Scientist: But our teeth, my good friend, our teeth! What can be the use of your talking about vegetarianism, when we both of us carry in our mouths a proof of the necessity of flesh-eating.
Vegetarian: But surely you do not hold the popular fallacy that man's canine teeth class him among the carnivora?
Scientist: They prove at least that he is an eater of flesh as well as of vegetables. Why else has he got such teeth?
Vegetarian: Why has a gorilla got such teeth? "For the purpose of combat and defence," Owen tells us, not of food. And if a gorilla, with "canines" much more developed than man's, is a frugivorous animal, why must man with less developed "canines" be carnivorous?
Scientist: Well, well; let us turn to the digestive organs, then. Look at the immense difference between the human stomach and that of the true herbivora. How can mankind get the required nutriment from herbs, when we have not the necessary apparatus for doing so?
Vegetarian: But it has never been argued by us, nor is it in any way essential to our argument, that mankind is herbivorous. What have the herbivora to do with the question?
Scientist: I have seen them quoted in your books as instances of strength and endurance——
Vegetarian: To dispel the illusion that there is no chemical nutriment in anything but flesh food; but that is quite a different thing from asserting that man is himself herbivorous. The point at issue is simple. You charge vegetarians with flying in the face of Nature. We show you, from your own authorities, that the structural evidence, whatever that may be worth (it was you who first appealed to it), pronounces man to have been originally neither carnivorous, nor herbivorous, but frugivorous. If you think otherwise, what do you make of the apes?
The close similarity that exists between the structure of man and that of the anthropoid apes is the hard fact that cannot be evaded by the apologists of flesh-eating. In the conformation alike of brain, of hands, of teeth, of salivary glands, of stomach, we have indisputable proof of the frugivorous origin of man—indeed, it is not seriously questioned by any recognised authority, that man was a fruit-eater in the early stages of his development. As far as comparative anatomy throws light on the diet question, mankind and the apes are, so to speak, "in the same box," and he who would disprove the frugivorous nature of man, must also disprove the frugivorous nature of the anthropoid apes, a predicament of which the more intelligent of our opponents are keenly aware. And this brings us to the second branch of the subject of this chapter.
Whatever his original structure, it is argued, man has extended his resources in the matter of food, and has long been "omnivorous," while his middle position between the carnivora and herbivora indicates that he is naturally suited for a "mixed diet." Omnivorous, it will be noted, is the blessed word that is to bring comfort to flesh-eaters, and the inconvenient apes, whom the naturalists class as frugivorous, have somehow to be dragged in under the category of "omnivorous." But, first, a word about the meaning of this saving term.