Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages / Including a System of Vegetable Cookery

by William A. Alcott

It will be said, perhaps, the vegetable-eating Europeans are not always distinguished for vigorous minds. True; but this, it may be maintained, arises from their degraded physical condition, generally; and that neglect of mental and moral cultivation which accompanies it. A few, even here, like comets in the material system, have occasionally broken out, and emitted no faint light in the sphere in which they were destined to move.

But we are not confined to Europe. The South Sea Islanders, in many instances, feed almost wholly on vegetable substances; yet their agility and strength are so great, that it is said "the stoutest and most expert English sailors, had no chance with them in wrestling and boxing."

We come, lastly, to Africa, the greater part of whose millions feed on rice, dates, etc.; yet their bodily powers are well known.

In short, more than half of the 800,000,000 of human beings which inhabit our globe live on vegetables; or, if they get meat at all, it is so rarely that it can hardly have any effect on their structure or character. Out of Europe and the United States—I might even say, out of the latter—the use of animal food is either confined to a few meagre, weak, timid nations, like the Esquimaux, the Greenlanders, the Laplanders, the Samoiedes, the Kamtschadales, the Ostiacs, and the natives of Siberia and Terra del Fuego; or those wealthier classes, or individuals of every country, who are able to range lawlessly over the Creator's domains, and select, for their tables, whatever fancy or fashion, or a capricious appetite may dictate, or physical power afford them.

VII. THE MORAL ARGUMENT.

In one point of view, nearly every argument which can be brought to show the superiority of a vegetable diet over one that includes flesh or fish, is a moral argument.

Thus, if man is so constituted by his structure, and by the laws of his animal economy, that all the functions of the body, and of course all the faculties of the mind, and the affections of the soul, are in better condition—better subserve our own purposes, and the purposes of the great Creator—as well as hold out longer, on the vegetable system—then is it desirable, in a moral point of view, to adopt it. If mankind lose, upon the average, about two years of their lives by sickness, as some have estimated it,[24] saying nothing of the pain and suffering undergone, or of the mental anguish and soul torment which grow out of it, and often render life a burden; and if the simple primitive custom of living on vegetables and fruits, along with other good physical and mental habits, which seem naturally connected with it, will, in time, nearly if not wholly remove or prevent this amazing loss, then is the argument deduced therefrom, in another part of this chapter, a moral argument.

If, as I have endeavored to show, the adoption of the vegetable system by nations and individuals, would greatly advance the happiness of all, in every known respect, and if, on this account, such a change in our flesh-eating countries would be sound policy, and good economy,—then we have another moral argument in its favor.

But, again; if it be true that all nations have been the most virtuous and flourishing, other things being equal, in the days of their simplicity in regard to food, drink, etc.; and if we can, in every instance, connect the decline of a nation with the period of their departure, as a nation, into the maze of luxurious and enervating habits; and if this doctrine is, as a general rule, obviously applicable to smaller classes of men, down to single families, then is the argument we derive from it in its nature a moral one. Whatever really tends, without the possibility of mistake, to the promotion of human happiness, here and hereafter, is, without doubt, moral.

But this, though much, is not all. The destruction of animals for food, in its details and tendencies, involves so much of cruelty as to cause every reflecting individual—not destitute of the ordinary sensibilities of our nature—to shudder. I recall: daily observation shows that such is not the fact; nor should it, upon second thought, be expected. Where all are dark, the color is not perceived; and so universally are the moral sensibilities which really belong to human nature deadened by the customs which prevail among us, that few, if any, know how to estimate, rightly, the evil of which I speak. They have no more a correct idea of a true sensibility—not a morbid one—on this subject, than a blind man has of colors; and for nearly the same reasons. And on this account it is, that I seem to shrink from presenting, at this time, those considerations which, I know, cannot, from the very nature of the case, be properly understood or appreciated, except by a very few.