Sins of the Flesh: A History of Ethical Vegetarian Thought 9780774815093

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Preece, Rod, 1939Sins ofthe flesh : a history ofethical vegetarian thought / Rod Preece.

Includes bibliographical references andindex. ISBN 978-0-7748-1509-3 1. Vegetarianism—Moral andethical aspects~History. 2. Vegetarianism—History.

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For myfellows onthe path

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The sinful lusts of the flesh.

~ The Catechism, in The Book of CommonPrayer(1549)

For theythatare after the flesh [of animals] do mindthe things of the flesh. — Tertullian (c. 160-220) ... the lust ofthe belly. x

— St. Basil of Caesarea (329-379) ... thathumour that lusteth after Hesh andblood.

~ Roger Crab (1655)

... tis no easy task to preach to the Belly that has noears. ~ Alexander Pope, paraphrasing Cato (1713)

... blood lusts ... brutalize the person and hardentheinstincts ofthe

heart.

~ Alphonse de Lamartine (1848)

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Acknowledgments / xi Introduction Bill of Fare to the Feast: The Whats and Whys of Vegetarianism / I

be

The Human in Prehistory/ 24. Eastern Religions and Practice /54.

“nd

ON

wpe

Pythagoreanism / 76

g

Greek Philosophy and RomanImperium / 94 Judaismand the Earlier Christian Heritage / 117 Bogomils, Cathars, and the LaterMedieval Mind / 136

The Humanismof the Renaissance / 146 The Cartesians and [Their Adversaries in the Seventeenth and

Eighteenth Centuries: / 158

Preaching withoutPractising: From Mandeville and Pope to Goldsmith and Wagner/ 188 TO

Militant Advocates: From OswaldandRitson to Shelley, Phillips, and Gompertz / 232 The Victorians, the Edwardians, and the Foundingof the

Vegetarian Society/ 267

Vegetarians and Vegans in the Twentieth Century/ 290

13.

Vegetarianism in North America/ 308

Postscript Prospects / 333 Notes / 339 Selected Bibliography/ 373

Index / 385

Two books have beenespecially influential in my preparation of this vol-

ume: Deep Vegetarianism, by MichaelAllen Fox, and Vegetarianism: A His-

tory (the secondedition of The Heretics Feast), by Colin Spencer. Muchas

is my admiration for the authors of these two books and the works they have produced, and muchas I shall, unavoidably, repeat some of their messages and analyses in these pages, althoughin verydifferent words and with very different emphases, myjustification for Sinsofthe Fleshis that I believe [ have somethingto offer that takes us alittle further alongthe adventurous road Fox and Spencer have trod.' Andwhereas I nowand again reject specific interpretations of Spencer andFox, I muststress that such disputes are often a matterof interpretation ofavailable evidence, not simple mat-

ters of fact. I do not insist that myinterpretationsare right and theirs erro-

neous — where we differ — but on the basis of probabilities, | do find some

interpretations more appropriate than others, and myinterpretations do not always coincide with those of my forerunners. Perhaps I deviate from Spencer the mostin that I find his book almost as muchafascinating historyof food — whichI would be quite incapable ofwriting — as ahistoryof vegetarianism and almost as muchahistory of philosophical andhistorical-cultural attitudes in general as of attitudes that relate to vegetarianism

and animal ethics in particular. Myinterest lies primarily in the ethical dimensions ofvegetarianism, andit is on this aspect of vegetarianism that I concentrate in this book. Moreover, I viewneither our prehistoricalpast, nor the experience ofthe East, nor the wisdomof Pythagoras, nor the as-

ceticism ofearly Christianity in anything like the same manner as Spencer. XI

XI

Acknowledgments

Andthere is considerably moredisagreementbesides.Still, I have benefited a good deal from Spencer's5 erudition and amgrateful forit, although | regret that noneofhis copious notesare referenced with page numbers. In fact, notes withouta page referenceare of almost no value. I deviate from Fox in that his work relates more to the philosophythan to the history of vegetarianism, as | am sure he intended and would bethefirst to acknow-

ledge with justifiable pride. Despite Deep Vegetarianism’s majororientation, however, there is also muchofinterest to the philosophical historian inits pages, even if, again, | do not always concurwith his interpretations. Although DanielDombrowski’s The Philosophy ofVegetarianism played only a modest role in directly influencing the preparation of this book, other than for Chapter 4, when I first read the book a numberofyears ago,

it had a significant impact on my thinking. It is an impact that I am sure still lingers and will have had an important subliminal effect on my approach. Moreover, despitethetitle ofDombrowski’s book,thereis much ofsignificant historical merit, especially on pre-Socratic, classical, and Hellenistic Greece. A fourth book, Tristram Stuart’s Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to the Present Time appeared whentheresearch for this volumewasessentially complete andall but the final words ofthe text had beenwritten. It treats mainly the period and events covered in someofthe later chapters ofthis volume. Althoughit was

a most enjoyable read, was most informative, and is superbly composed and researched, especially for the period from the mid-seventeenthto early nineteenthcenturies, the bookprovedonlytangentially relevant to my theme andapproach. It is certainly a most valuable‘addition to theliterature on vegetarian history and absolutely essential for serious scholars interested predominantly in the European (and primarily British) seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries. Nonetheless, Stuart and I have verydifferent — even competing — stories totell. I am indebted to the research of Keith Thomas that he used inhis groundbreaking Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500-1800. It was especially valuablefor the third section of my eighth chapter. Although I taughtthephilosophy of Rousseaufor over thirty years, my biographical comments on Rousseau’s /zstory in Chapter 9 have been informedlargely by Maurice Cranston’s superb three-volume biographyon the life of the Franco-Swiss philosopher. I amalsograteful to Karen and Michael lacobbo, whose Vegetarian America: A History helped to fill significant lacunae in myknowledge of theAmericanvegetarianexperience that I neededfor Chapter13. I deemed it importantfor the sake of ameasure of

Acknowledgments

Xiil

completeness to include a chapter on American vegetarianhistoryin this book. However, for those who require a more comprehensive examination, I can do no better thansuggest they read the very informative and comprehensive book bythe Iacobbos. Myrelatively few pages are no substitute for the detail of their nearly three hundred. Long before I read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Blood Rites: Origins and History ofthe Passions of War, | hadacceptedthe hypothesis promoted by Ehrenreich that early humans were much more prey than predator, a hypothesis now confirmed in abundantdetail by the meticulous researches of Donna Hart and RobertW. Sussman in Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators and Human Evolution. Nonetheless, Ehrenreich’s bookstimulated meto recognize the importance ofanimalsacrifice in relation to predation andthesig-

nificance of animal worship. I have learned much fromherevidence and argument but have applied it in a field in which she hadnointerest perse (her concern was with the origins of warfare), and I have reached conclu-

sions that [am confident she would not share. Nonetheless, | am indebted to her analysis, albeit indirectly. Just as I had acceptedthe view of the humanas preylong before I read Ehrenreich, so I had some reservations about the extent of vegetarianism

andthe ethical treatment ofanimals in Easternreligious traditions long before I had read the work of D.N.Jha, professorof historyat the University

of Delhi. Indeed, I mentioned at some length in my Animals and Nature:

Cultural Myths, Cultural Realities, written some years before Jha’s major workon the subject of Eastern animal worship was published, the manner in which I considerthe religions of the Orient to have been misinterpreted, especially by Western scholars. Nonetheless, the abundant evidence provided by Professor Jha in The Myth of the Holy Cow gave me access to

detailed material of whichI was previously unaware. I have relied onthis material in part for Chapter2 of this book. Of course, mysources for that chapter are quite varied, but without Jhas meticulous research, I would have lacked the rigorous evidence to draw the conclusions that myprevious research had prepared me to expecton further investigation. I could not have unearthed independently the myriad sources he brings to bear. Por my understanding of Pythagoras, I am indebted in considerable measure to CharlesH. Kahn, whose book on Pythagoras andthe Pythagovean WayofLife was as invaluable to me for mythird chapter as it was in my preparation of a chapter of Brute Souls,Happy Beasts, and Evolution: The Historical Status ofAnimals. Even where myconclusions on Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans may sometimes differ markedly from those of

XIV

Acknowledgments

Kahn,theyare inspired byhim. “or the same chapter, I have been veryfortunate to have JonathanBarnes's Early Greek Philosophyas a source book of some ofthe most significant statements ofthe pre-Socratics. In The Ethics ofDiet (1883), Howard Williams provided a remarkable account ofa very large proportion ofmaterialrelevanttothe historyofvegetarianism, as previous researchers have found, some acknowledgingtheir indebtedness to Williams, others pretending it to have beenagreat dealless significant than it really was. The book is in fact a boon toall those interested in the historical record. I have availed myself of that material as appropriate in the preparation of this book. For the convenience ofthe reader, I have made reference to the readilyavailable 2004 Illinois reprint edition, edited by CarolJ. Adams(Ihavereferred to the 1883 edition in some of myprevious work), both where I have proftted from Williams's compilations, including the large numberofcitations fromthe original contrib-

utors, and where | have reasonto believe the readerwill not have access to some of the scarcer historical material. Elsewhere, I have also sometimes referredthe reader to readily available sources rather than the more obscure originals. Mygreatest debt is owed to those who were role models onthe vegetarian journey. There were several, but foremost among these was Stephanie BrownofToronto. Ifit was watching a documentaryfilmin Calgaryin 1992 on “downer” animals in stockyards that proved the immediate occasion of my wife and myselfpursuing the vegetarian course, it was Stephanie whowas the most persuasive personal catalyst. Her gracious and considerate, yet unwavering, advocacy by example andwordbothpointedthe path andfacilitated the choice. The constant commitment of my wife, Lorna Chamberlain, to the ani-

mal cause helped to make the vegetarian path far easier,more enjoyable, andsmootherthanit otherwise might have been. I am especially pleased to acknowledge my indebtedness to Steve Sapontzis, Daniel Dombrowski, and Jodey Castricano for their erudite and sympatheticappraisals of the manuscript. Their insightful critiques helped me to avoid some inadequacies in the original manuscript. Yet, at the same time, their reviews persuadedthe publishers that the manuscript was worthyofpublication. They agreed to the release of their names so that their exceptional assistance could be duly acknowledged. Valuable as their assistance was, any remaining inadequacies are, of course, entirelymy own. As always, myeditorat UBCPress, Randy Schmidt, has beenveryhelpful, indulgent of myidiosyncrasies, and supportive ofmyefforts.

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BILL OF FARE TO THE FEAST: OF VEGETARIANISM

Onanearly page of her celebrated 1963 novel, Zhe Group,Mary McCarthy

introduced her readers to “Pokey” Prothero, a young woman who was “interested only in animals and hunt dances” and whose ambition “was to become a vet.” Nor was it only the dances following the hunt that

enthralled her, for, on the following page, we read that “she had been away

hunting for the weekend.”' To many, there wouldappear to be an incon-

gruence, a cognitive dissonance, between desiring a career as someone

devoted to the health and care of animals, on the one hand,and participation in the wilful destruction of animal life, on the other. Mary McCarthy does not consider the dissonance worthy of a mention, any more than does the early utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who maintained competing propositions about animal suffering andthe inferior value of animal life simultaneously.’ Similarly, the veterinarians WilliamKarkeek and William Youatt, nineteenth-century authors on animal immortality and animal wellbeing respectively, were also avid proponents of, and occasional participants in, the hunt.’ For the ethical vegetarian, there is an equal contradiction inthe lives of those whoclaim to abominate cruelty to animals but whostill go home to a roast-beef supper. Manysaytheylove animals. But all that the evidence suggests is that they love to eat them. Indeed, for most vegetarians, the eschewing of animalfleshis a natural extension of the accordance to animals of the most elementary ofrights, just as we

would consider humanrights necessarily to include respect for humanlife. Nonetheless, there is a 1965 book by Robin Borwickabout donkeys entitled People with Long Ears that makes an equation between human and nonhumananimals that drives the less radical animal-welfare scientists and

2

Introduction

others into apoplectic fits — metaphorically speaking at least. There seems to be a perception ofglaring contradictions in such persons bothbetween their protection of life and their causing of death, on the oneside, and

betweenthe value they accord humananimals and theirlesser valuation of nonhumananimals, on the other, that requires acareful analysis. I propose to address in this book howthis question ofvalue has been approached historically andto investigate the path ofethical vegetarianismin humanhistory. WHERE ARE VEGETARIANS TO BE FOUND?

Initially, one must ask: “what is vegetarianism and how numerousare its adherents?” Reliable figures are hard to comeby, and the existingdatais subject to conflicting interpretations. But probably not much morethan 3 or perhaps 4 percent of North Americans — some say 5, whereas others, suchas the Vegetarian Resource Group, after having conductedapollin

1994, suggest less than 1 percent — are moderatelystrict vegetarians, with a slightly higher proportion in Europe. It is perhaps more instructive and

impressive to note that, already as of 1992, “as the New York Times reported, there are well over 10 million vegetarians in [the UnitedStates].

NewYork alone is supporting 35 vegetarian restaurants for about 100,000 strict vegetarians, andthere are perhaps half a million whoare part-time vegetarians.”* Hilda Keanhas stated that as of 1994, “at least 5 per cent of

all Britons were vegetarian and 5,000 people a week were estimated to be moving to a meat-free diet.”° Ifthis was true then — and some evenestimate the number to be as high as 7 percent - we would have goodreason to believe that the figures wouldbeslightly higher today. But we mightalso be inclined to wonderwhetherthe higherfigures are at least in part a product of wishful thinking.

The proportion ofvegetarians whoare vegan in the Westis decidedly on the rise, and an at least quasi vegetarianism appeals to many more thanin the past. And, of course, there are some omnivorous members of humane societies and other animal organizations whopractise vegetarianism from shame when theyare in the companyoftheir more radical colleagues from the same organizations but return to a flesh diet when they are at home. There are also many vegetarians who are vegans manqués — wannabe vegans, if you will, or vegan “flexitarians” (see page 15) — those whoare stead-

fastly vegetarian but vegan only when circumstances readily allow. Cer-

tainly, there are far fewer vegetarians in the Orient, including India, where

animal sacrifice is still practised, than is commonlybelieved, especially by

Introduction

3

vegetarians themselves.A majority of those who are vegetarian in India (vegetarians constitute around one-third of the total population) are female, although certain areas of the country, predominantlythe south,

but also Gujarat in the northwest, are historically vegetarian as a whole. According to Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby in The Hindu World, “the men of anestimated half of twentieth-century Hindufamilies (including those of several Brahmanjatis) favor the eating of fish, chicken and mutton.° In fact, Indian men often claim the arduousness of their employment requires the strength purportedly derived from a flesh diet, a claim given encouragement bythe young Gandhi, an encouragement he came later to regret. He thought initially that Indians could overcome their British masters by acquiring equivalent strength byeating the diettheyate. Later, on reading vegetarian advocacyliterature in an English vegetarian restaurant, he was awakened to the ethical appeal ofthe fleshless diet. As James Gaffneyhas expressed it appositely: “Gandhi, who hadrenounced vegetarianism outofhostility to English colonialism, was restoredto it English liberalism.”” As India becomes wealthier, we can expect, based on our experience of economic developmentelsewhere, that the proportion of vegetarians will decline, although not as rapidly as would be thecase if there were no strong vegetarian culturaltraditions. In China, almost all vegetarians — excluding a few Buddhist monks (most Chinese Buddhist monks are not vegetarian) — are inhabitants of

rural areas, andtheyare often vegetarians not by choice but bypoverty, the vast majority ofthe rural population consumingIo percentanimal protein in their diet (in the United States it is about 50 percent). The figures for South Koreaare verysimilar to those for China. With its ethic of unity and conformity, deviations from the dietary norm in South Koreaaresaidto be frowned upon. Onthe other hand,it is reported thatthere are fifteen socalled “vegetarian” restaurants in Seoul alone, some of which offer more

varied fare thanpurely vegetarian. Butat least the availability ofvegetarian dishes can be assured in those establishments. Westerners who arrive in Chinese cities as students and whoare already vegetarian usually find it very difficult to remaintrue to their preferred diet. Even Chinese sleeper trains do not offer vegetarian meals. Onefares little better in Japan, it

would appear. According to Jan Dodd, “vegetarianism isn't widely practised, or a fully understood concept in Japan. You mightaskfor a vegetar-

ian (saishoku) meal in a restaurant andstill be served something with meat

or fish.” Suchis the ubiquity in urban China, Korea, and Japan offlesh andsauces derived therefrom, other than sometimes in the temples andthe occasionalvegetarian establishment. Norare other| suddhist temples always

4

[Introduction

secure for a plant-based diet. Even the Dalai Lama, the exiled head °t Tibetan Buddhism, apparently having unsuccessfully tried vegetarianisn once before, claimed in April 2005 to have recently begunto trya vegetar. ian diet again. Buddhists, particularly Buddhist priests, may have the reputationof being vegetarian. Only sometimesare theyso in fact. WHAT Is A VEGETARIAN?

gq

The question of what constitutes a vegetarian receives a hostof conflicting answers.An employeeofthe Vegetarian Society in England oncetold me that they would count as a vegetarian anyone who does not eat anything with aface. While not having a face maybe aninitial pointer to the uninitiated in determining whatis acceptable and whatis not, being faceless is not ipsofacto an infallible indicator ofwhatis ethically appropriate. What of clams, mussels, oysters, scallops, andthe like? Are they not animal? Are they not sentient beings? Thescientific jury is in general still out about their sentience, while admitting serious doubts. It was once commonforat

least some to doubt the sentience of many more complex (and faced) creatures, althoughScottish animal scientists have now concluded that the expressionless fish feel pain and quite substantially so. Recent investigations have convinced Duke University researchers that “bird-brained” birds

have well-developed, feeling mental systems. Furthermore, a study by British scientists published in the Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences casts serious doubt on the anthropocentric assumption of numerous philosophers that thought is dependent on language. “We are kicking againstthe claim thatit is language whichallows youtodo other high order intellectual functions,” said RosemaryVarley, lead researcher from the Universityof Sheffield.? Assuming suchscientists are right — for, to misrepresent Euripides slightly, one scientists newly discovered meat soon becomes anotherscientist's atrophied poison — the time-honouredsports of shooting and angling are decidedlycruel pastimes, even if the fish, after being tormented with a hookin its mouth, is returned alive to the water.Nonetheless,

muchto the chagrin of vegetarians, a Norwegian 2005 study suggests that lobsters, and by implication less complex crustaceans, do notfeel pain. The animal advocate remains dubious. No questions on vegetarianismandthe principles behindits practice are ever as simple as theyatfirst appear. What of the consumptionof eggs anddairy products? Althougheggs, milk, and cheese are not flesh, they are derived from the confinement, and some would argue the perennial mistreatment, of animals, even iftheyare

Introduction

5

so-called “free-run” or “free-range” animals — intentionally deceptive misnomers if ever there were any, at least in much of North America! For example, in the United States the Department of Agriculture designates “free-range” to mean that a bird has some,evenif limited, access to the out-

doors, however confinedand in whatever proximitytoothers, while practices of beak trimmingand other invasive procedures continue unabated. Thelife of a “free-range” turkeyis four to six months. In the wild the bird can live for up to twentyyears. Whatif they are raised according to the five freedomsthat the more compassionate of omnivores regardas essential for whattheycall cruelty-free farming? These freedomsare: (1) animals should have freedom fromthirst, hunger, and malnutrition through readyaccess to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour; (2) animals

should have freedomfrom thermal and physical discomfort through the provision of an appropriate environment, including shelter and a comfortable resting area; (3) animals should have freedomfrompain, injury, and disease by prevention or rapid diagnosis andtreatment; (4) animals should have freedom to express normal behaviour by the provision of sufhcient space, properfacilities, and companyof their own kind;(5) animals should have freedom fromfear and distress by ensuring conditions andtreatment that avoid mental suffering.'° Most vegetarians welcome these “five freedoms’”for food animals enthusiastically but wonder,if the animals are enti-

tled to such benevolent treatment, whytheyare notalso entitledto their lives andto theeliminationoftheir inordinately early deathpangs.If ther is a propensity to consider farmanimals “stupid beasts,’’ research co ducted at the BabrahamInstitute ofCambridgeshouldservetodispel che myth. Infact, not onlypigs, long renowned for their intelligence, but other food animals, too, are among the most perceptive andinquisitive of animals. Cattle, sheep, and thelike are as worthyofprotectionas pets. The proponents of the freedomsargue that a conversionofsignificant proportionsofthe populationto vegetarianisminthe nearfutureis highly unlikely andthat the “five freedoms” will ensure the animalsasatisfactory life prior to their becoming food.It will also ensure that animal wellbeing will be a permanentfeature of the minds of many. Nonetheless, any consequent success may encourage acceptance of the newstatus quo. One must not forget, as George Bernard Shawwrote in the “Epistle Dedicatory” to Manand Superman, “the man whose consciousness does not correspondto that of the majority is a madman.”'' Still, the vegetarian andsocialist Shaw's ownlife and values showedthatt although one mustnot venture too far fromprevailing views in order to be regardedas worthyofbeingheard, one mustalso be something, if not too much, of a madmanif one wishes

6

Introduction

to effect changesin the values ofsociety.Abstract ethics, howeverrational,

can succeed onlyto the extent that theydeviate not toogreatly fromsocietys deeply embraced norms. Yet the societal dietary norms are repugnant to ethical vegetarians. Vegetarians are thus forced to be both “man” and “superman” simultaneously. That is, they must play the wisemadman and the mad wise man interchangeably, eccentric and magus together. Andif one still wishes to proclaim the ethical principle unadorned, it is worthy to recall that numerous renowned luminaries — Pope, Gay, Mandeville, Goldsmith, Rousseau, Voltaire, Lamartine, Wagner, and” en nyson

among

them — have proclaimedthe virtue of being vegetarian, while failing, by

various degrees, or so it would appear, to practise whatthey preached. This

principle withoutpractice is reminiscent ofseveral acquaintances who have

said, “I oughtto be a vegetarian,but who, despite the abstention fromveal

perhaps, continue in their omnivoroushabits. *

What, then, of animal by-products, such as skins that are transformed

into leather? A case can be made, andoftenis by the opponents ofvegetar-

ianism, that animals raisedfor their hides to be used as leather are among

the mostcruelly treated of creatures. Such opponents insist that if vegetarians are to be consistent — and they are sometimes derided by the same voices for not being so —they must alsorejectthe killing of animals for the

use oftheir skins.And so they must. And very manydo, a fact usually

ignored bythe cavillers. Whatthe purveyors ofsuch argumentsalsousually fail to recognize is that the argument applies to themselves just as strongly. If the wayleather-producinganimals are kept is manifestly cruel (and the cavillers are right to pointout thatit is, perhaps most notablyfor the productionofspecialty items such as doeskin gloves, crocodile shoes,alligator

purses, or sealskin handbags), then, unless the opponents of vegetarianism

wish to confess to fostering the abject cruelty theyhave correctlyidentified, they, too, must eschewthe use of animal skins, including leather — for example, in certain clothing,belts, shoes, seats, briefcases, and the like. That anti-

vegetarian omnivores donot recognize that the argumentapplies equally to themselves is a recognition that at least in some degree they hold the vegetarian to a higher degree of morality than they holdthe flesh eater. Implicitly, they recognize the worthiness of the vegetarian’s case and look for a groundon whichtheycanclaim that there are somelimitations to the vegetarians acknowledged moral superiority. As it is, the notion of the vegetarian whois not completely pure serves to provide a ready rationalization for the flesheater. Ifit is satisfactory for the vegetarian to be alittle less than perfect, so it seems to imply, then it is equallysatisfactoryfor the flesh eater to be wholly imperfect. Omnivores must at the very least confess to the

Introduction

7

cruelty even if they excuse the cruelty as what theyconsider a “necessary” andjustifiable cruelty.And in the above-proclaimed moralinfraction, the omnivore has conceded the practice of using animalhides for humanends is unnecessary.

The vegetarianis initially at a social disadvantage. The special dinner at

family gatherings, on first dates, at communal festivities, at weddings and

funerals, on anniversaries, at church and employer barbecues, and onreligious occasions, or occasions thathadaninitial religious or pagan impetus, suchas Easter or Christmas (andstill do for many), performsavital socie-

tal function. It is no less significant in seeminglyquite secular rituals with

a religious origin such asThanksgiving, where eventhe festive food, the

animal to be slaughtered, is prescribed. The ritual promotes the solidarity,

the belongingness, of the group orpair. Even the founder ofthe Vegan

Society in England,Donald Watson, on being asked whatwerehisgreatest

difficulties, replied: “Well, I suppose it is the social — excommunicating myself from that partof lite where people meettoeat.” To be sure, some vegetarians insist they prefer their ethical principles over the value of communal gathering, but theydo soat the expense ofthe social bond. The ritual mealtells the recipients of the bounty that they are welcome, appreciated, respected, and desired people. Inearlysociety, a man’s wealth andprestige were determined by howmanycattle he owned. Inthe words of Mary Midgley: “meat-eatingindicates success and prosperity, therefore hospitality.”!* Discussions aboutcuisine, recipes, and cooking constitute a major point of human contact and revolve, in the first instance, around flesh dishes. The vegetarian member of an omnivorous family, church, business, or even society may thereby becomeanoutsider, failing to participate fully in the communal process. Amongseveral other purposes, the mealreflects the generosity, the goodtaste, the wealth, and the prowess of the provider — even male sexual prowess, for there seems to be somecorrelation between meat and virility in the public mind. Moreover, inearly

humansocieties, meat was used by males as a part ofself-display in sexual selection, with the implication of: “Look at me! I amespecially brave. lam a great hunter and therefore a goodprovider. I have good genes and will provide the seed of good offspring.” The vegetarian appears to be the weak cousin. Perhaps, because of such evolutionary impetus, it will always be supremely difficult to persuade pubescent males to abandon flesh. The granderthe meal, the more luxurious the offering from the hunt, the more

impressive is the gift.And this usually involves the provisionofflesh — the most expensive andexorbitant food item, suchspecialty itemsas truffles ex-

cluded. Andeventhe provision ofsuch specialty items will lack the bravery,

8

Introduction

strength, or status associated withthe provisionofflesh. Ineluctably, vegetarians will seem inadequately generous with their nonfleshofferiing or inadequatelygrateful for the donor's gift offlesh — and,ineithercase, inad-

equately attractive to potential partners. The vegetarian is likely to be viewed as an outsider.Moreover, the hero and the adventurerare unlikely to be depictedas vegetarians. Valour and the fleshless diet are not associated in the public perception. The British philosopher Roger Scruton has argued very ably the importance of the humandiningritual andthe vitalcivilizing distinction betweenfeeding and eating, betweenfressen and essen, from the flesheater’s perspective.’’ If the vegetarianis to overcome the potentialloss ofthe art of communaleating, on which so manyaspects ofsocietallife depend,it is of

the greatest importance to maintain a concentrated emphasis onthesocial and integrative aspects ofculinary events. Only then will vegetarians be able to escape the impendingalienationoffailing to participate in the communal dining process. We maynotealso that the conventional conception of being“a man,” of being “manly” or “masculine,” involves the ideas of being courageous, robust, valorous, and warrior-like, of being “rational” rather than “emo-

tional.” By contrast, the popular “masculine” conception ofa vegetarianis of one whois soft, unduly compassionate, and tender. These notionsareall inherently incompatible with the traditional notion of “manliness.” The male vegetarian is in considerable danger of being viewedbyhis fellows as unmanly, even cowardlyand effete, perhaps somewhat effeminate. Therelatively easy moral decision to become avegetarian faces several, seemingly sometimes insuperable, psychological barriers. It is scarcely surprising that

vegetarians are predominantly, if far from exclusively, female. Ofcourse,

many renowned male (as well as female) athletes and othercelebrities are vegetarian or vegan, and manyin the past!have beenso. But, strangely, this hashadlittle effect on changingthe public consciousnesswithregardto the masculinity offlesh eating. By contrast, as earlyas 1885 in George Salmon’s Introduction to the New Testament, referring to the early Christianera, we read that “even those who

used animal food themselves came to think of the vegetarian as one who lived a higher formoflife.”It is as true in the twenty-first centuryas in biblical times. Even those whohavenoinclination toward vegetarianism often share a mild sense of guilt that the vegetarian takesthe hig igh ground that they themselves have relinquished. Nonetheless, especially whenarrogantly, aggressively, pompously,orselfassertively expressed, vegetarian attitudes may make omnivores uncomfortable,

Introduction

9

oppositional, and defensive. At its worst, the vegetarian mentalityis par-

aded mournfully inthe self-congratulatory terms of “woe is me. I am so misjudged and maligned by people who ought to knowbetter and who ought to understand whatI so readily understand.” The expectedresponse is found in the attitudes of numerous animalwelfare scientists. More often thannot, they deride the vegetarians’ unusualpractices and their paucityin numbers, as though the numerous millennia of the customary consumptionof flesh andthe numerical majority of the omnivores countedas some kind of moral argument in their own favour.'? Of course, the greatest opposition to vegetarianism comes from those engaged in, or vicariously

maintained by, the flesh industry. They often condemn vegetarian advo-

cates on the grounds ofthe vegetarians opposition to their very rightto their livelihood while ignoring, for example, that the abolition of capital punishment in certain states deprived the public executioner of his employmentin that capacity — rightly so, many imagine — andthatlegislation against drugs once legal andreadily available over the counter, such as laudanum (opium), has renderedcertain related occupations untenable.

No one regrets that unprotected asbestos workers, gas lamplighters, and child chimneysweepscannolongerfind employmentinthese capacities. Indeed, opposition to tobacco use has deprived manyfarmers of a decent livelihood. And although most would express great sympathy for such farmers, and believe it appropriate to provide financial compensation in their search for a new andviable crop or for a new form of employment, few would consider the farmers’ financial woes a sufficient ground to make tobacco use once again acceptable. No one has alawful right to aposition whose practice the society condemns. Ofcourse, no such condemnation exists at the present in the case of flesh consumption, but manyvegetarians believe that it should exist and thatits arrival is only a matterof time. HUMAN-ANIMAL HIERARCHY

Itis in fact not atall unusual for the omnivore simplyto bypass the vegetar-

ian ethical appeal on the assumption that humansare in somespecial man-

ner “superiorto other animals andhenceentitled to ethical preference over animals. ( )ften, a refusal to becomea vegetarianarises notfroma rejection of

the claimed moral imperative but fromits avoidance in the assumption of somekind ofexclusive status. As Pangloss says in Voltaire’s Candide: “Swine

were intended to be eaten, therefore we eat porkall the year round.”!® And most of us give the matter no more rational consideration than did Dr.

10

Introduction

Pangloss. If this was “the best ofall possible worlds,” as Pangloss naively imagines in apparent but misguided imitation ofLeibniz, it was certainly not so for the pigs. The idea that animals “were intended” for human use stretches in philosophical discourse back to Xenophon and Aristotle. ‘The ethical question is obviated by the parrotingof the unfounded andirrelevant “intended” dictum. ManyChristians and Jews — and their opponents — misinterpret the doctrine of “dominion” over animals as one that allows themto use animals for their own ends at will, when,infact, the relevant biblical pas-

sage imposes a modest obligation toward animals upon them.'” Nonetheless, humanclaims to preferential treatment are implicit in all such dicta — whethera matter of the “intended” or “dominion”justification. S

Have centuries of habit reduced the potential persuasiveness ofthe veg-

etarian appeal in the same way that male and white supremacy once reigned unquestioned because they were considered normal? Today, atleast amongthe educated in the West, sexism and racism are almost universally condemned. Frequent andstrident opposition is now the norm. Will the same perhaps happen to vegetarianism? Is the necessary step simplythe constant raising of the issue on the animals’ behalf in many minds over long periods oftime? Have we reached the potential for a greater era of benevolence? Muchas we may consider such progress a forlorn hope, we should not forget that in the eighteenth century it was not unusualto

encounter the view expressed in HenryFielding’s 7om Jones by Mrs. Deborah Wilkins about Tom Jones's wayward mother that she was “one of those misbegotten wretches, whomI don't look upon as myfellow creatures.” '® Miss| sridget went further anddescribed the unfortunate Jennyas “an impudentslut, a wantonharlot, a wickedjade, avile strumpet.”’ Ifwe acknowledge other animals as our fellow creatures, might we perhaps be on the road to consideration ofthe rightsofall sentient beings just as we have learned to disparage the attitudes of a Deborah Wilkins or a Miss Bridget? Nonetheless, we frequently encounterthe idea expressed by Emile Zola in Nana (1880) of the human “animal nature,”*® acknowledging humansas

animals but at the same time implying that while there are instinctive, unreflective, even lustful aspects of the human psyche, humansare not to be judgedbythe samecriteria as other animals, for we also possess rational andethical characteristics ofwhich nonhumananimals are said to be incapable. In fact, quite in contrast to the disparagement of “animal nature,” we find Zola three chapters later in Nana having Clarisse say of La Faloise that she was tempted to throwhimout: “The idiot didn'tlike animals, and that put the finishing touchto him.”?! If the path to ethical consideration

Introduction

ll

of animal interests has been eased, the humanisstill treated as a being enti-

tled to be judged byquite different ethical criteria from other animals. Despite Clarisse’s care for animals anddismissal of those inconsiderate of animal interests, she continues to eat the animals! Indeed, paradoxically and quizzically, liking or loving orrespecting animals seems for manypeople to bear verylittle relationship to not eating them. What otherentity than an animal can be commonly thought an object of affection, even admiration, by an admirer whothenduly goes hometoeat one ofhis or her fellows — indeed, oneof our fellow animals? Can anything other than evolutionary impulse, lust, habit, and now convenience have brought about suchastate ofaffairs? In Logic: Inductive and Deductive (1909), William Mintoofthe University of Aberdeen argued that practical wisdom would be acquired bythe rigorous pursuit of logical argument. He includeda “chain of being” diagram, aboutwhichhesaid: “Atable of higher andlowerclasses arranged in

order has been knownfromofoldas atree of division orclassification.”* This was howhe prefaced the chain of being diagram, which includedcategories of “Sensible” and “Insensible” leading upward to “Animal,” which in turn lead to “Irrational” and “Rational,” which then takes us onto Co% Man.” Habit encourages us totreat the diagram as logically persuasive, perhaps even compelling. “Man”is atthe helm. and therefore “sacred,” a secular way. Butit is the centuries-longpractice, notlogic, that allows ut s to arrangethechain ofbeing diagramas we customarilydo,at least implicitly, and to regard animalsas sensible butlacking substantial reason, as we

are inclined, and thus to accept the validity of the logical procedure that allows us to use animals for human dietary ends, althoughit is one with

dubious premises. What shouldbeclear is that even if the model were logically satisfactory, it would not followthat animals provided suitable food for humans any more thanthat the purported greater sensibility and rationality of the classical Greeks over their neighbours justified their enslavement ofmanyof them. Nordid the cannibalistic pride of the North

West Coast Kwakiutl, based on their sense ofsuperiority over others, jus-

tify the imperative of thelyrics of their Cannibal Dancer’s song:

eh

ph

aroundthe worldto findfood. around he world to find humanHesh. around he worldto find human heads. C Pe

[ wentall [ went all I went all I went all

around the worldto C find human corpses.*”

Tradition maybe persuasive but it is never morally compelling. Andif the

12

Introduction

proclaimed superiority does not justify the enslavement and the cannibalism, on whatbasis can humanrational superiority over animalsentitle the just personto use animalsfor food? Most of us grant animals certain minimal rights — the right to protection from unnecessarycruelty, for example. Onwhatbasis does depriving the animals oftheir lives constitute a part of “necessity? THE ORIGINS OF THE

my

686

“ERM

et

VEGETARIAN

Some, notably and initially Francis William Newman(an early member

andlater president of the Vegetarian Society, founded toward the end of the 1840s), argue the word“vegetarian”is not derived from “vegetable” but fromthe Latin word “vegetus,” meaning“lively, vigorous, and active,” fac-

tors that are proclaimed benefits of the abstention from fleshfoods.It is a highly improbable, far-fetched conjecture. Yet the myth was at one time continued on the English Vegetarian Society's own website, even though

there is no even moderately persuasive evidence for it. The term “vegetarian” was apparentlyfirst used in the late 1830s.The Oxford English Dictionary states that “the general use ofthe word appearsto have beenlargely due to the formation ofthe Vegetarian Society at Ramsgate in 1847,” although this begs the question ofits origins, for one has to wonder under what terms the about-to-be-formed society appealed to potential participants and howit came to nameitself the Vegetarian Society. The Oxford English Dictionary records a usage of the termalreadyin 1842 when The Healthianfor April of that year referredto the inutilityto “tell a healthy vegetarian that his diet is very uncongenial to the wants ofhis nature.” Such usage suggests that the term “vegetarian” was alreadyin use, that it was well enough understood, and that the practice of vegetarianism was sufhciently widespread that at least those whowere interestedin health would require no explanation of its meaning. Certainly, by 1848 the magazine Punch was using the term “vegetarian” as thoughit were a commonlyunderstood concept.Still, there was no general agreement on the appropriate term, complaints about the misleading name — misleading inthat a vegetariandietis not restricted to vegetables — being commonuntil well into the twentieth century. As early as some time around late 1813 we findthe radical poet Percy Bysshe Shelley writing a pamphlet unpublished duringhis lifetime that is now known as On the Vegetable System ofDiet. However, this piece was untitled before rediscovery and publicationin the early twentieth century. It was the editors of his pamphlet who gaveit the title by whichit is now

Introduction

13

known, a pamphlet he hadwritten earlier in the same year being entitled byShelley himselfA Vindication ofNatural Diet. Nonetheless, evenearlier,

in 1811, John Frank Newton, whoperhapsfirst introduced Shelley to vegetarianism, had written Return to Nature, or a Defence ofthe Vegetable Regi-

men, indicating quite clearly that the denial of flesh was already known by

reference to vegetables. Earlier still, in 7he Primeval Diet ofMan (1801)

George Nicholsonreferred to the “superior effects of a vegetable diet.”™ Indeed, in 1762 Rousseau had already countedpastry andfruits as being a part of the vegetable regimen.” The move toward the term “vegetarian” was well under waylong before the formation of the Vegetarian Society andlong before Francis Newmaninvented the improbable notion ofthe “vegetus origin. The puzzle remains, however. Vegetarians are so called

despite the fact, as noted,that theyeat a great deal more thanjust vegetable matter — fruit, grain, andnuts, for example. Certainly, for a very longtime those who ate whatis nowcalled a vegetarian diet were said to partake of a Pythagoreandiet, after the early lonian Greek philosopher whois said by some to have introduced (or reintroduced, if prehistoric humans did not

eat flesh) the practice to the West of declining to eat animal flesh. In the early twentieth century, dissatisfied withthe use of the term “vegetarian,”

as were many others —it was a commontopicofdebate ~ George Bernard

Shaw, who, as we have noted, was himself an avowed abominator ofthe

consumption offlesh, recommended the adoption of the term “Shelley-

ism,butit did not take. We are left with the term “vegetarian,” although

the essence of being a vegetarianis of course notthe practice ofeating vegetables but the avoidance of consuming the flesh of sentient beings. The details of the origins of the term appear, asyet, to be lost in the mists of time. Perhaps the explanation is quite simply that there was nosuitable term available and that, while “vegetarian” was inadequate, it seemed preferable toanyalternative. Today, the termis so well recognizedit would be inopportuneto seek a more accurate alternative. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a vegetarian as: “One wholives whollyorprincipally upon vegetable foods; a person who onprinciple abstains from anyformofanimal food,orat least suchas is obtained bythe direct destructionof [sentient, animal] life.” [ have introducedthe words

“sentient” and “animal” into the sentence both becauseit is usuallynotlife

itself, but sentient animallife, that is at issue — except among those such as

“fruitarians” (and some Jaina and Buddhists), whowill not kill a living plant

for their diet but will eat the fruits of the plant, as that does not harm

the plantitself- and because fewvegetarians would really have muchconcern aboutthe destructionof, say,microbic animals, despite Shaw’s quipin

14

Introduction

Too True to Be Goodaboutthe rights of “a poor innocent microbe’ andthe

practices of the Jaina, which we will discuss later. It is primarily sentient animals that are not to be harmed and hence noteaten. I restrict the term “sentience’ to conscious beings. (‘Tobe consciousis to respond to one’s surroundings in awareness of them; plants respondto their surroundings but have no awareness of them.) The word “vegetarian” has avariety of applications not entirely consistent with the implications of the Oxford English Dictionarys definition,atleast if the words “on principle’ in the definition have ethical content. For example, Romangladiators, it is said, lived on a vegetariandietof barley and leeks.Moreover, “Romanlegions,” historians

have it, “had conquered the world” on “coarse wheatenporridge.”They

were vegetarians.Wecanbe confident theydid not adopt this nonfiesh reg-

imenas a matter of ethical principle to prevent the destruction of animal life. It is unlikely they acquired their diet from principle at all. Indeed, today, and historically, a proportion of vegetarians deny themselves flesh for none other thanhealth reasons and many more for nothingother than economy.

Types OF VEGETARIANS

Weread, even in books by vegetarians about vegetarianism, of “ova-lacto

vegetarians,“pollo-vegetarians,” and “pesco-vegetarians.” “Ova-lacto vegetarian’ is a cumbersome name for what are the most commonformof vegetarians, those who eschewtheflesh of animals butstill consume such products as eggs, milk, andcheese. There seemslittle point in calling them

anything other thanvegetarians, pure andsimple. (“Lacto-vegetarians” eat dairy products butnoeggsorflesh; “ova-vegetarians’ eat eggs but nodairy

or fiesh.) “Pollo-vegetarians” are those whorefrain from mammalsbutare willing to eat the flesh ofbirds, notably chickens. It is difficult to find any

justification for such people being called vegetariansatall, not even quasi vegetarians, even if they do decline all red meat. Are we to acknowledge equally their beefo-porko-lambo vegetarian colleagues? The absurdity of the question proclaims its appropriate answer. “Pesco-vegetarians” are those whorefuse the flesh of birds and mammals but continue to consume fish andother seafood. There is no real sense in which theyare vegetarians ifwe consider that one ofthe primary purposes of vegetarianism is torec-

ognize the value of animalslives and to avoid animal suffering — according to the old sawthat “a semivegetarian” makes as muchsenseas “a semivirgin.” Mary ‘Tyler Moore describes herself as “a vegetarian but not a vegan”

Introduction

15

because she eats plentyoffish, reflecting a commonconfusion about vegetarian terminology.’’ Sheis plainlyin error about the meaningsofvegetar-

ianism and veganism. Atbest, she could be describedas “pesco-vegetarian.” Nonetheless, despite these quibbles, any form of “quasi vegetarianism”

can be auseful starting point for those who acknowledgethe justice ofthe vegetarian cause butneed timetofully adjust to its stringent requirements. Today, vegetarian advocates are inclined to regard vegetarianism as a process wherebyover time one comes to infringe increasingly less on the rights and wellbeing of animals. It is a process ofwhich I amacutely aware. [ must confess myselfguilty that I was a flesh eater manyyears ago whenI became chair of the Ontario Societyfor the Preventionof Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), renouncing flesh only two years after assuming the post and, even then,at first, continuing to consume someseafood onoccasion.

Thus, partial vegetarianism is treated by some vegetarian advocates as a

sometimes appropriate initial step. The American Dialect Society deemed “flexitarian” the most useful new wordof 2003, describing the term as applicable to “a vegetarian whooccasionally eats meat.” If we regardvegetarianism as a process, we should be waryof being too critical of such impurity. As the then twenty-six-year-old classical singer and actor Emily Klassenexpressed her “flexitarian” mode: “I hope that one dayI canbeabit

more virtuous and not eat meatatall.”’8 The vegetarian ethic is duly

asserted while falling short of vegetarian practice. Thepath is proclaimed. Nonetheless, we shouldbe concernedlest those whopractise half-measures should become accustomedto the shortfall. ‘To refer to flesh eaters such as “pollo-vegetarians” and“pesco-vegetarians’ as vegetarians at all seems, however, little different from regarding tradi-

tional Catholics whodeny themselves meat onFridays or Eastern Orthodox Christians whopartake of vegan feast days on occasion (Orthodox monastics are often vegans ) as some kind ofvegetarian. Indeed, the traditional

Catholic and Orthodox practices of suchself-denial seeminpartatleast to justify vegetariansbeliefs, although the religious would explain the reason for such absence as penitence rather than avoidance of harm.Ifthere are grounds for the denial of flesh onoccasion, then there would appearto be some groundfor considering the denial of flesh as in some mannerin principle preferable to flesh consumption, even though it maynot be thought a practicable regular habit because the spirit and Hesh of humankindare weak. It would appear Saint Paul opposed the requirement ofvegetarianism in the early Christian church not because it was not admirable but because, if it were stringently required, manypotential converts to the new

faith would be driven from Christianity by the hardship ofits practice. A

16

Introduction

goodcase can be made that the acceptance of flesh consumption inthe Jewish biblical tradition arose as a concession to humanfrailty in environmentally deleterious circumstances following the flood.?? Today, it is notable that many proudly proclaim they are vegetarians in part, even though theyeat chicken or fish. This ts an implicit acknowledgmentofthe

virtue of the vegetarian case. Such people want to proclaimthey approximate what theyfeel implicitly is the virtuous path.Moreover, to think of fish andpoultryas of a verydifferent order from the flesh of large animals is not without somecultural foundation. Thus, a case can be madethat early Christian vegetarians would partake offish, considering it a nonanimal itembecause ofits (apparent) lack of blood. Sometimes, supermarkets will have one section labelled “poultry” and anotherlabelled “meat.” And if one reads a contemporaryItalian restaurant menu, one islikely to encounter, beyond“pasta,” a section on “pollo” (chicken and maybe other poultry items) and one on“pesce” (fish and other seafood items, suchas shrimp andscallops) before one reaches “carne” (Hesh, meat proper, suchas beef, veal, and pork), an item seen as of a quite different nature from “pollo” and“pesce.” Veganism came into formal name andpractice in the English Midlands in the 1940s to identify those whonotonlyrejectall flesh and animalbyproducts fromtheir diet, including honey, but also refuse to wear or use

any products made from animals or involving harm to animals. Ofthese, manyare vegan at homebutfind it impossible to procure a vegan diet when eating out; and sometimesa less rigid vegetarianism may be found tobe necessary. Most vegans, of course, wouldfrequent a restaurant only where they knew a vegan meal could be obtained. Today, it is often possible to find a restaurant with vegetarian options but far more dificult to find a

vegan meal in manyplaces. This is already a significant improvement, for

not too long ago it was almost impossible to find a vegetarian meal when travelling or when a change ofvenue from home cooking was desired. Normal everyday celebrations outside the home provided insurmountable problemsfor the vegetarian, as is now sometimesthe case for the vegan.

In addition to vegans, we encounter: vegetarian “rawfooders,” whoeat

only uncooked nonflesh items, believing this to replicate the condition of original humanity (a few “raw fooders” also eat uncookedfish); “fruitarians, who refuse to kill either animals or plants and live fromfruits, nuts, seeds, and a few vegetables, which are derived fromplants but whose consumption, as we have noted, does not require the death ofthe host plant

itself; “macrobiotic vegetarians,” who live on whole grains, vegetation, and miso(a paste concocted from fermentedgrain andsoybeans); and “natural

Introduction

17

hygienists,’ who combine plantfoods in a certain manner and whofrequentlyfast. These latter groups each tend to think of themselves as the most complete vegetarians, endeavouringto ensure that their dietary prac-

tices do not exploit any member of the sentient realm in any manner and/or to replicate what they see as the pure andpristine human ofsome veryearly period in prehistory. There are also “locavores,” who,in addition to being vegetarian or vegan, and sometimes neither, try to eatlocal, seasonal foods wheneverpossible.

GROUNDS FOR VEGETARIANISM

There are at least eight possible grounds for adopting a fleshlessdiet: (1) one is not able toafford the price of flesh — historically a commoncondition and in some parts of the world today a contemporarycondition, facts that hint at the lie of those who claimflesh eating to be a precondition of humanhealth, for those who cannot afford flesh but enjoyfruit andveg-

etables do not generally seemto suffer from the compositionoftheir diet, although they may sometimessuffer from the paucityofit; (2) one refuses for religious or spiritual reasons to participate in anyself-indulgence and practises instead self-denial and self-purity — a course pursued by some early ancients, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jaina alike; (3) one’s

habit-determining religion teaches that animal sacrifice is not a just means of appeasing the gods — an occasional, but sometimes contradicted, precept

of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and a more rigorous and customary

precept by New Testament times; (4) one may have determined that a plant-based diet constitutes a healthy regimen and asignificantly healthier one thanthat enjoyed byanimal eaters; (5) one mayhave reachedthe conclusion that the conditions under which animals are reared and fed are environmentally harmful andthat one should eschewthe eating of animal products for environmental protection; (6) one maynot be opposedto the eating of animals per se, but animalsare so ill-treated under modern farming conditions that their consumption is unacceptable; (7) one maybe born into areligionor caste that practises vegetarianism and maycontinue this dietary habit merely becauseit is a part of one’s denominationorcaste identification — “cultural vegetarianism,” if you will; and (8) one maybe persuaded that the eating of animals is unethicalin and ofitself.Although all of these instances will find an occasional mentioninthis book,it is with

those who have been convincedtolive a vegetarian or vegan life on the eighth ground that I am primarily concerned. The reason givenfor the =

18

Introduction

rejection offlesh by 72 percent of vegetarians in a US 2005 poll was an ethical reason; four outofthefirst five reasons given bypolled British vegetarians were ethical reasons. Vegetarianism has become predominantly a matter of ethical concern. To give the reader the flavour of arguments for vegetarianismas they have changed over time, wherever possible —andit is increasinglypossible for some ofthe periods covered inthe later chapters — [ have included representative statements of their creed from the primary exponentsof vegetarianism themselves.

FLESH

The reader may wonder whyI have chosento write frequently of “flesh” rather than “meat.” The word “meat”in origin refers to anything usedas nourishment, whether from animals or not, usually solidfoods, although

in principle includingliquids. “Green meat” refers to grass as fodder or appropriate vegetables as food. “Meat” was also, and occasionallystill is, usedto refer to the edible part of fruits, eggs, nuts, and the like.There was

certainly no indication in its usage that exclusivelythe flesh of animals was

or is meant. It can be positively misleading when someone maysaythat

theyeat fish but no meat, for one mayrightlytalk of the meatypart of the

fish. And fish are of course animals as much as are cows, atleast according to the scientific criteria ofWestern culture. “Viand,” too — the French word for meatis viande, derived fromthe Latin vivenda, meaning “living,” but whenit is without the “e,” the word refers to victuals in general — has also

hada lengthy usage in English, meaningall kinds of sustenance. “Flesh,” by comparison, which derives from German andScandinavian sources,is

explicit, referring to that which covers the framework of bones and is

enclosed bythe skin of an animal — whether human or nonhuman.In the

context of this book, “flesh” has a double referent: it is the lust of the

humanflesh for animal flesh andits rejection that we seek to understand.

Nonetheless, as a concession to custom, | have sometimes mentioned

“meat where there is no doubt about the meaning. THEMES OF THE BooK

There are several themes in this book. The overarching theme is that, despite the occasional presence ofascetic and cultural vegetarianism, full ethical consideration for animals resulting in the eschewingofflesh did not

Introduction

19

arise until after the Aristotelian period in Greece. It was then repeated in

Romebefore disappearing until its revival at the turn of the nineteenth century.There are a numberofpartial exceptions to this, as with certain early Jewish and Christian vegetarian sects; with Leonardo da Vinci,

Thomas Tryon, George Cheyne, and David Hartley; with aspects of Eastern thought; and in a few other minor but engaging instances. A subsidiary theme is that the humanspecies was probably quasi-vegetarian and perhaps even fruitarian in origin. Further, the vast majority ofthe frequent eighteenth century advocates of vegetarianism preached without practising. It took the general questioning of authority and fundamental change in expectations encouraged by the culture ofthe Frenchrevolutionaryera to bring about a vegetarianismusually practised by those whopreachedit. A further argument, exemplifiedat points throughoutthe book,ts thathistorically there has been aparadoxical incongruence betweenthe developmentofsensibilities to animals and the declination to consumetheir flesh. A society may best be understood less by howit answers questions and more by what questions it perenniallyfails to ask itself. Whether we should consume flesh is rarely pondered. Customarily, we have treated whatis done traditionally as a compellingcriterion of what we oughtto do. Forthe vast majority of persons, customand virtue are, from a practical perspective,

almost synonymous. There is a propensityto believe that what isnormal — or what has become normal— is whatisright. It takes an event of the enormity of the French Revolution to persuade inquisitive voices to ask the relevant questions and considerit morally imperative to act uponthe answers. According to Plato, Socrates said that the unexaminedlife is not worth

living.°° Few humans have examinedtheir omnivorous practices with any degree of rigour. It shouldnotbe forgotten, however, that some very hon-

ourable andintelligent people have examined their diet and reached very different conclusions from those formulated bythe historical figures examined in this book. Often, the ecologically minded will argue acertain

amountofflesh eating and predationis necessary to maintain an appropriate species balance and toallowfor the use ofbarrenlandotherwise unproductive in farming. But the flesh eaters’ argumentsare customarilyderived from the proclaimedsuperiority ofhumansovertheir fellowcreatures. Paradoxically, this might be a reasonfor noteating animals rather thaneating them. Wouldwe expect Sir IsaacNewtonto feel entitled to eat an intellectually handicapped person? No. We wouldexpect Newton to have sympathy for those so inferior to him inintelligence, following the dictumof theologian and church father Clement of Alexandria about “training men to gentleness by their conduct toward those beneath them.”*! Would we

20

Introduction

expecta victorious side in hockeyto eat their vanquished foe? Ofcourse not. Despite the fact that the victors killed the vanquishedin the Mayan ball game (theydid not eat them), we are inclined to think ofthe practice as a cathartic ritual not to be repeated in more “civilized” climes. And although the word “cannibalism” derives from the Caribes, who practised it onthose “inferiors” they had defeated, no one todayproposes toreintroduce the practice — apractice still known in medieval Europe and, even later, in times of famine.** Should we, then, practise such rituals on “inferior’ animals? To know theattitudes with which this question was answered in the negative is what this bookisall about.

PURPORTED VEGETARIANS

Some avid vegetarians will be disappointed notto find muchdiscussion of their favourite “vegetariansin these pages or mention ofsomeof the most famous “vegetarian” quotations from these and otherauthors. The unfortunate reality is that the Internetis replete with entirely invented “quotations’ from someofthose authors whowere vegetarian but presumably did not say what the inventor wanted themto have said. Numerous websites,

even those of a reputed national vegetarian association, also contain lists of

vegetarians that include a numberwho,quite simply, were not vegetarians at all. In some cases, the relevant statement was made byone vegetarian and then applied mistakenly to another historical figure. Perhaps the purported vegetarians are includedinthe lists because they have impressive names and their inclusion gives greater prestige to the cause. Perhaps some-

times a person of one surnameis confused with another ofthe samesurname. Perhaps easily misread statements in books on vegetarianism have led to the assumption that somehistorical figures were vegetarian whowere not. Perhaps the logicof statements made bythese actors onthe world stage ought to have led to vegetarian practices, but the logic was not followed and they continued to consumeflesh. Inreality, the frequenterrors serve only as an embarrassmentto vegetarians whocare for honesty and accuracy. There are numerous inaccurate “quotations” to be found —from Albert Einstein, for example, who became avegetarian towardthe veryendofhis

life.And numerouslists ofvegetarians include both Henry David Thoreau and Charles Darwin, neither ofwhom gave upflesh orclaimedto doso. To make the matter worse, these gross errors have creptinto print in the writings of quite reputable authors. One such modernlist froman authorI respect, as well as a historical conference presentation that made the same

Introduction

21

error, included Sir Isaac Newton, whowas concerned to eliminate excessive

cruelty fromthe stockyards and the kitchenbutnottoeliminatetheirasso-

ciations withflesh. In fact,Newtonate a very limited amountoffood, with

little flesh, and he was often claimed byeighteenth-century vegetarians as one oftheirs. He certainly appears to have preferred vegetables, and he perhaps went without meatforperiods of time. Perhaps Newton's recognition

that animals were entitled to earnest ethical consideration was extended further than warranted. But he wasnt avegetarian. Or,atleast, there is no convincingevidence that he was — and, thus, no good groundsforclaiming

him as one. Another spurious website list produced by a Monterey, California, physician practising holistic medicine included Jeremy Bentham,

William Blake, Charlotte Bronté, CharlesDarwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Milton, IsaacNewton, Plato, Socrates, Jean-JacquesRousseau, Henry David Thoreau, H.G. Wells, William Wordsworth, Oliver Goldsmith,

Martin Luther, Alexander Pope, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Voltaire — for not one of whomis there any convincing evidence oftheir vegetarianism andfor most ofwhomthere is incontrovertible evidence they were not vegetarian. Some, including H.G. Wells, were decidedly antivegetarian. Another

listnamed Shakespeare, the economic andsocial theoristAdam Smith(an advocate but not a practitioner), and that avid hunter Prince Charles as

“famous vegetarians.” There is no evidence to support the vegetarianism of any one of them — and agreat deal to indicate otherwise. By comparison, the contentofthe International Vegetarian Union (I[VU) webpages is most impressive. The unionis both even-handedand impeccably concerned to reportthe historical reality. Nonetheless, even here readers are often misled into think ing that omnivorous animal advocates — listed under “history of vegetarianism’! — either also advocatedvegetarianismor practised it. Frequently, they didneither. To besure, the IVU addsadisclaimer acknowledging» that someofthoselisted mightnot havebeen vegetariansat all. But an impressionof their vegetarianism is left nonetheless. And why would theybe listed as vegetarians if there was no convincing evidence thatthey

were vegetarians?

RELATIONSHIP TO My PrREvious WRITINGS

Having alreadywritten extensively onthehistory of animalethics andthe developmentofattitudes to animalsin general, I was interested in applyin myfindings to the specific matter of ethical vegetarianism, a topicclose to my heart. But thatwould mean revisiting andreiterating aspects of my

22

Introduction

previous workto provide the context in whichvegetarian thought could be

placed, as well as restating someof the details mentionedelsewhere. Con-

sequently, especially, but not solely, in parts of the first half of the book, aboveall in the first half of Chapter8, I have recapitulated, and sometimes substantially so, some of what I have previously written elsewhere. Notto have done so wouldhaveleft gaps in the story and its framework. The narrative would not have read as a continuous whole. Accordingly, where appropriate, I have borrowedoccasional ideas, passages, and quotations from my Animals andNature: CulturalMyths, Cultural Realities, Awefor the Tiger, Love for the Lamb: A Chronicle ofSensibility to Animals, and Brute Souls, Happy Beasts, and Evolution: The Historical Status ofAnimals. Where these have been borrowed, theyhave been reoriented to a different audience and to questions relevant to the development ofvegetarian thought. Mysincere apologies are due to those who mayhave read someof myprevious work and thus to whomI maybe unnecessarily repeating myself on occasion. I trust that the entirely new remainderofthe book will make up for the repetition they endure. Vegetarianism is a topic I have touched upon but, despite my abiding interest, have never entered into in any depth before, other than in myedition of George Nicholson's Primeval Diet ofMan. However, muchof what I have written over the past two decades is tangentially relevant to vegetarian history. Thus, I do notfeel I come to the matter entirely anew. MANNER OF APPROACH

A half-century and more ago the academic normwasto attempt to produce

objective and impartial argument, to be “value-free.” In recent decades the majorityofsocial scientists, historians, and philosophers have moved away from suchan approach. Today, the far greaterlikelihoodis to encounteran

emphasis on rights, compassion, and justice rather than onimpartiality. There is an intermediate position that maybe said to encompassbothtraditions. Compassion maybesaid to be an appropriate concept that should guide our ends. Impartiality, or detachment, however, remains of great importance as avehicle. It is vital that one’s compassion andpredilections shouldnot influence howone reads the evidence. Nor should compassion control the directionthat the analysis should take or the evidence thatis investigated.When one discusses events of the past, the task is to write not as an advocate, although anadvocate oneis, but as ahistorianofideas. Put another way, it is vital that our research not be influenced by wishful

‘aden

[3

Introduction

thinking, as so often happens in the field ofanimalethics. It remainsas true today as in the heydayof“scientism” that our values should not predetermine the weighing or selection of the material. It is with this precept in mind that this book has been written. In the words of Tacitus in The Annals (bk. 1, ch. 1), history should be written sine ira et studio — with neitherbit-

terness nor partiality. Afurther apologyis in order. Although gender-neutral language is distinctly preferable, the requirements of historical analysis sometimes enjoin the use of “he” and“man”if one is not to misrepresent the thoughts ofthose ofearlier eras about whomoneis writing.

HUMAN ORIGINS

Mostpaleontological accounts of the earliest humans depict themas flesh eaters. Ifthese paleontologists are right — onthe balance ofpossibilities,

there is a reasonable chance they maywell be — it is one of the most astonishing facts of humanhistory, one that cries out for explanation, that most

societies, including our own,possess or possessed primal memories, or myths,

of a time when wewerenotflesheaters atall and of the circumstances in whichflesheating began. Whether it is from the account in Genesis, or from thetales of the Makritare of the Orinoco, or fromthe legends of the Cheyenne, welearn

of a time when no animals were consumedin the societal diet. Do these legendstell us something about humanorigins? Andif so, ifhumans were originally vegetarian or even vegan, what would, then, have occasioned their introduction to an omnivorous diet?Why doweall share very similar dietary legends? Is it an implicit recognition of our primordial nature?

Was it the fact, when humansleft the originalhomeland ofEast Africa and

year-roundvegetation was nolongeravailable, almost 2 millionyears ago, that humans first turnedto the eating of flesh? Such an explanationofthe change to flesh eating, if changeit is, must at the veryleast be incomplete

because the inhabitants of the African homeland were also omnivores, and

the fossil evidence indicates a continued period ofthe humanas both predator and preythere as well as in the newhabitats. Perhaps alightninginduced forest fire destroyed all the immediate vegetation, and the corpses

24

[3

xmo

The Humanin Prehistory

of the animals burnt in the fire were the onlysource of food. The merit of such anexplanation is that itwould allow us to begin to understand how humans came not onlyto eat flesh but also to eat cooked flesh. That raw flesh is, on the whole, too tough for our teeth to tear and chew suggests

primafacie anoriginal vegetarian or at least quasi-vegetarianlifestyle to be a distinct possibility for the humanspecies. Afterall, the earliest humans not only lackedfire but also had nosophisticated tools with which to kill or capture animals, nor the speedwith whichto entrap mammals or flying birds. Nonetheless, it should be noted that we tendto cook vegetable food as well. If the cooking offleshis a strange artifice, so, presumably, is the

cooking of other foodstuffs. Although it would not be asdifficult as to chewrawflesh, the chewing ofsome uncookedvegetables would also prove troublesome. That would suggest that we were perhaps fruit eaters before we used fire and cooked manyof our comestibles. Theclassical Greek vegetarian Dicaerchus believedthe first person sated with the produce of the oak tree took the step to war with the animals and with other humans.’ Theophrastus, also a vegetarian pupil of Aristotle, andhis successor as headofthe Lyceum, thought that animal consumption had begunas a consequence ofthe destruction ofcrops in war. If so, it is notable that there was no general attempt to returnto a vegetarian diet once the crops had recovered. In his “Essay on Flesh-Eating,” the GrecoRoman Plutarch (c. AD 46-120) speculated that before there was adequate agriculture, the infertility of savage earth provoked original humanstokill animals for food. Humans of his own era, he added, had no suchexcuse.

“Nature,” he tells us in the same essay, “firmlyforbids humansto feast on flesh.” But he has rather more to say on the abject horror of the first persons handling offlesh as foodandeating it than on the causes that invoked it. The seventeenth-century Pythagorean Thomas Tryondeclared fleshto have occasioned violence among men and appearsto believe the eating of flesh arose from the quarrelsome nature ofhumanbeings. George Nicholson, at the turn of the nineteenth century, proclaimedthe eatingof animal flesh to have begunin ancient times in order to prevent the cannibalism that he believed had become commonas a result of famine.’ In 1811, John Frank Newtoncited Pliny on blamingthe origin of flesh eating on Hyperbius, son of Mars, who killed the first animal, and on Prometheus, whoslew

the first ox — and discoveredfire, on which presumablyto roast the slaughtered ox. Keith Thomas has observed that seventeenth- and eighteenthcenturybiblical “commentators argued as to whether meat-eating had been permitted [after the flood] because man’s physical constitution had degenerated andtherefore required new forms ofnutriment, or because the

26

The Humanin Prehistory

cultivationofthe soil to which he was condemned required a more robust food, or becausethe roots andherbs on whichhehadfed in Edenhadlost their former goodness.”* By contrast, the most common modernpaleontological view is that the beginning offlesh eating requires no explanation, for we have always been omnivores. Perhaps, when adequate vegetation andfruit were scarce, scavengingthe marrowof,say, a leopard’s prey introduced humansto animalfare. Usually, the leopard, or some other powerful carnivore, woulddrag its prey, sometimes a hominid, into the fork of atree to escape competition from other predators, suchas lions, andthe successful predator would usually consume about two-thirds of the prey. The remnants ofthe flesh wouldbe devoured byeagerly waiting hyenas,jackals, vultures, andthelike, perhaps even by the competing lions. With the flesh nowtorn away andnoeasy pickings to be had, the weaker human's manual dexterity wouldallowfor the breakingof the bones and the extraction of the marrow.Infact, RaymondDart, the South African paleontologist who discovered the early hominid Taungchildin 1924, first believed that australopithecines were in

essencescavengers of animals, before Dart developedfully the now uncon-

vincing idea of*manthe butcher” (myterm, his analysis) by the 1950s.

Even the scavengerthesis isnowdoubted. Perhaps instead, ona particular occasionofscarcity and extreme hunger, anythingedible would have seemed acceptable, and a habit begunin scarcity was thenrepeated in abundance Oneotherpossibility, one bearingthe ring of truth, is that, as the African climate became morearid several millionyears ago, the equatorial forests went intoadecline, andthe transitional zones betweenforest andsavannah became, it would appear fromthe fossil record, the primary human area of habitation. Froma primarilyfruit diet,humans would have had to turn to more variegated fare, including leaves, vegetables, tubers, insects, lizards, and small mammals. In other words, environmental change would have brought abouta changeindiet. Thereafter, ashumantechnology improved

throughincrease in brain size, we would have learned to co-operate eftectively with other humansandto entrap larger animals — and the period of “man the hunter” would have begun, with an ever-present conflictin the humanunconscious mind between the vegetarian of Eden andthe omni-

vore of Arcadia(see pages 35 to 44 on the Golden Age). Ofcourse, in the

Edenic period, humans would not have thought of themselves as vegetarian ~ a thoroughly modern concept —as though diet were simply a matter of conscious choice, but would have felt more comfortable, more at ease, more human, more“natural” with a fleshless diet. Perhaps there is a smattering oftruth inall these hypotheses. Whatever the origins offlesh

The Humanin Prehistory

27

eating — assuming there were anyorigins —it is clear that any hypothesis

must, at least for the time being, remain largely speculative and unverifiable.And one must rememberalways that, so far as isknown, noother

species has undertaken a complete changeofdiet unless environmental circumstanceshave preventedthe continuationofthe original state. Whydoes it matter what we were in origin? In one importantsense,it does not matterat all. We have been continuously adaptingourselves to newcircumstances in our evolutionary developmentfor millions of years. Andthose adaptations have allowed us to continue to thrive on a new and ever-changing diet. In Aristotelian terms, it iswhat we are becoming, not what wewere in origin, that is the humanfulfilment. In anothersense, we

tendtofeel intuitively that our original diet is likely to have been morein tune with the needs ofourconstitution than anything developed during the oppressions and general vicissitudes of humanhistory — thetraditional argument being that “nature” is preferable to “culture.” Perhaps most important, whetheraflesh or tuberor fruit diet is more in accord with our dietaryorigins does not obviate the ethical requirement — a requirement that must stand until countered —not to harm othersentient creatures. It is not the responsibility of the vegetarian to showwhyother sentient beings should not be harmed — thatis primafacie an essential part ofall just treatment ofothers. Itis the responsibility ofthe flesh eater to demonstrate whythere should be an entitlement to the breach ofthe rule in the case of nonhumananimals. This must involve a demonstration of the justifiability of the slaughter of animals to fulfil an unnecessary human purpose, whichinturninvolves the demonstration ofthe worthiness ofthe humanto have other animallives sacrificed for its pleasure. And perhaps an important aspect of anysuch discussion involves talking always of eating animals rather thanofeating meat. To talk of eating meat is to avoid the psychological impact ofthe ethical question. Perhaps the discrepancybetweenthe paleontological accounts of human

omnivorousness andthe societal vegetarian legendsarises in part through a different understanding of “animal.” ‘Today, we tend tothink of an animal as anyliving organism, whether as complexas a dolphin or as simple as a worm, that is distinguished from plants by feeding on organic matter. Moreover, animals are related to each other bybiological descent anddis-

tinguished from plants in the same manner. Theyalso usually possess specialized sense organs and nervous systems. Typically, theyare self-directed andrespond more rapidlyto stimuli than do plants. Bycontrast, in huntergatherer societies there are no such “refinements” of understanding. “Animal”is the “higher food,” which is caught by the male hunters. Everything

28

The Humanin Prehistory

else, including small birds, eggs, lizards, and tiny mammals, is that which is gathered by the females and categorized separately as “lower food,” as “vegetable.”4 "Theact of hunting withartificialweapons determines the classification of“animal.”Inbiblical usage, blood is deemed the essence of humanand animallife, an identification continued in Western culture for manycenturies thereafter andnotentirely extinguished now.’ Perhapsthis wouldaccountfor the apparent exclusionoffish in early Christian culture fromthe notion of animal, for blood in the fish is not immediately apparent. [his view is suggestedin the writings of St. Augustine, who, knowing full well ofthe biblical fishing stories, still said Christ forbadefleshinhis disciples’ diet. In classical Greece, a prevailingdistinction was not between mammals andfish butbetween land animalsandsea animals, a distinction that persisted in later Catholic dietary laws, thus including whales,seals,

and squid along with cod, mackerel, and bass. Habitat was the defining characteristic.Other Greeks thoughtof animals as being recognized bythe fact that they breathed— air being takeninto or expelled from the lungs — which would suggest that only certain complex beings counted as “animals.” Likewise, Hindus, followingthe Rig- Veda, deemed Atman (breath or soul) the principle of animallife,which was apparentlynotsharedby plants. Theneo-Platonist Plotinus (c. AD 205-270) claimed animals feel pleasure

andpain, whereas vegetables do not— adistinctionthat begged the question of thestatus of the least sentient members of the animal realm, those

that almost two millennia later the pre-Darwin evolutionist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck would call the “apathiques” — the insentient. Begging the same question, at least byourscientific criteria of what constitutes an “animal,”

Plotinus’s student Porphyry(c. Ap 233-304) declared animals tobe rational, whereas plants were not, adistinction repeated in the seventeenth century

byJean de La Fontaine, querying whether we should notallow animals at

least this one distinction fromotherliving matter.® Theclassification of

“animal” has thus usually been a matter more ofculture thanofscientific taxonomy. Hence, the customarycritique of those whooppose vegetarian-

ism and animal rights that manysmall animals are insentient, lack reason,

and are thus not worthyofethical consideration entirely misses the point. It is, in the first instance, with the elimination of pain and suffering, not with thescientific concept of“animal,” that the ethical vegetarian is concerned. Occasioning the demise of an animal microbe maybe thoughtno breachofthe vegetarian ethic. Whydo the paleontologists think of humansas primordial flesh eaters? Perhaps tendentiousness is present to a degree in the mindofthe paleontologist because we have conceived ofourselves for millennia as primordial

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29

hunters, because being the head ofthe food chain and the dominantcreature on earthisa part ofourself-image, an image that would havearisen as

we becamehunters. The paleontologist maybe predisposedto find a flesheating ancestor. Yet as the seventeenth-centurypolitical philosopher Thomas Hobbes reminded us with his rhetorical question: “When a lion eats a man and a maneats an ox, whyis the ox made morefor the man than the man forthelion?”’ In part, paleontologists find humans as omnivores in the distant past because they expect to find humans as omnivores — the ox, it would appear, is thought to be made more for the man than the man for the lion. Theidea of head of the food chainseemsto follownot from evidencebutfromiimagination or assumption. Far from the human’s being head of the food chain, in someparts of the world carnivorous animals remain a constant threat to humanlife, as they once were over the whole planet in great profusion. Sometimes, potential victims, as with the inhab-

itants of the Sundarban delta in India, wear a face mask on the backs of

their heads so predators, in this case tigers, will think they have been spotted and thus abandonthe chase. Elsewhere, predation is common; almost everywhere, predation was once common. Indeed,inlight of the obvious error about our natural place in the food chain, why would we, whether paleontologists or not, ever 7magine ourselves headofthe food chain and the principal animal?Whyshould we not recognize, as any understanding of the general humanprehistorical role and the contemporaryrole in parts ofthe world, especially Asia andAfrica, would suggest, that the humanlies

somewhere in the middle of the food chain? The only possible answerlies in human conceit, prompted byour innermost psychological inheritance. It should be noted there is no consistency in the paleontological accounts of the diet ofthe earliest humans. Or perhaps we should saythe greatest consistency in suchaccounts is their variability over time. For example, until very recently the image of the Neanderthal wasthatofa snarling and gruntingfailed vegetarian species that died out, while flesheating Homo sapiens became masterofthe world. Flesh eating was thus seen to make us the most successful and the dominantanimal. Increasingly, the picture today of the Neanderthal is changing toone ofan intelligent and emotionally complex melodious creature who interbred with Homosapiens. At one time, humanity's fruitarian origins were takenfor granted,later

likewisehumanity's omnivorousness. In the past couple of centuries each generationhas differed from the previous generation in its account ofthe circumstances of human origins. Very often, the flesh-eating accounts read like rationalizations of those who wish to find some “natural” justification for their diet andtheir conquering demeanouras hunters. Descriptions of

The Humanin Prehistory

vegetarian origins read sometimes as convenient rationalizations of the accuracyof the sacred scriptures or of thevirtue ofdenial or as a psychologically satisfying confirmationofourintrinsically vegetarian nature. Less ideologically oriented accounts include, on the one hand, DesmondMorris

in The Animal Contract taking the traditional viewthat we were originally fruit eaters before we becameHesh eaters and, on theother, Jared Diamond

in The Third Chimpanzee taking the now more customaryviewthatflesh eating has been a perennial humancharacteristic.* Certainly, we should read all accounts (including this account) with a degree of reservation,

waiting for a time — if there ever will be one — when there is a great deal more convincing physical evidence than currently exists.What nowexists as evidenceis subject to a variety of competing but almostequally persuasive interpretations. As the vegetarian molecular biologist Randall Collura says, the “evidence presented ... has never been definitive, and I don't believe it ever will be.”? We shouldcertainly be very waryofthe grandiose image of humankindbuilt onscanty evidence and interpretedto elevate humanity without anygreat degree of reliability, other than the certainty of humanhubris. Butlet us not imagine that competinginterpretations of humanorigins are ofrecent vintage.‘At the turnof the nineteenth century George Nicholson, originally a Bradford printer, wrote anintriguing book entitled The

Primeval Diet ofMan, based on aconceptionofthe natural humanas prey and as naturally vegetarian in contrast with the following century's glorifcation ofthe prehistorical human predator.!° Nicholson quoted manyof the purported historical authorities stretching back over two millennia who

had maintainedover the centuries — as, indeed, the biblical book of Genesis also proclaims — thathumanswere originally vegetarian, even vegan, in

their dietary habits. Slowly, the idea of “man the hunter” came to super-

sede that of “man the vegetarian.” Ofcourse, it had long been proclaimed

that “man the hunter” was the pathtakenover a fewthousandyears (biblical literalness predominateddecidedly until the 1830s and lingered into the twentieth century, when all animal species, even the earth itself, were thought to be a mere fewthousand years ofage, six thousandbeing the compilation of Archbishop Ussher of Armagh). And, ofcourse, it isnow knownthat humans have been at least occasional small-animaleaters for a hundred thousand years and more. The question, however, that is con-

stantlyraised inquires about the fons et origo ofhumankind: arehumans by

natureand origin flesh, fruit, or vegetable eaters? Are we by nature andori-

gin savannah hunters or tree-top fruit pickers in the same mannerthat acat is a carnivore by nature and origin? The assumption throughout recorded

.ca

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history appears to have been that whatever we were in ourorigins best

expresses our fundamental moral nature.And the answer commonlyaccepted is in constant flux. Every quarter-centuryorso, the scientific community offers a very different interpretation of humannature andorigins. In our answers to questions of humanorigins, much will depend on what we consider “human”inourprehistory and what we countas “protohuman’(usually termed “hominid”). If we restrict the idea of “humanity” to the past hundredthousandyears or so, it would appear certain we have always beenflesh eaters, at least to a degree. However, if we seek “human-

ity’ shortly after our evolutionary breakfrom the othergreat apes, we probablyate fleshveryrarely, ifat all, perhapsthe occasionalin insect orlizard but probablynothingaslarge as a rabbit. Indeed, answers to these questions of origin depend equally on what is meant by animal, which probablyvaried greatly from our current ideas based onscientific taxonomic differentiations among animals, vegetables, and fruit, distinctions that would have

been completelyalien to the mind processes of ourearly ancestors. Indeed, onlyin the eighteenth centurydid the Western mind become imbuedwith questions of classification in anything approaching a rigorous manner, notably with John Ray andhis associates at the beginning of the century andwith Carolus Linnaeusthree decadeslater. Those whoconsider humans bynature vegetarianoften relylargely on the biology ofhumans fortheir evidence. Thus,it is said that whereas a natural herbivore has, for example, a long and complex intestine, a carnivore has a very short and simple one inorder to excrete the poisonouseffect of a flesh diet very quickly from the animal andto notallowtheflesh topermeate the whole body. This begs the very question of the biological nature of humanity, for few haveever claimedthe humanto be a natural carnivore but, like pigs, to be natural omnivores (animals who are opportunistic

feeders, capable of consumingalarge varietyofdifferent foodstufts, including both flesh and vegetable foods), many of whomhave structures very similar to those ofthe vegetarian animals. Certainly, we do not possess the physical characteristics possessed by, say, carnivorous lions or tigers, but nor do omnivorous pigs share these characteristics. There is a great deal of variety in animal and humandietary behaviourand physical structure. The choice is not restricted to being herbivores (strict vegetarians), carnivores (flesh eaters), or omnivores. There are alsofrugivores (animals whoeatfruit predominantly), gramnivores animals whoeat nuts and seeds primarily),

lores (those who exist mainly onleaves), and insectivores (who consume nsects and small vertebrates along with fruit and vegetation). And the comparison of our bodilystructure with those of the carnivores involves

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32

more than the merelysuperficial but requires us to notice, for example, that cell types distinguish species from each other according to the diets they consume.In addition, planteaters generally possess large chambersoffood deposits. Horses, rhinoceroses, and colobine monkeys have posteriorsacs, whereas cattle and deer ruminants have forward sacs. There are no such sacs, either posterior or anterior, in humans. Dogs (which are natural carnivores, although not so completelyas cats) have intestines that resemble those ofomnivores more than they resemble those ofother carnivores, such as raccoons. [he small canine teeth of humans are sometimes thoughtto indicate that the humanlacks adequateteeth for a flesh diet, but the size of the cranium andrelative smallness of the human jawbrought about by evolutionary developments of the brain may be more important than diet in determining the size and powerof the teeth. Moreover, the predominantly vegetarian gorillas and gelada baboonshaveverylarge canines, which eo

a

functionas bark-tearing devices, defence weapons, andvisual threats rather

than being essential for food consumption. Generally speaking, the human seems prima facie very well equippedstructurally as an omnivore rather thanthere being onesole legitimate interpretation of the humanasacreature structurally suited to a wholly vegetarian diet. As Randall Collura expresses it, the “bottom line is that nothing about our anatomyorphysiologydictates a vegetarian diet (or precludes one either).”!! Very often, those who claim the humantobeinorigin afruitarian or a vegetarian compare humansto their closest relatives, the apes. Thereis, however, considerable variety among apes. The onlyfrugivores appear to be gibbons andsiamangs, and theyare primarily rather than exclusivelyso. The orangutansare alsofruit eaters, although they consumealarge amount of general vegetation as well, but no substantial flesh. Gorillas eat vegetation in general, especially leaves, and againno substantialflesh. It was tradition-

ally thought that ourclosest genetic and evolutionaryrelatives, the chimpanzees, were also almost entirely vegetarian, but it isnow knownthat they

consume animals occasionally, both mammals andinsects, just as others of

the great apes eat insects. However, chimpanzees eat mammalmeatvery infrequently, and fleshis a very small proportionof their diet. Baboons prey occasionally on antelope. What this suggests tous is that there would appear to be a general inclination towardfruit and vegetable food amongtheapes but that habitat and availability play significant roles in the specific kinds of food eaten. Certainly, the flesh-eating chimpanzees, not unlike the gibbons, would appeartodiffer from most oftheir great-ape relatives, and one

is led to wonderfromthe accounts of chimpanzee meat eating whetherit is an aspect of bravado and machismoratherthananyreal dietary preference,

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33

whether the choice depends more on psychology than on biology. Thus, young male chimpanzees capture and kill smallmonkeys in an apparent attempt to impress females, whoare offered a morsel ofthe prey, ratherlike

humanteenagers with marijuana, alcohol, or tobacco. The biblical idea of

“the fruit of the forbiddentree” is not without merit in the case of the chimpanzees.'* The human has manyclose relatives who have restricted fruit or vegetarian diets, but they do not include the veryclosest cousin. Whenwelook at the bodystructure of early humans andrecognize that

they lackedtalons andclaws, could not match a cheetah,a tiger, or even a rabbit for speed, and possessed far weaker and smaller teeth thana croco-

dile or a lion andless agility than a monkeyor a squirrel, we soonrealize how implausible it is to think of our human ancestors as specialized

hunters, as has sometimes been thought. Investigating the fossil evidence — skulls, other bones, footprints — of Australopithecus afarensis, wholived

between 5 and 2.5 million years ago, we are led to the speculative conclusion that they were bipedal, stood aroundfourfeettall on average, weighed around eighty pounds, andhad teeth pretty much like our own. Moreover, they did not havetools to cutflesh (the first tools were constructed about2 to 2.5 million years ago), and theyhad nofire on which to cookflesh. The

first solid evidence for controlledfire comes from significantlyless than 1 million years ago, although some suggest the controloffire began “perhaps as far back as ... 1.8 million years ago.”'’ Nosatisfactory flesh digestion, at least of the tougher portionsofflesh, could have occurred before the control of fire. Indeed, we are led to wonderwhyfire was introduced for cooking if other animals were our natural diet. Would we not have expected to eat themraw?It is very difficult to conceive of humans, as we have already noted, as generally raw-Hesh tearers and eaters other thanof thevery smallest of mammals, birds, and lizards. It is worthrecalling that in zoology the Carnivora is an order ofmammals — comprising the cats, dogs, bears,

hyenas, weasels, civets, raccoons, and mongooses —that have powerful jaws and teeth adapted for tearing and eating flesh. The human does notfit at all as a primaryflesh eater. Nor do humansescape the problemofthe lack of carnivorous characteristics by conveniently designating them as omnivores instead. Theyare still expected to be consumers of significant quantities of flesh.

The famous Australopithecus, Lucy, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, had

“anexceptionally long big-toe,”Donna Hart and Robert Sussmantellus in z

Manthe Hunted, “that was divergentlike our modern human thumbs and could be used to grasp and climbtrees.”'* Customarytree climbing suggests prima facie a fruit-eatinglifestyle. Moreover, the evidence for systematic

34

The Humanin Prehistory

organized hunting of anything other than small mammalssuggests hunting began no more thansixty thousand years ago, at most ninety thousand. Whenwe consider further that there were very many times more large predators in the distant prehistoric past than today and that thosein existence were far larger than their modern counterparts —sabre tooth tigers,

hyenas, crocodiles, lionesses, and the like, which would find a humanto be

a tasty supper— it is not unreasonable to assume, as the fossil record suggests, that the human wasprimarily afruit, tuber, and nut eater whostayed well away wheneverpossible fromthe predatory carnivores. Moreover, the human did not possess the weapons necessary to kill any but the very smallest of animals and lacked the speed orstealth to catchall but the very slowest. Further, humans were withoutthe social organizationnecessary to arrange a hunting expedition, and manyearly skeletons have been found with carnivore teeth indentationsin their skulls, indicating humans’ status

as prey. It is perhaps likely that a few insects, and maybe small lizards and the like, were consumedalong with the fruit andvegetation, but Australopithecus afarensis was probably an a/most complete vegetarian, livingcertainly no less comfortablyinthe trees as on the savannah,as indicated bythe long arms — hanging by them to pick fruit — andrelativelyshortlegs. Thick jaw bones and smallincisors and canines compared to the molars, whichare

large, flat, and blunt, were characteristics of Australopithecus afarensis. Strik-

ingly, there were no long shearingcrests on the teeth required for the chewing of substantial flesh. The evidence overwhelminglysuggests an animal that ate leaves, fruits, seeds, and tubers predominantly. M. Teaford and P. Ungar conclude that “early hominids were not dentally preadaptedto eat meat— theysimplydid not have the sharp,reciprocally concave shearing blades necessary to retain and cut suchfoods.”!’ Nonetheless, sometimes whenwe look to modern hunter-gatherers, we often tend, sadly and prejudicially — “they are closer to humanorigins than we are,” we imagine — to assumethat

their preferred fleshdietis likely to be similarto the diets ofour earlyancestors. It is certainly true that no aboriginal societies, or significant groups

within suchsocieties, are vegetarian, althoughit is estimated that the gather-

ings of the womenconstitute over two-thirds ofthe diet. The male hunters would not like it to be so. Yet their preference for flesh eating may be understood,like that of Western culture, as a part of theirArcadian rather

than Edenic character, as will be explained in the next section of this chapter. It has customarily been argued thatit was in the organizationofthe hunt that humans begantolearn to develop their skills and their minds, thus

becomingthe large-brained ape with far more reason and sagacity than other species. Yetit is justas likely that the brain evolved not in hunting but

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35

in trying to outwit the predators. Indeed, co-operation andsocialization wouldhave developedin like manner not as mutual advantage in the hunt but as necessarysteps to provide defence. Predators are oftensolitaryani-

mals, or they mayact in pairs. Diurnal primates find it necessaryto live in permanentsocial groups both to provide sufficient voices to sound a predatory alarm and for there to be more individuals to confuse their foes by scattering, or to mob them,if attacked. The most that canbesaid is that the evidence suggests a human who wasoriginally prey and quasi-vegetarian as a distinct possibility, although this is a supposition without anyabsolute certainty. At the same time, with absolute certainty it can be said therelatively recent humanis the only primate ever to have regularly eaten large

animals — as large as a rabbit, thatis. In fact,mainly throughthe paucityof

large animals there, the European “discoverers” of the Caribbean islands were astonished to findthe inhabitants living predominantly on worms,

spiders, and other insects.They were insectivores. We can be sure that if

early humansate anyflesh, it was not of the large-animal variety that we encounter in our grocerystores.

THe GOLDEN AGE

The Golden Ageis a period of human prehistory remembered or imagined in the legends of almost all societies.The idea of the Golden Age playeda majorrole in Chinese and Indian thought. InIndia, the age is thoughtto have long disappeared, now replaced with the corrupt Iron Ageof Kali. Stull, today, the Pityantjatjara aborigines of Australia revere tjukurpa, the mystical past and its legendary heroes. A similar conceptionis present in many contemporaryforaging societies. Islam, too, holds to a conceptionof the highest ofallhumansas the zmsan-/-kamil—the primordial manoffully realized spiritual qualities.And the one-time doyenne of medieval studies Hélene Guerber acknowledgedit also as aWestern legend, albeit deriva-

tive. “Ofall the romances ofchivalry,” she tells us:

The most mystical andspiritual is undoubtedlythelegendof the HolyGrail. Rooted in the mythology ofall primitive races is the belief in a land of peace and happiness, a sort of earthly paradise, once possessed by man, but now lost, and onlyto be attained again bythe virtuous. The legend of the Holy Grail, which some authorities declare was first knownin Europe bythe Moors and Christianizedbythe Spaniards, was soonintroduced into France, where Robert de Borron and Chrestien de Troyes wrote lengthy poems about

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it. Other writers took up the theme, among them WalterMap, Archdeacon

of Oxford, who connected with it the Arthurian legends. It soon became

known in Germany, where in the hands of Gotttried von Strassburg, and especially ofWolfram von Eschenbach,it assumeditsmost perfect and pop-

ular form.'®

The Anglo-Saxon word “aergod” means “as good as at the beginning.” The thoughtpersists in the writings ofAquinas. The ideaof the originalas somehowthebest is to be found in most cultures. Was there a Golden Age? Certainly not, if what we meanbythatis the utopian ideal outlined byits historical promoters. Nonetheless, the ques-

tion is answeredless easily if what is meantis a time whencultural novelties were not always sought and a time before knowledge was desired as an end in itself. The conception ofa prior Golden Age could well have arisen from a perception thatnotall arts, knowledge, and wisdom had proved beneficial tohumankindandthat something of inordinate value had been lost in the course oftime. After all, the serpent, the symbolof thefall, was always portrayed as wise. And wisdomwas associated with cunning and hence withdeceit or evasion. Amodernexpression ofthe return of the GoldenAge and thevictory of the virtuous is to be found in the rapturous chant ofthe Iranian people awaiting Ayatollah Khomeini’ return fromexile in 1979: The daythe Imamreturns No one will tell lies anymore No one will lockthe doors of his house People will becomebrothers Sharing the bread oftheir joys together In justice andsincerity.!”

As FrancisWeen wrote of the endeavours of the Khomeini sycophants, “Iran goes back to a past that seems a lost paradise.”!® This lost paradise would appearto be an integral part of the human psyche,a desire toovercome whatare seen as perennial, but not inevitable,human characteristics

associated withour historical experience. There is a decidedpossibility ofthe legend being a part of earlier Western oral myth, evenifit first arrived in popularliterary formonlyinthe Middle Ages.In religious literary form the legendgoes back at least to Genesis within the Judeo-Christian tradition and muchearlier in other coun-

tries of the Middle East, in India, and in China. Andit plays an important

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rolein classical philosophy. It has, as indicated, long beena part of popular

literature, again exemplified throughVoltaire’s Dr. Pangloss in Candide: “Men... must in somethings have deviated fromtheir original innocence; for they were not born wolves, and yet they worry one another like those

beasts of prey.”!? Likewise, in Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubertrefers to “the cradle of humansociety” as the time of“the savage ages when men lived off acorns in the depths ofthe forest. Then theycast off their animal skins, garbed themselves in cloth, dug the ground and planted the vine.

