28 Vegetarianism : [January, 
drawn from anatomy and zoology may be dismissed as 
fallacious. 
Perhaps the only remaining argument of the vegetarian 
party which still requires to be discussed is the assertion 
that our present system of diet involves cruelty to animals. 
The question resolves itself into this — Have we the right to 
take animal life at all ? or, to put the matter more plainly, 
have we the right to exist ? The alternative is put before 
us, to kill or to be killed. We can scarcely move without 
destroying some minute organism. We are compelled to 
extirpate, as far as practicable, beasts of prey, venomous 
reptiles, parasitic vermin, and Entozoa. In our agricultural 
operations, by digging, ploughing, liming, and draining the 
soil, we slay unwittingly and incidentally, but not the less 
surely, legions of worms and larvae. Not only so, but we 
are obliged, for the defence of our crops, to wage a constant 
war against field-mice, rats, hamsters, graminivorous and 
fruit-eating birds, caterpillars, sawflies, aphides, locusts, 
earwigs, mole-crickets, weevils, wireworms, slugs, and other 
animals down to the Phylloxera and the Oidium . Vegeta- 
rianism, therefore, would not exempt us from the necessity 
of destroying animals to secure, if not to procure, our sus- 
tenance. Nay, it is very probable that the numerical 
amount of life taken direCtly for our animal diet would sink 
into utter insignificance compared with the slaughter neces- 
sary in the cultivation of our vegetable food. Now, if we 
are justified in thus killing to defend our crops, does it not 
seem very hazardous to contend that we ma}^ not kill for the 
direCt purpose of eating ? True, the enemies of our fields 
and gardens are generally of a small size and a low organi- 
sation. But it would be absurd to permit the death of a 
locust, and condemn the slaughter of a sheep. 
It must further be remarked that those animals which we 
now rear for food would, if no longer required, be infallibly 
doomed to extirpation. The hog, the hare, the rabbit, the 
turkey, duck, goose, &c., could not be permitted to go on 
increasing in our midst, and consuming the produce of the 
soil, when no longer able to make us any return in their 
flesh. The future even of the ox and the sheep would 
become problematical. It may be very well for Shelley to 
sing — 
“ The dwellers of the earth and air 
Shall crowd around our feet in gladness, 
Seeking their food or refuge there.” 
But in sober prose the disuse of animal food will mean to 
many species not emancipation, but destruction. Hence it 
