[190] This popular excuse is perhaps the feeblest and most disingenuous of all the defences usually made for flesh-eating. Can the mere gift of life compensate for all the horrible and frightful sufferings inflicted, in various ways, upon their victims by the multiform selfishness and barbarity of man? To what unknown, as well as known, tortures are not every day the victims of the slaughter-house subjected? From their birth to their death, the vast majority—it is too patent a fact—pass an existence in which freedom from suffering of one kind or other—whether from insufficient food or confined dwellings on the one hand, or from the positive sufferings endured in transitu to the slaughter-house by ship or rail, or by the brutal savagery of cattle-drivers, &c.—is the exception rather than the rule.
[191] Moral and Political Philosophy, i., 2. It is deeply to be deplored that Dr. Paley is in a very small minority amongst christian theologians, of candour, honesty, and feeling sufficient to induce them to dispute at all so orthodox a thesis as the right to slaughter for food. That he is compelled, by the force of truth and honesty, to abandon the popular pretexts and subterfuges, and to seek refuge in the supposed authority of the book of Genesis, is significant enough. Of course, to all reasonable minds, such a course is tantamount to giving up the defence of kreophagy altogether; and, if it were not for theological necessity, it would be sufficiently surprising that Paley’s intelligence or candour did not discover that if flesh-eating is to be defended on biblical grounds, so, by parity of reasoning, are also to be defended—slavery, polygamy, wars of the most cruel kind, &c.
[192] The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, xii., 11. See, amongst others, the philosophical reflections of Mr. Greg in his Enigmas of Life, Appendix. But the subject has been most fully and satisfactorily dealt with by Professor Newman in his various Addresses.
[193] Compare the similar observation of Flourens, Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, in his Treatise on the Longevity of Man (Paris, 1812). He quotes Cornaro, Lessio, Haller, and other authorities on the reformed regimen.
[194] He well exposes the fatal mischief of emulation (in place of love of truth and of love of knowledge, for its own sake) in schools which tends to intensify, if not produce, the selfism dominant in all ranks of the community. Not the least meritorious of his exhortations to Governments is his desire that they would employ themselves in such useful works as the general planting of trees, producing nourishing foods, in place of devastating the earth by wars, &c.
[195] The reason, as given by himself, for his abandonment in after years of his self-imposed reform, is worthy neither of his philosophic acumen nor of his ordinary judgment. It seems that on one occasion, while his companions were engaged in sea-fishing, he observed that the captured fish, when opened, revealed in its interior the remains of another fish recently devoured. The young printer seemed to see in this fact the ordinance of Nature, by which living beings live by slaughter, and the justification of human carnivorousness. (See Autobiography.) This was, however, to use the famous Sirian’s phrase, “to reason badly;” for the sufficient answer to this alleged justification of man’s flesh-eating propensity is simply that the fish in question was, by natural organisation, formed to prey upon its fellows of the sea, whereas man is not formed by Nature for feeding upon his fellows of the land; and, further, that the larger proportion of terrestrials do not live by slaughter.
[196] Wealth of Nations iii., 341. See, too, Sir Hans Sloane (Natural History of Jamaica, i., 21, 22), who enumerates almost every species of vegetable food that has been, or may be, used for food, in various parts of the globe; the philosophic French traveller, Volney (Voyages), who, in comparing flesh with non-flesh feeders, is irresistibly forced to admit that the “habit of shedding blood, or even of seeing it shed, corrupts all sentiment of humanity;” the Swedish traveller Sparrman, the disciple of Linné, who corrects the astonishing physiological errors of Buffon as to the human digestive apparatus; Anquetil (Récherches sur les Indes), the French translator of the Zend-Avesta who, from his sojourn with the vegetarian Hindus and Persians, derived those more refined ideas which caused him to discard the coarser Western living; and Sir F. M. Eden (State of the Poor).
[197] History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, xxvi. Notwithstanding Gibbon’s expression of horror, we shall venture to remark that the “unfeeling murderers” of the Tartar steppes, in slaughtering each for himself, are more just than the civilised peoples of Europe, with whom a pariah-class is set apart to do the cruel and degrading work of the community.
[198] The Task. When Cowper wrote this (in 1782) the Law was entirely silent upon the rights of the lower animals to protection. It was not until nearly half a century later that the British Legislature passed the first Act (and it was a very partial one) which at all considered the rights of any non-human race. Yet Hogarth’s Four Stages of Cruelty—to say nothing of literature—had been several years before the world. It was passed by the persistent energy and courage of one man—an Irish member—who braved the greatest amount of scorn and ridicule, both within and without the Legislature, before he succeeded in one of the most meritorious enterprises ever undertaken. Martin’s Act has been often amended or supplemented, and always with no little opposition and difficulty.
[199] The term “Mercy,” it is important to observe, is one of those words of ambiguous meaning, which are liable, in popular parlance, to be misused. It seems to have a double origin—from misericordia, “Pity” (its better parentage), and merces, “Gain,” and, by deduction, “Pardon” granted for some consideration. It is in this latter sense that the term seems generally to be used in respect of the non-human races. But it is obvious to object that “pardon,” applicable to criminals, can have no meaning as applied to the innocent. Pity or Compassion, still more Justice—these are the terms properly employed.