Was this an advance? Didn't their discoveryentail more disadvantages than benefits?”*° The acorn myth was alreadypresent in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (first century aD), where we read: “Ceres discovered corn; previ-

ously menhad lived on acorns.”7! Our imageofthe earlyhumanor hominid begins to change fromthat of the essential hunter when we cometo recognize that the early human, and for that matterall othergreat apes, were in origin far more prey than predator species andthat their behaviour correspondedto this predominant reality. In light of the distinct possibility that the earliest humans were vegetarian,or at least quasi-vegetarian, the primal memory of the Golden Age becomesreadily comprehensible, especially when weunderstand that the legend consists of two competing elements or stages: the Edenic andthe Arcadian — primal memories occasionedby different periods of human prehistory.” The first is a primal memoryof our period as prey(see the next section ofthis chapter), whereas the secondis a primal memoryofthe early stage of our predator period, and the twoare ever in tension within the humanpsyche. These periods, or stages, may be understood as the vegetarian (prey) and omnivore (predator) stages, as depicted in the humanjourney from “manthe hunted” to “man the hunter.” The conception ofthe human as in essence hunted or hunter turns out to be a questionnotreally about essence at all but about the humanin different periods of prehistory and the impact these stages have left on the human mind. Eachstage informs a part ofthe humanpsyche andis incompatible with the otherpart informed bythe other stage. Being both hunted and hunteris apartof the human primal memory. In its pure form, as what Max Weber called an “ideal type” (although suchtypescertainly neverexisted in their entiretyin actuality), the Edenic is rural, simple, peaceful, altruistic, symbiotic, innocent, loving (agape), co-operative, compassionate, meek, tender, egalitarian, andvegetarian — in short, the Edenic worldis the world oft Fheangelic

andsaintly. This is the Eden of Genesis before humans and animals becameflesh eaters and before the fruit of the tree of knowledge was eaten, as so many

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religions depict, the time ofan essential difference fromourpresent nature.

It is viewed as the earliest stage of humanprehistory, a period when,in the words ofElijah Buckner in 7he Immortality ofAnimals (1903), a view shared

by the vegetarian founder of Methodism, John Wesley: “the earth, teeming

with every variety of useful productions, was the great storehouse of the Almighty, from whichall living things were commanded to help themselves. Theywere all vegetarians, for they were commandedby God to live on nothing else. There was no necessity to destroy one life to support another... In this primeval innocence, there was surpassing beautyin every animate and inanimate object, and everyliving thing in the heavens above

andall that movedinthe waters below, were at peace.”*? Few would accept today such an accountas prehistorical reality. Even more secular writers

suchas Virgil and Jean-Jacques Rousseautook humankind'’s originally simple and vegetarian past for granted. The first written expression of the Golden Age in Westernliterature came from Hesiod (eighth century Bc) when he contrasted in Works andDays ourpresent “age of iron,” a degraded age of “toil and misery,” of “constant distress,” with the GoldenAge, in

which “all good things were theirs, andthe grain-giving soil boreits fruits ofits own accord inunstinted plenty, while theyat their leisure harvested their fields in contentment and abundance.”™“Every reference to a ‘golden age’ in Westernliterature and speech,” M.L. Westtells us, “derives directly or indirectly from ... Hesiod,” although there was a previous passingreference to such an age (unnamed) in Homer's //iad(bk. 1, 260-68).*? The veg-

etarian emphasis was likewise expressed by Plato (c. 428-347 Bc) in the

Statesman(269-74) andby the Romanpoet Ovid(43 Bc to AD 17): “content with foods produced without constraint[i-e., compulsion, force, killing],

they gathered th

berries and blackberries clingingto the bramble thickets, and acorns which

hadfallen from the broad tree of Jupiter.””° Evenearlier, the Pythagorean

poet Empedocles (c. 490-430 BC) hadtold us that in such anage: “the altar did not reekof the unmixedbloodofbulls, but this was the greatest abom-

ination among men, to snatch outthelife and eat the goodly limbs.””’ Moreover, in that bygone age, Empedoclessays, “all [animals] were gentle and amenable to men, both beasts and birds; and kindness glowed.”*? He showed his preference for thesacrifice of costly perfumes rather than flesh.

373°"

In fact, Empedocles commended the life of ancient humans, who, he

believed, were peace-loving vegetarians who eschewed animal sacrifice to

the gods until Strife entered the world and the perennial conflict began between Love andStrife that epitomized what he thoughtof as the modern world, with Strife ever in the ascendant.

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The “ideal type” ofArcadia, by contrast with Eden but sharing some of

its characteristics (again neverfully achieved inactuality), is rural, simple, industrious, adventurous, loving (eros), loyal, courageous, strong, honourable, respectful, hierarchical, hunting-based, and omnivorous —inshort, the world of Pan, King Arthur, and the “noble savage.” According to the

renownedanthropologistofreligion MirceaEliade, this desire for a return to the past, of which, I am postulating, both Eden andArcadiaare reflections, arises in an attemptto overcometheinevitable decayinvolved in the

marchofhistory, which removes us fromthe perfection of the creation of

the gods.” If the origins provide security and change produces dishar-

mony, then the creations of the gods are far superior to the civilizations

developed by humankind. Buttheyare different securities provided bythe “origins.” They are similar in that both Eden andArcadia are in conflict with the cultured soul ofthe city and its technology, which delights in “progress, books, learning, the arts, and the finesse ofcivilization, as well

as, of course, in science andluxury. But whereas Edenis an objectof beauty,

serenity, and reverence, Arcadiarelates more to the awesome,the sublime, and the majestic. In Arcadia, it is the rugged laws of nature that are respected, whereas in Edenit 1s the individuallives of animals. It is even

thought that in the ideal Edencarnivorous animals would be neitherpred-

ators against us noragainst the other vegetarian animals. Together, the ideas

of Eden and Arcadia are in constanthistorical tension in the human mind and breast — hence the impossibility ofconnoting the ideal nature ofhumankind: there are competing ideals in constanttension within our minds.We do not endure moral relativism. We endure conflicting moral absolutes. In the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, composed on twelve tablets about three thousand years ago, the path from Eden to Arcadiais exemplified. Here, Enkiduis a primitive humanwholives in accord withthe ani-

mals, sharing in commonwith thema vegetarian diet. The temple girl,

Shamat, and the symbolofearlycivilization, Gilgamesh, escort Enkidu on

an adventure to prove himcapable of valour, lust, reason, and the robust virtues.When he returns to the animals temporarily, they no longer

acknowledge him as one of their own, andhe no longer possesses their

speed andstrength. Enkiduhas arrived in Arcadia. He no longer sees himself as an animal in the waythat other animals are animal. Before Arcadia is reached, most societies have legends of a wholly vegetarian past, nowlost in the mist of time. Thereafter,humans andcertain other animals become flesh eaters. Thus, the Makritare of the Orinoco

believe that, in the conclusion of the vegetarian stage, “Mantuwa, the Jaguar, approached and took abite of the serpent flesh. That was the first

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eating of meat. Whenthe others sawthe red bloodflow, theyallpressed in for amouthful.”°° The elders ofthe Bassari of West Africa teachthatbefore the time offlesh eating, the deity Unumbotte gave the people “seeds ofall kinds’ and said, “go plant these” so that “the people mightlive fromtheir fruit.” In remarkable similarity to Genesis, “Snake” tempts “Manandhis wife” to eat forbidden fruit — flesh — instead.*! They become aware oftheir differences from other animals, develop a separate language from that of the othercreatures (thatis, their interests diverge), and becomeflesheaters.

George Nicholson repeats one of the traditional interpretations of the origins offlesh eating, suggestingthe practice arose after an animalsacrifice to the gods whena Phoenicianpriest picked a piece ofburnt offering from the ground andlicked his lips.*” The myth of the Golden Ageis treated in modernliterature as an ahistorical imagination. But we need to ask: howahistorical is it, and what

function does it perform? According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, “myth”is “r. a traditional story concerning the early history ofa people or explaining anatural or social phenomenon,andtypically involving supernatural beings or events. 2. a widely held butfalse belief — a fictional person or thing — an exaggerated oridealized conceptionofa personorthing.” Thus, amyth maybetrue or false.There are various kinds of myths. Some are myths that explain. Some are myths that instruct. Some are myths that instruct while providing true orfalse historical explanation.And as Maynard Mack has it, “most myths are caramelized fragments of common 2933 , e s Being accustomedto scientific explanation,we tend to forget how sen the explanations of science evolve, at least in part, from our owncultural stance. To be sure, the explanations offered by science may be more convincing explanations to us than those offered in the absence ofscientific method, butthe latter are very persuasive in the cultures in which theyare developed. Forearlier humans, explanations would have to be ofthe pre-

scientific variety.To experience something of a mythic awakening, it is

worth watching a magnificent, shimmering dawn and then imagining, in

the absence of scientific explanation, in what terms the societal elders would have explained the shimmering dawnto the initiates and the difference betweenit and a dull and cloudy dawn. A bright, beautiful dawn may well be explainedas the gods speeding across the heavens andlighting the day. A dull dawn maybe explained as the gods being hinderedintheir progress by the enemiesoflife-giving light. The night, which the dawnis

dispersing, is a time of darkness and danger.(Itis difficult to discern when

candles were invented, butit was probably not until Romantimes. Their use did not become widespreaduntil the later Middle Ages. Until then, the

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4I

primary diminutionofthe darkness ofthe night was the light of the moon. Flaming torches were notoriously unreliable.) The moon maythus have been worshipped as the provider of a measure ofrespite from the unseen terrors of the dark. Anduponthefearsof the night, the promise of the day, and the experience of mysterious events, a whole pantheon ofgods — some

threatening, someat least occasionally benevolent, including thelife-giving

Sunandthe twilight-givingMoon — will have emerged. The conflict between the Edenic and Arcadian versions of the Golden Age myth will allow us to understand howit is that a myth mayretain competing elements: a pride in the original humanas beingat one with the animals and an equal pride in having becomeflesheaters. Thus, for example, in the Cheyennecreation myth, originally “every animal, big and small, every bird, big and small, every fish, and every insect could talk tothe people and understandthem. The people ... went naked and fed on honeyand wild fruits; they were never hungry... Duringthe days theytalked with the other animals, for they were all friends.”** This was, of course, the Edenic stage in which pride is expressed. These conditions did notlast, however, for the “Great Medicine taught” the Amerindians to catch andeatfish at a time whennoneofthe other people knewabouteating meat ... the Great Medicine blessed [the Amerindians] and gave them some medicine spirit to awaken their dormant minds. From thattime on they seemedto possess intelligence and knowwhat to do. The Great Medicine singled out one of the men and told him to teach people to band together, so that theyall could workandclothe their nakedbodies with skins of panther andbearanddeer. The Great Medicine ... gave them corn to plant and buffalo for meat, andfrom that time on there were no more floods and no more famines.”

Humanco-operation permitted hunting, and henceflesheating andpelt

acquisition, which, thus, according to the myth, ensured human survival.

The utopian ideal of Eden was being replaced by the courageous and adventurousideal ofArcadia. The pride in the Edenic stage did notdisappear but existed alongside that of Arcadia, albeit in a weaker form. In the

precarious earlier period, so the Cheyenne legend of the origins of the

buffalo hunttells us, it was initially the buffalo who was the meateater, but

eventually the human vanquished the buffalo in a contest and wonthe

right to consumethe buffalo instead. In other words, at first,nonhuman animals were the predators, and humananimals were the prey. Later, as we

shall see, the period of the human as prey was replaced by that of the

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human as predator. The Cheyenne legends depict clearly the conflict between the “natural” (“original”) and the cultural, the instinctive and the

learned, the primitive andthe developed — in short, the Edenic andthe

Arcadian, which have come to confound humanideals ever since. Aboriginals everywhere inhabit the world ofArcadia rather than Eden, which,

paradoxically, may comelater (or perhaps constitute a return) in human conscious development. For the aboriginal, as for the supposedly “civilized,” the Arcadianis seen as the decidedly superiorstage, one in which the humanhas changed from preyto predator, but thelingering pride in Edenis neverquite lost.

Whatif there were no vegetarianstage in humanprehistory, as, we must constantly remind ourselves, most paleontologists continue to believe?

Eventhe ethicalvegetarian scientist Randall Collura states that we “evolved eating a wide varietyof diets containingboth plants and animal food” and that “humans dontreally have a naturaldiet.”%° In this circumstance, the Edenic vegetarian ideal must be seen as a deeply held moral value — the absolute, if dificult to attain, ethical ideal. If such is the case, the Golden

Age does not in any mannerrepresenthistorical reality; instead, the pervasiveness of the myth suggests that it was an intuited moral goal of humankind. It iswhat the humanis conceived to be inideal form —the Form, the Idea, ofPlato's justice, if you will. It is humanperfection;it is a primal moral memory, to express it in quasi-Wordsworthian and Jungian terms.°’ It is an expression of the sense ofjustice present in every human, however distorted culture may have rendered it. But it is also seen as an impractical ideal. Its alternative is viewedas the necessity of culture replacing nature in humanconsciousness. The addition ofArcadiaalongside the perennial myth of Eden suggests a permanent contradiction in humanity's primal memories. Neither culture nor contradictionis a recent acquisition. We have to return to Eden toescape the contradictions, if they can ever be escaped at all. But the image of Arcadia is so deeply implanted inthe human mindthat anyretrogression to Eden is a dauntingtask. The moral imperative may be weakenedgiven the “would it were so” nature of the mythofthe Golden Ageinthat, according to the myth, nat-

ural carnivores become vegetarian when it is clearly incompatible with their biological constitution that they be so, even thoughit is worth noting that

manywell-intentioned, but perhaps misguided, vegetarians have attempted

to render their carnivorous companionanimals likewise vegetarian.** Of

course, it would not have been possible that in the distant past carnivorous

animals would have been vegetarian, as the mythrequires. Or that herbiv-

orous animals could have been carnivorousat one time, as suggested in the

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Cheyennelegend. The use of the buffalo as predator in the myth, rather than the real predators from whomthe Amerindians have suffered, provides a convenientjustification for the slaying ofthe buffaloes inrevenge.

The mythis, in fact, a rejection ofthe cruel realities of carnivorous “nature”

— namely, that there are carnivorous animals, notably carnivorous animals from whose teeth and claws humanstraditionally have suffered. Nonetheless, it is equally clear that such arestriction on the myth wouldnot necessarily have applied to omnivorous humans. It maywell be that the human part of the moral or historyis valid as history, whereas that of the carnivorous animals is merely a wish basedon a utopianimage ofthe eradication of competitive and aggressive nature, which humansprehistorically had to endure — a nature frequently deemed deplorable by such prominent historical figures as Leonardo daVinci, Victor Hugo, Charles Darwin, Thomas Hardy, and George Bernard Shaw.”’ Toreferto the words of Darwinalone,

writing to J.D. Hooker in 1856: “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low andhorridlycruel works of nature.”*° In short, vegetarian impulses constitute an attempt to replace the rancour of a world of natural conflict with the tranquility of the utopian peaceable kingdom, to overcome the morally wasteful and harmful in favour of the morallypristine. The Edenic primary premise maybe expressedin the dicta of various traditions, such as the saying of the Christian desert fatherAbbot Mosesthat “a man ought to do no harmto any,”“! the Judaic adage of Bal Taschit (do not destroy), andthe Jain principle of ahimsa (nonharm). Despite the adages, Arcadian harmto others remained the norm. At the veryleast, the earliest time of the Golden A ge presents itself as the essential human morallesson. In the words of Porphyry expressing the vegetarian mandate: “We shouldimitate those thatlived in the goldenage, we should imitate those of that period whowerefree. For with them modesty, Nemesis and Justice associated, because they were

satisfied with the fruits ofthe earth.” Randall Collura says that today, in contrast, the “first thing we needtodo... is to abandon the Gardenof Eden

mythology.”But dowe? If one has serious doubts about thehistoricityof the GoldenAge, as manywill, the doubt does noteliminate the appeal. As the philosopher Daniel Dombrowski has pointedout, although “once upon atimestories ofa contract between man andanimal are merelystories, so are the ‘once upon atime’ stories between manand man.In that

this condition has not bothered the history of social contract theoryfrom Plato to Kant to Rawls, it should notbother us. Thatis, these stories ofan ancientvegetarian past, evenif not true, offer insights into the beliefs of the

people whotold them.”**

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What if neither the claimed historicity nor a manifestation ofthe intuited good appears convincing as anexplanationforthe persistence ofthe myth of the Golden Age? Thenthe myth would appearto stand as a symbol for that which humanityhasstriven throughoutits history. For example, in Dostoevsky'’s The Devils (1871-72), Stavrogin has a “Golden Age” visionof a primeval earthly paradise of happiness andinnocence,inspired by Claude Lorraine’s painting Acis and Galatea: “A feeling of happiness, hitherto unknownto me, pierced myhearttill it ached ...Here was the cradle of European civilization, here were the first scenes from mythology,

man’s paradise onearth. Here a beautiful race of men had lived. Theyrose andwentto sleep happyand innocent; the woodswere filled withtheirjoyous songs, the great overflowoftheir untappedenergies passed into love

and unsophisticatedgaiety. The sunshed its rays on these islands and that sea.” Yet Dostoevskyis aware oftheillusion, althoughitis an illusion that loses nothing bybeing anillusion. Stavrogin continues: “A wonderful dream, a sublimeillusion! The most incredible dream that has ever been dreamed, but to whichall of mankindhas devoted all its powers during the

whole of its existence, for which it has died on the cross and for whichits prophets have been killed, without which nations will not live and cannot even die.”*? Whether history, intuition, or symbol of human goals, the

GoldenAge stands as a remarkable signpost ofthe finest ideals of humanity. It is a signpost whoseclarioncall resonates deeply in the humanbreast. THe HuMANAS PREY

Myth depicts humans as vegetarian in origin.And myths usually have some historical, moral, or explanatoryjustification. But on what hard evidence, we must ask, should we believe the humananimalto have been

originally a predominantly vegetarian and preycreature rather than a natural predator? We have already met somesignificant hard evidence, but there is more. Paranthropus boisei, discovered by the Leakeys in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, was saidto be “robust” — referring not tooverall stature but to the extremelylarge jaws and molars, suitedto grinding hard, fibrous plant material. The teeth of australopithecines were also decidedly not those of a flesh eater. However, because intestines do not fossilize, it is

impossible to discern whetherthe intestines of primitive humans resembled those of vegetarian animals most completelyornot. Pewflesh-eating predators are also natural prey, althoughthere are a significant numberofexceptions. An adult animal usually belongs to one

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AS

categoryor the other. Thus, humanflesh eating along withatradition of being hunted must be seen as somethingofararity, evenif the antitheses

occur at different periods of human development. Butitis a rarity borne out byevidence and argument. Holes in the skulls of some early hominid fossils match perfectly with big-cat fangs.Many humanfossil bones bear the marks ofbeing gnawed. Hans Kruuk, an authority on predators, argues that our horror, yet fascination, with man-eatertales is based on ahardwired fear of our history of having been hunted, afear developed over millions of years.“ The horror, together withfascination, reflects that one

meets danger with both anxiety and excitement: witness the attraction of

horror films, an attractionscarcely explicable in the customary terms of

“entertainment” or “pleasure.” The strange reality - unfathomable in conventional terms —is that manypeople are excited byevents that arousefear. Paradoxically, fear mayitselfbe fulfilling on occasion,as exemplified bythe synchronyofterror and the sublime. During the Raj, the British kept statistics on the numbers of humans

lost to tiger predation. Between 1800 and1900, theyestimated somethree

hundred thousand humans had beenkilled.*” In the summer of 1996 in

Indian Uttar Pradesh, there were thirty-three fatal wolf attacks on chil-

dren.*® Ignorant, weak, and inexperienced human childrenare especially easy prey. Self-confident, aggressive carnivores canafford to live alone;

weaker animals mustlive communally. And the humanis a decidedly social animal, out of prehistoric need. As the protoanarchist William Godwin wrote: ©There is nothing that the humanheart moreirresistibly seeks than an object to whichto attach itself.”” As the numberoflarge predators has declined ingeneral through human populationexplosion,habitat destruction, effective hunting, urbanization, and“civilization,” a few areas of the world have remainedrife with predation. Nile crocodiles are still feared as creatures that dine on humanflesh andthat ofother primates. In the already mentioned Sundarbans regionof northern India and Bangladesh,tiger predation is a constantthreat. In a fourmonthperiod of1988, sixty-five people were killed there bytigers. Even in Canada, bears (grizzly, polar, and very occasionally, black) and mountain lions take a small toll.°° In Australia, Florida, and California, humansare at

risk from sharks. Predation was a constant threat in the past both morefrequently than now andfar more extensivelyin the areas affected. In the not so distant past, in his Descriptive Sketches, Wordsworth numbersbears, rav-

enous wolves, and bandits as objects of fear in his Swiss wanderings. At Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia, paleontologists have discovered fossils from Homo erectus some1.7to 1.8 million years ago — perhapsthe first x

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hominid to venture beyond the confines ofAfrica. The fossils give a clear indication of having been preyed upon. Indeed, Hart and Sussmanreport ona*Dmanisiskull [that] bears thesignature set of holes into whichsabretoothedfangs fit with perfection.”°' Gnaw marks on one ofthe hominid lower jaws demonstrate that some ofthe Dmanisi population wereeaten by large cats. And there are good grounds for the belief that the human brain still stores fear and threat memories, albeit unconscious memories, of those early ages. Cornell University’s Colin Campbell, a reputed biochemist, stated to the New York Times that, far from being primordial hunters, “we're basically a vegetarian species and should beeating a wide variety of plant foods and minimizing ourintake of animal foods.”?? The history of the humanas prey would confirm Campbell’s claim. Humans are more likely to have been primordial quasi-vegetarians whoselater history has endowed the human psyche with a sense of being anessential omnivore.

ANIMAL SACRIFICE

“In the beginning no animalwassacrificed to the gods, nor was there any positive lawto preventthis, for it was forbiddenbythe lawofnature.”*? So said Porphyry. How, then, did animal sacrifice to the gods originate — the product of which was eaten primarily by the humansacrificers? Perhapsit should first be noted that there are many misleading suppositions made with regard to animals and worship. Worship is often thought an adoration of the object worshipped. In fact, adoration in worship arrives late in the history of prayer. In manyinstances, although by no meansall, beings are worshipped because theyare feared.Animals that are neither feared nor food are not customarilythe object ofprayer. Where sharks are a constant threat to humanlife, as in the South Pacific, they are worshipped(bythe Tuamoton, for example) in the hope thatthe sharkswill thereby spare the lives ofthe kith and kin ofthe worshippers.The Ainu of Hokkaido, Japan, prayed to the bear buttreatedthe caged (although, ofcourse, “worshipped”) bear abominably. The object was to render the potentially harmful bear innocuous. Certainly, it is important to distinguish between reverence and awe derived fromfear or terror and reverence andawe based onlove, admi-

ration, and wonder. The latter showsa respect for the beingas anentityin itself, reflecting anevaluationofits appealingqualities; the former reflects the urgency to escape the consequences of the worshippedbeing’s wrath, the desire of the worshipped animalbeingto have oneselfas food. In some

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instances, the worship will alsoreflect that we are in awe ofthe animal's

powers. Animals were often themselves deities precisely because they were

feared. Nonetheless, totemism was a commonpractice — a lingering remnant of Eden. Under totemic belief a tribe considers itself a descendentof a particular animal, to whichit bears aspecial kinship relation. Onlyocca-

sionally is a totemic animal sacrificed, and then as a special gift to a

favouredgod. Even under totemism, contrary to commoninterpretation,

there is no “oneness with nature,” for animals other than the totem animal

are regularly sacrificedandeaten. Certainly, in manyincipient states and among hunter-gatherers, animals

were usually worshipped, but we should not imagine that those wor-

shipped benefited from the worship. Nowhere were animals worshipped more assiduously thanin ancient Egypt — fromcrocodiles through snakes to baboons. Yet the “worship” was of no benefit to the animals. So many “worshipped” animals have been found in human graves in Egypt that they must have been acquiredin the neighbouring lands specificallyfor the purpose ofsacrifice. Let us avoidthe easy error of imagining that treating animals well in myth, drawing pictures of them on cave walls, or making statuary of them meantthattheywere well treated or well respected, in the positive sense ofthat term. More often thannot, they were killed for their

divinity.Animals were useful symbols to help humans developrules forliving, and for saving, their ownlives. Onlyrarely did the animals matteras ends in themselves. Nor should we confuse positive symbols with benevolent treatment. In India, the cobrais still worshippedin places. Before the religious ceremony involving worship of the cobras, their mouths are sewn shut. In 1994 the Indian government released dozens ofsuch tortured — yet “worshipped” — cobras back into the wild, after the sutures had been removed,of course. In the Euthyphro, Plato has Socrates proclaimthat “where reverenceis, there is fear.”°4 Likewise, the Greek poet Stasinus as well as Thomas Hobbes em-

phasized the connection between fear andreverence. None of this should persuade us to ignore saying no. 17 of the Pancatantra: “In blind darkness are we sunk when we offersacrifices withbeasts. A higherreligious duty

than harmlessness (ahimsa) has never been norshall be.” But the ahimsa of

the Pancatantra is followed no morefaithfully, other thanas rote, than are the New Testament admonitions to pursue peace andturnthe other cheek. Bulls, goats, and sheepare slaughtered inritual sacrifice in Indiastill today. In the Hindu Kaharinganregionofthe Dayaks of Borneo, the tiwah — the funeraryritual — involves the sacrifice ofanimals to protect humanlives from evil spirits. The Toraja ofthe highlands of Sulawesi in Indonesiasacrifice as

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many as 250 buffaloes on the death of an important person. These “sacred” animals are bred for the specific purpose oftheir sacrifice. Being“sacred” andbeing thus “worshipped”is of absolutely no benefit to the animals.

In the Great War of 1914 to 1919 — to take but one of myriad potential

examples — the soldiers of the Allied forces, and equally their enemies, imagined themselves on the side of God andjustice.They did not imagine themselves full of rage or hatred toward their foe, at least not in the early years of the war. Instead, they thought of themselves as noble. They had a strong sense of solidarity with their compatriots, an attitude that the war fostered; they were patriots, they belonged, and theyrevelled in their belongingness. Likewise, hunters see themselves engaged not in enmity with the preybutin solidaritywiththeir fellowhunters. They “cherishthe noble art ofvenerie,” as Walter Scott wrote in The Talisman. Theyshare the sense of being part of a body, of being subsumed,lost almost, within a greater am

whole — hence the blood-smearing ritual of the foxhunt, which integrates

the novice recipient of the blood into the fraternity. The comradeship of the hunters gives themasense theyare pursuing a just end, even though the object of their enterprise involves the killing of another being — an

innocent being, a “respected” being, but one whois on “the otherside,” just as, at first in the FirstWorld War, the Germans and Austrians were

“respected” but on “the otherside.” Despite the “respect,” they were killed ifthe opportunityarose. Certainly, hunters feel without any doubtas they slaughter their prey that the animal is deeply “respected.” With undoubted exaggeration, but nonetheless meaningfully from the perspective of the hunter, we are often told that “traditional hunters typically viewthe animals they huntas their equals. Theyexercise no power over them.”” This is, of course, because the aboriginal has fewartificial weapons with which

to wield extraordinary power. Butthereis little equality in that thehuman predatorsare rarelysuccessfully hunted bytheprey.Infact, the ethical vegetarian deemsthe claimed respect a malevolent subterfuge if death or harm ofthe preyis intended, but it wouldbe churlish to denythat hunters fee/, persuade themselves they possess, a sense ofrespect towardthe objectofthe chase, however muchit is anathema and unconvincingto the ethical vege-

tarian. War and hunting are useful analogies for understanding some aspects of the human-animalrelationship, especially with regard to animal sacrifice to the gods andto Hesheating. Rituals of societal blood sacrifice — both humanand animal — celebrate andreenact the transition from prey to predator, from hunted to hunter, from Eden to Arcadia. Animal sacrifice, with roles reversed, reenacts the predation of animals on humans. Nowit is the animalthat is prey.

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hunted bypredators must have played a supreme role inhumanevolution. In moving from prey to predator, one lives in constant tension, often

ambivalence, retaining sometimes admiration, often respect, and usually

fear for nonhumananimals in the prey stage alongside the sacrificial, vivisecting, flesh-eating habits of the predatorstage. Violence is not a necessary part of the primordial human psyche, butit is expressedin the traditional glorification ofthe warrior andthe hunter that is a consequence of our transition from prey to predator, from Eden to Arcadia. Onlythe horrors of wars excesses in the past century have dimmedthe glorification of war. As long as war was fought onarestricted battlefield betweenlimited numbers ofsoldiers, with the vast majority ofthe population involved no more than peripherally, war and warrior could be readily glorified. And sport —all sport is an imitation of war and the chase —has come to be war andhunting’s modern replacementto the extentthatreal war can be avoided. Huntingtoday and animalsacrifice to the godsare traditionally substitutes for war; they are bloodsacrifices in the tradition of war in whichthe victim is viewedas “only an animal,” on the one hand, but

as a worthyfellow creature, on the other. The animal has to be worthyas an admirable object for sacrifice if the godsare to be truly respected. AsBarbaraEhrenreich explains in BloodRites, “blood sacrifice is notjust ‘areligious ritual; it is the centralritual of the religions ofall ancient and traditionalcivilizations... it is probably throughritual killing that humans approached the experience of the transcendent.”*° Today, it is in part throughthe killing involved in hunting that the animal becomes “sacred” andis thought by hunters to be “respected” — its blood, the symboloflife, is sought. Amongthe ancient Greeks, no important decisions or important events could occur withoutsacrifice — without blood — andancient Greece

was merely an “advanced” representative of the norm. It was, oddly, as

shownin the rituals of numerous societies from Papua to Hawaii to Australia, less death than blood that was required. Yet often bloodis seen as the essence of life.And loss of blood leadsto loss oflife.

Ancient Greeks, Hebrews, Canaanites, Maya, and more wereall ob-

sessed with sacrifice. The gods demandedsacrifice. Sacrificing the animal

to the gods wasin part to thank the gods for past mercies andinpart to persuade them to act benevolently by turningthe tide ofhistory in the supplicant’s favour, but mostofall the purpose of sacrifice was to propitiate the

gods, to avert their wrath. Threatening forces must be thwarted, and those forces include, or once included, predatory animals. The threat from the

large carnivorous animals must be thwarted through worship. Sacrifice is societys sanction of violence, which the transition from preyto predator

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seems to demandas asignal of the new-foundpower of humankind. René Girard in Violence and the Sacredargues convincinglythat war andsacrifice serve ultimately the same end —the suppression ofinternecine conflict and the direction of conflict outwardinstead.°’ The primaryfunction ofwar and sacrifice is communal — the compactofwarriors, the bonding ofsacrificers, the camaraderie of hunters. Communalprayer encourages the inteeration and thesense of oneness. Andifthis is so, thenthere are countless millennia of hardwired tendencies in the humanpsyche, especia ally the male psyche, becauseit is from the males that the warrior and huntercasteis mainly drawn, fighting to withstandthe logic and the ethics of the vegetarian argument. Thusit is that for mostflesh eaters, animal consumption seems an essential part of being human,orat least “civilized,” despite the strength of the vegetarian’s ethical argument. Indeed, omnivorousness

often seems almostimperviousto the ethical argument. War andsacrifice must be seen as vindications ofthe superiority in some mannerof one’s tribe or nationor religionif the sacrifices are tobe justified to oneself, if acts of aggression and oppression are to be countenanced as acceptable. One must think of one’s nation as especially protected by a particular god if one is to justify preferential consideration for one’s own

compatriots. And,likewise, humans must see themselves as in some manner superiortoother species, and not subject to the sameethicalcriteria,if

animals are to be treated as subservient to human ends. If vegetarians are to succeed in their task, they neednot mere successful ethical argument but

must replace the warriors’ and hunters’ subliminal need for blood, the promptings ofour evolutionaryhistory, with someotherfulfilling passion ~ war with hockey or soccer, even chess; hunting with archery, javelin throwing, or billiards and, ultimately, with the fully satisfying meal, equally acceptable and ritually meaningfulto allmembers of the community and absent of the nowcustomary flesh component. The meal must be communal andintegrational, an especially difficult task when the vegetarianis in a decided minority. Animalsacrifice came to replace humansacrifice, to be directed toward more socially acceptable goals, as the idea of the value ofall humanlife came to predominate. It is now commonlyrecognizedthat humansacrifice has been widespread throughout much of humanhistory — in bothtribes andurbancivilizations. It is mentioned in the Indian sacred Vedas andwas practised by the Aztecs and Maya. Britain, Mexico, and Carthaginia are

among the lands where humansacrifice appears to have been commonplace. But at some point, almost everywhere, humansacrifice was replaced

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byanimalsacrifice. The sacrifice of animals instead ofhumans was deemed worthyofpleasing the gods. As Girard has recognized,thesacrificialvictim

must be seen primarily as a scapegoat ~ one whois blamed forthe sins of

others. The victim was sacrificed to excuse some iniquity or to avoid some calamity, such as analien invasion, an epidemic, or an internecine conflict. Indeed, the very term “scapegoat” is derived from the Yom Kippurpractice of transferringthe sins of the faithful onto the goat — from the humancul-

prit to the goat substitute, whichis to be sacrificed in the humansstead.

Andthe harmless goat stands as the representative ofall animallife, including the dangerous predators. If the beasts that once killed humans almost

at will, and for whomconsiderable “respect” wasstill felt,were to become sustenance, then the ultimate revenge was achieved. What is perhaps an

example of the fear of the potentialreversal of roles once again is expressed

in the Hindu Kausitaki Brahmana and Satapatha Brahmana when,in the legend of Bhrgu, a visitor to the yonder world sees an animal eating a

humanin revenge for his having been eaten by a human onearth,just as the human in reality has wreaked revenge onthe animal.’® The famous adage of the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz is appropriate: “War is not an independent phenomenon butis the continuationofpolitics by other means.” Sacrifice is the politics of revenge — a reversal oftraditional politics — against the once feared but now dominated enemy. And the dominationis practised primarily not on the dangerous predators but on the harmless animals whomit is so much easier to dominate. In the story of Cain andAbel, God is said to prefer Abel’s flesh offerings (deemedvaluable and apposite!) over the “fruit of the soil” offerings

(deemed insufficiently grateful and unfitting) from Cain. Thus, flesh rather

thanfruit becomesthe dietof the gods. Of course, in reality, humans consume mostofthe sacrificed animal and notjustin the lands of the Bible. Thus the formal meal comes intoexistence — as a part of one’s ceremonial duty to the gods. Flesh could be consumedonlyifit had beensacrificed according to the prescribed ritual and for the appropriate divine recipients. Animals must thus undergo a ritual death and be consumedin the temple according tothe usually observed rites, without whichthe practice is seen as a serious moral transgression akin to murder. Eden has not quite disappeared, for, in manyinstances, the value ofthe animal's life is recognized

andthe animalis apologized to forits treatment. The same apologetic practice continues today among manyInuit, a practice that suggests an awareness that the killing andeating are wrongs in themselves that require some externaljustification, usually in the formofa religious or mythical permission.

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Girard goes so faras to say that the awe-inspiring nature oftheritual would be lessened significantlyif it did not includethe elementoftransgression. What should beclearis that animalsacrifice is recognizedas a substitute for humansacrifice. Humansacrifice is an evil in itself, which reverential circumstance once excused. Animal sacrifice remains a transgression, butit is a lesser transgressionthanthe taking of humanlife. For the vegetarian,it is

apparent that nowthat the then presumed needfor animal sacrifice and hence animal eating has disappeared, meat eating is as readily dispensable as sacrificeitself. Nonetheless, the veryreal difficulty for the vegetarianis to determine in what communalandintegrative manner the nonfleshsubsti-

tute might be made communallyand socially satisfying to the omnivore. Humansdiffer from natural carnivores and from other omnivores in that our flesh consumptiondependsonreligion and ritual to authorize its practice. After millions ofyears of evolution, the trauma of being hunted was replaced by the trauma of being the hunter, andreligion and ritual served to assuage the trauma. Especially when confronted with danger, whenthere is anexternal threat, we move closer together in commoncause

andsolidarity, even in war (hunting andsacrifice) against the predatory enemy. Andthe vehicle ofthe solidarity was initially the commonbelonging expressed in areligion. It is ahumanpropensityderived from our evolutionaryhistoryto side with the weak(ourselves) against the strong (predatory animals) and to rejoice in our legends (animal-related myths and others) of the victory of the naturally weak over the naturally strong. As Ehrenreich expressesit, “The transformation from prey to predator in which the weakrise up against the strong is the central‘storyin the early humannarrative.””? And whatgreater victory can we have in devouring the erstwhile and nowvanquished foe thanbyeating what onceate us? It is what, like it or not,makes

most humansfeel “human”as the once dominated but now dominantanimal — head ofthe food chain, as humans imagine themselves to be. Throughout humanprehistory and humanhistory, Homo sapiens has been developing a moral conscience, although never sufficient entirely to

overcome humanevolutionary impulses. Vegetarians usually believe they have adopted a necessary stage in human ethical development, but the humanis far more therationalizing animal thanthe ethical animal, far

more the product of evolutionarily developedgenes than ofthe philosophical imagination. The humanas predator plays a greater subliminalrole than the humanas moralist in the humanpsyche.If the vegetarianidealis

consistent with Edenic morality, it is not consistent with the moralityof

Arcadiaand later stages of humanhistory. And this fact persuades most

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53

people, albeit subliminally. It is a sufficient justification for their dietary habits. The vegetarian has many ofthe nonrational elements of human psychologyto overcome,an almost insuperable task. Thusit is that the ethical task of the vegetarian is an arduous one —to overcomethelust for animalflesh that is a constituent part of the Arcadian humanprimal memory. Yet it must not be forgotten that the once pervasive lust of the human for the flesh offellow humans — cannibalism — has been overcome. Symbolically, partakingof the bloodandbodyof Christ in the Eucharist, a practice of several Christian denominations, is reflective ofthis aspect of our prehistory. Humans once thought they acquired the virtues of conquered humans byeating themand later thought they acquired the courage and guile of nonhumananimals byeating them.Wenolonger, in general, pos-

sess these beliefs — although moststill tend to imagine a flesh diet makes us stronger and healthier, a remnant of our Arcadian history. And thus the

task of the vegetarian, although still immensely difficult because ofthe

continuing influence ofthe evolutionaryforces, is eased. Because we no longer fear animals, we nolonger look onthemas superiors or even equals. In the West, we are often sentimental about some of them andtreat them

through “love” and sentimentality as decidedlyinferior creatures, as our “toys.” Where pred ationIsstill a reality, no such pampering or sentimental[

affection can be enjoyed.Where predationis no longera reality, pamper-

ing and sentimentalaffectionstill ascribe lower status to the nonhuman animal. Both being prey and treating animals sentimentallyrefiect that, as a species, we have never come to acknowledge humansas animals inquite the same way we acknowledge other species as animals. Recognition of humans andotherspecies as animals in the same manneris perhaps the szve gua nonof ultimate vegetarian success. A Ithoughat least quasi-vegetarian origins are not a proven part of humanprehistory, the evidence and argumentis undoubtedly persuasive, perhaps compelling. Despite the apparent vegetarian aspects of humanprehistory, it is not

until the Indianexperiences of around the millenniumbefore the time of Christ, rapidly followed by, or perhaps contemporaneous with, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, that we encounterexplicit vegetarian practices.

INDIA AND THE ExopUS

Perhaps more misleading pious prose and wishful thinking have been

expressed about the purportedpervasive vegetarianismandrespect foranimals of Indianreligious and philosophical traditions than aboutanyother aspect of historical vegetarianism. It is certainly true that India has pro-

vided far more of the impetus to vegetarianism than has any othersingle

country, but tolisten to some accounts, by Western vegetarians in particular, of the doctrines of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainismis oftento

hear a verydistortedstory. Indeed, in the words of the renowned doyenof the anthropology of religion Mircea Eliade, in his profound study Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, “the analysis of a foreign culture principally reveals what was soughtinit or what the seeker was already preparedtodiscover.”' The result has beena host of misinformation. Nonetheless, Indias vegetarianismhad an abiding impact on manytravellers to the subcontinent fromthelate sixteenth to the nineteenthcenturies and on administrators of the British Raj. Andviathe travellers and the administrators, in time naturalists, essayists, poets, and philosophers were awakened to the

vegetarian appeal. At the veryleast, many were impressed that the Indian experience demonstrated that humans did not require flesh to live a healthylife, a fact they could have learned just as easily from the poor of their own countries or fromthe slaves on the WestIndies plantations, who were in most instances served the same fodderas the working animals. It was an important awakening because the more commonpriorview, even 54

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55

held by many whothoughtofvegetarianism as anideal, was that the human constitution hadovertime cometo necessitate the consumptionof fiesh.And manyothers — Isaac Newton, for example — were persuaded by the reports fromIndiaofthe need to treat animals with respect and toeliminate gross cruelties fromthe kitchen. To be sure, it tookthe additionof the

culture inspired by the French Revolution to encourage a sense ofthe pos-

sibility of all kinds ofpolitical and social reform, but the Indian experience was instrumental in helping to develop an awareness of a potential European vegetarian practicality. Manycenturies previously, the early Fathers of Christianity had commended the Brahminsfortheir abstemiouslife. Frequently, later stories that emerged from India treatedan idealized Brahminism,or occasionally Bud-

dhismor Jainism, as though it were the whole ofthe Indianreality. That the Indians were reportedto live healthy lives to the age of 200 (sometimes even 300) is anindication of the degree of gross inaccuracies born ofwant-

ing to have a good story to impart. Manydid not come to vegetarianism from the practices of India but cameto the practices of India from vegetarianism, finding in themapractical exemplaroftheir ideals atwork andmisrepresentingthereality ofIndia in the process. Others embellished thereality of Indiain the stories theytold to impress their audience with wondrous tales. In manyothersuch stories told in Europe, it was Turkey that was treated as the ideal of a country wholly considerate ofits animal population. This was especially so fromthe seventeenth to eighteenth centuries among the literati. And, again, there was more idealization thanreality. This was

not unlike the idealization of the aboriginal beginningin the late fifteenth century anddeveloped by Peter Martyr,Oviedo, Montaigne, andothers.’ Several contemporary writers on Indian vegetarianism provide a very one-sided and quite misleading accountofits practice. Theyact the partof rationalizing apologists rather thaanthat ofinformative scholars. It is necessary, therefore, to attempt to provide some healthy balance in the understanding of modern vegetarianism’ most worthy forerunner. Voltaire’s eighteenth-century admonitions are as apposite to the currentintellectual traveller as to his fellowphysical travellers then: “Our European travellers for the most part are satyrical upon their neighbouring Countries, and bestowlarge Praises upon the Persians and Chinese; it being too natural to

revile those who stand in Competition with us, andto extol those who being far remote fromus, are outofthe reach of Envy.”* The less we know of a civilization and the further removeditis fromus culturally, the easier it is to imagine an improbable utopia andtousethatculture as a cudgel with whichto flagellate ourselves.

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Other than depictions in very broad strokes about Aryans — whowere probablytribal peoples from the Caucasus mountain region — and others invading the land now knownas India, about their very nomadic pastoral economy, and aboutincipientagriculture, including cattle sacrifice,little can be offered with confidence aboutIndia’s earlycultural traditions that arrived from the steppes. We can be confident, however, that in a conjunctionof the beliefs of the conquered Dravidians and the conqueringAryans, Brahmanism,the early form of Hinduism, was developed. There are unfounded yet firm beliefs among manytraditionalist Hindus in the practice of the venerationofthe cowin the earliest thus developed Vedic customs andprecepts. But there are equally adamant and well-documented denunciations by some Hinduscholars that no such customsorprecepts existed. India is a land ofmanysubcultures, often interrelated but with very considerable divergence. Althoughit is an oversimplified account, one maysay Aryan culture forms the basis of the north, whereas the south has beenpredominantly Dravidian. Dravidians speak a Tamil-related language andare thought to have occupiedthe Indian subcontinent before the invasion of the Aryans. But the two were never entirely separate after the invasions.It is impossible to describe the culture of the nation with anydegree of accuracy andclarity, for the varieties from regionto region are legion, the discrepancies between rural and urbanlifestyles are notoriouslyrife, and the cultural diversity of the nation is acknowledged as official in the Indian Constitution's recognitionoffifteen regional languages. These are scarcely surprising facts about the most populous countryinthe world after China. Despite governmentalefforts to change the culture of caste — indeed, to outlaw it — the caste system continues to have a major and direct impact on the practices and beliefs of HinduIndia today, althoughit is undoubtedly in a measure ofdecline. Nonetheless, the caste system — noless oppressive

than the former apartheid system of South Africa — continuesto be rigorously upheld by many fromthe uppercastes. With such disparaging treat-

ment of the lower castes and, of course, outcasts, it would at first seem

surprising if animals were treated with a respect rarely accorded somefellow humans. It was pointedoutin the Introduction that approximately one-thirdof the population ofIndia is vegetarian — a commendablyfar higher proportion by asignificant amountthananyother country. That figure mayitself be alittle misleading, however, in that some 40 percentofIndia’s population lives in dire poverty, although the prospects for change are nowbeginning to improve substantially, even dramatically. Thus, some of the poor may be vegetarian not out of cultural practice or ethical principle but

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57

because they cannotafford flesh. In the areas outside India where Hindu-

ism is the recognized religion, its beliefs and practices differ greatly from

those proclaimedas the Indian Hindu norm, andalthough Buddhism has practically died out in India, it has flourished elsewhere since leavingits birthplace.Whereit is practised abroad,the differences amongthe varying formsare sogreatthat it is in some respects difficult to see them as having sufficient in commontoidentify the various strands as Buddhism in common,otherthanthat theyare derived ultimatelyfromasingle originalsource. What wecan say of the religious constitution of present-dayIndia — from whichcountry Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism haveall sprung —

is that some 80 percentof the population is Hindu, including so-called “seculars” of Hinduorigin; 14 percent is Muslim; fewer than one-halfof

I percentis Jaina; and the remaining § plus percentis divided among Chris-

tians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and a few Parsees (Zoroastrians),whomIshall dis-

cuss in the next chapter. Neither Muslims nor Sikhs nor Christians are customarily vegetarian. The Buddhists in India consist largely of refugees from Tibet, together with a few converts, almost entirely from the lower castes of Hinduism. While the proportionofJaina is extremely small, the influence ofJainism has far exceeded the numbersofits adherents.

HINDUISM

Almost everything about Hinduism is paradoxical, confused, and accordingly, unclear ~- which, of course, couldbe said withno less truth abouta number of other religions as well, Christianity included. The real Indiais as elusive for modern Westerners as it was for the British characters of E.M.

Forster's A Passage to India. There are innumerable strands andsects within

Hinduism, andit has no well-defined ecclesiastical organization or system of orthodoxy. Its threemost commontraditionalfeatures are world renunciation (now diminishing), adherence to the caste system, and acceptance of the Aryan Vedas — Sanskrit sacred scriptures of the period from c. 1500 to c. 600 BC — as the scriptural basis of the religion. The earliest and most authoritative of these scriptures is the Rig-Veda, although, as notoriously

with the Bible andthe Koranalso, there is no agreed uponinterpretation

of the varying and apparently contradictory decrees contained within the Vedas or even consensus on their meaning. Vegetarianism and nonvegetarianism, whichco-exist peacefullyin India, are rather a matter more ofcaste andtraditionthanofethical principle or choice. The tradition of the caste into which one is born — the complexity

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of caste is reflected in the fact there are over 3,000 castes and subcastes

today — predominantly determines the dietary practice that will be followed. Brahmins(the priestly and intellectual caste) in general and those of the farming and mercantile caste (Vaishya), alsocalled Banias (traders), are

traditionally vegetarian. Today, it is especially the women who renounce

flesh. Among the Brahmins, the Vaishnava are said to be devoutin their

rejection of flesh, whereas Shaivite and Shakti Brahmins are known to indulge their Heshly appetites on occasion. Thewarrior, or administrative, caste (Kshatriyva), the labourer caste (Shudra), and the untouchables(Pariahs, or Haritjans [children of God], as Gandhi renamed them) — formally,

“untouchability” has disappeared but not in fact — are predominantlyflesh

eaters. Nonetheless, a remarkable feature of India is that even the flesh

eaters have greatrespect for vegetarianism and regard its practice as in principle worthier than their own less commendable omnivoroushabits. Still, by andlarge, vegetarianism is promoted and deemed worthyofpractice because it is seen as an intrinsic part of the appropriate human condition, as a part of earthly renunciation, not because our moral responsibilities to ourfellow animals warrantit. Veegetarians are admiredbecause theyare seen to be releasing themselves from the shackles of the mundane sphere. What, then, can be said with anydegree of confidence abouttheearliest Indian dietary practices? From long before the Aryan invasions (occurring from the middle of the second millennium BC), animal bones and stone

tools, depositedin the period from between one hundred thousand and ten thousand years ago, have been found in abundance at excavation sites throughoutthe Harappacivilizatonarea ~ the remarkably advancedIndus Valley civilization of the secondhalfofthethird millenniumsc— indicating the prevalence of flesh consumption. hepre-Aryan invasion evidence is relevant because Aryanculture syncretized with —that is,married its own cultural practices with — the prevailing practices of the peoples of the conqueredterritories, usually said to be Dravidian. There is abundant archeological evidence that flesh eating continued after theAryan invasions. Beef,

pork, mutton, venison, fish, fowl, and river turtles, along with theflesh of

carnivorous animals, appear to have been consumed.* Large numbers of charred bones with cut marks, indicating the cooking andeatingof flesh,

have been excavated, covering both the Vedic and post-Vedic periods. Moreover, there is frequent reference in the Vedic texts, according to D.N.

Jha, author of The Myth ofthe Holy Cow, to “the cooking ofthe flesh of the oxforofferingto gods, especially Indra, the greatest of the Vedic gods, who

was strong-armed, colossal, anda destroyer of enemy strongholeds.” At one place, it is said: “they cook for me fifteen plus twenty oxen.” Atother

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places, Indra is said “to have eaten the flesh of bulls, or of one or of a hun-

dredbuffaloes or 300 buffaloes roasted by Agni or a thousand buffaloes.” Agni is a god whoacts as an intermediary between heaven and earth and whotakes the sacrificial offerings to the higher gods. It wouldbestrange if the dietary preference ofthe gods was entirely alien to that ofthe supplim

cants, at the very least on festive occasions suchas the birth of ason or the

marriage of a scion. Indeed, there is ample documentaryevidence offrequent flesh consumption onsuch occasions throughoutrecordedhistory.° Nonetheless, the Vedic texts seem to suggest that a substitute for animal Cb

sacrifice might be desirable. And, apparently, sometimes rice and barley

figies were offeredinplace offlesh, a practice we also hear about among

the Pythagoreans. This desire to eradicate animalsacrifice might best be understood in the newcultural context permitted by the change frompas-

toralism to settled agriculture, animals beingno longercentral to all human

experience. Althoughthere are clear indications of Vedic preference for the purity of behaviour among the Brahmins through the denial of flesh, it would appear largely an aspect of the preferred asceticism of the priestly class (noticeable even today among Eastern Orthodox monksinthe Christian tradition as well).’

It is difficult to determine when vegetarianism became a commonpractice in India, both among the Brahmincaste and incertain regions of

the country. There is no consistency on the subject of vegetarianism in the

religious commentaries and digests between the eighth and nineteenth centuries, Jhatells us, although it is generally agreed that intheearlier cen-

turies it was a customary expectation that even a cow would bekilled for a learned brahmana(a respected memberofthe Brahmincaste) or even fora less exalted guest — and even today beef consumption,in preference to the more expensive mutton, is not at all rare, especially among the lower castes.® However, it is probable that some of Brahmincaste renounced flesh

as early as 1000 BC to be ascetically pure. Thereafter, albeit very slowly,vegetarianism cametobe seenas a preferred wayoflife, entailing somerespect for animals, not just by Brahmins butaroundthe seventh or eighth century BC, with varying degrees of success, also by Hindus in general, someareas

becomingvegetarian completely. This occurred mainlyin the south, where agriculture is more suitable to the practice of vegetarianism, where the &

influences of Buddhism and Jainism were stronger, and where religious

competition was accordingly more keenlyfelt. When the inhabitants had become vegetarian, however, they tended to retain their vegetarianism for cultural andreligious reasonsrather than because theyconsideredita right of the animal notto be eaten. Steven J. Rosen, whoregards vegetarianism

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as generally pervasive on ethical grounds in the Hindu tradition, concedes

that “the non-vegetarian diet has become widespread among Hindusin the modern world, just as it had in the early part of the Vedic restoration process.”’ (The Vedicrestoration process is the period of Hindurevitalization in response tothe increased popularity of Buddhism in India, effectively eradicating Buddhism eventually.) Vegetarianism remains something of an ideal, but not always a consistentlypractisedideal, and whereit is the idealit is primarily for the saintly interests of the devout. As James Gaftney rightly has observed: “reluctance to kill animals did not necessarily entail an equal reluctance to eat them— solong as theywere killed byothers less spiritually elevated.”'® That animalwellbeing is not a prominent purpose in vegetarianIndiais reflected in the fact that manycowsare slaughtered in a most inhumane mannersolelyfor their hides. Theyare killed, despite their holiness, to provide leather for shoes, seats, belts, and thelike.

Despite the commoncontradictionsin the scriptures, the precepts of the various religious commentaries contained significant animal-respecting directives in their hortative edicts. In numerous impressive instances, vegetarianism appears primafacie to be based on ethical principles,or at least to relate to themin some manner. Thus wefind, for example, the Mahaoharata announcing: “Dharma[religious duty] exists for the general welfare \abhyudaya| ofall living beings.Thus, that by which the welfare ofthe greatest numberofliving beings is sustained, that for certain isDharma.”'!

In G. Naganathan’s Animal Welfare andNature:Hindu Scriptural Passages, we read that the Pancatantrastates: “The holyfirst commandmentruns: not harsh but kindly be — andtherefore lavish mercyon the louse, the bug andthe gadfly.” Further, “Whether it is the wormin the excrementor the beingin Indra’ss heaven, their love oflife is the same, their fear of death is the same.” !”

But our confidence in the substance ofthe passagesis a little shaken whenwe turn to Chandra Rajan’s translation of Vishnu Sarnas editionof the Pancatantra and find no equivalent to the passages cited by Naganathan.’ In fact, there are considerable divergences in the translations of

Hinduscriptures in general. Thus, for example, the same passage fromthe openingwords of the /shopanishadis translatedin quite different ways by three different scholars. Naganathan renders the relevant opening passage as: “The entire universe andeverything within it, animate and inanimate, is His. Let us treat everything aroundus reverently, as custodians. We have nocharter for dominion. All wealth is commonwealth. Let us enjoy, but neither hoard norkill.The humble frog has as muchrightto live as we.”

By comparision, R.C. Zaehner’s version is far simpler and devoid of

reference to animalethics, other than an implicit acknowledgmentthatall

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beings are ensouled: “The whole world must be pervaded by a Lord — /

Whatever moves in this moving [world] / Abandonit, and then enjoy:/

Covet not the goodsofanyoneat all.”!> And Juan Mascarétranslates the

same passage as: “Behold the universe in the glory of God; andall thatlives

and moves on earth. Leaving the transient, find joy in the Eternal: set not your heart on another's possessions.” '° Whereas Zaehner and Mascaréhave treated the passage as being concernedprimarily with abandonmentoftheself, renunciation ofthe mundane, recognition ofsoul in other beings (including animal beings), disparagement of greed, and humanworship of the godhead, Naganathan seemsto have treated the passage quite diffferently as a profound statement regarding animal ethics; he appears to have imposed his owngloss, values, and preferences on the material and tried tendentiously and unwarrantedlyto differentiate it explicitly from the commonly condemned but commonly misunderstood “dominion” language of Genesis — a language thatin fact enjoins a measureofethical consideration for other animate beings.'” We thus have groundsfor being suspicious ofsomeof the moreelaborateofthe Hindustatements onanimalethics offered to us, which mustaccordingly always be treated with somecaution.

There is, nonetheless, a general, if far from complete, consistencyin some ofthe statements we encounter. Accordingly, always being waryof

potential tendentiousness in the translations we meet, whoseoriginals are themselves open to easy misinterpretation, as we shall see from John Mackenzie’s statements (below), we should delight in such pronouncementsas: “Ahimsa |treedom from harm] is the highest dharma, self-control, gift,

penance, sacrifice, power, friend, happiness, truth [and] scripture.”!® Inthe

same scripture, we are also told: “Everyone in the [meat] business, the one whocuts, the one whokills, the one whosells, the one who prepares, the one whooffers, the one whoeats, all are killers.” And again, this time in pantheistic mode, in the Bhagavad Gita: “| [the godhead] amthe Self established / Inthe heartofall contingent beings; I

am the beginning, the middle and the end / Ofall contingent beings too.””° The pantheistic messageis repeated even more emphaticallyin the Mahabharata: “We bowtoall beings with great reverence in the thought and knowledge that Godenters into them through fractioning himself as living creatures.”?! Nor is theMahabharataalone in such expressions of reverence. The Hitopadesa asks: “Whatis religion? Compassionforall things whichhavelife. To animals inthis world, health.What is kindness? Aprinciplein the good. Whatis philosophy? Anentire separation fromthe world.”*? If this beautiful passage enjoins compassion,it also enjoins the

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do-nothing of quietism, as we will also see in the Sadhu response to Gandhi(below): feel benevolently but do not act to right the wrong.

Finally, from the Bhagavatam(there ismuch more, butthe respectful pattern is clear): “The perfect devotee ofthe Lord is one who sees Atman[the

soul, breath, the principle of life] in all creatures as an expression of the Supreme Being andall beings as dwelling in the supremespirit.”” It is difficult to interpret these edicts as anything other than an immedi-

ate and thorough concern with animals as ends in themselves, but it

remains a fact that numerous Hindusages interpret such scriptures as a part of our duties to the godheadrather than expressing any concernwith animals for their intrinsic selves. At the veryleast, such Hindusare able to point to passages inthe scriptures thatlead in a different direction. Andas we have seen, we find conflicting interpretations of the same passages, some quite at odds with each other. Contradiction is the nature of many religions. Despite the lack ofcertainty, the evidence appears on the whole to suggest that the Hinduexpression of benevolence toward the animalis a part of a sincere, if not extensive, concern forthe animalin itself. Nonetheless, both sides ofthe story should be heard.

In Holy Cow: The Hare Krishna Contribution to Vegetarianism and Animal Rights, Steven J. Rosen accosts D.N. Jha, author of The Mythofthe

Holy Cow, claimingthat “scholars of Hinduism ... point out that animal

sacrifices were a departure fromthe overall spirit ofVedic dharma[religious duty], even if these sacrifices are mentioned in the Vedas themselves.”*4

And, ofcourse, Rosen is right that some always found animalsacrifice il-

legitimate, just as several writers of the Hebrew Bible also found animal sacrifice unacceptable, whereas others said God demandedit. But itis equally right that some Hindus advocated andpractised animal sacrifice, andthere is no good ground otherthan wishfulfilmentto imagine the former more legitimate or numerous than the latter.What Rosen conveniently neglects to tell us is that animal sacrifice continues in Hindu temples even today, althoughitis less prevalent than before. Mahatma Gandhi felt compelled in his autobiography to mourn the continuedpractices: [ sawa stream ofsheep goingto be sacrificed to Kali [the Hindugoddess of destruction] ... laskedhim[a religious mendicant]|: “Do youregard this sacrifice as religion?”

“Who wouldregardthe killing of animalsas religion?” “Then, why don’t youpreachagainstit?” “That's not my business. Our business is to worship God... it is no business of us sadhus.”

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We did not prolong the discussion but passed on to the temple. We were greeted byrivers of blood. I could not bear to stand there. I have neverforgotten that sight. That very evening I had an invitation to dinner at a party of Bengali friends. There I spoke to a friend about this cruel form of worship. He said “The sheep don't feel anything. The noise and the drum-beating there deadenall sensation ofpain.” I could not swallowthis. ] told himthat, if the sheep had speech, they would tell a different tale. [ felt that the cruel custom should be stopped. Howis it that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice and emo-

tion tolerates this slaughter?

It was not stopped and it was tolerated. Joseph Campbell said of a slightlylater time, in the second half of the twentieth century, on the occasion ofa visit to India: “I noticed that the place where a goatis sacrificed every morning (andabuffalo on feast days) is situated about where the nandi|sacrifice| is placed in a Siva temple compound... It is said that ear-

lier the goat sacrifice in this temple was a humansacrifice.”*° The goatis the symboloflust and the buffalo ofanger; thus, these passions are supposedly sacrificed along withthe sacrifice of the animals. The sacrifice is undertaken to assuage humanills but, of course, at the expense ofthe animals. Nor did Gandhi consider the treatment of the cowto be consistent with her supposedholystatus: “Howwebleedher to take the last drop of milk from her. Howwestarve her to emaciation, how weill-treat the calves, how

we deprive them of their last portion of milk, howcruelly we treat the oxen, howwe castrate them, how we beat them, how we overload them.”?’

In the Hindureligion cows are considered in principle the motherofalllife

~ indeed, the mother ofthe gods — the symbolof wealth, and the most sacred of animals. But, clearly, Gandhi was ofthe viewthat, althoughthey

might be “revered,” they were in fact treated poorly. Thereality of the contradiction between Hindureligious philosophyand Hinduregular practice is best summed up by Joseph Campbell in Baksheesh and Brahman: Indian Journal, 1954-1955: “Indiansociety is not a function of Indian philosophy, but on the contrary Indian philosophyis a function of one section of Indiansociety.Consequently Indiansociety as a whole does notillustrate ... the ideals of Indian philosophy.””° The idea ofsacrifice in the Vedic tradition is said by Hinduapologists (Rosen, for example) to have encouragedinveterate and unalterable flesh eaters to continue animalsacrifice as an act of worshipprior to the con-

sumption offlesh,if it had to be doneatall.”? Of course,this is equally true

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of the practice ofotherreligions — andit is noless true to point out that Christianity, say, or pagan monotheism in early Rome, abolished animal sacrifice altogether a couple of millennia agoor thereabouts, whereasit still

exists today in Hindutemples in India. Rosen continues,telling us thatthe Laws ofManu(c. 200 BC to AD 200) conclude byfirmly discouraging the eating of meat: “The merit of not eating meat, which involvesalling, is

equal to the merit of performing hundredsofhorsesacrifices.”2°> What Rosen does not point outis that the Laws ofManuthereby decJare horse sacrifice to be meritoriousin andofitself, even if decidedly less meritorious than abstention fromflesh. To equal the abandonmentofflesh, one must

perform numerous horse sacrifices! Religious devotion seems a principle

prior to, andindependentof, animalethics.Moreover, the Satapatha Brah-

mana, one ofthe Hindu commentaries on the Vedic scriptures, declares unequivocallythat “meat is the best kind offood.” Andcattle hide was used widely in a variety ofways. Bythe time ofthe Upanishads(sixth century Bc or so), we find a parent being encouragedto eat abeeforveal stewif, on the birth of a son, a learnedchildis desired, although, alternatively, the child maybe fed adiet ofbird flesh andfish at the age of six months.?! In Hindu Ethics:A Historical and Critical Essay, John Mackenzie has argued that the vegetarian principle was considerably weakenedinpractice through the Laws ofManu, whichhe quotes as follows: “One mayeat meat whenit has been sprinkled with water, while Mantras were recited, when Brahmanas desire (one’s doing it), whenone is engaged (in the performance of a rite) according to the law, and whenone’slife is in danger.”** And

again: “He whoeats meat, when he honours the gods and manes, commits no sin, whether he has boughtit, or himself haskilled (the animal), or has receivedit as a present from others.”*° Oneis tempted to conclude that the purposeof(partial) flesh abstention

ismore the purity of the Brahmin and Vaishya castes thanthe wellbeing of

animals. Indeed, Basant K. Lal, a professor of philosophy atMagadh Uni-

versity, Bodh Gaya, India, has observed that: “The Hindu recommenda-

tion to cultivate a particular kind of attitude toward animals is based not on a consideration about the animal as such but onconsideration about howthe developmentofthis attitude is a part of the purificatorysteps that bring mento the path ofmoksa (salvation).”** He adds: “Hinduisminall its forms teaches that we have no duties towardanimals andthus implicitly denies that they have anyrights.” The phrase “inall its forms”is relevant in implying that such Hindu doctrine applies as much to the Brahmin caste as to others. Rosen's apologetic commentary would have been more balanced if he

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had added that in the Vedic Laws of Manutransmigration means tha “people of darkness always become animals.” The purpose ofthe transn gration ofthe soul wasto release humansfromthe basenessofthe ani‘mal character within. The very reason wasto reject the animalaspect of character within the humanbreast, notatall to respectthe animal. According to the Laws ofManu, animalsare the lowest of“the three-foldlevel of existence,whichis itself divided into three, some animals being distinctly lower than others, and all being far lower than humans. Manu tells us that animals were created by the gods to be sacrificed, that killing, when it is

doneasreligious ritual, is nonkilling, and that injury (Aimsa) permitted by the Vedicscriptures is nonkilling (ahimsa). Manualsoprovidesa detailed

list of animals whoseflesh wasedible. Thekilling ofcattle, the bearers of

the most frequently proscribed flesh for food, continued until about the twelfth century.*® Still, although there are undoubtedlylimitations to the Hindu concern for animal wellbeing, it would be churlish to denythat suchconcernexists in some measure, even if counteredbyothersayings of the scriptures. John Mackenzie adds insightfully that there are limitations “to the doctrine of ahimsa” — the doctrine of nonharmtoother beings — which normally so arouses our admiration, noting that it “does not applyto the taking oflives in battle, or to the infliction of capital punishment. By

qualifications suchas these the force of the doctrine is considerably weakened. The exception to the general principle that life should not be taken, and that the flesh ofanimals should notbe eaten, were so manyand ofsuch diverse kinds, that we canbelieve it would be exceedinglydifficult to determine whetheraparticularact was abreechof the law or not.We knowthat hunting andfishing continued inspite ofall laws.”*” If Mackenzie's interpretationis in accord withcultural reality, it would be reasonable to conclude that the doctrine of ahimsais not verydifferent in practice from less seemingly altruistic doctrines elsewhere. The rose-tinted interpretations of Rosen's accountpale against the animadversions of Ranchor Prine, who, confronted withthe realities of life in

modern India, insists that “for nearly two centuries Indians have been estranged from their own [ecology-sympathetic] culture by English education. They have been encouragedto think inWestern ways andto value the things which the Westvalues. Their owntraditional values have been marginalized. In many cases they no longer knowwhat these values were or whythey were held because those things are no longer taught.”** ‘To some extent, Prine may well be right about the orientation of modern Indian values — in which case modern Hinduvegetarianism, respect for

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animals, and care for the environment maybeseentobe seriously im-

paired. But it would be grossly misleading, for example, to blamethefact of animal sacrifice onthe British. First, animalsacrifice existed throughout India for millennia before the establishmentof the Raj; indeed, as we have

seen, it is acknowledged in the Vedas. Second, the British disapproved of animal sacrifice in India andtriedto discourage it, although they accepted

it as preferable to the continuing practice of humansacrifice. If “English education” had succeededinits efforts “to value the things which the West values,” it would have succeededin eliminating this particular misuse of animals for humanends. Moreover, the once extensive practice of overt female infanticide among Hindus was a consequence ofthe dowrysystem,

not somealienBritish innovation.*?It is inappropriate to blame the decline in family values on the modernity introduced to India by the British, a charge found in the same book. Indeed, if female infanticide is declin-

ing, the introductionofthe alien value systemis at least in significant part to be thanked. Likewise, the sameis true of child marriages. Andthatthe ritual burning alive of widows was madeillegal in 1829is due to the same foreign source. No one shoulddoubtthe ills imposedon Indiabythe Raj. Butthe fictions offered of Hindupurityreflect, understandably, indignant self-righteousness more than a concern with Indianpractical or philosophical reality. Sull, none of this shouldpersuade us to discountthe fact of asignificant

vegetarian tradition in India nor to imagine that Hinduvegetarianism was

basedentirely on considerations other than the wellbeing of animals,although animals — at least other than the cow—clearly never heldan exalted status. But it shouldpersuade us to look at these vegetarian origins with a

warier eye than is customary in the Western vegetarian practice, which

tends toward evaluation in a decidedly unidimensionalvein.Itis certainly

worth bearing in mind the admonition of Gandhi, whowasaculturalveg-

etarian from birth but wholearnedhisethical vegetarianism from the writings of Percy Bysshe Shelley and HenrySalt after visiting a vegetarian restaurant on Farringdon Street in Londonwhile resident in England:

“The ideal of humanity in theWestis perhaps lower buttheir practice ofit very much more thoroughthan ours. Werest content with loftyideal and are sloworlazyin its practice. We are wrappedin deep darkness, as is evident from our paupers, cattle and other animals.”*° Moreover, to put the conception of “Hindudiet” into perspective, it is worth noting that, in practice, it is not seen as a generallyvegetariandiet. For example, Canada’s

Via Rail offers various “special meals” in its food service. Those meals include “Asian vegetarian,” a category to which about one-third ofIndia’s

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population would belong, but under the heading of “Hindu meal,” composed with the assistance of Hindureligious authorities, lamb, eggs, fish, dairy products, rice, herbs, and spices are seenas allowable, whereas beef,

veal, or pork andits derivatives are excluded. The island of Bali in Indonesia has had a Hindupopulationsince the seventh century. Currently, Hindus constitute about 2 percent of Indonesias total population but havelittle of the animal-orientedattitudes that are said to be found in Indian Hinduism.Areading of the Balinese Hindu legend of Bhima Swarga confirmsa significant degree of ambivalence. Cruelty for funis decried but slaughtering animals for food orsacrifice is improper only whentheprescribed ritual is not followed.*! Likewise, Malaysia also has a small Hindu population, but Hindusare vastly outnumbered by Muslims. There is also a smattering of Hindus in omnivorous Pakistan, but they constitute less than 3 percent of the population,

whereas Hindus in Bangladesh are a proportionately greater 10 percent.

Among the population ofSri Lanka, Tamil Hindus comprise 18 percent. Although the Hindus ofthese states differ somewhat inbelief and culture from the Hindus of the Indian homeland, the differences are ratherless than those to be found amongthe different branches of Buddhism. For, in none ofthe Hindu groups, abroad orin India, is vegetarianismcentral to

ethical doctrine. It is merely a part of cultural traditionor is not. The one exception maybesaid to be the Hare Krishnas, althoughtheir relationship to traditional Hinduismis obscure. Hare Krishna practice, formalized with the founding of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness,

emerged not in India but in NewYork City in 1966, basing its philosophy onthe teaching ofthe sixteenth-century Bengali sage ChaitanyaMahabraphu, who regarded the Hindugod Krishnaas the supreme personal God. Hare Krishnas practise vegetarianism andanascetic lifestyle, and theystrive to attain enlightenment by chanting the mantra Hare Krishna (Lord Krishna). To the extent that the vegetarianism of the Hare Krishnasis an ethical vegetarianism and moves well beyondasceticism, it maybesaid, as its foundation in NewYorkmight suggest, to owe its creed to Westernas

much as Hindu mores. The lackof centrality of vegetarianism and animalethics to Hinduism can be readily gauged. While browsing in theWorld’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto, for instance, I foundfive shelves of books devoted to Hindu-

ism. For none of the books was vegetarianism in any waya principal topic. Very fewofthe books evenhad “vegetarianism” in the index. And of those that did, Gandhi's autobiographyexcepted,all treated the subject in

a quite superficial way in one or twolines. Moreover, in the lengthy and

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multiauthored Movements and Issues in World Religions, there is no mention

of vegetarianismin the several chapters on Hinduism and Buddhism, even

whereethics is the stated topic, and there is only one mentionof ahimsain the book — and this without reference to animals.** According to such books, the vegetarianism ofHindu India does not seemto playa majorrole in the ethical considerations ofthe practitioners. Nonetheless, vegetarians shouldrejoice in the considerable degree to which vegetarianismis practised and remainsasignificant,if declining, matter ofculturalsignificance. BUDDHISM

The Buddhist religion and philosophy were founded around 525 Bc in India by Siddhartha Gautama. After its birth in India, Buddhismatfirst attracted a significant following, mainly among lower-caste Hindus, primar-

ily, it would appear, because of its opposition to the caste system. A similar rejection of caste encouragedthe success of Islam at alater date. Today, on the subcontinent, Muslims inhabit mainly the former Raj-occupiedlands of Pakistan and |Bangladesh, although some 14 percent ofIndia’s population is also Muslim, together with Afghanistan, which the British ulti-

matelyfailed to incorporate into the Raj. Buddhist canonical works written in the Pali language and commentaries in Pali and Sanskrit demonstrate with both clarity and certainty that

the early Buddhist diet was nonvegetarian; at the veryleast, flesh was a

fairly frequentdelicacy. Although the Buddha (Gautama) was unequivocally opposed to animalsacrifice both for ritual and for food therebyderived, there is solid evidence that early Buddhists, including Buddhist

monks, ate flesh.4?The Vinaya Pitaka informs us that Buddhaproscribed the flesh of certain animals tomonks but, by implication, permitted the consumptionof other animals bythose monks.** And again, the use ofanimal hides was widespread. The doctrine of the Middle Path — midway betweenself-indulgence and total asceticism — was inimicalto vegetarianismbecauseconsistent vegetarianism wasseento represent anextreme. The idea of the Middle Path was in essence a pragmatic doctrine, makingreligious life not too great a burdeneither forthelaity or for thereligious orders, i§ n contrast with whatwasseenas the essential hardship of Hindu devotion. There is even an unverified but oft-repeated tradition that the Buddhahimself died from eating tainted pork. Others sayit was from poisonous mushrooms.Yetotherssayit was from the weaknessofhis bodybut

do not deny that he consumed flesh. The very fact that there developeda

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traditionofdeathfrom eating tainted fleshreflects that flesh eating was not thought to be proscribed or to be abnormal. The first claim that Buddha himself was a vegetarian came fromSri Lankan Buddhists in a Theravada text written in the third century Bc, hundreds ofyears after theBuddha's death, but there is no evidenceofitin his life and circumstantial evidence that he most probably was not a vegetarian. Indeed, Japanese Buddhists acknowledge explicitly that he was not. In reality, we knowas little with any certainty of Buddha's life in Indiain the sixth century Bc as we know of Pythagoras in Italian MagnaGraecia a fewyears earlier. The greatest successes forBuddhism in India occurred during the reign of the Buddhist Emperor Asoka (c. 273 to c. 232 Bc) of the Mauryan dynasty. He managed through bloodyconquest to unite almost the whole ofIndia, together with some ofthe neighbouringterritories. Tradition has

it (bolstered, if not occasioned by, inscriptions on pillars and boulders, as well as by Asoka’s direct edicts) that he was so remorseful forthe sufferings inflicted by his wars of aggression that he renouncedconflict, toleratedall

faiths, declared his belief in a+imsa, andregulatedthe slaughter of animals, exempting certain species fromit. It is even said ofAsoka, andwiththe ring

of truth, althoughwithout hard evidence, that he enjoined his subjects to treat animals with kindness and consideration. Indeed, heis said to have providedanimals with medical care. Whethertrue or not,many European travellers to India over a millenniumlater were astonishedto find animal hospitals there, and it is quite probable this was a practice institutedin Asoka’s time. More certain is that he prohibited animal sacrifice to the gods. Under his auspices, it is also said, Buddhism was elevated froman Indian sect to a major world religion. Upon his death, the Mauryan Empire rapidly declined, and Indiareturned to its particularist roots.

The traditional association of Asoka and his realm with vegetarianism seems scarcely tenable. Asokarefers to the slaughterhouse and tothe state office ofthe superintendent of cows, althoughit is possible, if improbable, that the superintendence should nothave been oftheir slaughter. Asoka required butchers to be just toward their customers by charging thema fair price, an unnecessaryedictif animals were notslaughtered for food. When we readofthe animals exempt from slaughter, it becomes clear that many other animals, including cows, were not exempt. Indeed,as Jhatells us, “in

one ofhis edicts Asoka informedhis subjects that two peacocks and adeer continuedto forma part ofthe royal cuisine every day, though he had the noble intention of stoppingeventhis killing in future.”* Butifvegetarianismwasnot practised, there is at least in Asoka’s edict a clear indica-

tion that a vegetarian diet wouldbe preferable. Moreover, an animal ethic

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was vociferously proclaimed. Asoka at least pointed the wayto an idyllic vegetarian and cruelty-free future. Aseventh-century Chinese Buddhistvisitor to India — authorofthe regulations to be observed by a Chinese monastic order in which flesh eating is depicted as a minor character flaw akin to losing one’s temper, rather than as a major sin — enumerated the flesh foods that were proscribed for Mahayana Buddhists and those that they were allowedto eat. Hinayana Buddhists also ate Hesh despite an apparentroyal edict not to slaughter any animal for food on pain of death.*It is doubtful, Jha believes, there ever

wassucha proclamation.*’ Nonetheless, the very tradition ofthere having been such a proclamationindicates something ofits deemed desirability. Hunting and butchery were proscribed for Buddhists, althoughthe edict was often ignored, and flesh eating was deemed acceptable providedthat the flesh was served by non-Buddhists and that the butchery and hunting, when the proscription was observed, were undertaken by non-Buddhists. Whereas some Mahayanaand Hinayanatexts preachedagainst the eating of flesh, the evidence strongly suggests littleheed was taken of the preach-

ings — any more than, as we have noted, the NewTestament persuaded

Christians always to love one another, to treat others as they would themselves be treated, to seek the path of peace, or to turn the othercheek.

Indeed, in light of these biblical exhortations, which persuade no onethat

they were commonlypractised principles of Christianity, one has to wonder why the exhortations contained in other scriptures are soreadily thoughttorepresent the cultural reality of the traditions in whichtheyare expressed. Theyare there as admonitionsto thefaithful, not as descriptions of cultural practice. Buddhismis today very largely absent from India (andhas been since the thirteenth century) but continues elsewhere in Asia, albeit in different forms. There are two main schools: Theravada (or Hinayana) Buddhism in Southeast Asia (Sri Lanka,Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos); and Mahayana Buddhismin Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, and

China. A third way, the Vajrayanaschool, has alengthytradition in Tibet and Japan butis at least temporarily in recession. Other minor schools include Zen — which concentrates on immediate enlightenment through meditation ~ Pure Land, Lamaism, Tendai, Nichiren, and Soka Gakkai.

Formally, Theravada Buddhismretains essentially the same doctrines it adopted in the third century Bc, conforming to the strict and narrow teachings of the early Buddhist writings, and Mahayana Buddhism has,

also formally, remained true to the style it developed in northernIndiain the first century aD, being more liberal than Theravada Buddhismand

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making concessions to popular pietyand tothe idea of a personal saviour (bodhisattva). In Chinathere has been a subscription to pure vegetarianism among some of the Mahayana Buddhistlaity, but it has been far from pervasive. In Paris, for example, where there are in excess offive thousand Chinese Buddhists, after theNew Year visit to the temple, and following

Buddhist tradition, the celebratory dinner must include wonton soup (wontonsare usually filled with minced pork), duck, and fish, a portion of which must beleft on the plate as asacrificial offering. Hong Kong does, however, have a vibrant andinventive tradition of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine, andit is this that has often been imported to the West. Elsewhere,it

is sometimes —but far from always — expectedthat the monkswill be vegetarian, except when their alms dish is provided with flesh, when it would be a greater sin to offend the giver than to eat the flesh. And flesh is commonlygiven. In China, Buddhismarrived in the first century ap, became almost exclusively vegetarian bythe sixth century, but was in significant decline by the thirteenth, being replaced by a neo-Confucianism that had cometo intellectual andcultural dominance. Often, the subscription to a particular creed is no moreeffective in Buddhist than Christian countries. Thus, for example, in Myanmar, where

Theravada Buddhism predominates, goats, pigs, cattle, and poultry are

raised for food. In Sri Lanka, whose inhabitants likewise profess Theravada Buddhismin the main,beef, fish, venison, andhare constitute a significant

part of the regular diet. In Lamaic Tibet beef, mutton, poultry, yak, and pork are consumedasa part ofthe everydayfare. Japanese Mahayana Buddhism appears to have encouragedthe frequent use of fish in cuisine and does not appear to have objected to other flesh foods either —atleast after some early vegetarian orientations — although it was instrumental in the denigrationofthose involved in animal butchery for food. Although theoretical principles of Buddhism seem to commendvegetarianism, there are so manyexceptions to the commendationthat both Mahayana and Thera-

vadatheology acknowledge that flesh consumption does not constitute a breach of fundamental Buddhist laws. Tibetan Buddhists believe that tantric practice makes vegetarianism unnecessary.. \s Jha explains, “while theoretical debates on meat eating anddietary practices persisted among the Buddhists, the flesh of animals including milch cattle continuedto please their palate.”** He thus denies there is muchbasis for the viewofa broad Buddhist vegetarian past or presentinpractice.

Self-proclaimed Buddhists inWestern countries are ofcourse very largely

vegetarian and often imagine Buddhism to have a whollyvegetarian and animal-respectful belief system. They possess a very misleading picture of

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the tradition as a whole to whichthey have come to belong, especially where it has syncretized with indigenous practices and beliefs. It is worth noting that entries regarding different types of Buddhism were consulted in several general encyclopaedias during the preparation of this volume, and not one mentioned vegetarianismas an aspect of Buddhism. This does not, of course, denythe relevance ofvegetarianism to Buddhism,butit does indicate that where the religion is explained in short compass, vegetarianism is considered lowonthelist of priorities to be discussed. Apart of the misconception ofthe centrality of vegetarianism to Buddhismlies in the fact that abimsa (nonharm)issaid tobe the first law of Buddhism. Butthere

is no agreement on what ahimsa requires. Nonetheless, there is no doubt

that a general subscription to compassionis a hallmarkof Buddhism. Because animals lack the faculty ofprajna (insight) necessary to understand Buddhist teachings, they cannot obtain nirvana. Theyare therefore, for Buddhists, intellectually and morally beneath humans,but,like humans,

theylive alife of adversity and theysuffer. Therefore, despite these evaluations of animals by early Buddhists, the adherents ofthe faith were persuaded to preach, if not always to practise, ahimsa toward animals as a principle appropriately practised toward all breathing beings.*? Perhaps the central aspect of Buddhisminall its formsis its acceptance of the panIndian presupposition of samsara, a flux in whichall living beings pass through a continual cycle oflife anddeath via the transmigrationof souls. Karma mayeventually lead a human(althoughnotan animal, even though

the humanmaydescend into an animal form) toescape the cycle and reach nirvana. Buddhism opposesall killing as one ofits primaryethical principles, but as with Hinduism,killing (especially of animals) may be treated as a form ofnonkilling — thatis, as acceptable killing, a principle not un «x

the oppositionto kil cents) in Christianity,which appears in practice not to apply to innocent animals. There is no doubt that many animal-respectful passages are to be found in Buddhist writings, especially in The Dhammapada — probably composed in the third century Bc ~— whichhasfargreater strength inthis regard than most other Buddhistliterature. Thus, for example, 74e Dhammapada stresses the similarity between human and animal: “All beings tremble before danger,all fear death. When a manconsidersthis, he does notkill or

cause to kill.”*° Andit describes ahimsaas the measure ofsuperiority among humans: “A manis not a great man because heis a warrior and kills other men, but because he hurts not anyliving being he in truthis called a great man. 95]

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“He who hurts not anyliving being, whetherfeeble or strong, who neither kills nor causes to kill, him I call a Brahmin.” The strength, however, is somewhat diminished when werealize that in

some circumstances nonharm, noninjury, and nonkilling (or a/imsa) allow for harm, injury, andkilling (or Aimsa) — acceptable killing is nonkilling — as is likewise true of the Hindu doctrine, although with far less frequency in the Buddhist than the Hinducases. The difficulty of making general statements about Buddhist vegetarianism is reflected in the disparity amongthe practices of Buddhist monks — that is, those mostlikely to eschew flesh within the Buddhist tradition. In

Vietnam, the monasteries are mainly vegetarian; in China, sometimes so.

In medieval times the Japanese monks were vegetarian but ceased to be so

manygenerations ago. At one time in Korea, the Buddhist monkswere largely vegetarian; today, manyeat flesh. Tibetan monks are usually meat

eaters. So, too, are those of Sri Lanka,Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia.

If there is a generalization to be made, it is that many more Buddhist

monksare flesh eaters than not, andin the general population most Bud-

dhist laity by far are flesh eaters. In fact, becauseof its attitude of non-

violence towardnature, vegetarianism has beenmore commonamongTaoists than practitioners ofanyothercreed, although, evenin Taoism,there is no

direct instructionto avoidflesh.

JAINISM

Jainawere, andare, far less compromisingontheideal of ahimsa than Buddhists or Hindus, approachinga strict veganismin theirpractices,at least among the monksinitially and more broadly later. In the tenthcentury, when Buddhism still retained some ofits adherents in India, that Buddhists were frequently nonvegetarian was a common Jaina complaint against them — especially against the b/ikku, the monks, who regardedas pure everything, including flesh, that was put into their alms bowls. Ahimsa was very probablya Jain principle before it was adopted by Buddhists and Hindus, andit has probably remained more central to Jainism thanto anyother creed. To besure, the Jaina subscribedto a similar animal hierarchyas did the Hindus, distinguishedbytheir capacities for feeling — the moresentientbeingofgreater valuethan theless sentient. Butall were ofvalue andall were tobe considered, if not to the same degree. AlthoughearlyJain referencestoflesh eatingare significantly less frequent than those ii n the Hindu and Buddhistliterature, they are nonetheless

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present in both the canonical andexegetical writings.’ But they disappear earlier, indubitablybythe eleventh century, and vegetarian practices are the rule, although there are exceptions evento this whenwe read ofroyal cock sacrifice and the eating ofthe proceedsorofthe slaughtering ofbulls by the wealthy, or when we find exegetical texts proscribing certainflesh items, implying that it was acceptable to consumecertain others. Nonetheless, later in the sacred scriptures ahimsa is rarely interpreted as acceptable himsa, as it is more frequently in both Hindu and Buddhist texts. Still, there are some doubts aboutJaina consistency even in the modern era. On a visit to India in the 1930s, George Bernard Shaw commendedthe equality and humanityofthe Jaina tradition in principle but declaredJainismin

moderntimes to have beencorruptedbyidolatry.” There are certainly inconsistencies in some ofthe Jain texts, not merely in those of recent vintage. Thus, the twelfth-century guide to Jain yoga, the Yoga Shastra, is initially emphatic against Aimsa: “Ahimsa, truth, non-steal-

ing, continence andnon-possessionare the five major vows whichare con-

comitantto charitra [good conduct].”a S54

Perhapsthefifth andleast important requirement— that of nonpossession, ahimsa being the first duty — shouldsurpriseus as a proclaimed principle of a merchantclass, a class to which the Jaina belong predominantly,

and we mayrightly imagine it was not assiduously practised. But the denunciation of hunters and hunting is undeniably and emphatically pronounced: “Are these flesh-eating humans who hunt the innocentdeer, dwelling inforests, and living onair, water and grass, anybetter than curs?

Whyshould the people whofeel pain at the slightest prick ofa thorn, attack the innocent animals with sharp pointed weapons? These cruel hunters destroy the life of these poor creatures for the sake of some momentary pleasure. If an animal faces danger of death heis terribly pained, then how muchwill he suffer when attacked withterrible weapons?””® We canbe sure that huntingis entirely alien to the Jain tradition.Noth-

ing is ever simple, however, in Eastern thought. In the same book, The Yoga

Shastra ofHemchandracharya, killingfor religious sacrifice is expressly permitted. Religious ritual appears to have outweighed the protectionofanimallife in the orderof principledpriorities. Thus, animal protection must be seen, at least in significant part, as a promotionofascetic purity. This priority is seen also in the well-known Jain practice of goingto extraordinarylengthsto protect even thetiniest of animals. The Jainaare snown to wear a cloth over their mouthssoas notto ingesttiny air-borne nsects.As Heinrich Zimmer explains in Philosophies ofIndia, “wherever the Jaina ascetic walks, he has to sweep the waybeforehis feet withalittle

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broom, so that noliving thing maybe crushed byhis heel.”*” Sometimes, they employ someoneto dothe sweeping for them.It should, however, be clear on a moment’s reflection that the purpose of this endeavour must be to maintainthe purityof the Jain rather thanto save the lives oftheinsects. Indeed, Zimmerrefers explicitly to the Jaina as ascetic. Far more insects will be killed by having a path sweptfor him, or even sweepingit himself, than if the Jain were to take fewer elaborate measures to avoid stepping on the animalcules. The insects will still be killed, but the Jain will have

escaped the sin ofhaving caused the death, at least directly. Yet the Jain will also have vicariously created the sin of the sweeper, for the Jain’s desire to escape beingthe direct cause ofthe insects’ death, or somelesser Aimsa, will

have requiredthe sin still to be committed but by someoneelse.When the Jain himself sweeps, more will be killed or harmedthan if there were no sweeping. As a result, the animalcules certainly are nobetteroff. Zimmer tells the story of a couple of Bombaybeggars “carrying between thema light cot or bedalive with bedbugs. Theystop before the door of aJaina household andcry: “Whowill feed the bugs? Who will feed the bugs?’ If some devoutladytosses a coin from a window,oneofthe criers places himself carefully in the bed and offers himselfas a living grazing groundtohis fellow beings. Wherebythe lady of the house gains the credit, and the hero of the cot the coin.”?® Itis the divine credit the womanseeks, not food for the bugs, who would do quite well without the beggarly body. Nonetheless, that Jaina are forbiddenbytheir religious vows from participating in occupations that even indirectly harm animals encourages the ideathat nonhumananimals are entitled to freedom from harmfor their ownsakes. Looking at the vegetarian traditionin Indiaas a whole, it wouldappear, as It seems to appearin origin for religious vegetarianism everywhere, that ritual worship and asceticism— self-purity, self-denial, world renunciation, andthe elimination of passion — played a greater role than did consideration for the wellbeing of animals, although it wouldalso appearlikelythat vegetarianismitself encouraged a belief that animals were sufficiently akin to humansthat they were entitled to a significantethical consideration. If Indian vegetarianismdid notarise out of a considerationforthe wellbeing of animals, and does not always proclaim it a prominentethical principle, it almostcertainly spawneda healthy measureofit.

