312 THE ETHICAL KINSHIP 



anything at all, exchanges a few shells for a 

 section of human bologna. One fellow wants to 

 know the price of the boy's head which lies on the 

 neighbouring block, and a woman complains that 

 the baby's brains which she bought the day before, 

 and which were recommended as being especially 

 ' fresh and nice,' turned out to be * bad.' We can 

 see them go home with their gruesome purchases, 

 cook them, and sit down and eat them, discussing 

 their flavour or their lack of it, and remarking their 

 tenderness, toughness, or juiciness, and finally 

 throwing the bones out to the dogs — all with as 

 little thought of the immorality of it as * Thanks- 

 giving ' gluttons have to-day at their feasts of 

 blood. There may have been an occasional 

 'visionary ' among these people fanatical enough tc 

 ' refuse to eat meat,' or even to protest against the 

 practice. Probably there was. There generally 

 are a few such discordants in every generation of 

 vipers. But ' fanatics ' in those days were in all 

 likelihood, as they are to-day, too few to be 

 troublesome. 



To anyone familiar with the pliability of the 

 human conscience, or with the soundness and 

 depth of intellectual sleep, these things are neither 

 impossible nor strange. There is so little looking 

 into the essence of things, so little looking at 

 things as they are, and so much thinking and 

 doing as we are accustomed or told to think and do 

 — there are, in fact, so few who can really think 

 at a] I — that if we had been accustomed and taught 

 to do so from childhood, and the world were 



