less meat in a week, than the average Englishman of the present consumes in a single day.... The Persians, the Grecians, and the Romans, became ruling nations while vegetarians."

In _Fruits and Farinacea_, Professor Lawrence is quoted as follows: 'The inhabitants of Northern Europe and Asia, the Laplanders, Samoiedes, Ostiacs, Tangooses, Burats, Kamtschatdales, as well as the natives of Terra del Fuego in the Southern extremity of America, are the smallest, weakest, and least brave people on the globe; although they live almost entirely on flesh, and that often raw.'

Many athletic achievements of recent date have been won by vegetarians both in this country and abroad. The following successes are noteworthy:--Walking: Karl Mann, Dresden to Berlin, Championship of Germany; George Allen, Land's End to John-o'-Groats. Running: E. R. Voigt, Olympic Championship, etc.: F. A. Knott, 5,000 metres Belgian record. Cycling: G. A. Olley, Land's End to John-o'-Groats record. Tennis: Eustace Miles, M.A., various championships, etc. Of especial interest at the present moment are a series of tests and experiments recently carried out at Yale University, U.S.A., under Professor Irving Fisher, with the object of discovering the suitability of different dietaries for athletes, and the effect upon the human system in general. The results were surprising. 'One of the most severe tests,' remarks Professor Fisher, 'was in deep knee-bending, or "squatting." Few of the meat-eaters could "squat" more than three to four hundred times. On the other hand a Yale student who had been a flesh-abstainer for two years, did the deep knee-bending eighteen hundred times without exhaustion.... One remarkable difference between the two sets of men was the comparative absence of soreness in the muscles of the meat-abstainers after the tests.'

The question as to climate is often raised; many people labour under the idea that a vegetable diet may be suitable in a hot climate, but not in a cold. That this idea is false is shown by facts, some of which the above quotations supply. That man can live healthily in arctic regions on a vegetable diet has been amply demonstrated. In a cold climate the body requires a considerable quantity of heat-producing food, that is, food containing a good supply of hydrocarbons (fats), and carbohydrates (starches and sugars). Many vegetable foods are rich in these properties, as will be explained in the essay following dealing with dietetics. Strong and enduring vegetable-feeding animals, such as the musk-ox and the reindeer, flourish on the scantiest food in an arctic climate, and there is no evidence to show that man could not equally well subsist on vegetable food under similar conditions.

In an article entitled _Vegetarianism in Cold Climates_, by Captain Walter Carey, R.N., the author describes his observations during a winter spent in Manchuria. The weather, we are told, was exceedingly cold, the thermometer falling as low as minus 22° F. After speaking of the various arduous labours the natives are engaged in, Captain Carey describes the physique and diet of natives in the vicinity of Niu-Chwang as follows: 'The men accompanying the carts were all very big and of great strength, and it was obvious that none but exceptionally strong and hardy men could withstand the hardships of their long march, the intense cold, frequent blizzards, and the work of forcing their queer team along in spite of everything. One could not help wondering what these men lived on, and I found that the chief article was beans, which, made into a coarse cake, supplied food for both men and animals. I was told by English merchants who travelled in the interior, that everywhere they found the same powerful race of men, living on beans and rice--in fact, vegetarians. Apparently they obtain the needful proteid and fat from the beans; while the coarse once-milled rice furnishes them with starch, gluten, and mineral salts, etc. Spartan fare, indeed, but proving how easy it is to sustain life without consuming flesh-food.'

So far, then, as the physical condition of those nations who are practically vegetarian is concerned, we have to conclude that practice tallies with theory. Science teaches that man should live on a non-flesh diet, and when we come to consider the physique of those nations and men who do so, we have to acknowledge that their bodily powers and their health equal, if not excel, those of nations and men who, in part, subsist upon flesh. But it is interesting to go yet further. It has already been stated that mind and body are inseparable; that one reacts upon the other: therefore it is not irrelevant, in passing, to observe what mental powers are possessed by those races and individuals who subsist entirely upon the products of the vegetable kingdom.

