“What is clearer [he sums up] than that man is not furnished for hunting, much less for eating, other animals? In one word, we seem to be admirably admonished by Cicero that man was destined for other things than for seizing and cutting the throats of other animals. If you answer that ‘that may be said to be an industry ordered by Nature, by which such weapons are invented,’ then, behold! it is by the very same artificial instrument that men make weapons for mutual slaughter. Do they this at the instigation of Nature? Can a use so noxious be called natural? Faculty is given by Nature, but it is our own fault that we make a perverse use of it.”
He, finally, refutes the popular objection about the strength-giving properties of flesh-meat, and instances Horses, Bulls, and others.[122]
In his Ethics (affixed to his Books on Physics) he quotes and endorses the opinions of Epikurus on the slaughter of innocent life:—
“There is no pretence,” he asserts, “for saying that any right has been granted us by law to kill any of those animals which are not destructive or pernicious to the human race, for there is no reason why the innocent species should be allowed to increase to so great a number as to be inconvenient to us. They may be restrained within that number which would be harmless, and useful to ourselves.”[123]
With that Great Master he thus rebukes the fashionable “hospitality”:—
“I, for my part, to speak modestly of myself, lived contented with the plants of my little garden, and have pleasure in that diet, and I wish inscribed on my doors: ‘Guest, here you shall have good cheer! here the summum bonum is Pleasure. The guardian of this house, humanely hospitable, is ready to entertain you with pearl-barley (polenta), and will furnish you abundantly with water. These little gardens do not increase hunger, but extinguish it; nor do they make thirst greater by the very potations themselves, but satisfy it by a natural and gratuitous remedy.’”[124]
THERE is one name which, in reputation, occupies a pre-eminent position in philosophy, belonging to this period—Francis Bacon. But, for ourselves, for whom true ethical and humanitarian principles have a much deeper significance than mere mental force undirected to the highest aims of truth and of justice, the name of the modern assertor of the truths of Vegetarianism will challenge greater reverence than even that of the author of the New Instrument.
That Bacon should exhibit himself in the character of an advocate of the rights of the lower races is hardly to be expected from the selfish and unscrupulous promoter of his own private interests at the expense at once of common gratitude and common feeling. His remarks on Vivisection (where he questions whether experiments on human beings are defensible, and suggests the limitation of scientific torture to the non-human races)[125] are, in fact, sufficient evidence of his indifferentism to so unselfish an object as the advocacy of the claims of our defenceless dependants. When we consider his unusual sagacity in exposing the absurd quasi-scientific methods of his predecessors, and of the prevailing (so-called) philosophical system and the many profound remarks to be found in his writings, it must be added that we are reluctantly compelled to believe that the opinions elsewhere which he publishes inconsistent with those principles were inspired by that notorious servility and courtiership by which he flattered the absurd and pedantic dogmatism of one of the most contemptible of kings.
One passage there is, however, in his writings which seems to give us hope that this eminent compromiser was not altogether insensible to higher and better feeling:—