The Ethics of Diet

The Ethics of Diet
Author: Howard William
AT the present day, in all parts of the civilized world, the once orthodox practices of cannibalism and human sacrifice universally are regarded with astonishment and horror. The history of human development in the past, and the slow but sure progressive movements in the present time, make it absolutely certain that, with the same astonishment and horror will the now prevailing habits of living by the slaughter and suffering of the inferior specieshabits different in degree rather than in kind from the old-world barbarismbe regarded by age more enlightened and more refined than ours. Of such certainty, no one, whose beau idéal of civilization is not a State crowded with jails, penitentiaries, reformatories, and asylums, and who does not measure Progress by the imposing but delusive standard of an ostentatious Materialismby the statistics of commerce, by the amount of wealth accumulated in the hands of a small part of the community, by the increase of populations which are mainly recruited from the impoverished classes, by the number and popularity of churches and chapels, or even by the number of school buildings and lecture halls, or the number and variety of charitable institutions throughout the countrywill pretend to have any reasonable doubt.
In searching the records of this nineteenth centurythe minutes and proceedings of innumerable learned and scientific societies, especially those of Social and Sanitary Science Congressesour more enlightened descendants (let us suppose, of the 2001st century of the Christian era), it is equally impossible to doubt, will observe with amazement that, amid all the immeasurable talking and writing upon social and moral science, there is discoverable little or no trace of serious inquiry in regard to a subject which the more thoughtful Few, in all times, have agreed in placing at the very foundation of all public or private well-being. Nor, probably, will the astonishment diminish when, further, it is found that, amid all the vast mass of theological-religious publications, periodical or other (supposing, indeed, any considerable proportion of them to survive to that age), no consciousness appeared to exist of the reality of such virtues as Humaneness and Universal Compassion, or of any obligation upon the writers to exhibit them to the serious consideration of the world: and this, notwithstanding the contemporary existence of a long-established association of humanitarian reformers who, though few in number, and not in the position of dignity and power which compels the attention of mankind, none the less by every means at their disposalupon the platform and in the press, by pamphlets and treatises appealing at once to physical science, to reason, to conscience, to the authority of the most earnest thinkers, to the logic of factshad been protesting against the cruel barbarisms, the criminal waste, and the demoralizing influences of Butchery; and demonstrating by their own example, and by that of vast numbers of persons in the most different parts of the globe, the entire practicability of Humane Living.
When, further, it is revealed in the popular literature, as well as in the scientific books and journals of this nineteenth century, that the innocent victims of the luxurious gluttony of the richer classes in all communities, subjected as they were to every conceivable kind of brutal atrocity, were yet, by the science of the time, acknowledged, without controversy, to be beings essentially of the same physical and mental organization with their human devourers; to be as susceptible to physical suffering and pain as they; to be endowedat all events, a very large proportion of themwith reasoning and mental faculties in very high degrees, and far from destitute of moral perceptions, the amazement may well be conjectured to give way to incredulity, that such knowledge and such practices could possibly co-exist. Tha

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