VEGETARIANISM 587 



IS VEGETARIANISM CAPABLE OF WORLD-WIDE APPLICA- 

 TION? 



Bt Professor ALONZO ENGLEBERT TAYLOR 



UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



VEGETARIAN'S are to be classed into four groups : 

 Vegetarians from motives of gustatory taste. 



Vegetarians from motives of esthetic taste. 



Vegetarians from motives of physiological opinion. 



Vegetarians from motives of ethical opinion. 

 Some individuals, particularly in youth and in advanced years, 

 dislike the flavor of flesh. Esthetic vegetarianism is common; and 

 much that in the minds of the adherents of this exclusive diet is re- 

 garded as physiological opinion is really esthetic revulsion. The pub- 

 lication of the " Jungle " made many converts to vegetarianism. The 

 centralization of slaughtering has intensified the natural aversion to 

 the process, since, in addition to the lack of hygienic precautions that 

 once prevailed in the large packing houses, the mass of gore as exempli- 

 fied in the large establishments multiplies the esthetic revulsion. This 

 is due to a trait in human nature familiar to every psychologist and 

 sociologist. It has been difficult to arouse in this country a proper gen- 

 eral appreciation of the extent of the yearly loss of life due to prevent- 

 able dangers of machinery. The daily deaths among employees, here 

 and there geographically, does not impress the public mind. But when 

 through a defect of machinery a score of lives are obliterated in a wreck, 

 the public is appalled. 



Vegetarians from motives of supposed physiological opinion are 

 very numerous. The physiological reasoning of the majority of these 

 individuals is not based upon a study of physiology in any sense of the 

 word. It is too often merely an expression of that license of democracy, 

 according to which in this free country everybody feels the right to a 

 definite opinion on every subject, without having studied it — a license 

 almost as widely utilized by the college-bred as by the uneducated man, 

 and contrary to common prejudice as widely utilized by men as by 

 women. To the individual adherent of this school of vegetarianism, the 

 exclusion of flesh from the diet is based upon the conviction that it is 

 harmful to digestion or inimical to nutrition. A sense of personal ex- 

 perience (often purely esthetic, sometimes merely an idiosyncrasy, at 

 times imaginary) is all too easily expanded into a generalization in 

 the untrained mind. That the contrary experience can occur is made 

 evident by the reported instance of a young man in the Alps who from 