THe PyvtHaGoras PROBLEM

At approximately the time the Upanishads were being composedinIndia, Pythagoras was born in Ionia amongthe first stirrings ofWestern philosophy. He is usually presentedto us as the father of Western philosophical vegetarianismandas anethical vegetarian who derivedhis animalethics from the kinship between humans and animals via the transmigration of souls.’ To kill an animal would potentially be tantamounttokilling a humanrelative. Yet there are inadequate grounds for such a presentation,

although there are persuasive hints of aspects of it. Not only are there marked discrepancies in the early sources — for example, Apollonius said Pythagoras bit a snake to death, whereas others have presented himastreating all animals with respect —but, infact, we also knowalmost nothing of thelife,practices, and doctrines of Pythagoras, andthis despite the tremendous amount of scholarly speculation about these matters.? Pythagoras

wrote nothing down,so far as we cantell.A manuscript or two wouldhave

helped to give us a clearer picture, although some Pythagoreans have claimed

lost books to have been written, including Hieros Logos (SacredWord). If

so, it is curious that no one in antiquity whose books remain appears to have referred to any of those by Pythagoras before they were lost.We certainly know someofthe contentofother books that have beenlost and can be confident they once existed. One of the reasonssolittle is knownof Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, apart merely fromage, is that, itis said, the adherents of the Pythagoreancult took a vowofsecrecysothat nothing 76

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oyoy

potentially damaging to the sect would be divulged. Thatinitself would refiect the mystical, perhaps even conspiratorial, rather than philosophical nature of Pythagoreanism. By unverihable, but persuasive, tradition — and the word of Isocrates — Pythagoras is thoughtto havevisited the priests ofEgypt, and also Babylon and Persia, where he learned the basis of muchofhis religious philosophy.’ The Indophile theosophist Annie Besant wentso faras to say, ingenuously, that “he brought from Ind the wisdom of the Buddha, andtranslated it into Greek thought.”* She was not alone. The Irish Unitarian William Drummond,in The Rights ofAnimals (1838), apparently relying on Ovid, as probably did Besant, claimed Pythagoras visited India and studied under the Brahmins.’ By contrast,Thomas Tryon (1634-1703) thought Pythag-

oras to have visited India and taught the Brahminstheir philosophy. Lucius

Apuleius (ap 124-170) claimed that Pythagoras had learned muchofhis

philosophyfrom Indian wisdombutnotthat hevisited the subcontinent. Such are the confident but unverifiable assertions born ofhistorical imagination! Butif it is improbable that Pythagoras reachedIndia, it is nonetheless quite plausible that he was introducedto Indian religious and philosophical ideas whenhe wasin Persia. If Pythagoras possessed a pronounced animal ethic, either he learned respect for other species in the countries he visited or he developed one independently. But there is nothing definitive in the religions or philosophies of those countries now knownas comprising theMiddle East that would accountfor his supposed profound animal sensibilities. And there isno convincing evidence that he developed an animal ethic independently. One thing that he almost certainly did learn in his youthful years, and one commontothetraditions

from which he probably learned, was the necessity of purging oneself of

one’s animal nature in order to becomeas purelyspiritual as possible, to

approachthe gods, to separate oneselffromthe world. It was anorientation reminiscent of Brahmin world renunciation. Heis said to have learned this doctrine fromhis teachers Thales and Anaximanderbefore he visited Egypt and Babylonia, where it would have been reinforced. By contrast, in the

fifth century Bc, the atomist Democritus took pains to remind his contemporaries that at root we were no more than animals ourselves. It appears to have been a poignant message and one necessary for the times as a reminder to those who would divestus of our essential animal being. The

Pythagoreans attempted to escape their animal nature. Theywere ascetics first and foremost. Pythagorasis also said to have learned the compositionanduse ofhallucinatory drugs on his visits abroad — hence his reputation as a magician.

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The historian of antiquity MartinWest regards him as “part philosopher, part priest, part conjuror.”° The Victorian-era Pythagorean Edouard Schure observed that “Porphyry and Iamblichus have depicted the commence-

mentofhis life there [i.e., in Croton, Magna Graecia] as being that ofa

magicianrather than a philosopher.”’ The GermanclassicistWalter Burkert views him as a shaman. The scholarly image of Pythagoras is certainly not primarily that ofa philosopher devotedto ethical vegetarian principles. The overwhelmingbelief of the epoch, as with Platonists later, was that the human was divine in nature. Otherspecies, of course, were not. The task was to express humandivinity by purifying the humansoulas fully as possible — that is, by divesting it ofits animality. We can be confident that Pythagoras taught the immortality of the humansoul, and as Charles Kahn says, “in the Greek tradition deathlessness is the attribute ofthe

gods.”® Thus, in pursuing human immortality, the Pythagoreansaspired to

be godlike and far removed fromotherspecies. If we turn to the Golden Verses, so named by Iamblichus, which were composed probablyabout 250 BC ~ and certainly several centuries before the fifth century ap, when the Stoic Hierocles wrote a commentary on them— we find no mention of anything pertainingto an animalethic. Purporting toreplicate the original

instructions from Pythagoras to his flock, the Golden Verses tell us: “And when,after having divested thyself of thy mortal body, thou arrivestat the

most pure Aether, Thou shalt be a God, immortal, incorruptible, and

Death shall have no more dominionover thee.”’ The task was to divorce oneselfas completelyas possible from one’s animal nature in favourof one’s spiritual potential, to achieve immortality no less. Biological kinship with the animals, and the transmigration ofsouls between humansandanimals,

did not imply a recognition of a commonnature, any more thantheydid

for Plato ~ in Lysis (221E-222D), Plato pointed out that to esteemone another as kin(ozkeios) is not the same as to esteem anotheras a beinglike

oneself — and to the extent that any commonality might be implied, Pythagoreanism was intent on divesting humans ofthat nature, removing themselves from earthly matters, to reach the gods. Nonetheless, we can

recognize that there was something ethical, an inkling atleast, implied in the ideaof biological kinshipin the culture of the epoch, when, according

to Plutarch, the early evolutionist Anaximander, “having declaredthatfish are at once the fathers and mothers of men, urges us not to eat them.”'°

Still, biological kinship does not ipso facto implyanaffective relationship.

Kinship mayof course beaffective, but there is no compelling reasonthat it be so.

In his Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, Charles Kahnpoints out that “we

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have threelives of Pythagoras fromlate antiquity, by Diogenes Laertius,

Porphyry and Iamblichus, in that order, and each one is more marvelous

than its predecessor.”!! The more distant the biographer from Pythag-

oras’s time, the more confidentheis of Pythagoras’s doctrines and the more

wondrous the biographer imagines them. The first was written several centuries after Pythagoras’s death, rather like writing about Charles II of Eng-

landtoday in the absenceofreliable historical documentation. To besure, each of the biographers hadan array of snippets of prior commentaryon whichto build thelife they were writing, butthere waslittle on which they could depend with anygreat degree of confidence, resorting to selection here and there from ahost of not always consistent observations and with no adequate criteria for selection — other thanthe desire to present a persuasive picture ofa historical giant among men. Hagiographydid not begin withthelives of thesaints!There was anearlier book, Concerning Nature, by Philolaus, written close to the time of Pythagoras, but very little ofthe book remains and nothing on diet or metempsychosis. One would have thought the book morereliable, being closer in time to Pythagoras, but

some ofthe remainingpassages utterlyfail to convince, smacking more of myth than reality. Being a near contemporary of Pythagoras does not appear to have improvedthe recollection. But perhaps the most influential

bookin creating the Pythagorean myth is Book 15 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses — written well over a half-millenniumafter the demiseof the Ionian sage.

There, Ovid provides us with a most engagingpicture basedprimarily on his vividliterary imagination, Pythagoras emergingas a pronouncedadvocate for theinterests of animals. Anditis the Ovidian Pythagorasthat had the mostinfluence on public conceptionthereafter. Colin Spencerstates that somesay Pythagorasdiedat the age of 70,others at 104, a discrepancyof a large numberofyears.’* For Iioward Williams, the age is noless vague, being‘variously computedat eighty, ninety, or one hundredyears.”!% Today, Pythagoras’s lifespan is normally depicted as around 582 to around 507 Bc. Whenthereis solittle agreement on basic facts, and whennorecord has beenleft, how can we feel confident on mat-

ters of doctrine or personality? Charles Kahn views the matter aright when he avers: “The historical figure of Pythagoras has almost vanished behind the cloudof legendaroundhis name.”'* We can feel confident, as noted,

that Pythagoras taught the doctrine of immortality, and we can be almost certain ofhis teaching of the transmigration of souls ~ Eduard Zellertells us that in the centuryfollowing his deathit was for the teaching of immortality and metempsychosis that he was known.'° An almost contemporary, Xenophanes, pokedfun at Pythagoras, according to Diogenes Laertius,

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when,onseeing a dog being whipped, Pythagoras ejaculated: “Stop donot beat it, for it is the soul of a dear friend.” !© But we do not knowwhetherthe

story is true orwhether Pythagoras was more concerned aboutharmto the dogorto the friend. It would notbe atall surprising if transmigration were a part ofthe credo giventhat the frequencyof the doctrine’s appearance in

early societies is remarkable and quite independentof any ethical notions

connected with kinship. It existed in a number of aboriginal societies, includingthose ofAmazonia, Indonesia, and/\ustralia, amongthe Druids

of Celtic France in mythological form, and among the Aztec warriors,

whose favourite formwas thatof thehummingbird, sippingnectarforever.

If we can be reasonablyconfident of immortal souls and transmigration

as aspects of Pythagorean doctrine, whatelse can we believe beyonda rea-

sonable doubt? He was probablya vegetarian, at least on the whole, but for the sake ofthe purity ofhis own soul, not for the sake of the animals. Erich Prank is perhaps a little harsh in his conclusion thatall the discoveries attributed to Pythagoras belong to Magna Graeciascholars of a century later and that the Pythagoreans were “a religious sect similar to the Orphics.”'” By contrast, Charles Kahn reported in 2001 that “recent scholarly opinion seemstobe inclining to a more positive viewof Pythagoras as a mathematician and philosopher.”'* Nonetheless, whereas Pythagorean scholars, such as Moderatus(first century ap), claim that Platonismis a

plagiarism of Pythagoreanism — “they have taken for themselves the first fruit of Pythagorean thought” is the commonconception — the modern Germanscholar Walter Burkert has shown convincingly to the contrary that what is taken as Pythagorean philosophy was first brought to us by Plato and his successors.'? Howard Williamstells the apocryphal story of howPlato spent an enormous sumto purchase a book by Pythagoras, the Pythagorean System by purported name, andis said to have incorporated the principal part ofit into his 7imeaus.*® Certainly,what we knowofthe supposedly Pythagorean ideas on numbers and music are knownto usprimarily through the Phaedo and the 7imaeus ofPlato, and to a lesser degree

from the Meno, Republic, and Phaedrus, butthisofitself does not argue for a Pythagorean source for the ideas, despite Plato’s expressed preference in the Republic (600 AB) — the only time Plato ever mentions Pythagoras by name — for the philosophy of Pythagoras over the poetry of Homer. The impressive Irish scholar Dominic O’Meara observes that ever “since [the time of | Plato andhisAcademy[,] Platonists have showngreat interest in

the figure of Pythagoras and a strong inclination to ‘Pythagoreanize.””?! And so they have. However, the Pythagoras they have sought is not the unknowable Pythagoras clouded in mist but, in Platonic terms, the Form,

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the ideal type, of themselves. To “Pythagoreanize” is to Platonize. If the

thoughtofPlato replicates in some mannerthatof Pythagoras, asit would

primafacie appear to do, Pythagoras wishedtoseparate himselfas fullyas possible from everything animal, as Plato did, not to revel in his relation-

ship toit.*? Weshould notbeatall surprised that so muchofthe earliest Greek philosophy seems obscure to us andoften appears strange. We are standing at the beginningof a whole new wayof thought. It did not arrive fully clad with Thales — traditionally deemed the first philosopher, following Aristotle’s assertionto thateffect.And Thales was an older contemporary of Pythagoras. The distinctions among myth,religion, science, and philosophy werenotatall clear, and not until Socrates was there anythinglikea clear conception of ethics. What philosophythere was in the beginning concerned itself with the nature of nature (physis), not withthe nature of

the goodorthejust. Nor was philosophyall of apiece, a readily recognizable subject matter or approach. As Martin West has explained: “° Early Greek philosophywas not asingle vessel which asuccession ofpilots briefly commandedandtriedto steer towardsan agreeddestination... it was more like a flotilla of small craft whose navigators did notall start from the same point or at the sametime, norall aim for the same goal; some went in groups, some wereinfluenced by the movementsofothers, sometravelled out of sight of each other.”*? Nowcalled early Greek philosophy, preSocratic philosophy wasanessentially unclear, uncoordinated, and fumbling — if sometimes brilliant but also sometimes wildly inaccurate — mythreplacing adventure of the speculative minds of Ionia and MagnaGraecia. We should notexpect, nor do weget, cohesion andclarity or always even meaningfulness. Religion, myth, and the beginnings of philosophyatfirst intermirneled. It is appropriate to imagine Pythagorasasclinging tenuously

toall three. lamblichus considered Pythagoras “the prince andfather ofdivine philosophy,” whereas Heraclitus regarded himas a clever charlatan: “much learning, artful knavery.”** In the words of Charles Kahn, Heraclitus viewedhim as one whose“learning is great” but whose “wisdomis fraudulent.”*? Diogenes Laertius and Iamblichus present Pythagoras as an atleast almost consistent vegetarian — he ate flesh onlyrarely, whenthe gods demanded it, noted Iamblichus. But we are not told how often the gods

demanded it.The renownedclassicist Jonathan Barnes, in The Presocratic

Philosophers, casts doubtontheidea he wasa vegetarianat all.*° The playwrights of the New Comedy(c. fourth century Bc) certainly thought the

Pythagoreans to be supposedly vegetarian, for they occasionally made the

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failures to meet the requirements of the Pythagoreandiet the butt oftheir jokes. Aristoxenus (fourth centuryBc) reports that Pythagoras ate suckling pigs and tender young kids but abstained from ox and sheep.’ Perhaps Aristoxenus acquired this information (or misinformation) from a Pythagorean sympathizer. Perhaps he or his informant was defending Aristotle's reputation in a cynical and quasi-rationalist age fromsuspicionofhis being too primitive. The facts are unclear. Aristoxenus apparentlywrote anearly biographyof Pythagoras, but it has nowbeenlost.The Byzantine patriarch Photius also claimed that Pythagoras andhis followers ate sacrificial flesh on occasion.*® Athenaeus mocked the Pythagorean Epicharides for eating dog fiesh.*? Plutarch said the Pythagoreans abstained from mullet but implied that theyate other flesh.*? In the Ethics ofDiet, Howard Williams concludes: “The obligation to abstain fromthe flesh of animals was founded on mental and spiritual grounds rather than humanitarian grounds.”*! The Golden Verses of Pythagoras state: “But abstain thou fromthe meats which we have forbidden in the purifications and inthe deliverance of the soul,” which, of course, implies that other meats could be consumed.** In the

“symbols of Pythagoras,” containedin the same book ofGoldenVerses, we

are told (symbol 39), contradicting the implications of the above verse, “Abstain from animals,” but we are left in doubtas to the reasons for the

abstention, be it kinship, or purificatory worship, or an explicit animal ethic. Nowhere in the Golden Verses is there any suggestionit might be a matter of ethics. Porphyrytells us, “fish he ate rarely,” but then the coldblooded fish maynot have been recognized as animal in the same manner as other beings were animal.*’ Nonetheless, Plutarch tells us Pythagoras did not eat fish because he thought of them as akin to humans, belonging with us (oikeia).°* Thus, with such a host of inconsistencies, we cannotbe sure

whether Pythagoras declinedall flesh and, if he did, whether on the grounds of purity of soul alone or whether the supposed doctrine contained at least the elements ofa respect for animals in and for themselves. In Universal History, Diodorus presents the transmigration of souls — “metempsychosis’ — as a central doctrine of Pythagoras.* By contrast, Howard Williams claims that “byit Pythagoras intended merely to convey to the ‘uninstructed,’ byparable, the sublime idea that the soulis gradually purified byasevere course of discipline until finally it becomesfittedfor a fleshless life of immortality.”°° But what can we make ofthe transmigration of souls? As only the souls of the corrupt, at least according to the Pythagorean Empedocles, enter the bodies of animals, one has to acknowledge thatthe claimed “kinship” relationis one ofthe vastly superiorto the vastly inferior, not onlyin reason andethics butalsoin overall status.It is,

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again, a doctrine reminiscent of Indianreligious philosophy. Certainly, there is no incontrovertible reason for assuming that kinship — that is,

being animals in common— will have led to considerate treatment. Noris there any good reasonto believe, as does Colin Spencer, for example, that “the very concept of metempsychosis implies that all creatures are equal.”°’ It certainly did not implyequality, for instance, among the Aztecs. They were decidedlynot vegetarian and kept an imperial zoo of the natural, the strange, andthe deformed. But they believed in metempsychosis nonetheless. No one in todays society who committed the greatest atrocities against nonhuman animals would denythat he or she and the victim were animals in common. No one who was an omnivore and ate animals would denybeing biologically related to nonhumananimals. “Kinship,” merely because of the word’s emotive persuasion, encourages us to expect it to imply more, but there is no incontrovertible, or even good, reason whyit should. After all, even Saint Thomas Aquinas, normally thought to have been one of the prime exemplars of the philosophyof animal denigration, wrote: “The Word[logos] also has anessential kinship not only with the rational nature, but also universally with the whole of creation, since the

Word contains the essence ofall things created by God.”** Aquinas

acknowledges his kinship with the animals through logos, but this fact

does nothing to persuade Aquinastoraise the status of animals — and certainly not to consider themequals. Diogenes Laertius and most succeeding authors say that Pythagoras and his followers ate no beans. Aristotle tells us that others disagreed, both

about flesh and beans, stating that a “false opinion of longstanding has gained ground andincreasedin strength — the opinionthat Pythagoras the philosopher did not eat meat and also abstainedfrom beans.”*? Aristoxenus reported beans to have been Pythagoras’s favourite vegetable.*°Apparently, they were fine laxative — “they soothe andgentlyrelieve the bowels.”*! Whereas almostall the evidence is on one side, and Empedocles himself warns “wretches” not to eat them, we do not know on what groundsbeans

were eschewed,if they were eschewed. Cicero was confidentPlato believed the ban was because offlatulence.** Historically, scholars have engaged in the most imaginative, even bizarre, speculations on the potential grounds. Sometimes, they provide entertainment but not muchpersuasion.It has been suggested, with greater reasonthan someof the wildspeculation,that

perhaps the beansborelittle relationship to what we knowas beanstoday. Perhaps they were considered unhealthy for some reason, orat least perhaps that was acommonmedical opinion. Pythagoras probablylearned the practice as a piece of mysterious lore from the Egyptianpriests, who also

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abstained from beans, as did the Zoroastrians. But he could have learned it

earlier from Thales. Was this a primitive taboo, as has been mooted? Probably. All that we mayglean from this abstention is that Pythagoras, it seems not unreasonable to conclude, still stood on the side of superstition in significant respects, not yet fully in tune with the requirements of the philosophic disposition.He was more shaman than philosopher.Was the renunciation offlesh also an aspect oftaboo? Even if there were absolute consistency in the accounts of Pythagoras

andhis doctrines, this alone wouldbe insufhcient to convince us of the

nature of his philosophy, although it would give us less anguish. Howdid Diogenes Laertius find informationfor his first biography? From sycophantic accounts by contemporary Pythagoreans, themselves centuries removedfrom Pythagoras? From general impressions in the public mind that maywell have been formed in one way and developed quite differently over the intervening centuries? From the scarce and often contradictory documentedhistorical comments? And was the second account basedon the first with a few addedfurther speculations, which gaverise to the third? Whatif by contrast theyall concurred, but the first was faulty historiography? Historically, telling a good story, putting one’s hero in the light in whichone wants himto be seen, was often more important than veracity.

Does the biographer want to defend Pythagoras fromthe potential suspicion of being opposed to whatever the current conventional wisdoms might be at the time the biographeris writing, and does this defence accountfor the differences in the biographies? As Spencer has rightly expressed the matter, “modernscholarship points out that each new biographerreinterprets the material in the subjectivelight ofhis age and beliefs.”* Whateverhis beliefs, howdid Pythagoras come to achieve his undoubtable reputation as a giant among men? A“figure of consequence,” Jonathan Barnes deems him in a moment of understatement.** Was Pythagoras a

philosopher, mathematician, musicologist, priest, magician, shaman, or charlatan, as has been variously thought — orall, some, or none? “A manof

great charismatic authority’ appears to be the only answer we maygive with confidence. If we turn to Homer's works fromthe eighth centuryBc,

or to Homerandthe Homeridae, as it is no longer believed that the works

attributed to Homer were composed bya single person, we findwarriors andhunters as the exclusive heroes — except perhaps for the dog Argos in the Odyssey, the battling frogs and mice in the Batrachomyomachia, and “goodly-brave steeds” in general. The warrior heroes’ passions were wine andflesh. There were lesser heroes in Greece ofthat time, too — the poets, the storytellers, the musicians — but none were anywhere nearon a par with

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the warriors.What then of the philosophers? Perhaps in Pythagoras’s case he was esteemed as much for his commanding presence and mystical priestlyfunctionas for his arcane knowledge, but — if not yet alongside the

ranks ofthe warriors — the newbreed, nay newspecies, of philosophers, the mysterious possessors of previously unimagined half-truths, purveyors of uncommon knowledge, were coming to the fore. They were viewed with suspicion but also with awe anddread. They were men to be reckoned with. Whatever else might be said, Pythagoras was viewedas a towering authority, a man beyond normal men.It has been said there were three kinds of men: ordinary men, philosophers, and Pythagoras. Thatis probably howhe wasseen in his owntime. This perception ts given credence by the unverified but persuasive historical claim that onlythe elevated mathematikoi — the initiated of his school — were allowed tosee Pythagoras. The inferior akousmatikoi — the novices — were forbiddento see him, although

they could hear him. They were separated from his august presence bya screen. [he mystique of Pythagoras was beingcreated. At least we canbe sure that Pythagoras was a highly charismatic figure who dominatedhis time andspace. EcyprTr, BABYLONIA, PERSIA

Whence did Pythagoras derive his ideas? What were the major influences that encouraged him to adoptan orientation towardthe immortalsoul, metempsychosis, vegetarianism, and animalethics, if that is what he did, which were, or seemedto be, novelties to Western culture? If Isocrates, a

contemporaryofPlato,is to be trusted, Pythagoras studied “sacrifices and temple purifications” with the Egyptians.*? By repute, he set out on his voyage to Egyptat the age of twenty-two.What he learned there about the secrets of the Egyptian doctrines maintained in the temples he was sworn to secrecy not to reveal. The priests by whom he wasinstructedin Egypt were vegetarian for the same purificatory reasons that seem to have moved Pythagoras. In this waythe priests were raised above the mere mortals. Fortunately, because the Egyptians have hada uniform system of writing for somefive thousandyears and, in general, adequate records have beenkept, information about Egypt is rather more reliable than for most other nations — despite the antiquarian efforts to delete the records of queens whoaspired to be pharaohs. We can thus be confidentofpriestly asceticism but mustnote that such asceticism, hence vegetarianism, was not enjoyed

(or suffered) by the populace at large.Denying themselves the impurities

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of animalflesh raised the priestly class above the merelaity. The priest-

hood, whichpossessed powers well beyondthatofstrictlyreligious authority, constituted a relatively small but elite group within Egyptiansociety.

Indeed, prior to Pythagoras’s time, for nigh on a half-millennium, Egypt was in effect a priest-run theocracy, but by the time of Pythagoras’s presumed sojourn the theocratic power had waned.Still, the priesthood remained aformidable force. A large variety of animals were worshippedin Egypt, but as we sawearlier, ic was of no benefit whatsoever to the animals.*° In those societies where animals were deemed divine, they were eaten precisely because they were divine. They were sacrificed and eaten because to do so wasto participate in the divine. The Egyptians’ belief in the transmigration ofsouls must be understood not as a vehicle to respect animals but as a means to provide the populace with an avenuetotheir secular andreligious potentialities. If people didtheir duty, their souls wouldbe elevated toward the godhead. If one failed in one’s earthly requirements, the soul would descend into that of a lowly animal. It seems very probable that there wasat least an element, and probably much more thanan element,ofthis in the Pythagorean adoption of metempsychosis. Indeed, the case for the influence of Egyptinparticular, and theMiddle Eastin general, on the doctrines

andpractices of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanismhas considerable merit. Priestly vegetarianism and abelief in the transmigration of souls were also aspects, slightly later in origin, in the culture of Babylonia, the ancient empire of Mesopotamia.It is mooted whether, along with Egypt and Persia, Pythagoras also visited Babyloniato study the mysteries ofthe priestly practices. It has been further suggested that Babyloniais most likely the place where Pythagoras learned the esoteric secrets of the preparation and use ofhallucinatory drugs to consort moreeffectively withthe gods, factors that helped to create his reputation as a shaman. Persia is the third countryheis said mostlikelyto have visited . There,it is thought he met Zoroaster (c. 628 to c. 551 BC), the founder of Zoroastri-

anism — at least thelikely lifespan dates do not rule out such a meeting. By the time he was thirty, Zoroaster (known by some as Zarathustra) had experiencedrevelations ofa newreligion he was to preach and proselytize. The religion was concerned with theprotection of the harvest of a sedentary people. It required kind treatment of the animals that had helped to produce the bountyofthe harvest. The reasonfor the consideration of these animals — and apparently they alone amonganimals — was primarily because kind treatment wouldresult in more efficient performance. However, with the adoption ofsuch a practice, the consideration for animals in

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and for themselves would likely have ensued quickly. Thus consideration

for animals was foreshadowed, we can reasonablyproject, in the doctrines

of Zoroaster. Gradually, the use of narcotics in prayer and thesacrifice of bulls to the god Mithra, practices that Zoroaster is thought to have abhorred, crept into the practice of Zoroastrianism, and thusthereligion's potential for the benefit of the animals diminished. There appears to be little explicit in the practice of Pythagoreanism that was adapted or adoptedfrom Zoroastrianism, although those convinced of a serious animal ethic among the

Pythagoreansare likely to findsimilar influential expressions by the Persians of the Pythagoreanera. >

THE OrpHICS

There is a contender for significant influence on Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism far closer to home than Egypt, Babylonia, or Persia: the Orphics. In Greek mythology Orpheusis a celebrated Thracian musician. Thrace occupies the southern tip ofthe Balkan peninsula, bordering the Black Sea. Orpheus was said to produce such charming music onhis lyre that wild animals were soothed, trees danced, andrivers stoodstill. The Orphiccult developed in Greece somewhat earlier than the era of Pythagoras but was prominent during the Samian’slifetime. The Orphics, paying lip service to Orpheus, were ascetics who espoused metempsychosis andthe abstention from animalflesh inorder to purge the animal — hence, evil — aspects of the humancharacter. No doubt, these characteristics of the Orphics were at least somewhatinfluential on Pythagoras’s thought. But there is another aspect of the Orpheus image that can have played very little role, an image that is often confusedin considering the Orphic impact on Pythagoras: that of the animal-respecting Orpheus. The image did not cometo fruition until centuries after the time of Pythagoras. It is in Ovid’sMetamorphoses, written around the time of Christ andover a half-millenniumafter Pythagoras’s earthly demise, that we get anatleast partly new image of Orpheus, just as we gota rather different picture of Pythagoras than had reigned previously. Just as Ovid succeededingiving posterity a probably distorted, but extremely influential, picture of Pythagoras (along the samelines as those that had beenpreviouslydeveloping in contrast to its earliest depictions but far more explicit in its ethics ‘

4

‘-

|

e

|

ale

and in far more modernguise), he succeeded likewise in producing an

equally novel, and probably misleading, depiction of the traditional image

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of Orpheus. Tobe sure, the one is an image ofa philosopher, the other a

portrait of amythological figure, but they eachserve to deceive — however beautifully they are written. Theytell us rather more perhaps about one side ofthe contradictoryaspects of contemporary Romanexpectations and mores — symbolized antithetically by vegetarian influences and the Roman games — than about the characters they purport to describe. Moreover,

from the perspective of understanding the influence on Pythagoras, whatever effect the Orphic tradition may have had cannotinclude today’s customary conception of Orpheusas the greatally of the animals. To be sure, he charmedthe wild beasts, butin the original myth he has not much more relationship to the wildbeasts than to the dancingtrees or to thestatic rivers.Andhis abilityto soothe the wild beasts tells us nothing more about the beasts than that they were customarily wild. Indeed, of greater signihcance in this accountis the remarkable feat of Orpheus’s control of them, which could be said to represent governance and dominanceofthe animals rather thanrespect. The original mythtells us something of the remarkable musical accomplishments associated with Orpheusrather thanofanidyllic relationship with the animals. In Book10 of the Metamorphoses, Ovid regales the wondrous story of Cyparissus and the stag, a considerable embellishment onprevious accounts ofthe legend. Ovid has Cyparissus kill the stag inadvertently and then pine away untodeath for his misdeed against the beloved animal. In effect, Ovid creates a new myth fromanold myth. Thestorytakes place in the groves of Orpheus, and Ovid concludes the tale: “Such was the grove which Orpheus had drawn around him, and nowhesatin the midst of a

gathering of wild creatures, and a host of birds.”*” An Edenic image of Orpheus and the attendant animals was created. Such an image could never have reached Pythagoras nor had anyinfluence on his philosophy. Norwas the image consistent with the traditional myth. THE PvyTHAGOREANS

JonathanBarnessays, “the school of thought founded by Pythagoras lasted more than amillennium.”Indeed. Butit was the school of thoughtrather thantheschoolitselfthat endured. Within a couple ofhundredyears of the founding, the Pythagorean schoolproper hadbeendriven outofits home in southern Italy, ostensibly over some religious or political dispute with the newauthorities.ManyPythagoreanfollowers are reported to have been murdered. There was the remnantof a schoolstill in existence at Tarentum

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in the fourth century pc. And a newschoolwasinexistence for a while in

Romein the first century ap, of whichthe extreme ascetic Apollonius of

Tyana and perhaps the Pythagoreanapologist Moderatus of Gades were adherents, butthe cultists, if we may call them that, soonfell foul ofthe

strict authorities and disbanded. Apparently, smaller schools remained scattered about Europe, primarily Greece and Italy, for another few hundredyears. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts demonstrate continued interest in Pythagorean doctrines. There was a significant, almost worshipful, revival in the Victorianera, spawning a number of new books, most tending toward the occult, but no booksofassistance to the animal cause. Not

once did Edouard Schure, perhaps the most prominent and representative of the authors of such books, mention animal ethics in his book onthe

Pythagoreantradition. Not once in his forty-page chapter on “The Order and the Doctrine” did he deem abstention from flesh worthy of even a passing comment. Solittle did he see concern for animals as central to Pythagoreanism. Indeed, he saw Pythagoreanismas essentially concerned with purification ofthe soul, emphasizingourspirituality and attempting to eliminate our animality. Its purpose was to elevate us toward the heavens andthus to repudiate our presumed kinship withotherspecies as far as possible — although, of course, Schure does not express the renunciation of kinship in precisely these terms. It is implied by the purification and the emphasis. Hetells us clearly enough that “humanity evolves betweenthe natural and animal world into whichit plunges byreason ofits earthly roots, and the divine world of pure spirits, its heavenly source, towards whichit aspires to rise.”*? He writes further of the Pythagoreans endeavouring to be “freed from the darkness of animality.”*° It is not the commonality ofspecies, not kinship, in whichhe revels but human exclusivity from the other species that he seeks. One is struckby the vastlydifferent interpretations in play, dependent upon whether one approaches the understanding of Pythagoreanism fromthe perspective of an animaladvocate or from anyother bent, be it academic, religious, or spiritual. One must conclude that the perspective tends to informthe interpretation, sometimesradically. The Pythagorean school,it is said, was divided into mathematikoi (the “esoterics’ who inhabited the hallowed halls — according to Schure,

“Pythagoras called his disciples mathematicians because his higher teaching beganbythe doctrine of numbers”) and akousmatikoi (the “exoterics”

whoawaited “the test” to see whether they were adequate to join those of

the higher calling).?' The primarydiscipleship was some three hundred

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strong, according to Williams. Spencer numbers the converts at some two thousand and the philosophersat six hundred. Again, thereis a significant >

discrepancyin the historical record aboutbasic facts. Only the mathematikoi, those trainedto pursue the ethereal soul, were requiredtobe vegetarian, although oncertain days the samefleshless restriction was imposed on the akousmattkot. Surely, if the protection of animals were uppermostin Pythagoras mind, or even a vague butfirmly heldprinciple, all would have been requiredto abstain from fleshor, at least,would have been exhorted to do so. No such requirement was imposed nor exhortation reported. Instead, becoming a vegetarianis a privilege, a mark ofstatus, an

elite emblem. In the Pythagorean world, to be allowed to becomeavegetarian is a way to distinguish oneself from all others. These divisions between mathematikoi and akousmatikoi are reminiscent of the Manicheans,

founded by Mani(ap 216-276), whose followers were dividedinto the elect

and the hearers, the latter ministering to the elect, who again were required

to abstain from flesh, unlike the hearers. The division, too, evokes the memoryof the 6rahmana inearly Hinduismandthe origins of the caste system with a not toodissimilar resultant distinction between those who were vegetarian and those who were not. The vegetarian requirement was to aid in the renunciationofthe world, not to proclaim oneself an essen-

tially animal part ofit.To become a memberofthe mathematikoi was to be advanced in otherworldliness. Whatever may be the truth of early Pythagoreanism, by the second or third century ap the image was firmlyset, as we can see fromthe skeptic Sextus Empiricus in Against the Mathematicians (or Against the Dogmatists, as it is also known):

Pythagoras and Empedocles and therest ofthe Italians [so called because they resided in Greekcoloniesin Italy] say that wehave afellowship not only with one another and the gods but also withthe irrational animals. [Sextus Empiricus does not believe the animals are irrational. This is merely a sop to

conventional usage.] For there is a single spirit which pervades the whole world as a sort of soul and whichunites us with them. Thatis why, if we kill them and eat their flesh, we commit injustice and impiety, inasmuch as we are killing our kin. Hence these philosophers urgedusto abstain from meat.”

By the time of Sextus Empiricus, the idea of Pythagoras as an advocate for the animals was firmlyentrenched. The idea of kinship had come to possess ethical content. Oratleast it has beenso traditionallyinterpreted. Of the biographers from antiquity, Kahn deems Porphyry“the least

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unreliable.”°* Porphyry expresses the doctrine simply: “Whathesaid to his associates no-one can saywith anycertainty; for theypreserved no ordinary silence. But it became verywell known to everyonethathesaid, first, that the soul is immortal; then, that it changes into other kinds of animals; and,

further, that at certain periods whatever has happened happensagain, there being nothing that is absolutely new; and that all living things should be considered as belonging to the same kind. Pythagoras seems to have been the first to introduce these doctrines into Greece.”

In contrast with Sextus Empiricus centuries later, here with Porphyry we have as yet no explicit acknowledgmentofa sophisticated animalethic con-

nected withkinship in Pythagoreandoctrine. Indeed, it would appearto be true of Sextus Empiricus onlyif the “injustice and impiety” he mentions

are viewed to be crimes and sins against the animal realm, not infractions

against the achievementofthe appropriate human goal. Either interpretation would appearreasonable. Sacrifice was regarded as an importantpart of the Greek tradition, and the Pythagoreansalso practised sacrifice, but it may well have been,atleast onoccasion, an efhgy ofan animal, or a cake, or honey, or sweet-smelling perfumes, suchas frankincense and myrrh, that were sacrificed to the gods.

Some Pythagoreanapologists have even indicated it was mathematical

speculations that were sometimes sacrificed! But if Iamblichus is to be

believed, it was animals that were sacrificed. Porphyry concurs but adds

that certain parts, such as the head, feet, testes, and genitals, were not eaten. Aristotle adds heart, sea urchin, and womb amongthe Pythagorean

inedibles.”” Pythagoras is said by some, however, to have preferred to sacrifice at the bloodless altar of Delos. Nonetheless, according to lamblichus, the Pythagorean perspective was that one must noteat flesh unless the ani-

mal was appropriate for sacrifice and had beensacrificed by the dueritual. The ritual was thus of greater importance than thelife of the animal. At the religious festivals the dissection of the carcase would be undertaken

by the priests. It is ironic that the butcher is thus the direct descendent of the clergy! Humansouls, it seems to have been believed, do not transmi-

grate into animals that it is appropriate to sacrifice. In other words, Itis onlythe less esteemed — but better-treated — animals intowhomthesoulis transmigrated. In the hands ofthe later classical Pythagoreans, particularly lamblichus, we are,Dominic O’Mearatells us convincingly, “led up through successive

stages of Pythagorean philosophy, the final stage being reached ... in a Pythagoreantheology.”*® Yet it should be understood the later Pythagoreans were either completing the process portendedin the origins or completing 2

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the circle, returning Pythagoreanism toits theological roots. O'Meara allows that, for Porphyry, the value of vegetarianism lies in the fact that “it demands the minimumofattention fromthe soul, since it is inexpensive

to procure, simple to prepare, and unexciting. Porphyry would preferthat we do away with food altogether.””’ Theological asceticism, not animal protection, is at the root of Pythagorean vegetarianism, to the extent the diet was vegetarian. If there are grounds to be cautious in our interpretations of the animal sensibilities of the Pythagoreans in general, we can feel rather more confident about the animalsensibilities of one of them: the mathematikoi poet Empedocles. We metthe SicilianEmpedocles (c. 495 toc. 435 BC) already in our earlier discussion ofthe Golden Age, but there is more to be said. To be sure, he was often regarded as something of a shamanin his practice, and perhaps as something of an extremist in someof his views, but we can see at the very least an elementof an animalethic in his expressions. Naturally, his reasons reflected his primary asceticism. Not only did he abominate animal sacrifice, as we saw in Chapter1, but the reason hegivesis to

avoid “dehlement’ rather than to achieve justice. He was explicit that we should abstain fromeating living beings because “the bodies of the animals we eat are the dwelling places of punished souls.”°? He maintains the distinction between potentially divine humans and animals by notingthat animal bodies are only the houses for punished souls. Humanbodies were the houses for potentially pure souls. But Empedocles praises kindness between human and animals and seems to suggest that justice applies in the same mannertoall creatures.” Atleast, that is howAristotle interprets him: As everyone somehowsurmises, there is by nature a commonjustice and injustice, evenin the absence of communityand compacts [aprescient swipe against the Stoics!]. This is what Empedoclessays about not killing animate creatures,

but a lawforall, through the broad

air it endlessly extends and through the boundless light.©°

There is almost in fact, and very probably by implication, an explicit

animal ethic here, at least if Aristotle is right that, forEmpedocles, justice (probably here synonymouswith law — a clear distinction betweenthe two

came manycenturieslater) is the groundfor not killing animals. Moreover,

at no point in anything extant fromtheclassical periodis it suggested that Empedocles thought of himselfas differing from the master, although, to

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be sure, he was regarded as anextremistin his views. Either, we must con-

clude, there ismore of an animal ethic to Pythagoras thanouranalysishas suggested, or there is less of one to Empedocles than the quotation from Aristotle would seemto imply. Alternatively, Empedocles sees something more in the renunciationof flesh than does the master. Whether Pythagoras was a philosopher, mathematician, musicologist — his reputation with regard to music is reflected in Voltaire’s claim that “Pythagoras owdthe invention of Musick to the Nose of the Hammerof a Blacksmith” —priest, or charismatic charlatan, we cannot know with any justified degree of confidence.®’ What we do knowis that, whatever the

truth of the personality and doctrines maybe, Pythagoras’s name has been indelibly associated with vegetarianism as an aspect of animal ethics throughout Westerncultural history, although his purported precepts have beenrarely followed. In fact, until just a few years before the time ofthe founding of the Vegetarian Society in 1847, a person whodeclined animal fiesh was knownto partake ofa Pythagorean diet. Wefind Pythagoras honouredin the verse ofthe self-described “water poet” John Taylor andin the

various writings of John Donne, John Dryden, John Wilmot, John Gay,

Henry Fielding, and Soame Jenyns, among others. He is lauded in the pages of The Tatler. Whether Pythagoras founded Westernethical vegetarianism or not, and the balance ofavailable evidence suggests the answeris

distinctly in the negative, Pythagoreanism(like Zoroastrianism) foreshadowed the announcementofareadily recognized, explicit animal ethic but no more thanthat, perhaps Empedoclesto the contrary.It is following Aris-

totle that, as we shall see, such an ethic comes to the fore. The ethic

depended on the recognition that nonhumananimals are animal in the same way that humananimals are animal, noton the kindof minimalkin-

ship between humans and animals that Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans seem to have wantedto promote.

CLASSICAL GREECE Whether or not Pythagoras was the harbinger of philosophical and ethical vegetarianism, undoubtedly the mannerin whichhe waspresentedplayed a role in the development of some later Greek philosophy. Whereas the classical Greeks were the pioneers in philosophical thought, andinseveral respects have scarcely beenexcelled even today, the Romans were masters of empire whorelied in large part on the philosophical innovations they inherited from the Greek members oftheir empire. And although we can see the beginnings ofphilosophyin the sixth century Bc among the Greeks of Ionia (present-day Turkey — Pythagoras wasoriginally fromIonia before he emigrated to Crotonin southernItaly), it is not until Socrates (469-399 BC), givenliterary form byPlato (c. 428-347 Bc), that we encounter explic-

itly ethical principles of the kind that we understandtoday— even though, itwould appear, Empedocles cameclose. The classical Greek claimwas to have discredited the rule, authority, and doctrines ofpriests in favour of rational philosophy. Nonetheless, especially in Rome, the Orphic mysteries continuedto playavital role. If philosophy—thatis, the love of wisdom — was replacing the powerof the priesthood and the shamans,it was a hardwonvictory with numerous temporarydefeats alongthe way. Animalsacrifice continued until the fourth century aD, and even manyofthe philosophers still displayed a reluctance to abandonall ofthe occult. Flesh was not generally consumedbythe Greekpopulationat large other than at religious, political, and formalfamily religious ceremonies — and 94

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then perhaps onlya couple oftimes a year or so.As Oswyn Murraywrites:

“meat at all times [was] reservedfor festival occasions andthe eating ofsac-

rifice.”'! The Greeks were “noted among the Europeans for their abstem-

iousness,” Howard Williamstells us.* Of course, some of the very wealthy

were occasional exceptions. Those whodid not partake of the flesh onthe occasion of such public festivals were castigated as nonparticipants in public life. Hence they were regarded as less than full members of the community.They were, indeed, to a significant degree, viewedas betrayers of the communityor, at least, as aliento it. They were renegades. Nonetheless,

almost all participated in animal sacrifice, even if only infrequently. Tradi-

tion, a different tradition from the Phoenician tradition reportedearlier from George Nicholson, had it that the first ever animalsacrifice wasthat

of a pig after the priests of Delphi had indicated that sacrifice was permissible if the victim concurred.* Having had holy water sprinkled on the head, the pig would nod his assent —to rid itself of the annoying liquid — andthus thesacrifice was performed. A version of the myth wasretoldby Ovid in the Metamorphoses (bk. 15, 111-15), this time with greater consistency with previous accounts. Che significance e of the mythlies in the fact wo ss

that even before the triumphofexplicit ethical philosophy, the pig’s agreement was deemed necessaryifthe sacrifice was to be considered acceptable. Ifthe sacrifice was a crime against the animal unless it acquiesced in its own death, there was a lingering suspicion that the practice was notfullylegitimate, that there was somethingless than acceptable in the killing and eating of animals. The death was excused only if the appropriate rites had been performed. As we sawin the first chapter, eating the Hesh ofanimals was areversal of the prehistorical role of the humanas prey. It was an auspicious event that required special rites, as the Pythagoreans seem to have

required earlier. The necessary acquiescence of the animal intimated that

animal ethics were beginning,if as yet in inchoate form: while waiting for

the newbreed of philosophers to address the relevant questions explicitly, animal ethics first addressed only those questions portendedbytradition. Such prephilosophical suppositions were the probable extentofanimal,or even self-conscious human,ethics among theearliest pre-Socratic Greeks, includingthe original Pythagoreans. Betweenthetime of ¢+mpedocles and Socrates, we have noreliable evidence that any of the majorphilosophers were ethical vegetarians. Nor was Socrates himself a vegetarian, as far as we cantell, although some fourthcentury commentators claimed he advocated afleshless diet on grounds of mental purity. Even if he haslittle to add tothe vegetarianstory, his role in the development of Western philosophical thought is far toosignificant any

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merely to pass him over without a mention, for his introduction ofethics into philosophywas seminal. Like Pythagoras, Socrates left no writings to posterity. Indeed, he did not write any of his philosophy down. And the four accountsofhis life and teachings — by Aristophanes, Xenophon,Plato, and Aristotle — contain some annoying discrepancies, although the accounts by Plato and Aristotle are pretty much in accord. There is, however, a tradition of thought associated with Socrates that bears the test of scrutiny. This tradition was perhaps most memorablyexpressed bythe Roman statesman, orator, and essayist Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) »

whenhe informed us that Socrates was thefirst to call “philosophy down from the heavens andset her inthe cities of men and bring heralsointo their homes and compelher to ask questions aboutlife and morality and things good andevil,”* although it again must be confessed Empedocles appears to havetravelled a partofthe journey, even ifhe did not quite complete it. Prior to Socrates, Greek philosophy was concerned with nature (physis) rather than with the questions of ethics. Prior to Socrates, so it is commonlyandpersuasivelysaid, polisandfamily, sometimes sect, were the highest loyalties.Now, as a result of Socrates's arguments, the primaryloyalty, in theoretical principle anyway, was to truth and justice (effectively synonymous in Platonic dialogue). The love of wisdom wasto be priorto the love of compatriots. In both practice and theory, however, only human interests were taken into consideration. If Socrates madeethics explicit, he did not include animals within the beings to whomtheethical principles were to be applied. In general, early classical Greeks took itfor granted that ethical thought S

was first and foremost about the relations between humans — although,in later classical Greek thought, ethical theory was, as we shall see, not with-

out a significant other side. Onlyrarely around the time of Socrates and Plato did animals get more than a passing mention, never mind asignificant consideration, although there were a few notable exceptions.’ Xeno-

phon (c. 435-354 Bc), friend and student of Socrates, captures the Greek

spirit of the age whenhestates explicitly in hisMemorabilia (bk.4, pt. 2, secs. 9-12): “the beasts are born and bred for man’s sake.” This is perhaps the first statement ofthe philosophythat underlies so muchlater opposition to animal ethics andethical vegetarianism: might makes right, superiority trumpsinferiority, law and customare the standardsofjustice. Although Socrates made explicit the rational standards ofethics, he did

not apply, as previously noted, anyofhis ethical principles, related prima-

rily to the virtues, beyondthe realm of the human — however,he did point out, viaXenophon,thatanimals are subject to the same desires as humans.

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He transformed the Greek ideaofvirtue fromattaining any desired end into that ofattaining the morally good end. Via Plato in the Laches (196E) and Lesser Hippias (375A) — sometimes doubted as a genuinelyPlatonic work —heis said to have averred that some animals were capable of some of the same character attributes ashumans and that some animals were not restricted to acting from instinct alone. Nonetheless, his question always was: what is the standard of human happiness, what is human virtue? Like Aristotle, as we shall see, Socrates regarded animals, so it was said, as legitimate human food. Xenophon, in his biography, claimed that Socrates found animals appropriate for human consumption,for no better reason

apparently thanthat they were customarily eaten, even if not in the pro-

portions found in later European society. Moreover, in his Memorabilia,

Xenophonhas Socrates maintain that, corporeally, humankind is unique in possessing erect posture, hands, speech, andsexual appetite “unbroken to old age”; we are mentally unparalleledin our awareness ofthe deities, in ourability to anticipate and thus to provide against the elements and the want offood,andin our capacityfor learning.° The humanbeingis the distinctly superior being. Of course, we do not knowhowaccuratelythis represents Socrates, althoughit certainlyfits themoodofthe times. But given that what we take as Socrates's thought is derived primarily fromPlato's depiction of him and that it is verydifficult in Plato’s dialogues, where Socrates is almost always a primary character, to discern whois thereal Socrates and when Plato is talking through him, we should perhaps move directly on to Plato, who does have something to say both about metempsychosis and aboutvegetarianism, albeit not in the clearest of voices. In a

mannersimilar to Pythagoras, Socrates, and Aristotle — indeed, to most of

the Greek philosophical tradition — Plato believed that humans,at least

whenthey are rational, are divine in their natures. Not so otherspecies.

The discoveryof objective truth “is a manifestation of the divine ina race whichis of supernatural lineage.”’ There is thus every reason to expect Plato to imagine humansto be of adifferent order fromother animals. I have dealt at some length with the competing versions of metempsychosis and the potential vegetarianism of Plato elsewhere, butthe gist of my observations, with someclarifications and amendmentsfor the purpose of this book, bear repetition.* Despite his elevation of the humanto a quasi-godlike status, Plato has humansshare their souls with other animals. Indeed, on death, most take onthe souls ofother creatures — which,

it was sometimessaid, is difficult to comprehendif only the humanshares fully in the divine, if only the humanis ofa supernatural lineage. In the Phaedrus, Plato describes the cavalcade ofgods and purifiedsouls who have

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escaped the transmigratory cycle oflife and death, which is achieved, he

remarks in the 7/aetetus, by imitating the godsas far as possible, a view that in turn he examines more closely in the Phaedo. And ofcourse, only

the humans can imitate the gods because theyalone possess sophia, philosophic reason; only they can join the parade —the functionof sophia is rather similar to prajna in Buddhist thought.’ Indeed, this apparent contradiction persuaded Iamblichus, writing against the transmigration conclusions of Porphyry and Origen, who were followers of Pythagoras and Plato on metempsychosis, to decide that only humansouls were ofan exclusively rational nature and that, because a rational soul cannot become a nonrationalsoul, transmigration between nonhuman and humansouls

wasnotpossible. Despite all this, Plato has no difficulty accepting the flight of the human soul to the animal soul and vice versa. If deathlessness is the distinctive attribute of the gods through the transmigration of souls, both humans

and animals wouldappear primafacie to be similarly deathless, and hence both partake in a measure of divinity. Yet this is not the message one receives from Plato's dialogues any more than from the Indian philosophies. Thus in the Meno, Plato uses the apparently Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of souls to pursue “an epistemologyofinnate ideas and a priori knowledge,” whichhe elaborates in the Phaedo, insisting that the basis of “recollection is a prenatal acquaintance with eternal Forms” — apparently, for Plato, well beyondthe capacities of nonhumananimals to have acquired intheir transmigrations.'! Platotells us further in the Phaedo that “thought is bestwhen the mindis gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her — neither sights nor sounds nor pain nor anypleasure — whenshe hasas little as possible to do with the body, and has no bodilysense orfeeling, but is aspiring after being.” The philosopheris to pursue “absolute justice ... absolute beauty and absolute good,” and “he attains to the knowledge of themintheir highest purity who goes to each of them with the mind alone, not allowing whenin the act of thought the

intrusionor introductionofsight or anyother sense in the companyofreason, but whentheverylight of the mindin herclearness penetrates into the verylight of truth in each.”'!* No one imagines a rhinoceros contemplating the absolute good. No one imagines a hippopotamus attemptingto divest itself of its senses. For Plato, the bodyis animal, and the mindis thatin

which humanscanlose their animal nature. The otherworldlysimilarities with Pythagoras are apparent. Clearly, Plato sees a vast difference between the human capable of such abstruse philosophy and the nonhumanincapable ofsuchintellectual or spiritual elevation.

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Metempsychosis is so central a part of Plato’s thinking that he discusses it in the Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus, and Meno. Itis even implied in the

judgmentmyth toward the end of the Gorgias.'* The version of metempsy-

chosis in the Republic is rather more respectful of animals than thatofthe Phaedo, the two dialogues in which hetreats the transmigration of souls mostfully.'* Having praised Pythagoras and philosophy over Homer and poetry, Platotells us in the Republic of both animals and humansgetting to choose the bodies that will next house their souls, the animals sometimes choosing human form, humans sometimes, especially when ill-treated in their presentlives, choosing animal form. Here, thereis no explicit hierar-

chyof humansover other animals. Was theidea of the transmigration of souls, for Plato, morealiterary and theological device to explain thedemandsofjjustice thana serioustheorythat related to the natures ofhumans and animals? Thatthere are other ideological myths in Plato makes the suggestion plausible. For example, there is the renowned “myth ofthe metals,” a political device, in which humansaretold they belongto different classes ofgold, silver, and bronze, each mixed with earth,iin order to persuade themto accepttheir differinglots inlife. We can havelittle doubt Plato hopes to persuade the bronze class aboveall oftheir inferiorstatus. Norshould we imagine that he considers the myth a mere metaphorwithout practical consequences. Whatever the truth may be about metempsychosis — the transmigration of souls — it is quite clear that Plato did not use it to enhance the idea of kinship, at least not in anyethical sense, between human and nonhuman animals. Heused it probably as asimilar metaphorical device to that ofthe “myth of the metals” to explain what otherwise might be inexplicable, the purification of the soul, and the repercussions ofsin, none ofwhichhad to

do with the elevationofthe status of animals.Whetherthe idea of metempsychosis in the Greek past, or in other lands and climes, demonstrated the affinity between humansandanimals, as is frequently claimed, is verymuch to be doubted. That it certainly does not necessarily implyanysuchaffinity,

requiring us not to harm animals or eat them, must be clear fromPlato's treatment ofthe subject, for Plato was decidedly an omnivore, if an omnivore who believed in moderation.However, Plato does have Clinias remark in the Laws that vegetarianismis currently practised andis a worthytradition. Indeed, it was commonlysaidthat the Spartans practiseda vegetarian diet. Nonetheless, metempsychosis and vegetarianism are independent phenomena, and the adoptionofthe doctrine ofmetempsychosis does not entail, nor does it necessarily promote, a vegetarianlifestyle, as some have

thought. It need not even encourage considerate treatment ofother species.

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In light ofPlato's rejection ofHomerin favour of the wisdomofPythagoras, would one not expect Plato also to have espoused the purported Pythagorean vegetarianism? Apparently, he did not infact. However, Plato accepts in Epinomis (also known as Nocturnal Council) that there was a Golden Age in which vegetarianism was practised andthat suchan age was preferable to the present, but he haslittle to say there with regard to vegetarianismitself.A case can however be made, andhas been made persuasively by DanielDombrowski, that Plato wishedhis republic to be a vegetarian city. Plato's society ofthe Republic, according to Dombrowski,is conceived as a return to the principles of the Golden Age in whichvegetarianism will once again be the accepted practice.'? Likewise, Howard Williams, writing well over a century hence, numbered Plato among the

antiflesh dietary reformers.'° And certainly Socrates's statement in the Republic aboutthe division of labourleads readily to this conclusion: “To feed them theywill make meal from barley and flour andwheat; some they will cook, some they will knead into fine cakes and loaves.” And when Glaucon questions whether they should not also have relishes at their feasts, Socrates replies: “I forgot that; they will have something more, salt,

of course, and olives andcheese, onions andgreens to boil, suchas they

have in the country[rural life wasfar less attuned to flesh than thecity].

And I suppose weshall give themdessert,figs and chickpeas and beans, and they will toast myrtle berries and acorns before the fire, with a drop to drink, not too much.”!” These are all wholesome, nonflesh foods, of course,

even if a dairy product (cheese) is included. And when Glauconasks how Socrates wouldfeedthe citizens if he were founding acity of pigs (metaphorical pigs, of course) rather than the republic he describes, he replies with disdainthat they could continue to consumethe luxurious foods they

now consume. Yet it seems clear that Plato, through the character of

Socrates, is concerned with the mental and perhaps physicalhealth ofthe citizenry, not atall with the protection of animals, especially as the term “the city of pigs” is used with such disdain for pigs. His opposition is to “fine food ... and ointments andincense andprettygirls and cakes,all sorts z

of each.” His intent is for the city not to exceed “the bare necessities,”

which epitomized the Golden Age. One can be further confidentof this simplicity from what the Socrates character says when discussing the appropriate size of the city: “Yetit still wouldnot be so verylarge, evenif we were to add oxherds and shepherds and the other herdsmen,that the farmers might have oxenfor the plow, and the builders draught-animals to

use along with the farmersfor carriage, and that the weavers might have

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fleeces for skins.”'® There is no objection to the use of animals for human ends and noobjectionto the use ofthe skins ofthe slaughtered,oratleast

dead, animals. Moreover, what could be the purpose of keeping sheep if not for their flesh? Por milk and woolalone?Itis unlikely, althoughcer-

tainly not impossible, that goat, sheep, and pigskin were usedfor raiment and protection from the elements and that the flesh of the domesticated animal was not consumed.If Plato does intendavegetarian city, as Dombrowski has valiantly andintelligently argued, it is not out of respect for animals but to maintain an ascetic citizenry. IfPlato's recommendationsfor the republic are truly consistent with Pythagoras’s presumedvegetarianism, Williams's nineteenth-centuryinterpretationis well worthy of consideration: “The obligation to abstain from the flesh of animals was founded by Pythagoras on mental andspiritual rather than on humanitarian grounds.”'” Perhapsthe sameis true ofPlato. Perhaps the apparent inconsistencyofthe

domestication of sheep and a vegetarian diet was merely an oversight of

detail — an offence of which Plato was occasionallyguilty.°°

Aristotle (384-322 Bc) expressed a not dissimilar conception to that of Xenophon on humansuperiorattributes, with the moral implicationsfor the human-animalrelationship spelled out more explicitly, when he averred at the beginning ofthe Po/itics: “Plants exist to give subsistence to animals,

andanimals to give it to men. Animals, when they are domesticatedserve for use as well as for food; wild animals too, in mostcases if not all, serve to furnish man not only with food, but also with other comforts, such as the

provision of clothing and similar aids tolife. Accordingly, as nature makes nothing purposeless or in vain, all animals must have been made bynature

for the sake of men.”?! Yet a respect for animals was also creeping, incon-

sistently, into his thoughts. IfAristotle completely ignored the topic ofvege-

tarianism, he nonetheless laid out the factors that would have an effect on

his immediate posterity: his student Dicaerchus and his successor Theophrastus, both ofwhom chose to become vegetarians. Certainly, that two

of the most prominent vegetarians in antiquity, and the foremostof their ownera, were immediate products ofthe Aristotelian stable requires an investigation. It was nota feature of the age that students would react against the teachings of their instructors as theyare often saidto do today. Even Aristotle, renownedfor opposing someofPlato's tenets, accepted the tenor of the master’s thought byandlarge. ‘le seems to have been more

concerned to ensure his reputation as an original thinker by exaggerating

his differences fromPlato. We will find that this Aristotelian inheritance of

Dicaerchus and Theophrastus should not surprise us too greatly, for

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although Aristotle was far from becoming a vegetarian himself, his approachto ethics was one that could readily be borrowed and used toward more animal-considerate if not immediately vegetarian conclusions. Aristotle's reputation is, ofcourse, as one whowas diametrically opposed to the interests of animals, as his statement on animals for human use

would suggest. Perhaps we should first recognize that the aspects of “use” mentioned byAristotle, the provision of foodandclothing, applynot just

to Western societies in general but also to every Oriental, African, and

Amerindiansociety, which are by reputation supposed to be so much more animal-sympathetic than Westernsociety.Moreover, as we are customarily inclinedto ignore, farmore than 90 percentofthe world’s human population “uses” animals in precisely the waythat Aristotle indicates. Aristotle was doing no more thanstating what is, for many animal advocates, a

regrettable fact about humanity, although Aristotle may be readto find ita very convenientfact in line with the dictates of nature, as he saw them.It should be added thatas ateleologist, he thought this use the very purpose of nature. No one bothers to make asimilar accusation against Plato, even

though herefers directly to the use of Heeces for raiment andto the domestication of animals for various ends, notably oxen for the ploughand draught animals for carriage, presumablybecause heis not so directas to talk about the legitimacyof animal use explicitly.Althoughthere is undeniablythe animal-hostile aspectofAristotle, which his explicitness on animal use has exacerbated, the other side, on which a profound animal ethic

maybe built, is usually ignored. We maysurmise that both Dicaerchus and

Theophrastus were steeped in Aristotelian thought, even if Dicaerchus deviated from it the more.Still, they both benefited fromit. It is worth giving the other side someattention. Undoubtedly, Aristotle believes that our capacity for reason and the concomitant capacity for speech — whichhe sawas ourgodlike qualities —set humans apart from, and above,all other species.” It is reason that entitles

humansto ethical consideration before all other species. On the otherside, in On the Parts ofAnimals, Aristotle remarks: “For all living beings with which we are acquainted manalone partakes of the divine, or at least partakes of it in fuller measure thantherest.”’? Thus if other animals haveless capacity for reason than humans, whoaccordinglypossess greater divinity throughreason, nonetheless animals possess reason, andhencedivinity, in some degree. Accordingly, one mightinfer, animals are, for Aristotle, entitled to less ethical consideration than humans but to some consideration nonetheless. Aristotle hasnumerous remarks tomake about animalcharac-

ter that would support such a conclusion. He announcesthat “inall natural

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things there is something wonderful ... we should approachthe inquiry

about each animal withoutaversion, knowingthatinall of themthere is

something natural and beautiful” andthat “each animal body must somehow be made forthe soul.”** To be sure, the animal does not possess the humansoul with the capacity for speculative reason, butit has a soul capable of sense perception and calculative reason nonetheless. Porphyry went further and said Aristotle allowed animals to participate in /ogou(full reason).”” Perhaps he was relying, as Dombrowki postulates, on Aristotle's passagefrom the Historia Animalium(588: A8): “just as in man wefind knowledge, wisdomand sagacity, so in certain animals there exists some other natural property akin to these ... one is quite justified in saying that, as regards man andanimals, certain psychical qualities are identical with one another, whilst others resemble, andothers are analogous to, each other.”

Animals perceive “pleasure and pain.”*° Some animals are suited “for the developmentof courage and wisdom’ and “someare of a more intelligent nature.*’ Some are accordingly, in Aristotle's view, prudent. In the Poetics (ch. 7) Aristotle recognizes the potential for beauty in animals. The point about theidentity of certain human and| animal qualities is persuasive to Theophrastus inparticular. Thus, for Aristotle, there is in general a continuumofthe mentalstates between animals and humans.Yet this does not mean that, for Aristotle, animals and humans are almost identical. As he

wrote in the Nicomachean Ethics, “We do not call animals temperate or intemperate.”** Thereis, in other words, something about the humanmoral character that keeps a clear distance between humansand the otheranimals.We cannot use words appropriate to the description of humancharacter to describe the motives, emotions, or character of nonhumananimals.

Nonetheless,ifhumans are divorced fromlawandjustice, theyare the lowest of the animals ~ “a most unholy and savage being.” Animals possess memoryandareableto learn, but they do not understanduniversals. They do notpossessintellectual reason, but they are endowedwithpractical reai

son. In the Nicomachean Ethics (701B1-15) Aristotle describes this wisdom

as a low-level practicalwisdom.For Aristotle, ethics is a branch ofpractical rather than theoretical knowledge, and thus it can be argued that animals,

who possess practical rather than theoretical knowledge, are the subject of some ethical concern. If anything is consistent, it is that Aristotle is ambivalent aboutanimals.Itis difficult to escape the conclusion that when Aristotle's attention was attunedto the interests of thehuman community

~— as it was in the writing of the Politics and the NicomacheanEthics, tor example — he thought almost exclusively in the humaninterest, but when he turned his attention to animal questions, his conclusions were far more

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favourable to those towhomhisattention was then directed.Undoubtedly, he equivocated about animals throughouthislife but was more favourable to them, on the whole, in his maturity thanin his youth. Thus, while

Dicaerchus and Theophrastus could nothave reached their vegetarian conclusions byfollowing directly in the path of the master, there was muchin his teachings that could lead them away from the humanexclusivity that Aristotle's doctrines are normally thought to imply. Indeed, some of these teachings could be said to have provided an impetus toward aserious animalethic with vegetarian consequences.

Dichaerchus the Peripatetic, as he was known, appears to have derived

his vegetarianism most immediately from his admirationof the menofthe GoldenAge. Like Aristotle, he believedethical truths are best understood through the historical approach, and he followed Aristotle's idea ofthe

Golden Mean,although we cannotbe sure what he meantbyit,forhis veg-

etarian conclusionsare certainly at odds with the commonpractices ofthe day. Perhaps he thought,as he appearsto, that his contemporaries hadlong abandonedmoderation,andhe was intent on returning to it. According to

Porphyry in De Abstinentia (On Abstinence from Flesh), Dichaerchus believed the men of the Golden Age “were akin to the gods and were by nature the best men andlivedthe bestlife ... they are regarded as a Golden Race in comparisonwith the menof the present time made ofa base inferior metal.”*? Dichaerchus, it would appear, wished to emulate them. Unfortunately, little remains, other than his work onplants. But if we can rely on Porphyry with confidence, and in this instance we probablycan,for he had access to at least some of Dichaercus’s other writings, something of his attitudes to vegetarianism maybe gleaned. Dicaerchusis saidto explain howthe first person who had eaten “enoughofthe oak-tree” (i-e., enough of acorns andotherprimitive fruits) led the worldto suffering through the departure fromthe simple wayoflife.Eventually, he mooted, pastoralism, domestication, andthen agriculture forged the path to competition over

others’ possessions, and wars began. It was abstinence from animal flesh that contributed significantlyto the satisfactionof those of the Golden Age

with primitive life. Cicero, too, in Deofficiis (On Duty), advises us how

Dicaerchus thought that, following attacks on “great multitudes of animals,” amongotherfactors, tribes had been destroyed by their ownaggres-

siveness, and hence the “wars and seditions’ of men hadarisen©° Thus for

Dicaerchus, the primarylessons ofhistory(he tookthe Golden Ageasfact, not parable) teach us the wisdomandjustice of the simple life, of which

vegetarianismwas seen tobe anintegral aspect.

Theophrastus (c. 372-286 Bc) followed his friend Aristotle not onlyas

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his successor as head of the Lyceumbutalsoin that the focus of much of his work was onthe biologyofthe natural realm. Their friendship is refiected inthe fact that Aristotle bequeathedhislibrary to Theophrastus. As the passage quoted fromthe Historia Animalium indicates, Aristotle acceptedthe principle of psychological continuity from humans toanimals, a principle that Theophrastus adopted and took further than the master. While Aristotle’s primary biological work was on marinelife, Theophrastus’ extant workwas on plants, although weare told by Diogenes Laertius he also wrote several books on animals that have not survived.While Theophrastus is enamoured with the men ofthe GoldenAge, he has more con-

vincing grounds for his own vegetarianism than the superiority ofthe primitive life or, for that matter, the transmigration of souls, which he

appears to have discarded as philosophically unworthy. His primary known work, as noted, was onplants, and hestated clearly that plants differ from animals in that the former do notfeel pain. He bases his vegetarian conclusions on the fact that humans andanimals have similar biological structure andfeel alike. They suffer in common. Porphyrytells us in De abstinentia (bk. 2, 1-12) that the fleshless diet was no religious matter alone for Theo-

phrastus but that he heldthe killing of animals to be unjust. In addition, loss oflife matters as well as the eliminationofsuffering. Theophrastus adds that if the gods are thought to require animal sacrifice — whichwas

first caused by famine via cannibalism, he indicates — then, if you must, sacrifice the animals, but do not eat their flesh. He knew, of course, that

one ofthe purposes of the sacrifice was the consequententitlementto eat the Hesh. Thus to follow his advice was likely to lead to a diminutionof animal sacrifice. It is also likely, however, that he understoodthe centrality of sacrifice to the extant social order and feared the consequences ofdisturbing it too deeply. For Theophrastus, as for Aristotle, doing whatwas ethically right in the abstract was sometimespolitically wrong inthe concrete. Ethics was apractical discipline. Following a different path from Aristotle, Theophrastus argues that respect for animallife is required by our community (ozkeidsis) with them. It is the principle of community, or belongingness, that associates all animals, including humananimals, he claims, thus beginning the longstand-

ing argument about the appropriate recipients of justice, principally betweenthe Stoics and their adversaries. At least some of the Stoics — Zeno,

for example, the founder ofthe school — denied that humans belongedto the same community as other animals, arguing that humans, therefore,

could not owe animals just treatment. Zeno of Citium (c. 336to c. 265 BC)

was in fact one ofthose ascetic vegetarians whoserefusal to eat flesh related

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in no manner to consideration for animals. The Epicureans, too, were

ascetic vegetarians, even though todaywe tend to use the word Epicurean to refer to a propensityforsybaritic luxury rather than extreme simplicity

— the veryreverse ofits historic manifestation. Epicureans,infact, believed

that pleasure could be most readily achieved throughself-denial and the avoidance of desire.Despite Epicurus's vegetarianism, he believed animals existed forhuman use and that because animals couldnot enter into contracts, they were beyond the boundsofjustice. In this era the practice of a

vegetarian diet did not at all imply, or even suggest, a commitment to

avoiding harm to animals for the sake ofthe animals. Theophrastus was the

exception to the norm but nota complete rarity.As Plato recognized, there was a vibrant vegetarian tradition in contemporary Greek culture. And some ofthat had something,if only a smattering, of an ethical impulse.

In Theophrastus's view, we have arightto kill dangerous animals for selfprotection but onlyin the same mannerthat we have a right to protect ourselves against criminals. Otherwise, animals havearight to theirlives fortheir own sakes. Thus his vegetarian premise is based not onpurification of souls, noronthe lessons of primitive history, but onthe similarity of humans and other animalsin their potential to suffer andonthe value oftheir ownlives to them. He draws conclusions fromthe principle of psychological and biological continuity that seem never to have been entertained byAristotle. Promthe vegetarian standpoint, Theophrastusis truly the first of the moderns and the present-day ethical vegetarian’s earliest role model, although, yet again, Empedocles comes close and Dicaerchusis alegitimate contender. HELLENISTIC GREECE AND ROME

For Aristotle, the Greek polis (city-state) represented the perfection of social andpolitical society.He had no conception of howfragile and temporary was the Greekpolitical order that was soontobe overturned forever by Alexander ofMacedonia, whom,ironically, Aristotle had earlier tutored

for some six years. Greece became butone element within the new Mace-

donian imperial order, which included Egypt, Persia, Phoenicia, Babylon,

Lydia (in the western part ofAsia Minor), and parts of the Indian Punjab.

The period from Alexander's death in 323 Bc to the conquest of Egypt

Dy

the Romans in 30 Bc is commonlyknownas the Hellenistic age. Immedi-

ately following Alexander's death, the unity of the empire was loosened,

andit eventually began to crumble. Fromthe early secondcenturyBc,the Macedonian Empire, including Greece, was subject to increasing pressures

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from Rome,finally submitting withthe defeat ofthe Macedoniansin Egypt. Rome nowestablished its own imperial order with a Latin administration in the Mediterraneanregions. Eventually, the empire stretched from most of Britain to the Middle East. But ifRome gave Greece a new imperial overlord, it borrowedits philosophyverylargely from those Greeks it now administered. When Rome first conquered Greece, what Dombrowskivia Brumbaughcalls “teleological anthropocentrism” — the view that every-

thing in the world was created for humankind — was already dominant, if far from universal, in Rome andGreece.?! There was in effect a united cul-

ture of the twooriginally separate cultures. Stoicism, alongside Epicure-

anism ~ which shared muchofStoic thought — and Skepticism, flourished

for a half-millenniumin the Hellenistic Roman period from around 300

BC to AD200. Stoicism and Epicureanism maintained the teleological anthropocentrist view on the whole and moststeadfastly.

The prevalent Stoics, named after the “Painted Stoa’ (colonnade) where

they met, followedAristotle in that theyheld, by andlarge — in additionto the view that plants were made for animals and animals for men — thatanimals, lackingreason, shared no commonvalues with humans andthus that

there was no possibility to include animals withinthe frameworkofjustice. In other words, despite Dicaerchus and Theophrastus, it was the arguments of Xenophonand Aristotle that held sway with the Stoics. Beyond this, the Stoics believedin a rational, materialistic, and deterministic uni-

verse in which virtue involved understanding the world as it was and cheerfully acceptingit — indeed, withdrawing fromit — a viewnottoo dissimilar from ( )riental quietism. A few stalwart figures, however, stoodout against

this prevailing sentiment, and two of them are among the mostsignificant contributors to vegetarian thoughtin all ofhumanhistory: Plutarch (c. ap 46 to c. 120) and Porphyry(c. ap 233-304), the latter of whom shall be

treated below underthe heading of neo-Platonists.The first was born in Greece andthe second probablyin Tyre, Phoenicia. Both were educated in Athens. Both spent muchoftheir maturity in Rome,reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of the newpolitical order. Plutarch’s most famous work was his ParallelLives, consisting offorty-six portraits of Greek and Romanhistorical figures who shared some semblance with each other andthus showing the purportedunity of the Romanand Greek traditions. Parallel Lives reflects that this was a periodofdislocation, during which Greekstried to rediscover themselves within the new Romanorder andtried to demonstrate the similarity of the Greek and Romantraditions. Despite Stoic

dominance in Rome, Nero outlawedthe selling of meat in public while permitting its consumption in private at home,a reflection ofthe belief

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that there was somethingless than wholesomein flesh consumption. Moreover, vegetarianism was no new radical fad. It was avidlyfurthered and sup-

ported by the empress Julia Domna(c. aD 267-317) herself during the time

of Porphyry. Nonetheless, it should not be imagined that vegetarianism was widespread amongtheelites or readily tolerated. In fact, wealthy Romans indulged in frequent haute cuisine. Even the more modest dinner table containedgame birds, seafood, goat, pork, andchicken. Immediately prior to Plutarch, we find, surprisingly enough, a wayward Stoic as a prime proponent of vegetarianism. Seneca (4 BC to AD 65), a Romanstatesman, philosophical essayist, and playwright, reflected the newly revived interest in Pythagoras and his image as the exponent of transmigra-

tion and our consequent kinship with animals as the basis for the refusal of animal flesh. Sextius, by contrast, is presented to us by Seneca more as an ethical vegetarian, although we have to wonder whetherthe cruelty he condemnsis the practice of cruelty to humanslearned via butcheryof animals, in the mannerof Saint Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant, or whether Sextius is condemning cruelty to animals directly. Perhaps there is noclear distinction in Sextius’s mind betweenthe two. This passage from Seneca’ss Ad LuciliumEpistolaeMorales (Letters on Morals to Lucillus) alsoreflects both

that someofthe Stoics were less inimical to animalinterests thantheyare commonlyportrayed and that Romans were imbued with Greek thought: Inasmuch as I have begunto explain to you how much greater was myimpulse to approachphilosophyin my youththanto continue it in myold age, [ shall not be ashamedto tell you what ardent zeal Pythagorasinspiredin me. Sotion [a Pythagorean contemporaryof the young Seneca] usedto tell me why Pythagoras abstained from animal food, and why,inlater times, Sextius [i.e., Quintus Sextius the Elder, renownedfor declining an honourfrom Julius Caesar| did also. In eachcase the reasonwas different, but it was in eachcase

a noble reason. Sextius believed that man had enough sustenance without resorting to blood, andthat a habit of crueltyis formed whenever butchery is practised for pleasure. Moreover, he thought we should curtail the sources of our luxury; he argued that a varied diet was contraryto the laws ofhealth, andwas unsuitedto our constitutions. Pythagoras, on the other hand, held

that all beings were interrelated and there was a system of exchange between souls whichtransmigratedfrom one bodily shape to another... hemade men fearful of guilt and parricide, since they might be, without knowing it,

attacking the soul of a parent andinjuring it with knife or withteeth... If the theoryis true, it is a markofpurity to abstain fromeating flesh:ifit be false it is economy...

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[ was imbued withthis teaching, and began to abstain from animalfood;

at the endofa year the habit wasaspleasantas it was easy. | was beginning to feel that my mind was moreactive.32 me ny

Seneca, it is sometimes claimed, continued to practice vegetarianismin his private life — although one mightbe inclined to doubt it from the tone of his comments to Lucillus below — but returned to meat eating in public to avoidsocietal and imperial condemnation. His ownexplanation ofhis resumptionofflesh eating is containedin the sameletter to Lucillus: “the days of myyouthcoincided withthe early part of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. Someforeign rites were at that time being inaugurated andabstinence fromcertain kinds of animal food was set downas a proofofinterest in the strange cult. So at the request of my father, who did not fear gossip, but whodetestedphilosophy, I returned to myprevious habits, and it was no very hard matter to induce me to dine more comfortably.” He never mentioned havingresumedhis vegetarian diet at any time. His vegetarianism may thus have been a temporaryinterlude inearly adulthood. Indeed, he seems to implythat the greater comfort of the fleshdiet (comfort forwhom?certainlynot the comfort ofthe tortured animals) sat better with him. While vegetarianism was certainly practised in Rome,it

wasnota practice that sat comfortably with those in authority when practised on groundsofethical principle. Colin Spencer has described eloquently |the conditions ofrestraint in Rome during this period as contrastedwithtthose of earlier Greece: In the city states of Greece enquiring minds with unfashionable views were tolerated if not fostered, the city states being small and flexible enough to allow a collectionofdisparate viewsto flourish withoutfeeling overly threatened. Rome wasanother matter; the vast empire always ina state of growth, yet at its heart always insecure, its power vulnerable to criticism, enforced

conventional piety towards its gods onall its citizens. The Romans felt hostile to Greek thought which explored anti-social tendencies so the Pythagoreans were denouncedorbanished.Stoicism was approved ofas it emphasized the conventional dutiesoflife andvirtue.**

Perhaps the Romans were morejealous of Greek philosophical superior-

ity than hostile toit, for they borrowedit willingly enough, even if some-

times less than wholeheartedly.And not merely the Pythagoreans were

denouncedor banished. Even the Stoics were notfully exempt, for at the

age of sixty Seneca was condemnedto death by the paranoid Emperor

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Nero onsuspicion of conspiracy, following which, his execution being bungled, he committedsuicide. The commanding authority of the empire wasextendedtoallwho met withpolitical or social disfavour. In the ensuing years, we find significant expressions of animalsensibilities in the writings of Pliny the Elder, Ovid, Marcus Aurelius, Aelian, and

Sextus Empiricus. Ovid had a few years earlier written a fine poem extolling Pythagoras’s vegetarianism. But none of them,so faras I cantell, ever renounced the eating offlesh. Orat least, | am suspicious that suchis the case. However, Williams,Dombrowski, and Spencer are among the advocates of Ovid as a vegetarian. They should notbe too readilydiscounted. To me, he seems to have agreater interest in literary formthan in ethical principle. The most the evidence seemsto suggest of Ovid (43 BC to

AD 17), one mightsay, is that if he could write such heartrending condem-

nations of animal cruelty through the supposed mouth ofPythagoras, he

ought to have been a vegetarian. Yet later, neither Mandeville norRousseau

was anyless effusive. They still continued their omnivorous practices. If they convertedothers to the bloodless regimen, they did not convert themselves. [his period is the first decisive indication of the paradox that suffused Western culture hereafter — the generalsensibility to animals ran well ahead of the recognitionthat respect for animals required the refusal to eat them. Oddly, the thought was bornthat respect for the animals did not include respect for theirlives. Plutarch was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist but made several extended visits to Rome, where he was a popularlecturer. In his essay “Onthe Use of Reason by‘Irrational’ Animals,” Plutarch argued that animals were not irrational andwere inseveral respects superior to humans.> 35 Others — Chrysippus and Sextus Empiricus, for example — concurred on animal rationality but apparentlyfailed to draw vegetarian conclusions ey

from their deliberations. In “Life ofMarcus Crato,” an eminent Roman statesman, Plutarch discussed our responsibilities toward domesticated

species and some ofthe moresalutary aspects of the Greek tradition.°° But it was in his early and incomplete essay “On the Eating of Flesh” that Plutarch was a plaintiff against the inconsiderate treatment of food animals. And he advocateda vegetarian diet on the explicit grounds of sparing the animals the cruelties inflicted on themandalso of saving humanity from its flesh-eating self-degradation. Again, he evokes the memoryof Pythagoras in the vegetarian cause: Canyoureally ask what reason Pythagoras hadforabstaining fromflesh? For mypart I ratherwonder bywhat accident and whatstate ofsoul or mind the

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first man whodid so, touched his mouthto gore andbroughthislips to the flesh of a dead creature, he whoset forth the tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishmentthe parts that hadalittle before bel-

lowed andcried, moved andlived.Howcouldhis eyes endure the slaughter whenthe throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? Howwasit that the pollution did not turn awayhis taste, which madecontactwiththe sores ofothers andsuckedjuices and serums from mortal wounds? .. Youcall serpents andlions savage, but you yourselves by your ownfoul

slaughter, leave them no roomto outdoyouin cruelty, for their slaughteris their living, yours is a mere appetizer. It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out ofself-defence; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without

stings or teeth to harmus, creatures that,| sweat, Nature appears to have produced forthesakeof their nature and grace.*’ AF

Evenif flesh eating were morally acceptable, Plutarch adds, the wasteful practices of profligate humanscause unnecessarysuffering anddeath: But nothingabashesus, not the flower-tinting of the flesh, not thecleanlinessoftheir habits, or the unusual intelligence that maybe foundin the poor wretches. No,for the sake ofa little flesh we deprive themofsun, oflight, of

the duration oflife to which theyare entitled by birth andbeing. Then we go on to assume that whentheyutter cries and squeakstheir speechis inarticulate, they do not, begging for mercy, entreating, seeking justice, each one of themsay, “I do not askto be sparedincase ofnecessity; only spare me your arrogance! Kill me to eat, but not to please yourpalate.” Oh, the crueltyofit!What terrible thingit is to look on whenthetablesofthe richare spread, men who employcooks andspicers to groom the dead! Anditis even moreterrible to look on whentheyare takenaway, for moreis left thanhas been eaten. So the beasts died for nothing! There are others who refuse when the dishes are set before them, and will not have themcutorsliced. Though

they did spare the dead, theydid not spare the living.°*

The sole reasonfor this profligacy, Plutarch seems to suggest, is the com-

plete indifference of the humanbeing to anypain and suffering meted out to those beyond the human species boundary. Despite the eloquence and persuasiveness of Plutarch’s essay — the veryfirst ofits kind or, at least, the onlyonestill extant — the sybaritic dining luxuries ofthe wealthy continued, and so did the barbarities of the Roman games. Even the Stoic Cicero

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complained about the purposes ofthe games.*” He wentsofar as to write of the “impulse of compassion”for the ill-treated animals, but neither he nor others who claimed to feel compassion felt compassionate enoughto forgo the unnecessarytitillations oftheirpalate. It is logically odd — but apparently not psychologically incompatible — to express compassionfor an entity and then to consign the entity to oblivion. Plutarch certainly thoughtso. In fact, Plutarch was the classical vegetarian advocate most commonly cited from the seventeenth century on, but paradoxical ly, in manyinstances he was mentioned in defence of flesh eating. “hose who were tempted, but not tempted enough, to abandon flesh would recall Plutarch’s sentiments as a justification oftheir carnivorous behaviour. Provided the animals were killed without unduesuffering, so it was said, eating them was acceptable — andthis in ages whenit was even moredifficult than today to spare the animal the anguish and cruelties of slaughteringpractices. eo

2

THe Neo-PLATONISTS

Initially associated withPlotinus (ap 205-270), neo-Platonism is so called because ofits attention to the existence of the One andtothe attendant theoryofideas that were aspects ofthe later writings ofPlato, especiallyin the Zzmaeus. Plotinus was born in Egypt, probably of Romandescent, and studied in Alexandra and Persia before moving to Rome, where he set up his influential school, all of which reflects once more the cosmopolitan nature ofphilosophicallife in the Roman Empire. He advocated a moderate asceticism to allow oneto dispense with the senses andachieve a union with the godhead. In Plotinuss work, collected together as the Enneads by Plotinus’s student Porphyry, he was concerned with understanding the mysteries ofthe infinite and invisible, but, in fact, his system was a natural

extension of the thoroughly rational method oftraditional logic and the humanitarian lore of Greece. While there is no conclusive evidence, Ploti-

nus’ strict personal asceticism most probably included vegetarianism, although his biographer, Porphyry, could find no writing by Plotinus on the topic. Still, in his Life ofPlotinushetells us that Plotinus refused medicine with animal ingredients.*° It is certain that a numberof Plotinus’s followers were notjust vegetarians but also ethical vegetarians. The primary neo-Platonist ofinterest to vegetarians is the polymath and prolific scholar Porphyry, who continued the Pythagoras-Plato tradition that the primary humanendeavourwastofree one’s life fromthe calamities of the body. Together with Plutarch,he is the only scholar in antiquity to have

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writtena polemic infavourofthe abstention fromflesh. Along with a biographyofhis teacher Plotinus, he also wrote a biography of Pythagoras, to which previous reference has been made,as well as a book attempting to harmonize Aristotle's writings on logic with Platonism, in addition to 2

manyother writings. His book On Adstinencefrom Flesh is now commonly recognized as the primaryclassical work related to vegetarianism andani-

mal ethics. It is more than just a polemic.It is a finely reasoned argument of the significant human moral obligation toward nonhuman animal species. In it he makes the anti-Stoic case for extending justice to animals, denouncing the entailed viewofthe Stoics that animals lack reason. Further, he discusses the distinction between animals and plants. Unlike plants,

hesays, animals are sentient andrational, and he demonstrates the poverty of the argumentthat animals are intended forhumanuse. Most important, Porphyryintroduces the argument from marginal cases (e.g., the error of rationality being allowed to depraved men butnot to members of other species, thereby denying “rationality” tothe latter in principle but not the former) that is today considered a mainstay of the argument for animal rights. Animals possess reason, he believes, although not in the same degree as humans, and humans and animals share their senses in common. He

makes the customary due obeisance to Pythagoras on a couple ofocca-

sions, buthe is very well worth quoting at considerable length in his own

right, for nooneis better qualified than the author himselfto state his profoundly logical and compassionate argument. Noris there a better wayto understand the philosophical culture ofthe day: We shall pass on... to the discussion ofjustice; and since our opponents [the Stoics] say that this ought onlyto be extendedto those ofsimilar species, and on that account denythat irrational animals canbe injured by men,let us exhibit the true, and at the same time Pythagorean opinion, and demonstrate that everysoul whichparticipates ofsense and memoryis rational. For this being demonstrated, we mayextend, as our opponents will also admit,

justice to everyanimal... Since, however, with respect to reason, one kind, according to the doctrine of the Stoics, is internal, but the other external, and again, one kind

being right and the other erroneous, it is requisite to explain of which of these two, animals, according to them, are deprived. Are they therefore

deprivedofright reason alone? Orare theyentirely destitute bothofinternal and externally proceeding reason? They[the Stoics] appear, indeed, to ascribe to brutes an entire privation of reason, and nota privationofright reasonalone.For if they merely denied

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that brutes possess right reason, animals wouldnotbeirrational, but rational beings, in the same manneras nearlyall men are according to them. For,

according to their opinion, one or two wise men maybe found in whom alone right reasonprevails, but all the rest of mankindare depraved; though

some of these make a certain proficiency, but others are profoundly depraved, andyet at the sametime,all of themare similarlyrational ... If, however, it be requisite to speak the truth, not only reason mayplainly be perceivedin all animals, but in manyof themit is so great as to approximate perfection... Since ... that which is vocally expressed by the tongueis reason, in whatever manner it may be expressed, whether in a barbarous or a Grecian, a canine or a bovine mode, other animals also participate ofit that are vocal; men, indeed, speaking conformably to the human laws, but other animals conformablyto the laws whichtheyreceived from the Gods and nature. But if we do not understand what they say whatis this to the purpose? Forthe Greeks do not understand whatis said bythe Indians, nor those who are educated in Attica the language of the Scythians, or Thracians, or Syrians;

but the soundofthe onefalls on the ear ofthe otherlike the clangour of cranes, thoughbyothers their vocal sounds can be written and articulated,

in the same manneras ours can byus ... The likealso takes place inthe vocal sounds ofthe other animals. For the several species of these understand the language whichis adaptedto them... The difference, indeed, betweenourreason andtheirs, appears to consist, as Aristotle says somewhere,*! not in essence, but in the more andtheless, just as manyare of the opinion, that the difference between the Godsandus is not essential but consists in this, in themthere is a greater, and inus aless accuracy, of the reasoning power. And, indeed,so far as pertains to sense and the remaining organization, according to the sensoria andthe flesh, every

one will grant that theseare similarly disposed inus, as theyare inbrutes. For they not onlysimilarly participate with us of natural passions, and the motions produced throughthese, but we mayalso surveyin themsuchaffections as are preternatural and morbid. No one, however, of a sound mind, will say that brutes are unreceptive of the reasoning power, on accountofthe difference betweentheir habit of body andours, whenhesees that there is a great varietyofhabit in man, according totheirrace[i.e., species], andto the

nations [i.e., breeds] to which they belong, and yet, at the same time, it is grantedthatall of themarerational. It does not follow, if we have moreintelligence than other animals, that

onthis account theyare to be deprivedof intelligence; as neither must it be said, that partridges do notfly, because hawksflyhigher...

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ITs

Brutes are rational animals, reason in most of thembeing indeed imperfect, of which nevertheless theyare entirely deprived [bythe Stoics]. Since, however, justice pertains to rational beings, as our opponents say, howisit possible not to admit, that we should also act justly towardbrutes? For we do not extend justice toward plants, because there appears to be muchin them which is unconnected withreason... ‘To compare plants ... with animals, is doing violence to the order of things. For the latter are naturally sensitive, and adaptedto feel pain, on which account also they maybe injured. But the formerare naturallydestitute of sensation and in consequence ofthis, nothing foreign, orevil, or hurtful, or injurious [in terms of pain] can befall them ... Andis it not

absurd, since we see that many of our ownspecies live fromsense alone, but do not possess intellect and [right] reason, andsince wealso see, that many

of them surpass the mostterrible of wild beasts in cruelty, anger and rapine ... to fancythat we ought to act justly toward these, but that no justice is due from us to the oxthat ploughs, the dog thatis fed with us, and the animals that nourish us with their milk, and adorn our bodies withtheir wool? Is not

such an opinion bothirrational and absurd?... If Godfashioned animals for the use ofmen, in what [manner| do we use flies, lice, bats, beetles, scorpions and vipers? ...Andif our opponents [the Stoics] should admit thatall things are not generated for us, and witha view

to our advantage, in addition to the distinction which they make being very confused and obscure, we shall not avoid acting unjustly, if attacking and noxiouslyusing those animals that were not producedfor oursake ... | ought to mentionthat, if we define, byutility, things which pertain to us, weshall not be preventedfromadmitting, that we were generatedfor the sake ofthe most destructive animals, such as crocodiles ... For we are not in the least

benefited by them; but theyseize and destroy menthat fall in their way, and use them for food; in so doing acting not at all more cruelly than we do,

excepting that they commit this injustice through want and hunger, but we through insolent wantonness, andfor the sakeof luxury, frequently sporting in theatres, and in hunting slaughter the greater part ofthe animals. Andby thus acting, indeed, a murderous disposition and a brutal nature become

strengthenedin us, andrender usinsensible to pity, to which we mayadd,

that those who first dared to do this, bluntedthe greatest part of lenity, and rendered it ineflicacious... Since animals are allied tous, ifit should appear, according to Pythagoras,

that theyareallotted the samesoul that we are, he mayjustly be considered impious whodoes not abstain fromacting unjustly toward his kindred. Nor because some animals are savage,is theiralliance to us to be on this account

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abscinded. For some men maybe found whoare noless, and even more malefic than savage animals to their neighbours, and who are impelled to injure any one they may meet with,asif they were driven bya certainblast of their own nature and depravity. Hence also, we destroy such men; yet we do not cut themoff fromalliance to animals of a mild nature. Thus, therefore, if likewise some animals are savage, these, as such, are to be destroyed,

in the same manner as menthat are savage;** but habitude or alliance to other andwilder animals is not onthis account to be abandoned. Butneither tamenorsavage animals are to be eaten; as neither are unjust men.

