Chapter 44 - Humaneness In Our Diet

"Is not flesh-eating natural?" I hear it asked. "Does not man in his primitive, savage state make use of flesh naturally ? Do not animals devour one another?" Yes; but we are not savages, nor are we purely animals, and it is time for us to have outgrown this attendant-of-savage-life custom. The truth of the matter is that considerably more than one-half of the people in the world today are not flesh-eaters. And many peoples, whom large numbers in America and England, for example, refer to as the heathen, and send missionaries to Christianize, are far ahead of us, and hence more Christian in this matter. And one reason why missionaries in many parts of India, among the Buddhists and Brahmins, for example. have been so comparatively unsuccessful in their work is because the majority of those keen-minded and spiritually unfolded people cannot see what superiority there is in the religion of the one whom it allows to kill, cook, and feast upon the bodies of his or her fellow-creatures, which they themselves could not do.

In Bombay, to have the carcasses of animals exposed to public view, as we see them in the stores and markets here, and at times scores of them decorating the windows and entire fronts, is prohibited by law.

No, experience will teach you that if you do away with flesh-eating and get in its place the other valuable foods, the time will quickly come when you will care less and less for it; then again, the time will come when you will have no desire for it, and finally, you will grow positively to dislike it and its effects, and nothing could induce you to return again to the flesh-pots. And as for those who think that the ones who are not flesh-eaters are necessarily weaklings, I should like to match a friend of mine, an instructor in one of our great American universities, who for over eighteen years has eaten no flesh foods, -- I should like to match him with any whom they may send forward, when it comes to a test of long continued work and endurance.

In London there are already numbers of restaurants where no flesh foods are served; in Berlin there are already about twenty, and their number in these, as well as in numerous other cities, is continually increasing. It is a matter of but a short time until there will be numbers of such in our own country. The only really consistent humanitarian is the one who is not a flesh-eater; and great, I am satisfied, will be the results, both to the human family and to the animal race, as children are wisely taught and judiciously directed along this line.

When one goes into the better restaurants where no flesh foods are served, in England and Germany for example, one is impressed with the foundationless excuse of so many people that it is hard, or even impossible, to get along without flesh foods. In the vegetable realm will be found an abundance, a hundred or a thousand times over, and especially when we begin to give some little attention to the great varieties of most valuable foods there, and to the exceedingly appetising ways in which they can be prepared. One reason why such large numbers of people feel that meat is a necessity, or almost a necessity with them as an article of food, is because in our hotels and restaurants and cafes, and, in fact, in the majority of our homes, the meat element forms the chief portion of the foods prepared for our tables, and to it, practically, all the skill in preparation is given; while the other things are looked upon more as accessories, and are many times prepared in an exceedingly careless manner, much as mere accessories would be. But with a decreasing use of flesh foods and with more attention given to the skilful preparation of the large numbers of other still more valuable foods, we shall begin to wonder why we have so long been slaves to a mere custom, thinking it a necessity.

The time will come in the world's history, and a movement is setting in that direction even now, when it will be deemed as strange a thing to find a man or a woman who eats flesh as food, as it is now to find a man or a woman who refrains from eating it. And personally, I share the belief with many others, that the highest mental, physical, and spiritual excellence will come to a person only when, among other things, he refrains from a flesh and blood diet.

And there is another matter of grave importance that we should not be allowed to lose sight of in this connection. The brutality to the animal creation, which as a weaker creation we should protect and care for, has its corresponding and balancing element in connection with our duty to those who are hired to do our butchery for us.

Each one who aids in creating the demand for flesh foods is to a greater or less extent, not indirectly but directly, responsible for the degrading and dehumanizing influences at work in the lives of many thousands of their fellow-men. We are our brother's keeper whenever it comes to a matter that we are personally involved in, and there are responsibilities that we cannot shift after we are once made acquainted with the facts pertaining to them.

(from: Every Living Creature)