When we come to consider the mentality of the Oriental races we certainly have to acknowledge that Oriental culture--ethical, metaphysical, and poetical--has given birth to some of the grandest and noblest thoughts that mankind possesses, and has devised philosophical systems that have been the comfort and salvation of countless millions of souls. Anyone who doubts the intellectual and ethical attainments of that remarkable nation of which we in the West know so little--the Chinese--should read the panegyric written by Sir Robert Hart, who, for forty years, lived among them, and learnt to love and venerate them as worthy of the highest admiration and respect. Others have written in praise of the people of Burma. Speaking of the Burman, a traveller writes: 'He will exercise a graceful charity unheard of in the West--he has discovered how to make life happy without selfishness and to combine an adequate power for hard work with a corresponding ability to enjoy himself gracefully ... he is a philosopher and an artist.'

Speaking of the Indian peasant a writer in an English journal says: 'The ryot lives in the face of Nature, on a simple diet easily procured, and inherits a philosophy, which, without literary culture, lifts his spirit into a higher plane of thought than other peasantries know of. Abstinence from flesh food of any kind, not only gives him pure blood exempt from civilized diseases but makes him the friend and not the enemy, of the animal world around.'

Eastern literature is renowned for its subtle metaphysics. The higher types of Orientals are endowed with an extremely subtle intelligence, so subtle as to be wholly unintelligible to the ordinary Westerner. It is said that Pythagoras and Plato travelled in the East and were initiated into Eastern mysticism. The East possesses many scriptures, and the greater part of the writings of Eastern scholars consist of commentaries on the sacred writings. Among the best known monumental philosophical and literary achievements maybe mentioned the _Tao Teh C'hing_; the _Zend Avesta;_ the _Three Vedas_; the _Brahmanas_; the _Upanishads;_ and the _Bhagavad-gita_, that most beautiful 'Song Celestial' which for nearly two thousand years has moulded the thoughts and inspired the aspirations of the teeming millions of India.

As to the testimony of individuals it is interesting to note that some of the greatest philosophers, scientists, poets, moralists, and many men of note, in different walks of life, in past and modern times, have, for various reasons, been vegetarians, among whom have been named the following:--

Manu Zoroaster Pythagoras Zeno Buddha Isaiah Daniel Empedocles Socrates Plato Aristotle Porphyry John Wesley Franklin Goldsmith Ray Paley Isaac Newton Jean Paul Richter Schopenhauer Byron Gleizes Hartley Rousseau Iamblichus Hypatia Diogenes Quintus Sextus Ovid Plutarch Seneca Apollonius The Apostles Matthew James James the Less Peter The Christian Fathers Clement Tertullian Origen Chrysostom St. Francis d'Assisi Cornaro Leonardo da Vinci Milton Locke Spinoza Voltaire Pope Gassendi Swedenborg Thackeray Linnæus Shelley Lamartine Michelet William Lambe Sir Isaac Pitman Thoreau Fitzgerald Herbert Burrows Garibaldi Wagner Edison Tesla Marconi Tolstoy George Frederick Watts Maeterlinck Vivekananda General Booth Mrs. Besant Bernard Shaw Rev. Prof. John E. B. Mayor Hon. E. Lyttelton Rev. R. J. Campbell Lord Charles Beresford Gen. Sir Ed. Bulwer etc., etc., etc.

The following is a list of the medical and scientific authorities who have expressed opinions favouring vegetarianism:--

M. Pouchet Baron Cuvier Linnæus Professor Laurence, F.R.S. Sir Charles Bell, F.R.S. Gassendi Flourens Sir John Owen Professor Howard Moore Sylvester Graham, M.D. John Ray, F.R.S. Professor H. Schaafhausen Sir Richard Owen, F.R.S. Charles Darwin, LL.D., F.R.S. Dr. John Wood, M.D. Professor Irving Fisher Professor A. Wynter Blyth, F.R.C.S. Edward Smith, M.B., F.R.S., LL.B. Adam Smith, F.R.S. Lord Playfair, M.D., C.B. Sir Henry Thompson, M.B., F.R.C.S. Dr. F. J. Sykes, B. Sc. Dr. Anna Kingsford Professor G. Sims Woodhead, M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S. Alexander Haig, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P. Dr. W. B. Carpenter, C.B., F.R.S. Dr. Josiah Oldfield, D.C.L., M.A., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. Virchow Sir Benjamin W. Richardson, M.P., F.R.C.S. Dr. Robert Perks, M.D., F.R.C.S. Dr. Kellogg, M.D. Harry Campbell, M.D. Dr. Olsen etc., etc.

