'Surely hell, fire, and repentance are in store for those who for their pleasure and gratification cause the dumb animals to suffer pain.' The Zend Avesta.
Gautama, the Buddha, was most emphatic in discountenancing the killing of animals for food, or for any other unnecessary purpose, and Zoroaster and Confucius are said to have taught the same doctrine.
IV
THE ÆSTHETIC POINT OF VIEW
St. Paul tells us to think on whatsoever things are pure and lovely (Phil. iv., 8). The implication is that we should love and worship beauty. We should seek to surround ourselves by beautiful objects and avoid that which is degrading and ugly.
Let us make some comparisons. Look at a collection of luscious fruits filling the air with perfume, and pleasing the eye with a harmony of colour, and then look at the gruesome array of skinned carcasses displayed in a butcher's shop; which is the more beautiful? Look at the work of the husbandman, tilling the soil, pruning the trees, gathering in the rich harvest of golden fruit, and then look at the work of the cowboy, branding, castrating, terrifying, butchering helpless animals; which is the more beautiful? Surely no one would say a corpse was a beautiful object. Picture it (after the axe has battered the skull, or the knife has found the heart, and the victim has at last ceased its dying groans and struggles), with its ghastly staring eyes, its blood-stained head or throat where the sharp steel pierced into the quivering flesh; picture it when the body is opened emitting a sickening odour and the reeking entrails fall in a heap on the gore-splashed floor; picture this sight and ask whether it is not the epitome of ugliness, and in direct opposition to the most elementary sense of beauty.
Moreover, what effect has the work of a slayer of animals upon his personal character and refinement? Can anyone imagine a sensitive-minded, finely-wrought æsthetic nature doing anything else than revolt against the cold-blooded murdering of terrorised animals? It is significant that in some of the States of America butchers are not allowed to sit on a jury during a murder trial. Physiognomically the slaughterman carries his trade-mark legibly enough. The butcher does not usually exhibit those facial traits which distinguish a person who is naturally sympathetic and of an æsthetic temperament; on the contrary, the butcher's face and manner generally bear evidence of a life spent amid scenes of gory horror and violence; of a task which involves torture and death.
A plate of cereal served with fruit-juice pleases the eye and imagination, but a plate smeared with blood and laden with dead flesh becomes disgusting and repulsive the moment we consider it in that light. Cooking may disguise the appearance but cannot alter the reality of the decaying corpse; and to cook blood and give it another name (gravy) may be an artifice to please the palate, but it is blood, (blood that once coursed through the body of a highly sensitive and nervous being), just the same. Surely a person whose olfactory nerves have not been blunted prefers the delicate aroma of ripe fruit to the sickly smell of mortifying flesh,—or fried eggs and bacon!
Notice how young children, whose taste is more or less unperverted, relish ripe fruits and nuts and clean tasting things in general. Man, before he has become thoroughly accustomed to an unnatural diet, before his taste has been perverted and he has acquired by habit a liking for unwholesome and unnatural food, has a healthy appetite for Nature's sun-cooked seeds and berries of all kinds. Now true refinement can only exist where the senses are uncorrupted by addiction to deleterious habits, and the nervous system by which the senses act will remain healthy only so long as it is built up by pure and natural foods; hence it is only while man is nourished by those foods desired by his unperverted appetite that he may be said to possess true refinement. Power of intellect has nothing whatever to do necessarily with the æsthetic instinct. A man may possess vast learning and yet be a boor. Refinement is not learnt as a boy learns algebra. Refinement comes from living a refined life, as good deeds come from a good man. The nearer we live according to Nature's plan, and in harmony with Her, the healthier we become physically and mentally. We do not look for refinement in the obese, red-faced, phlegmatic, gluttonous sensualists who often pass as gentlemen because they possess money or rank, but in those who live simply, satisfying the simple requirements of the body, and finding happiness in a life of well-directed toil.