Vegetarian: My good sir, it has occurred to us years and years ago. The question is as old as the movement itself. The cock-and-bull argument, I presume?
Consistency Man: I ask, what would become of the cockerels and bull-calves under a vegetarian régime? At present your supply of milk and eggs is easy enough, because the young males are killed and eaten by us carnivorous sinners. But are you not, to a certain extent, participators in the deed?
Vegetarian: Yes, frankly, to a certain extent (a very limited extent) I think we are. We are content to get rid of the worst evils first.
Consistency Man: But is one sort of killing worse than another?
Vegetarian: Immeasurably worse. Even if it were necessary under the vegetarian system, to destroy some of the calves at birth, as the superfluous young of domestic animals are now destroyed, it would be ridiculous to compare such restricted killing of new-born creatures with the present wholesale butchery of full-grown and highly-sentient animals in the slaughter-house.
Consistency Man: You say "if" it were necessary, but is there any doubt of it?
Vegetarian: It is not by any means so certain as you suppose that the slaughter of calves would be unavoidable. Vegetarians use milk sparingly—far more so than flesh-eaters—and a limited amount of milk is obtainable without killing the calf. Nor is there any reason, as Professor Newman has pointed out, why a number of oxen should not be employed as formerly in working the land. But I do not wish to take refuge in future possibilities. I prefer to take the bull-calf argument "by the horns," and admit that, under present conditions, we are indirectly responsible. Call it inconsistency, if you like. If it be inconsistency not to postpone the abolition of the greater cruelties until we also abolish the minor ones, we are willing to be called inconsistent.
It may be noted, in passing, that the zeal with which flesh-eaters urge this counter-charge of "inconsistency" is designed, unconsciously perhaps, to hide an important admission—viz., that where eggs and milk are used there is no necessity for butchers' meat, or, in other words, that vegetarianism is a perfectly feasible diet. "Eggs and milk," says Dr. T. P. Smith, when objecting to their use by vegetarians, "contain a much larger quantity of nutritive material than an equal amount of meat, for which, therefore, they may easily serve as substitutes."[[16]] If this be granted, the rest is a mere battle of words.
But the cock-and-bull argument, with which may be linked the objection to the use of leather, is only one of many departments of the consistency trick. Another favourite method of convicting vegetarians of inconsistency is to start from the false assumption that vegetarianism is the same thing as Brahminism, and that any destruction of even the lowliest forms of life is therefore reprehensible. "As for the argument based on the cruelty of slaughter-houses," says Mr. W. T. Stead, "I don't see that it bears upon the question, unless you take the extreme Hindoo doctrine as to the wickedness of taking sentient life, even in the shape of lice and adders." That is to say, the terrible and quite unnecessary cruelties inflicted on the most highly-organised and harmless animals in the cattle-ship and slaughter-house do not even "bear upon" the morality of diet, unless we also abstain from killing the most noxious and lowly-organised forms! Of the same nature is the foolish "when-you-drink-a-glass-of-water" fallacy, which argues that, as we necessarily swallow minute organisms in drinking, we need have no scruples as to the needless butchery of a cow or a sheep. The savages who in the good old times used to eat their grandfathers and grandmothers might have justified their dietetic habits on precisely similar grounds.
Nor is it only insects and "vermin" on whose behalf the consistency man is concerned, for plants also have life, and therefore if the vegetarian holds that "it is immoral to take life" (which he does not), he must be inconsistent in eating vegetables. As an instance of a common but strange misunderstanding of the vegetarian principle on this subject, I must here quote a passage from the "Science Jottings" of Dr. Andrew Wilson. Note the triumphant tone of the unscientific scientist as he rushes to his absurd conclusion: