Part 1

Why I Am a Vegetarian

An Address Delivered Before the Chicago Vegetarian Society

By J. Howard Moore

Frances L. Dusenberry McVicker’s Theatre Building Chicago

PREFACE.

The human race is like a snake—it sheds. Ever and anon, as the ages bloom, old forms of thought are superseded by intellectual bran-news. Shrines at which one generation adores become to the succeeding desolate and despised.

This little brochure has a mission. It is not a formidable one, but it is. It goes out with the hope that it may help, if ever so infinitesimally, in ridding the human of that terrific instinct of _inconsideration_ toward the sub-human races. Solidarity is its plea, human and universal.

It would be inexcusable to suppose it to be exhaustive. It is not even defensive. It is a projectile, and projectiles do not apologize.

It intends to be followed.

J. H. M.

Chicago, May, 1895.

“What more advance can mortals make in sin? Deaf to the calf that lies beneath the knife, Looks up and from the butcher begs her life. Deaf to the harmless kid, who, ere he dies, All efforts to procure thy pity tries, And imitates in vain thy children’s cries.”

— ANONYMOUS.

“No flocks that range the valley free, To slaughter I condemn; Taught by the Power that pities me, I learn to pity them.”

— GOLDSMITH.

“It is a vulgar error to regard meat in any form as necessary to human life.”

— SIR HENRY THOMPSON.

“The anthropoids and all the quadrumana derive their alimentation from fruits, grains, and other succulent vegetal substances, and the strict analogy between the structure of those animals and that of man clearly demonstrates his frugivorous nature.”

— OWEN.

“Does it not shame you to mingle blood and murder with nature’s beneficent fruits? Other carnivora you call savage and ferocious—lions, tigers and serpents—while yourselves come behind them in no species of barbarity. And yet for them murder is the only means of sustenance, whereas to you it is a superfluous luxury and crime.”

— PLUTARCH.

WHY I AM A VEGETARIAN.

I am not here to convert you to vegetarianism. I know too well the nature of mind to commit any such blunder. I am here to talk English and, if possible, give you glimpses. I can not hope in half a hundred minutes to rinse from your brains sand bars that have been ages in depositing. It is no holiday matter to emancipate one’s self from an old, inveterate slavery. It is a task so formidable that few do it without help. It requires a courage and an iconoclasm greater than most possess to make heroic initiatives. But after a reform is accomplished and its principles become matters of course, there are then few persons without the ability to look back and wonder why idiots are so much like men.

Men are somnambulistic. Stupefied by the long night of instinct out of which it arose, the human mind is only half awake. Washington was the father of a country, but he held human beings as slaves and paid his hired help in Virginia whisky. It took Americans one hundred years to find out that “all men” included Ethiopians. Men who risked their lives to achieve personal and political liberty for black men deliberately doom white women to a similar servitude. Rich men give millions to museums or universities, when they would know, if they had the talent to stop and think, that the thousands who make their wealth work like wretches from morning till night and suffocate in garrets and feed on garbage, in order that they may be munificent. Human beings preach as the cardinal of morality that they should act upon others as they would be pleased to have others act upon them, and then take the most sensitive and beautiful beings all palpitating with life, and chop them into fragments with a composure that would do honor to the managers of an inferno.

It has been said that when a proposition is presented to us for our acceptance or rejection we treat it as we would treat an article of furniture presented to us for our apartments. We try it. If it fits in character and complexion, we accept it, and it becomes a part of our paraphernalia. If it does not fit, we reject it. Every proposition that comes to our intelligence is thus accepted or dismissed, depending on the congeniality or uncongeniality of the subjective and the objective. It is impossible absolutely for mind, constituted as it is on the earth, to accept a proposition that is antagonistic to it. And when a proposition is presented to the mind, the only way in the world to win its acceptance is by coaxing and modifying the mind itself. I come to you tonight with a proposition. In a very feeble and fragmentary way I attempt to do what every polemic attempts to do—to dynamite your minds, to havoc their foundations and reconstruct them in harmony with the proposition I champion. But there are so many attitudes of opposition possible, so many objections that are thinkable, and so many things assumed by those who pitch themselves against it, that I cannot hope in one evening to accomplish more than a beginning. But if I can somehow succeed in dilating your pupils a little, and enable you to realize in some measure the infamy in which you and the rest of the occidental world are today engaged, I shall feel better than if I had spoken to stones.