He... who admitshe isallied to animals, wall not injure any animal... since justice consists in not injuring anything, it must be extended as faras to every animated creature ... when reason governs... man will be innoxius towards everything. For the passions being restrained, and desire and anger wasting away, but reason possessing its proper empire, a similitude to a more excellent nature immediately follows.*°

Since we do not eat inferior humans, Porphyry has argued, we should

not eat animals either, evenifwe consider them inferior.The argumentfor

not eating the former applies with equal force to the latter. The passage here quotedfromPorphyryat extraordinary length is the most important statementinthe historyofvegetarianismbefore Percy Bysshe Shelleya millenniumand a halflater, and arguably not equalled even then. Mostsignificantly, for Porphyry, justice to animals requires that we do not eat them.

THe JewisH TRADITION Manyare aware of the modest successes of vegetarianism in the classical world, but a great dealless is heard about the modestsuccesses in the early Judeo-Christian tradition. There are, however, significant vegetarian instances to be found. But theyare foundless frequently thanare hints that vegetarianismwould have been practised widelyifGodhad not made the concession that flesh could be eaten. Thus, at the close ofthe eighteenth

century, we findThomas Young, an Anglican priest and FellowofTrinity College, Cambridge, allowing that there could be no good groundforeat-

ing flesh if Godhad notgranted the privilege. Thus Young remarks: “After the flood, God bya particular grant gave permission to Noah and his descendants, to take awaythe lives of animals for the purposes offood. NowIthinkit evidently appears fromthe grantitself, independent of any other arguments, that without it mankind would not have hada right to kill animals for food. For if the right could have been derived from any other source, that grant would have been unnecessary, in which case we cannot conceive that God would in so express and particular a manner have conferredit.”' Nor did Young stand alone, offering some novel biblical exegesis.A fewyears earlier, the political philosopher and preeminent Anglican theologian William Paley had observed: “It seems to me thatit would be difficult to defend this right [to eat flesh] by any arguments

whichthe light andorder of nature afford; andthat we are beholdentoit wy for the permission recorded inscripture, GenIX, 1, 2, 3.°* Without God's 117

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grant to the contrary, so we are being told, vegetarianismis the diet appro-

priate to the dictates of nature. God’s grant was imperative to the maintenance ofthe traditional regimen. In his pursuit ofecclesiastical preferment, Paleyalso proved himself incapable of accepting the moral conclusions of his rational insights when they interfered with his rationalizations. So at odds with nature did God’s permissiontoeat flesh seemtobe thatin the third century ap Tertullian wentso faras to say the passage permitting flesh consumptionis “intending to enjoin abstinence by the very indulgence granted.’Tertullian,like several others, foundthegrantso distasteful that some interpretation was necessary that wouldimplythe reverse of what

wasostensiblybeingsaid.

These sentences from Young and Paley containinterestingimplications. They appear to concede that God allowed humans to contravenethe then universally acknowledged natural law, of which Godis the source inthe

Judeo-Christian tradition. If God were the source, was he not, then, break-

ing his own moral laws? Orwas Tertullian right that in some mysterious manner the passage furthered abstinence? The original biblical requirement ~— arguably written by Ezra some 400 years Bc, althoughit is nowusually conceded that Genesis was written byat least two different authors many decades and mindsets apart — reads: “Behold, I have given youevery herb bearing seed, which is upon theface ofthe earth, and everytree in the whichis thefruit ofa tree yieldingseed; to youitshall be meat” (Gen.1:29).

Weare compelledto ponder whether this was an exampleof thecommon reference to a GoldenAge(very probably) or whetherthereweresignificant Jewish vegetarian groups who were the occasion for the writing of the verse. Althoughthisis afar less likely groundfor the inclusionoftheverse, it is not at all implausible that there were numerous vegetarian groups around atthe time, and flesh eating would have beenfurther curtailed by the practices ¢of those whowere wary of animalsacrifice, those whopractised animalsaacrifice and did not eat the flesh (a commonand praiseworthy Jewish practice according to Porphyry [On Abstinence from Animal Food, bk. 2, 26]), and those wholived toodistant from the Holy Temple at

Jerusalem, the onlylegitimate place ofsacrifice. And sacrifice was the prerequisite of entitlement to eat animalflesh. Tobe sure, somerural Jewsare reported to haveslicedpieces fromliving animals to maintain a continuous supply of fresh meat —livinglarders — but that has been an unfortunate practice of manycultures. And some more, no doubt, ate flesh without attending the Holy Temple. It is quite improbable that the vegetarianpractices of atleast a fewof the priesthood in the neighbouring lands of Egypt, Babylonia, andPersia, and probably others close to home besides, did not

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influence at least in some degree the culture of the Jews, especially given that, bybiblical tradition in the book of Exodus, they had spent some time in captivity in Egypt, where some had cometo practise Egyptian rites.

Was there a specific reason the god they worshipped had decided to abrogate the original injunction notto eat flesh out oftemporarynecessity? The granting of the permission toeatflesh was of course made after the flood. Roberta Kalechofsky has argued thatwhen Noah disembarkedfrom the ark, he was met with a world denuded ofplant food, aview held previously in 1655 by the Leveller mystic Roger Crab.4“he environmental catastrophe that had occasioned the flood story — a version ofthe story being repeated in manycultures — had radically altered the ecology, Kalechofsky argues. Humans must either eat flesh temporarily or starve to death. They chose not to starve. Nowhere, however, does God once again

reimposehis original vegetarian, andperhaps vegan,restrictions on humankind, a fact usually explained as a concession tohumanweakness — byTertullian, for example.’ Instead, immediately following the concessiontoeat flesh ~ “every thing that liveth shall be meat for you” (Gen. 9:3) — we are told: “But flesh with the life thereof, whichis the blood thereof, ye shall not

eat’ (Gen. 9:4). Our immediate response is that the commandis ofno

value to the animals, for with the blood removed,theyare justas dead asif

they are eaten with the blood intact. However, the appropriate interpretation is rather more beneficial to the animals: one must not take thelife of the animal without considerable thought, blood being the principle oflife and life being ofinherentvalue. It is a not uncommonrabbinical argument that the stricture in Jewishlawallowedthe killing of the animalifthe needs were strong, andthen onlyvery rarely. Whether that becamethe later Jewish practice is a different matter. What the stricture indicates is that Jewish principles several centuries before the birth of Christ, if not vegetarian,

came closerto it as a general rule thanthose societies that restricted their vegetarianismto oneclass or one or twocastes alone. Indeed, as Clement

of Alexandriasaid, “the Jews had frugality thrust upon themby the [Mosaic] Lawin the most systematic manner.”® And we can read in the Book of Enoch, a Judaic text composed in parts from around 170 to 64 BC — Enoch was connectedwith andrevered by the Essenes — that it was onlyafter the flood that humans “beganto sin against birds andbeasts andreptiles and fish, and to devour one another's Hesh andto drink the blood.”” The idea

mooted is thatflesh eating wasstill a sin despite the concession.In fact, the

Jewishprescription regarding bloodcontinued for several centuries among

early Christians according to Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History.® It is nowfairly well known butbears repeating, especially in light ofthe =

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fact that one hears the contrary viewstill frequently reiterated, that “dominion” in Genesis — “let them have dominionoverthe fishofthe sea,

andover the fowl ofthe air, and overthe cattle, and overall the earth, and over everylivingthing that creepeth uponthe earth” (Gen.1:26) — does not mean,as pointedout both cogently and memorablyby Richard Schwartz, “the rule of a haughty despot.”’ Traditionally, such commentators as Edward Payson Evans, Lynn White Jr., Peter Singer, and Roderick Frazier Nash have interpreted Genesis 1:26 as the legitimizing onset to a JudeoChristian oppressionof the animal andother natural realms.'!° White, for example, interprets the passage to implythat, according to Judeo-Christian scripture, God hadcreated all of the nonhumanrealm“explicitly for man’s benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose butto serve mans purpose.” Singer's interpretation has a decidedlypolitical impulse: “To end tyranny we mustfirst understand it.” Such interpretations ofthe text, if not necessarily of the practice, are seriously inerror. Infact,

yada (the Hebrew wordtranslated as dominion) doesrefer to a significant

power that may be used despotically. Nonetheless, an implication of the termis that humans were intended to share not only some of God’ss prerogative but also, as the theologian Andrew Linzeyhas explained, “his moral nature,” acting toward animated nature as God did toward humans,

bringing order to chaos and bringing blessings and goodness rather than tyrannical mastery to the world.'' Certainly, in Genesis animals are subor-

dinated to humankind, and humansare entitled to their use. But as the

detailed research of Elijah Judah Schochet has demonstrated, animals were to be regardedas “the delicate tool,” as instruments for humanuse, tobe sure, but to be used with feelings of respect for, and kinship with, animals.'* Moreover, what we mightcall limited dominion has beenthe cus-

tomaryhistorical interpretation ofthe grant. To take but twoofa host of potential examples, Lord Erskine remarkedin a debate in 1809 onthesecond reading of an unsuccessful animal welfare bill that “the dominion granted to us over the worldis not concededto us absolutely. It is a dominion in trust; and we shouldnever forget that the animal over which we exercise our powerhasall the organs which renderit susceptible ofpleasure and pain.”!° In the Rights ofAnimals (1838), the Unitarian Irish preacher

William Drummondarguedthat “man’s dominion over [the animals] is a .

delegatedtrust, which he is required to use with discretion andlenity... The [animals] were formedfor their ownenjoymentoflife ... it is a dominion ofjustice and mercy.”'* Such commentary was commonfromthesixteenth century onward. Startlingly, in light ofthe abuse heapedtraditionally on the Judeo-Christian

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ethic with regard to animals, we find specific practical pronouncements of consideration for animals earlier, more fully, and more consistently ex-

pressed in pre-Christian Judaism, taking a culture as a whole, thanin any other culture, even thoughvegetarian conclusions are not usually drawn from these pronouncements,atleast not by the orthodox. Thus, for example: “It is forbidden according to the law of Torah to inflict pain on any living creature. On the contrary, it is our dutyto relieve the painof any creature, even if it is ownerless or belongs to a non-Jew."'”

Althoughsimilar proscriptions are to be foundin Indianthought, there are others that contradict them. There are no competing instances in Judaic thought other thanoccasional mention ofanimalsacrifice, practised less than in most religious traditions. Byreferring to ownerless animals being entitled to freedom fromthe infliction of pain, the proscription makes it clear that the dutyis to the animal directly, not indirectly to the animal anddirectly to the owner,as later for both Aquinas andKant. And the reference to being ownedbya non-Jewimplies that one musthave concern for the animal in andforitself, not because it may be owned by someone to whomonehas anaturalobligation by|being a memberof one’s own

religious community. Several otherclassical Judaic edicts have similarref-

erences to respc yonsibilities to animals owned bynon-Jews. Thus, for example, we are told: “Whenhorses, drawing a cart, come to a rough road or steep hill, andit is hard for them to drawthe cart withouthelp, itis our dutyto help them, even whentheybelong to a non-Jew, because ofthepreceptnot to be cruel to animals, lest the owner smite themto force them to draw more than their strength permits.”'° As an indication, again, that it is the responsibility to the animaldirectly that is being promoted, we mayread in the Talmudthat heaven rewards those who show concern and compassion for nonhumansand that one should not own an animal unless one can feed and care for the animal.!” Another Hebrew doctrine reads: “a good mandoes notsell his beast to a cruel person.”!® And again fromaclassical Hebrewdoctrine: “As the Holy One, blessed be He, has compassion upon man, so has He compassion upon the beasts of the field ... And for the birds ofthe air.”!? There are manyprecepts of a moreprecise nature, including: Jews must avoid plucking feathers fromlive geese, because it is cruel to do so.” Rejoicing cannot occurat an animal's expense.*!

Animals are not to be pennedup in stables on the Sabbath.’ One whoprevents an animal fromeating whenat workis punishable by

flagellation.”

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The Jewishproscriptions against animal cruelty are a signal example of the most advanced expressionsofsensibility to animals not being enjoined bythe requirementnotto eat them. The renowned Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (ap 37-100), when

writing of the fundamental laws of the Mosaic code, observed: “it is not

lawful to pass by anybeast thatis in distress,whenit is fallen down under its burden, but to endeavour to preserve it, as having a sympathywithit in its pain.”*4 Thus not onlyis the dutydirect to the animal, but the moral also imposes a responsibility both to refrain from cruelty and to act in a manner supportive of the animal's interests. Nor is there any quasiAristotelian sense of animals intended for humanuse, althoughthere is certainlya reality that they were so used: “Thou thinkest thatflies, fleas, mosquitoes are superfluous, but they have their purpose increation as a means of afinal outcome... Of all that theHoly One, blessed be He,cre-

ated in His world, He did notcreate a single thing without purpose.”” Of course, such assertions were made precisely because the impliedethical imperatives were not followed. Even Samson, according to Judges 15:4, caught three hundred foxes andhadtorches placed betweentheir tails and lic. They were then driven through the fields of the Philistines.*° Indeed, ethical imperatives were advanced forsimilar reasons of noncompliance in othertraditions. There is more in the Hebrew Bible besides, alongside the recommenda-

tions to performsacrificial rites —- although some passages do deem such sacrifice to be evil and displeasing to God (e.g., Psalms 66:4 and Hosea 6:6). Thus, to mention but three of the relevant animal-considerate verses: A righteous man regardeth thelife of his beast: but the tender mercies of the

wicked are cruel (Proverbs 12:10). [In other words, upright persons have

Youshalt not plough with an ox and anass together (Deuteronomy 22:10). [Thatis, yoked animals mustshare an equal burden andthus not be harmed byan unequal burden imposed bythe yoke.| Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he is treading out the corn (Deuteronomy25:4). [The farmeris being instructed that the ox must not be

deprivedof a due portionofthe fruits of the animal’s labour.

Unlike the Homeric Greek tradition, Jewish mores did not, and donot, celebrate hunters as heroes. Nimrod and Esau, who enjoyed the chase,

are not well regarded in Jewish tradition. As Roberta Kalechofsky has explained, “there is no recordof blood sports ... or any use of animals for

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any purpose of entertainment, nor gladiatorial combats, bullfighting,

cockfighting, dogfighting etc. Thereis no tradition of the hunteras hero, romantic figure, or macho exemplar.””” Her viewis well confirmed with regard to bloodsports in W.E.H. Lecky’s nineteenth-century History of European Morals, where he remarks that“the rabbinical writers have been remarkable for the great emphasis on the duty of kindness to animals.” He addsthereis “no 0 record of any wild beast combats existing among Jews.”**

Other societies have animal-friendly pronouncements of perhaps a rather earlierpe per riod, but they are balanced by statementsthat treat animals a great deal less than respectfully.Among the Jews, the pronouncements consistently treat animals with respect andconsideration, exemplifying and extending Zoroastrian protection of working animals. Such pronouncements are both significant in number and quite specific. Even the methods of slaughter were intended to be considerate of food-animal interests, although whether they were and are remains,infact, a matterofsignificant

dispute. However, although these statements indicate a clear dutyto the animal, the stronger duty by far was to God — “the earth is the Lord’s,” everything that exists belongs to Him, andcorrespondingly, we have no right to harm1 anything.9 The laterT Jews,ass similarly the Christians, took Jews, thiswas as especiallys so onfestiveoccasionsorat« Friday family‘dinners to celebrate the commencementofthe Sabbath, although sluttony was

expressly forbidden. Whereas vegetarianism made little headway among mainstream Judaism, it appears to have played a role among nonconformist sects. The consistencyof the ethical statements gives one cause to wonder whether vegetarianism was more commonthanthe available evidence indicates. Or was this simply one moreinstance, as in so manycul-

tures, where sensibility toward animals permits, paradoxically, the right to bring their lives to aninordinately early end and consumetheir carcases? Noneofthese positive pronouncements appears to have led to anywide-

spreadvegetarianism among the nonconformists — although, again, we

cannotbe sure. Thehistorical record is notatall clear. Even if we take the Essenes as a strictly Christian example of a vegetarian communityinthe early Christianera, as some have beeninclinedto do —andit is quite inap-

propriate to do so given the community’ existence for over a century

before the birth of Christ — it would be probable that any early Christian quasi-vegetarian group would findits roots in the immediately preceding Jewishtraditions.*? Moreover, for thefirst eighty-five years or so ofthe Christian tradition, thereis no clear distinction between Christianity and Judaism, Christianity being in effect an expression of a tendency within

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Judaism,just as later Protestantism became an aspect ofChristianity with the initial intention not to cause a schism within the Catholic Church but to reform the church.Infact, early Christians were notcalled by that name but as Nazarenes (Nazoreans), referring to themselves as “the way,” “the

poor ones,” or “keepersofthe light.” They thought of themselves as Jewish and followers of Christ. Atleast until the time ofJohn Chrysostom(fourth to early fifth century), many Christians continuedto engage in Jewish worshiprituals. The Essenes were a fairly small, but perhaps widely dispersed, Jewish,

but nonconformist, male, mainlycelibate, religious order originating in the second century Bcand lasting until the second century ap. What we

know about them comes mainlyfromthe Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered at Qumran in 1949. The Essenes regarded themselvesas strict followers of the

law of Moses, believedin the immortality ofthe soul, and probably at least at first practised ritual sacrifice, as evidencedbyarcheological remains, even though Philo Judaeus (Philo ofAlexandria) said they did not. But perhaps he was referring to Essenes after the birth of Christ. They may well have fused with early Jewish Christianity, and some even say that theywere led in the first century by James, brother of Jesus. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is evidence of Persian, but also of Hellenistic, influences in their doc-

trines. Certainly, they were deemedto be ofa type from whichprimitive Christianity descended. Indeed, early church fathers claim that John the Baptist was an Essene whorestricted his diet to locusts and honey,as a consequence of whichlocust beans (carob) are known as Saint John’s bread. The Essenes were mentionedfrequently in antiquity.According to Por-

phyry (Deabstinentia 4.3) and Jerome (AgainstJovinianus 2.14), they were vegetarian. The Jewish historiographer and military leader Flavius Jose-

phus (Antiquities 15, 10.4) stated unequivocally, if not fully convincingly, at least if the traditional view of Pythagorasis the correct view, that the Essene and Pythagoreanprinciples were identical. Infact, in general, the Essenes

permitted themselves grasshoppers andfish, which, again, may not have been seen as fully animal. Likewise, the Nazoreans of Mount Carmel were

a vegetarian or quasi-vegetarian Judeo-Christian brotherhood, closely

related to the Essenes. According to the Panarion of Epiphanius, another Jewish sect, the Theraputae of Egypt, restricted its members’ diet to bread, hyssop (a wild bush whose twigs were used in Jewish purificatoryrites), salt, and water.*' Like the Essenes, althoughoflater origin, the Ebionites (literally, poor men) were a Judeo-Christian vegetarian sect that followed

the Mosaic law. Theyalso regarded Jesus as a virtuous man anointed bythe

spirit and, although the Messiah, not in fact divine.

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Clearly, for the Jews, as later for the Christians,humankindis made in the image of God, and as a consequence, the interests ofhumankind trump

those of the animal creation — but only where there is a conflict between

human and nonhumaninterests. Otherwise, the interests of the animal

creation are entirely worthyas the interests of an inherently valuable part of God's creation. Nonetheless, there always was a clear conflict between the interests of animals as ends in themselves and the use ofanimals as creatures subservient to the overriding interests of humankind. Neither

mainstream Jews norlater orthodoxChristians were ever able to resolve the

contradiction. The potentialfor ethical vegetarianism, inherentlypossible in light ofthe high regard for animals as entities with their own ends and purposes, was always subordinated to the dominant humaninterestin continuing to exploit the power of animals, to domesticate, and, we presume, to slaughter and eat animate beings, whoseintrinsic value as a consequence of the many Judaic pronouncements wasin principle inconsistent with their being employed as apart of the humandiet. Thereafter, much of the

history of the Western relationship to animals, beginning in the classical era, hangs on the same contradiction, with significant numbers lauding animals as inherently worthycreatures, ends in themselves noless, but con-

tinuing at the same time to enjoy them as a partof their supperor, at the

veryleast, onfestive occasions.

EARLY CHRISTIAN PRACTICE

The Panarion by the Christian-despising Epiphanius and the pseudoClementine Recognitions and Homilies point torigorous ethical vegetarian sects in early Christianity.**The apocryphal second-centuryActs ofAndrew, widely employed by Gnostic and heretical groups, claimed a connection

between demonsandflesh.As Stephen H. Webbhas argued, apocryphalor not, “it demonstrates that the Christian revulsion against animalsacrifices”

— the customary occasions of flesh consumption — “was widespread.”*? Clement of Alexandria called Christian communal meals agapes — literally love feasts — for being in essence “heavenlyfood,” claiming that such meals “should not include the smell of roasting meat.”** He recommendedand adopted a strict regimen, but his idea of a nonflesh diet is instructive. He tells us “the Apostle Matthewlived uponseeds and nuts, and vegetables without the use of flesh.” Yet he continues: “And John, who carried tem-

perance to the extreme, ‘ate locusts and wild honey.” Locusts, then, did not appear to countas flesh. Neither, it would appear, didfish: “And the

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fish which, at the commandofthe Lord, Peter caught, points to digestible

and God-given moderate [i.e., nonanimalflesh] food.”Clearly, the early Christian conceptionof a fleshless diet does not conformto modernconceptions of such adiet. “Animal” was notyet ascientific concept. Nor, evidently, was it for the Jews. The idea ofa fleshless diet was one restrictedto not eating mammals orbirds. Undoubtedly, there were a significant numberof vegetarian or quasivegetarian groups within early Christianity. We have already seen the habits of the Essenes, who became Christian after their origin as Jews and,

quite likely, without renouncing their Judaism. And we have also noticed the Ebionites. The relevant question is whether these groups practised vegetarianism or quasi-vegetarianism entirely as an ascetic matterofritual purification or whether theywere also ethical vegetarians who maintained their practice in part out of consideration for animals. So excellent an authority as Benedicta Ward, the finest of the commentators onthe desert fathers, observedthat “the aim of the monks’ lives was not asceticism, but

God, andthe way to Godwas charity. The gentle charityof the desert was the pivot in all their work andthe test of their wayoflife. Charity was to be total and complete.”*° By contrast, the widely read and eminently well-researched Colin Spencer takes the nowcustomary viewthatearly Christian vegetarianism wasentirely ascetic, referring to the Essenes as

beginning “the long tradition of asceticism that was to influence the early church fathers.”°’ Not once does he mention an animal-ethical aspect of their vegetarianism. On whatside does the preponderance ofevidencefall? Onlyrarely is the matter made explicit in the historical record. Thus interesting accounts couldbe read with either explanation. The following account, reflective ofdistinctions between the church hierarchy and the groundlings, is instructive as an example ofa tale that couldbe interpreted either as ascetic or as ethical vegetarianism. Theophilus, who was Archbishop of Alexandria at the time Augustine was Archbishop of Hippo,

relates the following story, Ward tells us: “As the monks were eating with ithe archbishop], they were brought someveal for food and theyate it withoutrealising what it was. The bishop, taking a piece ofmeat, offered it to the old manbeside him, saying, “Here is a nice piece of meat, abba,eat it.’ But

he replied, “Till this moment we believed we were eatingvegetables, but, if

it is meat, we do noteat it.’ None ofthemtasted any more ofthe meat which wasbrought.”** In the long run,the flesh ofthe bishops outweighedthe vegetables of the abbas in the development ofChristian attitudes and practices. Clearly, the groundsforthe rejection of flesh could have beenthe sake of the slaughtered animals, or the purity of the monks, or both together. ‘The

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followingreflects thereality far more clearly. Saint Athanasius wroteofthe desert-dwelling Saint Anthony that his food was“bread andsalt, his drink only water. Of meat and wineit is needless to speak, for nothingofthis sort was to be found amongthe other monkseither” — hence the generality of the fleshless diet among the monks. And the groundsfor the diet were not solely purity ofspirit, for “the wildbeasts kept peace with him,”as enjoined byJob 5:23: “the beasts of the fieldshall be at peace with thee.” When there was a droughtSaint Anthonyreleasedhis camel that it mightseekforitselfandsurvive. Theinherent value of the camel outweighed Anthonys rightofpossession. “Mybookis nature,” heis reported to have said, “and wherever I will,I

can read the word of God.”*’ Thereis surelyat the very least an element of

ethical vegetarianism in Anthony's denalof flesh and communionwith the beasts. Even clearer is the story of Saint Jerome about Theon,oneof the vegetarian monks of Egypt, whose “food was cooked on nofire. They said of himthat at night he wouldgo out to the desert, and for company a great troop of the beasts of the desert would go with him. Andhe woulddraw water fromhis well and offer them cupsofit in return for their kindness in attendinghim. One evidenceofthis wasplainto see, for thetracksof gazelle and goat“and the wild ass were thick abouthiscell.”*° It was no meanfeat of generosity to offer water fromone’s well inthe desert! The stories were probably apocryphal, almost certainly exaggerated. No matter. Suchstories of

whatever tradition are proneto reflect more ofthe desirable thanthereal. Thetale imparts what was thought an epitomizingattribute — the appropriate ethic — of thesaintly person, and this included a respect for animals and an intimationofacloselyfelt ethical kinship. Theearly Christian abbot Moseslisted seven ethical principles, the fifth of which was: “A“7 man ought to do no harmto any,” as derived from Isaiah 11:9: “they shall not hurt nor destroyin all my holy mountain” — a doctrine verysimilar to the Jaina ahimsa(theprinciple ofnonharm)and theJudaic Bal Taschit (do not destroy).*! The patristic scholar and translator Helen

Waddell wroteof the early seventh-century monk John Moschus, author of

the Pratum Spirituale, that “he was a lover alike of man and beasts, and never wearyofstories aboutthe goodnessandguilelessnessoflions, and the wisdomofthelittle dog of the,abbot Subena Syrorum.”*” Moschustold tales ofAbba John the Eunuch, who“had more compassion than anybody weeversaw, not only for men butalsofor animals.” Anentirely ascetic por-

trait of early Christian vegetarianism misses a great deal of the wondrous affectionthat was evidentlydisplayed. Nonetheless, asceticismwascertainly

present and in a mannerthat is scarcely conceivable to modern minds. Thus, for example, Saint SimonStylites was a fourth-century monkto

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whose shrine near Antioch (the thirdcity of the empire)many medieval, andsomelater, pilgrims made the journey ofhomage. Theearly-twentiethcentury journalist and travel writer H.V. Morton remarked that Simeon “believed that only by the complete humiliation of his bodycould his soul set itself free and fit itself to contemplate God.”To this end,he devised “all kinds ofself-torture ... It was a worldin revolt against materialism.”* We should wondernot onlyat the inflictionofself-Aagellation butalso at the surprising fact that for many centuries so manyfoundthe behaviour — which was not all that unusual for the time, we might add — as worthyof pilgrim-

age and hence veneration. But not even Stylites was entirelyascetic, at least if there is any truthto tradition. By legend, he is supposed to have cured a blind dragon, “dragon” being symbolic of a large and dangerous animal. Evenif the story is untrue or, at the veryleast, an exaggeration,as surelyit must be, it is important. Thatthe story was worthyofbeing inventedreflects that it was deemed admirable to respect and care for otherspecies. Similarly, Saint Macarius was renownedfor being gentler witha blind hyena kitten than with his own kind. In the instances of both SimeonStylites and Macarius, it is not at all unreasonable to infer that their belief in kindness

to animals lay behind the developmentofthe vegetarian traditions. There were numerous philosophers and theologians — as thoughthere was much ofa difference in those days! — as well as commonorgarden commentators inthe early Christian era who subscribed, usuallyliterally and sometimes figuratively, to the idea of the Golden Age as the requisite standardto be achieved or a past paradise no longer recoverable because of man’s original sin. In such images the primitive state was always superior to the fallen state, and the vegetarian practices always superior tothe present age of flesh consumption. Manyidealized the vegetarianlifestyle, but we do not knowwhether manyofthem, other than some monks, practisedit.

Probably precious few.Among the glorifiers of primitivism, we findthe

heretics Tertullian and Novation, as well as Philo Judaeus (or Philo of Alexandria) — a Jewish thinker, the most significant before Moses Mai-

monides — who developed a sophisticated form of the doctrine and who had a significant influence on Christian theology in general through his developmentofthe idea of the scriptures asallegory.** Saint Jerome(c. 347420) practised regular Heshless fasting,which he believed was a temporary return to paradise. He was not otherwise a vegetarian, although he remarked

that at Christ’s resurrection we wouldall cease to be flesh eaters. The rea-

son that the prospects for vegetarianismwithin orthodoxChristianity were

slimis perhaps explained by Saint Paul’s edict to Timothy ( Timothy4), where Paul refers to the “doctrines of the devil” (verse 1), which included

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“commanding toabstain from meats’ (verse 3) not because such abstention

is a wronginitself but because suchrigid requirements woulddetract from the primary Christian duty — the quest forsalvation. A general vegetarian requirement would diminishthe likelihood of Christian conversion. Helen Waddell translated forty charmingstories fromLatin in adelightfullittle book entitled Beasts and Saints (1934) about what she called “the mutual charities” between man andbeastin the early Middle Ages. Waddell depicted a world alive with interspecies respect amongthe desertfathers, the saints ofthe West, and the saints ofIreland. Thetask is to relate these “mutual

charities” to vegetarian practices beyondthoseofthe desert fathers. Aninviting candidate is the Scottish and Irish Culdeans (or Kildeans), as they were popularlycalled, amonastic order foundedin the fifth century ap. Theywere ascetic monks with vegetarian practices. In a report on the monastics, we read that they ate “cooked vegetables, seasoned onlywith salt. Never did theyeat fiesh or fish, nor did they permit cheese or butter, except on Sundays and feast days.”*? One assumesit is the cheese andbutter allowedonthe special days. “They were true monks,” weare toldfurther, “imitating the monks of Egypt [the desert fathers] and leading alife like theirs.” George Boas claims

their practice to have been“inreality more like that of the Essenes.”*° His report continues: “They hadnot a single oxor other animalfor cultivating their fields, or for doing any work whatever, for each was ox or horse for

working.”*’ To be sure, “the little old abbot had a ponyfor travelling anda fewcowsfor milk.” Theyalso kept a fewsheep for wool. Inpart, the dispensationof the animals and their labour was in practice an early acclamation of the dignity of labour, almost unknowninthis periodof the early Middle Ages. But inpart it was to save the animals fromhaving to labour on behalf ofhumans. Althoughthe evidence oftheir ethical vegetarianism is not incontrovertible — as usual for this early medieval period, the records are inadequate for absolute confidence —it is nonetheless quite persuasive. Ifpurity of soul was the primary purposeofvegetarianism, the evidence suggests a significant concernfor the animals as well. It is significant both that many, if decreasingly fewer, of the monasteries were vegetarian, although notgenerallyfor ethical reasons, and that most

of the saints, if not ultimately the most influential of them, were knownfor their protection of animals. Rev. AndrewLinzeyhas estimated that more than two-thirds of the medieval saints demonstrated“a practical concern for, and befriending of, animals.”*® Another theologian, Stephen H. Webb, has confirmed that “one ofthe criteria for sainthood seems to be the compassionate treatment of animals.”’? Again, manystories ofthe saints may be apocryphalor exaggerated. But they demonstrate bothhowsaintlypersons were perceived and the ethic they were expectedto pursue.

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Notall the storieswere undocumented myths, however. Thus, for example,

the Abbot of Spoleto, Saint Isaac the Syrian, who died around 700 ap,said:

Whatis a charitable heart? It is aheart which is burning with love for the whole creation, for men, for the birds, for beasts ... for all creatures. Hewho has such

a heart cannotseeor call to mind a creature withouthis eyes beingfilled to tears by reason of the immense compassion whichseizes his heart; a heart which is softened and can no longerbear to see or learn from others of any suffering, even the smallest pain being inflicted upona creature. That is why such a manneverceases to prayfor the animals ... [He is] movedbythe infinite pity whichreigns in the hearts of those who are becoming united with God.”

If this is in any degree an exemplification of the feelings of the vegetarian monks, we canfeel confidenttheirs was an ethical, not merely an ascetic, vegetarianism.

There were certainly in these years examples of a broader Christian

respect for animals. Thus, for instance, Saint Basil (c. 329-379), Bishop of

Caesarea, reminded his audience ofPsalm36:6 in saying God “has promised to save both man and beast.” Moreover, the animals “live not for us alone,

but for themselves and for God.””!Basil writes of “a sense offellowshipwith

all living things, with our brothers the animals ... cowhom [God] hast given

the earth as their home in common with us.”?? The prolific Saint John Chrysostom(c. 347-407) — Howard Williamstells us he wrote 700 homilies, orations, doctrinal treatises, and epistles - was Archbishop of Constantinople until he was deposed and exiled.’’ He observed: “Surely, we ought to

show[otherspecies]

great kindness and gentleness for manyreasons, but above all because theyare of the sameoriginas ourselves. 4 Hewas himself 23%&

for a while a vegetarian,at least for his four years spent in a monastery, but probablyreturnedto flesh to pursue his career inthe ecclesiastical hierarchy. Still, he praised the abstinent monks their diet: “no streams ofblood are

among them; no butchering and cutting up offlesh; no dainty cookery; no

heaviness of head. Norare there horrible smells of flesh meats among them or disagreeable fumes fromthe kitchen.”* Theideaofa purely ascetic Christian tradition that did not care for animals iswithout merit.

GNOSTICS

There was not always a clear distinction between the orthodoxand the Gnostics, manyof the latter continuing to worship in the churches ofthe =

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former, and manyofthe former coming perilouslyclose in their thinking to the heresies of the latter, as well as some, suchas Tertullian, who became

a Montanist, being respectably orthodox for much oftheir lives but discovering something in late maturity they had cometo regard as absent from the customary worship and practice. Tertullian tells us: “So great is the privilege of a circumscribeddiet that it makes God a dweller with men, and, indeed, to live on equal terms with them.””° The purpose ofthe diet

is thus to achieve union with the deity. Valentinus (c. 125 to c. 160), often

considered the first and greatest of the Gnostics, approaches theesoteric essence whenheteachesthat ultimatereality is a procession of aeons! God was knowable only gnostically as the being beyond all concepts of God. Knowledge of God, in other words, came fromanessentially mysterious,

spiritually motivated intuition. And the state in whichthis intuition could be achieved was thought to comeinsignificant part froma fleshless diet. Having the source of their ideas in Jewish mysticism, Hellenistic mystery cults, and Egyptian, Babylonian, andPersian mythology, the Christian Gnostics ~ and there were many other Gnostic cults in manyofthereligions of the region — cameto the fore in the secondcentury AD, promising salvation through occult knowledge that they, the privileged, alone pos-

sessed. In general, the cults held to a dualistic conflict between good and evil, spirit and flesh. Humanity’s salvation was to be achieved through the divine spark of spirit and the abomination ofall matter and flesh. The adherent’s life was to be spent in the glorification of the one and the utter rejection of the other. The later developmentofthe high-medieval Jewish Kaballah, which so influenced Robert Fludd and John Miltonin the sev-

enteenth century, foundits spiritual impetus in Christian Gnosticism and Catharism.”” Although these Gnostic sects were vegetarian in the main, this vegetari-

anismhadverylittle, if anything atall, to do with a concernforthelives of the animals from whomthe Gnostic sects abstained. The Gnostics were not,at least in this respect, legitimate descendants of the desert fathers. Three examples should suffice. Novation was a third-century schismatic who, on the grounds ofthe failure of the traditional church to maintain appropriatelyrigorous religious standards —that is, with respect to human worship — opposedtheelection of Saint Cornelius as pope anddeclared himself pope in his stead. Heclaimed the original diet ofhumankindwas restricted not merely to nonflesh food butalso to the fruit of the trees. It wasthe commission ofsinthat cast the eyes downto the groundforsustenance. Humans were creatures who hadanupright posture and, accord-

ingly, were not meant bynature to find their sustenance on the ground.

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They were thus unlike other animals. Accordingly, as with somelater fruitarians,Novation thoughteven the eating ofgrains did not belong to

the natural humandiet. It was with the introductionoftoil after the Fall that the concession to eat flesh was granted sothat the strength necessary for husbandry would be acquired.’* Nowit was time to return tothe vegetarian past. There was no indicationin his writings that the interests of animals were to be considered. Marcion(c.85 to c. 160) was an early Christian bishop who foundedthe Marcionites, one of the first major professions of heresy to rival the Catholic Church. He claimed there to be twogods inconflict: the stern Hebrewdeityand the compassionate, merciful God oftheNewTestament. “Nature” — as the physical world, including the animal realm —far from being an indicator ofthe just, was the workofthe evil god and the enemy of the Christian God. Thus, for the Marcionites, even sex was an abomi-

nation as that which would further the existence of the material world. The animals, even more “natural” than humans, were, George Boastells us, “objects of contempt to the Marcionites.””

The Montanists were founded by Montanus of Phrygia (fl. ap 170) and werestrict ascetics, encouraging ecstatic prophesying and believing the day of judgment was at hand. The Montanists and Marcionites shared the belief that their Eucharist should consist of milk and honeyto recreate the Edenic vision of Exodus 3:8, in which God came “to bring them... to a

country rich and broad, to a country flowing with milk and honey.” Milk

was symbolically opposed to blood, and honeywas seenas a foretaste of heaven.® The Montanists’ most famous convert was Tertullian, but even though the movementdied as aviable sect in the third century, the vege-

tarian Cathars and Emanuel Swedenborg were influenced at a muchlater date by their anti-intellectualism. Tertullian (c. 160 to c. 230) left the

Catholic Churchin213 to join theMontanists because oftheir more rigor-

ous theology andpractical ethics, althoughanimals were not included in

the ethics. His saving grace was that he believed animals possessed immortal souls. And unlike many Gnostics, he did not despise Nature in principle but avowedthat “the innocence and purity of nature being restored, animals shall live in harmonywith each other, andinfants will play without harm with animals once ferocious’°! — presumablya reference to Isaiah 11:6-8 and the peaceable kingdomtobe introducedafter the redemption. However, he shows no concern for animals as they are here and nowbefore the new Edenhas been created. It is, indeed, dificult to find even a remnant of an animal ethic among the Gnostics, even though they were almostall vegetarian. The asceticism of the Gnostics seemsto have differed

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substantially from the animal respect displayed bythe earliest Christian

fathers and can be viewedas aninstance of Christianity turning awayfrom its early respect for the animalcreation.

MANICHEANS

Earlyin the third century ap, Mani, or Manes (c. 216-276), the founder of Manicheism —“a belief in the inherentevil ofall matter”®? — broke awayfrom the Gnostic sect, the Elchasaites, to which his father, Patik, had been con-

verted and whichhad beeninstrumentalin developing Mani’s early religious

and philosophical thoughts. The Elchasaites were an anti-Pauline, JewishChristian, vegetarian sect whose members thought ofthemselvesasstrict followers of the Mosaic law. Thesect inhabited Persia, where the semiofficial

religion was Zoroastrianism. By the time he was twenty, Mani was developing astrictly dualist system of thoughtin which, in common with the now customaryGnostic division, everything emanating from the bodywasevil in nature, whereas that emanating from the spirit was heavenly. He derived muchofthis doctrine fromthe earlier Gnostics, especially the Marcionites, evenif the debt was never acknowledged. Although the division between mind and bodywasstrict and althoughsex wascast out along with flesh, Manisrejection of the bodywas notas rigid as that of other Gnostics. In Mani’s view, the world was divided into the people of darkness and the people oflight. It was humankind’s heavenlytask to promote the Spirit of Light and abominate the Spirit of Darkness. In line with Marcionite doctrine, animals belongedto the kingdom of darkness, a viewalso expressed in the Hindu Laws ofManu. One might have expected the proximityto the Zoroastrians andtheir incipient concern for animals in their ownselves to have influenced the Manicheans, butthis would appearnot

at all to have been the case. After considerable, even violent, opposition to whatthe Elchasaites saw as arrogance and sloth — Mani thoughtfruit and

vegetables should be received as alms, not collected, a practice reminiscent of Buddhism —a few, including Patik, came to regard Manias the true

prophet of God, andthus the Manicheanreligion was born. Blasphemous speech, the consumptionofall flesh, the practice ofsex, and the drinking of wine were forbidden, but the sole reason for each appears to have beenthe purityofthe spirit.Reminiscent of the Pythagoreans, theManicheans were divided intothe elect and the hearers. For the

latter, the rules wereless strict — without somelaxity the propagationofthe species, or at least sect, would have beenin peril. The hearers were allowed

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to marry, eat flesh, and possess property, all forbiddento the elect. The

Manicheansalso adoptedthe doctrine of the transmigrationof souls, per-

haps fromcontact with neighbouring India. Simply from proximity, Indian ideas are likely to have had greater influence in Persia than elsewhere in the region. To the contrary, however, it is possible that the doctrine began in the Middle East and spread fromthere to India. Orofcourse, the idea could have developedin more than oneplace at the same time, not at all a rare occurrence in cultural history. With animals belonging to the kingdom of darkness for the Manicheans, onceandfor all the idea that transmigration ofsouls implies human-animaal kinship and that kinship necessarily implies a respect for animals shouldbeforever dismissed. After Manidied from torture bythe Zoroastrian Sassanians in 276while on a mission of conversion, the Manicheans did not wither away but appear to have prospered, if the continued opposition to their effective proselytizing is a measure. In Romeat the beginningofthe fourthcentury the emperor Diocletian warned of the threat from the Manicheans. He followed this by persecuting the Manicheans as well as more orthodox Christians. Later in the century Timothy, the patriarch ofAlexandria, felt orthodoxChristianity sufficiently threatened by Manicheanismthat he required the meals of his clergy and monksbe inspected regularly to check whether the supposedly devout were eating their customaryflesh diet or a Manicheanfleshless diet. The emperor Theodosius banned the Manicheans in 381. Later, Manicheismspread asfar as China, where it appears to have flourished, although always in a minority, until the fourteenth century, and a few groups appearto have surviveduntil the beginningof the sixteenth century, after which they were heard from no more. Eventually, within Christendom, the name “Manichean” becamein effect a synonym for almost every kind of heresy and, for centuries, was a

term of abuse within mainstream Christianity. Both theManicheans and the desert fathers were competing symbols in Rome ofthe simple and abstemiouslife, vying with each other to persuade manyto adopt avegetarianlifestyle. For a time, each had somesuccesses. In rather longer time,

neither prevailed. Catholic orthodoxy remaineda fleshy orthodoxy. THe AUGUSTINIAN REACTION

In Ofthe Morals ofthe Catholic Church, SaintAugustine, Bishop of Hippo, indicated that, among Christians, vegetarians were “without number.”® The fact appalled him, and he helpedtoestablish the orientation of the

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Catholic Church thereafter with regard to flesh. He clearly recognized

there were ethical aspects to vegetarianism, claiming in 7he City of God: “Wedonot apply “Thoushalt notkill’ to plants, because theyhaveno sen-

sation; orto irrational animals that fly, swim, walk, or creep because they are linked to us by noassociation or commonbond. Bythe Creator's wise ordinance”— it was of course no ordinanceatall but a permission granted, as we have seen, in special circumstances — “they are meant for ouruse, dead oralive. [t only remains for us to apply the commandment‘thou shalt not kill to man alone, to oneself and others.”°* There was an ethical responsibility to fellow humans but none to fellowcreatures of other species, which, he implied, some ofhis vegetarian opponents afhrmed. Augustine's defence of flesh eating has both Aristotelian and Stoicphilosophical elements.It also appearstobe bornofhis formerly having been a Manicheanhearer. Desiring to demonstrate his own rejectionofhis former

Gnostic adherence and to assert at the same time his refound Catholic purity, his reasoning involves an elementofrationalization. If the ground onwhich weare entitled tokill plants is that “they have no sensation,” one is entitled to wonder whythesensationcriterion does not apply to animals as well as to plants but, of course, with the opposite consequences. Moreover, since animals “die in pain,” asAugustine acknowledges, evenif ani-

mals “are meantfor ouruse, deadoralive,” oneis led to wonder why“man disregardsthis in a beast.” Theonly possible answer, for Augustine,is that a being must have both sentience and the kind of reason possessed by humans — whichof course, for Augustine, meant, tautologically, that the

kind of reason possessed by humans only humans have! — if it is entitled not to be harmed,killed, and eaten. Humans win andanimals lose — apre-

determinedvictory anddefeat occasioned bythearbitrary selection of a category only humansare deemedapriori to possess! Augustine hadset the stage forthe flesh-eating victory within Christendomforcenturies tocome against both the Gnostic and ethical considerations that had been advanced and remainedeffective, althoughin decline and never dominant,

up until this time. Butas we shallsee, it was not quite a total victory, even if the apparentlyfairly wide practice of vegetarianismprior to the Council of Gangrain the fourth century was never to return. That there were reservationsis expressed in the Easter 2007 view ofPope Benedict XVIthat the Passover was probablycelebrated withouta sacrificial lamb.

BOGOMILS

If laic vegetarianism was moribund in the Catholic Church from the very early medievalperiod,it raised its head elsewhere within Christianity.From the sixth century through the remainder of the medieval period, Howard Williams tells us in The Ethics ofDiet: “The merits ofmonastic asceticism were more orless preached duringall these ages, although consistent abstinence from flesh was by no means the general practice even withthe inmates of the stricter monastic or conventional establishments — atall events in the Latin Church. But we look in vain for anything like the humanitarianfeeling of Plutarch or Porphyry.”! Indeed, wefind anascetic vegetarianism fromat the veryleast the eighth to fifteenth centuries, one beyondthe confines ofthe monasteries, but as Williams indicates, there wasno return to the respect for animals foundin these Greco-Romanvegetariansor, for that matter, foundin the Christian ethical vegetarianism of the desert fathers. The Roman Empire in the West wasformally endedbythe defeatat the palace of Soissons in 627. This was the titular collapse ofcivilization that led in the West ifnot to the Dark Ages, as they were once commonlycalled, at least to the temporary butlong-lived decline in the yearning forlearning and effective administration, an overwhelming concernto eradicate heresy ~— perhaps more as a matter of power andcontrol than of doctrine — and continuous conflicts between churchandstate, except whentheirinterests coincided. Among those who had been declared heretical were the Paulicians 136

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~ so called, itwould appear, from their perhaps single-minded devotion concentrated onthe Pauline Epistles. In the eighth centurythey were exiled from Armenia to Thrace. A Syrian branchwas deported in the tenth century to the Balkans by the Byzantine emperor Basil I, where theyare said to have combined with the Bogomils. In line with the Marcionites, the Paulicians were dualist, believing that

the Old Testament God created matter, which was evil, and that the God of Christ was the authorofspirit, which was goodandwasthenatureoflife to come. Thus, like the Marcionites and other Gnostics, they castigated animallife as the life ofthe flesh. They were sometimes deemed Manichean ~ by nowthe customarytermofheretical abuse — as were the Bogomils and Cathars. Nonetheless, the record is silent on their abstention from flesh,

althoughtheirjoining with the Bogomils is alikely enoughindicationofat least a measure ofit. The influence of the Paulicians on the Bogomils seems fairly certain. The medieval historian and expert on medieval heresy Mal-

colm Lambertstates that: “At somestage ... theBogomils underwent some Paulician influence: this affected their understanding oftheir history and

gave thema tradition which linked them to the early Christian centuries.

Paulicians as individual converts toBogomilism carried over something of

their history, traditions and texts; they may alsohave influenced their hosts in the directionofradicalclualist beliefs.”?: Whereas the author of The Yellow Cross: The Story ofthe Last Cathars Rebellionagainst the Inquisition, René Weis, deems the Catharsand theirilk

Manichee — “the pedigree ofthis dualist, Manicheanheresyreaches backat least to the eleventh century’ ~ Lambert, who authored 7he Cathars, describes, to the contrary, the doctrine “so often labelled Manichee’”as hav-

ing “nothing to do with Maniandhis movement, which hadlong died out in Western Europe. The [Bogomils and Cathars] were not the endpoint of

a line of ancient heresy: their roots lie in the religious and social history oftheir own age. They were individualistic, sui generis, sporadic,the fruit of particular circumstances, coteries, isolated leaders.”’ Perhaps the discrepancy between Weis's and Lambert's accounts is to be explainedbythe fact one is thinking ofsharing certain aspects of a doctrine andofthe labelling of the sects bythe orthodox, whereas the other is thinking ofthe causes and immediate antecedents of the professors ofthe heresy. Justified or not — and, strictly speaking, probably not — the term Manicheancontinuedto be

employedas a description of theBogomils and Cathars.

Peter, tsar of Bulgaria, wrote toTheophylact, the Patriarch of Constantinople, some time in the middle of the tenth century, describing “an

ancient and newly appearedheresy ... Manicheanism with Paulicianism.”‘

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He wasreferring to the Messalians (or Massalians), who were not infact

newbuthad beenaround in Bulgaria for a centuryor so. They were sometimes called “enthusiasts” or “corentes” because of the agitations they received from the holy spirit — rather like the Quakers of alater period. Epiphanius thoughtthese heretics first arose in the time of Emperor Con-

stans (earlier fourth century), whereas Theodoret, friend of Nestorius,

datedthe origins to the time of EmperorValentian (later fourth century). Whatever the origins, the adherents prayed frequently, almost incessantly, andwere successful in their proselytizing, having spread throughoutAsia Minorbythe fifth century.The orthodoxalso claimed “they taught Mani-

chean impieties,” and these ideas, they said, were then the source of some

of the doctrines of the Bogomil sect. It is rumoured of the Messalians that they practised sexual libertinism and also that they enjoyed the worldly pleasures of wine and flesh after completing the requisite three-year abstention.Ifso, andit is to be doubted giventhat slanderof the practices of one’s adversaries was commonplace,it was not this libertinism the Bogomils inherited. At least not at first. Toward the very end ofthe | sogomilera, they too were tarnished with the libertine brush by their persecutors.

Aswith muchofthe history we have encountered to date, the record of

the Bogomils is a great deal less than complete.It is said they were founded by an uneducated Bulgarianvillage priest,named Theophilus or Bogomil ~ meaning beloved of God — about the beginning ofthe tenth century on the basis of Paulician and perhaps some Messalian influences. What we knowbeyondthese bare likelihoods is that, aroundthe turnofthe first millennium, a certain monk, Basil by name, came from Macedonia to Con-

stantinople to preach the Bogomil heresy. He was arrested, imprisoned,

andburnedatthe stake, along with other Bogomil leaders.However, the Bogomils not onlysurvivedbut, at least for some considerable time, appear

to have also flourishedin Bulgaria. Perhaps because theyprayedeight times a day! As previously noted, the Bogomils were strictly dualist. They adopted the Marcionite-Paulician doctrine that the bad God of the Old Testament hadcreated matter, the good God oftheNewTestament having createdspirit. Even to touch flesh was to obey the commandofSatan. Animals lackedthe divine spark that infused humans andwere thus anentirely diabolical product. Likewise, wine was condemned. However, the success

of the sect was predicated perhaps more onits political than onits doctri-

nal appeals. The movement was intensely nationalistic, reflecting and

profiting from resentment of Byzantine power and culture as well as the suffering ofSlavic serfdom.

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In the West the Bogomils extendedtheir influence into Serbia, where

they managed to convince the king to adopt Bogomilismas the state reli-

gion. [he king brought some ten thousandofhis subjects, itis said, into

the religion with him. The papacy and neighbouring monarchies eventu-

ally combined to convince the king, Ban Kulin, by showofarmsto return

to the Catholic fold.Still, againstall odds, the heresypersisted, andstill it was fought from Rome. Eventually, by the secondhalf of the fifteenth century, the forces of Islam invaded. Shortlythereafter, the victorious Turkish sultan allowed the nobility its land and privileges, provided they adopt the Islamic faith. In a matter of months Bogomilism perished forever inthe

Balkans, but a different formofa similar heresy, the Cathar heresy, had by

then flourished in, and perhaps departed to, parts of southern France and Italy, reaching both Britain and Germany. CATHARS

Althoughit isunknown whether there was anycausal connection between the Bogomil and Catharfaiths, there seems to be noprobabilityof such a

connection. We are not even entirely sure whichcamefirst, even though, on balance, the evidence seems to point to theBogomils —we first hear of

the Cathars at the beginning ofthe eleventh century.Whateverthe causal relationship, Lambertdescribes “striking likenesses between Eastern Bogomolism and Western Catharism, especially in their ritual practices and their attitudes towardsthe beliefs, order andritual ofthe great churches against which they struggled andprotested.”? Headds that “powerful asitis, all our evidence of a link between Bogomilism and Catharism before 1143 is inferential, based onlikenesses betweenritual, diet, religious practices and

doctrines.”® The movementrejected traditional baptism, the cross as an appropriate symbol, marriage, and the eating of flesh. In general, the

Cathars,at least the perfect, or elect, eschewedall flesh and even milk,for

they were born ofcoition, andevery form offood associated with animal fat. Eggs were also forbidden. Theypermitted themselves fish because the creation of fish in water was deemed somehow to escape the pollution of animal coition. They opposedthe killingof all forms of animallife, fish excluded, because, again, that wouldinvolve theminthe worldoftheflesh.

The acceptability of fish as a nonflesh itemis reminiscent ofthe earliest Christian “vegetarian” practices and perhaps derives in some measure from Cathar understanding of those original practices. Unlike the Bogomils, they did notreject wine, except during their frequentfasting periods.

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The sect was divided into the perfect and the credentes, a division not unlike in the Pythagorean and Manichean practices. Whereas the prohibitions against the perfect were fairly strict, those against the credentes were far more lax. The credentes were permitted all forms offlesh. The perfect sullied flesh dishes, gravy andstew in particular, with the derogatory term feresa —in effect, meaningdeadly, namelyto one’s heavenly ambitions. The complexities of the diet, the desire for absolute purity, the menial relationship of the credentes to the perfect, and the effect of constant persecutionare expressed in informative detail by the credens Pierre Mauryinhis account ofa supperon the night of17 June 1307 at aninn in Laroque d’Olmes in the modern-day département ofAriége in the South Pyrenees region: Andsince at the inn conger was already being cooked in another pot, when we wanted to cook ours separatelyin the newly purchased one, the hostess of the inntold us not to run up such anexpense, butrather cook upall the conger together in one. Bernard replied that she should not worry about the expense, because she wouldbe well paid for the fire. Because there were many pots with meat on the hearth, Bernard andI were anxious to ensure that no feresa, that is meator gravyfrom the meat, should enter ourpot; even though

our pot was covered, westill stayed close to it until the fish were cooked.

Duringthe time the Perfect slept Bernard and I were aboutto sit downat the table whenthePerfect advised us to buy eggs for two pennies and put themin front of us onthe table, to ensure that our diet would notbetrayus

as a heretical party.We boughtthe eggs. Thenafter Bernard had prepared a dish of fish andfish broth for the Perfect, he lifted the [remaining] fish out

of the pot, andhe and I brokethe eggs into it.Then Bernard and | ate the eggs as well as the fish, but the Perfect did not eat eggs, but only fish and broth... Our bill was paid by myself and Bernard Bélibaste, and between us we spent that dayaboutfourshillings.’

Theritual was pure, but there is absolutely no evidencethatthe wellbeing of animals wasgiven any consideration. Indeed, Cathar vegetarianismseems,like Gnostic vegetarianism, to have beentotallyascetic.

Bythe time of the meal at Laroque d’Olmes, the Cathar heresy had long been understrenuous proscription — hence the considerable care at the inn that the creed be neither suspected nor discovered. The Albigensian Cru-

sade against the Cathars had begun in 1209 but had beenreinforced bythe nstitution ofthe Inquisitioniin 1232. In 12.43 a force of some10,000 French troops besieged the primary Cathar stronghold of Montségur, which finally surrendered;in March1244, althoughsomeof the Cathar faithful

Bogomils, Cathars, and the Later Medieval Mind

IAI

escaped and continued to practise their religion in the Languedocareaof France. At least two hundred were burned todeathfollowing the surren-

der. Bythe fifteenth century Catharismwasfinally destroyed bytheefforts ofthe CatholicChurch with the aid ofmonarchs willing to stamp outheresy. THe Later MEpIEVAL MIND: FrRoM THE BE TO DIVES ET PAUPER

Althoughthe European Middle Ages witnessed littlevegetarianismoutside the “enthusiasm” ofheretical sects and the more modestasceticism ofthe occasional monasteries and nunneries, we can recognize in these times

hints of the resurrection of the animalsensibilities that are a prerequisite of ethical vegetarianism. Among the moststriking of new mediaeval appearances were the bestiaries. It has become customarytoregard the bestiaries as a mere means ofsocialization, in which the animals are no more than characters on the stage playing their moralizing roles for the edification of the audience. But as Ron Baxter has shownin Bestiaries and Their Uses in the Middle Ages, if that is howbestiaries began, editions produced in the

later part of the medieval era showeda decidedinterest in animals for their ownsake: “they made it more of a reference book and less ofa lecture

script.”® Europeans were beginning to think about animals rather than merely through them. And althoughthe religious hermit Richard Rolle of Hampole’s fourteenth-century “The Nature ofthe Bee”is still dependent onethological inaccuracies derived from Aristotle andis still largely concerned with demonstrating the animals’ role as no more than alessonfor our moral behaviour,it is difficult to read the essay without recognizingan authenticrespect for the birds and beesofthe story.” Infact, a respect for animals appears to have been mersng among some

of the more notable figures of the time. For example, John ofSalisbury (1110-1180), biographer of Thomas a Beckett and writer on government, criticized thearistocratic practices ofhis day, pointingoutin his De nugzis curialium(Trifles of the Court) how hunting demeaned humanitybutalso

expressing some sympathyfor the victims as well.!° Walter Map (c. 1140-

a9,

1209), archdeacon of Oxford, states in a book of the same nameas that written by Salisbury how courtlylife has degennerated humanity's nature, whereas the animals have maintainedthe grace ¢ first given‘ahem.Butthis

pales against the statementof Richard de Wyche(c. 1197 to c. 1253), Bishop of Chichester, who said of the farm animals: “Poor, “mocent little crea-

tures: ifyou were reasoning beings andcould speak you would curse us. For

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we are the cause ofyour death, and what have youdonetodeserve it?”'*We have already mentioned the numeroussaints whoreceived their sainthood through consideration for the wellbeing of animals. In addition, thereis

Brigit of Sweden, who urged compassion on animals, and the Franciscan Bernardine of Siena, who preached the moral superiority of animals.'’ Together, they servedto raise the status of animals in general. In fact, animal respect was growingin the established church,at least amongtheless orthodoxlaity, whereas ascetic vegetarianism was the province ofthe heretical sects. Ironically, respect for animals andvegetarianism in these Middle Agecenturies developedin entirely antithetical ways.Those wholearned a serious measure of respect and affection for the animals continued toeat them, whereas those whoforbore toeat themfailed to respect thematall.

Indeed, the vegetarians deemed animals to be of the world of Satan! Almostall the medieval legends have animals as heroes, from the horse Bayard in the Legends ofCharlemagne to thehorse|Bucephalus in the Leg-

ends of Alexander the Great, from King Arthur’s animal helpers in the Mabinogian to the birds of Parzival — and many more besides. In the fifteenth-century poem Piers the Ploughman, by William Langland, we can read: “Yet the thing that moved me most, and changed my wayofthinking, was that Reason ruled andcared forall the beasts, except only forman

andhis mate, for manya time they wandered ungovernedby Reason.”It is the portent ofa newera ofrespect to which Langlandis pointing the way. Whatshould perhaps puzzle us most aboutthe lack of consequentethical vegetarianism upon the frequent recognition of animal worth in the Middle Ages is the enigmatic case of Saint Francis ofAssisi. Francis admon-

ished his Hock, informing themthat “all the creatures under heaven, each

according to his nature, serve, know and obey their Creator better than you. ? BBoth Thomasof Celano andSaint Bonaventure, the earliest of the

Franciscanbiographers, described Francis as a benevolentfriend to theanimals. Francis’s first biographer, Celano, described himas a man of “very great fervor andgreat tenderness towards lower andirrational creatures... he called all creatures brother, and in a mostextraordinary manner, a manner never experienced byothers, he discernedthe hidden things of nature with his sensitive heart.”'° Francisdisciple Saint Bonaventuretells us that “whenheconsidered the primordial source ofall beings, he was filled with even more piety, calling creatures, no matter how small, by the name of brotherorsister, because he knewtheyhad the samesource as himself.” Wondroustales are told of Francis’s relations with, and experience with,all mannerofanimallife. Yet neither biographer suggests Francis to have been a vegetarian, eitherof the asceticor ethical strain. If he had been anethical

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vegetarian, it would have beena matter of astonishment, would surely have been mentioned by Bonaventure and Celano, and would have beenlooked at askance bytheecclesiastical authorities. If he had beenan ascetic vege-

tarian, such vegetarianism would have surely been a requirement of Francis’s order. But as Michael Allen Fox says in referring to the medievalsaints, “whose kindness to animals is legendary”: “Saint Francis of Assisi (11811226) is merely the most celebrated ofthese ... Yet Saint Francis did not compel his followers to adheretoa1 vegetarian diet, nor is such a rulepart of the Franciscan order today.”!® Ti» be sure, it is worthy of note that the Poor Clares, the female equivalent to the Franciscan Order, founded by Saint Clare ofAssisi (1193?-1253), have been vegetarian for centuries: “meat

maynotbe used, even on Christmas.” Yet even here the reasoning is almost entirely ascetic. Perhaps it is also worth mentioning that the Franciscans abjure flesh on feast days — as many as two hundred in a yearat one time. But that leaves well over a hundred days offeasting on flesh! Perhaps we might also note that Amerindiansalso call animals “brother” and that all Native tribes have traditionally been omnivorous. If we find Saint Francis

enigmatic, the enigma belongs no less to those of other cultures. Calling

animals “brother” as an expression of kinship doeslittle to save the animals fromunnatural andearlydeaths. The essay of theMiddle Ages that by far most clearly announcestheevil of cruelty to animals is a moral treatise of the late fourteenth century, certainly no later than 1410, entitled Dives et Pauper. Keith Thomashas said of it that “it is a notable passage and a very embarrassing one to anybodytrying to trace some development in English thinking about animal cruelty. For here at the very beginning of the fifteenth centurywe havea clear statementof a position which differs in no respect whatsoever fromthat of most eighteenth-centurywriters on the subject." > Thetitle means “the wealthy andthe ordinary” because, as Henry Chadwickpointsout, “pauper means a personof modest meansrather than someone withoutfood,roof, or clothing; Oviddefined himas‘a man who knows how manysheep he owns.’””° The passage from Dives et Pauper on the Ten Commandmentsreads: WhenGod forbade manto eat Hesh, he forbade himto slay the beasts in any cruel way, or out of anyliking for shrewness. Therefore, He said, “Eat ye no

flesh with blood (Gen IX), thatis to say with crueltyfor I shall seekthe blood

ofyoursoulsat the handsofall beasts.” “Thatistosay, I shall take vengeance for all the beasts thatareslain out ofcruelty of soul and alikingfor shrewness.” For Godthat makeall hath care ofall, and Hewill take vengeance uponall that misuse his creatures. Therefore, Solomonsaith, “that he will

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arm creatures in vengeance on their enemies” (Sap. V); and so men should have thought for birds and beasts and not harmthemwithoutcause, in tak-

ing regard they are God's creatures. Therefore, they that out ofcruelty and vanity beheadbeasts, and tormentbeasts or fowl, more than is proper for men’s living, theysin incase full grievously. oi

This may not be goodbiblical exegesis.But the moral message is impressive, even if it does not lead towardvegetarianism. Killing animals for requisite foodis acceptable — it is not “without cause” — but no gratuitous harmis tobe tolerated. Certainly, it is atremendousethical step in advance on the vegetarian Cathars, but the food animals did not prosper therefrom. If, as the evidence suggests, there was a professed general sentiment in favour of the interests of the animals present in the minds and, byrepute, in the actions of manyindividuals in the medieval era, whydid this sentiment and these actions have almost no influence in persuading the populace to adopt avegetarian diet on ethical grounds? Afterall, it would seem incongruous to profess respect, admiration, and affection for animals and then to consumetheir bodies, although it must be stressed that many were deprived of the opportunitytoeat flesh more than very occasionally by their poverty or were prevented from obtainingflesh foodsby the powerof the nobility, whokeptthe flesh produce for themselves. Still, this deprivation must not be exaggerated, as we saw in the apparent abundance expressed inthe flesh pots of the hostelry at Laroque d’Olmes. Why, then, were animals eaten? Inthefirst instance, through accultura-

tion. If all of one’s family, friends, and acquaintances apparently consider animals an appropriate nature- or God-givenand necessary food product, andif, as they do, people desire a connection to and acceptance by their families, associates, and communities, theywill find it hard to conceive that the general opinions of the group are unethical. Initially, the groupis,

for most people, the very source of moral and acceptable opinions, and these are later buttressed by the wider authority of church and state, which both help to establish and then to reinforce the customaryopinionsofthe community. Moreover, at that time it would have been verydifficult in

Europe to maintain health on ayear-roundvegetariandiet withoutsignifcantly greater nutritional knowledge than was available. In the second instance, it is the oppressive force of powerthatis eftective.As Lord Acton said wisely, all power tends to corrupt andabsolute

power corrupts absolutely. Thus, if there is no legitimate authority or devoutlybelieved doctrine that interferes with the exercise of power, then the power possessed by humansto treat manyanimals as appropriate foodstuff

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will have its way. If people are not constrained to act otherwise, our predilections will not permit our sensibilities to interfere with ourselfish power. Por the vast majority in the Middle Ages, the legitimate authority in

social matters, and hence power in those matters, was the church. Most

acceptedas a matter beyond questionthat the authority of the church was granted by God and was thus unassailable. And God had “ordained” the eating of flesh. To maintain its authority, and hence power, the churchfelt constrained to oppose all forms oforganization and doctrine that threatened its omnipotence. Whatever did not conform withits interests was heresy. The most significant form ofheresy seemed alwaystoinclude a doctrine that rejected the eating of flesh foods. Thus, more thanever, the

church was not only coerced byforce ofcircumstance to regard the eating of flesh as proper and normal, and the rejection ofthe eating of flesh as intrinsically heretical, but also came frequently to regard flesh eating itself as a mark of normality and hence acceptability. Thus a commonlyprofessed respect andconsiderationfor animals persisted incongruently,if not outright contradictorily, alongside a continuation to consume animals. This strange ambivalence was to continue into posterity. No one did more to state the medieval church's attitude to these matters more effectively andinfluentially than Saint Thomas Aquinas, the prime representative of

Catholic orthodoxyin the late Middle Ages. Notoriously, Aquinas followed Aristotle in the belief animals were entirely appropriate as a meansto the fulhlment of humanpurposes, including dietary purposes.

THe CARNIVOROUS CONSENSUS AND THE

REBIRTH OF THE PROFANE

In their instructive book Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter Singer, editors Kerry S.Walters and Lisa Portmess divide the includedessays into four historical parts, culminating in Part 4, on the twentiethcentury. Part 1 consists of six contributions from antiquity. The book then jumps from Porphyry to Part 2, on the eighteenth century. With a considerable measure ofjustification, there is nothing deemed worthy ofinclusion between Porphyryand theeighteenth century. To be sure, the editors could have found short and valuable snippets from a variety of authors over the one and a halfintervening millennia, but nothing of both length and sub-

stance was found for inclusion. And ofthe “eighteenth-century” contributors, only twoofthe five authors whoare selectedpractised vegetarianism, one (Shelley) not becomingavegetarian until the nineteenth century(at the start ofwhich he wasonlysevenyears of age). He is more properly included in Part 3, among the nineteenth-century contributors. Such is the general dearth ofthe practice of ethical vegetarianism between Porphyryand the turn of the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, in those interveningcenturies several brave figures braced themselves against the carnivorous consensus,

and a few more contributed to the developmentof animalethics. Whereas the thought of the Middle Ages was first and foremostreligious, withat least one eye cast continuously towardeternity, Renaissance

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thoughtfixed theothereyefirmly on the mundane. Life on earth became an acknowledged, althoughnotthesole, endinitself, as Thomas Aquinas hadtentativelyalready affirmed in thelatter partofthe thirteenth century, not merelya preparation for heaven, as Augustinehadinsisted. Butif this

wastheage of Reason,andit was, it wasnoless the age ofSuperstition. If the one augured well for the animals, the other did not. Nordid all of Rea-

son. And seeminglylike never before, it was in Europe an age ofsevere cold that limited the growing season, bringing famine to an already undernourished people. Naturally, the lack of vegetable produce encouragedanincrease in stock production, but vegetable food was also lacking with which

to feed the livestock. Again, if this was an age of Reason, it was not anage that rejected Christianity. It was, however, anage that questioned seriously

the practices of the church andits clergy, a querythat resulted in the outbreak of the Reformation immediatelyprior toLeonardoda Vinci's death. The Renaissance introduced the idea that became the governing conceptionofthe Enlightenment: all nature was continuous, simple, anduniform. Mostimportant, nature was knowable entirely through reason and empirical investigation. No heavenly or mythical intermediary wasnecessary of appropriate to the acquisition of knowledge. The Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (National Academy ofthe Lynx) wasinstituted in Rome,the forerunnerofall national scientific societies, to promote objec-

tive and scientific thought. The tyrannyof the priesthood was on notice.

Yet if Renaissance scientism was a spur to the mostheinousvivisection,its humanity was also a spur to its vehementdenunciation.

What humanismappearedintent to overcomewasthetrulyecclesiastical medieval attitude of what the Thomist scholar Jacques Maritaindescribed as “keeping men fromthinking about themselves.” In the second

half of the fourteenthcentury, Francis Petrarch, poet laureate atRomeand noless one ofthe early great Renaissancehumanists, announced:“I am an

individual and wouldlike to be wholly and completely an individual; I wish to remain true to myselfas far as I can.”! This is indeed theItalian

reveille of the Renaissance, although,to be accurate, as Michael Seidlmayer

has demonstrated convincingly, the clarion was heard a centuryearlierat the time of the Hohenstaufen — “the most creative and intellectually the most important of the Middle Ages ... one of the summits in the development of Europeanculture. It was then andnot at the time of the Renaissance that what Burkhardtcalled ‘the discovery of the world and man withinit’ really began.”* Oras Percy Byrsshe Shelley saw: “Dante wasthe first awakener of entranced Europe ... He was the congregator of those

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great spirits who presided over the resurrection of learning.”’ Certainly, ever since the mid-thirteenth century, minds had been slowly turning toward nature and the secular. Petrarch’s statement is the announcement of an awakening from the slumberof seeing everything aboutthe individual in termsofrelationships — to family, for example. The Renaissance version of the story of Romeo andJuliet — it is in origin of muchearlier vintage — is astriking instance of the conflict arising from the awareness of the new importance oftheself rather than that ofone’s family. Knowingone’s place, especiallyas toclass, hadlong beenthe hallmark of one’s identity — throughtraditional kinship associations rather thanthrough choice, emotion, and reason. Church and

state, for example, were primarybutfrequently conflicting obligations to which the self must be inescapably subordinated. Petrarch’s words are a prerequisite of being able to recognize individuals as ends in themselves. Ifwe had to await Kant and the closing decades of the eighteenth century before ethics were formulatedin these terms, that was howthe Renaissance was beginningto think. It culminatedat the time of the FrenchRevolution in the notionthatthe purpose of the state was to serve the individual, not the individual to serve the state, but the first rum-

blings were already underway. To recognize individual humansas ends in themselves is a prerequisite of recognizing individual animals as ends in themselves. It is only when we can look to ourselves and say “I” that we can look to animals and acknowledge their right to be perceived, if not necessarily conceive of themselves, as an “I” too. If the Renaissance andits aftermath witnessed among someadeplorable conception ofthe humanas the only truly worthy animal — as with the Cartesians, for example, who treated animals as automata— it also experienced a conflicting andgrowing compassionand respect among the large bodyof people who thoughtin non-Cartesian terms, who treated animalsas intelligent andsentient crea-

tures. But only very fewof these were persuaded that these attributes entitled the animals totheir unfetteredlives. Luicr CORNARO

Luigi Cornaro (1465-1566), an upper-echelon Venetian bybirth andbreeding, was not anethical vegetarian but a quasi-ascetic vegetarian, if he was

one at all.And he probablywas a vegetarian. To be sure, he was known to eat an occasional egg. But this was no hindranceto his apparentprinciples. In his time he was celebrated inall Europe through his writings for the

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Spartan regimen he pursued, persuading many he oughtto be imitated, although wehave no evidence of the number whodidso. He published several short treatises duringthe last fewyears ofhis life, celebrating his healthy longevity, which were translated, Howard Williamstells us: “into

all the civilized languages of Europe [and one of which] was once a most popular book. There are several English translations ofit, the best being

one that bears the date 1779.”* Joseph Addison commented favourably on

the “temperance” of Cornarosdiet in the pages of 7e Spectator in October 1711, notingthat “Nature delights in the most plain andsimple diet. Every animal, but man, keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food ofthis species, fish ofthat, andflesh of a third.”’ The term “simple diet,” or “natural food,” a

phrase employed by Cornaro, was a commonwaytorefer to ahumanreg-

imenoffleshless fare. However, Addison concludedhisarticle in The Spec-

tator, “| have not here considered temperanceas a moral virtue, but onlyas it is the meansofhealth.”° His promise to return to the ethical aspects of the issue, so far as | can discern from thearticles attributed to Addisonin The Spectator, was notkept. Noris there any evidence Addison pursuedthe recommendedcourse with any degree of rigour himself. The only time Addison appears to have broached anywhere near the topic again was in October 1712, when hediscussed the chain of being in an article on “Med-

itations on Animal Life” and acknowledged even the wormsas “my mother and mysister.”’ But there is no discussionof theethical appropriateness of a fleshless diet. Still, that Addison indicated clearly in the October 1711

issue of The Spectator that temperance was an appropriate mop for discussion suggests it was not alien to the public mind. Temperance, oneofthe four cardinal virtues, meant self-restraint and, as with the.temperance movementlater,would commonlyimplyabstinence. And heconsidered the matter a question of “moralvirtue.” Certainly, Addison’s comments and the continued English publicationofhis writings are areflectionofthe influence that Cornarocontinuedto wield centuries after his demise. Addison’s commentsare also areflection of the fact that ethical vegetarianism was notentirely alien to public consciousness. Cornarotells us, writing in the then commonthird person, switching to the self-referencedvocative, andthentothe first person: “he has nowa better relish for his dry bread than he hadformerlyfor the most exquisite dainties. Andall this thou hast effectedbyacting rationally, knowing that bread is, above all things, man’s proper food whenseasoned by agood appetite...

It is for this reason that dry bread has so muchrelish for me, and I know from experience, and can withtruth affirm, that I find suchsweetnessin it

that I should be afraid of sinning against temperance were it not for my

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being convinced ofthe absolute necessity of eating ofit, and that we cannot make use of a morenatural food.”* “Natural food,” it would appear, included neither the produce ofthe chase northat ofanimal domestication and butchery. Nor, we can imagine, did adiet of dry bread appeal to many whoenjoyed their food! Of particular interest about Cornarois his apparently vegetarian diet based on grounds other than the intendedholinessof the practitioner. To be sure, it is still the purification of the bodyhe seeks, but the difference between Cornaroandhisascetic predecessorsis that he is an apparentvegetarian on primarily secular grounds, seeminglythe first since theearly Christian centuries to be so. Andthis reflects the fundamental change of tenor of thought of the Renaissance from that of the Middle Ages. Ifit is appropriate to think of Machiavelli (14469-1527) as the first exemplar of modernity in political thought, on the groundsofhis rational and empirical methods, and it is common to do so, then Cornaro is the first of the

modernrational andsecularvegetarians, although not a vegetarian on ethical grounds. Still, as we can see from the intention of Addison, Cornaro’s

temperanceledtowardethical considerations.

Influenced by Cornaro and determined to imitate him wasthelearned Belgian LeonardLessius (1554-1623). Lessius extolled thevirtues of a temper-

ate, apparentlyfleshless, diet in Hygiasticon(1614), againentirelyfor reasons ofhealth. Joseph Ritson, an early-nineteenth-century writer on, andpracti-

tioner of, vegetarianism, unearthedanother “hygienist,” a certain Dr. W. Moffat(d. 1604), the title ofwhose book onthe topic of Healths Improvement

also places himin the Cornaro camp. Nonetheless, Moffat’s writingindicates it was nothealth alone that movedhim. Heasksznter ala whether:‘civil and

humaneyes[can] yet abidetheslaughter of an innocent‘beast,’ the cutting ofhis throat, the smashing himonthe head, the flaying ofhis skin, the quartering and dismembering ofhis limbs, the sprinklingof his blood, the rip-

ping up his veins, the enduring of ill-savours, the heaving of heavysighs, sobs, and groans, the passionate struggling andpantingfor life, which only hard-hearted butchers can endure to see.”’ There was clearly an ethical dimension 4 la Plutarch to Moffat’s regimen. Indeed, there was a significant distaste, revulsion even, at the injuries inflicted through butchery. As an

aside, it is worthy of note that Moffat frequently employed the word“meat”

to mean a great deal more than flesh alone, and the word “beast” placed in

quotation marksindicates boththat the term was becomingprimarily one of abuse and that somewereless than satisfied bythe prejudicial usage. Linguistic formsas well as animal ethics were changing. It was becoming less acceptable to malign the animals by seeminglypejorative expressions.

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LEONARDO DA VINCI

If Cornaro was the first of the modern vegetarians, having whollysecular

reasons forhis vegetarianism, and if Moffat was a manofat least aesthetic

disapprobation, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was the first since Porphyry to fuse animal ethics with principled vegetarianism, although a good dimensionofit existed in Moffat. Da Vinci was thus the first of the modern ethical vegetarians, basing his thoughts solelyin the ethical realm. This is not to deny his apparent religious devotion but to realize that the

grounds for his vegetarianism were entirely humanitarian. It is morality,

not the desire to placate perceived authority or the deity directly or to

respect health considerations, that impels his conclusions. From the perspective ofhis enlightened outlookon thearts and sciences, da Vinciis the

very epitome of the Renaissance “man.” Fromthe perspective ofhis ethical vegetarianism, he would have been quite at homeinthe early nineteenth century. We have no incontrovertible evidence that da Vinci was a vegetarian. He did not state that he was, and we evenfindevidence of the purchase offlesh in his accounts, althoughthat very probably was for staff, guests, andart

students. He also designed meat-roasting jacks and stoves, a reflection of his inventive interests.Moreover, according to Giorgio Vasari in 1550, da Vinci created stores of dead small animals as models for his art, but itis possible that, rather than killing them,he collected them shortly after their

natural deaths. It would appearthat da Vinci, stating verylittle of his own life and worldview, was regarded byothers as vegetarian. Thus, for example, Andrea Corsali wrote to his patron(also patron of da Vinci and brother of Pope Leo X), Giuliano de’ Medici, stating: “certain infidels called Guz-

zarati [Hindus of North West India] do not feed upon anything that contains blood, nor do they permit amongthem anyinjury be done to any living thing, like our Leonardo da Vinci’!® — an exemplaryuse of “blood”

as the apparent defining characteristic of an animalfor both contemporary Europeans and Indians. A biographer of da Vinci, Serge Bramly, states that he “dined offsalad, vegetables, cereals, mushroom and pasta; he seemsto

have been particularly fond of minestrone.”'' Da Vinci himselfasked of humanity: “Does not nature produce enoughsimple foodfor theeto satisfy thyself?”'? As with Luigi Cornaro, the simple food means nonanimal food. This could be read, as with Cornaro, as no more than vegetarianism

on health grounds, but his comments oncruelty to animals would emphat-

ically suggest otherwise. The closest he came to announcinghis ethical veg-

etarianism was whenhe implied that he would notlet his body become a

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“tombfor other animals, an innofthe dead... a container of corruption,”

andhe expressed great despair of humanity for doing so."

Writing in 1550 ofthe lives of several Renaissance artists, Giorgio Vasari

commented very favourably on da Vinci's concern for animals andclearly expected his readers to rejoice in this respect and consideration along with the writer. | ya Vinci, he remarks,

was so pleasing in conversation that he attracted to himselfthe hearts of men. Andalthoughhe possessed, one might say, nothing and workedlittle, he

always kept servantsandhorses, in whichlatter he took muchdelight, and par-

ticularlyinall the other animals which he managed withthe greatest love and patience; and this he showed whenoftenpassing by the places where birds were sold, for, taking them with his own hand outoftheir cages, and having

paid for them whatwas asked, helet themfly awayintotheair, restoring them to their lost liberty. For which reason nature was so pleased to favour him,that, wherever, he turned his thought, brain, and mind, he displayec 1 such divine powerinhis works, that, in giving [the animals] their perfection, no one was everhis peer in readiness, vivacity, excellence, beauty, and grace.'*

Da Vinci's notebooks are replete with condemnations of humanityfor its lack of wisdom in general andcruelty to animals in particular. A few representative examples will suffice toexpress the tenorofhis objections to humancruelty. For example, on bees, he wrote: “And manywill be robbed oftheir stores and their food, and will be cruelly submerged and drowned by folks devoid of reason O justice of God! Whydost thou not awake to behold thy creatures thus abused?”!? Writing of “sheep, cows, goats and the like,” he bemoaned that “from countless numbers will be taken awaytheir little children and the throats ofthese shall be cut, and theyshall be quartered most barbarously.”'® Indiscussing “asses that are beaten,” he exclaimed to Nature: “I see thy childrengiven up toslaveryto others, without anysort of advantage, andinstead of remuneration for the good theydo, theyare paid with the severest suffering, and spend their whole life in benefiting their oppressor.” !” Christian opinion,as expressed by the church and heavily influenced by Saint Thomas, andoccasional laic Christian opinion, as expressed by the compassionofa daVinci, have little in common. Da Vinciobservedthefoolishness anddepravity of humansseenintheir environmental degradation through shipbuilding and mining,in their cru-

elty to animals (containing even ahint of awareness of the gross immorality of habitat destruction), and in their often unwarrantedbelief in their own heavenly immortality:

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Animals will be seen upon the earth who will always be fighting with one another, with verygreat losses and frequent deaths on eachside. And there

will be no end totheir malice; by their strong limbs we shall see a great portion ofthe trees in the vast forestlaid low throughout the universe; and when theyare filled with their food, the satisfaction oftheir desires will be to deal

death, and grief and labour andfear and fright to everyliving thing; and from their immoderate pridetheywill desire to rise towards heaven, but the excessive weightoftheir limbs will keep them down. Nothing will remain on earth or under the earth or in the waters that will not be persecuted, dis-

turbed and spoiled, and those of one country moved to another. Andtheir bodies will become the tomb andthe meansoftransit ofall the living bodies

they have killed. O Earth! what delays thee to openandhurl themheadlong into the deep fissures of thy huge abyss and caverns, andno longerto display in the sight of heaven so savage and ruthless a monster?!®

The animal that da Vinci condemnsis of course the human animal.

Cornaro, Lessius, Moffat, and da Vinci were notthe sole vegetarians of

the era. Althoughrecords are scanty, we knowalso of Saint Philip Romolo

Neri (1519-1595), known as the “Apostle of Rome,” whoate but one meala

day consisting of “bread and waterto which a fewherbs were added.”!” His

wasundoubtedlyanascetic vegetarianism.And some monasteries werefull

ofat least part-time ascetic vegetarians. But we canfind aliterary hint of an ethical touch in Miguel de Cervantes's The Ingenious Gentleman: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605-1615). The book exhibits sensibilities to animals beyond those to the horse Rocinante, not least to Squire Sancho Panza’s ass. What is perhaps less commonlynoticed is that in Chapter 1 he pays due regard to the Golden Ageandits vegetarianlifestyle, although it is probablylittle more than arhetorical Hourish, and it ismost unlikely Cervantes was ever

persuaded to forgofiesh. Still, it is a signal portent ofthe role that the idea

of the Golden Age wasto play, as it had played centuries previously, in the developmentofvegetarian thought. ae

RENAISSANCE SENSIBILITY TO ANIMALS

If the Renaissance producedfewvegetarians, it produced an abundance of ideas that set animals on a higher plane than that to whichthey had sometimes been accustomed, evenhigher thantheyhad beenplaced in 1567by the denunciation and prohibitionofbullfighting by Pope Pius V,although the Spaniards at whomtheproscription was directed contrived to ignoreit.

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Inline with John ofSalisbury, the great Catholic humanist Erasmus condemned huntingand asked whatpleasure there could be in the slaughter of animals. The one-time chancellor to King Henry VIII andmartyred Catholic

saint SirThomas More (1478-1535) likewise castigated the habit of hunting,

telling us that “hunting is the lowest thing even butchers can do” and deploring the hunter’s pleasure derived “fromkilling and mutilating some poorlittle creature.”*° The inhabitants of his Utopia “kill no living animal in sacrifice, nor dothey think that Godhas delight in blood andsacrifice, Whohas givenlife to the animals to the intent they should live.”*! Nor does he approve ofthe transference ofarable land to grazing land. However, paradoxically, the Utopians continue to slaughter animals for food.

Such thinking takes us little further than thefiner sensibilities expressed in the lateMiddle Ages. With Montaigne, however, animal sensibilities are raised well beyond those conceived in the medieval mind, even though he

does not ultimately optfor vegetarianismin practice. Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne (1533-1592), heldthat there is “a

kind of respect anda general duty ofhumanitywhich tiethus... unto brute

beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees andplants ...unto menwe

owe justice, and to all othercreatures ... grace and benignity ... there is a

certain commerce and mutual obligation betweenthemand us.”*? Prima facie, this is little more than anexpression of Stoic philosophy, rejecting our owing justice to the animals. But ifit is Stoicism, it is Stoicism with some novel twists and one that recognizes ourobligations toward the animals. With the customaryobeisance of the animal advocate to Pythagoras, but also to Plutarch, Porphyry, Pliny, Democritus, even Plato, andothers of the classical period, Montaigne showeda particular concern to limit pain to animals. In his essay “Apology for Raymond Sebond,” Montaigne denounced human hubris and the manner in which humans distinguish themselves fromall other animals.He described the qualities and remarkable capacities he believed animals to possess in considerable superiorityto humans. He even quoted Lucretius approvinglyto ascribe a general equality between humans and animals. And he then concluded that “the very share of the favours of nature that we concedeto the animals, by our own

confessions, is very much totheir advantage.”*° Ifhe does not himself turn awayfromflesh foods — at least we have no evidence that he did — he understands the case fromoriginal nature for doing so:

Asforuse in eating, it iswith us as with them, natural and without instruction. Who doubts that achild arrived at the necessary strengthfor feeding himself, could find his own nourishment? The earth produces and offers to

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him enough for his needs withoutartificial labour, andif not for all seasons,

neither does she for the other races [i.e., species] ~ witness the provisions

whichwe observe the ants andotherscollecting for the sterile seasonsofthe

year. Those nations whom wehave lately discovered, so abundantlyfurnished with natural meat [1.e., nonflesh meats] and drink withoutlabour [i.e., without domestication and hunting], have just instructed usthat bread is not our sole food[i.e., there are other nonflesh foods than bread] andthat

without toil our mother Nature has furnishedus with every plant we need, to shewus, as it seems, howsuperiorsheis to all our artificiality; while the extravagance of our appetite outrunsall the inventions by which weseekto satisfyit.74

Clearly, he is promoting a vegetariandiet, although he acknowledges the

great difficulties the varying seasonsafford the vegetarian diet. Montaigne’s unspecified era of the Golden Age is not the Golden Age of Edenin the Genesis account nor the age ofprimordial Arcadian manintheforests; perhapsit is something more like what would have been familiar to the inhabitants of classical Greece. The characteristics he ascribes to the age wouldfit more comfortablywiththis option. Still,Montaigneappears tobethe first ofthe postclassicalliterary luminaries to have described a vegetarianstate of nature in principle preferable to that of carnivorous culture. Heis followedlater, as we shall see, by manyother nonpractising preachers.It is the first clear indication that somewhere lurking in the mind of manyvegetarian advocates is the supposition that a Heshless diet was once an achievable moral goal — indeed, areflection of the humanideal — butthat, because of

the path pursuedby humanvice over the centuries, the human—oratleast Western — constitution can no longer endure suchprivation. The increased awe toward the animal realm expressed in the later editions ofthe bestiaries was increased manyfold bythe science of the Renaissance, to which da Vinci himselfcontributed. It was an awe based on precise description of the animals, their movements, and the causes. But

there was also the mysticism ofthoselike Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and Jakob Boehme(1575-1624)» which V complicatedtheculture ofthe laterpart

of the high Renaissance. Bruno developed apantheistic conception of the worldin which the animals had a respectedplace, all parts ofthe worldsoul being animated by God. In Cause, Principle and Unity, he described“the universal intellect,” of which animals are a part, as “the innermost, most real, and essential faculty, and the mostefficacious part of the world soul. It is the one and the same thing, whichfills the whole, and directs nature in producingherspecies in the right way.”*’ If, for Bruno, animals do not

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participate in therationallife, they are nonetheless themselves the product of universal reason and are thus kin with all species. Jakob Boehme proclaimed: “And Adamknewthathe was within everycreature, and he gave to each its appropriate name.”*° Not only is there a kinship with other species, but a certain commonidentity amongallspecies is also being expressed. And the personal naming of the animals is seen to give them a greater respect than the merely cultural or scientific means of identification. [his kinship implied for Boehme —or so it wouldappear, everything in Boehme being opaque — a unity of the animals with the deity, a unity that shouldnot be broken for humanuse.Infact, via Pythagoras and Plutarch,

Boehmedeveloped a systemofinfluential ideas, known as Behmenism that resembled nineteenth-centurytheosophy, preaching radical nonviolence. In MeasureforMeasure,William Shakespeare (1564-1616) acknowledges the significant sentience of animals. In As You Like [t, he describes “melancholy Jacques” approvingly as a manofconsiderable animalsensibility. In the poem Venus and Adonis, he expresses great sympathyfor the hunted hare and acknowledges sentience even in the snail.Nonetheless, in Macbeth, the witches’ cauldron contains parts ofsnake, frog, bat, dog, blind-worm,

lizard, owlet, dragon, wolf, and shark — all creatures maligned bygeneral superstition. And theissue ofsaving animals from slaughteras food is never raised by Shakespeare. In Metempsycosis, John Donne (1572-1631) shows sympathyfor the life of the unfortunate fish, the preyofthe angler. Francis Quarles (1592-1644) shows sympathyfor foodanimals — “Howfull ofdeath is the life of momentary man.””” But he can go no further than recommending: “Take nopleasure in the death of a creature; if it be harmless or useless destroy it not; if useful, or harmful, destroy it mercifully.”Useas food is sufficient to ensure the animal's death, butat least the importance

of a merciful deathis recognized. Still, itwas by andlarge the nobility and their aides who had the opportunity to decimate the wild and the domesticated, which they took ingreat quantities. The severity ofthe antipoaching laws, in Britain in particular, sufficed to hinder most illegal hunting,

with all flesh of anysize reserved for the peers of the realm. A typical lunch for a relatively prosperous peasant might consist of bread, cheese, andale, with salted herring perhaps being added to the same menufor supper. Colin Spencer has observedthat, with remnants ofprevious flesh mealsstill in the cauldron, the pot being emptied perhaps onceayear, “all the cook-

ing of Christendom, from whatever region, was designed around the consumption ofanimals.””? In fact, only the wealthiest peasantry enjoyed more

than the scantiest portionofflesh, and then infrequently. If, for some, the cookingwas designed aroundflesh, for most, the flesh portion wasdecidedly

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meagre. Andfor more thana few, it was no more than a whiffoflingering

memory.

