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VII. THE MORAL ARGUMENT

In one point of view, nearly every argument which can be brought to show the superiority of a vegetable diet over one that includes flesh or fish, is a moral argument.

Thus, if man is so constituted by his structure, and by the laws of his animal economy, that all the functions of the body, and of course all the faculties of the mind, and the affections of the soul, are in better condition – better subserve our own purposes, and the purposes of the great Creator – as well as hold out longer, on the vegetable system – then is it desirable, in a moral point of view, to adopt it. If mankind lose, upon the average, about two years of their lives by sickness, as some have estimated it,²⁴ saying nothing of the pain and suffering undergone, or of the mental anguish and soul torment which grow out of it, and often render life a burden; and if the simple primitive custom of living on vegetables and fruits, along with other good physical and mental habits, which seem naturally connected with it, will, in time, nearly if not wholly remove or prevent this amazing loss, then is the argument deduced therefrom, in another part of this chapter, a moral argument.

If, as I have endeavored to show, the adoption of the vegetable system by nations and individuals, would greatly advance the happiness of all, in every known respect, and if, on this account, such a change in our flesh-eating countries would be sound policy, and good economy, – then we have another moral argument in its favor.

But, again; if it be true that all nations have been the most virtuous and flourishing, other things being equal, in the days of their simplicity in regard to food, drink, etc.; and if we can, in every instance, connect the decline of a nation with the period of their departure, as a nation, into the maze of luxurious and enervating habits; and if this doctrine is, as a general rule, obviously applicable to smaller classes of men, down to single families, then is the argument we derive from it in its nature a moral one. Whatever really tends, without the possibility of mistake, to the promotion of human happiness, here and hereafter, is, without doubt, moral.

But this, though much, is not all. The destruction of animals for food, in its details and tendencies, involves so much of cruelty as to cause every reflecting individual – not destitute of the ordinary sensibilities of our nature – to shudder. I recall: daily observation shows that such is not the fact; nor should it, upon second thought, be expected. Where all are dark, the color is not perceived; and so universally are the moral sensibilities which really belong to human nature deadened by the customs which prevail among us, that few, if any, know how to estimate, rightly, the evil of which I speak. They have no more a correct idea of a true sensibility – not a morbid one – on this subject, than a blind man has of colors; and for nearly the same reasons. And on this account it is, that I seem to shrink from presenting, at this time, those considerations which, I know, cannot, from the very nature of the case, be properly understood or appreciated, except by a very few.

Still there are some things which, I trust, may be made plain. It must be obvious that the custom of rendering children familiar with the taking away of life, even when it is done with a good degree of tenderness, cannot have a very happy effect. But, when this is done, not only without tenderness or sympathy, but often with manifestations of great pleasure, and when children, as in some cases, are almost constant witnesses of such scenes, how dreadful must be the results!

In this view, the world, I mean our own portion of it, sometimes seems to me like one mighty slaughter-house – one grand school for the suppression of every kind, and tender, and brotherly feeling – one grand process of education to the entire destitution of all moral principle – one vast scene of destruction to all moral sensibility, and all sympathy with the woes of those around us. Is it not so?

I have seen many boys who shuddered, at first, at the thought of taking the life, even of a snake, until compelled to it by what they conceived to be duty; and who shuddered still more at taking the life of a lamb, a calf, a pig, or a fowl. And yet I have seen these same boys, in subsequent life, become so changed, that they could look on such scenes not merely with indifference, but with gratification. Is this change of feeling desirable? How long is it after we begin to look with indifference on pain and suffering in brutes, before we begin to be less affected than before by human suffering?

I am not ignorant that sentiments like these are either regarded as morbid, and therefore pitiable, or as affected, and therefore ridiculous. Who that has read the story of Anthony Benezet, as related by Dr. Rush, has not smiled at what he must have regarded a feeling wholly misplaced, if nothing more? And yet it was a feeling which I think is very far from deserving ridicule, however homely the manner of expressing it. But I have related this interesting story in another part of the work.

I am not prepared to maintain, strongly, the old-fashioned doctrine, that a butcher who commences his employment at adult age, is necessarily rendered hardhearted or unfeeling; or, that they who eat flesh have their sensibilities deadened, and their passions inflamed by it – though I am not sure that there is not some truth in it. I only maintain, that to render children familiar with the taking away of animal life, – especially the lives of our own domestic animals, often endeared to us by many interesting circumstances of their history, or of our own, in relation to them, – cannot be otherwise than unhappy in its tendency.

