This eloquent discourse takes place while the three friends are watching, during the night, at the bier of the supposed dead. At the moment when the last funeral rites are to be performed, equally with the spectators we are surprised and pleased at the unexpected resuscitation of Mandaras, who, it appeared, had been in a trance, from which at the critical moment he awoke. With what transports he is welcomed back from the confines of the shadow-land, may easily be divined. For some time they live together in uninterrupted happiness; the young German, who had adopted their simple mode of living, remaining with them. In the intervals of pleasing labours in the field and the garden, they pass their hours of recreation in refined intellectual discourse and speculation, the younger ones deriving instruction from the experienced wisdom of the venerable sage. The conversation often turns upon the relations between the human and non-human races; and, in the course of one of his philosophical prelections, the old man, with profound insight, declares that “so long as other animals continue to be excluded from the circle of Moral Existence, in which Rights and Duties are recognised, so long is there no step forward in Morality to be expected. So long as men continue to support their lives upon bodies essentially like to their own, without misgiving and without remorse, so long will they be fast bound by blood-stained fetters (mit blutgetränkten Fesseln) to the lower planes of existence.”
At length the sorrowful day of separation arrives. It is decided that Mandaras should return to Germany, a wider sphere of useful action than the Himalayan valleys presented; and an additional reason is found in the discovery that his mother herself had been German. With much painful reluctance in parting from beloved friends, he recognises the force of their arguments, and once more leaves his peaceful home for the turmoil of European cities. After suffering shipwreck, in which he rescues a mother and child—at the expense of what he had held as his most precious possession, a casket of relics of his beloved Urwasi—Mandaras lands once again at Livorno. He finds his old friends as eager as ever for proselytising “the heathen,” and quite unconscious of the need of conversion for themselves. At the death of the aged father of Damajanti, she, with her friend Sunanda and Theobald, who still remains with them, and (as may have been divined) is the devoted lover of the charming Sunanda, determines to leave her ancestral abode and join her brother in his adopted German home. When they arrive at the appointed place of meeting they are overwhelmed with grief to find that he, for whose sake so long a pilgrimage had been undertaken, had been taken from them for ever. Having lost his passport he had been arrested on suspicion and imprisoned. In confinement he had shrunk from the European flesh-dishes, and, unsupplied with proper nourishment or a sufficiency of it, had died (in the true sense of the word) a martyr, to the last, to his moral principles. With great difficulty his final words in writing are discovered, and these, in the form of letters to his sister, declare his unshaken faith and hopes for the future of the World. There are, also, found short poems, which are published at the end of his Memoirs, and are fully worthy of the refined mind of the author of Mandaras. Thus ends a romance which, for beauty of idea and sentiment, may be classed with the Aventures de Télémaque of Fénélon and, still more fitly, with the Paul et Virginie of St. Pierre.[274]
The space we have been tempted to give to Mandaras’s Wanderings precludes more than one or two further extracts from Struve’s admirable writings. His Pflanzenkost, perhaps the best known, as it is his most complete, exposition of his views on Humane Dietetics, appeared in the year 1869. In it he examines Vegetarianism in all its varied aspects—in regard to Sociology, Education, Justice, Theology, Art and Science, Natural Economy, Health, War and Peace, the practical and real Materialism of the Age, Health, Refinement of Life, &c. From the section which considers the Vegetable Diet in its relations to National Economy we quote the following just reflections:—
“Every step from a lower condition to a higher is bound up with certain difficulties. This is especially the case when it is a question of shaking off habits strengthened by numbers and length of time. Had the human race, however, not the power to do so, then the step from Paganism to Christianity, from predatory life to tillage, in particular from savage barbarousness to a certain stage in civilisation, would have been impossible. All these steps brought many struggles in their train, which to many thousands produced some hardships (Schaden); to untold millions, however, incalculable benefits. So, also, the steps onward from Flesh-Diet cannot be established without some disturbances. The great majority of men hold fast to old prejudices. They struggle, not seldom with senseless rage, against enlightenment and reason, and a century often passes away before a new idea has forced the way for the spread of new blessings.
“Therefore, we need not wonder if we, also, who protest and stand out against the evils of Flesh-Eating, and proclaim the advantages of the Vegetable Diet, find violent opponents. The gain which would accrue to the whole race of man by the acceptance of that diet is, however, so great and so evidently destined, that our final victory is certain....
“Doubtless the Political Economy of our days will be shaken to its foundations by the step from the flesh to the non-flesh diet; but this was also the case when the nomads began to practise tillage, and the hunters found no more game. The relics of certain barbarisms must be shaken off. All barbarians, or semi-barbarians, will struggle desperately against this with their selfish coarseness (eigenthümlichen Rohheit). But the result will be that the soil which, under the influence of the Flesh-Régime supported one man only, will, with the unfettered advantages of the Vegetable Diet support five human beings. Liebig, even, recognised so much as this—that the Flesh-Diet is twelve times more costly than the Non-Flesh.”[275]
Struve’s Seelenleben,[276] published in the same year with the Pflanzenkost, and his last important work, forms a sort of résumé of his opinions already given to the world, and is, therefore, a more comprehensive exposition of his opinions on Sociology and Ethics than is found in his earlier writings. It is full of the truest philosophy on the Natural History of Man, inspired by the truest refinement of soul. In the section entitled Moral he well exposes the futility of hap-hazard speeches, meaning nothing, which, vaguely and in an indefinite manner addressed to the child, are allowed to do duty for practical moral teaching:—
“They tell children, perhaps, that they must not be cruel either to ‘Animals’ or to human beings weaker than themselves. But when the child goes into the kitchen, he sees Pigeons, Hens, and Geese slaughtered and plucked; when he goes into the streets, he sees animals hung up with bodies besmeared with blood, feet cut off, and heads twisted back. If the child proceeds still further, he comes upon the slaughter-house, in which harmless and useful beings of all kinds are being slaughtered or strangled. We shall not here dwell upon all the barbarisms bound up in the butchery of animals; but in the same degree in which men abuse their superior powers, in regard to other species, do they usually cause their tyranny to be felt by weaker human beings in their power.
“What avails all the fine talk about morality, in contrast with acts of barbarism and immorality presented to them on all sides?
“It is no proof of an exalted morality when a man acts justly towards a person stronger than himself, who can injure him. He alone acts justly who fulfils his obligatory duties (Verpflichtungen) in regard to the weaker. ... He, who has no human persons under him, at least can strike his horse, barbarously drive his calf, and cudgel his dog. The relations of men to the inferior species are so full of significance, and exercise so mighty an influence upon the development of human character, that Morality wants a wider province that shall embrace those beings within it.”