Before concluding this section it might be pointed out that the curious prejudice which is always manifested when men are asked to consider any new thing is as strongly in evidence against food reform as in other innovations. For example, flesh-eating is sometimes defended on the ground that vegetarians do not look hale and hearty, as healthy persons should do. People who speak in this way probably have in mind one or two acquaintances who, through having wrecked their health by wrong living, have had to abstain from the 'deadly decoctions of flesh' and adopt a simpler and purer dietary. It is not fair to judge meat abstainers by those who have had to take to a reformed diet solely as a curative measure; nor is it fair to lay the blame of a vegetarian's sickness on his diet, as if it were impossible to be sick from any other cause. The writer has known many vegetarians in various parts of the world, and he fails to understand how anyone moving about among vegetarians, either in this country or elsewhere, can deny that such people look as healthy and cheerful as those who live upon the conventional omnivorous diet.

If a vegetarian, owing to inherited susceptibilities, or incorrect rearing in childhood, or any other cause outside his power to prevent, is sickly and delicate, is it just to lay the blame on his present manner of life? It would, indeed, seem most reasonable to assume that the individual in question would be in a much worse condition had he not forsaken his original and mistaken diet when he did. The writer once heard an acquaintance ridicule vegetarianism on the ground that Thoreau died of pulmonary consumption at forty-five! One is reminded of Oliver Wendell Holmes' witty saying:--'The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye: the more it sees the light, the more it contracts.'

In conclusion, there is, as we have seen in our review of typical vegetarian peoples and classes throughout the world, the strongest evidence that those who adopt a sensible non-flesh dietary, suited to their own constitution and environment, are almost invariably healthier, stronger, and longer-lived than those who rely chiefly upon flesh-meat for nutriment.

III

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The primary consideration in regard to the question of diet should be, as already stated, the hygienic. Having shown that the non-flesh diet is the more natural, and the more advantageous from the point of view of health, let us now consider which of the two--vegetarianism or omnivorism--is superior from the ethical point of view.

The science of ethics is the science of conduct. It is founded, primarily, upon philosophical postulates without which no code or system of morals could be formulated. Briefly, these postulates are, (a), every activity of man has as its deepest motive the end termed Happiness, (b) the Happiness of the individual is indissolubly bound up with the Happiness of all Creation. The truth of (a) will be evident to every person of normal intelligence: all arts and systems aim consciously, or unconsciously, at some good, and so far as names are concerned everyone will be willing to call the Chief Good by the term Happiness, although there may be unlimited diversity of opinion as to its nature, and the means to attain it. The truth of (b) also becomes apparent if the matter is carefully reflected upon. Everything that is _en rapport_ with all other things: the pebble cast from the hand alters the centre of gravity in the Universe. As in the world of things and acts, so in the world of thought, from which all action springs. Nothing can happen to the part but the whole gains or suffers as a consequence. Every breeze that blows, every cry that is uttered, every thought that is born, affects through perpetual metamorphoses every part of the entire Cosmic Existence.[2]

We deduce from these postulates the following ethical precepts: a wise man will, firstly, so regulate his conduct that thereby he may experience the greatest happiness; secondly, he will endeavour to bestow happiness on others that by so doing he may receive, indirectly, being himself a part of the Cosmic Whole, the happiness he gives. Thus supreme selfishness is synonymous with supreme egoism, a truth that can only be stated paradoxically.

Applying this latter precept to the matter in hand, it is obvious that since we should so live as to give the greatest possible happiness to all beings capable of appreciating it, and as it is an indisputable fact that animals can suffer pain, _and that men who slaughter animals needlessly suffer from atrophy of all finer feelings_, we should therefore cause no unnecessary suffering in the animal world. Let us then consider whether, knowing flesh to be unnecessary as an article of diet, we are, in continuing to demand and eat flesh-food, acting morally or not. To answer this query is not difficult.