I want to remind you and warn you that it makes no difference how just a proposition may be and how universally and unreservedly it may be ultimately accepted, its beginning is always a period of interrogation and war. When Garrison first announced the proposition denying the right to auction Ethiopians, the proposition was assailed by the most formidable volleys of objection. Those objections seem puerile today, but in the days in which this proposition found few heads in which to hide, they were axioms of ethical and political science. So when you take an attitude on this proposition _remember_ there are future generations as well as this one, and _be careful_ that you do not make the same spectacle of yourself that poor old Webster and other blind men made when they poured cold water down the spines of early Abolitionists.

I became a vegetarian by my own reflection. I did not know at the time of the vegetarian movement, and, hence supposed myself alone among republics of carnivora. It did not seem to me graceful or ideal that I, an ethical being, should maintain my existence at the incessant expense of misery and death to others. But the problem that for some time tormented me was whether it were possible to keep up a successful and at all interesting existence without ox-hips. I wondered whether the universe were so constructed that it were impossible for its most endowed children to live without the crudest and most recreant egoism. There is now no remnant of a doubt about the possibilities of a bloodless existence, nor even of its positive hygienic advantages. I had been considerable of a vulture, and for sometime after eliminating flesh from my menus I had desire for it. But gradually that desire faded, and there came in its stead a growing horror of flesh. The grinding of the tissues of my fellow beings seemed horribly akin to the chewing of the emotions of my friends. After a few weeks of fruits and vegetables there came over me a feeling of exultation and superiority and crispness that was truly novel. Today, I am thoroughly emancipated from the coils of kreophagy. I shall go down to my grave and out into the darkling hereafter with a bloodless digestion, if I am the only animal in the universe to do so. The flesh-tearing performances which I am compelled everywhere to behold seem to me to be the lurid deeds of maniacs rather than the timed and premeditated acts of sane beings. And I can but pity, not only the creatures whose throats are severed and whose skeletons are stripped, but the blind and reckless cannibals who perpetrate these crimes. When the whole earth teems with such a bewildering variety of beautiful and bloodless fruits, it seems so strange and so sad and so frightful that man should continue the barbarous, blood-sucking practices of the world’s infancy.

Vegetarianism is the neglect by one being to suppress another for nutritive purposes. I believe in it. I believe I should neglect to suppress the interests and lives of _non_-human beings for identically the same reason I should neglect to suppress the interests and lives of _human_ beings. The exploitation of birds and quadrupeds for human whim or convenience is an offense not different in kind from the offenses denounced in human statutes as robbery and murder. And the same logic which impels abstinence from one of these offenses impels everyone who has the power to be consistent to refrain from all of them.

There is, in fact, but one crime in the universe and all varieties of impropriety whatsoever are aspects or phases of this crime. It is the crime of _exploitation_—the suppression of the interests, lives, or welfares of some beings for the whim or convenience of others—the neglect to recognize the equal or the approximately equal rights of all to life, consideration and happiness—the crime of doing to others as you would that others would _not_ do to you.

I look back over the ages of this world—not the ages of human history simply, for the history of the human species is but a little section, the remembered chapter, in the history of the evolutions which have been performed by mundane life. I look back to the beginning of life on this planet—back 50,000,000 of years ago, when the first protoplasmic specks sprawled in primeval seas. Life originated in the sea fifteen hundred thousand human generations ago. After ages of evolution it crept out upon the continents, subsequently entered the forests, climbed and clambered among the trees, became endowed with perpendicularity and hands, descended and walked upon the soil, invented agriculture, built cities and states—and here we are. Human civilization is but the van, the hither terminus, of an evolutional process which had its beginning away back in the protoplasm of primeval slime. The philosopher is the remote posterity of the meek and lowly monad.

Now, this whole enterprise, this entire process of biological evolution, has been accomplished by the survival from age to age of the fittest to survive; that is, by the subjection and elimination of the weak and the simple by the more powerful and sophisticated, And the disposition to exploit manifested by every animal that breathes, from philosopher to fish, is a disposition which has been implanted in the natures of living beings by the necessities of evolution. The great task of reforming the universe, therefore, is the task of eliminating from the natures of its inhabitants the disposition to be inhospitable, egoistic and merciless, which has been everywhere developed by evolution.

In the ideal universe the life and happiness of no being are contingent upon the suffering and death of any other. And the fact that in this universe of ours life and happiness have been and are today so largely maintained by the infliction of indescribable misery and extinction, is the most pathetic, the most stupendous, and the most sickening contemplation that ever invaded human mind. It is encouraging to know, however, that life in its highest forms, that is, as represented by the most cultured aggregates of the human species, is evolving rapidly and irrepressibly toward the ideal, that is, toward a social state in which the interests and life of each individual being are more and more equally precious. What are civilization and morality? What do we mean by ethical progress? The growth of consideration for others—nothing more—simply cessation of, or abstinence from, exploitation. Courtesy, kindness, justice, altruism, humanity, what are they? They are the qualities which distinguish those who put themselves in the place of others, who recognize the existence and the preciousness of others, and who act upon others as they themselves would be pleased to have others act upon them. Otherism is the antithesis of _laissez faire_. The growth of civility in the earth is the growth of the principle or consciousness of solidarity among its inhabitants.