If, in general, the Renaissance seemed to augurwell for the increased

regardfor animals, the publications of Descartes seemed very muchto dim the prospects. Indeed, the general opinion has beenthat Descartes had an enormouslynegative impact on the treatmentof animals. In the next chapter we will investigate the influence of Cartesianism and the question of whether Cartesianism andthe inauguration of the era of unregulatedvivisection occurred independently.

CARTESIAN AUTOMATA

The prevalent but quite erroneous viewthat prior to modern times there wasno consideration for animals in the Westis still repeated in some of the most recent relevantliterature.Thus, for example, Gary Francione, writing in 2004, states: “Before the nineteenthcentury...Western culture didnot recognize that humans had anymoral obligations to animals because animals did not matter morallyatall.We could have moral obligations that concerned animals, but these obligations were really owed to other humans andnot to animals. Animals were regardedas things, as having a moralstatus no different from thatof inanimate beings.”! As we have seen, and will see again in this chapter, this view is without merit, but it is based on an episode in Europeanhistory that has commonly, if unwarrantedly, led to

sucha conclusion. Infamously, in the seventeenth century the Frenchrationalist philosopher René Descartes determined in The Discourse on Methodthatit is not merelythat “brutes have less reason than men, but that they have noneat all.” Moreover, “it is nature whichacts in themaccording to the disposition of their organs, just as a clock which is only composed ofwheels and weights, is able totell the hours and measure the time more correctly than we can do with all our wisdom.”? Animals lack reason because theylack sentience. They lacksentience because they are machines like watches. So Descartes was interpreted to have said. Speech andHexible response are, in Descartes’s view, exclusive to humanityand are prime indicators ofrationality. 158

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*

Thus we arrive at the idea of the insensible machine and at the animalwatch analogy: animals are not thinking, sentient beings but complex machines like clocks and watches. Descartes reinforced this viewin the

groundbreaking Meditations on the Foundations ofPhilosophy (1641) when

he observed: “looking from a windowand sayingI see men whopassin the street, I really do not see thembutinfer that what I see is men... yet what do I see from the windowbut hats and coats which maycover automatic machines? YetI judge these to be men... solely by the faculty ofjudgment whichrests in mymind, I comprehendthat whichI believed I saw with my eyes.” WhateverI perceive, he added: “I can... not perceive ...without a human mind.”’ For Descartes, possession of a Auman mind is a prerequisite of inference, perception, and judgment. Moreover,it is a prerequisite

ofethical consideration. There has developed a consensus among animal advocates that René Descartes and his conceptionof animals as automata hadanextraordinary influence on the European mind, one very muchto the lasting detriment of animals. However, a close inspection of the Europeanculture of theseventeenth andeighteenth centuries reveals a more nuancedpicture. In recent decades, there has been a resurgence in the traditional dispute over whether Descartes allowed for any animalsensation, John Cottingham

and A. Denny, for example, arguing the affirmative, whereas GarySteiner, for his part, holds to the negative.* But ifwe cannotbe entirely confident of Descartess view of animal sentience, or at least cannot be confident ofits

consistency in Descartes’s writings, we can be confident of his denigration of the animals and his objection to what he calls “the superstitions of Pythagoras,” although he was not above practising vegetarianism himself at times on health grounds.We cannot be confident the views ascribedto him

were entirely his, but we can be confidenthisself-proclaimed followers held the belief of animals as unfeeling automata completely — “possessing eyes in order not to see, ears in order not to hear, and so on.”° In France, Descartes was followed by Pierre Chanet, M. Des Fournelles (nomde plumeof Géraud de Corderoy), Antoine le Grand, andaboveall, Nicolas Malebranche, who proved very much more of a mechanist than

the master. His animal automata, he thought: “eat without pleasure, they cry withoutpain, they grow without knowingit, they desire nothing, they knownothing, andif they behave in a seeminglyintelligent manner, it is because God, having made them thusto preserve them, has so formedtheir 4

y

bodies that they avoid mechanically and fearlessly everything capable of

destroying them.”° guise, n chia bran Male in even hy, osop phil Although Cartesianrationalist

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wasin generalgreatly admired and highlyinfluential, it is remarkable how many expressed their convictionin the validityofits arguments exceptwith regard to what they saw as the preposterous notion of animals as bétes machines. For example, Marin Cureau de la Chambre, physician in ordinary to the king — and one who knew both humanandanimal anatomies from practical experience — argued in adamant oppositionin Trazté des Connoissance des Animaux(1646) that animals could reason and were in-

genious. On the grounds of animal capacities, he even questionedthe right of human dominionover them. The Catholic abbot Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), who, as we shallsee, argued the case in favour of vegetarianism, was appalled at what he sawas

Descartes's blindness where animals were concerned. In fact, long before Descartes had published his Meditations, which denieddefinitively that animals possessed the capacity for reason, Gassendi had announcedhis position in the preface to Exercises in the Form ofParadoxes in Refutationof the Aristotelians (1624): “I restore reasonto the animals; | findnodistinc-

tion between the understanding and the imagination,” which was adistinction the Peripatetics (Aristotelians) employed, one afirmedby Descartes, to indicate what they sawas a significant distinction between human and animal thinking. He went onto arguethatitis simply a prejudice to deny animals the faculty of reason, that animals reason in the same manneras humans, andthat“all knowledge” — whether humanor animal — “is in the

senses or is derived from them.”’ Thus, when the Meditations appeared Gassendi was preparedto dobattle. In the secondmeditation, Descartes observed, as we have seen, a grand distinction between the humanand the animalin the faculty ofjudgment. Only humanspossessed the capacity to draw rational but unverifiedinfer-

ences fromtheir experience. Thus, Descartes opined, as we have noted,if looking on a street from a window we sawonly moving hats and clothes,

we would correctly judge that they were wornbypersons. Adog, it was thought, would be quite incapable of performing such a feat. Gassendi wrote privately to Descartes, expressing what he called his “Doubts.” Descartes responded publicly, dismissing Gassendi’s reservations. In return, Gassendi wentinto print with what he nowtermed his “Rebuttals”: Youdenythat any dog has a mind and leave him wholly withan imagination (as the Peripatetics had done]; but the dog also perceives that a man orhis master, is hidden underthe clothes, and even underavariety ofdifferent

forms... Is it not true that if you thinkthe existence of a mentalityis evidenced byyourrealization that there is a man underneath when yousee

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nothing but his hat and clothes, andiflikewise a dog realizes that there ts a man underneath whenhesees nothing but his hat andhis clothes,is it not true, I say, that you shouldalso think that the existence of a mentalitylike yours is evidenced bythe dog?®

Gassendi notonlygranted rationality to the animals but determined on the basis of humanitys natural constitution that we had no right to eat them. He drew atleast quasi-ethical theories about vegetarianism fromhis rejection ofthe Cartesian notions of what it is to be human. Gassendi wrote tohis friend the renowned Belgian physician and natural philosopher Jan B aptista van Helmont, rejecting his conclusions on the carnivorous nature of humankind, claiming: I was contending that from the conformationof our teeth, we donot appear to be adapted by Nature in the use of a flesh diet, since all animals ... which Nature has formed to feed onflesh have their teeth long, conical, sharp, uneven, andintervals between them — of which kind lions, tigers, wolves,

dogs, cats, and others. But those who are madeto subsist only on herbs and fruits have their teeth short, blunt, close to one another, and distributedin even rows. Ofthis sort are horses, cows, deer, sheep, goats, and some others.

Andfurther, thar men have received from Nature teeth which are unlike

those of the first class, and resemble those ofthe second.It is therefore probable ... that Nature intended themto follow, in the selection of their food, not the carnivorous tribes, but those races of animals which are contented

with the simple productionsofthe earth ... As for flesh, true, indeed,it is that manis sustained on flesh. But how manythings, let me ask, does man do every day whichare contraryto, or beside, his nature? Canuse so noxious be called natural? Faculty is given by Nature, but it is our ownfault that we

make aperverse useofit.’

Gassendi added, “there is no ,pretense for saving that any right has been Gassendi added ying a n y t i g granted to us by[natural] law to kill any of those animals which are not destructive to the humanrace.”!° Gassendi’s argumentis the teleological

one that we oughtto act in the way that Nature has intendedfor us. That ethical implications are to be drawn fromthe “scientific” findings is clear from his use ofsuch words as “noxious,” “fault,” “right,” and “perverse.” None-

theless, strangely, Gassendi failed to followthe ethical implicationsofhis

ownargument. Heis one of those — we will meet several more in the next

chapter, and we already encountered Montaigne inthe last —- whowere persuaded by facts and arguments conducive to vegetarian conclusions but

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found it far more convenient to continue to dine on flesh. Strangerstillis x

that, in a manner, Descartes was on Gassendi’s side. He concurred with his

rationalist ally Sir Kenelm Digby that a vegetable diet would prolong humanlife and beganto practise that diet, albeit not without an occasional reversionto flesh. Of course, this did not change his views on the mechan-

ical nature of the animalcreation. Among those distraught at Descartess argument was the Cambridge PlatonistHenry More (1614-1687), Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.

Writing to Descartes in 1648 to praise his work in general but to abominate

his views on animals as automata, More complainedbitterlyofthe “inter-

necine and cutthroat idea you advance, which snatcheslife and sensibility away from the animals”: ;

33

But | beg you, most penetrating man, since it is necessary by this argument

of yours, either to deprive animals of their senses, or to give themtheir immortality, why should you rather set up inanimate machinerythan bodies motivated by immortal souls, even thoughthat may have beenthe less con-

sonant with natural phenomenaso far discovered? In this, indeed, most ancients judged and approved: take Pythagoras, Plato, and others. Certainly, the persistent ideais presented in all the works ofPlato, andhas givencourage to all the Platonists. Nevertheless, such a remarkable genius[as yourself| has

been reduced to these straits, that, if one does not concede immortalityto

the souls of brutes, thenall animals are of necessity inanimate machines. '!

Although both Gassendi and More tooktheside of the animals against

Descartes, Gassendi declaredin favour ofa fleshless diet and against animal

immortal souls, whereas Henry More took the opposite view — in favour of

immortal animal souls but against flesh denial. Such is the nature ofthe humanparadox! Bothtook the viewthat animals were sentient and rational creatures.

Other than probably Descartes, certainly Malebranche, the few Cartesians previously mentioned, the Jesuit Francois Garasse, Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, the seminarians of Port Royal, and perhaps a handful of Englishmen, Kenelm Digby being the most prominent, very few were fully persuadedofthe thesis that animals were truly insentient.A few managed to .

make Descartes a laughing stock on the issue. Thus in 1672 the famous authorofletters addressed to her daughter,Mme de Sévigné, wrote incredu-

lously of Descartes’s infamous “beast machines”: “Machines whichlove, machines whichchoose one fellow over another,machines which arejealous, machines whichare afraid! Surely, surely, you are making funofus;

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not even Descartes could have aspired to get us tobelieve that.”!* In Eng-

land, Lord Bolingbroke, noting Descartes’s analogy between an animaland

a watch, declaredthat the plain man wouldpersist in believing that there

was a difference between the town bull and the parish clock.'? Bernard Fontenelle delivered the deepest cut ofall: “You say that animals are both machines and watches, don’t you? But ifyou put one male dog machine in close proximity with a female dog machine, athird little machine maybe the consequence. In their place you may put two watchesinclose proximity with each other for the whole of their lifetime without their ever producing a third watch. Now, according to our philosophy,all those things

that have a capacity to render three out of two possess a greater nobility whichelevates them above the machine.”'* Despite this ribald opposition

to Descartes, reflectingaraising of the animalsintheirstature, fewtook the

viewwe should cease to eat the animals. Fontenelle declared the animals to “possess a greater nobility,” but this nobility did not save them fromhis dining table. It is perhaps the Cartesian clergyman John Norris of Pemberton(1657-

1711) who illuminates the issue of Cartesian influence best, indicating that

howeverpersuasive Cartesian arguments might have been to the contemporary mind, there is something in humanconscience and experience that makes the whole scheme withregard to animals dubious and dangerous.

Writing in 1701, Norris avers:

‘To conclude nowwith a word concerning the Treatmentof Beasts. Tho’it is my Opinion, orif you will, my Fancy, that Reason does most favour that side

which denies all thought andperception to brutes, andresolves those Movements of theirswhichseemto carry an appearanceofit (because Le those we exert by Thought) into MechanicalPrinciples, yeaafterall, lest in Resolution ofso abstract a Question our Reason shouldhappen to deceiveus, as‘tis easy to err in the Dark, Iamsofar fromincouraginganypractices of Cruelty, upon the Bodies ofthese Creatures, which the Lord of the Creation has (as to the

moderate andnecessaryuse of them) subjected our Power, that on the contrary I would have them used and treated with as much tenderness and pitiful regard, as if they hadall that Sense and Perception, which is commonly(tho’ I think without sufficient Reason) attributed to them. Which equitable Measure, that they [who] think theyreally have that Perception, ought in pursuance of their own Principle, so muchthe more Conscientiously to observe."

Norris's statement is significant for several reasons. First, it makes clear what we customarily doubt: that despite well over a half-century of

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Cartesianism, “Sense and Perception... is commonly... attributed to” animals. That is, the Cartesians had, on the whole, failed to convince. Second,

it indicates that the primary problem withthe idea of animals as automata was not merely a metaphysical one but was understood to lie in the fact that it provides an ethical justification for cruelty to animals, including invasive animal experimentation. Third,it suggests that intellectual speculations need to be tested against our ethical intuitions and, if counter to those intuitions, needto be thought through again. And Norris is trying to think them through again, for if they appear to convince his reason, they utterly fail to persuade his conscience. Finally, Norris's statement affirms

that even those who might have been persuadedofthe generalvalidity of

Cartesianism and who might have accepted the proposition that animals were for humanuse should deem it appropriate that animals should be treated with tenderness and compassion. The /ogically surprising consequence is that despite the “tenderness and pitiful regard,” few drewthe conclusionthat we shouldcease to eat the animals. If this was little more thanapart ofthe beginning ofa general compassiontoward animals, it was no more than an elementary beginning. Norris and almostall his fellows continuedtothinkthat eating animals was a part of “moderate and neces-

sary use. “Necessary” is importanthere, for it reflects that most continued

to believe, whatever our origins, that we had become carnivores byacquired nature. Anyother dietary regimen, it was thought, would be deleterious to human health andlongevity. If Digby and Descartes recognized the long-term benefits of a vegetarian diet, the vast majority, including most of Descartes own supporters, did not. The evidence seems incontrovertible that whereas Descartes, andto far lesser degree Malebranche, mayhave influenced the European mind onthe status of animals to some degree, the majority concurred that animals were sentient and at least somewhatrational creatureswho metthe standard for ethical consideration of their interests. However, custom and societal com-

munitarian reasons ensured thatthose ethical considerations did not extend to a profound respect for animals andcertainly did not customarily lead to vegetarian conclusions. ANIMALSAS [TOOLS

It ought to be a matter of some surprise that the vast amount ofanimal experimentationthat arose in the Renaissance brought about considerable opposition — indeed, although equally invasive and counter to animal

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interests, far more than wasdirected against the eating of animals. This

reflects that carnivorism was far more aningrained element of the human constitution than were the experiments, which were designed as much to

increase human knowledgeas to effect improvements to human medicine. It was not until the twentieth century that animal experimentationresulted

in significant improvements tohumanmedicine, and even thenthere were

manywho arguedthat the increased benefits could have been achievedjust as readily, perhaps more readily, than those derivedvia the detriment of animals. Longbefore the Cartesians, the Greek scientist Galen(c. 131-200), who

resided,chiefly inRomefrom aboutthe age ofthirty and wasimperial court physician to Marcus Aurelius, correlated extant medical knowledge with his owntheories derived fromdissections of animals, chiefly apes and pigs. He did not require a metaphysical distinction betweenirrational soul and immortal soul to justify his research to himself or to others. Power over the animals andlust for knowledge were quite sufficient. His frequently inaccurate — and sometimes guite erroneous — conclusions remainedreceived authority until the publication of De humanicorporis fabrica (The Structure of the Human Body)in 1543 bythe Flemish anatomist AndreasVesalius working at the University of Paduain Italy. Vesalius’s research was based on dissections of human corpsesrather than of animals, the latter having

sometimes led Galen widely astray. Not surprisingly, scientists were interested more in function than in structure, for which experimentation on living bodies was thoughtto be necessary. And it was naturally deemed impermissible to conduct such experiments on humans. Nosuchstrictures applied to animals. As a consequence, invasive research on animals became commonplacefrom the sixteenth century on. Throughhis research on animals, William Harvey demonstratedthe function of the heart and complete circulation ofthe blood in his 1628 Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (The Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals). This wasre-

ceivedas a great advance in knowledge andservedto legitimate live-animal experimentation. Harvey's work was publishedfully thirteen years before Descartes published his Meditationes de prima philosophia (Mediatations onthe Foundations of Philosophy, popularly known as the Meditations). The willingness to count animals as beneath earnest ethical consideration wasexpressed most directly not by Descartes, and not using his metaphys-

ical principles, but by the Oxford chemist Robert Boyle, who bemoaned in his 1686 A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Receivd Notion ofNature: “The veneration wherewith menare imbued for whattheycall nature has been a

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discouraging impedimentto the empire of menoverthe inferior creatures of God: for manyhave not only looked uponit, as an impossible thing to compass, but as something impious to attempt.” '

Seeing the stars through a telescope, Boyle was compelled to reject the idea that everything was created for human benefit, a truth accepted equally by Descartes.” Still, Boyle —- Descartes, too — continued to experiment on animals. For example, Boyle invented anair pumpthat he gratuitously tried out on animals to showthat they could notlive withoutair. Hechose, as later did Charles Darwin, with myriad scientists in between, to place the importance of knowledge over the pain and sufferingof animals. There are two relevant factors about the statement from. Robert Boyle. First, he acknowledges that there wassignificant oppositionto the dominanceover nature, which included invasive research on animals. Second, he indicates that empire over the animals was to be welcomed not because of some fine metaphysical distinctions in the Cartesian manner but because animals were inferior, and the use of animals without consideration for their interests would increase human knowledge. To be sure, Descartes had been conducting experiments on animals long before this, but it did not take the notionof animals as mechanicalbeingsto allowfor the continuationof animal experimentation, although no doubt Cartesian metaphysics gave some added rationalizedjustificationofthe practices that would have been undertaken anyway. By the time of Robert Boyle and René Descartes animal experimentation had become averitable parlour game — to prove, for example, that parrots woulddie if deprived of oxygen! Fortunately, there were loudand shrill voices raised in opposition to thesepractices, although, unfortunately, far morevociferously andbroadly thanethical arguments against the torturing andkilling of animals for food. Surely, the cruelty to food animals was noless than that perpetrated on those animals underthe scientific knife, and those people wholived, worked, and walked within earshot ofthe abattoirs could notfailtobefully aware of it. The diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1704) complained against the “petty experiments’ of the new amateur“physiologists,” who torturedanimals for the amusementof their guests. The essayist and editor Joseph Addison (1662-1719) wrote in The Spectator of a “barbarous experiment” involvingabitch and her pup.'* Thepoet Alexander Pope (1680-1744) protested against the experiments of surgeon Dr. Stephen Hale, commenting: “He commits most ofthese barbarities with the thought of being ofuse to man, but howdo we know we havearighttokill creatures that we are so little above as dogs for ourcuriosity, or for some use to us.”!? The printer and compiler George Nicholson reported on a mid-eighteenth-century

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case of experiments by a Dr. Browne Langrish (d. 1759). Having described the revolting experiments in gruesomedetail, Nicholsontells us how “these

privilegedtyrants sport away thelives andrevel in the agonies andtortures

ofthese creatures, whose sensationsare as delicate, and whose naturalright

to an unpainful enjoymentoflife is as great as that of man.”?? The Monthly Review for September 1770 referred to “numerous and cruel experiments’ and to the “most deliberate and unrelenting cruelty’ before concluding “surely there are moral relations between manandthefellow-creatures of the brute creation.”! The Monthly Review never made mentionof the “unrelenting cruelty” to farmanimals at the slaughterhouse or ofthe moral relations that ought to pertain to animal husbandry. It was not that food animals were of a lower order thanother animals, merely that it was seenas a necessity that we live fromtheir bodies. It was the master critic Dr.Samuel Johnson who administered the coup

degrace. Hereferredtovivisectors as “a race of men whohavepractised tortures withoutpity, andrelated them without shame,andare yet sufferedto erect their heads among humanbeings.”** Writing in 7/he Idlerfor 5 August 1758, he complained:

Amongthe inferiour professors of medical knowledge, is a race of wretches, whose lives are onlyvaried byvarieties of cruelty; whose favourite amusementis to nail dogs to tables and openthemalive; to try howlonglife may be continuedin various degrees of mutilation, or with the excision orlaceration of the vital parts; to examine whether burning ironsare felt more

acutely by the bone or tendon, andwhether the more lasting agonies are producedby poisonforcedinto the mouthorinjected into the veins... It is high time that universal resentment should arise against these horridoperations, whichhardenthe heart, extinguish those sensations which give man confi-

dence in man, andmakethephysician more deadly than the goutor stone.”

Despite these stirring words, Johnson was a renowned frequenter ofthe

London clubs, where he dined on succulent flesh. Indeed, he was famous

for his large fleshly appetite. Wasthis a double standard? Wasit a failure to conceive of the foodanimal's plight? Was carnivorism a matterso ingrained that the alternative seemed unthinkable? Or was there really an essential difference between abattoir butchery and surgical incision? The extant accountsoflife at the eighteenth-century slaughterhouse would suggest that the difference, if any, was quite minor. There was something aboutthe

human constitution, it was thought, that made flesh eating an essentially

humanactivity.

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The FrenchmanJean Antoine Gleizés (1773-1841) was intended for the medical profession, but in the 1790s his “intense horrorofthe vivisectional

experiments in the physiological torture dens,” Howard Williamstells us, “soon compelled him to abandonhis intended career.”** By the end of the

decade he hadadopted a vegetarian diet, although,like fellow vegetarian

Thomas Tryon,hefailed to persuade his wife to join himinthe abstinence from flesh. He wrote enthusiasticallyto call others to the path of his conviction, observing the lack of compassion, born of habit, among humans towardfellowcreatures: Thus men continue to accuse themselves of being unjust, violent, cruel and treacherous to one another, but theydo not accuse themselves ofcutting the throats of other animals and of feeding upon their mangled limbs, which

nevertheless, is the single cause of that injustice, of that violence, of that cruelty, and ofthat treachery...Men believe themselves to be just, provided theyfulfil, in regard to their fellows, the duties which have been prescribedto them. Butit is goodness whichis the justice ofman; andit is impossible, I repeat it, to be goodtowardsone’s fellow without being so towards otherexistences.” Ofthose we have mentioned, other than Nicholsonand Gleizés, none of

these abominators of the cruelties of animal experimentation extended their compassion to refraining from having animals killed for their food. This is surelya clear indication of the customary humanconvictionin the appropriateness of the flesh diet and the difficulty in overcomingthe prac-

tice with ethical argument alone. It wouldbe fair to say that almostall those who refused to dine onflesh for ethical reasons also opposed animal experimentation, whereas among those who opposed animal experimentation, onlya relatively small proportion were also committedvegetarians. Aswe have seen, Cartesianismwas notthe original inspirationfor animal experimentation, andthe experimenters enjoyed not anunassailed vic-

tory buta victorythat was contested by numerous opponents. The primary reason for animal experimentation was that there were no lawstorestrictor control it — there were fewlaws to preventorrestrict anything not ofa threatto the state, directly or indirectly - and there were more influential persons with greater interest in medicalandscientific knowledge thanthere were persons willing to pursue the moral course and deemthe painand suffering of animals a necessaryfactor in ethical discourse. Ethical vegetarianism faced an evengreater uphill battle because a mere intellectual victory

over the Cartesians would have beenevenless effective. The experimenters acted not from metaphysical and moral principles that ran counter to those

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oftheir adversaries — other than a belief in human superiority — butrather from a lack of them. In the absence of medical successes, they were prompted bysheerself-glorification, professional ambition, and parlour boredom — and the nhysicians hadtheir professionalstatus ontheir side. By contrast, the flesh eaters had an eveneasier task. They acted fromthe “lust of the belly,” as Saint Basil termedit, from primordial habit, convention, and societal togetherness, even more dificult opponents to conquer. Andtheyhad religion on their side in an era whenreligious pronouncements were treated with the utmostreverence by the majority. Andreligion looked askance at any dietary practice that might smack of heresy or unorthodoxy. The vegetarian argument wasfarless legitimate thanthat of abolition or control of animal experimentationin the culture ofthe times. If the newscientific age succeeded in providing a preliminary understanding ofthe orbits ofthe planets, of the general laws of mechanics, and of scientific method,it did not always proceed veryfar in our knowledgeof the animal realm. If we were beginningtoask theright questions, thevery essence of a successful scientificstrategy, we were still mired in myth where animals were concerned. To be sure, the later bestiaries were written with an increasing interest in animals for their own sakes, and this was furthered

in the Renaissance. But the first “scientific” treatises on animals left almost as muchtobe desiredas the bestiaries themselves. In Konrad Gesner’s Historia Animalium(in five volumes between 1551 and 1587) westill encounter

the satyr (a woodland spiritman-beast), and several of the animal imaginings from Physiologus’s second-century exemplarofthe bestiaryare repeated. Representations of these animals invented in the mythic mindhad not changed in fourteen hundred years. In Ulisse Aldrovandi’s fourteenvolume Natural History, beginning in 1599, a harpy — part bird, part woman — is duly described in detail. Edward Topsell’s History of FourFooted Beasts (1607) contains a sphynx, dragons, andbasilisks(reptiles that can kill a man with a lookbut are harmless to women), and in a 1655vol-

ume ofhis we findportraits of an Indian zebra and four kinds of unicorn. Atthe endof the seventeenth century the University of Leiden’s “Indian Cabinet Hall” of scientific curiosities proudly housed a winged cat, the hand of a mermaid, and acockatrice (a synonymfor the basilisk, a monster hatchedfrom a hen’s egg). This was indeed the age of science but far from

fully so. Science can provide understanding only whenits data correspond with reality, and much available material, even from the most reputable of sources, did not correspond withreality.And to the extent thatjustifiable sympathies are dependent on appropriate factual knowledge, and respect

emphatically so, misinformation is likely to distort that sympathy and

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respect.The impetus to animalrespect, and ultimately to vegetarianisn had poorprospects whenthe object requiring respect was so misrepresenred.

To be sure, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) — who commendedbut appears

not to have always practised vegetarianism — had madegreatstrides in putting the acquisition of knowledge onascientific foundation, but it was John Ray (1627-1705) and Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) who did most to systematize our understanding andprovide a contextin whichsensibilities towardanimals could be confidently expressed. Bythe veryclose ofthe seventeenth century, John Ray haddevelopedasystematicclassificationof the

animal and vegetablerealms, assisted byhis student FrancisWillughby and

manyclerical andlay associates.And Ray’s observations persuaded himof the justice of a vegetable diet, even thoughthe persuasion was apparently insufficient to alter his dietary habits. If the age of science spawned many amateur parlour physiologists, it stimulated an even greater numberto undertake investigations into natural history, which is not ofitself any guarantee of animal sensibilities but often a happy precursor nonetheless. By1737, Carolus Linnaeus had publishedhis groundbreaking Systemanaturae fundamenta botanica and Genera plantarum, creating ascientific tax-

onomyapplicable inthe first instance to plants but also to animals. Such taxonomy provided a sounder footing from which to viewthe animal realm, and someofthe benefits of more rigorous science were nowof benefit to the vegetarian cause. Thus, as Keith Thomashasstated, “Later seventeenth-centuryscientists like Walter Charleton, John Ray and John Walliswere much impressed bythe suggestion that human anatomy,particularlythe teeth andintestines, showed[as it had shown Pierre Gassendi earlier in the century, as we have seen] that man hadnotoriginally been intended to be carnivorous.”*° Eventhe diarist John Evelyn wrote ashort book, Acetaria: A Discourse ofSallets, to showthat humankind could live

quite agreeably ona vegetable diet and dispense withanimalflesh, again

without changing its cuisine. “Science” was,albeit haphazardly, providing a knowledgeofthe reality of animals — their organs, their sentience,their

structure — that would allow us to understand howanalogous, perhaps even homologous, theywere to us.

The reality was that Bacon’s age of scientific understanding proved a difficult age for many — although, of course, not all —to arrive atselfconvincing moral conclusions. To be sure, commonsense heldthat animals feel pain andsuffer and that they have a modicum ofreason, but the Renaisssance brought such new and surprising speculative knowledge in almost every sphere that confidence wanedin the customarycertainties. As

JohnLocke saw, amongothers, Cartesianism seemed to contradict common

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sense. But who could trust commonsense any more? The Renaissance and

its aftermath should not be understood as a time ofincreasingcertainty

but as a timeof troublesome quest. It was a time that invoked a questioning among astalwart few ofthe time-honouredflesh-eating traditions. Whereas those whodid raise questions did so predominantlyfromanascetic perspective, we increasinglyfind ethical considerations underlyingthe justifications offered. And ethical deliberations were aided by appropriate scientific — physiological, psychological, taxonomic — knowledge. Nonetheless, most retained the conviction that a fleshless diet was possible only in an ideal world. VEGETARIAN VARIETIES

Although vegetarians were scarce in the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries, they were not unknown,andtheywere increasingly common.First andforemost, they were ascetics who eschewedanimalflesh

in order to punish their own flesh. Andthey achieved some notoriety. For example, in the 1620s Thomas Bushell, an English Civil War royalist and Baconian disciple, was determined tofollowthe master’s vegetarian advocacy. Herestricted himselffor three years to a regimenof herbys, oil, mustard, honey, and water and ended his days on a meagerfleshless regimen.

The Ranter John Robins,a self-styled resurrected Adam—despiserofthe authoritarian Stuarts and Cromwell alike — enjoined his numerous midseventeenth-century Londondisciples to abstain from flesh andalcohol.

Judith Traske, wife of the Judaist leader John Traske, refused flesh for at least seven years while imprisonedduring thereign of Charles I.’7 “Inthe

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,” Keith Thomasinforms us,

“there were sectarians, influenced by the German mystic Boehme and by William Law’s Serious Call (1738) who, alongwith some Southcottians and Swedenborgians, followed a similar austere regimen of abstinence from

animal food.”*® At the sametime, a few religious fundamentalists adhered rigorously to the injunction of Genesis 9:4, refusing to eat any flesh with blood in it. And the pantheistic Gerard Winstanley, leader of the Diggers, the most radical wing of the parliamentarians during the English Civil War, showed a decided antipathyto all forms of violence, ostensibly including violence to our animalbrethren. So did a number ofthose who hadbeen sickened by the bloodshedtheyhad witnessed andinflicted in the conflict. There was undoubtedly an animal ethic amongthe moreradical of these parliamentarians. The radical Presbyterian Richard Overton's views

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on animal immortality and the significant humansimilarities withanimals, via the French armysurgeon Ambroise Paré, exemplifythat perspec-

tive.And as later became a commonplace amongradical (and even some moderate) animal advocates, both Diggers and Levellers were said to

believe that the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would be done by applied to animals. It was even engraved onthe vegetarian Leveller Roger Crab’s tombstone. Apart from the ascetics — and whether manyof the others wereatleast partly ascetics in different guise is opento question — there were those who opposed the killing of animals on almost any ground. In Manand the Natural World, Thomas mentions the opponent of animal ethics Thomas

Edwards, whoin 1646 discussed with disgust what he saw as the unfortunately prevalent doctrine that one must notkill any lawful creatures Clawful” meaning, presumably, those notinjurious to humankind); a certain Mr. Marshall of Hackney, preacher and former soldier, disciple of Giles Randall of the Family of Love, whobelievedit wrongto kill any of God's creatures; and Roger Crab, the Leveller mystic, who opposed all flesh consumption, primarily on the groundthatit encouraged humanlust —the “sinful lusts of the flesh,” as the Book ofCommonPrayer had warned about in a different context.*? As a sign of solidarity with the poor, Crab renounced flesh as anaspect ofsybaritic luxury. He went further. Eating meat, he believed, was the cause of almost all humanillness. Thomas

Edwards added more than a touch of animal sensibility in Gangraena, although expressing nothis ownviewsbut those of membersof the Family of Love whom he was condemning, in stating their apparent view that: “Godloves the creatures that creep on the groundas well as thebestsaints;

andthere is no difference between the flesh of a manand the flesh of a toad.”Theradical Ranter Jacob Bauthumleyadded a pantheistic Hourish, averring: “I see Godinall creatures, man andbeast, fish and fowl and every green thing from the highest cedartothe ivy onthewall; and that Godis the life and being of them all.”°! ‘Thomas Parr, of whomlegend hasit that he diedat 152 in 1635, was“of old Pythagorass opinion,” according to John

Taylor, theself-described “water poet,” although on what erounds weare not sure. His diet was “old cheese, milk , coarse bread, small beer and whey.”°? Thediarist John Evelyn said of him: “As soon as old Parr cameto change his simple homelydiet to that of the Court of Arundel House [to which he had been invited as a celebrated guest] he quickly sank and drooped away.”°° Ofthe seventeenth-century English vegetarians, byfar the mostsignificant in terms of the combination of animal ethics and the refusal to eat

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fiesh was Thomas Tryon (1634-1703),who was a convert from Anabaptism

~ which he had adopted at the age of nineteen — to the so-called Pythagorean diet at the age of twenty-three in 1657, inspired by the mystical writings of Jakob Boehme,althoughhe failed to convince his wife to

forgo flesh. Sometimes, probablyfor political reasons in the unfriendlyculture of the Restoration, he advisedhis readers merely to limit their flesh eating. At other times, he was far more forthright: “Refrainat all times from such Foods as cannot be procured without violence and oppression. For knowthatall the inferior Creatures when hurt do cry and sendforth their complaints to theirMaker or grand Fountain whencetheyproceeded. Be not insensible that every Creature dothbearthe Image ofthe great Creator according to the Nature of each, and that He is the Vital Powerinall things. Therefore let none take pleasure tooffer violence to thatlife, lest he awaken the fierce wrath and bring dangerto his ownsoul.”** Nor didhe resist condemning his fellow citizens their cruelties: “The inferior creatures groan under your cruelties. You hunt them for your pleasure and overwork them for your covetousness, and kill them for your gluttony, andset them to fight one anotheruntil they die, and countit a sport and a pleasure to behold them worryone another.”*? Humankind’s duty, he added, was: “as it bests tends to the helping, aiding and abetting beasts to the obtaining ofall the advantages their natures are by the great,

beautiful and always beneficent creator made capable of.”°° Tryon blames flesh consumption on customand culture rather than on

humannature, noting howavisitor from a non-flesh-eating nation would

be horrified at our markets and ourpractices on seeing: “the communication we have with deadbodies, and howblythe and merryweare at their funerals, and what honorable sepulchres we bury the dead carcasses of beasts in — nay, their very guts and entrails — would he notbefilled with astonishment and horror? Wouldhe not count us cruel monsters, and say we were brutified, and performedthe parts ofbeasts ofprey, to live thus on the spoils of our fellow creatures?”°’ Tryon was profoundly impressed by what he had read about Indian practices, largely inaccurate although they sometimeswere, and ruminated onthe kind ofworldthat couldbe createdif an Indian vegetarian andanimalethic could be imported into Europe. He seems to have had anespecial concern for the birds. Speaking for them, he asks: “Buttell us, Omen! We prayyoutotell us what injuries have we committedto forfeit? What laws have we broken, or what cause given

you, wherebyyoucan pretenda right to invade and violate our part, and natural rights, and to assault anddestroy us, as if we were the aggressors,

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and no better than thieves, robbers and murderers, fit to be extirpated out

ofcreation. Fromwhence did thouderive thy authorityforkilling thyinfe-

riors merely because theyare such,orfor destroying their natural rights and

privileges.”°* This was probablythe first time the newly coinedconcept ofnaturalrights had been applied to animals rather than to humansalone. Infact, ‘Tryon wouldhave beenloath to apply the concept to many humans. Heelevated the animals while denigrating humankind, “this proud and troublesome Thing, calledMan’ — proudand troublesomebecauseit hadthe unmitigated

gall toinflict its unnecessary greed on their innocent bodies. The vegetarian diet that should be the consequence was “WisdomBill ofFare.” Like many animal advocates, he did notrestrict his ethical concerns to animals. He enteredthelists on greater gender fairness, the atrocious treatment of slaves, the ill-treatment of the insane, the barbarities of criminal punishment, the need forreligious toleration, andthe horrors of war. He

influencedthe feminist, playwright, and purported spy Aphra Behn(16401689) with what she sawas his rustic eloquence. She acknowledgedher

indebtedness to Tryon and said she was persuadedto try his vegetable regimenfor a period.When|Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) became a vegetarian for a time in his youth,he attributed the decisionto reading Thomas

Tryon. Even after returning to flesh eating, Franklin said “he never went a fishing or Shooting,” and he continued to speak favourably about an abstemiousdiet.*’ Iryon was oneofthoserare figures: a man for whomthe elimination ofinjustice seemed to infuse his whole being,evenifinhis last

years he affected the role of wealthy landed gentleman. ‘Tryonis probablythe first in the anglophone worldto provide a predominantly ethical justification for vegetarianism, although he understood it had health benefits as well. He was probablyvegan, to boot. Andifpoliticalcircumstance after the Restoration (1660) convinced him to temperhis message, it was circumspection, not philosophy, that persuaded himto do so.

Onthe continent of Europe there was a man whohad a similar vegetarian influence as did Tryon in the English-speaking world: Antonio Celes-

tina Cocchi (1695-1758), Professor ofMedicine at the University ofPisa and

later Professor of Anatomyat the University of Florence. He wasthe cele-

brated author of Delvitto pitagorico per uso della medicina (1743). The book

was translated into English as On the Pythagorean Diet. The sympathies of both Voltaire and Rousseaufor a vegetarian regimen were based in significant part on the writings of Cocchi. However, the influence onthese

Franco-Swiss philosophes, if less than orthodoxphilosophes, comes as something of a surprise given that, in contrast with Tryon’, Cocchi’s argument

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is based inlarge part on the healthbenefits of a vegetable diet rather than on the protection of animals. He was, for example, the first to argue

that scurvy was occasioned by a lack of vegetables. He regarded “the Pythagoreandiet... as useful in medicineand, at the sametime,asfull of innocence, of temperance, andof health.”*° When Cocchiis writing to vindicate Pythagoras, the Samianis regarded as a great physician whose vegetable regimenarose “fromthe desire to improve health and the manners of men.”*! But although Cocchi clearly approves of the “innocence” andthe attempt to improve “the manners of men,” theyreceive relatively short shrift in his discussion. Almostall the attentionis on health. It would appear that the portrait of Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism,althoughstill basedlargely onthe imagination of Ovid, was subject to change according to the whim and convenience of the advocate. In Cocchi's case it was Pythagorasthe healer. Vegetarian advocacy was also a province ofthe highly influential Swedish scientist, prophet, and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). His mystical theology was both intricate and confusing but sufficiently inspiring to manythatafew years after his death a new church (most commonlycalled NewJerusalem Churchor simply New Church) was established with a number of branches, all devoted to the preaching ofhis doctrines. His theology, including the advocacy of a vegetarian diet, thereby acquired a limited but significant publicexpression. ‘And this vegetarian creed contained the rudiments of an animalethic,albeit an obscure one. Certainly, it was a great dealless explicit and direct thanthatofTryon. Thus, for example, Swedenborgstatedthat “the Divineis in each andevery thing of the created universe,”* which appears simple enoughinitself. It mayalso be said to possess ethical implications, even though the predominantreason for the eschewingofflesh was ascetic. The obscurity is exemplified not only in Swedenborg’s own wordselsewhere on occasionbutalso in the discussionofhis biographer,Martin Lamm: “evenat the time when

he was professing a philosophy... distinctly mechanistic ... we detect in Swedenborg’s minda leaven of mysticism... his Animal Kingdom attempts an empirical penetration, not merely of the essence ofthe soul andits intercourse withthe body, buteventhestate ofthe soul after physical death.”* Although “the Divine,” as we might expect, appliedin the first instance to

humans, Swed enborg observed that animals have their organs, limbs, and

viscera in commonwith humankindand that theyall have aspiritual nature. Infact, he remarked: “living creatures of the [animal] kingdom”are like humans“except in the matterof speech,”a facility on whichhe placed significant weight.“* Martin Lammadvises us “that the thoughts of the

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nonreasoning animals are no more than tremulations produced byexternal

sensations,although perhaps not much different from what Swedenborg

a

imagined much humanthought to be.*? The soul is a machine but not insensible, for it is a machina animata—aliving machine.“ It is an ideaperhaps no more enlightening than Malebranche’s insentient machines. Nonetheless, the emphasis on thesimilarities between man and beast encouraged an acknowledgment amongthebelievers that, although there were differences andthese to the benefof humankind, there were sufhcient similarities that we owedaresponsibilitytoall of God'screatures. Despite his recognition of a good measure of human continuities and similarities, Swedenborg’s primaryreason for advocatingabstentionfrom animal fleshis rather more scriptural and prehistorical than ethical, referring back to man’soriginal condition as worthyofrecapture, although the suggestionis clear that such a state was morallyas well as historicallypristine. Cruelty was not a perennial humancharacteristic but had arrived along with the changeof diet. Animal cruelty was thereby condemned: Eating the flesh ofanimals, consideredinitself, is somewhat profane; for in the most ancient times they neverate the flesh of anybeast or bird, but onlygrain

... especially bread made of wheat... the fruits of trees, vegetables, milk and

such things as are made fromthem,as butter, etc. To kill animals andeat their

flesh was unlawful [i.e., contrary to the law of God or natural law and hence

unjust], being regardedas something bestial. Theyonly tookfrom themuses andservices, as is evident from Genesis 1, 29-30. But in the course of time, when man becamecruel like wildbeasts, yea more cruel, first they began to kill animals and eat their flesh. And because man hadacquired such a nature, the

killing and eating ofanimals was permitted andis permitted at the present day.*”

Like most of his contemporaries, he took theidea of theGoldenAge inthe scripturesliterally, telling us “the earth was formerly like heaven, andthe agelike a celestialamusement’and mentioning explicitly‘the Golden Age of (humankind’s] primitivestate.”4* It was a paradiseto be recaptured.

Often associated with Boehmeandthe theosophists in mannerofspiritual thought, althoughwithless relevance to modernity, Swedenborg would be relegated to a mere footnote in vegetarian history wereit not forthe impactoftwoofhis followers, William Cowherd andJosephBrotherton: the one for his major influence on Christian and secular vegetariandevelopments in bothBritain andvia some ofhis disciples the UnitedStates, the otherfor his organizationalskills and his importantvoice in the founding of the Vegetarian Society in England.

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Like Swedenborg, the French physician Philippe Hecquet (1661-1737)

argued the warrant of Genesis 1 and “the Gardenof Eden”fora vegetarian regimen. Ratherlike Luigi Cornaro and unlike Swedenborg, he was con-

cerned withdiet largely from a health perspective alone. Mechanist in the Cartesian manner, and anascetic to boot, Hecquet lauded the health provided by a monastic diet compared with the sybaritic luxury of the urban gentry, and he ended his days housed among the Carmelites. Reviving, he believed,the temperance doctrines of ancient Hippocratic medicine, he claimed that flesh interfered with the digestion and circulation of the blood.He compiled alist of peoples from Brahmins to Tartars via numer-

ous Spanish andItalians who, he claimed, lived on noorlittle flesh yet

maintained their health and vigour. And he claimed that the fleshless diet was gaining substantial ground amongthe traditional flesh eaters. Even Hecquet’s opponents conceded the growing strength ofthe antiflesh movement. Fruits, grains, seeds, and nuts shouldreplace meat, Hecquet opined. It was so intended by Godandnature. Williams informs us that Hecquet contrasted man with those “animals whom Nature manifestly intended for carnage’ andconcludedthat “since men have neither fangs nor talons to tear flesh ... it is far frombeingthe food mostnatural to them.”” George Cheyne (1671-1743). a British physician who was a contempo-

rary of Hecquet and greatly admired by him, advocated a fleshless diet initially on the grounds ofhealth benefits, as Hecquet had done, butsoon saw that it was very much anethical issue as well. The grossly corpulent Dr. Cheyne had becomeso after debauching himself on a wide array of culinary novelties he had discovered onhis arrival in London from Scotland. Infact, he had been no abstainer during his days as a young man in Scotlandeither. His only recourse from a threatened early demise, he found, was a milk, bread, fruit, and vegetable diet. Helost somehalfofhis

total weight in short order and soonbegantoproselytize for the vegetable regimen. Like many advocates of the time ofthe ills of flesh, he also denouncedalcoholas a primarycontributor to the same maladies brought on by meat. Notsurprisingly, he became athorninthe flesh of the medical establishment, stimulating the formidable physician Dr. John Arbuthnot, friend of Alexander Pope and John Gayand himself no foe to the benef-

cial effects of a vegetable diet, to organize sentiment against the excesses of

Cheyne's sparse regimen. Indeed, a number in the periodclaimed theeffect of Cheyne’s regimen was to cause the steadypractitioner to waste away untodeath.

Cheyne addressed the ethicalissues directly in his Essay on Regimen of

1740, where hestated:

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The questionI design to treat of here is,whether animal or vegetable food was, in the original design of the Creator, intended for the food ofanimals, and particularly of thehuman race.And I am almost convinced it never was intended, but only permitted as a curse or punishment... At what time ani-

mal foodfirst came to manis notcertainly known. He was a bold man who madethe first experiment... To see the convulsions, agonies and torture of a poor fellow-creature, whomthey cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify luxury, andtickle callous andrank organs, must require a rockyheart, anda great deal ofcrueltyand ferocity. I cannot find anygreat difference, on the foot ofnatural reason and equityalone, betweenfeasting on humanflesh and feasting on brute animalflesh, except custom and example. I believe somerational creatures [i.e., humans] wouldsufferless in being

butchered than a strong Ox or red Deer; and in natural morality andjustice, the degree of pain here makes the essential difference.”

Cheyne’s animal sensibilities are here clearly profound and tothefore. But there are other things to notice about the passage, too. His claim that Godhadpermitted human carnivorousness as a punishment —one, he added, intended to shorten humanlives — was treated with derisionbyhis peers. In an otherwise favourable summaryof Cheyne’s life and accomplishments, the Dictionary ofNational Biography tookhimearnestlyto task on this point. Cheyne’s reference to the absence of compensationreflects the commoncontemporary assumption that, unlike humans, animals do not have the prospect of an immortal life and thus, again unlike humans, cannot be recompensedin the nextlife for the ills they suffer in this. It was not uncommontohear the argument —by Alexander Pope and Humphry Primatt, for example — that animals accordingly have an evenbetterclaim than humanstobetreated wellin this life. Cheyne’s concentration on the elimination of pain and suffering as the primary moral reason for the avoidance offlesh and onthe eradicationof cruelty to animals comes long before such was popular— afterMoses Maimonides, Montaigne, and William Hinde, to be sure, but well before Richard Dean, HumphryPrimatt, Jean-

Jacques Rousseau, and then Jeremy Bentham deemedpain and suffering the cornerstone ofanimalethics. In The Case ofthe Author, written just over a decade before the endofhis life,Cheyne describes the regimen he follows at present, which consists of “milk, with tea, coffee, bread and butter, mild cheese, salads, fruits andseeds

ofall kinds, with tender roots (as potatoes, turnips, carrots).” In short, he adds: “everything that has notlife.”°! Given the limits of general eighteenthcentury conceptions of“life,” Cheyne believed we had a responsibility to 2

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all the sentient animal realm. Moreover, he had considerablesuccess in per-

suading others of the necessity of pursuing his recommendedregimen. Amonghis notable converts, we find the Anglican priest and prophet of Methodism John Wesley (1703-1791), who told the Bishop of Londonin 1747 that since following Cheyne’s dietary advice, he had beenfree fromall bodily disorders, and the novelist Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), author of the sentimental Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) andClarissa Harlowe (1747-1748). In the pages of the novels, aspects of the diet are mentioned

andtreated as a wholesome ingredient of simplicity. Although he was a strict follower ofthe regimen during Cheyne’slifetime, it seemslikely that Richardsonreturned to a more varied diet after Cheyne’s death.

Notall the conversions of the age, however, were ultimate successes. A

numberofthe once-convinced soon managed to unconvince themselves. Por example, when hewasastudent at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Philip DormerStanhope, Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1791), was persuaded on moral grounds to eschewtheeating of flesh. In the pages of The World, Joseph Ritson reports Chesterfield as stating: “I remember whenI was a young manatthe university, being so muchaffected with that verypathetic [Le.,

full of feeling] speech which Ovid puts into the mouth of Pythagoras against the eating of theflesh ofanimals, that it was sometimebefore | could bring myself to our college mutton again, with someinward doubt whetherI was not making myself an accomplice to murder.””” “An accomplice to murder” again he soon was, rationalizing his newfoundflesh-eating convictions based onthenatural rights of the strongover the weak, somewhat reminiscent of Hugo Grotius’s seventeenth-century views on war, the rights of conquest having gainedlegitimacy over time by their very success. The views were reminiscent, too, ofwhat T.H. Huxley, referring to such “rights” of the strong over the weak, would later call “tiger rights.” Indeed, having renounced his renunciationofflesh, Lord Chesterheld renouncedalso

any adherenceto principles ofsensibility toward animals. Althoughtherights of the strong over the weak were rarely advanced as an argumentin favour of flesh eating, perhaps Chesterfield was merely more honest than most.Itis

quite probable that the idea underlay most thinkingofthe time: weeat the flesh of animals because we havethe powerto doso. atingfleshis E the prime symbol of our dominanceover other species. In fact, it was very difficultin

those days ofwell-stocked college larders to be an undergraduate vegetarian. Beefand pigeonpies, beef and mutton joints, and roasted duck were regular college fare. The customarytarts, apple pies, cakes, and plum puddings would not alone satisfy the students’ appetites. Chesterfield was no exception.

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Strangely, William Wordsworth, astudentat Saint John’s College from 1787, wrote reminiscently of his Cambridge days in The Prelude: I chaced notsteadily the manlydeer, But laid me downto anycasual Ofwild wood-honey; or, withtruant eyes Unruly, peeped aboutfor vagrantfruit.”

At least it is strange — for a moment wedare tobelieve we have found a

clandestine Pythagorean! — when we knowof his commonflesh consumption, yethe is not alluding to his diet but to his preferred booksofsensibil-

ity and to the sexual adventures of whichhe dreamed and which he sought.

Numbered,like Chesterfield, among the former vegetarians reverting to

the consumption offlesh are Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and James Boswell (1740-1795). Having been converted to a vegetable diet by the

words ofTryonat the age ofsixteen, Franklin cameto realize that fish ate fish and determinedcarnivorousness to be the eternal law ofnature. Inclination wonout over principle. James Boswell turned to the vegetable regi-

men in his earlymanhood with protestations of conviction that the diet would last. But he later confessed he had long fallen by the wayside. Nonetheless, both he and Dr. Samuel Johnson read Dr, Cheyne and found hisrecommendedfare a necessarydiversion for extended periods on medical grounds from their customary bourgeois feasts. Despite these occa-

sional reversals, vegetarianism made significantstrides, especially in medical circles, throughoutthe later eighteenth century. *

«

INCREASING ANIMAL SENSIBILITY

It was in the main not an awakeningto the lessons of Pythagoras, or India, or Turkey, or aboriginal myths andpractices that aroused animal sensibilities,howeveroftenanidealizedversion of them was used topaint the scene and explore the possibilities — as did, for example, Tryonofthe first version, Goldsmith ofthe second, Bacon of the third, and Montaigneofthe fourth. They were imaginative tropes to show us how the practices of our own culture were lack ing and couldbe transformed within our own changing values. Animalsensibilities were, as we have seen, encouraged bythe Renais-

sanceitself, the rebirth ofclassical inquiry and knowledge,the sensibilities commencing not as often thoughtinthe earlysixteenth centurybut having their first inklings around the midst ofthe fourteenth. This ts exemplifiedin

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the fourteenth century bythe aforementioned William Langland’s Piers the Ploughman, anallegorical,alliterative,unrhymed poem that acknow-

ledges a certain animal superiority and that was written long before the renowned “voyages of discovery” had begun. Being asked by Nature to gather wisdomfromall the wonders ofthe world, including the animalcreation, Langland investigates the birds, beasts, reptiles, and humanity, per-

ceiving “how surely Reason followedall the beasts, in their eating and drinking, and engenderingof their kinds ... And I beheld the birds inthe bushes building their nests, which no man withall their wits could ever

make.” He wonders at the breeding and secreting capacities of the birds, concluding, as we sawpreviously, “Reason ruled and cared for the beasts,

except only for man and his mate; for manya time they wandered ungoverned by Reason.”** In Chapter6 we met the fourteenth- or fifteenthcentury animalsensibilities expressed in Dives et Pauper in some detail. It was an extensionofthese sensibilities that wasrife in the ensuing ages. Langlandstands as a symbol ofthe newera, even thoughhelived andwroteat its very inception.

Central to the rebirth witnessed in the Renaissance, and seenin profusion in the following centuries, was the discovery of persons andanimalsas objects rather thansubjects, which resulted in their being seen notin rela-

tion to ourselves but as independentbeings with their ownattributes, their

own character, their own rights — as ends in themselves noless, although

this formulation would come a couple of centuries later. Shakespeare's Romeo andJuliet is a telling tale of the changing mores as exemplified in similar Renaissance tales of the loving pair. The Montagues and Capulets represent the dying past, where everythingexists in relation to the communal whole. By contrast, Romeo andJuliet are individuals with loyalty to their selves.Their loyalty to each other comes onlyafter their discovery oftheir individuality. Theyrepresent the Renaissance and the new mores of the succeeding eras. As Polonius says to Laertes in Hamlet, “This aboveall: to thine ownselfbe true, / And it mustfollow, as the night the day, / Thou

canst not thenbefalse to any man”(Act I, scene3, lines 78-80). Respect for the otheras a self, whether humanor animal, was predicated on one’s own self-recognition. Ofcourse, Langland and Dives et Pauper are onlyisolated expressions among the beginnings — animal sensibilities in embryo,if you will — but theyarose precisely from regarding other beings as objective entities, as independent beings who do notexist merely as a part of our community and an extension ofourselves.AsD.H. Lawrence sawso wellofa later period, but one suffused with the sameideals, the achievementofPaul Cézanne was one in which his “apples are a real attemptto let the apple

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exist in its own separate entity, without transfusing it with personal emotion. Cézanne’s great effort was, as it were, to shove the apple away from him, and toletitlive ofitself.”°° Novelists and poets, artists andscientists, all frequently acknowledge their need to distance themselves from the object of their attention both to depict it accurately and to appreciateit as it deserves. Unfortunately, along with the incipient sensibility toward animals, the new concern for knowledge for its own sake encouragedthe greatest misuse of animals. As always inWestern culture, at least from the time ofthe Renaissance, the two sides were in constant tension: cruelty and sensibility inseparably. In the century before the French Revolution there was a veritable cultural revolution in “sentiments, manners and moral opinions” — Edmund

Burke's words but a popular phrase of the period and one with application beyond Burke's intent. This was the centuryof Sensibility. The idea was of a revolution in attitudes pertaining to fellow humans, but it applied in lesser degree to the animal realm, too, culminating in the considerable increase in popular advocacyofthe vegetarian diet entirely on humanitarian grounds in the years following the Revolution. This advocacywas predicated on the general expansion in animalsensibilities — countered by the experimenting scientists and numerousclerics and their faithful flocks concerned lest the distinction between humans and animals be obscured. From the middle of the seventeenth century most learned voices were heard onthe side of the animals, although, as we have noted, this was con-

temporaneouswith the rapid increase in uncontrolled animal experimentation, a consequence of the increased desire to know things for their own

sakes; an interest that Thomas Hobbes describedin Leviathan (1651) as “a

lust ofthe mindthat bya perseverance ofdelight in the continual and indefatigable generation ofknowledge, exceeds the short vehemenceofanycarnal pleasure.”°° It was a lust and delight that countered the tenor of most expressions ofanimalsensibility. But it was in line with another compatible view, one expressed by Francois Fénelon, the theologian Archbishop of Cambrai, that because of the faculty of speech, humans were “more perfect” than other animals, with the implication that other animals were not worthy ofserious ethical consideration. Paradoxically, Fénelon added, “it happens equally often that | am more perfect whenI remainsilent than whenI talk” — a viewthat the animal advocates ofthe time would readily have endorsed.” In each nation the Fénelon viewexisted alongside the growingsensibility. We find this general tenor favourable to the animals expressedprimarily by the literary luminaries of the era but also by the Puritans during the

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Cromwellian Protectorate in England, who succeeded in prohibiting the publicdisplay of animalfighting until the Restoration. This sectariansensibility might best be exemplified in the words of William Hinde (15691629), curate of Bunbury in Cheshire: “I think it utterly unlawful [ie., unjust] for any mantotake pleasure in the painand torture ofanycreature, or delight himself in the tyranny which the creatures exercise, one over another [as in their carnivorousness|, or to make a recreation of their

brutish cruelty which they practise upon one another[as in cockhghting,

dog fighting, bearbaiting, etc.].°°° It was a commonenoughkindofutter-

ance. And “fellow-creatures” was a commonphrase ofthe Puritans that helpedraise the status ofanimals. Onthe otherside ofthe Atlantic, we find the recently immigrated fellow Puritan the Reverend William Ward writing the Body ofLiberties of the Massachusetts Bay Colonyin 1641, which was intended to protect domesticated animals from abuse onthe farm and during transportation.*’ Again, the ironyis apparent: It is important to provide a measure ofjustice to those creatures youare soontotreat withthe grossest injustice! Amongtheliterary fgures, we find Andrew Marvell (1622-1678) lament-

ing the deathof a fawn; John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), and Jonathan Swift (1677-1745) comparinganimals favourably to humans;the

diarists John Evelyn (4620-1706) and Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) denigrating

animal “sports”; and Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess ofNewcastle (16241674), speculating on potentially greater knowledge in animals than humans and deriding human hubris in imagining humanssuperior. She even questioned whether we hada right to animal flesh. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) stressed the interdependence ofall beings, HenryFielding (1707-1754) abominated cruelty to animals and called for stronger measures against the

perpetrators of animalcruelty, and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea

(1661-1720), John Gay(1685-1732), and JohnDyer(1700-1758)all regretted

in their poetry humanfailure to consider the interests of animals appropri-

ately. Christopher Smart (1722-1771) wrote with grace and charm inpraise

ofhis cat, asking that “God be merciful to all creatures in respect of pain.”°° Butit is the Scot James Thomson (1700-1748), William Cowper (17311800), and Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) who perhaps did mosttoraise

sensibilities toward animals, although the Englishman Daniel Defoe (16601724), the Scot Tobias Smollett (1712-1771), and the Irishman Henry Brooke (1703-1783) also had passing but significant comments against

cruelty to animals in their pages. We encounter, too, Richard Steele (16721724) writing in the pages of TheTatler in praise of kindness toward animals. In contrast with an exemplar of lack of consideration to animals, he

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states: “I am extremelypleased to see his younger brothercarry an universal benevolence toward every thing that has life.”®' A fewofthese authors also praised vegetarian practice but did not partake ofit. This was not an age of merelyliterary consideration for animals. The Cromwellian intriguer Richard Overton(fl. 1642-1649), the French philosopher Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), and the German philosopher Gottfried

Wilhelm Leibniz (1644-1716), along with Henry More (1614-1687) andthe

Cambridge Platonists as well as the parliamentarian Soame Jenyns (17041787), concurredin granting immortalsouls to animals. The Anglicanpriests Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752), Rev. Dr. John Hildrop (fl. 1742), Rev. Richard Dean (1727-1778), Rev. John Wesley (1703-1791), Rev. Capel Berrow(1715-1782), and the Swiss Protestant naturalist Charles Bonnet (1720-1793) were oflike mind. The Reverends James Granger (1723-1776) and HumphryPrimatt(c. 1735 to c. 1778) were adamantly in favourofpromoting human duties toward animals. In 1683 the Anglican dean of Winchester Richard Meggott preachedonthe similarity of humans with animals. Even on the questions ofreasoning, learning, and knowledge, which

humans thought their prerogative, the animals were not without their share, he opined. In America, the devout John Woolman (1720-1772) was

not only an advocate against slavery but also wrote with passion against cruelty to animals, andthe deist recluse William Wollastonasserted in The Religion ofNature Delineated (1724) that animals were better off under the

control ofmanbutthat they should be taken into accountin proportion to their various degrees of understanding. Amongthe philosophers, John Locke (1632-1704) usedthe great chain of being model to narrowthe distinctions between humans andother animals, whofromspecies to species “differ in almost insensible degrees.

And Locke argued that “children should fromthe beginning be bred upin an abhorrence ofkilling or tormenting anyliving creature.”® Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), condemned those whoshowed“unnatural and inhumandelight in beholding torments, and

in viewing distress calamity, blood, massacre anddestruction with a peculiar joy and pleasure.” For Shaftesbury, viewed my manyas the inaugurator of the cult of Sensibility, this principle applied to the gore “both ofour own or another species.”The Scottish utilitarian David Hume (1711-1776)

argued that humans and animals differed only in degree, not in kind —a formulation that was soon to become commonplace. His Treatise ofHuman Nature (1729-1740) contained chapters on “Of the Reason of Animals,” “Ofthe Pride ofAnimals,” and “Ofthe Love and Hatred ofAnimals.” “No truth appears to be more evident,” he observed, “than that beasts are *

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endowd with thought as well as men.”® His countryman AdamSmith (1723-1790), philosopher and economist,hadlittle to sayto elevate the animals. But he understood howunnecessary was flesh to the humandiet, although he was no vegetarian himself, a recognition held equally bythe great historian of the Decline and Fall ofthe Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon (1737-1794). Smith heldthat “the trade of a butcheris a brutal and odious business,” a view shared by many ofhis contemporaries, butchers beinggenerally disparaged for the vicious work they do. There was evena contemporary pervasive myth that butchers were debarred from jury work on accountofthe brutalityof their trade. Further, because fiesh was unnecessaryto health, Smith argued, for tax purposes meat should betreated as a luxuryitem. The Anglo-Irish parliamentarianandpolitical philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797) remarked approvingly that certain “animals inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affection toward their persons, we like to have them near us, andwe enterwillinglyinto a kindofrelation with them.” AndFrances Hutcheson (1694-1746) tells us that “brutes have a right that no useless pain or miseryshouldbeinflicted upon them.”®’ He added his voice to those of Thomas Young and WilliamPaleyin stating that the right to slaughter animals for food was “so opposed to our natural compassion that one cannot think anexpress grant ofit by revelation was super-

fluous.”°* Yet later he observed thatkilling animals for food was necessary and an appropriate humanright. He seems to have decided this was useful “pain or misery’ that was “inflicted upon them.” Commissionerof the Boardof Trade Soame Jenyns notedthat “Godhas cyC

iven many advantages to Brutes, which man cannotattain to withall his

¢

superiority ... we are not so high in the scale of existence as our ignorant ambition maydesire ... Is not the justice of God as much concernedto preserve the happiness of the meanest insect which he has called intobeing as the greatest manthateverlives.”® If a picture is worth a thousand words,

perhaps the engravings of Hogarth were moreeffective thanall the writings of the philosophers, essayists, parliamentarians, and poets. In the mideighteenth century, William Hogarth (1697-1764) published a series of didactic engravings entitled The Four Stages ofCruelty, in which crueltyto animals was depictedas the precursor to cruelty to humans, and although cruelty to humans was clearly in Hogarth’s mind far the more serious offence, the lessons on causality and animal cruelty were not lost on the educated public. Thenas nowthe vast majority of persons gave no thoughtto the ethics of flesh eating. This was so amongmanyeven of the most adamant animal

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advocates. This is exemplified by Henry Fielding, one ofthe first English novelists. He was not only profoundly sympathetic toill-treated animals — horses and asses in particular — but was alsoprobablythe first since the Protectorate days of the 1650s to recognize,as early as the 1740s, the need to

legislate against cruelty to animals. He thoughtofhimself as “having been sent into this world as a general blessing” with the intent “to redress all grievances whatsoever, andto defend andprotect the brute creation” — food animals excepted apparently.”” Through his son Tom, he was aware ofat least one “whoprofessed the Pythagorean principles” and saw some merit

in his views ontransmigration, but the idea of ceasing to eat animals never

seems to have entered his mind. Clearly, the time was ripe for a general respect for animals to growinto something more — a respect that would extend far enoughthat the millennia of custom wouldbe questioned and overcome.Itis astonishing thatall these expressions of animal sensibility had notalready resulted in a broad acceptance of the view that we had no right to slaughter for food. It did not. But times were changing. Atfirst, the recommendations to abandon flesh were made butnot followed even by manyof those who were making the recommendations. It was easier intellectually to reach the conclusion that eating flesh was unnatural or unjust than to overcomethe ingrained and convenient practice to which they had become inured. Those who advocated a vegetarian diet for health reasons stood onfar firmer ground. Their recommendations were of immediate self-interested benefit to those whoobtainedthe advice, and thus they were relatively easy to follow. The ethical vegetarian had to do the very opposite — persuade thelisteners to "

look outfor the interests of others, often at the expense of abandoning

their culinarydelights.

There is, as previously noted, something incongruous in the claimthat

one should respect andcare for the animals and theneat the objects ofthis respect and care. Yet that is precisely what happened — by those whose words we have metand probably admired overthe lastfew pages, for example, and even by those who pointed out the incongruence.We mustconclude there is something at work deep in the humanpsyche — notofitself at all a surprising proposition— thatlimits the capacityto act onthe determinations of the inquiring mind. But the incongruity existed not merely among those who advocated concern for animals and were silent on the issue of eating them but also among mostinthe eighteenth century who wrote eloquently against the eating offlesh while, apparently, downingtheir muttonchops simultaneously. Theprevailing belief among the animaladvocates seemsto have been that we should andcould live fromanexclusively

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vegetable diet in a different world but that humans, as they had become over the millennia since Eden, inhabited a fallen world where theyrequired a flesh diet in order to survive. Pythagoras and the vegetariansoftheclassical era, they readily imagined, lived close to the time of the prelapsarian paradise and shared something of the prelapsarian human constitution. Those attracted to vegetarianism onethical grounds had to believe the health vegetarians cheatedoccasionally; they could do so withoutanyfundamental harmto their principles.

It is a remarkable phenomenonof the history of vegetarianism that a number of prominent persons have concluded — in print no less — that “nature” or “justice” requires the eliminationof a flesh diet, have appeared to recommendthat diet, but have not themselves behaved “naturally” or “justly” in followingthe prescribed regimen — Montaigne, Mandeville, Thomson, Gay, Pope, Goldsmith, Voltaire, Rousseau, for example. Orat least, so it would appear. And it would appearthat at least some of them have not made muchoreven anythingofan attempt. There are others who

have determined that a vegetable diet is the appropriate ethical path, have

taken that path, and then at a later date have convinced themselves to the

contrary — Seneca, James Boswell, Philip Dormer Stanhope (Earl of Chesterfield), and Benjamin Fran Indeed, Voltaire declared himself “the innkeeper ofEurope.”!''® His hospitality —- which was frequent and generous, as we have seen — would very much diminishthe likelihood of his ownrejection offlesh, atleast if

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his diet occasioned no comment from the guests — or himself. One sentence in a letter from Voltaire to Rousseau in 1755 — whenthey remained, temporarily, on cordial terms, even though Voltaire was infact in the midst of condemning Rousseau’s latest work — gives one cause to reconsider momentarily however.'!” Neither was in good health. Thus, Voltaire wrote from Geneva: “You must comehere and restore your health in your native air... enjoy freedom,join me indrinking the milk ofour cows andnibbling our vegetables.”''® But the reconsideration is only momentary. If vegetables were astaple item, so was muchelse. It was a protestationofthe life of rustic simplicity they each extolled and eachignored. Oneis tempted by MaryShelley's somewhat exaggerated view of Voltaire as a cynic and of Rousseauas a hypocrite. Voltaire became famousforthe philosophyof tolerance. Was his practice one of tolerantself-indulgence for his own habits that did not meethis rigorous philosophical standards? “French levity dances on the tombs of the unfortunate,” he wrote about the cruelties of the parlementof Paris.'"” But he seems to have danced himself on the tombs of the permanently unfortunate animals. Surely, it is inconceivable that Voltaire practiseda fieshless regimen.If he had a passion for justice, and he did, in practice this justice did not extend beyond humanaffairs. As we can deduce from Voltaire’s superficially primitivistL’7ngénu, he is not a primitivistat all — fewhave everseriously thought he was. Rather, inall his works we cansee himas something of a melioristwho possessed, in the words of R.S. Ridgway in Voltaire and Sensibility, “that impulse towards altruism whichis the true mark of the manof feeling.”'”? Butit was not an altruism he was willing to extendto the animals when the price of that extension was a hindrance to his reputation as the grand manofletters welcomed and welcoming everywhere in society — whether in eighteenth-century France, Switzerland, Germany, or England.Inthe final analysis, we are left with no other conclusion than that on the issue ofthe fleshless diet, Voltaire, in the

mannerof Candide, chose tostep aside andcultivate his own garden. GEORGE Louis LECLERC, COMTE DE BUFFON

The authorof the famedforty-four-volume Histoire naturelle (1749-1804),

Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-1788) — Rousseau admired him aboveall otherliving Frenchwriters — discussed the groundsfor vegetarianismwith remarkable insight for the time butwastootiedto tradition

to advocate the practice:

“J

joo

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Manknowshowtouse, as a master, his power over animals. He has selected

those whose fleshflatters his taste.He has made domestic slaves of them. He has multiplied them more than Nature could have done. He has formed innumerable flocks, and bythe cares which he takes in propagating them he seems to have acquired the right of sacrificing them for himself. But he extends that right much beyond his needs. For, independently of those species which he has subjected, and of which he disposes at will, he makes war upon wild animals, upon birds and fishes. He does not even limit himself to those of the climate he inhabits. He seeks at a distance, even in the

remotest seas, new meats, and entire Nature seemsscarcelyto sufhice for his intemperance andthe inconsistentvariety ofhis appetite. Manalone consumesmore flesh thanall other animals put together. He is, then, the great destroyer, and he is so more by abuse than necessity. Instead of enjoying with moderation the resourcesoffered him, in place of dispensing them with equity, in place of repairing in proportion as he destroys, of renewing in proportionas he annihilates, the rich man makeshis boast andglory in consumingall his splendourin destroying in one day,at his table, more material than wouldbe necessary for the support of several families. He abuses equally other animals and his ownspecies, the rest of whomlive in famine, languish in misery, and workonly to satisfy the immoderate appetite and thestill more insatiable vanityof thishumanbeing who,destroying others by want, destroys himself byexcess. And yet Man might, like other animals, live uponvegetables. Flesh is not

a better nourishmentthan grains or bread... it is proved byfacts that [one] could well live upon bread, vegetables, and the grains of plants, since we knowentire nations and classes of men to whomreligion forbids to feed upon anything thathaslife.’*!

Yet, mirabile dictu, Buffonis not convinced bythe invincible strength of the conclusion of his ownargument, snidelytelling us the denialofflesh is “recommended by somephysicians too friendly to a reformed diet” and thus conceding the diet’s increased scientific popularity. Hetells us thatthe middle classlives longer than the poorandrustic — as though,eveniftrue, there were not myriad other reasons than the increased consumption of flesh to account for this eighteenth-century“fact”! And accordingly, he does not recommendthediet he has maintainedso well in argument, at

least ifhumankindis to avoid the infliction of abuse that Buffon acknowledges is nonecessity. It is difficult to imagine a moreblatantcase of rationalization. Indeed, incensed by Rousseau’s claims, he assuredhisreaders that humanbeings are not naturally herbivorous but need the nourishmentof

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pily, hap “un t tha ed oan bem ms lia Wil rd wa Ho , fon g Buf dinhav fonUpsee reato Buf onms flesh. e considered himself as holding a brief to defend his clients, the flesh eaters.”!?

ROUSSEAU

Because Percy Bysshe Shelley chose Rousseau, in “The Triumphof Life” (1822), as the man whorepresented the direction in which Europe was rushing, and because Shelley was both an adamant and vociferous vegetarian as well as a utopian perfectibilist who expected the newlyenlightened era rapidlyto right allwrongs, we maywell expectcitizen Rousseau, as he

loved to be called as a Genevese bybirth and breeding, to haverejectedall flesh. Indeed, he seemsto dosoin his writings, especially Emile. In fact, in

the poem, Shelley's thoughts do not dwell for a momenton the fleshless diet, and Rousseau'’s regimen is not at all a topic. Shelley's concluding words to the unfinished poemwere: “Fell, as I have fallen by the wayside.” But he was not thinking of Rousseaueating habits. If Shelley had not

drownedbefore the poem's completion, we mighthave learned more.Asit

is, we knownothingfromthe pen ofShelley as to whether Rousseau was commonlythought to have beena practising vegetarian. Perhaps it would still not have helped if the poem were complete. As Edward Duffy wrote, Shelley's “Triumph of Life” verses constitute “one of the most baffling pieces of romantic literature.” !*° If, as we shall see,] \ousseau ultimately failed to follow his own vegetarian advice, manyin succeeding generations who thought of themselves as Rousseauians were adamantfollowers of the creed, andat least a few died at the guillotine fortheir radical faith, althoughnotprincipallyfor the vegetarian aspect ofit that some of thempractised. To be fair to Rousseau, he never explicitly stated that he practised the vegetarian regimenhimself. Andit is possible to read Rousseau as afhrming thatthe altruistic part of our fundamental nature calls for abstinence from flesh, whereas theself-

preservationaspectallows for the killing of animals for sustenance.And we live byself-preservation! It was what he called “secondnature” that triumphed. Despite Shelley's silence,we have more pertinent information about the life ofRousseauthan about anyothereighteenth-century vegetarian advocate.And what we knowabout Rousseauseemsrepresentative of the type as a whole. In reply to Voltaire’s 1755 letter offering milk and vegetables (cited above), Rousseau wrote in conclusion, making no referenceto the vegetables, “I wouldrather drink the water of your fountain than the milk

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of your cows.” Whether Rousseauintendedto refer to anything other than frugality and simplicityis to be doubted. Andthe statement might be mere self-congratulatoryrhetoric, especially given that, despite his stated preference for water, he was knownto quaft a good bumperor twoofcountry wine andof some betterwine when finances or hospitality permitted. Perhaps the complete sincerity is also to be doubted, for he wished tobe regarded as the quintessentially simple man and, as Maurice Cranston points out, both Voltaire and Rousseau “mayhave written their letters with an eye to publication.”'*4 To be sure, in general,Rousseauconscientiously

pursued life of austerity, at least for public consumption— althoughthere are at least three portraits of him wearing fur trim, one by Gérard, one by Schellenberg, and one by Allan Ramsey. Nonetheless, as Cranston also

wrote: “In principle, Rousseau objected to the luxury and splendour of Holbach’s hospitality; in practice he enjoyed it.”'*? Nor was Holbachalone in offering luxury to Rousseau. Certainly, Helvétius was one of numerous

others. In fact, in the Paris period, “Rousseau alternated the frugality of a Bohemian existence in the rue de Grenelle with the luxuryofrich friends chateaux and Aételsparticuliers.”'*® With Rousseau,the frugal protestations ~ “it is by simplicity mandistinguishes himself” — do not always conform to a frugal wayoflife.'°7 In the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations ofInequality among Men (1754) and Emile (1762), Rousseau, the noble savage, or “honest savage” as

his friend Lord Keith usually called him, gives admirable indicationofhis respect and consideration for the animalrealm, butit is in Emile alone that he addresses the issue ofan appropriate dietary regimen.'*° There he advises: “Oneof the proofs that the taste for meat is not natural to manis the indifference which children exhibitfor that kind offood, andthe preference they all give to vegetable foods, suchas dairy products, pastry, fruits, etc. It is above all important not to denature this primitive taste and makechildren carnivorous. Ifthis is not for their health, it is for their character.” !?

It is notable here that Rousseau seems to employ an argumentsimilarto that of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant. That is, we ought todo good to animals in orderto be better humanbeings rather than for the sake of the animals themselves. That, however, would be to misread Rousseau and render him aninjustice. In Rousseau’s view, our character is improved when wedo whatis right, but our dutyis to the animals directly. In fact, he liked animals and kept pigeons, chickens, cats, and dogs as pets. A con-

temporary engraving by Monsiauxdepicts Rousseau boating with a dog (perhapshis pet, Sultan), and with rabbit companions, along with two women,

perhaps Thérése Levasseur and the wife ofhis friend Engel, whenhetried

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in 1765 to colonize with rabbits an island on Lake Bienne — nowcalled the Isle de Rousseau. He was disconsolate when his dog Turc died ofan accident in 1762, and hereceivedseveralletters of condolence that bore witness to the depthsofhis distress. Sultan accompanied Rousseautoexile in England, taking the arduous journey across Europe and the channel with him —no mean reflection of Rousseau’s attachmenttothe dog. “For, howeverone explains the experience,” continues Rousseauin Emile, “it is certain that great eaters of meat are in general more cruel and ferocious thanother men.”'*° Theerroneousbeliefthat diet itself affects the character — and hencethat oneis what one eats — has persisted overthe centuries andis still believed by many eschewers offlesh today. Like Voltaire, he must have thought ofhimselfas a flesh eater subject to the same ferocity and cruelty if he had meant what he said. Even when Rousseauis not writing aboutdiet, the vegetarian vocabulary being absent, much of what

he says implies vegetarianism. Thus, for example, in the Discourse on In-

equality, he writes: “as long as [one] does notresist the inner compulsion of

compassion, he will never do harmtoanother man,orevento anothersen-

tient being.” '3! What Rousseau has to say about dietary habit in Emileis more readilybelieved than whathe says aboutthe effectofflesh oncharacter: The farther we are removedfrom the state of nature, the more we lose our natural tastes; or rather habit gives us a second nature that we substitute for

the first to the extent that none of us knowsthis first nature any more.It follows from this that the mostnatural tastes ought also to be the simplest... Pruits, vegetables, herbs, and finally some meats [Rousseau does not mean flesh meats] grilled without seasoning and withoutsalt, constitutedthefeasts

of the first men ... Has anyone ever beenseen to have a disgust for water or bread? Thatis the trace left by nature; that is, therefore, also ourrule.'*”

“Trace left by nature” and“our rule” they maybe inprinciple. But we

have noevidence Rousseaulived for anyperiod of time by his own implied rules and agreat deal ofevidence that he did not. After all, although he

esteemedthestate of nature aboveall, he also insistedit was not possible to return to the state of nature. Perhaps not even to its traces. To be sure, he

tells us “the convulsions ofa dying animal will cause [Emile] an ineffable

distress.”'*? But he made it abundantlyclear the education he designedfor Emile, in which the boy could enjoythe natural sensibilities, was possible onlyin a republic.And in France, Rousseaudidnotlive in a republic. In Switzerland,he lived in a republic that had betrayed its republicanprinciples. Moreover, Rousseaudoes not seemto have beenentirely consistent in

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Emile, for one ofthe practical, mathematical tasks he sets the boyrequires him to want to fish in the moat from the window.In addition, the tutor instructs the lad in the benefits ofexercise to be had from hunting. The slaughter of animals is not the purpose.It is to distract Emile from the dangers of sex.'** But, surely, no authentic ethical vegetarian wouldever consider consensual sex a more perniciousactivity than the unnecessarykilling of sentient beings, even if the killing were not the primary purpose. Did Rousseaulive permanently in humanity's “second nature” while extolling the first in abstract principle? Whetherhe was with Louise de Warens at Les Charmettes in his youth, withthe bluestocking Mme. d’Epinayat the Hermitage, with the Comtesse d’Houdetot ~ “the first and onlylove of mywholelife,” albeit unrequited — with his long-time semiliterate companion Thérése Levasseur,

with whomhe wentthrough aform of marriage at Bourgoin in1767, with Mme.la Maréchale de Luxembourgat the Chateau de Montmorency, with

Mme. de Verdelin, with the Comtesse de Boufflers, as a fugitive for a short time at Yverdoninthe republic of Berne at the homeofthe banker Daniel Roguin, temporarily resident in asylum as the guest of David Hume,or renting Wootton Hall in Derbyshire from a Mr. Davenport,there is no indicationofanyfleshless diet.’* In fact, while he was first living atMétiers in Neuchatel, Rousseau dined as a paying guest with the Girardiers until the arrival of Thérése from France — apparently without requestingspecial fare. In Métiers, Thérése was said to have charmedvisitors “by her simplicity ofmannersas well as her skill as a French country cook” — aseemingly improbable complimentif she hadrestricted herself to eighteenth-century fleshless fare.!°° Indeed, amongthe items she was reported to have cooked

were gigot of mutton, trout, quail, and woodcock. As Cranston observes:

“Given Thérése’s skill in the kitchen and the poor reputationofthe fare at

the localinn,it is hardlysurprising that Rousseau always ate athome.” !” It

is difficult to believe that the mutton, fish, and game fowl were not intended for Rousseau. Did he resist “the inner compulsion of compassion’ he enjoined? The Abbé de Morellet wrote to Rousseau that he could readily appreciate why, in the case of la Maréchale, he “had made an exception” of “renouncing the worldandits splendours.”!°* In fact, there are many more occasions when Rousseau seems not to have resisted “the world and its splendours.” At restored Montlouis, he entertained } {me. Luxembourg’s husband, theMaréchal de Luxembourg,as well as the Duc de Villeroy, the Prince de Tingry, and manyother persons of rank. What do we imagine he served? We canperhaps hazard a guess fromthe so-called “simple” meal he 2

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served to the Hungariancount, Joseph Teleki de Szek, in 1761, whichincluded veal, rabbit, and paté. Are we to imagine Rousseau did not partake ofthe flesh himself? Noneofhis guests orhosts eversaidhe ate different fare than

they. Even if he did not partake, he would have beenguilty, vicariouslyat

least, of the conduct he deplores in Emile. Borrowing fromPlutarch, he

asks: “How could[a person] see a poor, defenceless animal bled, skinned, anddismembered? Howcould he endurethe sight of quivering flesh? How did the animal smell not make himsick to his stomach?”!*’ Apparently, it did not make Rousseausick. It has been said that, on at least one occasion,

Rousseau tolda fairy story while he andhis guests took turns rotating the meat onthe spit.'*° On another occasion, on a walking tour from Métiers with Frangois-Louis d’Eschernay in 1764, theyare reported to have taken with them“a picnic of patés, poultry, venison, and a good supplyofwine — loaded on the back of a mule.”'4! On James Boswell’s visit to Rousseauat Moétiers in the same year, a biographer ofJohnsonreports Boswell to have said that “our” dinner included beefand veal stew, pork, and trout.'** In 1758, Rousseau received a newyear's gift of four LeMans chickens — by contemporaryrepute the best — from his old friend Mme. de Créqui. We wouldhave expected her to have knownbetter thantopresentthegift if Rousseaualways declined flesh or was evenindifferent to the fare. Twoof the chickens he gave away, and two of themhe, or his household, ate. On

receiving a copyof Emile, the celebrated author Charles-Marie de la Condamine beseeched Rousseau to let him come to Montmorencyfora visit and bring a chickenfor the pot. Solittle did Condamine imagine the words of Emile were to be transformed into practice. Someone else — possibly Mme. de Verdelin — sent Rousseaua capon. The Prince de Conti twice sent

game, and the Maréchal — who knew himas well as did Mme. de Créqui — sent partridges. True, Rousseau did not appreciate the gifts, but that appearsto be because he abhorred the practice ofreceiving gifts, which he

thought deprived him ofhis independence, rather than because he disliked the gifts themselves. Humesaid he had afierce resistance to recetvingcharity.'Didhe consult onlythe “individual will” whenhis philosophy would have recommendedhe consult “the general will”? Does Rousseau provide himselfin 7he Social Contractwith a convenientexcuse for his flesh eating? There he wrote: “savage man”— of the Arcadiantype, we presume he means — “when hehas eaten, is at peace with the whole ofnature.”'“4 The acquisi-

tion of food, then, seems to escape the provisions of the peaceful laws of primitive nature. Rousseau wrote explicitly to condemn adulteryin Lettres vos i DY nod: a ee rarhalece (£ morales — us“illegitimate love” hecalledit — but he practised it nonetheless,if

less frequently than he desired.!” Did vegetarianismsimilarly belong to the

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categoryofthe impractical, republicanideal? Perhaps Rousseau’s practiceis captured in his commentaryin his edition of the Abbé de St. Pierre's Project for Perpetual Peace: “It is a sort of madness to be wise in a world of fools.”'*° Onone occasion Mme. d’Epinay made Rousseaua gift ofsalt —the high tax on, and henceprice of, salt was a major cause of the French Revolution. Was the purpose ofthe gift to cure flesh or preserve fish, as seemslikely? It is certainly a commodity Rousseau thought in Emile we shoulddo without ~as did“thefirst feasts ofmen” do “without seasonings andwithoutsalt.” He wrote a potential visitor to the Hermitage: “I shall have wine andrustic

foodstuffs, and if mypicnic does not suit you, you maybring your own.” '*” On anotheroccasion, he offered a different guest “a rustic meal.”!* Indeed,

he was knownas “the philosopher ofrusticity.”!4? On yet another date, a few years later, he wrote an invited guest to Petit Montlouis at Montmorency: “Ifit is necessary for me to agree to yourbringing your own dish of food, I doso with pleasure.”!°° Were the meals served to theHungarian count and to James Boswell a momentarylapse, an aberration? In atleast one instance, the dinnerhe servedhis guests movedstraight from soupto dessert, althoughwe are not told what was inthe soup.'?' Was this poverty or principle? Simplicity or probity? Was it vegetarian fare he offered or peasant saucisse as opposed to bourgeois cotelettes duly sauced andseasoned? This was the age of urban culinary sophistication, in whichjust a half-century later Viscount Chateaubriand’s chef invented “Chateaubriand” for the visit of the Duke of Wellington to the French Embassyin London, and Wellington’s chef replied with “Beef Wellington” for the return invitation to Apsley House. Probably, Rousseau was merely contrasting his own simple cuisine with the luxuries of the beau monde. Butif it was a fleshless meal Rousseau himselfate, did he consume vegetables at

his cottage andflesh in the confines ofthe luxurious homesofhis friends at whichhe so often dined?And without any comment being made? Clearly, we are left with far more questions than complete confidence in answers. But the balance of probabilities is veryclear. It is not just that Rousseau deviated occasionally fromafleshless diet, but that meatwashis regularfare. On composing La nouvelle Héloise, Rousseau remarked: “In my continual ecstasyI intoxicated myself with the most delicious feelings that ever enteredthe heart of man. Entirely forgetting the humanspecies, [ invented societies ofperfect beings, whose virtues wereascelestial as their beauty. 7152 Were the vegetarianvirtues celestial and Rousseau a mere mortal? He wrote at great length to Diderot, explaining the considerable difficulties he would have in accompanying Mme. d’Epinay to Geneva, including his evacuation ae

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problems, which would occasionfrequent breaks inthee journey, but without mentioning the difficulties of obtainingfleshless fare at the inns en route.With reference to thetheatre, Rousseau advises us: “In shedding our tears for fiction, wesatisfyall the duties ofhumanity without havingtogive up anything further ofourselves.”'*) Emile was fiction. Was the consumption of flesh oneof those things he wept over but did notfeel he had to renounce? The opening sentence of the author’s preface to La nouvelle Héloise contains the words “romancesare necessary to a corrupt people.”! In | \ousseau'’s view, he inhabited a corrupt monarchy where reblican

virtues were out of place. Mme. du Deffand said of the Comtesse de BoufHlers that she never allowed her principles to interfere with herpleasures. Could the same be said of Rousseau? It would appearso, at least on fairly regular occasion,for, although Rousseauwrote on benevolent educa-

tion for the young,he also consignedhisfive natural children with Thérése Levasseur to the Foundling Hospital in Paris for adoption. He was frequently brutally honest in his Confessions — “sometimes... describedas the first true biographyever written’ — even implying masturbation, although he also indicatedhis disapproval ofthe practice.!°’ He acknowledges having been aflesh eater in the Confessions, but the reader could be excused for thinking ofthese times asmomentarylapses fromthe customaryregimen. In writing to the physician Dr. Théodore Tronchin, Rousseau affirmed: “There is not a single man in the world whoin doing everythinghis heart prompted to him would not soon becomethe worst of scoundrels.”'°° Did the promptings of his heart meeta declination of the will? On the balance of probabilities, nay certainties, the answerhas to be decidedlyinthe afhrmative. In their commondenial of flesh fare, Rousseau and Voltaire seem

to have taken the opportunity to condemnthe crueldietary practices of a good part of the human race, at least of Western civilization, but to

have continued themselves to behave like the rest of humankind.'”’ Yet

Rousseau's ideas were commoncurrencyin the forming ofthe culture of

the French Revolution, where his speculative “would-it-were-so’s” encountered a formidablewill to act.Quietismwas defeated atthe barricades. In large part throughthe writings of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Rous-

seau sooncameto beseen as the vegetarian voice of France — indeed, of the

whole of mainland Europe — andvegetarians soon came to follow in what theysawas his footsteps, or at least his advocacy. Not only was Saint-Pierre himself a vegetarian advocate and apostle ofrustic simplicity, but, sofar as we cantell, unlike the master, he also practised what he preached,although

a skeptic might consider it probable that he was no more than a pescovegetarian who dinedonshellfish. It was certainly commonenoughin the

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earlier nineteenth century — largely with acknowledgments to Rousseau but often via Saint-Pierre — to deem the humaninnature and origina herb-

tvorous creature.

