Cruelty to Animals. 
[July. 
396 
with human servants, who tend them with the greatest care, 
who drive away their natural enemies (flies and maggots in- 
cluded), who watch the state of their health, nurse them 
when ill, supply them with medicine, attend at their ac- 
couchments when necessary, and do everything possible for 
their general welfare. 
In all this world of ours there is no other set of animals 
enjoying so much animal happiness as these, and yet the 
sentimental vegetarians cruelly advocate the extinction of all 
this pastoral bliss that has been a leading theme to poets of 
all ages. 
But Mrs. Kingsford will perhaps reply that we undo and 
reverse all this by killing them at last. If we are to be de- 
nounced for giving life and happiness to each individual for 
a limited period only, then must these vegetarians similarly 
denounce the Creator of ourselves and all the rest of the 
animal world for giving us life, and at the same time making 
death one of its necessary conditions. 
The vegetarian who bases his system of diet on pure and 
unaffected selfishness, without any goody-goody pretences, 
may be perfectly consistent in believing that it is better to 
prepare the organic compounds of vegetables by the aid of 
scientific cooking than by passing them through the digestive 
and assimilating organs of animals. He has within reach 
physiological arguments that are not easily refuted, especially 
in a warm climate, and he may fairly add to these the natural 
instinCt or sentiment that regards the carcase of a red- 
blooded animal as a very repulsive objeCt ; but from the 
humanitarian point of view he is far more cruel than the 
flesh-eater, not only for the reasons above stated, but on 
account of the number of individual animals he slaughters, 
if such killing is to be regarded as cruelty ; for the boiling 
of a cabbage involves the immolation of innocent slugs and 
caterpillars, and tens or hundreds of thousands of Aphides 
are sacrificed in topping a row of broad beans, to say nothing 
of the millions of Colorado beetles that have been merci- 
lessly murdered in order that ruthless selfish man may satisfy 
his greed for potatoes. 
If the scheme of Creation were based on the principle of 
sacrificing the higher animals for the benefit of the lower, 
and the race for the individual, the anti-viviseCtion senti- 
mental and vegetarian sisterhood would be in harmony with 
Nature ; but as it is, they should open their meetings not 
with prayer and praises, but with denunciations of the 
Omnipotent who has constructed this world and all its 
inhabitants on a principle diametrically opposed to their 