How shocking it must be to the inhabitants of Jupiter, or some other planet, who had never before witnessed these sad effects of the ingress of sin among us, to see the carcasses of animals, either whole or by piece-meal, hoisted upon our very tables before the faces of children of all ages, from the infant at the breast, to the child of ten or twelve, or fourteen, and carved, and swallowed; and this not merely once, but from day to day, through life! What could they – what would they – expect from such an education of the young mind and heart? What, indeed, but mourning, desolation, and woe!

On this subject the First Annual Report of the American Physiological Society thus remarks – and I wish the remark might have its due weight on the mind of the reader:

"How can it be right to be instrumental in so much unnecessary slaughter? How can it be right, especially for a country of vegetable abundance like ours, to give daily employment to twenty thousand or thirty thousand butchers? How can it be right to train our children to behold such slaughter? How can it be right to blunt the edge of their moral sensibilities, by placing before them, at almost every meal, the mangled corpses of the slain; and not only placing them there, but rejoicing while we feast upon them?"

One striking evidence of the tendency which an habitual shedding of blood has on the mind and heart, is found in the fact that females are generally so reluctant to take away life, that notwithstanding they are trained to a fondness for all sorts of animal food, very few are willing to gratify their desires for a stimulating diet, by becoming their own butchers. I have indeed seen females who would kill a fowl or a lamb rather than go without it; but they are exceedingly rare. And who would not regard female character as tarnished by a familiarity with such scenes as those to which I have referred? But if the keen edge of female delicacy and sensibility would be blunted by scenes of bloodshed, are not the moral sensibilities of our own sex affected in a similar way? And must it not, then, have a deteriorating tendency?

It cannot be otherwise than that the circumstances of which I have spoken, which so universally surround infancy and childhood, should take off, gradually, the keen edge of moral sensibility, and lessen every virtuous or holy sympathy. I have watched – I believe impartially – the effect on certain sensitive young persons in the circle of my acquaintance. I have watched myself. The result has confirmed the opinion I have just expressed. No child, I think, can walk through a common market or slaughter-house without receiving moral injury; nor am I quite sure that any virtuous adult can.

How have I been struck with the change produced in the young mind by that merriment which often accompanies the slaughter of an innocent fowl, or lamb, or pig! How can the Christian, with the Bible in hand, and the merciful doctrines of its pages for his text,

 
"Teach me to feel another's woe,"
 

– the beast's not excepted – and yet, having laid down that Bible, go at once from the domestic altar to make light of the convulsions and exit of a poor domestic animal?

Is it said, that these remarks apply only to the abuse of a thing, which, in its place, is proper? Is it said, that there is no necessity of levity on these occasions? Grant that there is none; still the result is almost inevitable. But there is, in any event, one way of avoiding, or rather preventing both the abuse and the occasion for abuse, by ceasing to kill animals for food; and I venture to predict that the evil never will be prevented otherwise.

The usual apology for hunting and fishing, in all their various and often cruel forms, – whereby so many of our youth, from the setters of snares for birds, and the anglers for trout, to the whalemen, are educated to cruelty, and steeled to every virtuous and holy sympathy, – is, the necessity of the animals whom we pursue for food. I know, indeed, that this is not, in most cases, the true reason, but it is the reason given – it is the substance of the reason. It serves as an apology. They who make it may often be ignorant of the true reason, or they or others may wish to conceal it; and, true to human nature, they are ready to give every reason for their conduct, but the real and most efficient one.

It must not, indeed, be concealed that there is one more apology usually made for these cruel sports; and made too, in some instances, by good men; I mean, by men whose intentions are in the main pure and excellent. These sports are healthy, they tell us. They are a relief to mind and body. Perhaps no good man, in our own country, has defended them with more ingenuity, or with more show of reason and good sense, than Dr. Comstock, in his recent popular work on Human Physiology. And yet, there is scarcely a single advantage which he has pointed out, as being derived from the "pleasures of the chase," that may not be gained in a way which savors less of blood. The doctor himself is too much in love with botany, geology, mineralogy, and the various branches of natural history, not to know what I mean when I say this. He knows full well the excitement, and, on his own principles, the consequent relief of body and mind from their accustomed and often painful round, which grows out of clambering over mountains and hills, and fording streams, and climbing trees and rocks, to need any very broad hints on the subject; to say nothing of the delights of agriculture and horticulture. How could he, then, give currency to practices which, to say the least, – and by his own concessions, too, – are doubtful in regard to their moral tendencies, by inserting his opinions in favor of sports, for which he himself happens to be partial, in a school-book? Is this worthy of those who would educate the youth of our land on the principles of the Bible?

