“Now, it has already been argued that the bodies of animals are not intended for the sustenance of man; and the decided opinions of several eminent medical writers and others sufficiently disprove assertions in favour of the wholesomeness of the flesh of animals. The agreeable taste of food is not always a proof of its nourishing or wholesome properties. This truth is too frequently experienced in mistakes, ignorantly or accidentally made, particularly by children, in eating the fruit of the deadly nightshade, the taste of which resembles black currants, and is extremely inviting by the beauty of its colour and shape.[215]
“That we have a right to make attacks on the existence of any being because we have assisted and fed such being, is an assertion opposed to every established principle of justice and morality. A ‘condition’ cannot be made without the mutual consent of parties, and, therefore, what this writer terms ‘a condition,’ is nothing less than an unjust, arbitrary, and deceitful imposition. ‘Such is the deadly and stupifying influence of habit or custom,’ says Mr. Lawrence, ‘of so poisonous and brutalising a quality is prejudice, that men, perhaps no way inclined by nature to acts of barbarity, may yet live insensible of the constant commission of the most flagrant deeds.’ ... A cook-maid will weep at a tale of woe, while she is skinning a living eel; and the devotee will mock the Deity by asking a blessing on food supplied by murderous outrages against nature and religion! Even women of education, who readily weep while reading an affecting moral tale, will clear away clotted blood, still warm with departed life, cut the flesh, disjoint the bones, and tear out the intestines of an animal, without sensibility, without sympathy, without fear, without remorse. What is more common than to hear this softer sex talk of, and assist in, the cookery of a deer, a hare, a lamb or a calf (those acknowledged emblems of innocence) with perfect composure? Thus the female character, by nature soft, delicate, and susceptible of tender impressions, is debased and sunk. It will be maintained that in other respects they still possess the characteristics of their sex, and are humane and sympathising. The inconsistency then is the more glaring. To be virtuous in some instances does not constitute the moral character, but to be uniformly so.”
We can allow ourselves space only for one or two further quotations from this excellent writer. The remarks upon the common usage of language, by which it is vainly thought to conceal the true nature of the dishes served up upon the tables of the rich, are particularly noteworthy, because the inaccurate expression condemned is almost universal, and that even, from force of habit, amongst reformed dietists themselves:—
“There is a natural horror at the shedding of blood, and some have an aversion to the practice of devouring the carcase of an innocent sufferer, which bad habits improper education, and silly prejudices have not overcome. This is proved by their affected and absurd refinement of calling the dead bodies of animals meat. If the meaning of words is to be regarded, this is a gross mistake; for the word meat is a universal term, applying equally to all nutritive and palatable substances. If it be intended to express that all other kinds of food are comparatively not meat, the intention is ridiculous. The truth is that the proper expression, flesh, conveys ideas of murder and death. Neither can it easily be forgotten that, in grinding the body of a fellow animal, substances which constitute human bodies are masticated. This reflection comes somewhat home, and is recurred to by eaters of flesh in spite of themselves, but recurred to unwillingly. They attempt, therefore, to pervert language in order to render it agreeable to the ear, as they disguise animal flesh by cookery in order to render it pleasing to the taste.”
His reflections upon the essential injustice (to use no stronger term) of delegating the work of butchering to a particular class of men (to which frequent reference has already been made in these pages) are equally admirable:—
“Among butchers, and those who qualify the different parts of an animal into food, it would be easy to select persons much further removed from those virtues which should result from reason, consciousness, sympathy, and animal sensations, than any savages on the face of the earth! In order to avoid all the generous and spontaneous sympathies of compassion, the office of shedding blood is committed to the hands of a set of men who have been educated in inhumanity, and whose sensibility has been blunted and destroyed by early habits of barbarity. Thus men increase misery in order to avoid the sight of it, and because they cannot endure being obviously cruel themselves, or commit actions which strike painfully on their senses, they commission those to commit them who are formed to delight in cruelty, and to whom misery, torture, and shedding of blood is an amusement! They appear not once to reflect that whatever we do by another we do ourselves.”
“When a large and gentle Ox, after having resisted a ten times greater force of blows than would have killed his murderers, falls stunned at last, and his armed head is fastened to the ground with cords; as soon as the wide wound is made, and the jugular veins are cut asunder, what mortal can, without horror and compassion, hear the painful bellowings, intercepted by his flow of blood, the bitter sighs that speak the sharpness of his anguish, and the deep-sounding groans with loud anxiety, fetched from the bottom of his strong and palpitating heart. Look on the trembling and violent convulsions of his limbs; see, whilst his reeking gore streams from him, his eyes become dim and languid, and behold his strugglings, gasps, and last efforts for life.
“When a being has given such convincing and undeniable proofs of terror and of pain and agony, is there a disciple of Descartes so inured to blood, as not to refute, by his commiseration, the philosophy of that vain reasoner?”[216]
In his previous essay, On the Conduct of Men to Inferior Animals, Nicholson has collected from various writers, both humane and inhumane, a fearful catalogue of atrocities of different kinds perpetrated upon his helpless dependants by the being who delights to boast himself (at least in civilised countries) to be made “in the image and likeness of God.” Among these the hellish tortures of the vivisectionists and “pathologists” hold, perhaps, the bad pre-eminence, but the cruel tortures of the Slaughter-House come very near to them in wanton atrocity.