Superior Person: But why, my dear sir—why should you refuse a slice of roast beef? What is the difference between roasting an ox and boiling an egg? In the latter case you are eating an animal in embryo—that is all.
Vegetarian: Do you not draw any distinction between the lower and the higher organisation?
Superior Person: None whatever. They are chemically identical in substance.
Vegetarian: Possibly; but we were talking, not of chemistry, but of morals, and an egg is certainly not morally identical with an ox.
Superior Person: How or where does the moral phase of food-taking enter the science of dietetics?
Vegetarian: At a good many points, I think. One of them is the question of cannibalism. Allow me to read you a passage from the "Encyclopædia Britannica": "Man being by nature {?} carnivorous as well as frugivorous, and human flesh being not unfit for human food, the question arises why mankind generally have not only avoided it, but have looked with horror on exceptional individuals and races addicted to cannibalism. It is evident on consideration that both emotional and religious motives must have contributed to bring about this prevailing state of mind."
Superior Person: Of course. Why read me all that?
Vegetarian: To show you that what you call "the moral phase of food-taking" has undoubtedly affected our diet. The very thought of eating human flesh is revolting to you. Yet human flesh is chemically identical with animal flesh, and if it be true that to boil an egg is the same thing as to roast an ox, it follows that to butcher an ox is the same thing as to murder a man. Such is the logical position in which you have placed yourself by ignoring the fact that all life is not equally valuable, but that the higher the life the greater the responsibility incurred by those who destroy it.
Or it may be that the superior person, instead of denying that morals affect dietetics, himself poses as so austere a moralist as to scorn the wretched half-measure of merely abstaining from flesh food while still using animal products. The result is in either case the same. The all-or-nothing argument is sometimes put forward in this fashion:
Superior Person: Well, as far as the right or wrong of the question is concerned, I would not care to be a vegetarian at all, unless I were a thorough one. What can be the good of forswearing animal food in one form if you take it in another?