588 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



childhood has lived solely on milk, excluding all meats, vegetables and 

 fruits. The physiological vegetarian is usually inconsistent, in that 

 milk, cheese, butter and eggs are not excluded, and very often meat 

 stocks and animal fats are used in the cooking of vegetables. Eeference 

 will be made later to the physiological grounds upon which consistency 

 in this matter is to be judged. 



Philosophical vegetarianism rests upon the simple ethical proposi- 

 tion that man has no right to preserve his existence, enlarge his com- 

 forts or advance his material and spiritual welfare at the expense of 

 the life of animals. Animals of all classes are to the ethical vegetarian, 

 as in the Indian religion, as fully entitled to life as man; the com- 

 mandment " Thou shalt not kill " is interpreted to apply generally to 

 all types of animal life, and the slaughter of animals for the service of 

 man is regarded as an expression of brute force which is inhuman. 

 There is in this proposition an ethical appeal which finds response in 

 every heart. The historical opinion of mankind, outside of India, holds 

 that the right of man to kill animals is one vested in the higher moral 

 and mental position of man among the animals, grounded in a higher 

 importance in the broadest sense. The right to kill animals is, however, 

 quite universally confined to instances in which higher human needs 

 are positively and directly advanced. Needless killing is by all culti- 

 vated peoples condemned (if less consistently in practise than in theory) 

 and the advance from savagery to civilization has been characterized 

 by progressive cultivation of the regard for life. Our societies for the 

 prevention of cruelty to animals and the Audubon societies are the pub- 

 lic expressions of the ethical feeling that we owe it to animals, and to 

 ourselves, to protect animals from suffering and from indiscriminate 

 and purposeless slaughter. But deeply rooted in the minds of the mass 

 of cultivated ethical men and women is the conviction that mankind 

 has the right to be fed and clothed at the cost of the lives of animals; 

 the domestication of animals is held almost universally to include the 

 right of slaughter as well as the right of service. 



To be consistent, the philosophical vegetarian must not only abjure 

 the use of flesh in the diet, he must also abstain from the utilization of 

 products of animal bodies, the procurement of which entails the death 

 of the animal. Thus his articles of clothing, personal effects, house- 

 hold furnishings and implements of trade and occupation may bear no 

 stain of blood. It is wholely inconsistent in one who keeps the hands 

 and feet warm with the skin of an animal to reproach another for keep- 

 ing the body warm by the use of meat as a fuel. Other fuels are truly 

 available; so are other means for the retention of the heat of the body; 

 the skin of man has no privilege above the other tissues of his body. 

 The Indian soldier who refused to use ammunition greased with beef 

 suet was entirely consistent. That it may be easy to feed the human 