It is hardly necessary to say that we are causing a great deal of suffering among animals in breeding, raising, transporting, and killing them for food. It is sometimes said that animals do not suffer if they are handled humanely, and if they are slaughtered in abattoirs under proper superintendence. But we must not forget the branding and castrating operations; the journey to the slaughter-house, which when trans-continental and trans-oceanic must be a long drawn-out nightmare of horror and terror to the doomed beasts; we must not forget the insatiable cruelty of the average cowboy; we must not forget that the animal inevitably spends at least some minutes of instinctive dread and fear when he smells and sees the spilt blood of his forerunners, and that this terror is intensified when, as is frequently the case, he witnesses the dying struggles, and hears the heart-rending groans; we must not forget that the best contrivances sometimes fail to do good work, and that a certain percentage of victims have to suffer a prolonged death-agony owing to the miscalculation of a bad workman. Most people go through life without thinking of these things: they do not stop and consider from whence and by what means has come to their table the flesh-food that is served there. They drift along through a mundane existence without feeling a pang of remorse for, or even thought of, the pain they are accomplices in producing in the sub-human world. And it cannot be denied, hide it how we may, either from our eyes or our conscience, that however skilfully the actual killing may usually be carried out, there is much unavoidable suffering caused to the beasts that have to be transported by sea and rail to the slaughter-house. The animals suffer violently from sea-sickness, and horrible cruelty (such as pouring boiling oil into their ears, and stuffing their ears with hay which is then set on fire, tail-twisting, etc.,) has to be practised to prevent them lying down lest they be trampled on by other beasts and killed; for this means that they have to be thrown overboard, thus reducing the profits of their owners, or of the insurance companies, which, of course, would be a sad calamity. Judging by the way the men act it does not seem to matter what cruelties and tortures are perpetuated; what heinous offenses against every humane sentiment of the human heart are committed; it does not matter to what depths of Satanic callousness man stoops provided always that--this is the supreme question--_there is money to be made by it_.

A writer has thus graphically described the scene in a cattle-boat in rough weather: 'Helpless cattle dashed from one side of the ship to the other, amid a ruin of smashed pens, with limbs broken from contact with hatchway combings or winches--dishorned, gored, and some of them smashed to mere bleeding masses of hide-covered flesh. Add to this the shrieking of the tempest, and the frenzied moanings of the wounded beasts, and the reader will have some faint idea of the fearful scenes of danger and carnage ... the dead beasts, advanced, perhaps, in decomposition before death ended their sufferings, are often removed literally in pieces.'

And on the railway journey, though perhaps the animals do not experience so much physical pain as travelling by sea, yet they are often deprived of food, and water, and rest, for long periods, and mercilessly knocked about and bruised. They are often so injured that the cattle-men are surprised they have not succumbed to their injuries. And all this happens in order that the demand for _unnecessary_ flesh-food may be satisfied.

Those who defend flesh-eating often talk of humane methods of slaughtering; but it is significant that there is considerable difference of opinion as to what _is_ the most humane method. In England the pole-axe is used; in Germany the mallet; the Jews cut the throat; the Italians stab. It is obvious that each of these methods cannot be better than the others, yet the advocates of each method consider the others cruel. As Lieut. Powell remarks, this 'goes far to show that a great deal of cruelty and suffering is inseparable from all methods.'

It is hard to imagine how anyone believing he could live healthily on vegetable food alone, could, having once considered these things, continue a meat-eater. At least to do so he could not live his life in conformity with the precept that we should cause no unnecessary pain.

How unholy a custom, how easy a way to murder he makes for himself Who cuts the innocent throat of the calf, and hears unmoved its mournful plaint! And slaughters the little kid, whose cry is like the cry of a child, Or devours the birds of the air which his own hands have fed! Ah, how little is wanting to fill the cup of his wickedness! What unrighteous deed is he not ready to commit.

* * * * *

Make war on noxious creatures, and kill them only, But let your mouths be empty of blood, and satisfied with pure and natural repasts.

OVID. _Metam._, _lib._ xv.

That we cannot find any justification for destroying animal life for food does not imply we should never destroy animal life. Such a cult would be pure fanaticism. If we are to consider physical well-being as of primary importance, it follows that we shall act in self-preservation 'making war on noxious creatures.' But this again is no justification for 'blood-sports.'