VIII. THE MILLENNIAL ARGUMENT

I believe it is conceded by most intelligent men, that all the arguments we bring against the use of animal food, which are derived from anatomy, physiology, or the laws of health, or even of psychology, are well founded. But they still say, "Man is not what he once was; he is strangely perverted; that custom, or habit, which soon becomes second nature, and often proves stronger to us than first nature, has so changed him that he is more a creature of art than of nature, or at least of first nature. And though animal food was not necessary to him at first – perhaps not in accordance with his best interests – yet it has become so by long use; and as a creature of art rather than of nature, he now seems to require it."

This reasoning, at first view, appears very specious. But upon second view, we see it is wanting – greatly so – in solidity. It takes for granted, as I understand it, that what we call civilization, has rendered animal food necessary to man. But is it not obvious that the condition of things which is thus supposed to render this species of food necessary, is not likely to disappear – nay, that it is every century becoming more and more the law, so to speak, of the land? Who is to stop the labor-saving machine, the railroad car, or the lightning flash of intelligence?

And do not these considerations, if they prove any thing, prove quite too much? For if, in the onward career of what is thus called civilization, we have gone from a diet which scarcely required the use of animal food in order to render it both palatable and healthful, to one in whose dishes it is generally blended in some one or more of its forms, must we not expect that a still further progress in the same course will render the same kind of diet still more indispensable? If flesh, fish, fowl, butter, cheese, eggs, lard, etc., are much more necessary to us now, than they were a thousand years ago, will they not be still more necessary a thousand years hence?

I do not see how we can avoid such a conclusion. And yet such a conclusion will involve us in very serious difficulties. In Japan and China – the former more especially – if the march of civilization should be found to have rendered animal food more necessary, it has at the same time rendered it less accessible to the mass of the population. The great increase of the human species has crowded out the animals, even the domestic ones. Some of the old historians and geographers tell us that there are not so many domestic animals in the whole kingdom of Japan, as in a single township of Sweden. And must not all nations, as society progresses and the millennium dawns, crowd out the animals in the same way? It cannot be otherwise. True, there may remain about the same supply as at present from the rivers and seas, and perchance from the air; but what can these do for the increasing hundreds of millions of such large countries? What do they for Japan? In short, if the reasoning above were good and valid, it would seem to show that precisely at the point of civilization where animal food becomes most necessary, at precisely that point it becomes most scarce.

These things do not seem to me to go well together. We must reject the one or the other. If we believe in a millennium, we must, inevitably, give up our belief in animal food, at least the belief that its necessity grows out of the increasing wants of society. Or if, on the other hand, we believe in the increasing necessity of animal food, we must banish from our minds all hope of what we call a millennium, at least for the present.

IX. THE BIBLE ARGUMENT

It is not at all uncommon for those who find themselves driven from all their strong-holds, in this matter, to fly to the Bible. Our Saviour ate flesh and fish, say they; and the God of the New Testament, as well as of the Old, in this and other ways, not only permitted but sanctioned its use.

But, to say nothing of the folly of going, for proof of every thing we wish to prove, to a book which was never given for this purpose, or of the fact that in thus adducing Scripture to prove our favorite doctrines, we often go too far, and prove too much; is it true that the Saviour ate flesh and fish? Or, if this could be proved, is it true that his example binds us forever to that which other evidence as well as science show to be of doubtful utility? Paul did not think so, most certainly. It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine, he says, if it cause our brother to offend. Did not Paul understand, at least as well as we, the precepts and example of our Saviour?

And as to a permission to Noah and his descendants, the Jews, to use animal food – was it not for the hardness of the human heart, as our Saviour calls it? From the beginning, was it so? Is not man, in the first chapter of Genesis, constituted a vegetable-eater? Was his constitution ever altered? And if so, when and where? Will they who fly to the Bible for their support, in this particular, please to tell us?