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE, RICHARD WAGNER, AND

ALFRED Lorp TENNYSON

In addition to those whofailedto live up to the dictates oftheir advocacy or even to try, there are also a fewfigures of some historical importance from a slightly later period whotried, in some manneror another,tofollowtheir convictions but whofailedin the attempt. Thus, for example, one of those influenced by Rousseau’s precepts was Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), briefly head of the provisional governmentafter the February Revolution of 1848 in France. In Les Confidences (1848) Lamartine de-

scribed his vegetarian predilections. Having explained the orientations of his early education from his mother, basedon the principles of Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, he added: It was in accord withthis system thatshe raised me.Myeducation wasa second-hand philosophical education corrected andsoftened by motherhood. In practice this education was derived substantially from Pythagoras and Emile. Accordingly, the greatest simplicity of dress and the most rigorous frugality of foodconstitutedits foundation. My mother was convinced, a conviction I share, that killing animals in order to feed ontheir flesh andbloodis one ofthe weaknesses of the humancondition;thatit is one of those curses inflicted on mankind,either byhisfall from grace, or bythe hardeningofthe heart throughhis ownperversity. She believed, a belief 1 share with her, that

the customof hardening the heart towards the most gentle animals, our companions, our helpers, here on earth, our brethren in workand evenin affection, that these sacrifices, bloodlusts, andthe sight of palpitating flesh, both brutalize the person and hardentheinstincts ofthe heart.

Especially in France, but not absent fromBritain, this idea of animals as humanhelpers was quite commonin the general culture, made famous after Les Confidences by Auguste Comte (1798-1857), often deemed the founderofsociology, in Theory ofthe Great Being and Theory ofthe Future ofMan (both 1854).'°8 It was a conceptionthatinfluenced John Stuart Mill. Lamartine continued: “She believed, and I believe it too, that |flesh|

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food, appearing more succulent and remedial, contains irritants and putre-

factions whichturned the food sour and shortenedman’s life-span. Asevidence in favour of abstinence from flesh, she wouldcite the numerous

peoples of India, who denied themselves everyliving being, andthe robust and healthy pastoral peoples, and even ourindustrious rural workers, who work more, live simpler and longer lives, and who eat meat perhaps ten times in theirlives.” MarianneStark noted that Lamartines observation appliedtoItaly, too. Writingin Lettersfrom Italy, between 1792 and 1798(1800), she stated that:

“The most remarkable quality in the Florentine Peasantis their industry, for, during the hottest weather, theytoil all day without sleep, and seldom retire early to rest: yet, notwithstanding this fatigue, they live almost entirely on bread, fruits, pulse, and the commonwine ofthe country.” !’ As instances ofrationalizations in favour of the side on which oneis arguing, and without any confirmatoryevidence for their statements,it is notable that Buffon deems the middle-class flesh eaters to live longerlives,

whereas Lamartine states that the peasants, who rarely eat flesh, outlive

their urban counterparts. Neither offers any evidence for his proposition but assumeshis authoritywill be sufficient to obviate any furtherinquiry. Lamartine continues his accountofhis childhood: She never allowed me to partake [of flesh] until I was thrownpele-mele into schoollife. To rid mydesireforit, if ever | had one, she did not reason with

me but employed that instinct that resonates withus better than logic.

[ had a lamb,a gift from a peasant from [the town of] Milly, which I had

taught to follow me everywhere, like a most loving andfaithful dog. We loved each other with that first passion which children and young animals naturally have for each other. One daythe cook said to my mother in my presence “Madame,the lambis fat; the butcher has cometoaskforit; should

I give it to him?” I cried out. I threw myself on the lamb. I demandedto knowwhat the butcher wanted with it; and what was a butcher. The cook replied that he was a man whokilled lambs, sheep, small calves, and lovely

cows for money. I couldnotbelieve it. | begged my mother. Andreadilygot mercyfor myfriend. Some days later,my mother, who was going into town, took me with her, and brought me,as if by accident, to the butcher's yard.| saw men with naked andbloody arms, who were slaughtering an ox; others

were cuttingthe throats ofcalves andsheep; yet others were carvingtheirstill palpitating limbs. Rivulets of blood steamed here andthere on the pavement. A profound compassion, mingled with horror, came over me, and| asked that we pass by quickly. The thought ofthose horrible and disgusting

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scenes, the obligatoryforetaste of one of the meat platters that I sawserved up at the table, caused meto loathe animal food and dread butchers. Despite the necessity of conforming to the customsofsociety, where [in mypolitical career] I could be found eating what everyoneelse eats, | retained a rational

repugnance for cooked flesh, and have always foundit difficult not to view the butcher’s trade as sharing somethinglike that of bureaucrats. | thus lived until I was twelve years of age on bread, dairy products, vegetables andfruit. Myhealth was noless robust, my growth noless rapid, and perhapsit wasas a result ofthis diet that | acquired those pure traits, that refined sensibility, and that quiet serenity of humourthat I have maintained tothis day. 160

It is perhaps surprising — but, based on experience, it should notsurprise us — that a manofsuchself-described “profound compassion, tinged with horror,” such “refined sensibility,” should find it so easy, or evenat all possible, to revert to flesh eating. If the emotions were truly as expressed by Lamartine, wouldnotflesh have nauseated himin precisely the same way 2

that the customary, unthinking, animal eater would be nauseated ifexpected

to engage in cannibalism? If Lamartinetruly felt as he says but returned to flesh for the remainderofhislife because of “the necessity of conformingto the customsofsociety,” then conventionis evenstronger than we have so

far depicted it in these pages. Otherwise, we must conclude that Lamartine’s

political career was offar greater importance to him than the maintenance of a moral systemin which he appears to have believedso passionately— at least until he was twelve years of age! It wouldappearthere can be, at the same time, both a natural compassionthat spurs one to deplore the eating of Hesh and a natural compulsion, born of our genetic impulses, to con-

tinue toeat it. There is no likelihoodthat Lamartine returned to a vegetarian diet whenhehadretired frompublic service. The German composer (Wilhelm) Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was one whosaw the moral necessity of vegetarianism but, despite his will, could not bring himself personally to abandon flesh.He was undoubtedly committed to improvementofthe animal’s lot. In Offener Brieftiber die Vivisektion (Open Letter on Vivisection), addressed to Herr Ernst von Weber, authorof Die Folterkammernder Wissenschaft (The Torture Chambers of Science), which letter was published in the Bayreuther Blatter in 1879, Wagner condemnedthe barbarity of animal experimentation. That we do not have the courage to abandonsuchatrocities, he claimed, was

“the curse ofourcivilization.” '©' He was noless committed inprinciple to overcomingthe habit of dining on flesh. Even fromanearly age, he was appalled bythe barbarity ofkilling food animals. When Wagnerwas a

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child, hewitnessed the slaughtering of an ox. “As the axe descended,”

writes Barry Millington in Wagner, “the boy would have rushed at the butcher hadhis friends not held himback. For some time after he refused all meat.”!® As an adult, he would discuss vegetarianism with his erudite

wife, Cosima. Having been convincedbyreading Gleizés that the impulses

of his youth were correct, “this teaching,” he wrote in Religion and Art (1880): (of the sinfulness of murdering andliving on ourfellow beings) was the

result of a deep metaphysical recognition of a truth; and if the Brahmanhas broughtusto the consciousness of the most manifold phenomenaoftheliving world, withit is awakened the consciousness that the sacrifice of one of our nearkin is, in a manner, the slaughter of one of ourselves: that the nonhuman animal is separated from man onlyby the degree ofits mental endowment,and, what is of more significance than mental endowment,that

it has the faculties of pleasure and pain, has the samedesire forlife as the most reason-endowedportion of mankind... Fromthe first, amidst the rage for predatory pursuits and for bloodshed, it has never been familiar to the consciousness ofthe true philosopher that the humanrace suffer fromthe disease which maintains them in a state of demoralisation.!©

In the words of Barry Millington, Wagner maintained in Religion and Art that the “earliest people on earth were graziers andtillers of soil; only later did theykill animals for food and, acquiring a bloodlust, turning to murdering eachother... Christ exhorted his followers to adopt vegetarianism, offering his own flesh andspilt blood. The primarycause ofthe decay of early Christianity was the failure of his followers to abstain from animal food.” Moreover, Wagner averred, it wouldbe possible to regain the lost

purity if we were to retrace these steps. Millington reported further Wagner’s statement that “a returnto natural food is the only basis ofa possible regeneration of mankind. Vegetarians and animal-lovers shouldjoin forces with the temperancesocieties and socialists to help bring this about... the mosteffective way of communicating these ideas is throughart, in particular the art of the tone-poet(i.e., music drama).”'

Yet Wagner himself failed to follow the path ofthe regeneration he thought necessary for humankind. The “deep metaphysical recognition” never advanced beyond the metaphysics. The widowofSiegfried Wagner, the composer's son, confirmed in 1972 the long attested fact that “Wagner wouldhave likedto have beenavegetarianfor ethical reasons, but his poor health prevented him from changing his diet. He suffered from a weak

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heart and eczemaoftheface.”'® Yet, whenhis health wasfar less of a concern, he failed equally tofollowthe regimenhe prescribedwithsachmoral fervour.

Although Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) is often referredto, usually

a touch unkindlyin intent,as the author of the memorable words “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” he wasalso a vice president of the National AntiVivisection Society. In his 1820 notebook—he waseleven years of age — he described himselfas letting wild animals out of traps to the fury ofthe gamekeepers. At homehe had a pet owl, commemoratedin verse, andat Cambridge University he kept a pet snake, and later a hedgehog. Toward the end ofhis life he kept a wolfhound, named Karenina, outofhis respect for the vegetarian Leo Tolstoy. As an undergraduate, before Charles Darwin embarkedon the Beagle, Tennyson subscribed to a Lamarckian theory of evolution. He brooded gloomily on evolution: “A monstrouseft was of old the Lord and Master’; now man“is first, but is he the last? is he not too

base?” !°° Hislast Lincolnshire poem, “OwdRoa” (1887), is about a dying dog that rescueda child fromafire. Like William Blake, he adopted Swedenborgianism, withits, often ignored, vegetarian principles. Yet he did not becomea lasting vegetarian(nor, it wouldappear, did William Blake,

even temporarily). Tennyson’s poem “To E. Fitzgerald” refers to his early attempt to becomea vegetarian: “Once for ten long weeksI tried, / Your table of Pythagoras.” Tennyson hadthe requisite animal sympathies but not the firmness of mind. Despite his deep admirationfor Shelley,he failed in his attempt to emulate him. Over a century earlier than Tennyson, Lord Byronappears to have reached the same conclusions in favourofvegetarianism, if more for vainglory thanfor the animals. As Marian Scholtmetjer wrotearight in Animal Victims in Modern Fiction: “Byron practised vegetarianism onlysporadically and largely out of vanity.”'©’ His conviction wasnotreally a moral convictionatall. What some ofthese accountsreflect is the considerable difficulty, but not impossibility, prior to the twentieth centuryof readily being served, or ofreadily obtaining year round, adequate vegetarianfare, especially if one was in public life or if one’s regular activities entailed public dining. They reflect also the degree to which a numberof individuals were first convinced of the ethical requirement to eschewflesh but managedto find arguments for the continued consumption, in the words of Lamartine, of

“whateveryoneelse eats.” As Gandhi wrote so appositely, although not

thinking ofhistorical vegetarianism: “nothing is more common than to

hear men warmly supporting a theory in the abstract without anyintention of submitting to it in practice.”'°* These words might standas the

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emblemof muchseventeenth- to nineteenth-centuryvegetarian advocacy. Thehistories indicate also the extent of rationalization.present amonga number of those who, in their more ethicalmomentsor their poetical

imagination, acknowledged the moral requirement ofa vegetariandiet but felt morestrongly the generallyperceived obligation, again in the wordsof Lamartine, of “conforming to the customsofsociety.” Butifethical vegetarianism’s successes were quite modest in practice,many membersofthe medical profession, enthusiasticallyif sporadically, continued to promote the vegetarian diet amongtheir patients for reasons ofhealth. Sometimes, for the literary figures — especially the poets — formand

finesse outweighed substance in their compositions. There was an Enlightenmenttradition of intellectual rhetoric in which the rhetoric far exceeded the material substance in importance.Whetherforpoet or not, the Golden Age often functioned as a convenientrhetorical device for proclaiming the moral necessity of a diet beyond the realm of reasonableness in the world as it had become. The perfect human created by God had become a haughtyand corrupt being, so it was said. Many thoughtthis corruption hadreceived the warrant, even blessing, of God —and ofsociety — andsoin corruption humankind must live. Over the millennia the human constitution had changed. The human was nowanirremediable carnivore.Itis perhaps aboveall thehumancapacityto rationalize self-interest that lies at the root of omnivorousness.

Knownas the “English Marcellus,” the fine Cambridgeclassical scholar from Trinity, authorofthe brilliant ProlusionesJuveniles (1793), Northum-

brian friend of William Wordsworth, andwinneroffour ofthe university's

literary prizes, John Tweddell (1769-1799) was“persuadedwehavenoother

right, thantheright ofthe strongest, to sacrifice to our monstrousappetites

the bodies of living things, of whose qualities and relations we are igno-

rant.” '® Engaged in archeological quests, he died suddenlyin Greece of a mysterious fever at the tender age ofthirty. If he had he lived, Tweddell

would probably have been a valuable ornamentin the vegetariancause. As it is, his remark could stand as a monumenttothe reality of humangreed fuelled everywhere by the Hobbesian lust for power. These words at the turn ofthe nineteenth century from this French Revolutionary sympathizer are representative of the change from the age of sentiment of the

eighteenth centuryto its successors age of implementation. Unfortunately,

in general, the recognition of the moral case for vegetarianism seems to

have preceded the perceived need to practiseit. It is certainly worthyof consideration howfortunate are contemporary vegetarians who can usually find something reasonably appealing in a

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regular grocerystore and, naturally, in a vegetarian or organic-food specialty store — and vegetarian food that will not damage, butwill enhance,

goodhealth. Moreover, mostrestaurants offer vegetarian, anda fewoffer vegan, alternatives — and, of course, there are numerousspecialty vegetarian or veganrestaurantsinthe largercities, at least in some countries. Veg-

etarians of prior centuries enjoyed noneofthat. Nordid those whoaffected to be vegetarian.

If there were several who were eloquentin their proselytization but way-

ward in putting the doctrine to the test, beginning in the 1790s, there began a movement, extremelyarticulate if very loose in organization —

other than perhaps a small French-British coterie of John Oswald andhis associates — that took its ethical dietary principles very seriously. It was they who made vegetarianism a viable moral cause and helpedto create the public consciousnessthatresultedin the formationofthe Vegetarian Society a half-centurylater, although the vegetarian influences of Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in mainland Europe inparticular shouldnot be neglected. Infact, the jump fromthe eighteenth to the nineteenth century was dramatic. It was not that ethical vegetarianism was

declared much more frequently in the last decade of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth centurythan before but that manyof those whoprofessedthe principle believed it applied to themselves directlyinthe here andnow. Increasingly, thosewho were convincedof the appropriateness ofthe vegetarian diet were persuaded that vegetarianism was the path to uncircumscribed justice. The eighteenth-century advocates were “Men of Feeling” —astandard termofthe century — whereas their successors were men (and women) of action. Of course, there are no convenient wellmarked dividinglines in history. Not all eighteenth-century advocates

failed to practise. Nor didall nineteenth-century advocates remainconsis-

tent in word and deed. Butconnectedwith1789 is the decisivemomentin

[3 ‘ded bs

whichthe balance tilts from thoughttoaction. The general questioning of authority unleashed bythe revolutionary

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forces in France was sometimes extended toissues beyond the immediate. AsPercy Byysshe Shelley rightly declared, the Revolution was “the master theme ofthe epochin whichwelive.”! It was the inauguration of democratic modernity. The apocalyptic expectation could be heard in Wordsworth's “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very Heaven! ...When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights.”? Or more prosaically, in William Cowper's lines about the Bastille: “There's not an Englishmans heart that wouldnotleap / To hear that ye were fall’nat last.” It was a time of which the eccentric yet tender Charles Lamb could write that it was “our occupation... to write treason.”* If the histrionicEdmund Burke could say, as he did, that England was “not tainted withthe French

malady,” he did not knowthe changing culture ofhis owncountry.° Wordsworth understood the times better when he recognized “shocks repeated day by day / Andfelt through every nook of townand field.”® Later, even Burke

acknowledged what he called “the Frenchifiedfaction” among his compatriots. If the Revolution was French, itwas not without numerousavidsupporters across the channel, at least in its early stages. And for some, the

object was to relieve animals as well as humans from tyranny. From subject to citizen was amomentousleap; being acitizen meant that one could do and not merely be done to. Theair was pregnant with

promise. A new, just, and vibrant order was thoughtto be in the making.

It was not merelya radical political innovation but also a jarringof the mind, nowfull of the most earnest imaginings. It was the practicalfruition of Enlightenment Sensibility. As happened again in the late 1960s, the questioning of traditional authority promoted the vegetarian bloodless agenda. Indeed,it was nocoincidence that principled, practisedvegetarianism arose at the very instance of the French conflagration. Noris it without significant relevance that, despite the Enlightenment Sensibility of the eighteenth century, the first wide-ranging attempts tolegislate against animal cruelty arose at the turn of the nineteenth. Ideas oflawas an instru-

mentof social policy were as yet scarcely known,andrelevant laws were very infrequently promulgated. Concomitantly, until now, there was no general recognition that the ways of the world were subject to change. Until now, the way things were socially was thought somehowirrevocably ordained. The poor, it had commonlybeensaid, will always be withus. The same was true of oppressedanimals. Ifthere was a continuityinBritish vegetarianism fromthe mid-seventeenth century, it had nowreachedits ethical and practical climax. Finally, fundamental change wasno longer a utopian dream but anachievable goal. The culture of deference met the renunciation ofprivilege. The Revolution, if

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itself a failure, having been corrupted after the purge of the Girondins by the gross excesses of Robespierre and theMontagnards, managed nonetheless to change the public conception ofunalterable providenceintorealizable potential.’ The revolutionaryconflict was rapidly becoming a contest between equally invidious alternatives, but the doctrines that the republicans espoused had a broader appeal. Vegetarianism, which in the hands of the revolutionaries was not merely a moral creedbutalso a resolute non serviam, could nowbe argued onits own grounds. The so-called Gagging

Acts of 1795(the Treasonable Practices Bill and the Seditious Meetings Bill)

tempered the clamourforradical reformin England. Butif the ardourwas dampened, it was certainlynot extinguished. The principal literary contributors to this culmination in British vegetarianismwere John Oswald, George

Nicholson, Joseph Ritson, William Lambe, John Frank Newton, Percy

tC

Bysshe Shelley, Sir Richard Phillips, Lewis Gompertz, and ThomasForster. They are entitled to a place of honourinthe annals of vegetarian history. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment was the age of exorbitantoptimism for the future and of skepticismof traditional religious and secular authority. Secular intellectuals imagined not onlythat rational men could

solve all the puzzles of the universe — as, indeed, most thought the new

breed ofscientists was already doing — butalso that the application of

rational principles would solve all social, political, and ethical problems.

There was, they thought, now nothing beyond human comprehension and, accordingly, nothing to hinder the humancapacitytosolve all the world’s previous andpresentills. James Gillrays famous government-sponsored cartoon of 1798 for George Canning’s Anti-Jacobin journal, lampooning the new intellectual class (including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Charles Lamb, William Wordsworth, Erasmus Darwin, JosephPriestley, and JohnThel-

wall — the last being the administration's principaltarget for his atheist radical republicanism), was entitled derisively the “NewMorality.” Andit was new,and exciting, and, above all, benevolent. It heralded anew,if implaus-

ible, kind of whollyaltruistic being. “The Jacobin school of poetry” was howthe Anti-Jacobin termed the new Romantics. A few, including Rous-

seau, Edmund Burke, andseveral Dissenters, demurred, although from

widely differing perspectives, but the prevalent view of the learned embraced the idea that this was the age of “perfectibility’ — Coleridge, for example, referring to his dreamof“trying the experiment of humanPer-

fectibility on the banks ofthe Susquehanna.”® However, as the Reign ofTerror increasingly dimmedthe expectations of a benevolent world-changing outcome ofthe Revolution, vegetarianism becameless an integral part ofa

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thoroughlyradical worldview. Nonetheless, it continued to appeal most readily to those who were sympathetic to the republican and democratic culture first presaged by the Revolution but whowere no longer confident ofits imminentvictory. Even the adamantsupporters of the “New Morality, especially Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, becamefar less sanguine aboutits promises, and manylater abandonedtheirearly radicalism. The most radical in each direction was Southey, who was already known while an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford, for his extreme republican views with strong French Jacobin sympathies and for prophesying

violent revolution in England and whowaslater regarded as an archreactionary byShelley and the like-minded. The matter waslittle different in Germany, where Hegel, Klopstock, and Goethe were among those who renounced theirearly adherence to the revolutionary cause.It is an unfortunate fact that no more than a few who espoused the “New Morality” became vegetarians but a notable fact that those who were persuadedintellectually were often alsopractitioners. Bythe closing decades ofthe eighteenth century there was an overwhelming increase in the interest in Nature, although most naturalists, amateurand professional,still failed to recognize thereality of suchevents as bird migration and although mermaids were often claimedto be sighted. Still, the idea of the unity oflife, as demonstrated by GiovanniBorelliin

De moto animalium (On the MovementofAnimals, 1680), namely that the same laws governed the wings ofbirds, the fins of fishes, and the legs of

insects, began to percolate. The notion that there was one templateforall of animated nature was an increasingly commonrecognition. Of course, a few continued to think that animals were intended for humanuse, but more of the educated now concurred with Henry More and John I aythat this beliefwas no more than a remnant of a bygone age — in Ray’s words, “wise men nowadays think otherwise.”’ But if most of the well-educated no longer imagined animals were for human use, they continued to use

them — and eat them — anyway. If the naturalists were interested more in understanding and collecting than in appreciating, the stage was set nonetheless for a vibrant movement to declare that the eating of animals was an infringement on the rights of animals andwas an activity incompatible with the nature of the properly conceived humanconstitution, as it was in the present, not merely in some

idyllic past or some phantomfuture. Moreover, such recognition implied a

practical refusal to eat the animals. Nor was the advocacyofthe abandonmentofflesheating restricted to a fewphysician dietary reformers andthe occasional animal advocate, for it reached out to some such as Robert

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Owen(1771-1858) — described as a “utopiansocialist” by Friedrich Engels — NewLanarkin Scotland and,later, initiator of the utopian experiment of

New Harmonyin Indiana. He advocated the adoptionofvegetarianism by the employees of his newvisionary co-operative industrial system. It was said that his workers treated Shelley's Queen Madastheir Bible, although,

presumably, more forits protosocialism than for the promotedvegetable diet alone. Owen foundindustry reformist sympathizers in the vegetarian Lewis Gompertz, secretary of the Society for the Prevention of Crueltyto

Animals (SPCA), and in William Thompson,the pioneering advocate of

co-operative socialism. In fact, manyvegetarian advocates atthis time saw vegetarianism and socialism as inextricably linked ideologically. Yet the spirit of reform wasin the air generally. Even the Anglican priestWilliam Paley, whomwe metearlier, was almost convinced of the case for vegetari-

anism.'° He stated initially that we have a “right to the fruits or vegetable produce of the earth” — for the “insensible parts of the creationare incapable ofinjury.” He then gave the next section ofhis Principles ofMoraland Political Philosophythe title “A right to the flesh of animals” and continued:

“This is a verydifferent right from the former. Some excuse seems necessary for the pain and loss which we occasion to brutes byconstraining them of theirliberty, mutilating their bodies, andat last putting an endto their lives, which we supposeto betheir all, for our pleasure or conveniency.’!! God'sdispensation was enoughfor Paley to ignore the logical conclusions ofhis analysis.He was adamant that “Wanton, and, whatis worse, studied crueltyto brutes,is certainly wrong.” Only hisGodcould convince him that the slaughteringof animals for food was not wantonandstudied cruelty. JOHN OSWALD

The first to enter the messianic fray on behalf of the animals was an Edinburgh Scot, one-time Grub Street journalist John Oswald (1760-1793),

later an armyofhcer who was sent to India, learned its culture and its mores, returnedto England, visited France, anddied acolonel in the French volunteer armyfighting the revolutionary cause onthe killing grounds of the Vendée campaignagainst the royalist sympathizers — althoughhis rank is disputed, the colonelcy being claimed by some, quite implausibly, to

belong to an American of the same surname.'* Tobe precise, he fell at Thouars in Poitou while leading his men in the bloodybattle for the strategically important Ponts-de-Cé. His two sons diedinbattle later in the

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revolutionary wars. He was an habitué of the Hotel d’Angleterre inParis, along with other engagé compatriots, and was represented inWordsworth’s dramatic tragedy 7he Borderers as “the finest young man inthe vale.”!° Before leaving the secondtime for France, Oswald wrote ashort book,

almost as muchnotesas text, titled The Cry ofNature, orAn Appeal to Mercy and toJustice on Behalfofthe PersecutedAnimats. \t was published in 1791 in

LondonbyJ. Johnsonof St. Paul’s Churchyard, the most distinguished liberal publisher of the time. To be published by Johnson was avalidation of Oswald’s radical credentials, earned in Parisian political intrigue. Thetitle

page bore withobvious authorialpride the information that the writer was a memberof the Jacobin Club. This membership reflected the author's fundamental discontent with the unreformed world —it was rumoured he

was involvedin a plot to assassinate George III —its politics, its societal

codes, and its ethics. He was in earnest expectation of an early revolutionary revision of the reigning order. Indeed, Oswald was an enthusiastic volunteer in both the French and the Rousseauian Revolutions. And helived in France at a time whenrejection offlesh was recognized as astatus symbol among someof the mostardent of the revolutionaries. Vegetarianism

wasalso popular in England — perhaps, as before, more in advocacythan steadypractice — duringthe years of the war with France but mainlyonthe groundsofhealth and economyrather than of humanitarianism. Oswald’s practical experience, rather than mere booklearning, of vegetarian Indiais evident throughout the book, althoughitis anidealization ofIndian vege-

tarian lore he presents. Nonetheless, what the lessons of India taught many, of whom Oswald was a prime exemplar, is that it was quite possible to renounce flesh andlive alife that was both healthy and innocent. Whereas manyprevious advocates thoughtofvegetarianism as the noble ideal, they alsomanaged to persuade themselves that it was a diet unacceptable to the

human constitutionas it had developedoverthe millennia. Nowthe vege-

tarian ethic could be adaptedto lessons fromcultural experiences within India, although manystill seemed to think the diet acceptable in thewarm Orient but alien — indeed, dangerous — in the Occidental clime.

The temper ofOswald’s book is summarized in the concluding paragraph: Maythe benevolent system spread to every corner of the globe; maywelearn to recognize andto respect in other animals the feelings whichvibrate in our-

selves;may we be led to perceive that those cruel repasts are not more injurious to the creatures whomwe devour than theyare hostile to our health, which delights in innocent simplicity, and destructive of our happiness, which iswoundedbyeveryact of violence, while it feeds as it were on the

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prospect ofwell being , and is raised to the highest summit of enjoyment by the sympathetic touchofsocialsatisfaction. 14

Perhapsthere is no other paragraphthat stands better as a symbolfor the incipient movementthan the following passage from Oswald, althoughthe book as a wholeis a call to engagement. Hetells us that: Promthe practice of slaughtering an innocent animal to the murder of man himself the steps are not very remote... from the texture of the very human heart arises the strongest argument in behalf of the persecuted creatures. Within us there exists a rooted repugnance to the shedding of blood, a repugnance whichyields only to custom, and which eventhe most inveterate custom can seldom entirely overcome. Hence the ungracious task of shedding the tide oflife, for the gluttonyof our table, has, in every country, been committed to the lowest class of men, and their professionis, in every country, an object of abhorrence.

Yet, paradoxically, he was an emphatic supporter of the armed introduction of the French Revolution to British soil. Bloodshed against fellow

humans in the honourable cause wasjustifiable, it would appear. Oswald

wouldprobably have faced difficulties with the British authorities once France and Britain were at warif he had survived. Infact, it was not always safe to be a vegetarian in those dark days. Publishers ofvegetarian texts and vegetarian advocates often found themselves in prison — Johnson was sentencedto six months in 1798 — althoughfar morefor the radical republican

views often associated with vegetarianism thanfor their espousalofethical vegetarianismitself. It is not only for the abstention from flesh that Oswald pleads but also for the abstentionfrom vivisection, an issue he considers veryclose to that of vegetarianism: Vainly planted in our breast, is this abhorrence of cruelty, this sympathetic affection for every animal? Or, to the purpose ofnature, do the feelings of the heart point more unerringly thanall the elaborate subtlety of a set of men, who, at the shrine of science, have sacrificed the dearest sentiments

of humanity???

For mostethical vegetarians, the two matters are intertwined: respectfor

animals requires both a refusal to eat them andarefusal to treat them as appropriate beings for invasive animal experimentation. Interestingly, the

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a9

nineteenth century spawnedthe first ever vegetarian society andalarge number of opponents, almost suscessful opponents, one might add, of vivisection. The latter group consisted first and foremost of dissenting Christians, aboveall Methodists. Very few of those who opposed vivisection withsuch fervour, as we saw with the Anglican Samuel Johnson, were

also vegetarians, even though the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley(1703-1791), was himselfa vegetarian. “Thanks be to God,” he wrote to the Bishop of Londonin 1747, “since the time I gave up flesh meals andwineI have been deliveredfrom all physicalills.” It is reflective of muchin Western culture that abstention from wine becameanintrinsic part of the Methodist nostrums, but nowhere has abstention from flesh

played a Methodist role.And although the abstention from flesh was on medical advice from Dr. George Cheyne, we should not imagineit entirely health- or asceticism-related. Wesley claimed that animals had immortal souls and that there were considerable similarities between human and nonhumananimals. He was concernedto alleviate their ills — “how severely do theysuffer,” he remarked ~ andultimatelytoallow them retributionfor the evils bestowed upon them byreplicating the Peaceable KingdomofIsaiah 11:6-9.'° It is logically strange that most of those who were appalled at the disgusting crueltyofvivisection did notfindthe slaughter of food animals equally repulsive. Even the redoubtable leader of the anti-vivisectionists, the Unitarian Frances Power Cobbe, was a confirmed Hesheater.

That thepractise ofvegetarianismwasno longerasrareas beforedoesnot, ofcourse, atall imply thata majority ofanimal advocates now refused to consume animal flesh. Infact, manystriking apparent inconsistencies continued as before. For example, the renownedanimal advocate and Oxfordclassicist Thomas Taylor (1758-18 35) ~ but not an academic on accountofhisrejection

of Christianity — was nota practising vegetarian. He wasthetranslator of Porphyry’sessay ontheeating offlesh andof muchotherGreekinto English as well as the authorofa witty, if unsuccessful, refutation of his formerten-

ant Mary Wollstonecratt’s The Rights of Woman, entitled A Vindicationofthe Rights ofBrutes. He has beenclaimedfor Pythagoreanism by Joscelyn Godwin in the foreword to The Pythagorean Sourcebook andLibrary.’ Perhaps more appropriate would be to describe Tayloras a neo-Platonist with aprofound empathy for, and understanding of, the pagan idealist tradition, including respect for animals —atradition that would include Pythagorasas commonlyconceived. Coleridgereferred to “Taylor, the English pagan,” as thoughthis were a fact commonlyunderstood."® Yet on reading the piety expressediin his The Life of Wiliam Cowper, written just two years beforehis death, one would be inclined to deem the paganisminrapidretreat.

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Are we to understand by Godwin’s claimthat Taylor was a vegetarian?

Taylorhadasignificant influence on Blake,Shelley, Byron,Wordsworth, and

Ralph Waldo Emerson, butnone of them claimed Taylor to eschewflesh. ‘To be sure, the translator of Porphyry and Iamblichus and commentator on Greek neo-Platonist vegetarians was often thought by his contemporaries to be a vegetarian and was of enduring importanceto the vegetarian cause throughhis translations. But Taylor declared himself tooactive to lead a vegetarianlife. Such a life was the ideal, he asserted, but was suitable

only for the sedentary. Fortunately, there were now manynoless active than Taylor — Oswald, for example — who decided that their actions must conform totheirprinciples.

To understandthe often incongruousrelationshipof the expression of

deeplyfelt sensibility to animals and the continuanceofeating their flesh,

it is importantto investigate where the linguistic expression seems to imply

vegetarianism when,in fact, it is not at all practised. This is especiallyrelevant in understanding Romanticism, in which the expressions are of the greatest sensibility. But whereas some were enticedby vegetarianism, most representatives of the “New Morality” continuedas before. Like Taylor, William Blake (1757-1827) was one who soundedas though he were a vegetarian. His poetryis full of wondrous phrases that we imagine only a vegetarian could have written. Like Oswald, he was sympathetic to the aims ofthe Revolution. And hebelieved, like Pythagoras apparently, in metempsychosis. He had, he said, once been Socrates and on another occasion mentioned “the books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life.”!? Blake did not, however, Mention any transmigrations into animals. He was a Swedenborgian

in religion, and Swedenborg advocated vegetarianism, but Blake was not a vegetarian. For Blake, Swedenborgianism was, as Peter Ackroyd indi-

cates, “a synthesis of occult andalchemical doctrine placed in the Christian context of redemption.” It is doubtful Blake wastruly interested in understanding Swedenborg doctrine. Rather, his concern was “to press Swedenborg’s beliefs into the frameworkof his own concerns.”

Equallystrangeis the case ofArthur Schopenhauer(1788-1860), who had,

in wordatleast, the greatest fellow-feeling with other species: “Boundless compassionforall living beings is the finest and surest guarantee of pure moral conduct.”?! Andhe was recognizedas the “chief interpreter of Buddhist ideas in Europe.””? Yet he continued to consume animalflesh. “Boundless compassion,” indeed! Of no one could it be said more appropriately, Lo FY

with perhaps the exception of Oliver Goldsmith himself, in the words of

Goldsmith: “Theypity, and theyeat the objects of their compassion.”Still, .

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it might be said that there was some kindof general movementin theair against flesh in the early nineteenth century. For example, in Chapter 3 of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life ofCharlotte Bronté (1857), we are toldthat,earlierin the century, the father, Patrick Bronté, raised his children on a fleshless diet, serving themonlypotatoes for dinner. The intent, accordingto Gaskell, was to raise themto simplicity and hardiness. The passage from Gaskell has persuaded manyvegetarians that Charlotte Bronté was one oftheir number. Infact, even as children, the Bronté siblings ate flesh, both according to the father andto their friends. Moreover, the diaries of the Bronté childrenrefer to their meals andtheir menus, all ofwhich contain

a flesh component. But nowthe tables were turned. Now those whosounded as thoughtheywere vegetarian usually were vegetarian, despite the notable exceptions, in contrast with much of the eighteenth century, when those whopraisedthe vegetarian ethic were most often not vegetarians themselves. Nonetheless, there were many who were vegetarian, or almost vegetarian, by default, at least temporarily, and not just among the exceedingly poor. Thus Dorothy Wordsworth in 1794, writing to her Crackanthorpe kin, stated: “My supper andbreakfast are of bread and milk, and mydinner chiefly of potatoes from choice.””’ Again, at a coaching innin|Brunswickin 1798, she was delighted to be served potatoes for her meal. But she

did not decline flesh when it was readily available. Nor did her brother William. The “plain living and high thinking” that Wordsworthidealized

did not include the rejectionofflesh on moralprinciple. Still, whenliving

at Racedown,Dorset, in the winter of 1797, they survived, Williamsaid, on “the essence of carrots, cabbage, turnips andother esculent vegetables not

excluding parsley, the produce of mygarden,” adding “and in to cabbages

we shall be transformed.”** By contrast, Coleridge complainedof the lack

ofvegetables served at his Christ’s Hospital school — but then there was no fiesh either!”? The West Countrypoorall around them whentheywere at Racedownwere even less well off. Certainly, they were customarilyvegetarian but notfrom anydesire. The rural indigent population could not

course the hares and eat the prey as did Dorothy and William onoccasion

at Racedown as guests of the Pinneybrothers, their landlords. When

Coleridge walked the hills anddales of Scotland, he survivedontea, porridge, ale, and oatcakes, but his everyday meals were otherwise. He enjoyed “beef and pudding” as the commonfare of the Coleridge home at Ottery St.Maryand “meat and potatopie” at Nether Stowey. Onthe Harz Brocken in Germanyit was baconwithschnapps in milk. The first meal Coleridge

shared with the Napoleon-worshipping republicanjournalistWilliam Hazlitt was ©Welsh Muttonandturnips.”*° He treatedleather with a compound of

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‘Mutton suet, Hog’s Lard and Venetian Turpentine.””” The Scotland tramp-

ing regimen was anexception. To be sure, the Wordsworth household was more often withoutflesh, but as among the impoverished masses, it was not a matter of choice. As Samuel Rogers observed, they were compelled “to deny themselves animal food several times a week,” being “in suchdire

straitened circumstances.’*® Manyrevolutionary sympathizers — as were the young Lake Poets — expressedthe greatest compassionfor the down-

troddenanimals without giving an apparentmoment’ thoughtto the need to cease to eat them or kill them for their hides. Even in the projected utopia, Southey refers without any apparent qualm to the pleasure of “hunting a buffalo,” presumablyforthe larder.” In formulating his ideals, Coleridge wrote of “the Fraternity of universal Nature.”*? This fraternal

unionhe regarded as “OneLife.” Yet he continued to eat his brothers. “Methinks it should have been impossible / Not tolove all things,” he wrote in “The Eolian Harp,” clarifying elsewhere that he means “a Thing ithat] has a Life of its own.”*' However impossible, the love included the

eating of the objects of adoration. “Arcadia” was a term the Romantics often usedtorefer to their utopia. It was certainly not a bloodless Eden. But not all revolutionary sympathizers were so careless ofthe rights of

animals. Given their language, one might have expected to encountera principled vegetarianism among the Lake Romantics. But one does not. Fortunately, despite these Romantics adherence to the practical norm,

there were others whofollowed in the steps of Oswald. GEORGE NICHOLSON

Six years after Oswald’s volume, previously Bradford now Manchester

printer George Nicholson (1760-1825) — “among the least known[of vegetarians], but none the less among the most estimable,” is Howard Williams's sound opinion”— joined the Oswaldcause in 1797 with a remarkable com-

pendiumofprior vegetarian and animal-welfare thought and practice from the earliest days ofliterature, entitled On the Conduct ofMan to Inferior Animals. This he expandedin 1801 into On the Primeval Diet ofMan; Arguments in FavourofVegetable Foods; On Man’ Conduct to Animals @c. @. Nicholson included commentary from Porphyry, Plutarch, and Montaigne, through Cowper, Thomson, Lawrence, Young, Locke, Goldsmith,

Erasmus Darwin, and John Arbuthnot, to William Buchan, George Cheyne, and JohnElliott, among numerousothers, addinga fewsnippets of his own along the way. A supplement, On Food, was appended to the

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1803 edition, offering numerous vegetarian recipes and enumerating “one hundred perfectly palatable substances, which mayeasily be procured at an expense much belowthe prices of the limbs of our fellow animals.”* Because he often did not acknowledge his sources,it is sometimesdifficult,

where the pieces quoted are not well known, to determine precisely what comes fromNicholson himself and what he has borrowed fromelsewhere. Asubstantial part, however, was a verbatimrepetition of Oswald. Andcertainly, manyofthose he quoted,as he surely knew, were not vegetarians but wrote in opposition to cruelty both in the operating theatres andthe abattoirs. In fact, Nicholson’s interests were restricted notto vegetarianism alone

but toall aspects of animal welfare, popular education, women’s rights,

abolition of slavery, and democratic government. Again, he was one of

those for whomjustice was indivisible. Nicholson's argument in On the Primeval Diet ofManhasfive major components. Initially, he argues that the earliest human habits are the primary indicator of our natural diet, that ifwe are to live well we shouldlive as nature intended— thatis, he claimed, as our remote ancestors did. Second, he contends thatifwe live a vegetarianlife, we will live afar healthier

andlongerlife.Third, he claims that if we recognize howessentiallysimilar in all relevant respects other species are to ourselves, we will treat them

with a great deal more respect. Fourth, human conduct toward other

species is frequently both unjust andinappropriate. Finally, he argues the pressing need for legislative protection of, and education concerning, the interests ofother species. Oneof those to whom Nicholson gave prominence was John “Walking” Stewart (1749-1822), so known because he hadtravelled through Europe,

Canada, and North Africa mostly on foot. As an employee of the East India Companystationed abroad and from his sojourning in India afterward, the abrasive Stewart had learned to appreciate the benefits of vegetarianism,

although inthe first instance froma healthperspective: “I am disposed to believe the alimentofflesh andfermented liquors to be heterogeneoustothe nature of manineveryclimate. I have observed among nations, whoseallmentis vegetable and water, that disease and medicine are equally unknown, while those whose aliment is flesh and fermentedliquor, are constantly a Hicted with disease, and medicine more dangerous thandisease itself; and not onlythose guilty of excess, but others wholeadlives of temperance.”

Stewart's exaggeratedview ofthe simple pathtoideal health merely by abstentionfrom fleshandliquorreflects the customary contemporarydistortion of reality produced byone’s predilections.What is both illuminating and disturbing about Stewart's accountis that he had ample opportunityto

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witness the reality of health outside his native Britain, and it was certainly

nobetter than in the homeland. Such is the apparent force ofrationalization. In India, early death frommalaria, for example, was common, and deformity from leprosy had been a prevalent problem for two thousand years. A vegetable diet did not save the Hindus from theseills. Despite his commonlynotedabrasiveness, the pantheist Stewart became both an intimate of the industrialist vegetarian advocateRobert Owen and a friend of the essayist andfellow opium addict Thomas de Quincey, who greatly admiredthe vegetarian principles of Stewart withoutjoining him in living them. De Quinceyalso thought himstrictly honestin his accounts of his adventures, which suggests his interpretation ofthe health ofthe

inhabitants’ ofvegetarian lands was no simple attempt to mislead.As E.M. Forsters A Passage to India indicates, British administrators met largely with one class of Indians and had a distorted view of the reality of the nation they governed. Althoughnotas radical or as entirely engagé as Oswald, who could be numbered amongthe infamous enragés, Stewart was one of“the Frenchifiedfaction” andwas in Paris during the early years of the Revolution, where, according to de Quincey, he impressed the young Wordsworth (also in Paris) with his views onliving in accord with nature.” For Stewart,

the innocent diet wasan integral aspect of the newworld inthe making.

Inline with the age, Nicholsonis convinced, perhapsa little tooreadily,

that the “Primeval Diet of Man” — and, indeed, that of a later age — was

wholly without sin. He cites Porphyryto tell us that the “ancient Greeks lived entirely on the fruits of the earth,” as did “the ancientSyrians,” and that “bythe laws ofTriptolemus, the Athenians were strictly commanded to abstain fromall living creatures.”°° FromAelian, he derives the informa-

tion that “the ancient Arcadians lived on acorns, the Argives on pears, the 9937 Atheniansonfigs.”*’ Via the writings of Diodorus Siculus, we are informed howthe fleshless diet of Pythagoras’s followersmade them“verystrong and valorous.”** FromGellius and Macrobius, we learn that the “Romanswere fully persuaded of the superior effects of a vegetable diet, that besides the private examples of manyoftheir great men, they publicly countenanced this modeofdiet in their laws concerning food.”*’ Like Montaigne, he pictured the Golden Age at aroundthetimeofthe classical Greeks rather than prior tocivilization. Such was thestate of the vegetarian interpretation of the Golden Ageas historical reality at the turn of the nineteenth century! Po reg

There are twosentences on which Nicholsonlays particularstress, capi-

talizing theminthe original. The first, “whatever we do byanother we do ourselves,” conveys his insistence that if we eat flesh, it as though we have done ourselves what the slaughterhouse butcher has done.*°It is a doctrine

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reminiscent of the Mahabharata, although not informed byit.*! The

second adds his version of the Golden Rule: “Treat the animal whichis in your power, in such a manner, as you wouldwillingly be treated were you such an animal,” in fact a paraphrase of the statement to similareffect by HumphryPrimatt writing in 1776.** Nicholson explains the inconsistencies of flesh eaters and refutes most ably the customarydefences offlesh eating, adding that “to take awaythe life of any happy being: to commit acts of outrage and depredation, and to abandoneveryrefinedfeeling of sensibility, is to degrade the humankind beneathits professed dignity of character but to devour and eat any animal, is an additionalviolation of those principles, because ‘tis the extreme of brutal ferocity.”* He accounts for this immoral continuance ofthe shedding of blood bytelling us that

“education, habit, prejudice, fashion, and interest have blinded the eyes of

men, and have seared their hearts.”** Given the importance of Nicholson’s bookinthe history of vegetarianism,it is unfortunate, even though it was reprinted more thanonce, thatit appears to have beenlargely ignored, at least by vegetarians. The public was rather more impressed. On Nicholson’s death, his obituary in the bourgeois Gentlemans Magazine amplyrecognized his merits, counting him “a man whose worthandtalents entitle him

to notice” andobserving that his writings, which were numerous and var-

ied, “already obtained the meedofpraise from contemporarycritics.” Moreover, “in alreatise ‘on the Conduct of Manto inferior Animals (which has

already gone throughfoureditions) we have evidence of his humanity of disposition; and numerous Tracts calculated to improve the morals, and addto the comforts of the poorerclasses, are proofs of the same desire of doing good.In short, he possessed, in an eminent degree, strength ofintel-

lect, with universal benevolence and undeviating uprightness of conduct.”” Gentleman’s Magazinefailed,however, to acknowledge Nicholson's

vegetarianism.

JOSEPH RITSON

Within a few monthsof the publication of Nicholson's revised tome, there appeared a volume from the cantankerous andcaustic revolutionary sympathizer Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), an antiquarian of repute but one with numerous enemies and a smallernumberof staunchandstalwart friends. The book was An Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty. After his death, Ritson’s “incipient insanity” in advanced age was noted by the compilers of The Dictionary ofNationalBiography — needlessto say, the

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compilers were not amongthefirmfriends! And the commentwasunjust. But the source ofthe injustice was perhapsa friendlyone. The obituaryin the Monthly Mirrorby his frequent companion,the philosopher William Godwin — dubbed“the Professor” by Charles Lamb forhis verbosity — referred to Ritson being subject to fits, to his having lost his prodigious memory, and to rapidly advancing senility.*° In addition, the judgmentin The Dictionary ofNational Biography was probablybasedprimarily onhis declared atheism — according toShelley, in the culture of the time atheism implied “immorality, social inferiority and unpatriotic behaviour” — on his animosityto others, and onhis support for the French revolutionarycause. He liked tobecalled “citizen Ritson,” and his homewas decorated with pictures of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Paine.And he displayed a bellicose

spirit in his revival of the legend of Robin Hood as ananti-establishment hero. He termedhis fellowantiquarians “fool” and “liar.” He attacked

Thomas Warton’s scholarship inhis Observations on Wartons History(1782),

a mordantcritique of the Oxford professor of poetrys History ofEnglish Poetry (4774-1781). He disputedthe originality of Bishop Percy's Religues and was less than impressed by Dr. Samuel Johnson's edition of Shakespeare. The reception ofthe millenarian republican Ritson, if notofhis work, has to be understoodinthelight of his percetved demeanour, r a eflection in somepartofthefact thatin the early years ofthe conflict with Prance he feared for his life at the hands of English government agents.

‘There was a conviction he would be arrested as a traitor. As to his work,

Joseph Haslewood wrote a tribute in Some Accountofthe Life and Publications ofthe LateJoseph Ritson, andhis publisher, Sir RichardPhillips, as well as Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Godwin, John Frank Newton, andSir Walter Scott admired him greatly. Ritson even appears in favourableguise in some of Scott’s Waverley novels. He claimed toderive his radical vegetarianismfrom Mandeville’s Fable ofthe Bees and fromthe age of nineteen rejectedall flesh, notingapologetically as an exceptionan occasion in Scotland whenheatea few potatoes “dressunder theroast.”*” And heoccasionally ate eggs, about whichhealso appearedatrifle guilty. Nonetheless, despite the occasional support, he wasridiculedin the socially conservative Edinburgh Review by an anonymouscritic, probably Henry Brougham, Whig politician and co-founder ofthe Review, whowasfull of “disgust, pity, contempt, laughter, detestation” and who was distraught that beef and muttoneaters should be thought the equivalent of cannibals.*® In the opening chapter of Adstinence from Animal Food, concerning a defence ofthe state of nature as man’s ideal, Ritson tells us: “Ofall rapacious animals, man is the most universal destroyer. The destruction of

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carnivorous quadrupeds, birds, and insects, is, in general, limited to par-

ticular kinds: but the rapacious capacity of man hashardlyanylimitation. His empire over the other animals which inhabit this globe is almostuniversal.”*” Ritson’s vilification of the human species — which is not to say unjustifiable vilification — which he exemplifies at some length, sets the tone for the remainder of the work, although he acknowledges, too, that

otherspecies are equally rapacious: “there is neither benevolence norintention in nature.”°° This tone continues to the final chapter, where he dismisses some of the customaryjustifications offlesh eating: “If god made man, orthere be any intentionin nature, the life ofthe louse, whichis as natural to himas his frame ofbody, is equally sacred andinviolable with his own... there is neither evidence nor probability, that any one animal is “intended” for the sustenance of another, more especially bythe privationofits life.The lamb is no more “intended” to be devour'd bythe wolf, than the man bythe tyger or other beast of prey, which experiences equally “the agreeable flavour ofhis flesh,” and“the wholesome nutrimentit administers to their stomachs’; nor are many millionsof animals ever tasteéd

by man; such reasoningis perfectly ridiculous! ...Man, in a state of nature, would,at least, be as harmless as an ourang-outang.”!

In the second chapter, Ritson purports to showthat neither humanteeth, nor intestines, nor other human bodyparts are appropriate for flesh consumption. He quotes the Scottish judge Lord Monboddo’s view that “by nature, andin his original state, [humankind] is a frugivorous animal, and

that he only becomes ananimalofprey by acquirdhabit.”*? In the third chapter Ritson aspires to demonstrate by numerous historical andgeographical examples that a nonflesh diet is quite capable of providing the strengthandvigournecessaryfor hard labour, noting, for example, that the “mineérs in Cornwall are remarkably strong, well made and laborious. Their chief foodis potatos.”*’ This chapter is followed by one on animal food being “the cause ofcruelty and ferocity” in humans, which in turnis succeeded bythe claimthat, historically, the eating of animalflesh led to

crimes against humans andultimately to cannibalism.In light of such claims aboutcruelty and ferocity, one maynot be surprised by the Dictionary ofNational Biography’ contentionthat Ritson was going mad, but then

it should equally be noted thatthe ratherfar-fetched claims of Ritson were commoncurrency amongthose who were advocates forthe eliminationof fiesh foods. Much ofthe remainder of the bookis concerned to showthat animal food is pernicious and vegetable food healthy. Not only did flesh

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cating lead to harm to the animals, butit also constrained people to engage in “barbarous and unfeeling sports” such as horseracing, shooting, bull-

andbearbaiting, cockhghting, and boxing. Moreover, a plant-based diet

was much less expensive than a flesh diet, and the labouring classes were turning toward a flesh-free regimen. Despite the title of the book, onlyinthe final chapter does Ritson turn his attention fullyto the issue ofjustice toward the animal realm, although it is touched uponon occasion throughoutthe book. Postulatingthat each animal has a right to life in andofitself, Ritson offers an analysis that was able to elude the commoncritique ofthe vegetariancase that as long as animals were killed instantly and without apprehensionoftheir impending demise, no harm was done —no painand suffering was inflicted. Ofcourse,

if life itself hadavalue, the force of this antivegetarian argumentdisappeared. Implied in the argumentis that it is remarkable how wetreathuman life as valuable, never venturing it acceptable to kill painlessly a human witha willtolive but acceptabletto kill afellowanimal providedit is a painless killing. WILLIAM LAMBE AND JOHN FRANK NEWTON

The eminent Londonphysician of vegetarian conviction William Lambe

(1765-1847) was fortunate enough to number amonghis eminentfriends both Lord Erskine(1750-1823), brilliant defender of the accusedradicals in the infamous treason trials of 1795 and author of 7he Causes and Conse-

quences ofthe Present War, who ledthe parliamentary attemptin the early decades ofthe 1 800s to provide England with animal-welfare legislation, and John Frank Newton(1770-1825), author of Return to Nature, who, having been converted to the innocent diet by Lambe,dedicated his important book onthe vegetariancause to him. Erskine also hadafriendshipwiththe

vegetarian publisher Sir Richard Phillips. One is led to wonder whether Thomas Erskine was a silent adherent or a strong sympathizerof the vegetarian cause. He madeitclear in the Commonsthat he did not champion radical causes, but where his heart lay, and perhaps sometimeshis knife and fork, we do not know. Thelack ofribald derision for his diet by his parliamentary opponents mayreflect his decision to have dined as theydined. What we cannotbe sure of about Erskine, we knowwith confidence about Lambe, who,after undergraduate studies at St. John’s College, Cambridge, proceeded to become a physician of considerable merit and renown. Having beenelected as Fellowto the College of Physicians, he was appointed

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to the Censorship and Croonianlectureship on several occasions and once

to the office of Harleian orator. To be sure, he was considered an eccentric

for his fleshless diet, but this apparent “eccentricity” in no wise hindered his career or reputation, the heights of his success coming well after he had changedto fleshless diet. It was at the age of forty that he decidedto confine himselftotally to “vegetable food” — and a fewyears later he produced Additional Reports on Regimen, which arguedthe case for afleshless diet almost entirely from the health perspective of a physician.” “The doctrine it seeks to establish,” he announcedretrospectivelyin 1838, “is in direct opposition to popular and deep-rooted prejudice. It is thought (mosterroneously) to attack the best enjoyments and most solid comforts oflife; and,

moreover, it has excited the bitter hostility of a numerous and influential body in society — | mean that body of medical practitioners whoexercise their profession for the sake ofits profits mere, and who appearto think that disease was madeforthe profession and notthe profession for the disease.” Although the benefits to the animal are scarcely ever raised in print by Lambe, we knowfrom his association with Erskine, Phillips, and Shelley

that they were there, even though he thought humans onaverydifferent plane from other animals. Indeed, his position is almostidentical to that of Aristotle: “In his nobler part, his rational soul, manis distinguished from the whole tribe of animals by a boundary, which cannot be passed.Itis only when mandivests himself of his reason, and debases himself by brutal habits, that he renounces his just rank among created beings, and sinks

himself below the level of the beasts.”°” If we are inclined to regard Lambeas, at best, a secondaryfigure inthe historyof ethical vegetarianism, he must nonetheless be acknowledgedas a personofsignificance in playing a role in bringing aboutthe first small, but not infrequent, semiformal gatherings ofethical vegetarians.

John Frank Newtonwas once a chronic invalid, who claimed the recovery and maintenance of his health were due entirely to William Lambe,

who, Newtonstates in dedicating Return to Nature to him, was the author

of “a medical discovery” — the valueofdistilled water, Lambe’s primary nos-

trum, was almost certainly what was meant — “which, I am confident, will

place your nameat somefuture, and perhaps no distantperiod, at the head of your profession.”°® Thereturn to nature that Newton advocated em-

braced vegetarianism, abstinence fromalcohol, and possibly nudism (at

least Shelley’s friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg thoughtso, although others

disagreed), the last ofwhich was to becomefaddish inthe early decades of

the twentieth century among back-to-nature thinkers. He also entertained the strange notions that meat eating caused syphilis and that the signs of

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the zodiac represented ancient symbols of vegetarianism.” Scarcelysurprising is that vegetarians were often thought somewhatidiosyncratic! But then this was the millenarian age. It was atNewton's homethat he, Lambe,Shelley, the protoanarchist and revolutionary sympathizer William Godwin, probably Joseph Ritson (we knowhe dinedfrequently with Godwin), and the “naturist” — or perhaps merely libertine — Boinvilles (sister- and brother-in-law of Newton) met

for vegetarian dinners and like-mindedradical conversation in the late eighteenth century and early years of the nineteenth century — the Vegetarian Society in embryo!®Perhaps included were Sir RichardPhillips and a fewothers as yet unknownto us — and maybe even Mary Wollstonecraft, at least as an occasional guest. Wolstonecraft left no evidence she was attracted to the vegetarian diet. But we knowshe sometimes dined withher husband-to-be William Godwin at the Newtons.°' We knowalso that the others were frequent dining companions ofeach other — although in Phillips’s case we knowonlyofclose associations ratherthan specifically of dining together. But we do not knowforcertainthat they dinedtogether as a grouprather than in fours andsixes, although it is adistinct possibility.°? Nor do we know whether William Godwin continued his feshless diet long after marriage to the second Mrs. Godwin.It is to be doubted that hedid so, at least consistently.And we know that Shelley andNewton did not meet until the second decade ofthe nineteenth century. Mentioning only Lambe,Shelley, Newtonand his family, and unknownothers as

participants,Howard Williamsrefers to “these pioneers of the NewRefor-

mation [who] were accustomed to meet, and celebrate their charming

réunions withvegetarian feasts.”°? The festive group wouldsurelyalso have

includedthe Boinvilles (mother and daughter), whose French ofhcer hus-

band/father had died inthe retreat from Moscowand with whom the Shelleys resided for a while in 1813, and other acknowledged vegetarians ofthe Bracknell radical community. Shelley’s companion from undergraduate days Thomas Jefferson Hogg, whowasalsooften aroundthe Newtonresidence at Bracknell in Berkshire and probably for a very short time a prac-

tising vegetarian — whenhabituated tolife as a lawyer, he evinced, in the

words of MaryShelley, “an attachmentto sporting” — called this throng, memorably, “the vegetable church of Nature.” “It is not man we have before us but the wreck of man,” wrote Newton

in Return to Nature (1811).The theme of the book is the rectification through the medicine of William Lambe of the “wreck” of humankind’s fall fromits natural state. Like Lambe, Newton devotes his attention and

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efforts primarily to the health aspects of vegetarianism, although, as with Lambe, there are undeniable ethical undertones and ‘he occasionalexplicit

comment. His claimis that if human beings could be as healthyas the “wild animals, they would... certainly exceed the age of one hundredand fifty years.”°° He understands the environmental benefit to the adoption of a fleshless diet, arguing against the necessity of the new and popular Malthusian pessimism that “no point can be demonstrated moreclearly thanthat the earth might contain andsupportat least ten times the number of inhabitants that are nowuponit.”® More land devoted to agriculture andless to animal husbandrywas becoming a favourite nostrumofthe time, embraced, beyond Newton,bysuchdiverse figures as Shelley, God-

win, William Paley,Adam Smith, and Erasmus Darwin. Shelley embel-

lished Newton's view with his ownconclusion that not onlydid animals suffer whenland was devotedto animal husbandrybut so did the human poor because the grain to feed the animals wasat the expense ofgrain for the humanneedy. The customary Malthusian riposte to such animadversions was that the population would soon expand beyondthe increased capacityof agricultural productionto feed the increased numberofpeople. But the moral value of decreasing animal suffering by turning awayfrom animal husbandrywas not dented bythe Malthusian response. Not until Newtonis two-thirds through the bookdoes he mentionthe ethical argument for eschewing flesh. He quotes John Ray, noting that “how much more innocent, sweet, and healthful, is a table covered with (vegetable foods] than with all the reeking flesh of butchered and slaugh-

tered animals. Certainly,man by nature was never madeto be a carnivorous animal, nor is he armedatall for prey and rapine, with jagged andpointed teeth, and crooked claws sharpened to rendand tear; but with gentle hands to gatherfruit and vegetables, and withteeth to chewand eat them.”°* And

he finally adds his own words: “So long as men are compassionate to such a degree that they cannotheara flystrugglingin a spider’s web without emotion, it never can be maintained that it is their natural impulse to

woundand kill the dumb animals[1.e., those whoare without the capacity to speak], or to butcher one another in what 1s called the freld ofhonour.” This sentence reveals the depth of Newton's concern for animals. We can presume with some confidence, if not with certainty, that animal interests were rarely mentionedby someof the vegetarian advocates, or rarely mentioned at length, not because they were thought irrelevant but becauseit

wasthought they wouldnotresonateas effectively withthe audience. Only anappeal to the maintenance ofthe reader’s health couldbe fullypersuasive.

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Iconoclast Percy Bysshe Shelley(1792-1822) was not so pessimistic, orif he was, he appealed tothe public conscience anyway. In fact, Shelley appeared the millenarian antithesis to pessimism in his writings.When William Godwinhad written in thefirst edition of An Enquiry ConcerningPolitical

Justice (41793) that soon there would be “nowar, nocrime, no administra-

tionofjustice as it is called, no government’ ~—aprophecy he soon came to regret — the perfectibilist Shelley remained astoundedthroughouthis short life that the prognosis had not proved immediatelyaccurate.’” He was the author inter alia of Queen Mab(1813), in whichhisradical philosophyis first expounded, andof Prometheus Unbound(1820), in which Prometheus washis symbolfor theoriginator ofthe new Golden Age. If it wasnottruly a returnto nature, it waswhat Wordsworthcalled “goldenhours,” “human nature beingborn again.”7! Shelley was, by consensus, the “greatest|thetorician and mostsublime

lyricist of all the English Romantic poets.”’* A perusal of his verse might suggest an author with a greater love for love, beauty, politics, sex, and poetryitself than for animals, or perhaps even humans, althoughthereare exceptions — for example, in The Revolt ofIslam and whenin Queen Mab he tells us: “no longer now/ Heslays the lamb that looks him intheface, / Andhorrible devours his mangled flesh.”Still, his prose tells another story than muchofthe verse. Despite being expelled from University College, Oxford, for his declared religious disbelief—- he composeda scabrous pamphlet, The Necessity ofAtheism —it wouldappearthathe learned enoughthere to spice his writings with evidenterudition, even though Shelley himself

deemedthecollege a fortress of mediocrity.He was equally disparagingof

his previous education at Eton. Inpart, the extraordinaryscholarship of

the notes to Queen Mab undoubtedly came from private reading. The notes are almost as long as the nine-canto poem andcontain lengthy quo-

tations from Pliny, Lucretius,Holbach, Spinoza, Bacon, and Plutarch. And

it is in these notes we encounter Shelley’s first defence of the vegetable regimen. Shelley had a decidedaversion to didactic poetry but noneat all to didactic prose to elucidate the poetry. Converted to vegetarianism by Newton, with whomhe hadaregular

acquaintance (and secondarily by Lambe and Ritson), and to millenarianism by Rousseau and William Godwin, his mentorandlater father-in-law (creeds that seemed to replace the discarded religion), he penned two pamphlets against the eating of flesh, the first being a part of the notes to Queen Mab and the second beinglost until the twentieth century. In these

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pamphlets, he argued that vegetarianism was natural to humans, thatit

promoted health and longevity, and — with even greater emphasis — both that it permitted food animals to escape the consequences oftheir harmful domestication and that wild animals should be spared the cruelties inflicted upon them by humanpredators. By general repute, Shelley's exposition is the finest argumentfor ethical vegetarianismsince Porphyryin the third century, so much so that George Bernard Shaw wantedto rename

vegetarianism “Shelleyism.” As a youth, Shawwasalready a committed Shelleyian: “I read him, prose andverse, from beginning to end.””? Shaw

also related the story he heard fromanold Chartist that “Queen Mab was knownas the Chartists’ Bible.”Inshort, it was a poem that announced the young Shelley's controversial and decidedlyradical political agenda. In including the flesh diet as one aspect ofthe oppression and injustice he was

determined to overcome, he showshimself, like Thomas Tryon, as one of

those moralists for whomjusticeis indivisible. Injustice to the animals isas much anaspect ofinjustice as injustice to thehuman poor. Indeed, Shelley thoughtthe intentofa writer must be to serve “the interests ofliberty,” and in his political writings in the year following the infamy of the Peterloo

Massacre (1819), he sounds inhis political analyses, especially in A Phiilo-

sophical ViewofReform,like a prescient Friedrich Engels. “Boldly but temperately written,” Shelley wisely intoned about his ViewofReform.” Poets and philosophers, he opined in his famous phrase from A Defence ofPoetry, “are the unacknowledgedlegislators of the world.” In Defence, poetry has a political and moral, rather than merelyaesthetic, role. On first planning the lengthy Queen Mabinlate 1811, he saidit wouldbe “byanticipation a picture of the manners, simplicity and delights of a perfect state of society: tho’still earthly.”7° °76 It was his unacknowledgedlegislation for ajust society. Newtonand Godwinwere perhapsjoint catalysts for the vegetarianpart of that agenda in Queen Mad,for at the time the poemwas being written Godwin happened to meet Shelley (their first encounter) taking tea at Newton's and discussing the vegetable regimen. In the first pamphlet, A Vindication ofNatural Diet: Being Oneofa Series ofNotes to Queen Mab, a Philosophical Poem,Shelley wrote: Prometheus (who represents the humanrace) effected some great changesin the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes, thus inventing an expedient for screening from his disgust the horrors ofthe shambles ... It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh byculinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight ofits bloodyjuices and rawhorrordoes not excite intolerable

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loathing anddisgust. Let the advocate of animal food, force himself to a decisive experimentonits fitness, and as Plutarch recommends,tear aliving

lamb withhis teeth, and plunginghis headintoitsvitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood; whenfresh fromthe deed ofhorror let himrevertto the

irresistible instincts of nature that wouldrise in judgment againstit, andsay, Nature formed me for such a workas this. Then, and only then, would he be consistent... Is it to be believed that a being ofgentle feelings, rising fromhis meal of

roots, would take delight in sports of blood ...2 [He whois] unvitiated by the

contagion of the world ... will hate the brutal pleasures of the chase by instinct; it will be a contemplationfull of horror anddisappointmenttohis mind, that beings capable of the gentlest and most admirable sympathies, should take delight in the death-pangs and last convulsions of dying animals ... never take any substance into the stomachthat once had life.’’

The essay had enormous impact onsucceeding generations ofvegetarians as a superbexampleofirrefutable justification for their cause. Timothy Morton, one of Shelley's biographers, points out that the idea of the Golden Age in Queen Mab — “politics parading as poetry,” another of his biographers, Richard Holmes, calls it — is one where “animals forget their animality and humans become more humane.””® Shelley evidently believedthat recent experience ofexplorers with animals who hadhitherto been ignorant of humans demonstrated that animal nature wouldbe quite different if humans behaved amiably toward them —a remarkable confluence of an atheistic conception ofthe coming Golden Age with the Christian image ofa regainedparadise. As it was, animals were victims of the humanrace, and we findthe impoverished Shelley, somewhatreminiscent

of Leonardo da Vinci with the cagedbirds, buying expensive crawfish from the Marlowhawkers and returning themtotheriver. It is unfortunate that Shelley's second and untitled piece, called byhis editors On the Vegetable System ofDiet (also composed in 1813, probably entirely on a visit to Scotland), remained unpublished until the twentieth century and unfortunate, too, that it remains largely unknown,for it is altogether an even more persuasive piece than thefirst. While Shelleyrepeats some of what he had argued in the first pamphlet, he adds a new gloss: “It demandedsurely no great profundity of anatomical research to perceive that manhas neither the fangs ofa lion northe clawsofa tiger, that his instincts are inimical to bloodshed, and that the food whichis not

to be eaten with the most intolerable loathing until it is altered by the

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action offire and disguisedby the addition of condiments, is not that food for which he is adapted by his physical conditions. The bull must be

degradedinto an ox, the ram into the wether byan unnatural andinhuman

operation.” Thatis, they are altered by castration, an operation he also condemnsin the first essay. Having noted the various tortures inflicted onfood animals (e.g., chickens “are mutilated and imprisoned until theyfatten” — those who condemnfactory farming but are wistful of a return to traditional

farming methods should take note!), Shelley proceeds to ask: “What beast

of prey compels its victims to undergo such protracted, such severe and such degrading torments? The single consideration that mancannotswal-

lowa piece ofrawflesh would be sufficient to prove thatthe naturaldiet of

the humanspecies did not consist in the carcases of butchered animals... Those who are persuaded ofthe point whichis the object of this enquiryto establish, are bound bythe mostsacred obligations of morality to adopt in practice what he admits in theory.” Shelley seems to be alluding to what was suggested in Chapter 9, namely that there were some who accepted the arguments for a vegetarian diet but who seemed to think theyapplied onlyto the abstract people ofthe “state of nature” andcertainlynotin practice to themselves. The GoldenAge was long in the past, and humans inhabited a “fallen” worldto which the rules ofthe

idyllic past no longer applied. Shelley's reasoning was quite different. He tried to practise what he preachedandto proselytize, like Oswald andhis ilk, onbehalfofthe persecuted animals. Some ofthose animals, he claimed, such as the Argali sheep, had been corrupted by domestication fromtheir magnificent natural selves into a mere shadowoftheir true nature. Shelley's biographer Richard Holmes, in decidedlyless enthusiastic vein for Shelley’s vegetarian compositions than were Shawor Gandhi,describes the essay as “one ofhis mostpeculiar and crotchetyproductions,” as being markedby“thin high-flownrhetoric,” and as an instance of unphilosophical “speculative ‘dietetics.”"” It is a haughty and unfounded judgment. Perhapsthe evaluation says more about HolmesthanShelley, for the biographer regards vegetarianismas “the cranky” part of Queen Mab.*°If there is anything hackneyedin the prose, it arises fromthe fact that Shelley had translated Plutarch’s essays on flesh eating from Greek to inglish and had borrowed someoftheir flowerylanguage. Certainly, Shelley answered — in the mannerintimated by James Boswell

yet more stridently — John Hawkesworth’s, Frances Hutcheson’s, and Dr. e

SamuelJohnson's considerations about due recompenseforexistence: rs

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The verysight of the animals in the fields whoare destined to the axe must encourage obduracyif it fails to awaken compassion. The butchering of

harmless animals cannot fail to produce muchofthat spirit of insane and

hideous exaltation in which the newsofa victoryis related altho’ fpurchased bythe massacre of a thousand men.If the use of animal foodbe in conse-

quence, subversive to the peace of humansociety, how unwarrantable is the injustice andbarbarity w uich is exercised toward these miserable victims. Theyarecalled into existence by humanartifice that they may drag out a short and miserable existence ofslavery and disease, that their bodies may be muti-

lated, their socialfeelings outraged. \t were much betterthat a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery.”

If Shelley stood firmly onthe side of the animals, it muststill be recognized, as Christine Kenyon-Jones perceptively observed, that although “animals are to be protected from humancruelty andevencalled‘brethren’ ~ andShelley's biographers cite several instances of his attempts to rescue animals from cruel treatment —the very process of showing such humanitarianismcanbe seen as one which distances the humanfrom otherspecies and... seeks tolegislate against crueltyto animals in order to render human beings less like ‘the brutes’ they might otherwise resemble.”*Itis a philosophical enigmafaced byall animal activists. Benevolent action on behalf ofother species seems prima facie to demonstrate humanexclusivity. Stull, Shelley would no doubt have replied that the very purported humansuperiority wouldbe grounds notonlyfor benevolence but also for absolute refusal to eat animalflesh. The Dictionary ofNational Biographycasts doubt on theconsistencyof Shelley's vegetarianism,telling us: “About this time[i.e., 1812] he adopted the vegetarian system ofdiet, to which he adhered with moreorless constancy whenin England, but seems to have generally discarded when abroad.”

Bread and raisins was his commonsupperfare in his home with Maryat Marlowfrom1815 — for atime, he kept a record of what he ate in grams — and at their lodgings at Livorno in 1819 it was grapes andfigs; the Shelleys were constantly on the move, occupying eight residences in two years. But of course, whentravelling andstaying at inns at considerable distance from one’s home, one would be constrained to accept whatever the inn had to offer. Still, we do not knowon whatbasis the Dictionary ofNational Biography reachedits conclusion, although it was a commonenoughopinion. Did Byronorone ofthe other guests at his regular Pisa dinners in 1822, at which Shelley was a constant presence and at which we knowthat wild

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boar was served onone occasion,report on a carnivorous Shelley? We have

norecord, andit seems unlikely, but we cannot be sure. We are given cause

for concern when wefind Shelley fishing with Edward Williams in the bay of Lerici in 1822 — they failed to catch any. Did fish not countas flesh for Shelley — despite his habit, noted above, of buying expensive crawfish only to release them— as they appeared not to countfor the early Christians and the Cathars? Certainly, flesh eaters, to assuage their unconscious guilt andjustify their ownpractices, will often try to besmirch the reputationofvegetarians withstories ofpalpabledietetic failure. Duringaperiodofillnessinthe late 1930s, George Bernard Shawwasprescribedfifteen monthly injections of liver extract. Immediately, the Daily Express trumpeted “G. B. S. Takes Meat.” “I do not,” he told the Vegetarian News. “Mydiet remains unchanged.”®In Shelley's case, the cynics wereatleastpartly right, for Shelley had returned to flesh on two occasions in 1815, the year ofPW)aterloo.It was the culminationofpolitical events that wouldbeaserious blowto the prospects for his radical idealism — even though later he would write, despondently, a sonnet celebrating Napoleon's defeat. Indeed, the Battle of the Nationsat Leipzig two years earlier had already pointed the trend. To be sure, in the first instance the lapse was occasioned bythe fact that his friend Thomas Peacock madeit difficult for the Shelleys to obtain a vegetable meal, but Percy’s lack ofresistance reflects his state ofennui. Onthat occasion, exhaustedfrom rowing and portage, Shelley was persuadedtoeat three whole mutton chops. Ona second boating trip a while later in the same year, Peacock fed him the samediet andattributed Percy's renewed enjoyment in life to it. Even earlier, on arrival at Holyhead from his abortive attempt to influenceIrish politics in 1812, Percystartledhis wife, Harriet, by ordering flesh at an inn. Andlater, in the final days of1817,

Mary, the second Mrs. Shelley, persuaded Percy to go on what proved to be a very temporaryflesh diet because ofhis illness.Whetherthe illness was physical or a result of despondencyoverthe political future and his publication ambitionsis open to dispute. But the return to flesh was never long-lived. In truth, Shelley complainedthat his household was in poorhealth,a situation not improved by the fact that in winter in Englandthe only vegetables readily procurable were cabbage, carrots, potatoes, andturnips, a diet ofinsufficient variety easily to maintain health. The situation improved somewhat for Shelley from 1818 until his death whenhe wasresidentin Italy and a more appealing regimen was more readily available. In fact, throughouthis adult life Shelley was frequentlyill, especially when the weather was cold. And he

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suffered repeated and severe psychological depression. His illnesses clearly troubled his vegetarian conscience, for in 1817 he wrote to his fellow poet and publisher Leigh Hunt: “Do not mention that I am unwell to your nephew, for the advocate of a new system ofdiet is held bound to be invulnerable by disease” or else his regimen is deemed unpersuasive.** But perhaps political disappointments ratherthanill-health occasioned the infrequent lapses. Certainly, Shelley himself thought his health benefited from his vegetable diet. Writing from his temporary home in Wales tohis friend Hoggin 1813, he announced: “I continue vegetable. -Jarriet [who

was pregnant] meanstobeslightly animal until spring.”® Shelley was confident his ownhealth was “muchimproved”bythe vegetable diet yet realized that with the limitedvegetation available, the damp anddreary winter did notsit well with his wife's pregnancy. By June, Harriet was stating that they had “all” — presumably “all” meant their extended household — “taken to the vegetable regimen again.”*° Certainly, Shelley continued to practise his vegetable diet for most of the rest of his life. Concerning literary dinner at theHampstead home ofHunt, the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon wrote sneeringlyof Shelley “carving abit of broccoli or cabbage onhis plate, as if it had beenthe substantial wing of a chicken,” while the others duly ate the flesh they had|been served.®’ Shelley's vegetable diet was of sufficient significance to him to risk censure and mockeryfor his principle.

Keith Thomasis also dubious ofShelley's consistency and commitment: “Some doubtis thrown upontheseriousness ofShelley's conversion to the ‘Pythagorean system’ in1812bythe toneofhis wife's invitationto afriend: ‘Mrs Shelley's comp[liment]s to Mrs Nugent and expects the pleasure of her companyto dinner, 5 o'clock, as a murdered chicken has beenprepared for herrepast.’”®® If anything, this note from Harriet duringthe Shelleys’ residence in Ireland to Mrs. Nugent, an Irish republican sympathizer, serves to strengthen ourconviction in the vegetarian regimenofthe Shel-

leys at this time. It would certainly not be normalto refer to the meal as a “murdered” chicken unless one’s feelings were somewhatintense. Anditis noticeable that the chicken is for /er repast. Surely, if the Shelleys were intending to partake, it would have beenourrepast or the repast. Moreover, a willingness to serve flesh to others seems to have been not uncommon amongat least some vegetarians, although perhaps not as commonamong those as vehementas Shelley in their conviction. For example, according to WilliamSt. Clair in The Godwins and the Shelleys, atterGodwin had opted for a “natural diet” he “still served meat to his guests and never scolded them for enjoying it.”®’ Moreover, Lord Byron, in denigrating their meagre diet of“greenfruit,”indicates in 1820, just two years before Shelley's death,

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that Claire Clairmont, the mother of Byron’s daughter, andthe Shelleys — a different Mrs. Shelley by this time — werestill practising a wholly vegetarian regimenin Italy, a fact that hints at the general error of the cynics as

well as of the misgivings of the doubting Thomas.”

Whether the mercurial Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was a long-term com-

mitted vegetarian, we do not knowforcertain. Nor, if she was thus com-

mitted, do we know whether she remainedone after her husband's early death, although there is no evidence for any changeofheart or of anydispute with her husbandorfather, William Godwin, ontheissue; yet there wasconsiderable dispute with Godwinonher elopement andsubsequent affair with Percy. Godwin’s vegetarian proclivities are significant, for, as Mary'slatest (and best) biographersays: “It would be rash to underestimate the degree to which Godwin, rather than Shelley, formed his daughter's social and political views.”’! Nonetheless, on sending young Mary awayto boarding school in Ramsgate orto stay with Baxter Dissenters at Dundee, no special dietary provisions appear to have been required, although the Glassite Dissenters in Dundee, of which the| 3axters were members, practised a quasi vegetarianism that, reminiscent of Clementof A lexandria, they called “love feasts.” Perhaps inhis days of gravefinancial and paternal distress, Godwin deemed diet tootrivial a matter with whichto beoverly concerned. Perhaps bythis time Godwin himself nolongerrestricted his diet to vegetables.Nonetheless, it should be acknowledgedthatas a young man Godwinhad beenadisciple of the millenarian andegalitarian dissenter JohnGlas (1695-1773) and mayhaveacquiredearlyproclivities toward vegetarianism from that source, later to be rediscovered andstrengthened by John Frank Newton. Perhaps the vegetarian leanings ofthe Baxters were at the back of Godwin’s mindin sending Marytohis friends in Scotland. We knowthat Marywas sympathetic to the vegetarian cause andthat, apparently, she practised vegetarianism during muchofthe span ofher married life. For example, in the first days of her elopement withPercyin 1814, she refers to her Paris supperoffried leaves of artichoke. In the same year at an inn near Troyes, the Shelley party hadtoresort to milk and sour breadin the absence of appropriate fare. Their roomin a Swiss inn where they stayed houseda glass case of stuffed birds. Mary’s and Percy's disapproval reflected their orientations. Ashort while later, in financial desperationat the Cross Keys Inn in London, Mary, her half-sister, and Percy were constrained to dine on cake. We find Mary at Windsorin 1815 joining with Percyin arguing the merits of a vegetable diet against the unsympathetic Thomas Peacock. Snidely, John Keats askedafterMaryin 1816: “Does Mrs S[helley] cut Bread and Butteras neatly as ever?”?* Comments on Mary's

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fare are very infrequent, but when they are made there is no mention of

fiesh.Thus, for example, in Mary's journal we read that she and the Shelley

household lunched during an expedition to Pompei in 1818 on oranges,

higs, bread, and apples.

In her Frankenstein (1818), her daimon was an animal-respecting, com-

passionate vegetarian, although subject to malevolentinfluences — a clear indication of her own leanings. Indeed, given that Byron was also on the whole a vegetarian sympathizer, if an inconsistent one, andat the time in a vegetarian phase ofhis life, and given that Byron andthe Shelleys were together, along with others, at Villa Diodati at Compegny, about three

miles from Geneva, where the novel was written, at least thematicallyit is fair to say Frankenstein was bornina vegetarian spirit.”? In The LastMan (1826), conceivedthe year after Percy's drowning, MaryShelley displayed the same animalsensibilities and maintainedthe view, as in Frankenstein,

that it ishuman deviation from Nature that has brought about Homo sapiens demise.And a couple ofyears before her death, Marysaidshe preferred bread andcheese to luxurious living. Still, on social and political matters generally, she hadsoftened her stance bythe 1830s. She eventried to soften the public imageofShelley as the radical rebel. Certainly, he had moderated in somerespects his extremes overthe years, especially after Harriet’s suicide.** But Maryoverdid it.Ably abetted by her daughter-in-law, Jane

St. John, she wasso successful in portraying an anodyneShelleythatin the 1890s George Bernard Shaw wondered whenthe atheist poet would be depicted “ina tall hat, Bible in hand, leading his children on Sunday mornings to the church in his native parish.””? No longer prompted bythe utopianism of Percyor herfather, Mary came to advocate slow progress. “| am not for violent extremes,’ she wrote, dismayed bythe rumblings ofthe Chartists. Her veryfinal journal entry was to copy out a quotation from Edmund Burke. Perhaps somewhere in the post-Percy period she abandonedthe fleshless regimen. Perhaps she was neveras fully committedas Percy, but certainly, as indicated by Byron ofthe household diet in 1820, she at least sometimespractised. Lorp ByrRON AND Str RicHarp PHILLIPS

As noted, Lord Byron (1788-1824) appears to have been an inconsistent vegetarian and not one whoproselytized in the vegetarian cause norone for whomtheinterests of animals played a majorrole in the choice ofvegetarian diet, despite his sensibilities to animals in general andhis surrounding e

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himself with them even more than Rousseau and Tennyson— for example,

five monkeys, five cats, ten horses, eight dogs, and elevenbirds, including five peacocks, at hishome at Ravenna in1821. As an undergraduate at Trinity College,Cambridge, he strolled King’s Parade withhis pet bear, whereas

the less ostentatious Coleridge kept the more customarycat in his roomsat Jesus College. Byron’s abstinence from animal flesh, when he wasabstaining, was based on the preservation of his own character, not on ethics, or at least not predominantly so. An early biographer and personalassociate of BByron, the Irish poet Thomas Moore,tells us of a particular prandial embarrassment:

As we had noneofus beenapprised ofhis peculiarities with respect to food, the embarrassmentofour host [the banker and poet Samuel Rogers] was not little on discovering that there was nothing on the table which his noble guest could eat or drink. Neither meat, fish,nor wine would Lord Byrontouch;

andof biscuits and soda water, which he asked for, there had been, unluckily, no provision. He professed, however, to be equally well pleased with potatoes andvinegar; and ofthese meagre materials contrived to makerather

a hearty meal ... We frequently during the firstmonths of our acquaintance dined together alone ... Thoughat times he would drink freely enoughof claret, he still adhered to his systemof abstinence in food. He appeared, indeed, to have conceiveda notion that animal food has some peculiarinfluence on the character; and | remember one dayas I sat opposite him, employed, I suppose, rather earnestly over a “beef-steak,” after watching me for a few seconds, he said in a grave toneof inquiry — “Moore, don't youfind eating beef-steak makesyouferocious.””°

Amore recent Byronbiographer, Phyllis Grosskurth, describes Byron’s regimen habits as “manicdieting” and“erratic eating” rather thanas fleshless dining.”” Moreover, Rogers, whenasked how long Byron would preserve his present diet, is reported to havereplied: “Just as long as you continue to notice it.°’* Hlis public persona maskedhis private character. Certainly, there were periods ofhis life when Byron was a consistentflesh eater. This episode highlights the difficulties faced by vegetarians in the nineteenth andearlier centuries. Butit also indicates a difficulty for the historian. If a person weresuccessful in clandestinely avoiding fleshas a guest,

did not dine inclubsor at inns, anddid notindicate his or her owndietary

habits, the vegetarian practice might be unknown, even thoughthese contingencies are unlikely.

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If Sir Richard Phillips (1767-1840) is less well knownthan Percy Bysshe

Shelley inthe vegetariancause, he was certainlyno less committed. He was a

businessman, founder and ownerofthe Leicester Heraldnewspaper, and publisher of books, employing numerous respected authors, including Coleridge. In addition, he was a politician who waselectedhigh sheriffofthe City of London and County of Middlesex, a republican, and a prison reformer +

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second only to John Howard(1726-1790) — whowas himself a committed vegetarian, claimingthat his diet gave him immunityfrom “gaol fever. 999

Phillips was dedicatedto the vegetarian cause fromthe days ofhis youth. He was a consistentsocial reformer who remained convinced ofthe moral necessity ofvegetarianismand wrote decisivelyinits favour. He was not, however,

universally admired. In 1798, Phillips “invented and promulgated” — his

words, from his tombstone — whathecalled“the interrogative systemofedu-

cation.” The resulting substantial pamphlet 7e Interrogative System (1820) wasaserious source ofcontention, several commentators claiming Phillipsto be a scoundrel who synthesizedandplagiarized existing educational writing. Perhapsthis was little more than reflectionof the animosities ofthe age,for he was also malignedas “adirtylittle Jacobin” and was known,not endearingly, by the nickname “Pythagoras.” Scoundrelor not, Jacobin or not — and he certainly retained muchofhis early radicalism — Phillips was sufficiently in favourto receive a knighthood in1808. In 1826, he composed GoldenRules ofSocial Philosophy, Being a System of Ethics, in which he adumbrated, interalia, sixteen dietary principles that had fully informedhis life. The first five should suffice to demonstrate the ethical nature of Phillips's conviction. He claimed the human should be committedto the flesh-denying cause: 1 Because, being mortal himself, and holding his life on the same uncer-

tain andprecarious tenure as all other sensitive beings, he does not find himselfjustified by any supposedsuperiority or inequality of condition in destroying the enjoymentofexistence of any other mortal, exceptin the necessary defence of his ownlife. 2 Because the desire oflife is so paramount, and so affectingly cherished in all sensitive beings, that he cannotreconcile it to his feelings to destroy or become a voluntaryparty in the destruction of any innocentliving being however much in his power, or apparently insignificant.

3 Because he feels the same abhorrence from devouring flesh in general

that he hears carnivorous menexpress against eating humanflesh, or the flesh of Horses, Dogs, Cats, or other animals which, in some countries, it is not customaryfor carnivorous mento devour.

‘aden

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4 BecauseNature seems to have made a superabundant provision for the

nourishment of animals in the saccharine matter of Roots and Fruits, in

the farinaceous matter of Grain, Seeds, and Pulse, andin the oleaginous ‘wal§

matter of the Stalks, Leaves and Pericarps of numerousvegetables. Becausehefeels an utter and unconquerable repugnance against receiving into his stomach thefleshor juices of deceased animal organization.'©°

The sixteen provisions of his manifesto as a whole could well have stood as the ethical foundation of the Vegetarian Society founded twenty-one years after the publication of Golden Rules ofSocial Philosophy and a mere seven years after Phillips's death. Lewis GOMPERTZ AND THOMAS FORSTER

To the best of existing knowledge, Lewis Gompertz (c. 1783-1861) had no acquaintance with anyof the other persons mentioned thus far in this chapter, other perhaps than Lord Erskine. Ofdistinguished Germandescent, he wasa Jewishphilanthropist, inventor of numerous devices, some to mini-

mize the burden to animals, and advocate of the oppressed, whether enslaved, female, impoverished,or brute being. Like Tryon, Oswald, Nicholson,

and Shelley, he believed that justice was not divisible.He was a vegetarian

— indeed, effectively a vegan — who refused toeat eggs or drink milk, refused to wearleather or silk, would not ride in a coach on account of the

suffering to horses, and abominated huntingandanimal experimentation.

He advocated developing alternatives to horse labour, believing it better

that humans shouldput their “own shoulders to the wheel” for important

tasks rather than oppress animalkind. In 1824, he wroteMoral Inquiries on the Situation ofMan and ofBrutes, a short timeafter the passageofthefirst

British animal-welfare legislation since the Cromwellian Protectorate and in the sameyear as the founding of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty toAnimals. In that year, underthe auspices ofthe Irish memberofParliament Richard Martin — “Humanity Dick,” as he was designated by George [V — who hadsteeredthe legislation through the Commons,a pub-

lic meeting was heldthat resulted in the formation of the SPCA, one of

whose purposes was to enforce the recently passed legislation. Thefirst secretary was the Reverend Arthur Broome, who proved incapable of han-

dling the precarious finances ofthe fledgling society. He was replaced by ef

Gompertz, who held the post for six years before resigning, allegedly over a dispute concerning the purported “Christian principles” that were “y

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claimedto be the foundationofthe society. Gompertz then founded the

Animals’ Friend Society, of which he remained president until ill health

compelled his resignation in 1846. His vegetarianism had beenat odds with manyof the more prominentofthe original society's honoraryvice presidents and even of the general membership. Noless a legislative promoter and SPCA co-founder than Richard Martin was a hunter and anangler. Afterall, the SPCA’s founding statementrejected “all visionary and overstrained views’ — andbythe standards of the SPCA, Gompertz was undoubtedly a visionary.'°! If his so-called Pythagorean practices — a charge levelled at him by one whothought the SPCA’s practices should be wholly Christian,which to him meant omnivorous — were in conflict with those

of the SPCA,theystood little closer to at least some ofthe practices ofthe members ofthe Animals’ Friend Society. In the Moral Inquiries,Gompertz provides what is perhaps the underlying ethical principle of the book in Axiom5 of Chapter 4: “That we should never admit ofthe propriety of the will or volition of one animalbeing the agent of another, unless we shouldperceive its own goodto comefromit,

or that justice should require it.”'°?We must assume that Gompertz is thinking of humanwill over otherspecies. As it stands, the axiomimplies that there is a moral obligation ofthe fox to the chickenandofthe lioness to the zebra.Amongthe otherprinciples he espouses is that “every animal has more right to the use of its own body than others have to use it.”!° Mostofthe principles are versions of the utilitarian doctrine, summed up bythe statement: “Our first dutyis to do aslittle harmas possible. Thesecond duty is to do good.”'™ Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Gompertz argument — and one that runs in total contrast withall those arguments for ethical vegetarianism we have encountered to date —is that he readily concedes that flesh foodis valuable tohumanhealth. Butthis fact, Gompertz insists, does not

provide humanswith an entitlementto that flesh. Gompertz depicts a contest between two antagonists, Y and Z, with Z taking the partof the animal

advocate:

Z: First, how do youprove that mankindis invested with the rightofkilling lanimals] and that brutes have been created[to be of service to mankind]?

