Twenty years ago, just the same "climatic" argument used to be put forward by the opponents of the temperance movement; it was impossible here to abstain from alcoholic drink, whatever it might be elsewhere. We do not often meet with that argument now; on the contrary, it is generally admitted that a disuse of alcohol brings with it an increased power of hardihood and endurance. As in drink, so in food. Those who fly to stimulants obtain a temporary sense of comfort at the cost of permanent vigour.
But granting that it is possible to support life on vegetarian diet in northern climates, is it also possible, asks the conscientious doubter, to live at one's highest energy under such conditions? Look at the carnivorous Mr. Dash's career, it is said, as compared with that of the vegetarian Mr. So-and-So! Was not the greater public activity of the former attributable to his mixed diet? To which it may be replied that any such personal comparison is necessarily useless, from lack of sufficient data as to the relative powers and opportunities of the persons compared. It is obvious that a man whose convictions are unpopular will have far less opportunity of carrying his principles into action than one who is the mouthpiece of widely current opinions, to the propagation of which he devotes, perhaps, an equal amount of ability. For this reason it is absurd to suggest that vegetarians, or any other class of unpopular reformers, are living on a less active plane because their activities are not of the kind that commend themselves to the man in the street—or to that equally fallible person, the man in the study.
The whole notion that vegetarians are less able than flesh-eaters to endure a severe climate is a delusion; it is not only untrue, but the contrary of the truth. "No one surely suggests," says Dr. Oldfield, "that the English climate is too cold for a vegetarian dietary, when there is the experience of the stalwart, hardy Scotch peasantry, in a climate far more rigorous, developing brain and muscle superior to the average Englishman, and this upon a dietary which for generations has been so largely vegetarian that no one would dream of saying that the small amount of flesh eaten by them could have had anything to do with the matter."[[30]]
Anyone who is intimately acquainted with the vegetarian movement in this country will bear me out when I say that the average vegetarian is much less susceptible than the average flesh-eater to extremes of cold and heat, and can get through an English winter in comparative comfort, without any of the "wrapping up" to which the mixed dietists are reduced. It is amusing, indeed, after being asked that common question, "Don't you feel the cold very much, as you eat no meat?" to observe one's questioner attired perhaps to face a moderate London winter like a German student for a duel—a moving mass of scarves and furs and overcoats, stoked up internally with plates of beef and cups of bovril, and shivering withal. "Poor fellow!" one thinks, "it looks as if you were the person whose diet might be all very well for those who live in the tropics, but not for the hard-working inhabitants of this northern clime."
FLESH MEAT AND MORALS
"Man is what he eats," says the materialist in the German proverb. The body is built up of the food-stuffs which it assimilates, and it is reasonable to suppose that diet has thus a determining influence on character. If this be true, the reflection is not a pleasant one for the flesh-eater. "Animal food," it has been said, "containing as it does highly-wrought organic forces, may liberate within our system powers which we may find it difficult or even impossible to dominate—lethargic monsters, foul harpies, and sad-visaged lemurs—which may insist on having their own way, building up an animal body not truly human."[[31]]
But here the idealist steps in with a different theory. Man is not what he eats, but what he thinks and feels; it is not what we eat, but how we eat, that most vitally affects us. This is well expressed in one of Thoreau's daring paradoxes: "There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as if I think I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once—for the root is faith—I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board-nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say."
There is, however, no real antagonism between these two theories, for both may be to a great extent true, though neither wholly so. If mind affects matter, matter also affects mind; if spirit acts on food, food in its turn reacts on spirit. The one truth that stands out clearly from a consideration of this subject, and from the witness of common experience, is that a gross animal diet is inimical to the finer instincts, and that, as Thoreau says, "every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or more poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food."[[32]] Plain living and high thinking are indissolubly connected. Vegetarianism, as I have already shown, is not asceticism, but if it offer the moral advantages of asceticism without the drawbacks, is not that in its favour?
But there is a tendency among certain "psychical" authorities of the present day to eschew the vegetarian doctrine as itself "materialistic," and as attributing too much importance to the mere bodily functions of eating and digesting. "What does it matter about our diet," they say, "whether it be animal or vegetable, flesh or fruit, so long as the spirit in which we seek it be a fit and proper one? The question of food is one for doctors to decide; 'tis they who are concerned with the body, while we are concerned with the soul." I wish to show that this reasoning is nothing but a piece of charlatanry, and rests upon a perversion of the philosophy that it claims to represent.