But it is idle to go to the Bible, on this subject. I mean, it is idle to pretend to do so, when we mean not so much. Men who incline to wine and other alcoholic drinks, plead the example and authority of the Bible. Yet you will hardly find a man who drinks wine simply because he believes the Bible justifies its use. He drinks it for other reasons, and then makes the foolish excuse that the Bible is on his side. So in regard to the use of flesh meat. Find a man who really uses flesh or fish because the Bible requires him to do so, and I will then discuss the question with him on Bible ground. Till that time, further argument on this direction is unnecessary.

CONCLUSION

But I must conclude this long essay. There is one consideration, however, which I am unwilling to omit, although, in deciding on the merits of the question before us, it may not have as much weight – regarded as a part of the moral argument – on every mind, as it has on my own.

Suppose the great Creator were to make a new world somewhere in the regions of infinite space, and to fit it out in most respects like our own. It is to be the place and abode of such minerals, vegetables, and animals as our own. Instead, however, of peopling it gradually, he fills it at once with inhabitants; and instead of having the arts and the sciences in their infancy, he creates every thing in full maturity. In a word, he makes a world which shall be exactly a copy of our own, with the single exception that the 800,000,000 of free agents in it shall be supposed to be wholly ignorant in regard to the nature of the food assigned them. But the new world is created, we will suppose, at sunrise, in October. The human inhabitants thereof have stomachs, and soon, that is, by mid-day or before night, feel the pangs of hunger. Now, what will they eat?

The world being mature, every thing in it is, of course, mature. Around, on every hand, are cornfields with their rich treasures; above, that is, in the boughs of the orchards, hang the rich russets, pippins, and the various other excellent kinds of the apple, with which our own country and other temperate climates abound. In tropical regions, of course, almost every vegetable production is flourishing at that season, as well as the corn and the apple. Or, he has but to look on the surface of the earth on which he stands, and there are the potatoe, the turnip, the beet, and many other esculent roots; to say nothing of the squash, the pumpkin, the melon, the chestnut, the walnut, the beechnut, the butternut, the hazelnut, etc., – most of which are nourishing, and more or less wholesome, and are in full view. Around him, too, are the animals. I am willing even to admit the domestic animal – the horse, the ox, the sheep, the dog, the cat, the rabbit, the turkey, the goose, the hen, yes, and even the pig. And now, I ask again, what will he eat? He is destitute of experience, and he has no example. But he has a stomach, and he is hungry: he has hands and he has teeth; the world is all before him, and he is the lord of it, at least so far as to use such food in it as he pleases.

Does any one believe that, in these circumstances, man would prey upon the animals around him? Does any person believe – can he for one moment believe – he would forthwith imbrue his hands in blood, whether that of his own species or of some other? Would he pass by the mellow apple, hanging in richest profusion every where, inviting him as it were by its beauties? Would he pass by the fields, with their golden ears? Would he despise the rich products of field, and forest, and garden, and hasten to seize the axe or the knife, and, ere the blood had ceased to flow, or the muscles to quiver, give orders to his fair but affrighted companion within to prepare the fire, and make ready the gridiron or the spider? Or, without the knowledge even of this, or the patience to wait for the tedious process of cooking to be completed, would he eat raw the precious morsel? Does any one believe this? Can any one – I repeat the question – can any one believe it?

On the contrary, would not every living human being revolt, at first, from the idea, let it be suggested as it might, of plunging his hands in blood? Can there be a doubt that he would direct his attention at first – yes, and for a long time afterward – to the vegetable world for his food? Would it not take months and years to reconcile his feelings – his moral nature – to the thought of flesh-mangling or flesh-eating? At least, would not this be the result, if he were a disciple of Christianity? Although professing Christians, as the world is now constituted, do not hesitate to commit such depredations, would they do so in the circumstances we have supposed?

I am sure there can be but one opinion on this subject; although I confess it impossible for me to say how it may strike other minds constituted somewhat differently from my own. With me, this consideration of the subject has weight and importance. It is not necessary, however. The argument – the moral argument, I mean – is sufficient, as it seems to me, without it. What then shall we say of the anatomical, the physiological, the medical, the political, the economical, the experimental, the Bible, the millennial, and the moral arguments, when united? Have they not force? Are they not a nine-fold cord, not easily broken? Is it not too late in the day of human improvement to meet them with no argument but ignorance, and with no other weapon but ridicule?