Secondly, it is to be observed that man himself possesses the same nourishing andpalatable qualities.Are we then to become cannibals for that reason? [ grant that the health of manrequires animal food, and it is not to be

expectedthat the strength andfaculties ofeither the body or mindcanbe near as great withthe privationofit, as withits aid, but that is nothing to the

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animals; a robber would notbesorich if he werenot tosteal;it is not therefore right to steal, when the lawscan be evaded.'”

Thus, in Gompertz's view, humansare deprived ofsome degree ofhealth without flesh and are harmed instrength andintellectual capacity without flesh, but, still, the humanhas noright to that flesh.The animal ownerof the flesh has a prior claim. There is a distinct emphasis on the equality of humanand nonhuman animals: “It matters not whetherthe victimbefurnished with two legs or with four, with wings, with fins, or with arms;

where there is sensation, there is subject for cruelty, and in proportion to the degree ofsensationwill its actions operate.” !°° Thomas Forster (1789-1860) dedicated to Gompertz his book Philozoa, or MoralReftections, onthe actual condition of‘the Animal Kingdom, andthe meansofimproving the same. Publishedin Brussels in 1839, the book was probably oneofthe thirty-four formally entered for the SPCA£100prize for the best essay on humanity to animals.'°’ The prize was won bythe ReverendDr. John Styles, DD, for The Animal Creation: Its Claims on Our

Humanity Stated and Enforced, by modern standards of judgmentinferior to at least three of the essays submitted. Forster was ararity, at least for the time, being a nonmonastic Catholic vegetarian.'°* In the appendix to his Animals Rights Considered in Relationto Social Progress (1892), HenrySalt gives a lengthy bibliography containing what he considered“a list of the chiefEnglish works, touching directly on” the subject of “AnimalsRights.”!° Salt ignored Styles’s contribution. The book by Forster he describes as an “excellent treatise” by “a distinguished naturalist and astronomer whohad taken an active part in the foundingof the Animals’ FriendSociety.”'!° No doubt waryof the carnivorous judgments of theSPCA’s boardof examiners, Forster wasa little guarded in his statements but nonetheless subtly pressed the case for vegetarianismin his section on “The Cruelty Connected with the Culinary Art”: Somepersons in Europe carrytheir notions about cruelty to animals so far as not to allowthemselves to eat animal food. Manyveryintelligent men have, at different times of their lives, abstained wholly from flesh; and thistoo,

with very considerable advantage to their health ... All these facts, taken collectively, point to a period inthe progress ofcivilisation when menwill cease to slay their fellow-mortals in the animal world for food... The returnofthis paradisical state maybe rather remote; but in the meantime we ought to

make the experiment, andset an example of humanitybyabstaining,if not fromall, at least from those articles of cookery with which anyparticular

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cruelty may be connected,suchas veal, whenthe calvesare killed in the ordinaryway.'!!

Whether guarded or not, the rather staid and conservative SPCArepre-

sentatives on the examining board — the Right Honourable Earl of Carnarvon, the Honourable and Reverend B.W. Noel, and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd,

MP — preferred a work, partly plagiarized, by a Church of England flesheating reverend doctor to one by a Catholic abstainer.'!” If the eighteenth century was the age of preaching without practising andthefirst halfof the nineteenthcenturywas the era ofadvocacycoupled

withpractical responsibility, together with a minimallevelof organization,

although somewhatincreasing as the decades progressed, the late 1840s onward witnessedthe first large-scale coordination ofethical vegetarian

advocacyand practice in recorded humanhistory.

If the eighteenth century had been the age of Sensibility and the French

Revolution had then given birth to the age of action, the middle of the

nineteenth century witnessed the coming ofthe age oforganization. Tech-

nological and economic innovation —the canals, railways, factory system of

production, and urbanization, for example — hadbrought abouteffective communication amongfar larger numbers of people than ever before and the ability to co-operate over far greater distances than ever before. Modernity broughtall the hitherto unknownills of anomic novelty, butit also allowed for co-operative accomplishments on a scale hitherto beyond imagination.

Although numerous analysts have foundthe origins of the Vegetarian

Society in 1847 to stem from Rev. William Cowherd (1763-1816) and the

Salford Swedenborgians ofthe early years of the nineteenthcentury, it is appropriate also to lookfarther backto Shelley, Ritson, Lambe, Newton, Phillips, Gompertz, andthe like in LondonandBracknell ofthe sameera. Decidedly, this secular orientation wasdecisive in the long run andlikely had considerablygreater influence even in the short run than is commonly recognized. This is not to say that Cowherd’s co-religionists were without immediate relevance. Indeed, they were vital. But the burgeoningethical aspects of the movementreflect the significant attitudinal changes that were underway in the Enlightenment-influenced cultural context of the early nineteenth centuryas witnessedparticularly in the thoughtof Percy Bysshe Shelley and Sir RichardPhillips. Even the most evangelical of the numerous newreligious denominations acquired an increasingly secular 267

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orientation, although, of course, they neither recognized nor acknowledgedthat orientation. In fact,manyof theincreasinrelysecular aspirations of the nineteenth century were expressed in organizedreligion. Of more immediate relevance to the foundation, alongside the Salford contingent,

were the Alcott House followers ofJames Pierrepont Greaves (1777-1842),

whose communal home was namedfor Bronson Alcott, himself a vegetar-

ian and a respected transcendentalist resident visitor from the United States. Greaves had foundeda vegetarian community on the outskirts of London, where he also promotedhis radical educational and political

ideals. Together, the Salfordians and the followers of Greaves were instrumental in the foundation of the new VegetarianSociety, although Greaves

himself died a fewyears before the society cametofruition, as had Cowherd over a quarter-centuryearlier. It was left to their followers to conceive

and construct the society. If Cowherd was, in religion, a devotee of Swe-

denborgian mysticism, he was not without an earnest secular reformist side, dispensing hot vegetable soup to the Salford poor andpreaching the inadequacies ofexisting institutions andpolicies. In fact, the pantheist Cow-

herdand Pestalozzian educational reformer Greaves, knownas the “sacred”

socialist, were not unworthyfollowers of the radical tradition espoused by some oftheir immediate forerunners. Indeed, radical secular and noncon-

formist Christian opinion were fusedin theorigins ofthe society. Socialism

was a commonhomefor vegetarians. Along with Greaves and, ofcourse, George Bernard Shaw, we find, for example, the classicist HenrySalt, the

theosophist Annie Besant, and the utopian Edward Carpenter embracing the socialist and vegetarian causes simultaneously. The Fabian socialists Sidney andBeatrice Webb, joint authors of History ofTrade Unionism (1894) andthe nine-volume English Local Government(1906-29), were also vege-

tarians. Beatrice described herselfas an “anti-flesh-fish-ege-alcohol-cofteeand-sugareater.”' She imposedherfrugal diet successively on the reluctant Sidneyand ontheir disappointed dinner guests. The fine poet and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, Rupert Brooke, who was killed in the Aegean in the First World War, was also a Fabian whose “socialism,” Margaret Lav-

ingtontells us, “was accompaniedbya passing phase of vegetarianism.” Cowherdand his fellows — a congregation of some four hundredatits

height —reflect, however, in part an asceticism of a dyingera, that of Swe-

denborg, whose concernwasto achievespiritual unity withthedeity. It was not that asceticism was moribund, merelythat the principles usually associated with asceticism were promoted increasingly on secular grounds —

hence Methodist, Baptist, and Salvation Army opposition to alcohol be-

causeofits practicaleftects on health, enjoyment, employment, andability

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to provide for one’s family. Noris this to say that no nominally Swedenborgianinspiration lay behind theorigins ofthe Vegetarian Society, merely that those inspirations were moresecularthanascetic, evenif the Swedenborgian mystical systemstill appealed to some. To be sure, Joseph Brother-

ton, Member of Parliament for Salford and an original member of Cowherd’s Swedenborgian Bible-Christian Church, chaired the founding

meeting of the Vegetarian Society at the Northwood Villa vegetarian hospital in Ramsgate in 1847, and James Simpson (1812-1859), likewise a member of the Bible-Christian Church, was elected the society’s first president. But many ofthe other 140 presentat the first convention hadno connection withthe Bible-Christian Church. Choosing Ramsgate for the inaugu-

da

ral meetingprovedanearlyinstance ofthe latercommonpractice ofholding conventionsatseasideresorts. It lies ontheIsle of Thanet in East Kent and was oneof the most popular seaside townsofthe nineteenth century. The townwas a couple of hundred milescloser to Alcott HousethantoSalford, a long distance to travel in those days, andofgreater conveniencefor the

Greaves than the Cowherdcontingent. Moreover, Cowherd, the vegetarian

inspiration behindthe church, was long dead, as we have noted. A number of his congregation, and indeed someof those most committedto vegetarianism, had left for America, and the influence of the Bible-Christian

Church does not seem to have been at all pervasive in English vegetarian circles. Moreover, any remnantsof influence possessed bythe BibleChristian Church waned as the society became increasingly concerned withtheethical aspects of keeping animals free from harm. In his address to the assembledthrong at the founding meeting, Brotherton arguedthat eating flesh was injurious to humanhappiness andhealth andthat the contamination of flesh foods was likewise damagingto the body. Althoughit wasnotthe most prominentpartofhis speech, he also pointed towardthe future in indicating that it was unnecessary, and byimplicationunjust, to kill animalsfor food. Ifthe ethical argument was notcentralatfirst, it

alreadyhadits place, and it was a rapidly growing place. By 1883 whensociety member Howard Williams's 400-page volume onthe historyofcontributions to vegetarianism was published,the title he gave it ~ The Ethics of Diet — was witness to the trend that had become the dominantreality. ‘Thatthere was a significant remnant ofSalford Bible-Christian influence is seen in the first annual meeting of the society in 1848, when there were

478 members; 232 attended theclosing dinner held atHayward’s Hotel in Manchester (Salford and Manchester are contiguous), near which, in Altrin-

cham, the societyeventually estsabiits permanent home.Salford’s geo-

graphical influence wassignificantas hometo the Bible-Christians.However, ort

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Brotherton died in 1857 and Simpson in 1859, thus diminishing most re-

maining ties with the Salford Swedenborgians, tenuousas theyalready were,

other thannotably through Brotherton’s wife, author ofA NewSystemofVegetable Cookery (1821), a Bible-Christian Church adherent, anda vegetarian

advocate until her dying day. Ifthe role of the Greaves contingent inthe origins ofthe society had beenthelesserrole, it was nonetheless not negligible.

In 1849, Isaac Pitman (1813-1897), the creator of a notedsystem of shorthand

that remained in commonsecretarial use until the invention ofthe recording and dictation machines, spoke at the society annual general meeting, declaring he had been a vegetarianfor eleven years. On the otherside of the Atlantic, the Bible-Christian Church remained extremelyinfiuential throughout the nineteenth century. William Metcalfe, along with his wife, Susanna,

James Clark, and some forty others had emigrated to Americain 1817, and the Bible-Christian Church they founded there contributed significantly to nascentorganized vegetarianism in America. Indeed, Metcalfe,if he did not

convert the primaryfigures of Sylvester Graham and WilliamAlcott to the vegetarian alimentary program,at least confirmedthemin it. In general, on the part of the majority, the tendencywasto think ofveg-

etarians as decided misfits and oddballs, although more with begrudging

admiration and supercilious condescension than withoutright hostility — for example,Anna Bonus Kingsford,vice presidentofthe Vegetarian Society,commentedonthefavourable Europeanreceptionof her Perfect Way in Diet in the preface to an English edition.’ Nonetheless, as Harriet Ritvo observed: “Rejection of the national diet smackedof profounderdissents;

if beef-eaters were self-classified as British, abstainers might belong in more disturbingcategories.”* Vegetarianism thus smackedofbeingalittle unpatriotic! And the more conservative, especially those whoseinterests and occupations were threatened, could still be quite antagonistic. Thus, the

satiricalmagazine Punch remarked about the Vegetarian Society conference dinner in 1848:

We do not quite understand the principle upon whichthese gentlemen

object to animal food,butif healthis their object, we do notthinkthat will be promotedby the mixture of messes they sat downtothe other dayat Manchester... There is somethingve very -y infantilein the pretended simplicity of this fare, for none but aparcel of overgrownchildren would sit downseriously to make a meal uponsweetstuft. We lookupon the Vegetarian humbug as a mere pretext for indulginga juvenile appetite for somethingnice, and we are really ashamedof those old boys whocontinue, at their time oflife, to display such a puerile taste for pies and puddings.’

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Nonetheless, a Victorian cartoondepicted what vegetarians were always fond of repeating: that manyvery large and robust animals were bytheir very nature vegetarian. Undera sketchof a caged zoo hippopotamusregarding a femalevisitor, the hippopotamusremarks, under the captionof “A Gentle Vegetarian”: “Morning, Miss!Whod ever think, lookingat us two, that you devoured Bullocks and Sheep, and /nevertook;anythitng but rice?”® Perhaps Punch’s defamatory remarks were more of an exception than the rule, although, in America, Sylvester Graham was accosted, ineffec-

tively it would appear, by someirate butcher and baker apprentices, maddened (or given a convenientexcusefor preexisting bellicose tendencies)

that his “raw food” advocacy would deprive them of their livelihoods.Itis to be notedthat the writer of the Punch report had a misconceptionofthe vegetarian diet, although it must be conceded that what passed for vegetarian fare in those days differs fromthe kinds of meals most vegetarians would prepare today. Moreover, the author seemed quite incapable of imagining that a memberof the human species might eschew flesh out of respect for the interest ofother species, even thoughthis was the era in which animal experimentation was almostabolished in| sritain. But thenthis was the age par excellencein which evenaltruistic ethics were commonlydressed inself-interested garb — enlightenedself-interest was, as a philosophical principle, often the best that could commonlybe hoped for. Perfectibility was being replaced by a doctrine dominatedbytherole ofself-interest. Health, environment, and animal ethics were on the agendaatthathis-

torical inaugural meeting in Ramsgate: flesh was harmful and vegetables were beneficial, a great deal more could be producedfrom landwith vegetable production than that used for animal grazing, and Dr. Charles Lamb andhis lay disciple John Frank Newtonwere quoted onhealth and Plutarch and Porphyry on animal ethics.’ For the first decade or so, while Brotherton and Simpson were at the helm, the society prospered and increased in membership. But by 1870 the membership had declined to 125, in part because increasing bourgeois wealth made flesh more readily affordable. The era of conspicuous consumption and status through consumption andostentation had arrived, even thoughstalwarttraditionalists were appalled. And it was the bourgeoisie that provided the Vegetarian Society with its effective membership. The poor had little interest in an organization whose principles were those by which theylived predominantly and bynecessity. Atypical expression was that of North Welshconstruction malcontents shortly before Waterloo: “we cannot workwithout meat andwe cannot get meat without money.”® As longas they could get sufficient money, they would use it to purchase flesh. Usually, there were

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insufficient funds. Around 1872 the British government conducted a study

on the diet ofagricultural labourers in Europe and determinedthat theyate verylittle flesh. Only in Pomerania and England were flesh foods commonlya part of the regimen, and then only sparsely, Pomeranians eating meat three times a week, England being notedfor its regional differences.

Success meant acquiring more ofthe desirable, not renouncing what one had. In Belgium and Scotland theyate alittle bacon but otherwise no meat. In Prussia and Saxony they ate flesh only on feast days. In the Netherlands, they fed onalittle fish but otherwise no meat. In Bavaria, Italy, Ireland, Sweden, and Russia no meat was consumed. In Spain and

Switzerland flesh was a luxury.’ Bythe beginning of the twentieth century the English working-class diet was a lot worse and the Scottish workingclass diet certainly no better. While the apparent vigour androbustness of the labourers were something to which the vegetarian could point to demonstrate that flesh was unnecessary, they could atthis early stage expectlittle support from the labouringclass. On the whole, the workers desiredto partake ofthe flesh they were denied, not to derideit. It is curious, then, to find that in 1853 the membership was said to be 889, half of whom were

reported as labourers and tradesmen. It seems unlikelythe proportionis accurate for so early a date, and perhaps it was broadcast to encourage diversity and expanse of membership. To the extent that the proportion might express a partial truth — and surely noaccurate occupational figures were kept — it would be largely a consequence of associated membership in a religiousor political congregation nowdrawnto the new societyorbecause of the frugal economyor health benefits claimed for vegetarianism. Still, fromthe early years of the nineteenth century, the working men’s movement stimulated some degree of interest in organizations, such as theHampden

clubs, designed to improve the labourer’s lot.Andthe sixty thousand who marchedat Peterloo in 1819 demonstrated an emerging consciousness. >

FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN

In 1873 newlife was breathedinto the ailing organization whenProfessor Francis William Newman(1805-1897), younger brother of Cardinal Henry

Newman, became president of the Vegetarian Society, having become a memberfive years earlier. Professor of Latin and co-founder of Bedford College for women,later a part of the University of London, FrancisNewmannot only broughtcharismatic prestige andsocialstatus to the society

~ the novelist George Eliot, once a geometrystudent of Newman,referred

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to him as “our blessed St. Francis,” whose “soul was a blessed yea,” and

thought him a “renowned” and “famous” author — but also infused this prestige and status with a decided orientation toward animalethics, one that was never to wane.'? Newmanstated in his Essays on Diet: That the first thought on discovering a newcreature should be “isit nice to eat?” is to me shocking and debasing. What is called the love ofsport has becomealove ofkilling for the displayof skill, and converts maninto the tyrant ofall other animals; yet this arose out of a desire of eating their flesh — a desire which cannot be blamedon that state of barbarism in whichlittle other flesh food was to be had. But when withthe growthofcivilization otherfoodis easier to get, when bread has won upon flesh-meat,it is evil to struggle for the morebarbarous state.Does notthe love of flesh inflame the love of killing, teach disregard for animal suffering, and prepare men for ferocity against men? We cannot blame the butcherif he becomeperfectly callous to the sufferings of animals. His trade not onlytrains himto callousness, but demandsit

of him: andthis is equally true ofthe vivisector: Hence no security whatever, in either case, is possible against any amount of wanton cruelty.The man whobypractice steals his own heart must lose his discernment of animal suffering with his concernforit. We must admit into our moral treatises the question ofthe rights ofanimals; and notonlythe limits ofour rights over them, but other topics hence

arising. When a man muststarve unless he kill a deer or a bison, no one blames the slaughter; butit does notfollow that whenwe have plenty ofwholesome food without killing, we are at liberty to kill for mere gratification ofthe palate.To nourisha taste for killing is morallyevil; to be accustomedtoinflict agony on harmless animals by wounding or maiming them without

remorse, prepares men’s hearts for othercruelty."!

With Newman, vegetarianism andanimal protection are irremediably and indivisibly interrelated. He lectured to the society membership on the beneficial environmental effects ofvegetarianism and complainedto them of the grievous problems of turning arable to pastoral land, but first and foremost his concern was withvegetarianism’s potentialto curb suffering to animals.!? Newman's presidency resulted in renewed interest in the Vegetarian

Society. By 1880, the membership had topped2,000, and suchimpetus was

instilled that, according to Vice President Anna Bonus Kingsford, the

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membership had climbed past 3,000 by around the turn of the century." If this figure sounds high,it is given credence byHarriet Ritvo’s equally surprising claim, based on the figure provided in Charles W. Forward’s Practical Vegetarian Recipes (1891), that “three thousand members ofthe

Vegetarian Society attendedits conference in 1881.” '* This membership was in part, no doubt, due to the association of vegetarianism with otherrelevant causes andalso due to overlapping memberships. For example, the president of the Food Reform Society in 1885, the Reverend W.J. Monk, was also avice president of the Vegetarian Society.And as Hilda Kean has reported: “According to the feminist and socialist Charlotte Despard, giying her presidential address to the Vegetarian Society, “Vegetarianism is pre-eminently a woman's question because it will do away with the most degrading part of her work.’””'? One wonders to what extent the future developmentof vegetarianism was hindered bylater technological developments in the kitchen that diminished “the most degrading part” of the work, which was then generally, and by somestill is, thought to be “womans work.” The early Vegetarian Society suffered from internal divisions. At first, the Manchester-based organization wasthe sole VegetarianSociety, although there were numerousindividuals from the metropolis associated with the Manchester Vegetarian Society via such groups as the Dietetic Reform Society (1875) and the London(later National) Food ReformSociety (1877),

titular indications that some balked already at the “vegetarian” designation, however much Newmantried to dress the “vegetarian” title in acceptable guise with a spurious explanation of the term's “vigorous” origins.'° The London Vegetarian Society became a branch of the Manchester Societyin 1885, but it was not tolast. As Colin Spencer described the breach, “Rela-

tions between London and Manchester became somewhatstrainedin the

1880s. London wanted to be a vigorous nationwide reforming society,

while Manchester thoughtithad beenthat for some time and Londonshould merely be a branch ofthe central society at Manchester. In 1888 the London groupsevered all ties with the original society and the London Vegetarian Society was founded.”!” The separation of the London and Manchester societies was to continue for almost a century, not to be reunited until 1969, their respective journals having become one a decadeearlier.

Even afew from society's upper echelons were attracted to the vegetarian diet. The widowof the British ambassador to Vienna, Lady Paget, boasted ofthe beneficial effects of her vegetarian lifestyle on her mental health: “I have experienced a delightful sense of repose andfreedom,a kind of superior elevation above things material.”'* The former foxhunter Lady

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Florence Dixie (1857-1905) was converted to the cause, bemoaning herpast shooting practices: Whatis it but deliberate massacre when thousands andtens of thousands of tame, hand-reared creatures are everyyear literally driven into the jaws of death and mown downinapeculiarly brutal manner? A perfect roarof guns fills the air; louder tap andyell the beaters, while abovethe din can be heard the heart-rending cries of woundedharesand rabbits, some ofwhich canbe seen dragging themselves away, with legs broken, or turning round and

round in their agonybefore theydie! Andthe pheasants! Theyare onevery side, some rising, some dropping; somelying dead, but the great majority

fluttering on the ground wounded; some with both wingsbrokenandaleg; others merely winged, running to hide; others mortally wounded, gasping out their last breath amidst the hellish uproar which surrounds them. And

thisis called “sport”!

Vegetarian practice allowed Lady Dixie to expiate her guilt. Far fromthe unhealthy dishes reported of the Vegetarian Society annual meeting by Punch, LadyDixie lived on two meals a day, consisting in the morning of watermelon, banana, almonds,raisins, and dates, together with milkand egg whites, followed by pineapple with milk and egg whites inthe afternoon.”°

HOWARD WILLIAMS

One of the members of the London Vegetarian Society was Howard Williams (1837-1931), graduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and author of The Ethics ofDiet (1883). It can be seen from the very positive and commendatoryremarks of Williams aboutNewmanshortlybefore the breach between the London and Manchester societies became final that the separation was not irrevocable. Two factors were ofconsiderable signihcance in the breach: one wasthe desire of mighty Londonnotto be subordinated to provincial Manchester; the second wasthefear that the reforms introduced by Newmanof the Manchester society would weakenthe principles of the organization,especially the category of associate membership for only partial vegetarians. The new Manchester president, elected in 1884, another Professor of Latin, this time J.E.B. Mayor from Cambridge

University - whom Williams also admired — was not deemed likely to tread the more radical paths desired by the youngerandless staid London contingent.*!

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The words of Williams reflect the pervasive ethical orientation ofthe vegetarian movement bythe later nineteenthcentury:

The principles of Dietary Reform are widely and deeply founded uponthe teachingsof (1) Comparative Anatomyand Physiology; (2) Humaneness in the two-fold meaning of Refinementof Living and what is commonlycalled “Humanity; (3) National Economy; (4) Social Reform; (5) Domestic and

Individual Economy; (6) Hygienic Philosophy... To the present writer, the humanitarian argument appears to be of double weight; for it is founded uponthe irrefragable principles of Justice and Compassion — universal Justice and untversal Compassion — the twoprinciples most essential in anysys-

temof ethics worth the name. That this argument seemsto have so limited

an influence [in societyat large] ~ even with persons otherwise humanely disposed, andoffiner feeling with respect to their own, andalso, in ageneral way, to otherspecies can be attributed only to the deadening powerofcustom and habit, oftraditional prejudice, and educational bias. If they could be broughtto reflect upon the simple ethics of the question, divesting their minds of the distorting media, it must appear in alight very different from that in which they accustom themselves to considerit... The step whichleaves for ever behindit the barbarism ofslaughtering our fellow beings, theMammals andBirds, is, it is superfluous to add, the most

importantofall.~

Williams followedShelley in the belief that “the natural form and organisation ofthe original types, the parent stocks of the domesticated Ox,

Sheep, Swine [are] now very remote from the native grandeur andvigour of the Bison, theMouflon, and the wild Boar.”*°

Williams's humanitarian concern for animals is expressedin the fact that he was a co-founder of theHumanitarian League with HenrySalt and a board memberof the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society, insti-

tuted by one ofthe leading anti-vivisectionists, Louise Lind-af-Hageby.*4

Assuming Williams to be representative of the London Vegetarian Society,

and to all intents and purposes he seems tohave been, if Manchester and Londonwere nowtaking different steps towardvegetarian goals,it is clear that the ethical principle of protection of animals from suffering was the primary mover in both organizations, even though their principles were extended well beyond the concern withsuffering to encompass a whole

wayoflife. However, some of Newman's reformsdid not sit well with the

Londoncontingent. Newman,as noted, hadcreated a categoryofassociate membership —that is, those who were moving toward vegetarianism. In

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addition, Newmanwanted thesocietytorestrict itself to abstention from flesh alone, whereas the LondonDietetic Reform Society, for example,also required abstention from alcohol and tobacco. Some wishedto require the use of no condiments.Newman and Manchester were seento lack the requisite purity of both spirit and practice. One important change was taking place that was ofsignificant interest to bothManchester and London: The lower middle class was blossoming, andthe age ofthe self-improving working man was underway — the Education Act of 1871 was having aninfluence. [hevegetarian societies had newclasses to which they could appeal. The membership claims of a half-centuryearlier were nowable to berealized. THe Bootus, ANNIE WoopBESANT, ANNA BONUS KINGSFORD, AND EDWARD MAITLAND

In the spirit of economy, although never connected with the Vegetarian Society, the Salvation Armys founders andleaders, William (1829-1912)

andCatherine Booth (1829-1890), became vegetarians — Williaminprinciple but not in fact — and abstainers fromalcohol because theysawinthe

former a methodbywhichthe poorcouldbe fedand inthe latter amethod by which the poor mightescape their precarious position. Oftentravelling, a factor that was deleterious to a vegetarian regimen, William Booth for-

sook complete vegetarian practice but notits promotion. However, his son, Bramwell Booth, became aconsistent devotee. Bramwell’s wife, Florence Bramwell Booth, helped to eliminate flesh from the Salvation Army's meals

andsupported the Humanitarian League against Cruel Sports, a successor to the Animals’ Friend Society. She also denouncedvivisection.

Another prominentvegetarian not connectedwith the Vegetarian Society was Annie Wood Besant (1847-1933), who was portrayed as Raina in Shaw's Arms andthe Man. pe Besant admired Shawnotforhis socialism alone but because he “preferred starving his body to starving his conscience.”*? Reputedlya great orator, a controversialsocial andpolitical reformer, separated from her clergyman husband, deprivedof her children by the judicial systemin 1879 as a consequenceof her atheism and unconventionality, advocate of birth control (thenillegal), she embraced theosophyin 1889. She moved to India, founded the Central Hindu College at Benares, becamepresident ofthe Theosophical Society, instituted the Indian Home

Rule League, and becamepresident of the Indian National Congress. A formidable woman! And one who was an earnest advocate for animals,

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embracingthetransmigration ofsouls and castigatingthe sin offlesh con-

sumption: “[Those who eat meat] are responsible for all the pain that

grows out ofmeat-eating, and whichis necessitated bythe use ofsentient animals as food; not only the horrors of the slaughterhouse, but also the

preliminaryhorrors of the railwaytrafhic, of the steamboatand shiptrafhe; all the starvation and the thirst and the prolongedmisery of fear which these unhappy creatures have to pass through forthe gratification ofthe appetite of man... All painacts as a record against humanityand slackens andretards human growth.’”° AnnaBonus Kingsford (1846-1888), a vice president of the Vegetarian Society, as previously mentioned, was educated inParis as a physician and, muchto the consternation ofher professors, was able to complete herstudies successfully without havingparticipated in vivisection. Her thesis was in effect a vegetarian manifesto. It was translated into English, by Kingsford herself, as Perfect Way in Diet: A TreatiseAdvocating a Returnto the Natural andAncient Food ofOur Race. She didnot, she wrote, study medicine for the benefit of humankind: “I do not love men and women. I dislike them too much to care to do them any good. They seem to me to be my natural enemies. It is not for them that I am taking up medicine andscience, not to cure their ailments, but for the animals, and for knowledge

generally. I want to rescue the animals fromcrueltyand injustice,which are for menot theonlysins. And I can't love the animals and those whosystematically ill-treat them.”’’ Ifshe was horrified byvivisection, she was no less inimicalto flesh consumption: No man who aimsat makinghislife an harmonious whole, pure, complete, and harmless to others, can endure to gratify an appetite at the cost of the daily suffering and bloodshed ofhis inferiors in degree, and of the moral degradation ofhis ownkind. I know not whichstrikes me most forciblyin the ethics ofthis question — the imjustice, the cruelty, orthe nastiness offlesheating. [he injustice is to the butchers, the crueltyis to the animals,the nastiness concerns the consumer. With regardto this last in particular, I greatly wonderthat persons of refinement — aye, even of decency ~— do notfeel

insulted on being offered as a matter of course, portions ofcorpsesas food! Such comestibles might possibly be tolerated during sieges, or other privation of proper viands in exceptional circumstances, but in the midst of a civilised community able to commanda profusion of sound anddelicious foods, it ought to be deemedanaffront toset deadfleshbefore a guest.*°

Despite her claimed lack of interest in humanity, Kingsforddeclared it

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her dutyto civilization through the advocacyofvegetarianismto raise those, suchas butchers anddrovers, out of their moral degeneracy.

Aspeaker at a meetingof the Food Reform Society noted the incongru-

ence of omnivorous habits among animaladvocates and reformers of animal-

welfare legislation: “It seems to me absurdto prosecute a poor uneducated donkeydriver forill treating his beast and complacently to sit down day after day to sirloin of beef andlegs of mutton.”’? No doubt Kingsford wouldhave concurred wholeheartedly, as would have her collaborator, Ed-

ward Maitland (1824-1897). With Kingsford, as with Besant, Williams,

Newman,andthelike, we hear a thoroughly modernvoice. Edward Mait-

land was equally convinced thathumansate meat in defiance oftheir nature

andtheir morality, evenif his voice wasina littlemore antiquated mode

than that of someofhis fellows:

We hold that neither by his physical nor his moral constitution does man belong to the orderof the carnivora orof the omnivora, but is purely frugiv-

orous; andin this we have the assent ofall competent physiologists ... Hence we consider that in accepting the conditions of Nature as our guide, we do act but rationally.Adding to reason, experience, we have onourside,first the

profoundest wisdomofall ages and countries from the remotest antiquity — the wisdom, namely, ofall those really radical reformers, of whomaTris-

megius, a Pythagoras, and a Buddhaare typical examples, whose aimit has been to reform, not institutions merely, but men themselves, and whose first

steps toward the perfectionmentof their disciples was to insist on a total renunciationofflesh as food, on the groundthat neither physically, intellectually, morally, nor spiritually can manbethe best thatit is in him to be save when nourished by the purest substances, takenat first hand from Nature, and undeteriorated bypassage through organisms, and eschewingviolence and bloodshedas a meansofsustenance orgratification.””

Reading Maitland is almostlike reading a representative of the mideighteenth rather than the late nineteenth century, butit is a matter more of style and tone thanof substance that differentiates a Maitland from a Kingsford. HENRY SALT

Anoutstanding classics scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, Henry Stephens Shakespear Salt (1851-1939) went onto teach at Eton — “cannibals

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in cap and gown,” he termedhis colleagues — until he met with disfavour

for his advocacynot merelyofthe poetry and prose of Percy Bysshe Shelley but also of “Shelleyism,” a doctrine that, for Salt, included his protosocial-

ist anarchism as much as his vegetarianism.*! Three years earlier, fellow socialist, vegetarian, and Eton teacher J.L. Joynes was also made unwelcome at Etonfor publishing a book in which he confessed to having been arrested, unjustifiably, in Irelandas a suspected revolutionary Fenian. The headmaster of Eton, Dr. Warre, attributedhis resignation to a subversive amalgamofsocialism and /égumes. Salt was closely connected with Joynes, having married hissister, Kate, in 1879. Saltretired voluntarily from Etonin1885toa life of simplicity in Surrey, where he wrote some forty books, twelve of which were on animal rights

and vegetarianism, the most memorable being Seventy Years among Savages

(1921). The savages werehis fellow Europeans. He also wrote A Pleafor Vegetarianism (1886), which, along with Shelley's first vegetarian essay, was instrumental in persuading Gandhi to becomeanethical ratherthan a cultural vegetarian, and his piece de résistance, Animals’ Rights Considered in Relationto SocialProgress (1892). Gandhi acknowledged,in atalk he gave to

the Vegetarian Society, at which Salt was present, that “it was MrSalt’s

book, A Pleafor Vegetarianism, which showedme why, apart froma hereditary habit, and apart from myadherence to a vowadministered to me by

my mother, it was right to be a vegetarian.He showed me whyit was a moral duty incumbenton vegetarians not tolive uponfellow-animals.”* Gandhi was of Vaishnavacaste from Gujarat, and on returning to India was accusedbyfellow F lindus of trying to impose Western ethical norms ontraditional Hindu vegetarianlore. Salt’s arguments for vegetarianism were those that have been rehearsed frequentlyin these pages, but he parades them always withanovel banner. What distinguishes Salt ter alia from so manyothersis his eloquence. In Seventy Years among Savages, he displays his attitude toward harming any

other being, whether for foodor otherwise: “All sentient life is akin ... he whoinjures a fellow being is doing injury to himself.” This is a fact of whichhe remindshis readers in verse: The motive that you'll find moststrong, The simple rule, the short and long,

For doing animals no wrong. e oe. 33 Is th is % E.ha f é@ WoOadY

In The Logic of Vegetarianism (1899) he comments:

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Behind the mere name ofthe reformed diet, whatever name be employed (and, as we have seen, “vegetarian” at present holds the field), lies the far more importantreality. Whatis the raison détre, the real purport ofvegetar-

ianism? Certainly not any 4 priori assumption,thatall animal substances,as such, are unfit for humanfood; for thoughit is quite probable that the move-

ment will ultimately lead us to the disuse of animal products, vegetarianism

is not based onanysuchhardandfast formula, but on the conviction, sug-

gested in thefirst place byinstinctive feeling, but confirmedby reason and experience, that there are certain grave evils inseparable tromthe practice of flesh-eating. The aversionto flesh food is not chemical, but moral, social,

hygienic. Believing as we do that the grosser forms of diet not onlycause a vast amount of unnecessarysuffering to the animals, but also react most injuriously on the health and morals of mankind, we advocate their gradual discontinuance: andso longas this protestis successfully launched, the mere

name by whichitis called is a matter of minor concern. But here onthis practical issue, as before on the nominalissue, we comeinto conflict withthe superior person who, with a smile of supercilious compassion, cannot see why wepoorascetics shouldthus afflict ourselves without cause.

Thereafter occurs a conversation between the so-called superior person

anda vegetarianthat covers the distinctions between eating eggandeating

roast beef andbetween eating nonhumananimals and cannibalism,as well as the appreciationof“the superior person” for the consistency ofwhat we

would nowcall a vegan, but rather less for the inconsistency ofthe cus-

tomaryvegetarian, culminating in the assumptionby the superior person that the reasons for vegetarianismare ascetic. Salt proceeds to debunk the idea that has played a prominentrole in vegetarianism in previous centuries, especially theMiddle Ages: Asceticism! Such is the strange idea with which, in many minds, ourprinciples are associated. It would be impossible to take a more erroneous viewof modern vegetarianism; andit is only through constitutional or deliberate blindness that such a misconception can arise. Howcan we conveyto our flesh-eating friends, in polite yet sufficientlyforcible language,that their diet is an abominationto us, andthat our “abstinence,”far frombeingascetic,is

much more nearlyallied to the joy that neverpalls? Is the farmeranascetic because looking overinto his evil-smelling pigsty, he has no inclination to swill himself from the same troughas the swine? And why, then, shouldit be

countedasceticismon ourpart to refuse, onprecisely the same grounds, to eat the swine themselves? No; our opponents mustclearly recognize, if they

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wish to formanycorrect notionofvegetarianism, thatit is based, not on asceticism, but aestheticism, not on the mortification, but the gratification

ofthe higher pleasures.

Weconclude, then, that the cause which vegetarians have atheart is the outcome, not of some barren academic formula, but out ofpractical rea-

soned conviction that flesh food, especially butcher’s meat, is a harmful and barbarousdiet ... The raison d@tre of vegetarianism is the growing sense that flesh-eating is a cruel, disgusting, unwholesome, andwastefulpractice, and

that it behoves humaneandrational persons, disregarding the commoncant about “consistency” and“all or nothing,” to reformtheir diet to what extent and with what speedtheycan.**

Increasingly, even the “superior persons” came to realize that modern vegetarianism customarily grows out ofthe horror of slaughtering innocent animals for human consumptionrather thanoutof anydesire forselfdenial in andforitself.Moreover, Salt is concernedto express, in line with Newman's preferences for the Vegetarian Society in Manchester, the increasingly modern viewthat vegetarianism can involve a process towarda goal. During the fin desiécle years, “aestheticism’” was the new watchword.

Accordingto Oscar Wilde, the informal leader ofthe aesthetic movement,

aestheticism implied a world that was “judged by the beautyofits artifice rather than by its moral value.” For a manlike Salt, aestheticism existed within the realm of the moral.

EDWARD CARPENTER

Born into an upper-middle-class family in Brighton, East Sussex, Edward Carpenter(1844-1929) attended Cambridge University and took holyorders in 1869. In 1874 he renouncedboth orthodoxreligionand civilizedsociety.

In their place he proposed asimple, primitive wayoflife that he sketched in the delightfully entitled Czvilisation: Its Cause and Cure, which went through seventeen editions between 1889 and 1921. Indeed, Carpenter,

knownas the “Noble Savage,” a second Rousseaubut far more consistent in his abstinence from flesh, became a minorcult figure with aprimitivist coterie of followers. But he also hadhis detractors. This “celebrated apostle of sandals,” as Michael Holroyd called him, was thought by George Bernard Shawto be far from a “Noble Savage.” Instead, he was described by Shawas “an ultra-civilized impostor.”*? But then Shawwasriled that Salt’s wife, Kate, showed a decidedpreference for Carpenter over himself.

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The essence of Carpenter's Rousseauian argumentlayin the advocacyof living a rural, vegetarian lifestyle in which we would learn tolive slowly and simply, in accord with our natural animal being, as do other animals. In

Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure, one of several books he wrote, Carpenter shows howthelife ofnonhumananimalsis superior to that ofhumans, and he advocates a vegetarian diet with inclinations toward a quasi-fruitarian regimen:

It may be noted, too, that foodofthe seed kind — by whichI meanall manner offruits, nuts, tubers, grains, eggs etc. (and | mayinclude milkinits various forms ofbutter, cheese, curds, and so forth), not only containbytheir nature the elements oflife in their most condensed forms, but havethe addi-

tional advantage that they can be appropriated withoutinjuryto anyliving creature — for even the cabbage mayinaudibly scream when tornupbythe roots and boiled, but the strawberryplant asks us to takeofits fruit, and paints it red expressly that we maysee and devourit!°°

Carpenter seems to believe that moderncivilization is an intermediate stage, perhaps a necessary one, betweenthe Golden Age ofthe past and a perhaps even significantly grander Golden Ageof a not too distant future. His is as much a millenarian dream as those ofthe p/ilosophes during the Enlightenment: Andwhenthe Civilisation period has passed away, the old Nature-religion — perhaps greatly grown — will come back. The immensestreamofreligiouslife which beginning far beyond the horizonofearliest history has been deflected into metaphysical and other channels — ofJudaism, Christianity,Buddhism,

and the like — during the historical period, will once more gather itself together to float onits bosom withall the arks andsacredvessels of human progress. Man will once more fee/his unity with the animals, with themountains and the streams, with the earth itself and the slowlapse ofthe constellation, not as an abstract dogmaofScience and Theology, but asaliving and

ever-presentfact.°”

The primitivist radicalism ofthe Carpenter kind has been both benefcial and detrimental to vegetarianism: beneficial in that it addeda novel andpersuasive dimensionto the vegetarian cause; and detrimentalin that it gave sustenancetothe viewofthe vegetarian as a strange, unkempt, sandle-clad breed beyond the pale of normalsociety. The notionof the sentience of vegetables raised by Carpenter was also

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addressed by Samuel Butler in his utopian novel Evewhon(1872), Butler reachingverydifferent conclusions fromCarpenter. In successive chapters on the rights of animals and the rights of vegetables, Butler explains that the Erewhonians had tried vegetarianism, but as the arguments for vege-

tarianism could be applied equally to plants, they argued, they resumed

flesh eating. Moreover, Butler adds a friendly warning to vegetarians:

“Those ... who preached to them about the enormity of eating meat, were an unattractive academic folk, and though they overawedall but the bolder youths, there were few whodid notin their hearts dislike them.”** Perhaps today’s vegetarians are a little fortunate that manyof today’s “unattractive academic folk” seem concerned more with ecology than withjustice for animals. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW AND LEO ToLstToy

Apartfrom somesignificantbut generally considered second-rank figures in cultural history — such as Francis William Newman, William Bramwell, and Catherine Booth; Henry Salt, Edward Carpenter, and Howard Williams;

Annie WoodBesant and the theosophists; and Anna Bonus Kingsford and

Edward Maitland — the second halfof the nineteenth century produced two vegetarians of the highest literary rank and public presence: George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). It is astonishing,

and a reflection of the deeply entrenched nature of flesh eating in the humanconsciousness, that they didnot have significantly greater influence thantheir prominence wouldhave warranted. George Bernard Shaw’s interest in animal ethics ranged from vegetarianism to vivisection — on which muchofhis attention was focused — to the

wearing offur and feathers, and to evolution. “Creative Evolution,” he called it,whichwas quite distinct from Darwinian naturalselection, which he castigated as “no selectionat all, but mere dead accident and luck.”*’

The most popular ofall anglophone dramatists — the sole exception being Shakespeare — Shawdescribed himself as “a vegetarian on purely humanitarian and mystical grounds” whohad“never killed a flea or a mouse vindictively or without remorse.”* It was Shelley’s The RevoltofIslam (1818) that persuaded him of the virtue of both socialism andvegetarianism: “I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian. It was Shelley whofirst opened myeyes to the savagery of mydiet,” recording “Never again mayblood of bird or beast / Stain withits venomous stream a humanfeast.”*! At the age of twenty-five he becameavegetarian,

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and at the age of twenty-eight he declared wryly: “I ama species ofsavage

andcannot be entertained like a civilized man. In short, I amavegetar-

ian.“* With tonguestill in cheek, he observed: “Myobjection to meatis that it costs too much and involves the slavery of men and womento edi-

ble animals that is undesirable.”*” When invited out, he told his hosts: “Do

not kill anything for me. I simply wonteatit.”** From the beef and mutton dining habit, whose “reek of the slaughterhouse ... convictedus all of beingbeasts of prey, I fled to the purer air of the vegetarian restaurant.”* Helisted nine inexpensive vegetarian restaurants worth frequentingthat hadrecently openedin London,adding: To-daypeople are brought up tobelieve that they cannotlive withouteating meat, and associate the lack ofit with poverty. HenrySalt, a championvegetarian, said thatwhat was needed in London were vegetarian restaurants so expensive that onlythe veryrich could afford to dine in themhabitually, and people of moderate meansonly once ayear, as a veryspecial treat, as in Paris, where British tourists brag of having dinedat So and So’s with a European reputation for high prices andexquisite cookery. What you have to rubinisthat it is never cheap to live otherwise than as everybodyelse does; andthat the so-called simplelife is beyond the means of the poor.”

Apple, cheese, macaroni, and salad with milk and soda wasatypical mealfor Shawand his guest when dining at The Queen's Restaurant in Sloane Square. Ononeoccasion, recuperating from illness, he returned toflesh for a short while, whereafter his illnesses were often attributedbythe ill-will ofothers to his vegetarian diet, whereas he claimedhis good healthto be attributable to his vegetarian diet. However muchhe waschided byhis friends, never again

did he willingly eat flesh. In his nineties helived mainlyfromsoups, eggs, milk, honey, cheese, fruits, cream, biscuits, and lemonjuice — together with sugar spoonedfurtively from the bowlandlargeslices of iced cake or chocolate when noone was supposedto be looking.*’ Hedescribed hisliterary “pastime as writing sermonsin plays, sermons

preaching whatSalt practised.”** In fact, Shaw’s “sermons”are to be found rather less in the plays themselves than in their extraordinary prefaces, which are often wordier than the plays. Still, they are not absent from the plays. In the Devils Disciple (1897) we learn: “The worst sin toward animals

is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That’s the essence of

inhumanity.” In TheAdmirable Bashville (1901) Shawcastigated bothvivisection (“Groping for cures in the tormented entrails / Offriendly dogs”)

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and the wearing of animal products (“Oh, yourladies / seal skinned and egret feathered; all defiance / to Nature’). Flesh eating, he observed, was

“cannibalismwiththe heroic dish omitted.”In Back toMethuselah(1922. Shawshowshis ironic andsarcastic contemptfor those whoclaimflesheating a prerequisite of strength, courage, andvalour. One ofAdams sons, he says, “invented meat-eating. The other was horrified at the innovation.” Franklyn Barnabas summedup whatfollowed as: “With the ferocity which is still characteristic of bulls and other vegetarians, he slewhis beefsteakeating brother, and thus invented murder. That was a verysteepstep. It was so exciting thatall the others began to kill one anotherfor sport, and thus

invented war, the steepeststep ofall. Theyeventook to killing animals as a means ofkilling time, and then, of course ate them to save the long and

difficult labor of agriculture.” Shaw was convincedofthe value ofthe alcohol-free and vegetarian diet to a well-functioning body. For a while, he was an avid cyclist, which complemented his idea of his vegetarian fitness. Following a rather nasty cycling mishap, he observed: “I am not thoroughly convincedyet that | was not killed. Anyone but a vegetarian would have been. Nobodybut a teetotaller would have faced a bicycle again for six months.”?! Solittlewas vegetarianism generally accepted as a viable alternative to flesh eating during Shaw’slifetime that popular commentators claimedit was onlythe secret consumptionofliver that kept himalive.’ The prevailing view was that it was simplynotpossible to live without flesh. It was odd that, muchas theliterary Shawwasrevered, he remained ineffective in per-

suading more than afew to follow the vegetarian banner. The same remains true today. A ShawFestival is held annually at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. His plays, and those of a few others, can be seen from late Marchorearly April toNovember. Theyare viewed not merely by manythousandsofvisitors from elsewhere in Canada but also by manyfrom the United States, by some fromJapan, and bya fewfromEurope. Veryfewofthe playgoers are aware that Shawwas a vegetarian. Thefestival’s organizers do nothing at all to commemorate — or even recognize — the fact. Andthe restaurants in Niagara-on-the-Lake have veryfew, if any, vegetarian options. Theyare less vegetarian-friendly than restaurants in general. Indeed, upon myasking restaurateurs andservers in Niagara-on-the-Lake whether they were aware of Shaw's vegetarianism, not one respondedin the afhrmative. The continued difficulty vegetarians face is perhaps exemplified by H.G. Wells in Anna Veronica (1909), where he caricatures and pillories “the HigherThought, the Simple Life, Socialism, Humanitarianism” and counts

vegetarianism among them.’ As Hilda Kean reports of Anna Veronica:

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‘Miss Minerva, wholives on movements and fourpence a day, and her

friend the Groopesare ridiculed for theirdiet of fruitarian refreshments of chestnut sandwiches buttered with nutter, accompaniedby lemonade and unfermented wine.”°* Resurrected here is the image ofthe esoteric, “little

old lady” vegetarian who has nothing better to do andis not to be taken too seriously. Even Shaw's commitmentwas not always taken with the earnestness with whichit was felt.That vegetarianism was not acknowledged some as analtogether serious and worthyethical commitmentis exemplihedin the treatment of Shaw bythe otherwise laudable William Morris. Morris and Shawoftendined together at a Londonvegetarianrestaurant,

even though Morris was nota vegetarian. So Morris would have knownthe depth of Shaw’s commitment. Yet the Morrises chided Shawforhis diet,

and on one occasion, while dining at the Morrises, Shawwasclandestinely

but intentionally given suet toeat. After he hadeaten it, Janey Morris said:

“That will do you good, there is suet init.”Suet is the hard white fat on

the kidneys andloins ofcattle, sheep, and other mammals. It does not seem

to have crossed the Morrises minds that, for Shaw, to consume such food

would have constituted a serious breach of ethical principle. Shaw's reaction is unknownbutcanbe readily imagined. Leo Tolstoy, one of the world’s great novelists,wrote such masterpieces

as The Cossacks (1863), War and Peace (1865-69), and Anna Karenina(187577). Although Tolstoy's sensibilities to animals were not absent from his

novels, they are far more pronouncedinhislater primitive Christian writings, after he had becomea vegetarianfairlylate inlife. According to one ofhis biographers, WilliamShirer, he gave up “hunting, smoking anddrink-

ing and, in time, he became avegetarian.”°° Vegetarianism seemsto have

been the most difficult virtue to acquire. In the end, he was as opposedto vivisection as he had becometoflesheating. In a letter of July 1909 he wrote: “What I thinkofvivisection is that if people admit that theyhave the right to take or endangerthe life ofliving beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit totheir cruelty.””’ Tolstoy's primary vegetarian statement is in “The First Step” (4892), written as an introduction to a Russianedition ofHoward Williams's The Ethics ofDiet: s

J

[ had wishedto visit a slaughter-house in order to see with my own C yes the reality ofthe question raised whenvegetarianismis discussed. But at first I felt ashamedto doso, as one is always ashamedofgoing to look at suffering which one knowsts about to take place but which one cannotavert; andso I kept putting off myvisit. Butalittle while ago I meton the road a butcherreturning to Tula

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after a visit to hishome. Heis not yet an experienced butcherand his dutyis to stab with a knife. I asked him whetherhe did notfeel sorry for the animals that he killed. He gave me the usual answer: “Why should Ifeel sorry? It is necessary.” But whenI told him that eating flesh is not necessary but onlya luxury, he agreed; and then he admitted he wassorry for the animals. “But what can I do?”he said, “I must earn mybread. At first | was afraid to kill. Myfather, he has never evenkilled a chickenin all his life.” The majority of Russians cannot kill; they feel pity, and express the feeling by the word “fear.” This manhad beenafraid but he was no longer... Not long ago [ also had a talk with aretired soldier, a butcher, and he too was surprisedat myassertion that it wasa pityto kill, and said the usual thing about it being ordained. But afterwards he agreed with me: “Especially whenthey are quiet, tame cattle. They come, poor things! trusting you.It is verypitiful.” Once when walking from Moscow, I was offeredalift by some carters who were going from Sérpoukhovto a neighbouring forest to fetch wood. It was the Thursdaybefore Easter. I was seated in thefirst cart with a strong, red, coarse carman, whoevidently drank. On entering the village we sawa well-fed, naked, pinkpig being dragged out ofthe first yard to be slaughtered. It squealedin a dreadful voice,

resemblingthe shrieking of a man. Just as we were passing they began to kill it. A man gashed its throat with a knife. The pig squealedstill more loudly and piercingly, broke away from the men, and ran off coveredwith blood. BeingnearsightedI did notsee all the details and watchedclosely. They caught the pig, knockedit down, and finished cutting its throat. When its squeals ceased the carter sighed heavily. “Domen notreally have to answer for suchthings?”hesaid. So strong is man’s aversion toall killing. But by example, by

encouraging greediness, by the assertion that God has allowedit, and above all by habit, people entirely lose this naturalfeeling. On Friday I decided to go to Tula, and, meeting a meek, kind

acquaintance of mine, I invited him to accompanyme. “Yes, I have heardthe arrangements are good, and have been waiting to go to see it; but if they are slaughtering I will not go in.” “Whynot? That's just what I wantto see! If we eat fleshit must be killed.”

“No, no, | cannot.” It isworth remembering that this man is a sportsmanand himself

kills animals and birds.”

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Tolstoy then describes the conditions of the abattoir in gruesome and

distressing detail, before concluding:

But why, if the wrongfulness — i.e., the immorality ~ of animal food was known to humanityso long ago, have people not yet come to acknowledge this [moral] law? will be asked by those who are accustomed to be led by public opinion rather than byreason. The answer to this questionis that the moral progress of humanity — which is the foundationofevery other kindofprogress —is always slow; but that the signoftrue, not casual, progress is itsuninterruptedness and its continual acceleration.”

This slaughterhouse statement from Tolstoy speaks loudly to me. As confirmed flesh eaters somesixteen years ago, my co-authorandIstated in Animal Welfare andHumanValues: “We knowfromrespected colleagues of the unbridled terror of the slaughterhouse and we know, and wearetold, we must go to see for ourselves. But we won't. We simply dont have the stomachfor it.”° By the time the book was published, we were vegetarians. Had wevisited a slaughterhouse we would probablyhave been vegetarians many years before seeing a documentary on stockyard “downers” persuadedusto take the step that in our hearts we knewwe should have taken long before. It now pains me, puzzles me, and shames meto thinkthat dedicated animal protectionists, myself included — to repeat Oliver Goldsmith again — could continue to eat the objects of their compassion. But suchis the paradoxical nature of humankind.

The early decades ofthe twentieth centurywere a period ofdecline for vegetarianism in general and for the Vegetarian Society in particular, perhaps best symbolized by the fact that shortly after the October Revolution in 1917 Russia, the vegetarian movement was declaredillegal and dozens of vegetarian restaurants andseveral vegetarian societies were compelled to close their doors, althoughin the 1930s George Bernard Shaw's wife, Charlotte, was underthe impression that“there are plentyofvegetarian restaurants in Moscow.”! Ofcourse, nowhere else at that time was there proscription, but there was retrenchment. The late-Victorian gains that had been made in Britain, especially amongthe less affluent, were being erodedas working-

class and petit-bourgeois living standards declined. And the FirstWorld War made the prospects of the fleshless diet even dimmer. Labourers who had volunteeredor had been conscriptedfor the armedforces foundthey enjoyedthe “luxury” of the unhealthy armyregimen with, for them, copious amounts of flesh they hadbeen unable toaffordas civilians andwithout which they would have been unable to survive on the otherwise meagre military rations. Young womenat home ona far leaner diet had nodesire to abstain but wished to obtain a modicumofwhat the menat the front were given. And the overarching approach ofthe Victorianera disintegrated as newandspecialist organizations came into existence, although members of the Vegetarian Society and the former Humanitarian League could now be foundin co-operationin, for example, the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports. After the warseveral private schools — some Quakerestablishments, for 2QO

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example — adopted afleshlessdiet with the earnest, if utopian, aspiration of abolishing conflict, war, and bloodshed. But, of course, such private schools

were beyond the reach and pocketofthe poorerclasses.Moreover, however well-intentioned, they were also unrealistic in their goals. Vegetarian restaurants retained the appeal they had acquired in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but they were frequented far more by those who wantedapleasant, inexpensive alternative totheir regular fare rather than a moralor even dietary commitment. However, the perceived nutritional

value offruit and vegetables was onthe rise, and a fewwere temptedby raw food diets but primarily out of a concern for health and economy, not a serious concernfor the animals. Rawfoodwas, of course, an aspect ofthe

return-to-nature movementthat had early beginnings, had never diedout entirely, and was nowenjoying a period of renewedpopularity.’

ROMAIN ROLLAND AND ALBERT SCHWEITZER

Intellectual vegetarian advocacy was notin quite the same doldrumsas the vegetarian movement. In France, RomainRolland (1866-1944), the popular pacifist, novelist, playwright, and biographer of both Tolstoy and

Gandhi, used his novel Jean-Christophe, which won Rollandthe r915 Nobel Prize for Literature, to state the case for animals. It was a study of contemporary French and Germancivilization throughthelife of aGerman-born musician who could not think of the animals without shuddering in anguish. He looked into the eyes of the beasts and sawtherea soul like his own, a soul which could not speak: but the eyes cried forit: “What have I done to you? Why do you hurt me?” He couldnot bear to see the most ordinarysights that he had seen hundreds of times — a calf crying in a wicker pen, with its big protruding eyes, with their bluish whites and pinklids, and white lashes, its curly white tufts onits forehead, its purple snout, its knock-kneedlegs: ~ a lambbeing carried

by a peasant withits four legs tied together, hanging head down,trying to holdits head up, moaninglike a child, bleating andlolling its gray tongue: — fowls huddled together in abasket: the distant squeals of a pig being bled to death: — afish being cleanedon the kitchen-table ...The nameless tortures which meninflict on such innocent creatures made his heart ache. Grant animals a ray of reason, imagine whata frightful nightmare the worldis to them: a dream of cold-blooded men, blind and deaf, cutting their throats,

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slitting them open, gutting them, cutting them into pieces, cooking them

alive, sometimes laughing at themas theywrithe in agony... [oa man whose mindis free there issomething even moreintolerable inthesufferings of animals than in the sufferings of men. For with the latter it is at least admitted

that suffering is evil and that the man whocausesitis a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadowof

remorse. If any man wereto refer to it, he wouldbe thoughtridiculous. — And that is the unpardonable crime... If God is goodonlyto the strong,if

there is no justice for the week andlowly, for the poor creatures whoare offered up as asacrifice to humanity, thenthere is no such thing as goodness, no such thing as justice.?

It is doubtful anyone has portrayed the psychology of an ethical vegetarian along with the psychologyofthe food animals withgreater insight and pathos. Ofequal empathy with the animals, and winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize for Peace, was Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965). Born in Alsace, he became a medical missionary, establishing a field hospital in 1913 at Lambaréné, Gabon, then French Equatorial Africa, where he remained, apartfromfrequent European fundraising trips and onevisit to the United States, for the remainderofhis workinglife. An authority on Bachand organ music, he

developed a Christianethiche called “reverenceforlife.” Alreadyas a child he had greatfellow-feeling with animals. Recalling one childhood memory, he exclaimed: “One thing that especially saddened me wasthat the unfortunate animals had to suffer so muchpain and misery. The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward by one man while another kept beating it

with astick to get it to the knacker’s yard at Colmar [in Alsace], haunted

me for weeks.”* At night he prayed silently: “O, heavenly Father, protect andbless all things that have breath; guard themfromall evil, and let them sleep in peace.” As anadult, he developed the theme of“reverence forlife”

in three major works: The Decay andRestoration ofCivilization, Civilization and Ethics, and Reverencefor Life. \t is in Civilization and Ethics that he developedthe idea ofreverence for life with respect to animals mostfully, arguingthat suchan ethic would reconcile the drives ofaltruismand egotism byrequiring arespectfor all other beings and by requiring simultaneously the developmentofthe individual’s resources. There hetells us: Ethics ... consists in this, that I experience the necessity of practising the same reverenceforlife towardall [whopossess] the will-to-live, as toward my own [life]. Therein I have already the needed fundamental principle of morality. It is good to maintain and cherishlife; it is evil to destroy and to

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checklife...A manisreally ethical only whenhe obeys the constraint laid on himto help all life whichhe is able to succor, and whenhe goes outofhis

wayto avoid injuring anythingliving.He does not ask howfarthis or that lifee deser deserves sympathyas valuableinitself, nor howfar it is capableoffeeling. To himlife as suchis sacred.°

The maintenanceof suchan ethic, Schweitzerrealizes, is dificult, but necessary, for the progress ofcivilization andjustice. Indeed, if we take Schweitzer’s positionin thestrict sense, as -efetring toalllife rather than just to animallife, the doctrine requires one to beafruitarian. Since plants

also havelife, it is necessary, if one is not to starve, to live fromthe fruitof

the plant in such a manner that the host plant itself does not die. But Schweitzer did not intend his doctrine to be sointerpreted, for he madeit clear that his reference tolife is to that which possesses the will to live. He states that the person whoholds reverenceforlife principles is not afraid of being laughed at as sentimental. It is indeed the fate of every truth to be an objectofridicule whenitis first acclaimed. It was once conisn to suppose that colored menwere really human beings and sidered foolis ought to be treated as such.What was once foolishness has now becomea recognized truth. Todayit is considered an exaggeration to claimconstant

respectfor every formoflife as being the serious demand ofarational ethic. But the timeis coming whenpeoplewill be amazed that the humanrace was so long before it recognized that thoughtless injuryto life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extendedresponsibilityto everythingthathaslife.’

(GANDHI

After his awakeningto the justice ofvegetarianism, primarilybyhis reading of HenrySalt, Gandhi devotedhimselfto the vegetarianideal with a similar dedication to that which he broughtto the other causes he espoused. Mohandas Karamchand(Mahatma) Gandhi (1869-1948) was educated as a barrister and

promotedpolitical change throughsatyagraha,literally “holdingto the truth,” but generally understoodas civil disobedience. He led India toward independence from Britain, promoting a primitivist message, symbolizedbythe spinningwheel (charkha) ratherthan byindustrialization. Inthe later 1920s he

gave a talk to the London VegetarianSociety in which the primitivist returnto-nature message was repeated but with an emphasis on animal ethics:

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What I want to bring to yournoticeis that vegetarians need to be tolerantif they want to convert others to vegetarianism. Adopta little humility.We should appeal to the moralsense of the people whodonotsee eye to eye with us. Ifa vegetarian becameill, and a doctor prescribedbeef-tea, then I would not call hima vegetarian [if he followed the doctor's advice]. A vegetarianis

madeofsterner stuff. Why? Becauseit is for the buildingofthe spirit and not of the body. Manis more than meat. It is the spirit in man for which weare concerned. Therefore vegetarians should have that moral basis — that a man was not born a carnivorous animal, butborntolive onthefruits and herbs that the earth grows. [ knowwe must all err. | wouldgive up milkif I could but I cannot. I have made that experiment times without number. I could not after a seriousillness, regain mystrength unless I went backto milk. That has been the tragedy of mylife. But the basis of my vegetarianismis not physical, but moral. If anybodysaid that I should die if I did nottake beeftea or mutton, even under medical advice, | would prefer death. That is the basis of my vegetarianism.”

Andif that sounds somewhat extreme, the omnivores need only ask themselves howthey would feel and behave if asked to eat humanflesh. The difference betweentheethical vegetarian and the omnivoreis that, by andlarge, the vegetarian considers humans as animalin the same waythat other animals are animal. The omnivore recognizes humansas animal but imagines themsubject to a very different ethic than that which oughtto govern humans. For the omnivore, humansare animals whoescape all the negative ethical implications of being animal by being different in some special way. ADOLE HITLER AND NAZISM

Historically, as we have seen throughout this book, vegetarianismhasfre-

quently been associated with primitivism — that is, the return-to-nature ideas that predominated amongthose whobelieved humanswere vegetarian in origin. Even Nazism, which came to powerin 1933, representedaver-

sion of the primitivist movement,at least someof the time, although never

consistently, a version evidenced in manyofthe medieval spectacles at the Nurembergrallies.And it has frequently been suggested that Hitler was a

vegetarian.” Indeed, taking the socialismin the “Nazi” name —fromNational

Social Democratic Party — at its face value, both Gandhi and Shawexpressed an early sympathyfor the beneficial potential in Hitler's regime.

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Certainly, Hitler boasted frequently of his abstention fromflesh, sometimes even presentinghimself as a raw-food advocate. There would appear to have beenperiods whenHitler, and a numberofhis seniorhenchmen,

promotedwithpride their vegetarian predilections. At other times, it was less prominent or simply disregarded. In his Animals in the Third Reich, Boria Sax postulates that one “possible explanation [ofthe vegetarianism of the Nazi leaders] is that the leading Nazis used abstinence from meatto signify theirelite status.Throughout mostof historyonlyelites couldreadily afford to eat meat on a regular basis. Many Christians, Buddhists and Hin-

dus have refrained from eating meattosignifytheir regard forbut also their elevation above animallife.”'° It is notable that in Hitler’s MeinKampf(My Struggle) of 1926 and in HJ. Marschiert: Das neue Hitler-Jugend-Buch

(Hitler Youth on the March: The New Bookfor the Hitler Youth), full of

advice on attitudes and behaviour appropriate for the new Germans and published within a year of the meteoric Nazirise to power, there is nota wordofvegetarian advocacy.'' Ifvegetarianism was appropriate for the Nazi leadership, it was not recommendedto the masses. Whateverthe reasons,

Third Reich animal orientationis nonetheless suggested both bythe pronouncements on treating animals withrespect and bythe fact the Nazis hadan aversion to animal experimentation— although ultimatelytheyonly hindered it rather than prevented it — and they had something approximating a policy of environmental awareness. They proved more successful in influencing their weaker neighbours with regardto opposition to animal experimentation, especially Liechtensteinin the mid-1930s. But probably, for Hitler, vegetarianism was far more boast andaspiration thanreality. Hitler revered the music(andthe racism) of R ichard Wagner, who also had vegetarian ambitions, but seemingly he was ultimately no more successful than his mentorin fully achieving them. Not onlydid the Nazis outlaw and persecute Germanyss vegetarian societies, but several of Hitler’s biographers and chefs have referred to Hitler's consistent deviation from vegetarianismin his liking for sausage meats.One former chef mentionedhis favourite mealas stuffed squab. In 1945 Symon Gould ofthe

American Vegetarian derided the vegetarian whowasso solely on health grounds: “Like Hitler, he sneaks a pig’s knuckle every time hefeels better.”'* To the extent that Hitler desired to be a vegetarian, it would appear to be primarily on ascetic or perhaps aesthetic grounds rather than there being serious and consistent ethical dimensions. Unfortunately, discussions ofHitler’spurported vegetarianismare often coloured bythefact that many antivegetarians are predisposed to find a vegetarian Hitler, while manyvegetariansare loath to find a loathsome manprofessing a loathsome >

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ideology counted among their number. Perhapsalittle lessheat might shed a little more light. Currently, hostile attitudes to Hitlerism, rather than

objective interpretationofthe evidence, playa decisive role in determining the outcomeof the debate. With less ideologically oriented investigation, a measure of truth might be found.Asitis, it is clear that Hitler's professed vegetarianism was a far from consistent practice but something of a Nazi leadership ideal nonetheless. BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS

Inthe period between the two world conflicts, vegetarianism continued to suffer, now in part fromits association with conscientious objection in the FirstWorld War. The COs(conscientious objectors), whether pacifist, religious, or vegetarian,or all three, were still treated with disdain and without

understanding or sympathybythe general public. Much ofthe vegetarian-

ism there was, and there was afair amount, was not ethical vegetarianism

in that the vegetarian concernarose primarily from grounds other than the elimination of animal suffering: among those prescribing a fleshless diet were the Order of the Cross (a pacifist and vegetarian informal Christian fellowship founded byRev. JohnToddFerrier in 1904), Mazdaznanism(an

offshoot of Zoroastrianism with hints of Buddhism), Seventh Day Adventists, and Quakers — the last of which approximatedthe ethical ideal more than the others. The ascetic vegetarians were concerned instead with the purityoftheir souls. The secular vegetarians, even amongthoseofreligious bent, thought it a part of their moral duty to pursue justice for animals. The English vegetarian societies continued to exist, most visibly in the weekly meetings ofthe cycling brotherhood, althoughthe societies did not flourish as they had at the turnofthe century. They showedtheir sympathy with the miners during the Jarrow-inspired generalstrike of1926, sending food parcels to the marchers. There were a few vegetarian Members of Parliament but no palpable vegetarian successes. By andlarge, the terrors of the wars and the humility ofthe Great Depression turned attention away from animal suffering and toward human suffering. Humansuffering had always held prominence. Now,it was almost entirely exclusive. The agenda had manypriorities ahead of the animals: class justice, gender suftrage, antifascist organization, economic andsocial reform. Precisely those most

likely to support the animal causes usually found a humancause about which theycouldfeel far more strongly. Whenthere are burning questions of humaninjustice to humans — and

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there always seem to be —it is very difhcult to divert the attention ofthe morally outraged from humanissues, often leading to the commonjibe against animal advocates: “why concern yourself withlesser animal problems whenthere is so much humansuffering in the world requiring our undivided attention?” The retort of the animal advocate is that justice is not divisible, animal issues are just one ofthe issues of injustice that must be addressed. To ignore any one grievous injustice is to leave the whole tarnished. Indeed, it is precisely when one looks to the animal advocate that oneis likely to see a person embroiled in manyethical issues, nonhuman animal, human, and environmental alike.And howarrogantly presumptu-

ous, the vegetarian opines, to imagine humansuffering to be ipso facto of

a higher order than animalsuffering!

In and after the Second World War, food rationingin Britain meantthat

everyone was deprived equally offlesh — at least everyone withoutsignifcant social and economic influence! Meat in very small quantities was allowed bythe rationing formula but was very scarce andvery hard to acquire. [he result was not that people accustomedthemselves to a vegetarian diet but instead that theyyearned longingly for the day whenonce againflesh would be readilyavailable. Even horse and whale flesh were not to be despised, although, infact, whale flesh in particular, Spam second, came to be abominated as the symbol ofthe years of deprivation. Moreover, as flesh slowly became once more available, status was verylargely invested in the quantityofflesh, howoften it could be obtained,andits quality. The governmenttried to persuade the population to turn tovegetables, but that very fact made veget ables less palatable. DoNaLp WaTSON, ELSIE SHRIGLEY, AND THE VEGAN SOCIETY

There was during the war years one event of monumental significance for the vegetarian movement. In November1944,in thecity of Leicester in the English midlands, the Vegan Society found its origins in the concerns of Donald Watson andElsie Shrigley (d. 1978). Watson was a conscientious objector and woodwork teacher, who hadceased to eat Hesh at the age of fifteen and whodiedatthe age of ninety-five in 2005. The organization's headoffice is nowat St. Leonard’s on Seain East Sussex. If the vegetarian diet was essential to a cruelty-free wayoflife,veganism was the pathto even greater elimination of animal suffering. For the vegans, it was not only important to abstain fromflesh but equallyvital that chickens and cows e

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should be spared the cruelties of egg, milk, butter, and cheese production

andthat all animals be spared being killed for their hides, pelts, or skins

andbeing mistreatedfor their wool. For some vegans no animal produce was to be wornor eaten; no animal wasto be exploited for humanbenefit. In December 1943 Watsongave a talk on vegetarianism and dairy products to the Vegetarian Society, of which a summarywas published in 7he Vegetarian Messenger the following March. In August, Watson and Shrigley discussed the formation of a subgroup of nondairyvegetarians. Unfortunately, the Vegetarian Society declinedto give the fledgling group special status orto advertise their proposalinthe pages ofthe journal,feeling that, although sympathetic to the group, promoting the program of what they sawas an extreme wing might diminish the commitment ofthe existing vegetarians to their cause by seeming to designate themas less completely pure. Nonetheless, in November 1944Elsie Shrigley,Donald Watson, and five others met at the Attic Club in Holborn, London, to discuss the for-

mation of the newassociation. Fromseveral proposals, the new name was chosen, apparently by Watson alone, by takingthe first three andlast two

letters from vegetarian, because, Watson said, “veganismstarts with vege-

tarianismand carries it through toits logical conclusion.” In the same month,the Vegan Society published its manifesto, whichran as follows: The aimsof the Vegan Societyare:

1 To advocate that man’s food should be derived fromfruits, nuts, vegeta-

bles, grains and other wholesome non-animalproducts andthatit should te

exclude flesh, fish, fowl, eggs, honey, and animals’ milk, butter, and cheese. ‘To encourage the manufacture anduse ofalternatives to animal commodities.

The VeganSociety seeks to abolish man’s dependenceon animals, withits inevitable cruelty and slaughter, andto create instead a more reasonable and humane orderofsociety.Whilst honouring the efforts ofallwho are striving to achieve the emancipationof man andof animals, The VeganSocietysuggests the results must remain limited so long as the exploitation in food and clothing productionis ignored. The Vegan Societyis eager that it shouldbe realised howclosely the meat and dairy produce industries are related. The atrocities of dairy farming are, in some ways, greater than those of the meat industry but they are more obscured byignorance. Moreover, The Vegan Societyasserts that the use of milkin any formafter weening is biologically wrongandthat, except when aken directly fromthe mother, it becomes polluted and unsafe. The Society,

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therefore, sees no honourablealternative but to challengethe traditions of orthodoxy by advocating a completely revised diet based on reason and humaneprinciple and guidedbyscience to meet physiological requirements. It is not suggested that Veganism alone would be sufhcientto solve all the

problems ofindividual and social well-being, but so close is its philosophy linked with morality, hygiene, aesthetics and agricultural economythat its adoption would remedy many unsatisfactory features of present-daylife. Thus,if the curse of exploitation were removed,spiritual influences, operating for good, woulddevelop conditionsassuring a greater degree of happiness and prosperityforall.

Accordingto Elsie Shrigley, the day at the Attic Club was “a Sunday, with sunshine anda blue sky — an auspicious dayfor the birth of anidealistic movement’ — a movementthatwasalso clearly optimistic, for the Second World Warwasstill in progress, although the ultimate victoryofthe Allies seemedincreasingly assured. Over a half-centuryafter the inception of the Vegan Society, the principles on which it was foundedarefinally beginning to permeate significant numbers within the animal advocacy community.

THE 1960S AND THE PROMOTION OF ANIMAL RIGHTS

In the early 1960s the Quakervegetarian Ruth Harrison begantheeffective

synthesization of the concepts of animal rights and vegetarianism in Britain. After Harrison, the espousal of animal rights implied, more often

thannot, a refusal to eat animal flesh. Her book on AnimalMachines (1964)

demonstrated that modern methods ofanimal husbandrywere, beyondall shadowofa doubt, a moral nightmare for the animals. In 1965 Brigid Bro-

phy wrote a full-page article entitled “The Rights of Animals” in the Lon-

don Sunday Times, advertising a concept that seemedwholly newto the readers, althoughin fact the epithet had beenin use for manyyears, a book including those very words prominentlyinitstitle having appeared over a century and a quarter earlier — never mindits author's viewthatflesh consumption and even hunting are morally acceptable!!’ Moreover, the first uses withregardto animals had been recorded,atrifle circuitously, and perhaps not ina discussionof animalsatall, by the Quaker George Foxin 1673 and, directly, by the Pythagorean Thomas Tryonin 1683."‘ Following-Harrison andBropshy, Oxfordrreplaced Cambridgeas the British spiral“home of the promotion of animal interests. In 1969 a groupof intellectuals,

Vegetarians and Vegans in the Twentieth Century

primarily academic philosophers, devoted themselves to the promotionof animal rights. The group included Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch, John Harris, Richard D. Ryder, and others, soon to be joined byStephenClark,

AndrewLinzey, Peter Singer, and others — a disparate group of generally excellent minds with competingreligious and secular orientations. High on the agenda was vegetarianism. Rightly, the animal-rights advocates observed it was not possible truly to claim to care for animals with one breath and to consume them withthe next. Theidea of a meeting to discuss measures to protect animals at which hamandbeef sandwiches were served seemed increasingly oxymoronic — indeed, downright immoral! In fact, Singer makes precisely this point at the very beginning of the book that is widely viewedasthe original book ofthe animal-ethics revival: Animal Liberation.’ Slowly, beginning with Harrison, animal-rights advocacy

and vegetarianism became almost synonymousin| sritain, spreading rapidly to mainland and Nordic Europe and to Australasia,whence Singer came, anda little more slowlybut noless effectively to North America. Or at least almost as effectively. | was astonished when| gave atalk at anacademic literature conference on animals in ¢ )ttawa in 2005 to be askedprivately afterward whyI had mentioned vegetarianism more than once. The questioner did not seem to imagine that vegetarianism and animalethics were inextricably related! Although there had always been some vegetarians, until the secondhalf of the twentieth centuryflesh deniers were almost chimerical creatures. As AndrewLinzeyexplained: Whenthat theologian, Dean Inge, deeply committed to animalrights as he use “we beca h fles up give not d coul we that recently® as 1926 as ed argu was, must eat something,”' I do not believe that he was being disingenuous. He really believed, as did many of his compassionate forebears, that one could

like the but ted exis ans tari vege of s our Rum not live without eating animals.

rumours themselves they did not — it was thought — persist. Most people until comparatively recently were incredulous thatreal vegetarians both existed andflourished.'’

The merit of what is called loosely the animal-liberation movementis that vegetarianism is nowavisible and perceptible reality. Moreover, the newproponents of vegetarianism have beenable to dismiss effectively the age-oldsaws that vegetarianismwasessentially unhealthy, that all supposed

vegetarians cheated sometimes, andthat the onlyreal protein was animal

protein. In the Victorian andlater periods, as Harriet Ritvo has reported of

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a Victorian cookbook, it “was widely acknowledged that... ‘animal food satisfied hunger more completely andfor a longer time thanvegetables,’

andthat ‘beef and mutton were the most nutritious of meats.’”!® Nor did such a view disappear with the Victorian era. Quite to the contraryof the earlier suppositions, the original animalliberationists now demonstrated that vegetarianism was not onlythe moral course butalso in reality even a healthier course, that better health was derived from nonflesh foods than from flesh. Besides those explicitly concerned to promote the rights of animals, there were also significant proportions of the counterculture — fromflower power to peacenik — who turned to vegetarianismin part as a means toprotest the establishmentandits values but also because animal issues were seen as legitimate aspects of the causeitself, even the NewLeft Revieweventually coming tosee animal rights as a legitimate part of the crusade. Thetraditional radical-authoritarian-“left” view had been quite unsympathetic. Marx andEngels deemed“membersofsocieties for the preventionof cruelties to animals” on a par with “organisers ofcharity, temperance fanatics, [and] hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind,”!? a judgment with

which many radical animal advocates, with their rabid denunciations of

“welfarists,” would seem to concur. In On the History ofEarly Christianity, Friedrich Engels referred disparagingly to vegetarians and “anti-vivisectionists.°° LeonTrotsky wrote of “vegetarian-Quakerprattle.”?! This NewLeft

Reviewreorientation, then, was quite a shift from the traditional Marxist view, but it has not been followed in general bythe farleft. Infact, vege-

tarians remain in general very waryof the current“newleft,” the green movement, as quite unaware of ~— and, in general, unconcerned about —

the plight of animals, other than from an ecological perspective, and also waryofit as amovementthat puts the holistic interests of the environment above the interests of nonhuman animals but not above those of human animals. Indeed, many animal-rights advocates for whom vegetarianism is an included necessity regard the customaryholismofecology as a subterfuge. Their view isthatif the ecologists truly believed that the rights of the whole are greater than those of the parts, they wouldadvocate the culling not just of animals occasionally but also of a goodpart of the human population. If not, and of course inreality they are not expected to, they are implicitly acknowledging the human is not an animal in the same way that other animals are animal.The humananimalis subject to different ethicalcriteria. Like the other conventionalpolitical parties, the Greens, as a fewoftheir

most avid supporters claimexplicitly, are acknowledging that the ends ofpolitical action are the promotion of humaninterest alone. Even action

Vegetarians and Vegans in the Twentieth Century to promotethe interests of the environmentare ultimately about makingit as appropriate a place as possible forhumanstolive. Giventhe successes ofRuthHarrison with AnimalMachines, Peter Singer with AnimalLiberation, Andrew Linzey with Animal Rights: A Christian Perspective, Stephen Clark with The Moral Status ofAnimals, Richard Ryder with AnimalRevolution, andthe report of the Brambell Committee of 196566, instituted as a response to RuthHarrison's revelations, with the intent to portrayeffectively the unacceptability of modernfarming methods,it is a little disappointing that there remain, even among the vegetarian and animal-rights advocates, significant misconceptions, or at least exaggera-

tions, ofwhat has happenedin the years sinceAnimalMachines. Some have exaggerated the successes by imagining there is nowa general sense of

shame amongtheflesh eaters. To the minor extent thatthisis true,it is not

a newphenomenon. Thustheliterary critic and essayist William Hazlitt in 1823 preferred notto have his sensibilities ruffled, declaring that “animals that are madeuse of as foodshouldeither be so small as to be imperceptible, or else we should ... not leave the forms standing to reproach us with ourgluttony andcruelty. I hate to see a rabbit trussed, or a hare broughtto

table in the form whichit occupied while living.”” In reality, by far the

majority todayis quite able to ignore the former sentience of the pork chops nowbeing consumed,although neither quite as easily norin quite the same proportions as before. In addition, there have long been some whose sensibilities balked but who continued to consume nonetheless. Those who imagine the changesin sensibility to have beensignificant believe that people nowprefertoease their consciences by shopping in supermarkets rather than at the butcher's. In supermarkets the animal form ofthe flesh they are purchasing is less readily recognized as animal. Butin reality, people purchase those itemsthat resemble theirliving form(e.g., fish, lobster, whole

poultry) just as readily as those whose animalidentityisless easily noticed. The changes that have takenplace withthe advent ofthe supermarketsisfor the profit of the purveyor and the convenience of the customer, not tohide that weare eatingflesh. Nonetheless, the promoters of vegetarianism have done a great deal to ensure that the wellbeing of animals is now afar higherpriority thanin the immediate past.Uhus Peter Singer, by far the best known of the vegetarian animal advocates, has argued persuasively to manyfor a metamorphosis in our attitudes towardotherspecies and for a kind ofhuman-animal equality: “Tfwe wishto avoid being numberedamongst the oppressors, we mustbe prepared to re-thinkeven our most fundamentalattitudes. We needto reconsider them

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fromthe point ofviewofthose most disadvantaged byourattitudes, and the practices thatfollow from theseattitudes.” “All animals are equal,” he writes, and the “basicprinciple ofequality... is equality of consideration; andequal consideration for different beings maylead to different treatment anddifferent rights.”*? Of course, it has beensaid thatif the rights are to be quitedifferent, there is noreal equalityat all.What ifone concludes the humanhasthe rightto life but the nonhumananimal nosuch right? Yet Singer's statement implies, in fact, that historically the animals’ rights have not been considered andare entitled to be considered as morallyrelevant in the same mannerthat allhumansare entitled to have theirrights considered. ThephilosopherStephen Clark:approaches the matter in a different way in demonstrating that manyofthe antivegetarian objections miss the point: Whatis the evidence that [other species] feel less distress than we do or that

their desires are “of another sort” than ours? Doubtless there areall sorts of distresses, at the waythe countryis going to the dogs, or at Jones’s newcat, or the like, whichbeasts are fortunately spared — thoughthe fact that they most probably do not appreciate our idiosyncratic problems mightraise the question as to whether sey have idiosyncratic problemstoo. It does notfollow, however, fromtheir lackofthese distresses that calves cannot be acutelydistressed at the absence of their mothers, nor that chickens are not distressed

whenunable to stretch their wings ... Animals, maybe, take as little thought for the morrow... unless perhaps they're squirrels. But this can hardly excuse

our inflicting present distress on them, merely because they cannot foresee a future end of such distress ...We do not, emotionally at least, have much understanding of death: my absence fromthe worldis strictly unimaginable to me... Cattle taken to the slaughterare similarlyterrified.”

Outside the realmof academe,others contributed to the elaboration of the vegetarian ideal. Thus publisher and author Jon Wynne-Tysonexplored whathe called “dietethics” — thatis, the ethics of diet — although he was concerned the matter should be seen fromapractical, not merely philosophical, perspective and from onethat the foodindustry should not itself fear in the immediate future: ‘To turn to practicalities, what feasible alternative is there to the present dominant stock-farming economygoverning oureating patterns in the West? I suggest there is no doubt that the onlyalternative in the long term(anditis the long term we must keep constantly in mind) is veganfarming. Thisis not

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to suggest that it is practicable to bring orthodoxfarming policies to a halt overnight as some ofthe more hysterically anti-progress lobbies seem tofear. ‘Today’s butchers and farmers neednotfear for their livelihoods noworin the future. Fundamental change invariably comes slowly. But they, with us, should face the fact that the onlyethical and lastingly workable future economy must be based on farming methods whichare solely directed to the growing and consuming of plant foods. There can be no eventual place in such an economyfor animals bred under man’s controlto satisfy his acquired taste for eating their bodies.*”

It is quite misleading to assert, as does Colin Spencer, that “alarge majority of people who turn to vegetarianismdo so because theybelieve meat to be unhealthy.”’° Certainly, vegetarians do usually believe that meat isunhealthy, but today ethics come before health in the vegetarian public mind. As HenrySalt and LewisGompertz demonstrated,there is no necessity for the vegetarian to assert that flesh is unhealthy.*” Nor are health concerns the primary reason for becoming vegetarian. As we sawin the introduction, 72 percent of American vegetarians gave animal ethics as their reason for becoming vegetarian, and the figure would probablybe higher in Europe.** In a surveyof1,000 vegetarians conducted by the English Vegetarian Society in 2005, the most popular reasons for choosing a vegetarian diet were “disgust at the treatment of farm animals” and“moral or spiritual conviction that taking life is wrong.” In fact, the first four answers were all ethical. Only the fifth ground was “considera vegetarian diet to be healthier thaneating meat.”If, in the early centuries of vegetarianism, asceticism played the predominantrole and onlylater did health become an overridingcriterion for the dietary choice, today the grounds for vegetarianism are, above all, of an ethical nature. Avoidance ofthe

injury involvedin the eating of sentient creatures outweighsall other considerations in the choice ofa vegetariandiet.

It is certainly true that health becomes inextricably intertwined with

ethics, in large part because those who are convinced ofthe justice ofthe eschewing ofanimalflesh find thatitis easier to persuade others who are not already convinced of the great injustices perpetrated on animals to abstain from flesh by appealing to their self-interest in their ownhealth.

And vegetarians, having become such, find health a good, if incomplete, groundfor remaining so.Moreover, increasing awareness ofthe unhealthy

nature of what is usuallycalled factory or intensive farming has turned numerous individuals — small a percentage of the whole as it is - completely

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305

away from flesh foods andhas occasioned others to be a great deal more selective and abstemiousin their choices. Genetic engineering ts likewise seen as a serious cause for concern, as are

potential diseases, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), popularly known as madcow disease. In fact, the concern with BSEreplicated a prior worry in the 1890s whenthere was a commonfear that tuberculosis might be spreadfromcattle to humans,afear that engenderedcalls to ban the importto Britain ofcattle fromIreland andthe UnitedStates.Much of the argument about genetic engineeringis technical and comprehensible only bythose trained in the natural sciences. Nonetheless, Greenpeace Internationalhas succeeded admirablyin reducing the daunting complexities to issues readily understood bythescientifically untutored mind. Molecular biology, they concede, has the potential to promote medical advances and increase our knowledge ofthe operations of the natural world while having an equal potential to turn the environmentinto a vast genetic experiment operatedin theinterests of commercial enterprise rather than the public good. Moreover, such enterprise, they argue, will be at the expense of the biodiversity and environmental integrity on which the future of the world and its food supply depends. Genetic engineering, Greenpeace points out, enables scientists to create artificial plants, animals, and

micro-organisms that can spread throughout the environmentandinterbreed with natural organismsin an unforeseeable and uncontrollable man-

ner. Once introduced into the environment, these genetically modified organisms (GMOs) cannotberecalled. This “geneticpollution”is seen as a major threat to future safety, especially through the potential limitation of natural diversity. Accordingly, they argue, these GMOs should not be released into the environment becausethere is totally inadequate scientific understanding oftheir effects.As an interim measure, Greenpeaceinsists,

all genetically engineered ingredients must be segregated from natural ingredients and dulylabelledas suchonall products.Greenpeace opposes allpatentingofplants, animals, humans, andtheir genes on the grounds that“life is not an industrial commodity.” Although they acknowledge the efforts of governmentsto addressthe threat of genetic engineering through such international regulations as the Biosafety Protocol, they emphasize the necessity of recognizing that biological diversity must be protectedif the earth’s very survival is not to be putat risk. The onlyaddition the animal advocate would maketo the Greenpeace proposalsis that the concept of “public interest” must include the interests of the nonhuman animals, both as species andas individuals.