Vegetarianism, therefore, that is, abstinence from non-human exploitation or the recognition of universal solidarity, is related from this exalted standpoint to the logic of the Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence and the modern movements of social reform. The sympathies of the consistent vegetarian go out naturally to the stricken and oppressed everywhere—to Cuba in her struggle for autonomy, to Ireland in her misery, to the helpless quadruped quivering under the pole-ax, and to the pitiable proletarian who goes up and down the monopolized universe seeking in vain for opportunities to earn honest nutrition. The vegetarian who is conscious enough to be consistent is in love with the universe, not simply with his wife or clan or species. He strives to be graceful to every being whose destinies he contacts, however humble or hopeless or eccentric that being may be.

I am a vegetarian because I believe that present-day ethics is founded on that puerile, pre-Darwinian delusion that all other kinds of creatures and all worlds were created explicitly _for_ the hominine species. Vegetarianism is the ethical corollary of evolution. It is simply the expansion of ethics to suit the biological revelations of Charles Darwin. Evolution has taught us the kinship of all creatures. The ancient hiatus between man and the other animals has been effectually sewed up. Biology teaches us, if it teaches us anything, that there is a solidarity of the sentient world. Man is simply _one_ of a _series_ of sentients, differing in degree but not in kind from the creatures below and around him. The ox he enslaves and slays and the poor reptile that wriggles in his pathway are his brothers, partaking of his nature and sharing his destiny. Man is simply the adult of long evolution, and his qualities are, of course, found among the juveniles and infants of the sentient world. The industrious bee, the civilized ant, the devoted steed, the mischievous ape, the irascible serpent, the sagacious elephant, the beautiful gazelle and the great, honest ox have within them in embryo all the emotions that roll through the soul of man. Fear, love, fidelity, hate, jealousy, joy, selfishness, curiosity, remorse, are all found everywhere, and they are the same passions that heave your breast and mine. Chastity, sobriety, obedience, personal cleanliness, industry, sympathy, self-control, friendship, heroism, sagacity—many dogs and other semi-civilized animals have all these qualities, and in a greater degree even than whole races of men. And these faculties and capacities of the non-hominine world are the same identical faculties and capacities that you have and I have. Industry and ingenuity in the beaver are just as genuine and just as commendable as the same qualities in man. The faithful dog who stood over the lifeless body of his master grieving for recognition and starting at every flutter of his garments till he himself died of starvation, was just as noble as if he had all his days walked on his hind legs and worn a cane. The wild bird who takes her life in her wings to save her nestlings from the voracious serpent, and the mother bear away on the Arctic snows who allows herself to be murdered in order to save her child, have just as genuine mother love and love just as sacred as that which burns in the breast of woman. The ingenious ant, which tends its fields, gathers its harvests, keeps slaves and armies and goes to war, and performs about all the antics of civilized man except maltreating the females and drinking gin, is not less civilized, and its civilization is not less real, because it is miniature. And the Christian who goes to church on Sunday and wails long prayers and then goes home and stuffs his alimentary with the quivering vitals of his naive fellows, and through the week lashes the flanks of his overburdened horse till the strained tendons are ready to snap, is not less criminal because he is strategic, and his crimes are not less infernal because they have no penalty but his conscience and no judge but himself. Whether we realize it or not the doctrine that on mankind’s account all the rest of the animal world came into being and that all non-human beings are mere hunks devoid of all psychic qualities found in man, is a doctrine not one whit more sagacious than the old geocentric theory of the universe.

Man has defined himself as the “paragon of the universe.” I do not say that he is not. I simply say that if he is, the universe has no cause for dry eyes. Man’s treatment of his own kind and especially his conduct toward the forms of life differing from him have been such as to brand him as a most ill-mannered and immodel organism. Human beings have been sufficiently clever and sufficiently devoted to each other to evolve into the masters of the earth, but instead of converting themselves into preceptors for the conquered races, they have become the butchers of the universe. Instead of becoming the models and school-masters of the world in which they have outstripped, and striving to repair the clumsy natures and regulate the straying feet of those by means of whom they have been hoisted into distinction, they have become colossal pedants and assassins, proclaiming themselves the pets and gods of creation and teaching each other that other races are mere fixtures to furnish food and amusement for themselves. They inculcate as a rule of conduct—and they preach it valiantly—that each should act upon others as he himself would choose to be acted upon. This ideal of social rectitude has been promulgated by the sages of the species for more than 2,000 years. But with miserable pusillanimity they confine its application to the members of their own species. No non-human is too innocent or too interesting or too wonderful to escape the most frightful humiliations, if by those humiliations human comfort or human amusement or human whim is in any way whatever garnished.

Look at the horse! No nobler and more beautiful creature is found in all the animal realm. A marvel of strength, speed and splendor. The most useful and most consummate associate of man. What wonderful possibilities of reciprocity! Man takes the horse from the plains, where he is exposed to the inclemencies of weather, the contingencies of food and the blunders of his own childlike nature. He gives him regular meals, pleasant shelter, intellectual surroundings, and a home. The horse in return gives man the benefit of his superior strength and speed, bearing man and his burdens and supplementing in a thousand ways the inadequate energies of his mentor. These are the possibilities, the ideal—gigantic strength supplementing superior wisdom. Beautiful reciprocity! What are the actualities? Sad, indeed! The horse is not an associate but a _slave_. He has no rights, and is seldom suspected of being entitled to feelings or vanities at all. He is treated as if he had merely existence and usefulness. He is neglected, overburdened and overworked, beaten, insulted, starved, maimed, misunderstood, deprived of leisure and liberty, unconsidered—doomed to an environment out of which has been drained every element calculated to promote his happiness and intelligence and perpetuate his nobility and beauty. He is a mere suggestion of the might-have-been. His regal neck has wilted; the splendid flanks are lean and drawn; the ambitious face is sad. The proud galloper of the plains, the companion of the winds, bearing fire in his nostrils and thunder in his hoofs, has become a soured, impoverished, broken-hearted but faithful _wreck_. The stars of heaven never looked down on a more pitiful sight than that of a horse, after having drudged all his days in the service of his lord, cast out in his helpless old age to wander and perish.

Our own happiness and that of our species are believed to be so much more important than that of others that we sacrifice without scruple the most sacred prerogatives of others in order that our own may be fastidiously trimmed. Even for a tooth or a feather to wear on our vanity marauders are sent through the forests of the earth to ravage and depopulate them. Beautiful beings which fill the woods with song and juvenility are compelled to sprawl lifeless and disheveled on the skulls of unconscionable sillies. Criminal and inconvenient races are exterminated with eager and superfluous violence. Thousands of innocent and helpless souls are caught up and carried by unfeeling emissaries into foul dungeons and there doomed by ghoulish clowns of science to the most protracted, useless, and damning victimizations. It is enough almost to make villains weep—the cold-blooded manner in which human beings cut the throats, dash out the brains, and discuss the flavor of their victims at their cannibalistic feasts.

Look at the scenes to be met with in all our streets and stockyards! An army of butchers standing in blood ankle deep and working themselves to exhaustion carving the throats of their helpless fellows—unsuspecting oxen with limpid eyes looking up at the deadly pole-ax and a moment later lying a-quiver under its relentless thud—struggling swine swinging by their hinders with their life leaping from their gashed jugulars—an atmosphere in perpetual churn with the groans and yells of the massacred—streets thronged with unprocessioned funerals—everywhere corpses dangling from sale-hooks or sprawling on chopping blocks—men and women kneeling nightly by their pillow sides and congratulating themselves on their whiteness and rising and leaping on the bloody remains of some slaughtered fellow—such are the spectacles in all our streets and stockyards, and such are the enormities perpetrated day after day by Christian cannibals on the defenseless dumb ones of this world.

Holy days, days above all others when it seems men’s minds would be bent on compassion, are farces of gluttony and ferocity. Unfeeling ruffians cowardly shoot down defenceless birds or prowl the country in rival squads massacring every living creature that is not able to escape them—_and for no higher or humaner purpose than just to see who can kill the most!_ This is egoism unparalleled on the face of the earth. No species of animal except man plunges to such depths of atrocity. It is bad enough in all conscience for one being to suppress another in order to tear it to pieces and swallow it, but when such outrages are perpetrated by organized packs just for pastime it becomes an enormity beyond characterization. The insectivora, the carnivora, and the reptilia are cruel. It is horrible to contemplate the enormous wickedness perpetrated on the less offensive races by these relentless brutes. But the crimes committed by the hominine species are the most insolent and extravagant in the universe. Non-human murderers are ruthless, but even serpents and hyenas do not exterminate for sport. A universe is, indeed, to be pitied whose dominating inhabitants are so unconscious, so irresponsible, and so ethically repulsive that they make life a commodity, mercy a disease, and systematic massacre a pastime and profession.