When prodded by the pangs of hunger the ferocious wolf does indeed pursue its prey with unwavering perseverance, and the spring of the crouching king of beasts overmatches the speed of the wing-footed deer. By ambush the feline family foil the fleetest in their attempts to escape. The cunning of the fox is proverbial, and the slinking nocturnal habits of the hyena and kindred scavengers illustrate the depth of depravity resulting from a diet of decayed flesh.
The vices generated by flesh eating may be said to be lassitude, ferocity, low cunning, and depravity. We may tame the herbivorous ox and elephant. Their diet makes them docile and stores enormous power which they obediently use in our service to perform prolonged and arduous labor. The flesh food required by the constitutional peculiarities of Carnivora makes them dangerous and incapable of thorough domestication. A cat may scratch at any moment, and the muzzling ordinances of large cities are ample proof of the danger of dogs. Besides, energy contained in the diet of Carnivora is so largely expended in digestion that they are drowsy and unfitted for sustained labor like the horse or elephant.
The drowsiness following a heavy meal of meat is too well known to require argument, and the custom of taking stimulants with food is an outgrowth of the desire to counteract the deadening effect of dead flesh. The intensified effect of feasting upon flesh in an advanced state of decay is well illustrated in “society,” where banquets of game that is “high” are accompanied by orgies of the wildest nature and followed by indulgence of the vilest instincts.
The Westerner who can live upon a clean, sweet, wholesome diet of vegetables, cereals, and fruits, does not become drowsy from his food; he needs no stimulant. There are no vegetarian drunkards. The soothing effects of vegetable food manifest as finer feelings, which replace the ferocity fostered by flesh food. Many need the mixed diet yet, for the practice of flesh eating has furthered the progress of the world as nothing else except perhaps its companion vice—drunkenness; and though we cannot say that they have been blessings in disguise, they have at least not been unmitigated curses, for in the Father’s kingdom all seeming evil nevertheless works for good in some respect, though it may not be apparent upon the surface. We shall see how presently.
A private corporation, the East India Company, commenced and practically achieved the subjugation of India with her three hundred million people, for the English are voracious flesh eaters, while the Hindu’s diet fosters docility. But when England fought the flesh eating Boers, Greek met Greek, and the valor displayed by both sides is a matter of brilliant record. Courage, physical as well as moral, is a virtue and cowardice a vice. Flesh has fostered self-assertion and helped us to develop a backbone, though unfortunately often at the expense of others who still retain the wishbone. It has done more as will be illustrated:
As said previously, the crouching cat is forced to employ strategy to save strength when procuring its prey, so that it may retain sufficient energy to digest the victim. Thus brain becomes the ally of brawn. In ancient Atlantis desire for flesh developed the ingenuity of primitive man and led him to trap the elusive denizens of field and forest. The hunter’s snare was among the first LABOR-SAVING DEVICES—which mark the beginning of the evolution of mind, and of the uncompromising, unflagging struggle of the meat fed mind for supremacy over matter.
We say “the meat fed mind,” and we reiterate it, because we wish to emphasize that it is by the nations which have adopted flesh food that the most noteworthy progress has been made. The vegetarian Asiatics remain upon the lower rungs of civilization. The further west we travel, the more the consumption of meat increases as does the disinclination for bodily exercise, and consequently the activity of the mind is increased to a higher and higher pitch in the invention of labor-saving devices. The American agriculturists’ acres are counted by thousands, and they harvest large crops with less labor than the peasant of the East who has only a small patch of ground. The reason is that the poor, plodding, grain fed Easterner has only his hands and his hoe, which he keeps in motion all day and day after day, while the meat fed, progressive Westerner turns power-driven implements into his fertile fields and sits down in a comfortable seat to watch them work. One uses muscle, the other mind.
Thus the indomitable courage and energy which have transformed the face of the Western World are virtues directly traceable to flesh food, which also fosters love of ease and invention of labor-saving devices; while alcohol stimulates enterprise in execution of schemes thus hatched to procure the maximum of comfort with a minimum of labor.
But the spirit of alcohol is obtained by a process of fermentation. It is a spirit of decay, altogether different from the spirit of life in man. This counterfeit spirit lures man on and on, always holding before his vision dreams of future grandeur, and goading him to strenuous efforts of body and mind in order to attain and obtain. Then when he has achieved and attained, he awakens to the utter worthlessness of his prize. Possession soon shatters illusion as to the worth of whatever he may have acquired; nothing the world has to give can finally satisfy. Then again the lethal draught drowns disappointment, and the mind conjures up a new illusion. This he pursues with fresh zeal and high hopes to meet disappointment again and again, for lives and lives, until at last he learns that “wine is a mocker,” and that “all is vanity but to serve God and to do His will.”