Vegetarians and Vegans in the Twentieth Century

VEGETARIANISM GOES MAINSTREAM Following the creation of the English Vegetarian Society in 1847, many other nations institutedsuch societies in rapid succession, among them the UnitedStates in 1850, Germany in 1867, France in 1879, Australiain 1886, and India in 1889. In 1908 the International Vegetarian Union was founded as the unifying bodyofterritorial vegetarian societies, holding a World Vegetarian Congress every twoorthree years — customarily now two — the first of which was held at Dresden, Germany, in the year of the union’s founding. Whereas national and international societies remain vibrant

today, contact betweenvegetarians is kept more readily via the Internet than via any othermedium. There are numerous vegetarian e-mail groups

covering such diverse factors as region (e.g., Derbyshire vegetarians), race and region together(e.g., black vegetarians of Georgia), nation (e.g., vegetarians in Canada), religion (e.g., Christian vegetarian association), rela-

tional context (e.g., vegetarian parents organization), orientation (e.g.,

vegetarian history), type of food(e.g., living and raw foods), and promotional services (e.g., Vegetarian Resource Group). ‘here is even a group for conservative vegetarians. Together, all serve to provide an integrational eo

a

basis for vegetarian association on a more frequentand less formal basis than at anytimeinthe past. The natural consequenceis that those whoare tempted to return totheir previous habits have a very convenient support base readily at hand — a vegetarian AA,so to speak. Ifvegetarianism hasnotas yet succeeded in gaining a high proportion of converts, it has undoubtedly succeededin makingitself a part of the societal mainstream. Vegetarians are no longer merely tolerated but, by and large, welcomed. This welcomeis especially noticeable in those countries — such as Britain, but far fromBritain alone — where, almost invariably, restaurant menushaveeither a green “V” next tothe several vegetarian itemsor,less

frequently, a special page devoted to vegetarian options. Airlines nowoffer a half-dozenvegetarian alternatives (e.g., Asian vegetarian, ova-lacto vegetar-

ian). Not merely specialty shops butalso large grocerystores offera significantvariety ofprepared vegetarian items. Even those whoare not committed to a vegetarian lifestyle will nowhappily choose a vegetarian meal in a restaurant not merely to avoid the dangers broughtto light by the avian flu and other potential illnesses but also because the vegetarian items are usually every bit as succulent andtastyas the flesh alternatives. Naturally, many vegetarians object whenthese grocerystore items are designed to replicate the taste of turkey(e.g.,Tofurky®, or tofu turkey), beef, chicken, pork sausage (e.g., soy| sratwurst), and the like, as such imitations

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maintain the notion that one is eating something akin to the “real” thing,

andthus the desire for the taste of flesh ismaintained. Andthe ideathatthe

vegetarian is being deprived of something worthwhile is encouraged. George Bernard Shaw was among those who thought such food choices

a capitulation: “do not be seduced by messypies, entrées, or such weak concessions to the enemyas ‘vegetable rabbit,’ ‘vegetable sausage’ and the like.”*? Nonetheless, such imitations ease the path for the new vegetarianto find foods that are as palatable as those they have renounced, and such foods are very convenient to prepare for those whose busylifestyles hinder them from preparing tasty vegetarian meals from scratch. Moreover, such imitations encourage the visits of omnivorousrelatives, who are likely to find the fare quite pleasant, thus helpingto maintainassociations thatare threatened through the choice of a vegetarian regimen —andto save the lives of a few more animals into the bargain.

Unitepo STATES

It is certainly presumptuous to attempt to cover the American vegetarian experience in a few pages, especially when vegetarian societies in the UnitedStates, althoughinterrupted, have a history almostexactlyas long as that of Britain. Indeed, a fine book on American vegetarian history — Vegetarian America: A History, by Karen and Michael Iacobbo — already exists, the authors finding it took 267 pages to deal adequately withthe topic.! Althoughit is quite incorrect to say, as does AndrewLinzeyinthe forewordto the Iacobbos’s book,thatthis “is one of the few — perhaps even the first — history of vegetarianism written fromthe perspective ofvegetarians’ (whatof prior authors such asHoward Williams, Michael Allen Fox, DanielDombrowski, Kerry S. Walters and Lisa Portmess, or Colin Spencer?),

it does far more than this present bookto putthetotality ofAmerican vegetarian history into perspective.’ Nonetheless, it wouldbe agrievous error to omit the American experience entirely from a general book onthehistoryofethical vegetarian thought suchasthis. The temporary vegetarianism of Benjamin Franklin, prompted by Thomas Tryon, has already been mentioned.’ But there are more vegetari-

ans of the same period ofa far more permanentnature, at least one of

whom Franklin knew, the German immigrant JohannBeissel, a founder in

1732 of the Seventh Day Baptists, known as Dunkers. Franklin probably knewseveral more, perhaps including the membership ofthe sect. These

Baptists were vegetarian, perhaps vegan, primarily for ascetic reasons but

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seem to have believed also in kindness to animals. Another vegetarian of the early eighteenth century was JoshuaEvans, ofJersey, whoclaimed that all animals love life and that it is a sin to take thatlife fromthem.In addition, there were “the Dorrelites” toward the end ofthe eighteenthcentury,

founded by William Dorrell, an English immigrant, who were probably

also vegan and largely ascetic and whoalso seemedto respect the rights of

animals. Unfortunately, the historical record is too skimpyto say much more aboutthese early American recusants from the dietary norm. In the same year thatWilliam Cowherd was founding the vegetarian

Bible-Christian Church in England, an American,L. Du Pre, was arguing that to eat animalflesh, specifically that of the cow, was to breacha covenant with God. Aroundthe same time, perhaps a fewyearsearlier, John

Chapmanof Massachusetts — the folk hero Johnny Appleseed — was practising vegetarianismas a follower of the teachings of Emmanuel Swedenborg but with an even greater respect for the animals than Swedenborg seemed to possess. Apart from such uncommonindividuals andsects, we have to look to the immigrants from Cowherd’s Salford Bible-Christian Churchto find the origins of vegetarianism, certainly of organized vegetarianism, inAmerica. Even thenthe level of organization was, at first, very limited. With some forty fellow church members, William Metcalfe, his wife Susanna,

and James Clark crossed the Atlantic. From the hardship ofthe journey, only eighteen remained vegetarian by the time America was reached. These immigrants established the Bible-Christian Church in Pennsylvania and began the task of proselytization.However, because of unemployment in

the area, several of the original congregation sought work elsewhere, including Clark, and some returned to flesh as well as to alcohol, which was also banned. Still, the faithful persisted, above all Rev. Metcalfe, who was

convinced his principles were ordained by Godand HisSon,arguing that the “fish” that Jesus was supposedto have eaten referred in fact to some nonflesh food. Indeed, as we have alreadyseen, even if the food was fish,

perhaps it was regarded as a nonflesh food.* In his booklet Abstinencefrom the Flesh ofAnimats, Metcalfe argued there was no humanlimitationto the precept “Thoushalt not kill.” He sufferedthe inevitable derision but one that was accompanied by a degree of admiration, Metcalfe even beingoi offered the ministry of a more aff]juent andrespectable church provided he adopt the same moresas his parishioners — which, of course, he refusedto

do. It has beenhintedthat offers ofassistance accompanied bythe requirement to abandonthe vegetarian and temperance principles may have had some devious motives.’ In fact, there appear to have been no nefarious

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ulterior motives, no conspiracy, no threat. These “rich friends” were merely #

concerned to see Metcalfe as, from their perspective, a responsible Christian leader coming to share “regular” Christian values. To be sure, his abo-

litionist, pacifist, abstinence principles were anathema to many, but the ridicule directed at him was matched bythe friendship of numerous oth-

ers. In fact, he and his church continued,albeit with considerable difhiculty

onoccasion, andin 1850 he was instrumental — indeed, the prime mover— in the establishment of a national Vegetarian Society, just three years after the founding of the Vegetarian Society in England. Infact, Metcalfe kept in touch with developments in Britain that influenced himto do the same

in the UnitedStates.Moreover, somewhat akin toMrs. Brothertonin England, Susanna Metcalfe collected vegetarianrecipes from church members

and published themas the Bible-Christian cookbook. The momentous step forward took place already in 1830 when a temperance advocate, the Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham (1794-1851), came to lecture and to meet members of the Bible-Christian Church. Whether Grahamwasalreadya vegetarianis unclear, although it is clear he had already developed Graham crackers, but from thenon, the already popular Sylvester Grahambecamethe principal advocate of the vegetarian andanti-alcohol causes inAmerica — and this at a time whenflesh andalcohol, even drugs suchas opium (laudanum), were not only considered “nor-

mal”fare but were also widely recommended as a medicinal cure for almost all ailments. During the cholera epidemicof 1832 local authorities and even the US Board of Health attempted to restrict the consumptionofvegetables. Flesh, alcohol, and prayer to combat what was seenas adivinely ordained illness, a punishment for sin, were the most common nostrums.

Grahamprescribed the very reverse of the popular and“official” view, achieving a considerable degree of support. He achieved some notoriety, too, especially among the medical fraternity, because Grahaminsisted that the prevailing unhealthy diet was the cause of the illness rather than, through an increase ofthe harmful foodstuffs, a remedyfor it. Frequent bathing — a novel ideagiven that until the seventeenth centuryin Europe, even annual bathing was a rarity, and that by the nineteenth, regular bathing wasstill uncommon — drinking water rather than alcohol, outdoor exercise, and a plant-based diet with whole grain bread would, Graham claimed, restore health, eradicate illness, and prevent recurrence. Many

responded favourably to Graham's eloquent pleas with the result that American vegetarians were known for quite some time not by the confusing epithet “vegetarian” but as “Grahamites.” Like manyof his British and other European counterparts, as we have

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seen, Graham told his audiences that Genesis represented a vegetarian

Golden Age whenthe populationlived ona whollybeneficial naturaldiet,

that thehuman bodywas not designedfora fleshdiet, or for condiments,

and that by nature the humanwasa frugivore. Like Lewis Gompertz before him and HenrySalt later, Graham agreed that humans could derive adequate nourishment fromflesh, but he wentfurther than Gompertz and Salt in pointing out what he sawas its negative attribute of stimulating lust andthe desire for alcohol. Nonetheless, whereas Gompertz and Salt con-

sidered the protection ofanimals the primaryreason forthe vegetariandiet, Graham appears to have taken the primary groundto be humanhealth. For Graham, raw foods were best, unadulterated foods came second, and flesh

and alcohol were entirely detrimental and to be avoided. Nonetheless, abstinence from flesh alone would not suffice, Graham warned. A poorlyprepared andpoorly chosenvegetable regimen would be worse than a modest mixeddiet of vegetable and flesh, Whereastheage of perfectibilty hadarisenalittle earlier in Europe, this was the millenarian age in the UnitedStates. From prison reform to industrial democratization to gender questions,all aspects ofAmericanlife were putin question with the prevailing belief that every social, economic, and political ill had a ready remedy. Humanreason, aided by God — oratleast by some unknowable deity ~ would showthe way. To be sure, the idea was already presentat the time ofthe Declaration of Independence, but nowit reached its zenith. The appropriate diet and the surest roadto health were amongthe historical questions that could now, it was felt, be answered

definitively. In light both ofthe large meals that were served andof the

prominence offlesh in those meals, not only Grahambutalso manyvisi-

tors to the UnitedStates noted the excesses in the American regimen. For Graham,one ofthe excesses was white flour, which should,he argued, be

replaced withcoarsely ground whole wheatflour — hence “Grahamflour” and, made fromthatflour, “Grahamcrackers.” The Iacobbos summedup the Grahamite regimen: “Graham advised thoseseeking health to abandon

all medicine, liquor, coffee, tea, butter, and milk (the latter not preferred

but allowed only in small quantities and diluted). They were to drink water, toast water, or water gruel; eat foodinits natural state, unspiced; and especially eat boiled wheatbread andfruit for regularity. Cleaningandexercisingthe skin with a brushwasalso advised.”® Manythousands‘attended Griahany n’s lectures — as manyas two thousandat atime, several hundred

being common. Manywere convinced and converted. Perhaps at no time prior to the Progressive Era at the turn of the twentieth century, that Gilded Age ofoptimism, has Western vegetarianism,albeit a vegetarianism

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based predominantly on health concerns, had alarger hearing and garnered more success — along with vehementopposition. Grahamite America offered great potential for the vegetarian cause. Moreover, with rather

more culinary wisdom thanis suggested bythe diet served at early meetings ofthe English Vegetarian Society, Grahamurged his followers to avoid puddings and pastry — the diet ofwhich Punch had beensoderisive.’ Graham’s Lectures on the Science ofHuman Life, published in two volumes in 1839, providedthe essence of his teachings for a welcoming public. William Alcott(17802-1854), not to be confusedwithhis cousin Bronson

Alcott, was also a dietary reformer, preaching his message in the sameera as

Graham. Hissuccess was not as great as that of Grahambut was considerable nonetheless. He was alreadya noted health-reform physician whenhe turned to the vegetarian regimen, claiming,like Graham, the humanto be

a natural frugivore, designed tolive onfruit and nuts. In 1837, Alcott joined

Sylvester Graham in the newly formed — and primarily “Grahamite” — American Physiological Society,which focusedonthe teachingof physiology, anatomy, andthe diet that shouldresult from the correct understanding of the first two. Thesociety andits women’s branch, the Ladies’ Physiolog-

ical Society, became a voice for vegetarianism anda natural forerunner of theAmerican VegetarianSociety, foundedjust over a decade later. The Ladies’ Physiological Society was also prominent in the promotion of greater independenceof, andrights for, women./\s in Britain, until the twentieth century vegetarianism was promoted together withother radical and reformist causes that were seen to be of a progressive nature. Alcott wrotenumerous books, one ofwhich was Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in allAges (1848). His grounds for the recommendationof the vegetariandiet consisted of the experiences of earlyhistory, including the Pythagoreans and Essenes, and mentioned the Bible-Christian Church, George Cheyne, William Lambe, and Baron Cuvier’s

work onteeth; environmentaland personal economy, health, humanphysiology, and anatomy; and finally, but most importantfor the future, moral

reasons, namelythe unnecessary and unconscionable slaughter of animals. If Graham did more than anyoneelse to bring vegetarianism — indeed, “Grahamism” — to the attention of the American public, it was William Alcottwho moved American vegetarianism more rapidly towardits appropriate animal-ethical base. It was not that Grahamhadentirely ignored the ethical base by emphasizingthe primarily ethological factors — for example, hestated explicitly that he sympathized withthe animals in their plight — but that he hadgiven greater prominence to otherfactors. In an1838 edi-

tion of the GrahamJournal ofHealth andLongevity he quoted, unattributed

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and slightly incorrectly, from Erasmus Darwinonregard for “Our brother emmets andoursister worms” and mentioned favourably, withoutindicat-

ing their source other than “Northern India,” austere and, for Graham, “extreme” Jaina practices.* Nonetheless, Alcott stressed the ethical rather more, condemning huntingand fishing as well as stating:

Nearly every argument which can be brought to showthe superiority ofa vegetable diet over one that includes fleshorfish, is a moral argument... The

destruction of animals for food, in its details and tendencies, involves so

muchcruelty as to cause everyreflecting individual — not destitute ofthe ordinarysensibilities — to shudder... ... the world, I mean our own portionofit, sometimes seems to melike

one mightyslaughterhouse — one grand school for the suppression ofevery kind, and tender, and brotherlyfeeling ~ one grandprocess of educationto the entire destruction ofall moral principle — one vast scene of destruction to all moral sensibility, andall sympathywith the woes ofthose aroundus.Is it not so?

... Howcan the Christian with the Bible in hand, and the merciful doctrines ofits pages for his text, “Teach metofeel another’s woe,”? — the beast’s not excepted — and yet, having laid down that Bible, go at once from the

domestic altar to make light of the convulsions andexit of apoor domestic animal?!”

If the moral argument was becoming the predominant argumentfor vegetarianism in Britain by the mid-nineteenth century, its arrival in the United States was perhapsa fraction earlier. Another physician who became a vegetarian advocate — indeed, also a

distinguished future president of the American Medical Association — was Reuben Dimond Mussey(1780-1866). He believed that humans bore much

similarityto the great apes and, thus, that humanslived most appropriately

on the similar vegetarian diet on which he thoughtthe apesall thrived.

Musseyregarded ancientcivilizations — where, he opined, humans had

lived longer — to have beenvegetarian, and he persuaded manyofhis medical students at Dartmouth to adopthis flesh-abstaining practices. ‘Two rumours were prevalent at large: first, that the Grahamites hadall died from cholera as a consequence of their weak constitutions resulting from the abstinence fromanimal flesh; and second, that the vegetarians were

planning to introducelegislation to outlawflesh consumption. Mussey's presence was perhaps enoughto dispel thefirst — although rumourisfrequently unresponsive to evidence — but the second was so increasingly

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commonthathe felt compelled to refute it in public. It is certainly worthy of note thatMussey’s reputation as a vegetarian did not prevent him from being elected president of theAmerican Medical Association. Despite the relative successes of Graham, Alcott, Mussey, and others, a flesh diet remained the norm. Butthe verystridency of most of the medical establishmentin heaping a measureofridicule onthe reformers, mixedoccasionally with a modicumof goodwill in recognizing the force of some ofthe vegetarian argument,reflected the positive public response to the vegetarian appeal that was frequently heard.It is only whenthe advocates of change are somewhatsuccessfulthat they need to be opposed soaggressively. In 1843 social reformer BronsonAlcott (1799-1888), a dedicated Pythag-

orean and cousin of WilliamAlcott, teamed withBritish visitors to inau-

gurate a Massachusetts vegetarian community. He had been avegetarian, almost vegan, since 1835, considering the wearingofleather “an invasion of the rights of animals.” He was oneoftheleaders ofthe transcendentalists — Romantic idealists - centred on Concord, Massachusetts, and the only one to be a committed vegetarian, writing of the horrors of butcheryin style reminiscent of Alexander Pope.'! Yet whereas the horror was sufficient to turn Alcott away from flesh forever, the horror served onlyto stimulate rhetorical flourish in Pope. Karen and Michaellacobbowrite correctly, but withthe potentialtobe misinterpreted, that another transcendentalist, “Henry David Thoreau...

wrote about vegetarianism in Walden, perhaps reflecting onhis friendship

with [Bronson] Alcott.”!? First, as “Walden”is not here italicized, it might

be thought there was a vegetarian community at Walden Pond, which, of course, there was not. Second, and more important, Thoreau’s comments

ondiet in Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854) reflect more his fascinatingly

paradoxical nature than any associationwith Alcott, although hehadtried

the Grahamite diet. His being was a synthesis of Eden and Arcadia.'° In Thoreauthe twoare inextricably intertwined. Whenhe was in Maine, we find himeating pork, moose, and fish rather than the Grahamitediet.Itis

important to the appropriate understanding ofone of the most enigmatic yet interesting figures in the intellectual history ofAmericathat the impression not be left that Thoreauwas avegetarian, as manyhave imagined him to be. Thus, he stated: “As I came through the woods withmystring offish,

trailing mypole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuckstealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight,

andwasstrongly tempted to seize and devour him raw ... Once ortwice... while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods,like a half-

starved hound,with astrange abandonment, seeking some kindofvenison

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whichI might devour, and no morsel could have beentoo savage for me.”

After muchin the same Arcadianvein, but then quoting Chaucer on hunters not being holy men(although getting the facts and words from The Canterbury Tales wrong), he determines:

It maybe vain to ask whythe imaginationwill not be reconciled toflesh and fat. 1 amsatisfied thatit is not. Is it not a reproach that manis a carnivorous animal? True, he can anddoeslive, in great measure, by preying on otheranimals, but this is a miserable way, as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, maylearn, ~ and he will be regardedas a benefactor

to his race whoshall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my ownpractice maybe, I have no doubtthatit is a part of the destiny of the humanrace, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, assurely as the savagetribes haveleft off eating each

other when they camein contact with the morecivilized.“

This is the Edenicaspect of his persona. It sounds rather reminiscent of the “thywill be done, o lord, but, please, not just yet” attitude we encountered amongcertain British vegetarian advocates in Chapter 9. Only when the nature of humanityhas changedwill it be appropriate to become vegetarian, he seemsto say like his forerunners. But on Thoreau’s owninter-

pretation, the contradictions are an inherent part of the humancharacter. Indeed, a correct comprehension of Thoreau will allow us to understand both the desirability of vegetarianism and the great difficulties present in the human character that hinderits achievement. Unfortunately, the complex aspect of the Thoreau character is usually not recognized, and even as fine a scholar as Angus ‘Tayloris led to state, quite incorrectly, that “Henry David Thoreau... stuck primarily to a vegetarian diet.”'? Nonetheless, it is notable that W.E.H. Lecky’s later famous idea of continuous moral progress toward the improved treatmentofanimalsis already conceived by Thoreau and that Thoreau understood full well — an idea he may indeed have adopted from Bronson Alcott — that the ground for abstaining from animal flesh is ultimately a moral one.'® Bronson Alcott may well have been the source also of Thoreau'’s theory of nonviolent resistance to the state as expressed in Thoreau's ever-popular essay on “Civil Disobedience,” but it was not a nonviolence he extended to the animalrealm. Nonetheless,

the essay confirmed Mahatma Gandhiin the pathofnonviolence, in which animals were included. Bronson Alcott also tried to persuade another transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, of the moral equivalence, or at least significant similarity, between cannibalism and the consumption of

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nonhumanflesh, an argument, it is rum oured, strong enoughto persuade

Emersontotry the vegetarian diet but without any continued success. The Origins ofOrganized American Vegetarianism

All along, the Bible-Christian Church had continuedto operate in Philadelphia and, indeed, continued to do so until it ceased to exist sometime in the 1920s, advocating reformin general withregardtodiet, temperance, tobacco, pacifism, and the abolition of slavery. But vegetarianism wasits

primaryadvocacyas the cornerstoneofall other reforms. In 1842 the secretary of the Kensington Physiological Society, directly associated with the church, argued that abstention fromflesh foods was the prerequisite of reformin general, a claim to be perpetuated later by theAmerican Vege-

tarian Society: “Abstinence from Murdered Animals as Food” — this was capitalized by the society — was “the first step” in reform, a dictum reminiscent of Tolstoy, who also wrote at a later date of vegetarianism as the “first step” in reform.'” Equally, theMassachusetts animal advocate George Angell wrote later of reform in animalethics in terms of steps. Yet vegetarians were notall unitedin their desired overall reforms. Most were abolitionist, but some were more wary. Most were Christian and someavowedly, even stridently, secular. Some were conventional Christians and somerad-

ically evangelical.What was needed wasan organization dedicated to the commoncausethat couldunite all the “Grahamites.” Shortly before the Physiological Society lecture, Metcalfe had published a thirty-five-page booklet that aroused considerable commentwell beyond the confinesof Philadelphia: Bzble Testimonyon Abstinencefromthe Flesh of Animals as Food, being an Address delivered at the Bible-Christian Church, NorthStreet, West Kensiington, on the Eighth ofJune 1840, being the Anniver-

sary ofsaid Church. Metcalfe announced that the Bible proscribed flesh consumptionnot merelyin Genesis andthe prophesies ofIsaiah but also in Romans 14:21: “It is good neitherto eat flesh nor drink wine.” Ofcourse,

he rehearsed the customary arguments, including the claimthat Jesus neither ate nor provided fish as well as other fiesh.He mentioned the abstinence experience of his own church over two decades. Although some reviewers were dubious aboutthe validity of the arguments, they were not entirely unfavourable. Apparently, the church's consistency impressed them. Most important, the booklet brought Sylvester Graham, William Alcott, and William Metcalfe together again in commoncause. Inthebelief that an organization devotedsolelytothe vegetarian message wasnecessary, William Metcalfe organized a convention in NewYorkas a harbinger of an AmericanVegetarian Society. The triumvirate of Metcalfe,

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Alcott, and Graham,thelatter longill and shortlyto die at the age offiftyeight, werepresent, accompanied by William’s cousin BronsonAlcott, who

wasto becomea preeminent voice for American vegetarianism. The number present at Clinton Hall was quite modest, but commendations from numerous well-wishers who were unable to attendwere read to the assembly, at least one of which was worthy of comment. Whereas one ofthe reputed founders ofsociology, the Frenchman Auguste Comte,hadlooked forward to the benevolent use of “higher” animals for humanends once technological advances had rendered oppressive animal power unnecessary, andalthough the London Zoological Society (Regent's Park Zoo) thought oneofits tasks to be the domestication of animals likely to be ofhumanuse

~ the zoo succeededonlyin domesticatingthe golden hamster! — Dr. David Prince ofSt. Louis regarded the elimination of animalservice “renderedby steam and galvanization’as afuture victory initself.'*Animal use would be increasinglyless necessary. The convention repeated the litany of vegetarian arguments, the attendees referring to the supporting evidence of Wesley, Swedenborg, Franklin, Shelley, Pope, and Isaac Newton— onlyhalf of whom hadbeenvegetarians for any duration — but it was agreed to form the American VegetarianSociety, at least one ofthose present objecting to the use of the word “vegetarian” onthe customarygrounds. In September 1850 the newly founded society met at the ChineseMuseum in Philadelphia to celebrate the FirstAnnual Meeting. It was a good dayfor the animals, as the founding ofthe American Vegetarian Society was accompanied ~ infact, if not causally — by an increase ofthe recognitionof certain, con-

fessedly limited, rights for animals and by their promotion bythe society, as was occurringalso in Britain andIreland. With the meetings in New

York and Philadelphia, the American Vegetarian Society had been born,

even thoughthe birth pangs would prove painful for the society and, indeed, would lead to infant mortality. But unlike the society, the movement managed to prosper.

At this time, vegetarianism was often associated with what now seem

strange panaceas to cure the sick or those who were afraid ofbecomingsick. The watercure, or hydropathy, was the most popularofthese cure-alls, one that required the immersion ofthe patient in water. Such cures remained popularuntil the close of the nineteenth century. These treatments were conductedatspecially designed spas and were sometimesassociated witha vegetarian diet.Conisequently, by showing what might comprise a sound andpleasurable vegetarian regimen, these cures were sometimesa valuable

antidote against the prevalent mythsthat the vegetarian diet consisted entirely ofwhole wheat bread and water and that it rendered the practitioner

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enfeebled or insane. Indeed, such myths were sufhciently widespread that theAmerican Vegetarian Society and its members felt compelled to make strenuous efforts to extinguish the misconceptions.Among the common claims of members of the Vegetarian Societyin its early years —as also ofits English counterpart — were that the vegetarian cuisine shouldrelease womenfromthe repressive roles imposed upon thembysociety. Notably, women outnumberedmen inthe fledglingsocietybutnot inits leadership. It was notable, too, that mostAmerican vegetarians were Christians who

regardedtheir chosendiet as an intrinsic aspect oftheirreligion. One ofthe most commonChristianvegetarian claims, by then common among European Christians as well, was that the “dominion” of Genesis imposed an obligation on humansto care for their charges. It is remarkable howlong the contrary opinion has pervaded the arguments of vegetarianism’s secular promoters. Perhaps the most commonlyrepeated erroneous view was that a flesh diet promoted aggressive andbellicose tendencies among the partakers. But the most significant fact was that the wellbeing of animals was now foremost ontheagenda. One ofthe greatest tragedies for the spread of vegetarianism was the early death in 1851, the year after the society was founded, ofSylvester Graham. If the greatest and best-knownpromoterofthe creed had died so early, this was surely evidence, so it was thought, of the inappropriateness

ofa vegetarian diet. It was a commonconvictionthat was hard for vegetarians to overcome. By 1854Sylvester Graham and William Alcottwere dead, and William Metcalfe had returned to England. The triumvirate was gone. The new guardwas notyet ready. The Vegetarian Society ran out of funds and ceased to function. But if the society was moribund, the vegetarian cause, judging bythe writings in its favour, was not aboutto joinits organizational parent. Once again, the Bible-Christian Church cametothe rescue, although

not effectively until three decadeslater, after other attempts to salvage vegetarian ideals had metwithlittle success. This time the rescue came in the

personofan immigrant from England, HenryClubb.In 1855 he had founded

the Vegetarian Settlement Company, one of numerous attempts to organize a utopian communein theNew World, the two best knownbeing the

short-lived quasi-transcendentalist commune of Brook Farm (1841-1847)

andthe Pantisocracy (from Greek pant-isocratia, meaning government by poss,

all) beside the Susquehanna Riverenvisaged, but neverrealized, by Samuel

Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Of somewhat greater success was Joseph Priestley’s scientific academy at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, which

lasted from 1794 until Priestley’s death a decadelater. Like the Pantisocracy *

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of the English Romantics, the Vegetarian Settlement Companynevergot off the ground. After his utopian failure, Clubb became a journalist but neverlost his interest in the cause ofthe vegetarian community, waiting to reorganize a national society when the time was ripe. But the time was not ripe for Mr., nowRev., Clubb until 1886, when the Vegetarian Society of America was instituted. A lengthy hiatus! Despite the lack of a national organization — the NewYork Vegetarian Society had also become temporarily defunct — the vegetarian ideal was still preached andpractised.

After the founding and then demise ofthe Vegetarian Society of America,

Clubb continued his association with the Philadelphia Bible-Christian Churchand as late as 1922 was a memberof the committee that wrote the 192-page History ofthe Philadelphia Bible-Christian Church for the First Centuryofits Existence.'? Unfortunatelyfor the vegetarian cause, the BibleChristian Church was also soon to cease to exist. Meanwhile, manyof the late-nineteenth-century water-cure establishments opted for a vegetarian diet. Thus, for many Americans, especially those not weddedto traditional mores, vegetarianism andhealth wereclosely associated. Indeed, the recruitment successes of the water-cure andvegetarianismadvocates were sufficient that the allopathic (i.e., “regular”) phy-

sicians joined in a somewhat concerted effort to combat the vegetarian advances. The result was a standoff. If the vegetarians did not succeed in making America fleshless, the allopathics likewise failed to convince those of a doubting nature to return to whatthe physicians saw as “normalcy.” In fact, the Hygienist movementadvocating drugless cures and a vegetarian diet became popular throughout both the UnitedStates and Europe, especially the former. Among those drawnto the water cure were Ellen and James White. In

1863 theWhites established a new denomination, the Seventh Day Adven-

tists,whose namereflects that they regarded Saturday as the Sabbath and that they awaited the secondcoming. Theyalso advocated (and the church still advocates but does not require) vegetarianpractices. Because ofthe difhculties that have occurred for travelling vegetarians throughout recorded history, Ellen White did notentirely renounce flesh until later in her ministry, but she was nonetheless steadfast throughout in her advocacy. The Seventh Day Adventists were successful in their proselytization, made

manyconverts, and expanded, although Ellen White and her church did

little to advocate the moral cause on behalf of animals. Today, approximately 50 percent ofAdventistsare estimatedto be vegetarian. The Nutrition Council of the denomination recommends the vegetarian diet on

both health and scriptural grounds, declaring it to be appropriate “because

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of their belief in the holistic nature of humankind.” The interests ofthe animals receive no attention. With considerable degree of contrast, immediately preceding the Civil

War, the Bible-Christian Church, continuingits perennial advocacy,listed

seven compelling grounds for abstinence from flesh, none of which were mutually exclusive. The biblical teachings, the investigations of science, andjustice for the animals headedthelist.As was to be expected, however, the AmericanCivil War (1861-1865) interrupted vegetarian advances. Indeed, neither the North nor the South provided vegetarian meals for its warriors. The vegetarian soldier was perforce compelled to return to flesh or to starve. As always, as we have seen before, war, animal ethics, and vegetari-

anismdid not mix well.

Stull, the CivilWar at an end, a few nonconformists persisted in their hor-

tative endeavours during Reconstruction, and eventhe allopathic physicians felt compelled againto recognize the success ofthe vegetarian appeal. But, on balance, the orthodoxyofthe flesh-eating regimen prevailed. Not onlywasit difficult for the tempted to conquertheir owningrained habits andthe persuasive force of the practices oftheir companions and acquaintances, butit

was also analmost insuperable task tomake themselves outsiders among the

members oftheir ownfamilies.AsLawrence Grunland, an opponentofvegetarianism, asserted, in a debate in the Chicago Vegetarian Society’s maga-

zine, it was not desirable for a social being to differ from mostothers and to

be deemed oneofthe peculiar people.”It is an argumentthat has proven a thorntoall advocates of unconventional change in humanhistory. And vegetarianism was especially prone tosucha critique. In 1872, seeing their advocated reform in some jeopardy, Mr. and Mrs. White of the Seventh Day Adventists hired the nutrition expert Dr. John Kellogg of breakfast-cereal fame to take vegetarian practices beyond,it wouldappear, even the heady days under the popularity of Sylvester Graham. Vegetarianismspread, throughKellogg and others, fromthe Northeast into parts of the United States that it had never ventured before. The Rebirth ofOrganized American Vegetarianism

Despite the popularity of nutritional vegetarianism,a national, specifically vegetarian, organization hadnot existed since the mid-1850s. Rev. Henry Clubb now recognized, as we have noted, both the need and the opportunity to bring one into existence, and naturally, as he was a Bible-Christian

Church minister in the city where the church had its roots, Philadelphia became the home ofthe newVegetarian Society ofAmerica, despite the Chicago Vegetarian Society's attempt to persuadethe fledgling organization

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to make its home in the windycity.Whereas dissenting Christianity in Britain had readily turned to a version of animal rights and wasin the forefront of the crusade against vivisection, Christianity in the United States

turned more readily than its transoceanic counterpart to vegetarianism.

Nonetheless,inline with the increasing skepticism ofthe times, the vege-

tarian movement embracedtheprinciples ofother faiths andphilosophies, especially theosophy, underthe influence ofwhich the ethical aspects of the creed prospered even further. An increasing connection becameevident inthe later nineteenth cen-

tury between suchanimalissues as vivisection and vegetarianism as well as

between some members of humane organizations and vegetarian practice, although, in someinstances, there was a surprising lack ofit. For example, one of the most influential and radical animal advocates, George Thorn-

dike Angell (1823-1909), co-founder of the Massachusetts Societyfor the

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (1867) and founder of the Bands of Mercy (1882) andof the American Humane Education Society (1889), was an abo-

litionist on issues of animal experimentation. His motto for the Human Education Society was: “Glory to God, Peace on Edarth, Kindness, Justice and Mercyto Every Living Creature.” He stated: “I am sometimes asked, ‘Why do you spend so muchof your time and moneyin talking about

kindness to animals,whenthere is so muchcruelty to men?’ And I answer,

‘We are working at the roots. Every humane publication, every lecture, every step in doing or teaching kindness to them,is a step to preventcrime, — a step in promoting those qualities of heart which will elevate human souls.’”*! Yet although an abolitionist on experimentation, there seems no evidence Angell joined his even moreradical colleagues in eschewing flesh. Of course, andthis remains true of SPCAs today, fledgling humanesoci-

eties were loath to associate themselves withthe vegetarian cause directly, in fear that they mayalienate manyoftheirflesh-eating, fund-contributing, support-rendering members. They would not be able to continue to pro-

mote the more commonly acknowledged protection of animals if they openly advocated what were seen as radical programs. Nonetheless, the turn of the twentieth century seemed to augur well for the final defeat of flesh and the eliminationofcruelty to animals, even if not in immediate

prospect. America sawitself as the symbolandreality of progress, andthe elimination ofcrueltyinall its modes anddietary reform were viewed many Americansas essential aspects of that progress.Manyin the women’s suffrage movement sawanimalsas entitled to a worldofgreater justice, just as they sawthe same with even greater conviction for themselves. And re-

frigeration in transport vehicles was making fruits and vegetables available,

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(FS

and at lower prices, tomany more peoplefor far longer portionsofthe year than hitherto. Ofthe greatest importance was that the promise of JohnKellogg’s engagement with the Seventh Day Adventists’ vegetarian cause was bearin fruit. He was nowacknowledged as the prime proponentofhealthyvegetarian nutrition. Kellogg had been working on producing nutritious substitutes for Hesh at the Battle Creek Sanitarium Health Food Company since the 1870s, more than ablyaided mostof the time by his accomplished wife, Ella Eaton Kellogg. Bythe turn of the centuryhis primarily nut-based OOO _

a

products were achieving tremendous acclaim, and Kellogg was reminding

those who benefited thattheir diet was also to the great advantage ofthe animals who were spared. Kellogg’s successes were broadcast widelyin the press, and vegetarianism became both respectable and popular, prompting the flesh-eating defenders to take up arms against promoters of dietary change. Each side vied withthe other in offering, sometimes irrelevant,

sometimes simply spurious, examples of armies, athletes, andscientific experiments to demonstrate the superiority of their chosen regimen. Following the lead of the Booths in Britain,the . \merican Salvation Armyjoined

the battle on the vegetarian side; several journalists and, naturally, the meat

industryitselfcarried the cudgel for flesh. The tide began to turn against the promoters of animal interests in the earlyyears of the twentiethcentury, whenanimal experimentation, long practised butpreviously a perennial failure in providing medical benefits, began to succeed, as its promoters had always proclaimed would come to pass. Animal experimentation was convincing the public of its legitimacy with far greater success thanbefore and was nowseen to be immensely beneficial in the promotion of human health. The claim of the opponents that similar successes could have been

readily achieved without animal experimentationfell on increasingly deaf

ears. [he altruists were put on the defensive bythe ever-prominent promoters of humanself-interest. Still, perhaps more from high prices than from any concern with dietary reform, flesh consumption—apart from the composition of the military regimen — diminished into the 1920s. Withthe First World War andthe Great Depression — the Regressive Era to followthe Progressive Era, the | usted Age to succeedthe Gilded Age — humanproblems, and they were legion and oppressive, were the preeminent concern. Exclusively humaninterests, not animalinterests, were the

contentof the mind. The dust bow! that was the Midwest provedincapable of providing adequate vegetarian fare.Many Americans were desperately undernourished and were compelled to eat whatever theycould get. The Depression forced even the Battle Creek Sanitariumintoreceivership.

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Vegetarians reverted once more to being regarded as cranks. Even the discoveryof the great benefits of the soybean could notdimthe revival ofthe desirability of flesh, if and whenflesh could be obtained, and hunger and scarcity madeflesh even more desirable — this despite Henry Ford’s advocacy of the benefits of the bean. Many who were vegetarian fromreligious conviction maintainedtheir diet, but they hadlittle success in persuading others to join them. In the Second World Warvegetarianismfared no better. Other thanfor military personnel, flesh was ratherscarce — afact that made it more desirable, not less. But if vegetarianism was indecline, the

ethical orientation of those whoremained true tothe faith was not.More andmore, flesh eating was regarded byvegetarians as morallybarbaric. The American Vegetarian Party and the American Vegan Society

In 1948 Symon Gould of the American Vegetarian founded the American

Vegetarian Party with John Maxwell as presidential candidate, far less to make any serious incursions into the dominant two-party system of the United States andfar more to advertise the vegetarian agenda tothe American public. The ploy worked.Newspapers covered the presidential candidates and reported on the vegetarian program, including Maxwell’s adamant opposition tothe killing of animals for food, fun, or fashion. The

presidential candidate for the party in 1952 was former military general Herbert Holdridge, whose platform seemed more generally pacifist than vegetarian. If vegetarianism did not increase rapidly as a consequence of the publicity, at least the political party seems to have been successful in gaining vegetarianism a modicumofsupport, again at least sufficient support that the medical profession took the opportunity once more to deride the “food fadists.” Butat least as a portent ofthe direction in which vegetarians were moving, or wished to move, in 1960 the American VeganSociety was founded

in NewJersey by Indian-born Jay Dinshah (1933-2000), who promoted the principles ofJainism through a/imsa (the principle of nonharm). In Outof the Jungle (1967) he wrote: “Man cannotpretend to be higher in ethics, spirituality, advancement, or civilization thanothercreatures, andat the same time live by lower standards than the vulture or hyena. The Pillars of

Ahimsa indisputably represent theclearest, surest path out of the jungle, andtoward the attainmentofthat highly desirable goal.”

In Ahimsa (1971) he developed a philosophyof reverence forlife itself that bore considerable similarity to the reverence-for-life philosophy of

Albert Schweitzer:

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‘To anyone whobelievesthatlife itself has some purpose —oris evenits own reason for being — one should not wantonlydestroy even plants. The destructionofanylifeis thus an act not to be takenlightly, or presumedto be isolated in the schemeofthings. Itis to be precededbycareful consideration

of the responsibilities and the possiblealternatives involved, and accompanied by an understanding that oneis indeed doing the right thing according to the presentstate ofexistence...Uhe ethical vegetarianis seriously interested in lessening the suffering that he maybe causing in the world— even inad-

vertently afflicted uponrelatively low formsoflife.’

Byincludingplants in the vegetarian concern, Dinshah,like Edward Car-

penter in England earlier, gave vegetarian adversaries an opportunity to cast vegetarians once again as irrelevant eccentrics.

From New Vegetarianism to Environmentalism

The revolution that was about to change muchofthe orientation ofAmer-

ica in the 1960s and1970s was both cultural andintellectual but primarily

the former. Evenatits mildestit was the age of the questioning of authority.This period sawthe beginningsof the mass-market publicitystunts that began to broadcast the vegetarian message to a far wider audience — an audience that, on the whole, disparaged the stunts but could notavoidthe message. The new vegetarianism, as manyof its participants sawit, intended bothto spare the animals their suffering and to end world hunger, claiming that wheat rather than cattle as the primary food source would readily feed the whole world. Feeding the world’s grain to people rather than food animals would solve the world-hunger problem, wrote Frances Moore Lappé in Dietfor a Small Planet (1971). The bookhas sold 3 million copies and has influenced,if not always converted, almost asmany minds. Vegetarian food, said manyofthe hippies, did not have tobe boring and dull. It could beso readilynutritious, inexpensive, farmore enjoyable than beef burgers or pork tenderloins, and overcomea wholehistoryof cruelty into the bargain. Vegetarian cookbooks abounded,especially bythe later 1970s. Thoreauian simplicity was the watchword of the new advocates,

bothin cuisine andlifestyle. Suddenly, vegetarianism was “in” — not with the average American perhaps but amongmanyofthe California and New York actors and media gurus as well as among those who werealienated from America’s seemingly unidimensionalcapitalist and acquisitive values. In 1975 Vegetarian World indicated that the groundsforpractising vegetarianism amongthe American people were environmental, health“based,

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ethical, aesthetic, religious, and physiological, but as the proportions were not given, the information toldusverylittle about recent changes. However, one might surmise that the ethical grounds were primary, orat least

becoming ever more dominantly so, that environmental reasons were increasing, that religious groups opposed to eating flesh remained about the same, and that health reasons would often be mixed with otherreasons.

The groundthat humans were vegetarianbyphysiological nature — despite beingdecidedlyin decline as the primary reason — remained auseful justification for having become a vegetarian but almost never a motive to become one. And the aesthetic ground — that flesheating is in and ofitself a disgusting and ugly activity — was nowrarely considered, although it had been a commonground given for vegetarianism in the nineteenth century.

In addition, the high cost of meat apparently persuaded sometotrya vegetarian diet in order to savemoney. Such opportunistic vegetarians would eat the occasional piece of flesh when the opportunityarose andrevertto an omnivorous diet whenfinancesallowed. Americanintellectuals were rather latecomers on the scene. The seeminglysolitary J. Howard Moore (1862-1916), Chicago authorofatleast five books on evolutionary biology and animal ethics, became a vegetarian,

probably aroundthe age ofthirty, in ignorance of anyvegetarian advocacy.Hetells us, “I becamea vegetarian by myreflection. I did not know at the time of the vegetarian movement,and hence, supposedmyselfalone amongrepublics of carnivora. Nearly every doctrine came to me as a trembling contraband ... 1 became a vegetarian for ethical considerations.”

This was writtenin 1897. By 1906 he was able to informhis English corre-

spondent HenrySalt — they had immense admirationfor each other — that there were four vegetarian restaurants in Chicago “that serve together many hundreds of people daily.” In 1910 he toldSalt that “Over here, we are in the midst ofa mild crusade against meat-eating.” But he hadto confess: “As usual, the impelling motive is a selfish one — the desire to save a few cents

... Howprimitive. Howsad. In one sense, how contemptible.””° He argued that the same general moral code applied “not to the black man and the white womanalone, but to the sorrel horse and the greysquirrel as well. Yes, do as you wouldbe done —not to creatures of your own anatomyor your ownguild only, but to all creatures.”*” LikeThomas Tryon and others before him, Moore believed justice to be indivisible. Suffering a debilitating illness, he shot himselfat the age offifty-fourin 1916. He seemsto have

been well ahead ofhis time,for there is no evidence his vegetarian advocacy

hadany direct influence on the Americanintelligentsia.His two major

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works, Zhe Universal Kinship (1906) — “the best ever written in the human-

itarian cause,” according to HenrySalt —- and The NewEthics (1907), seem to have remained largely unknowntohis owngeneration.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1905), describing zuter alia the horrors of the slaughterhouse, did rather more to promote the vegetarian message

amongintellectuals. Yet despite the vegetarian message toward the end of TheJungle, Sinclairstill treated the human,rather thanthe slaughteredanimal, as the dupe of the slaughterhouse operators. Humans, not animals, were the victims.*® Indeed, the socialist Sinclair demonstratedhis orientation byattending, the year before his death, the presidential signing ofthe

Wholesome Meat Actin 1967. Infact, the vegetarian cause was not promi-

nent amongintellectuals until the 1960s and 1970s, and then onlyperipherally, arising effectively muchlater than the counterculture, mainlyin the

1980s and1990s with such thinkers as Tom Regan, DanielDombrowski, and Carol J. Adams, and culminating in Foodfor Thought: The Debate over

Eating Meat (ed. Steve F. Sapontzis, 2004) — a book that presents arguments maintained by vegetarian proponents and adversaries, with valuable contributions from numerous philosophers andothers, including, on the

vegetarian side, in addition to the above-mentionedscholars, James Rachels, Evelyn Pluhar, Bart Gruzalski, Roberta Kalechofsky, and Val Plumwood.

The inclusivist position advanced by Tom Regan,one consistent with the views of most modernethicalvegetarians, is expressed by Reganas follows: In its simplest terms the animal rights position | uphold maintains that such diverse practices as the use of animals in science, sport, and recreational

hunting, the trapping of fur-bearing animals for vanity products, andthe practice of raising animals for human consumption are wrong because they systematicallyviolate the rights of animals involved. Morally, these practices ought to be abolished. This is the goal of the social struggle for animalrights. The goal of our individual struggle is to divest ourselves of our moral and economic tiesto these injustices ~ for example, by not wearing the dead skin of animals and bynoteating their decaying corpses. 29 Carol J. Adams addedthe eco-feminist dimension to the debate, argu-

ing that “the sexism in meateating recapitulates the class distinctions with an added twist: a mythology permeatesall classes that meat is a masculine food and meat eating a male activity.”*° The primarysuccess of the 1980s was in getting the message to many more Americans than had heardit before: everyone was now made aware of vegetarianism and animalrights.If relatively few were convinced, none

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could escape the barrage ofinformation. If the 1980s began in someignorance, a far greater ignorance thanintheearlyyears ofthe century, it ended with awareness. But those years also brought the problems ofopulence and the desire to have the best — people became proud tohave acquired apassion for food, especially gourmet cuisine. Often the best was seen to be shrimp,scallop, or frog-leg appetizers, together with salmon, filet mignon, veal, or lobster entrées, all prepared in specialty sauces. And if one hada surfeit of the “best,” there were always the increasingly popular ethnic cuisines to savour.

Portentously, 1980 was the yearof the founding ofPeople for the Ethical

Treatment of Animals (PETA) by Alex Pacheco, whoretired after twenty

years at the helm, and Ingrid Newkirk, for many always the primary voice of the organization. Their outrageous buteffective propaganda was (and still is) disparaged by many,including manyvegetarians themselves. But no one could doubt the success in bringing animal ethics constantly to public attention. Moreover, PETA's educational work had anextensive anddirect impactonall who were willing to inquire. Animal rights activism andvegetarian, even vegan, promotion were nowseen as one and the same. From

now on, those whodid not knowtheplight of food animals had chosennot to know, ornot to care, aboutthe cruelties they were inflicting, evenifvicariously. A similar approach, butentirely vegan, was taken by Alex Her-

shaft, founder in 1981 of the Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM),

which was similarly concernedwithoutrageous buteffective propaganda.

Unfortunately, sometimes, when one has heard the message too often or

too stridently, one becomes deaf to the appeal — stone deafifone is toosel-

fish to lend an ear. Yet the idea remains amongso many, althoughrarely voiced, that we wouldofcourse be vegetarians in an ideal world, but inthis vale of woe and tears we will carry on muchas before. This is anevil world,

so it is okay for us to be somewhatevil, too. Heir to the Baskin and Robbins ice cream empire and bredto direct the company, John Robbins renounced his inheritance andpublished Dietfor a New America in 1987, a bookthat, even if notoriously inaccurate in some

ofits detailed evidence and argument, persuaded manythat there were

overwhelming economic, environmental, and animal-rights arguments for

adopting a vegetarian diet. Despite the invincible environmentalist arguments for adopting a vegetarian diet, even if they are not as one-sided as vegetarians sometimes make out, most environmentalists continue their flesh-consuming ways, a clear indication that whatever primary concern one hasis likely to outweigh all other considerations. Some environmentalists look to the environment alone and do notraise issues that involve

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considerationforfactors not immediatelyrelevantto their overridingbelief in ecologicalholism,failing to recognize that in such a system nonhuman

animals have a right to be considered as individual ends in themselves in the same manner that humansare usually treatedas such, especially when individual human lives are at stake. Environmentalists have managed to

catch one ear ofgovernment,afactor that gives immenseprestige andlegitimacy, and some consequence, to their cause. Until the animal advocates can catch the other ear of government, or the ear ofa sizable and influential group within bureaucracies or legislative bodies, they are likely to remaincriers in the wind, even though they maysucceed inpersuadingreasonable numbers ofthe public that their cause is just. It remains as true todayas in the past that powerandinterest talk far more loudlythanjustice. And the animal advocates must persuade those in authority not only that they are right butalso that their cause is a matter ofpriority. For that,

given the nature ofinfluence in government, animal advocates mustrelate

their goal to a humancause.With considerable justice, vegetarians delight in portraying themselves asuncompromising radicals, believing emphatically that right is on theirside, but if the animal advocates are toachieve the success ofthe ecologists, a wing of the vegetarians mustpresent themselves in moderate guise.Although Edmund Burke is boundto be one oftheir

least admired political philosophers, they must learn from Burke that what

is morally right maybe politically wrong.Whether the vegetarian advocates want to bepristinely pure orpolitically effective is a question they must askof themselves in far more serious thanrhetoricalvein. Earthsave, foundedby John Robbinsin 1989, fulfils the role perhaps better than anyother organization ofattempting to combine the potentially divisive environmental andvegetarian causes, however similar their ends

mayappearto be onthe surface. Earthsave attempts to show howeach can contribute throughjustice for the environment andfor the animals to the individual's health, but the organization seemsto have greater effect inper-

suading animaladvocates to acknowledge the merits of the environmental cause thanin attracting ecologists to animalrights.

Similarly, PETA, which had attracted 325,000 members by 1990, argued

persuasively how the vegetarian and ecology causes couldbein unison.

Again, however, the effect was far more to put an extra arrowin the vege-

tarian quill with whichto state the vegetarian case thanto persuade environmentalists to give consideration tothelives ofindividual animals ofall species. Rather, on the whole, the environmentalists seemed quite willing to subordinate animal interests to the environmental interest and willing,

say, to cull large numbers of deer to protect Carolinian forests. Animals

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mattered whenspecies were endangered. Individual nonhuman—butnot human —lives were expendable whennosuch threats existed.More than anything else, the vegetarian found the need to counterwell-healed hordes

of those whose wealth andpleasure were derived from the destruction of animal lives, aided by occasional academics more concerned to further their careers through the publication of yet anotherarticle thantoface squarely a moralissue of considerable magnitude. Tobe sure, such individuals — whether rancher, hunter, or academic — recognize the human as an animal, but somehow the human animal never appears as an animal in

quite the same mannerthat other animals are animal — a point thathas been stressed frequentlyin this book. Almostneverare the criteria thought appropriate for the consideration ofhumanrights the samecriteria as those thought appropriate for the consideration ofnonhumanrights. Other than a few hideboundrelics of a previous era, physicians seem nolongerwilling to portrayaflesh diet as essential to humanhealth, although theytend to deviate from recommending an omnivorous diet only when there are compelling immediatehealth reasons for aparticular patient|to eschewflesh. Certainly, physicians nowwarn againstthe dangers of”1e excessesofflesh, especiallytrans fats, but despite the increasingscientific evidence theyare loath to advocate thefinalstep,especially when theeating offishis declared to be so beneficial to the humanrace. Itis a damning“indictment of the

humanspecies, whichpridesitself on itsmuch vaunted moralsense, thatit is able to escape the opprobriumofkilling andtorturingsentient beings. There appearstobelittle recognitionof the validity of the argumentthat, even ifanimal food were advantageous to humanhealth, this fact would not give humansthe right to deprive other animals oftheir lives. Even the formercattle rancher turned animal advocate Howard Lyman, of Voicefor a Viable Future, is unableto persuade his formercolleagues oftheircruelty andlack of consideration, although, undoubtedly, he provides valuable grist to the animal advocacymill in|showingfromexperience howinexcusable is the behaviourofhis former colleagues. The greatest advantage the modern vegetarian possesses over those of previous centuries is the significant number and variety of vegetarian organizations that help to further the cause. The modernvegetarianis far more impervious to the dangers of backsliding, of feeling alone, offeeling

“different” andisolated, for even if family — sometimes even spouseorparents, friends and associates — continue to consumeflesh, there is always a friendly and supportive voice on a website or at a conference able and willing to comfort and give strength and added validation to the ethical

choices. There is always an organization with meetings to attendthat help

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to reinforce the commitmentas wellas provide newandalternativefriends. More and more grocery stores have substantial vegetarian sectionsthatfurther the recognition that one does not stand entirely outside the community. More and more restaurants offer multiple vegetarian options, notjust a dish from whichthe flesh portion has been omitted. Less andlessare vegetarians considered oddballs; perhaps they are not yet deemed “normal,” but increasingly this is so. Perhaps the worst-treated vegetarians are American Christian vegetarians — at least to judge from the complaints one hears from themaboutthe derision heaped upon thembytheirfellow Christians ~ except in the few churches committed to the vegetariandiet. In establishment American Christianity, onestill hears frequently the absurd claim that God commanded humansto eat flesh — which shows howlittle they know of the teachings of their own religion. It may be that certain segments of American Christianity are amongthe final bastions of ignorance and prejudice waiting to be overcomein this changing world. CANADA

Canada’s climate and the great difficulty of providing a year-round vegetarian diet will undoubtedly have inhibited anyserious spread ofvegetarian practice before the developmentofrefrigeration in the twentieth century that could keep vegetables fresh over the hot summer months andthat could assist trucks and trains to transport chilled vegetables from regions with far milder climates further south during the cold winters andinearly spring. Indeed, traditionally, the Inuit diet was an almostentirelyflesh diet, a fact reflective ofhorticultural impossibility in the Far North, which is also to be found, with only degrees oflesser difficulty beyondthefertile spring and summer months, somewhatfurtherto the south. To be sure, wedded as English-speaking Canada was, prior to the mid-twentieth century, to British thought and tradition, withAmerican influence increasing rapidly from the Edwardianera on, the vegetarian arguments will have been known

well enoughbut will not have been seento have a readyapplication in the Canadiancontext.The Canadian winter climate was a powerful argument against vegetarianism until well into the twentieth century. In fact, organizationally, little or nothing happenedon behalfofethical vegetarianismin Canada prior to the founding ofthe Toronto Vegetarian

Association in 1945. No doubt, there were individual secular vegetarians before that time, and of course, there were the Doukhobors andotherreli-

gious vegetarian sects. But individual Canadians had to look to European

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331

and Americanvegetarian groups for comradeship and informationonthe latest developments. Vegetarianismperhapsgotits start in Canada withthe Doukhobors, who hadoriginally been a communal Russianreligious group prominentin Eastern Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and subject to frequent persecution. They were befriendedbyTolstoy, who enabled themto emigrate to Canadain 1898-99, some 7,400 of them moving to what is now Saskatchewan. Predominantly, they were “naturists,” practising nudism andvegetarianism andbelievingfiercely in their own independence fromall authority, whether secular or religious. Even when still in Russia, not allDoukhobors were entirely vegetarian, although in

1895 they determined to becomeso. In Canada,theywere at first vegetarian, but today, whereas manyofthe remainingDoukhobors on communal farms remain vegetarian, manyofthose who beganindependentfarmsalso beganraising livestock and eating flesh. Today, theDoukhobors who moved to British Columbia — 5,000 boughtlandandresettled in British Colum-

bia in 1908 after much of their donated Saskatchewanland was confiscated when the Doukhobors refused to swear the oath ofallegiance — are more likely to be vegetarian than their Saskatchewan counterparts. In both

provinces, theyare todayinserious decline in numbers. With somesimilarity to the United States, there was also a Swedenborgian church in Canada founded at Kitchener, then called Berlin, in 1842,

but neither the church, nor anyof the other Swedenborgian churches that followedthroughout the country, especially in the West, seemed especially interested in the vegetarianism within Swedenborgian doctrine. Ironically,

the Berlin church claimed as a member J.M. Schneider, the butcher who foundedthe J.M. Schneiderflesh-foods companyin 1890. The founding of the Toronto Vegetarian Association in 1945, a society

that has continued uninterrupted to today, was followed shortly by the Calgary Vegetarian Association, which at some point faltered, a new

Calgary association being instituted in 1993.The Canadian Vegetarian Union (CVU) was acknowledged in the 1950 minutes of the Congress of the International Vegetarian Union, where confirmation of the member-

ship application of theCVUwas also recorded.Members ofthe International Vegetarian Union from the Toronto and Calgaryassociations were recorded in 1960, from the Winnipeg association in 1993, and from the

Atlantic association in 2003. The membership of the Torontoassociation,

which began with 20 members, had become150 ayearlater. By 1965, it became increasingly involved in animal-rights activities when it had some 500 members.Membership grewfurther to 1.000 membersin 1993 andto 1,400 in 1995. By the turnof the century, the numberwassaid to be 1,700.

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Apart fromthe Toronto Vegetarian Association, withits only modesthistorical lineage, itwould appear that continued interest in vegetarian ideals

in Canada was decidedly late in its arrival. Nonetheless, vegetarianismin

Canadais today very muchonthe upswing and includes amongits adherents a substantial proportionofvegans. THe Nortru AMERICAN VEGETARIAN SOCIETY,

THE VEGETARIAN UNION OF NORTH AMERICA, AND THE INTERNATIONAL VEGETARIAN UNION

The Vegetarian Society ofAmerica having long been defunct, probably since 1922 when Rev. Henry Clubb passed away, it was considered impor-

tant to give the North American vegetarian movementan organizational base.Thus was the North American Vegetarian Society founded in 1974to

act as an umbrella group for more regionally based organizations and to help institute new organizations. [here are today numerous American and several Canadianafhliates. Its first major function was to host the World Vegetarian Congress at the University of Maine in 1975, co-organizedby the vegan Jay Dinshah,the largest congress put onyet for the International Vegetarian Union. The International Vegetarian Unionwas instituted in 1908 with the intent to provide an avenue for promotionofthe vegetarian ideal throughoutthe world. By 1914 there was anassociated vegetariansoci-

ety in almost all the European countries, several of them, together with New ZealandandAustralia, joining at the founding. By1960, Asiaoutside of India ~ India was a fairly early member — was represented, as was Africa. Latin America and the Caribbean followedin 1975. In 1985 the International Vegetarian Union created the regional council of the European Vegetarian Union;in1987 the Vegetarian Union of North America, formed in

Toronto, followed as a regional council; and in 1999 came the equivalent

Asian Vegetarian Union,all serving asliaisons with the worldwide vegetar-

ian movement. The International Vegetarian Movementholds world congresses, usually every two years, as has been noted, whereas the regional councils hold regional conferences, usually in the year between the two world congresses.

In the May 2001 edition of Enroute, Air Canadas inflight magazine directedlargely to the business traveller, the opening article included an interview with Pierre Lacombe, the former executive vice president of a chain of vegetarian restaurants. The article implied that foot-and-mouth disease and the madcowscare were primaryfactors in the contemporary increasing popularity of vegetarianism but speculated, with somewhat potential to be misunderstood, that “this trend is a return to the norm, a

reminderthat a predominantlyvegetarian diet has historically been the rule rather than the exceptionfor most of the world’s population.”! In the interview Lacombereported that the “numberof people who include vegetarian meals in their weekly menusis rising fast. In Canada, the health food sector is growing by about25 percent a year, compared with 2 percent for the foodsector as a whole. Per capita meat consumption peakedin the late 1980s andis now onthe decline.”* Althoughvegetarian food and what is commonly regardedas health foodshouldcertainly not be equated, vegetarian food constitutes a fair proportion of health food. The factors reported by Lacombe withperhapsalittle exaggeration are probablyreplicated elsewhere in the Westernworld. It should perhapsalso be noted that Lacombe regards the “percentage of strict vegetarians in the developed world to be about the same everywhere: 5 percent,” a rather higher figure than has been deemed probable in this book.? As we have seen, vegetarianism was extremely well arguedinclassical Greece and the Roman Empire without it ever becoming a predominant Western viewpoint. In early and medieval Christianity, vegetarianism was 333

334

Postscript

again espoused by a decided minority. It became popular and somewhat respectable, atleast amongtheintelligentsia, at the turn ofthe nineteenth centuryand againin the middle andtoward the endofthat century, before goinginto a decline. Vegetarianism has now becomeincreasingly popular, albeit slowly, ever since the 1960s. Is there likely to be any difference this time? Is vegetarianism just another “fad,” awaiting its inevitable decline as circumstancesalter? Is vegetarianism nowpermanently mainstream? What are the differences between the current increasing popularity ofvegetarianism and previous periods of popularity? We might suggest the relevant fac-

tors in favour of vegetarian advancesto be that: (1) increased awareness of

the deleterious effects of interventions in food production bybig business has resulted in legitimate health fears and some consequent fiesh avoidance; (2) the legitimacyof the vegetarian diet has increased, as exemplified by media and medical-journal treatment of the issues; (3) in light of increasing medical knowledge, physicians nowonlyrarelytell their patients of the necessity of flesh for health, except in certain exceptional cases and even then without adequate justification; (4) at one time, the flesh food industry would proclaim the unhealthiness of a vegetarian diet, whereas today it is compelled to resort, on the whole, to spurious and unconvinc-

ing claims that flesh food canbe equallyas healthyas a vegetarian regimen;

(5) increasedgeneral education hasresulted in a willingness to questiontra-

ditional authority onissues of diet and has consequently made vegetarianisma morelikely option for manyindividuals, especially the well-educated; (G) increased awareness in the public as a whole ofissues relating to animal rights has put vegetarianism on the moral agendain a waythat was notpossible in the past when education, especially higher education, wasrestricted

to an elite; (7) increased use ofInternet sites andInternet e-mail has served

to maintain the interest and commitment of those who have been convinced by the vegetarian arguments; (8) increased, if not a great amount of, publicity for the vegetarian and animal-rights causesin college | and university courses and through books, at frequent conferences, and by other means of regular communication have increased significantly the attention given to animal ethics; (9) as a greater variety of easy-to-prepare, pre-

cooked, appetizing, vegetarian options has become available in grocery stores, the easier it has become for working couples, especially those couples with children, to turn to a vegetarian diet; a preconditionof this practice increasingwill be a diminution ofa certain amountofvegetarian purist prejudice againstfleshless meals that resemble their meat counterparts (e.g., tofu “chicken” and soy “meatballs”); (10) the acknowledgment by significant segments of the medical profession that a vegetarian dietis

Postscript

335

perfectly healthy — a fact they once denied — has increased its acceptability; (11) there have been considerable advances in nutritional knowledge,soit is far easier than previously to avoid the deleterious health consequences sometimesfaced in the past; (12) vegetarian cuisine is now far more appealing and enjoyable thanat anytimein the past. Nonetheless, several limits to potential vegetarian advances might be

noted. (1) The decreased cost of certain flesh foods makes them more

affordable than in the past and perhaps more affordable than manyhealthy vegetarian items. (2) The continuedimportance offlesh forall the social reasons outlinedin the Introduction has persisted in the context offamily andcollegial dinners, particularly on special occasions suchasfirst dates, weddings and funerals, religious festivals, and occasions that once had a

religious origin. (3) Genesis 9:3 supersedes the earlier vegan edictbylegitimizing aflesh diet following the flood: “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you.”It is a justification of flesh consumptionthatisstill used, especially in the United States, to suggest that a vegetarian diet is unholy andcontrary to God's will — even as a command— which,of course, is not the case. Suchreligious legitimization diminishes the vegetarian appeal for a considerable numberofpractising Christians. Nonetheless, there are a fewchurches that advocate vegetarian or vegan diets, including perhaps the most radical ofall, the Universal Equalitarian Church of Mis-

souri, whose motto reads: “Where All Species Are Created Equal.” (4) The increased wealth, both personal andnational, throughout much(but by no meansall) of the world arising from general economic development has encouraged, and is encouraging, the counting of flesh consumption as a mark ofsuccess, a fact readily notable in the Caribbean, India, and China,

for example. (5) The ability of the organized business forces of intensive farming to spendvast sums of moneyto make their products popular and appealing has continued. Such publicity makes their claims difficult to counter. However,the successesofvery well-funded groups, suchas People for the Ethical TreatmentofAnimals (PETA), enable these groupstoretaliate against, although not yetto defeat, such business strength. (6) There

has been a rise in regressive and ultraconservative political trends in the United States and Europe. (7) There has been a concomitantrise of religious fundamentalism in both Christianity and Islam during the same period. (8) Finally, and most important, the evolutionary need shownin Chapter 1 to find some replacement for the hunt, most easily achieved through some kind ofsporting activity, in orderto satisfy the idea ofconquest in the human,especially the male, psyche remains a vital factor. This has already occurredto somesignificant degree: witness the gradual decline

336

Postscript

in hunting over the decades as the felt need for hunting has declined and sports activities have increased.Now, fewer thanIo percent ofthe popula-

tions of Western nations engage in hunting. But more needs to be done immediately to associate vegetarianism with athletic activity as the English Vegetarian Society once did with cycling. Such activities promote the vegetarian cause to individuals who otherwise might be imperviousto the vegetarian appeal. Moreover, such activities serve to associate pleasurable events with something seen primafacie as a burden andthus makethelatter more desirable, even something directly associated with the former. At

the veryleast, social gatherings — and there are already more thana few — ona rather morelocalbasis thanthe biennial meetings ofthe International Vegetarian Union would encourage agreater sense of belonging and commitment among the converted. To date, however, there are few notable

SUCCESSES. Althoughthe prospects for immediate and large increases in the number of vegetarians is not especially encouraging, a critical mass embracing vegetarianism wouldnonetheless offer genuine possibilities. If sucha critical mass comprisedsay15 or 20 or perhaps evenaslittle as 10 percentof the population of complex Western economies — that is, those that are not likely to experience rapid economic developmentin the foreseeable future ofthe type nowaffecting China and India — we could be confidentthatthe very normality of vegetarianism would encourage many more totake the ethical step.We are such mimetic creatures! Almost always, we do what most ofour associates do. If, prehistorically, cannibalism was replaced by the ritual eating of animals, other rituals can surely be conceivedto satisfy the imaginary needfor flesh, presumed by so manyto be a necessary part of being truly human. Aboveall, it will be when others findthe vegetarian life not merely morallysuperior butalso preferable as a wayoflife that vegetarianismwill succeed. Whenvegetarians receive not just respectfor their morals but also envyfor their status, vegetarianism will make the inroads that have for solongeludedit. It is not an impossible dream. Andinstances ofit are being witnessed. Afterall, not too manyyearsin the past, smoking

conferred status on the smoker. Now, the reverse is true. Today, it is the wastrel and the underachiever whoare depictedas smokers. A higherstatus is conferred on the nonsmoker. And the proportion of nonsmokers in society has increased dramatically. Vegetarianism will succeed when more and more people aspire to be vegetarians, taking their inspiration from more and more vegetarianrole models. Ironically, the greatest prospect for vegetarianism arises precisely because of a condition all animal advocates deplore: greater human dominance

Postscript

337

over otherspecies than at anyprior timeinhistory. Today, we no longerlive in fear of otherspecies in the West. There islittle fear of dangerous predatory carnivoresorslithering creatures of deadly venom,little fear ofplagueand disease-spreading rodents. The animal — the “other” —is no longer viewed as our natural enemy. Animalsare no longer quite so“other.” Animals are no longer a serious threat to ourverylives or the food supply on which ourlives depend, as they once were. Theyare no longerintrinsically “alien.” It is precisely because we nolongerlive in dread that we can afford to respect. Once,at best, we felt awe for the megafauna — andaweIs origi-

nally based infear. Now, we can feel a measure of a bond. And whenthere is respect and bonding, there is no desire to seek the revenge from which our substantialflesh eating probablyoriginallyarose. Stull, one sometimes despairs at the possibility of any long-termsuccess at all. Perhaps the humanbeing is congenitally incapable of species improvement. After all, Homo sapiens is the only species one could conceive to be so oblivious ofits ownreality as to devise terms foritself — humanity, humane, humanitarian — thatrefer to the veryantithesis of the reality of humanbehaviour throughout recorded history. Humanity has never, as a rule, practised humanity, acted humanely, or been a humanitarianspecies. Maysuch unjustified self-glorification not last in perpetuity. Evenbetter,

andeven more unlikely, wouldit be ifthe ethicalself-glorification were to becomejustified.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1. Although thetitle of this book is an allusion to the sixteenth-century Catechismin the Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church, | do not pretend that sixteenthcentury Anglicanism wasat all vegetarian in its outlook, merely that manyearly vegetarians deemed the desire to eat animal flesh to have arisen from the same aspects of humancharacteras the “sinful lusts of the Hesh” warned against in the catechism. INTRODUCTION: BILL OF FARE TO THE FEAST

1. Henry Fielding opened the Contents page of 7om Jones with the words: “The introduction to the work,orbill offare of the feast.” How much more appropriate are such words to opena tome concernedwith the ethics ofdiet rather than with the occasional lack of ethics of an engagingly roguish foundling. The phrase “Wisdom’s Bill ofFare” was usedby the seventeenth-century Pythagorean Thomas Iryonto referto a vegetarian diet. Mary McCarthy, The Group (1963; reprint, Franklin Center, PA: Franklin Library, 1978), 4,5.

be

. In his /ntroductionto the Principles ofMorals andLegislation, ed. J].H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart (1789; reprint, London: Methuen, 1982), Jeremy Bentham famouslyargued, in favour ofthe application of moralprinciples to animals, that “the questionis not, can they reason, nor canthey talk, but can theysuffer?” (sec. 17, subsec. 4b, 282, original emphasis). In The Principles ofPenal Law (1811), in The Works ofJeremy Bentham,vol. 10 (1843; reprint, New York: Russell, 1962), however, he averred: “It ought to be lawful

to kill animals, but not to torment them” (549-50). Of course, one couldargue that

Prothero, as a hunter, tormented as well as killed them. 3. On William Karkeek, see RodPreece, ed., Immortal Animal Souls: Joseph Hamiltons

Animal Futurity (1877), together with theDebate among Karkeek, Spooner andManthorp

339

349

Notes to pages 2-13

on “The Future Existence ofthe Brute Creation” (1839-1840) (Lampeter: Mellen, 2003);

see also William Youatt, The Obligation and Extent ofHumanityto Brutes, Principally Considered with Reference to the Domesticated Animals, ed. Rod Preece (1839; reprint,

Lampeter: Mellen, 2003). 4. Rabbi Alfred S. Cohen, “Vegetarianism from a Jewish Perspective,” in Roberta Kale-

chofsky, ed.,Judaism andAnimal Rights (Marblehead, MA: Micah, 1992), 176.

s. Hilda Kean, Animal Rights: Political and Social Changein Britain since 1800 (London:

Reaktion Books, 1998), 204, citing Realeat and Oxford surveys in 1994 of11,000 peo-

ple, as quoted in Emma Haughton, “The Fruit and Nut Case,” Guardian (London), 3

June 1997, 13.

367.

James Gafiney, “Eastern Religions andthe E 2004), 233. 8. Jan Dodd etal., The Rough Guide toJapan (London: Rough Guides Limited, 2001), 9.

9. As reported byBBC World News, 15 February 200s.

to. As stated in Lorna Chamberlain, PawsitiveNews (London, ON), Summer2004, 1-5. u. Bernard Shaw, Three Plays (Franklin Center, PA: Franklin Library, 1979), 16. 12. Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter (Athens: University of Georgia Press,

1983), 27.

13. Roger Scruton, “The Conscientious Carnivore,” in Sapontzis, ed., Foodfor Thought, S1-91. 14. George Salmon, /ntroduction to theNewTestament, ch. 11, 243, as quoted under “vege-

15.

posh

“nnd

16. .

18.

19. 20. a1. 22. 23. 24.

tarian’ in the Oxford English Dictionary. See, for example, Dan Murphy, Meatingplace.com, 10 September2004, reproduced by Doug Powell on Food SafetyNetwork, same date. Voltaire, Candide, trans. Tobias Smollett (1759; reprint, Franklin Center, PA: Franklin Library, 1978), 3. In fact, the Hebrew wordrédd@, whichis translated as “dominion,” allows for authority over animals but with a corresponding obligation toward them. See Rod Preece and David Fraser, “The Status ofAnimals in Biblical and ChristianThought: A Studyin Colliding Values,” Society andAnimals:Journal ofHuman-AnimalStudies 8, 3 (2000): 245-63, esp. 247. An explanationat greater lengthis to be found inthis book at pages 120-21. HenryFielding, The History of TomJones:A Foundling (1749; reprint, Franklin Center, PA: Franklin Library, 1980), 8. Ibid., 11. Emile Zola, Nana, trans. George Holden(1880;reprint, Franklin Center, PA: Franklin Library, 1981), 78. Ibid., 164. William Minto, Logic: Inductive and Deductive (London: John Murray, 1909), 51. Quoted in James A. Maxwell, ed.,Americas Fascinating Indian Heritage(Pleasantville, NY: Pegasus, 1978), 315. George Nicholson, On the Primeval Diet ofMan, ed. Rod Preece (1801; reprint, Lampeter: Mellen, 1999), 18.

25. See Howard Williams, The Exhics ofDiet: A Catena ofAuthorities Deprecatory ofthe

Notes to pages 14-33

341

on

Practice ofFlesh-Eating, ed. Carol J.Adams (1883; reprint, Urbana: University of [li-

x

nois Press, 2003), 162-63. .. Cowell, Cicero and the Roman Republic (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956), 54. Be

On Larry King Live,CNN,1 July 200s.

. Emily Klassen, quotedin the LondonFree Press (London, ON), 22 September2004, D2.

9. See Richard Schwartz, Judaism and Vegetarianism, rev. ed. (NewYork: Lantern, 2000), esp. 15-16 and 109-10. . Plato, Apology ofSocrates, 38A.

. Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies VII, in The Writings of ClementofAlexandria, trans.W.Wilson (London: Hamiltonand Co., 1867), quoted in Colin Spencer, Vegetarianism: A History, 2nd ed. (NewYork and London: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002), 120.

. As late as 1814, Percy Bysshe Shelley encounteredstories of cannibalism in France occasioned bythe ravages ofthe postrevolutionary wars. CHAPTER 1: [HE HUMAN IN PREHISTORY

. See page 104. ~

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Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. (New York: New York Review of Books, 1990), 203, recognizes the continued carnivorous habits of Voltaire and Rousseau but

offers neither evidence nor explanationbecause he was concernedat that point onlyto indicate thelimitations to Enlightenmentsensibilities.

158. See Preece, Aweforthe Tiger, 251-53.

IS). MarianneStark, Letters from Italy, between 1792 and 1798 (1800), 2 vols., letter 14,

quoted in Nicholson, Oxthe Primeval Diet, 8o. 160. Alphonse de Lamartine, Les Confidences (1848; reprint, Paris: Hachette, 1893), 77-79: 161, Richard Wagner, “Against Vivisection (an Open Letter toHerr Ernst von Weber),” in M.R.L. Freschel, ed., Selectionsfrom Three Essays by Richard Wagner (Rochester,NH: Millennium Guild, 1933), 8-9. 162. Barry Millington, Wagner, rev. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 5. 163. Richard Wagner, Religion and Art, quoted in Williams, Ethics ofDiet, 373.

164. Millington, Wagner, 104. 165. Quotedin Colin Spencer, Vegetarianism: A History, 2nd ed. (NewYork: Four Walls EightWindows, 2002), 264. 166, Alfred Lord Tenanyson, quotedin Peter Levi, Zennyson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993), 22:

. Marian Scholtmeijet, Animal Victims in Modern Fiction: From Sanctity to Sacrifice (Toronto: University | y of Toronto Press, 1993), 993), 29. 2

Notes to pages 229-238

363

168. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Diet and Diet Reform (Ahmadebad: Navajivan, 1949), 8. 169. John Tweddell, Remains ofJohn Tweddell (1815), ed. Robert Tweddell, 215, quoted in Thomas, Man andthe Natural World, 299.

CHAPTER 10: MILITANT ADVOCATES

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1. Percy Bysshe Shelley, quoted in Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (1974; reprint, NewYork: NewYork Reviewof Books, 1994), 346. William Wordsworth, The Prelude, bk. 11, 108-9, 113. William Cowper, The Task, bk. 5, 5. CharlesLamb, quoted in Kenneth R. Johnston, The Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover,

Nol§

description of himas “gentle-hearted Charles”; “sober” was his preferred epithet.

. Burke's histrionics were in evidence whenhe debated in the Commons in1792the

apprehended threat to the British. Havingleft the Whigs to join Pitt on the Tory benches, Burke melodramatically threw a concealed knife on the floor of the House. Thereupon, he wasassailed byhis former Whig allies with the demandthat he reveal

his secreted forks and spoonsaswell.

6. Wordsworth, Prelude, bk. 9, 182-83.

7. [he commonviewonthe Revolutions measure ofsuccess was, for example, expressed

in Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Letters ofSamuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 1, ed. ELL. Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 527, where he refers to “the complete failure ofthe

French Revolution.” Even manyofthose who foundexcuses for the Terror becamedisenchanted whenFrance attacked neutral Switzerland.

8. Coleridge, quotedin Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804 (NewYork:

Pantheon, 1989), 66.

9. John Ray, The Wisdom ofGod Manifested in the Works ofCreation (1691; reprint, New York: Garland, 1979), 129.

10. Forthe earlier discussionofPaley, see pages 117-18.

u. William Paley,Moral and Political Philosophy, in The Works of William Paley, D.D.,

Archdeacon ofCarlisle (4785; reprint, Philadelphia: Crissy Markley, 1850), 43-44.

12. “Vendée” was a term used looselyto refer to areas of royalist insurrection throughout western France, including Brittany and Normandy, notjust to the Vendée proper. 13. Wordsworth, The Borderers, quoted in David V.Erdman, Commerce des Lumiéres:John

Oswald and the British in Paris, 1790-1793 (Columbia, MI: University of Missouri Press, 1986), 104. 14. John Oswald, The Cry ofNature, or An Appeal toMercy and to Justice on Behalfofthe PersecutedAnimais, ed. Jason Hribal (1791; reprint Lampeter: Mellen, 2000), 41.

15. Ibid., 24-26. The same passages are to be found in Howard Williams, The Ethics of Diet: A Catena ofAuthoritiesDeprecatory ofthe Practice ofFlesh-Eating, ed. CarolJ. Adams (1883; reprint, Urbana: University ofIllinois Press, 2003), 181. The discrepancies between these texts and the originals point up a continuous problem with Williams's quotations. Williams adds after animal “of anotherspecies” without indicating that these words are not in the original. He substitutes “nature” for “texture.” He replaces “creatures” with “beings.” He has “the” table instead of“our” table. He introduces brackets where there are noneinthe original.He omits“to the purpose of

364

Notes to pages 239-245

nature.” Frequently, he changes punctuation to suit his fancy. Frequently, alchough nothere, he addsitalics where|he thinks the wordsshould be emphasized. Noneofthis ever affects the meaningoftheoriginal passages, but thoseinterested inpreciselythe wordsofthe original author shouldrefer tothe original whereverpossible andnotrely entirely on Williams's text. It is very fortunate that Williams collected most of the material relevant to the history ofvegetarianism and madeit available in oneplace.It is rather less fortunate that the material there provided is not completelyreliable. Nonetheless, it is amusing to read those authorities whose notes claim they are quot-

ing fromrather obscure originalworks but whose quotations retain exactly the same errors of interpolation orexcision as those ofWilliams.

16.

John Wesley, “The General Deliverance” (1788), in Sermons on Several Occasions, vol. 6, ser. 2, sermon690, InThe Works* af.John Wesley (3872; reprint, Grand Rapids, MI:

. Toscelyn( Godwin, ‘‘enneth Sylvan Guthrie, comp. andtrans., The Pythagorean Sourcebook and T Libnan (Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes, 1988), 13. . Coleridge, quotedin Holmes, Coleridge, 130. . William Blake,« uoted in James King, William Blake: His Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1991), 145. . Peter Ackroyd, William Blake (London:Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), 102.

. Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis ofMorality, 2nd ed., trans E.EJ. Payne (Indi-

PM

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‘eS,

bo

anapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 15 . Williams, Ethics oofDiet. 268.

Wwillia iam+ Wordsworth,‘quotediinibid.,477;, 490. . Holmes, Coleridge, 25. . Coleridge, quotedinibid., 179.

be be; Of |

. Coleridge, quotedinibid., 342.

. Samuel Rogers, quoted in Paul Johnson, The Birth ofthe Modern World Society, 18151830 (London: Phoenix, 1991), 408.

p ‘abdCedi Ne food

5

a4),

Robert Southey, quoted in Holmes, Coleridge, 75. Coleridge, quoted inibid., 82. Coleridge, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 864.

. Williams, Ethics ofDiet, 180.

3. George Nicholson, On the Primeval Diet ofMan, ed. Rod Preece (1801; reprint, Lam-

peter: Mellen, 1999), iil. 34. John Stewart, quotedin ibid., 91-92.

35. Johnston, Hidden Wordsworth, 365-66. 36. Nicholson, Onthe Primeval Diet, 14. wr

ibid., 1:

38. 39.

. Ibid,, 183. . See page 61. . Ibid., 223

3. Ibid., 98. The versionof this quotation in Williams, Ethics ofDiet, 192, corresponds

almost exactly with the original, apart from theadditionofitalics on two occasions,

the changeof“tis” to “it is,” and the omission of a comma(seenote 15). Throughout

wf

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Notes to pages 245-253

this book, where | have not hadthe original to handand have been unable to procure it, | have faute de mieux followed the Williams version, with the exception of omitting italics where | am confident they have beenadded.

44. Ibid., 99; also quotedin Williams, Ethics ofDiet, 193. 45. Gentlemans Magazine and Historical Chronicle, no. 95, pt. 2, July-December1825, 642. 46. Monthly Mirror, May1805. See William St. Clair, 7he Godwins andthe Shelleys (New York: Norton, 1989), 261.

7, Joseph Ritson, An Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty (London: Richard Phillips, 1802), 201. Incorrectly,Williams, Eahics ofDiet, 186, gives the quota-

tion as “dressed under roastedflesh.” . Quoted in Harriet Ritvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid and Other Figmentsofthe Classifying Imagination (Cambridge,MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1995), 199. . Ritson, Essay on Abstinence, 30-33. If four pages seem excessive for the numberofwords in the quotation, this is because three of the four pages have onlytwolines oftext, the

rest being consumed byfootnotes. . [bid., 37.

. [bid., 231-33, original emphasis. Ritson has an opening quotation mark before “sustenance’ with no closing mark, which anywayseems superfluous. [ have omittedit.

2, . . . . .

Lord Monboddo,quoted tnibid., 43. Ibid., 77. Ibid., 8s. William Lambe, quoted in Williams, Exhics ofDiet, 199. Lambe, quotedintbid., 203. Lambe, Additional Reports on Regimen, 226-27, quoted in Christine Kenyon-Jones, Kindred Brutes: Animals in Romantic Period Writing (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 112.

. John Frank Newton, Return to Nature, or A Defence ofthe Vegetable Regimen; with some accountofan experiment madethe last three orfouryears in the authorsfamily (London:

T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1811), iv. 59. St. Clair, Godwins, 263. ”

60. GI. 62.

Ibid. Ibid. Sizable dinner parties were not uncommoninthis period. Thus, for example, at a dinner at the Wordsworthresidence at Alfoxden in1797, fourteen persons sat downto eat.

3. Williams, Exhics ofDiet, 202.

. . . . . . .

MaryShelley, quoted in Holmes, Shelley, 273. Newton, quoted in Williams, Ezhics ofDiet, 66. Newton, quoted in ibid., 63-64. Newton, quoted in ibid., 67. John Ray, quoted by Newton,in ibid., 99. Newton, quotedin ibid., 154, original emphasis. William Godwin, An Enguiry Concerning PoliticalJustice (1793), quoted in St. Clair, Godwins, 106.

. Wordsworth, Prelude, bk. 6, 353-54. 2. Holmes, Shelley, 563. 3. George Bernard Shaw, quoted in Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, vol. 1 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), 39. 4. Ibid., 208.

Notes to pages 253-264

. Shelley, quoted inHolmes, Shelley, 593.

. Shelley, quoted in ibid., 97. . Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Works ofPercy Bysshe Shelley, vol. 6, ed. Roger Ing-

~

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“eady

366

pen and Walter E. Peck (New York: Gordian, 1965), 6, 8, 11, 17, 18.

78. Richard Holmes, quotedinibid., 157; and Timothy Morton, Shelley andthe Revolution in laste: The Body and the Natural World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 75-76, quoted in Kenyon-Jones, Kindred Brutes, 112.

79. Holmes, Shelley, 220. 80. Ibid., 201.

81. Shelley, Complete Works, vol. 6, 338, 339, 340-41, 343-44, original emphasis. On Boswell, see page 199.

82. Kenyon-Jones, Kindred Brutes, 12. The biographers she has in mindare Timothy

Morton, Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World (Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. (London: Edward Moxon, 1858).

8 3. Hol royd, BernardShaa4 VOL. 45 363 .

84. Shelley, quoted in Holmes, Shelley, 373.

85. 86. 87. 88.

Shelley, quoted in ibid., 184. Harriet Shelley, quoted inibid., 180. Benjamin Robert Haydon, quotedinibid., 360-61. Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500-1800 (London: Penguin, 1984), 296.

Sold

9. St. Clair, Godwins, 261.

90. See Phyllis Grosskurth, Byron: The Flawed Angel (Toronto: Macfarlane,Walter and Ross, 1997), 366. The letter from Byron on whichthe informationis basedis also quoted in Holmes, Shelley, 599. 91. Miranda Seymour, Mary Shelley (NewYork: Grove, 2002), $4. 92. John Keats, quoted in Holmes, Shelley, 361. 93. For the inception of Frankenstein, see Seymour, MaryShelley, 283. 94. Arguably, there are occasional exceptions, suchas thebrilliant political pamphlet Ox the Death of Queen Charlotte (1817), and although The Revolt ofIslam (1818) was, as published, relatively harmless,its original asLaon and Cynthia gave cause to fear government reprisal. In addition, Shelley's reaction to “the massacre of Peterloo” in 1819 was less than moderate, but then so was that of everyone else of even mildlyliberal vein. And his 1820 economic and political writings are undoubtedlyas radical as anything he ever wrote. 95. Shaw, via Newman Ivey White, Shelley, vol. 2 (1947), 416, quoted in Seymour, Mary Shelley, 555. 96. Thomas Moore, Life, Letters andJournals ofLord Byron(1860 ed.), quoted in Williams, Ethics ofDiet, 331. 97. Grosskurth, Byron, 134, 194. 98. Samuel Rogers, quotedin ibid., 143. 99. Colin Spencer, Vegetarianism: A History, 2nded. (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002), 214.

roo. Sir Richard Phillips, Golden Rules ofSocial Philosophy, being a System ofEthics (1826),

quoted in Williams, Ethics ofDiet, 240.

ior. Arthur Broome, SPCA Founding Statement (London, 1824), 2, quoted in Hilda Kean,

Notes to pages 264-273

367

Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since r800 (London: Reaktion Books, 1998), 36. 102. Lewis Gompertz, Moral Inquiries on the Situation ofMan and ofBrutes, ed. Peter 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

Singer (1824; reprint, Fontwell,UK: Centaur, 1992), 68. Ibid., 110. [bid., 140, original emphasis. Ibid., 84-85. Ibid., 150. See WilliamH. Drummond, The Rights ofAnimals andMans Obligationto Treat Them with Humanity, ed. Rod Preece and Chien-Hui Li (1838; reprint, Lampeter: Mellen, 2.005), XIV-XV.

108. Thomas,Man and the Natural World, 279.

109. HenryS. Salt, Animals’ Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress (1892; reprint, Clark Summit, PA: Society for Animal Rights, 1980), 136.

io. Ibid., 156. ru. Thomas Forster, quoted in ibid., 157-58.

112. On plagiarism, see Rod Preece and Chien-Hui Li, “Introduction,” in Drummond,

Rights ofAnimals, xxv-xxvi; and RodPreece, “The Prodigous Mr. Youatt: Some Unan-

swered Questions,” Veterinary History n.s. 12,3 (2004): 261-72. It should be recognized,

however, that plagiarism was not consideredso serious a matter in the nineteenth century as now. Coleridge wasa notedplagiarist, especially in Brographia Literarta. CHAPTER It: THE VICTORIANS, THE EDWARDIANS, AND THE FOUNDING OF THE VEGETARIAN SOCIETY

. Beatrice Webb, quoted in Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, vol. 1 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), 269.

Nudes

. Mare;varet Lavington, “Rupert Brooke: A Biographical Note,” in Rupert Brooke, 7he Collected Poems ofRupert Brooke (NewYork:Dodd, Mead and Company, 1940), 181. . Anna BonusKingstord, Perfect Way in Diet: A Treatise Advcating a Returnto the Natural andAncient FoodofOur Race (Kila, MT: Kessinger, n.d.), vii. . Harriet Ritvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid and Other Fragments ofthe Classifying Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 198. . Quotedat greater length in Colin Spencer, Vegetarianism: A History, 2nd ed. (New

York: Four Walls EightWindows, 2002), 2.48.

The cartoonis reproducediin Ritvo, Platypus, 201. . Mistakenly, in Vegetarianism: A History, Colin Spencer hasNewton with adoctorate, both in the text, at 231, and the index, at 380. . Quotedin Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (1974; reprint, NewYork: NewYork

wad

6,

Review of Books, 1994), 179.

6). TO.

Ii.

Thereport is given with more details ofthe actual diet in Kingstord, Perfect Way, 37-38. GeorgeEliot, quoted in Frederick Karl, George Eliot: Voice ofa Century (NewYork:

Norton, 1995), 141. Francis William Newman, Essays on Diet, quoted in Jon Wynne-Tyson, ed., The ExtendedCircle: An Anthology ofHumane Thought (London: Cardinal, 1990), 338-39,

original emphasis.

Notes to pages 27f3-284

368

. Howard Williams, The Ethics ofDiet: A Catena ofAuthorities Deprecatory ofthe Practice ofFlesh-Eating, ed. Carol J. Adams (1883; reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 93, 292.

. Kingsford, Perfect Way, 37. é

Ritvo, Platypus, 198. yy

. Henry Amos, ed., FoodReformers Year Book (London, 1909), 18, quoted in Hilda Kean, Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800 (London: Reaktion Books, 1998), 122.

. See page 12. . Spencer, Vegetarianism, 258.

. LadyPaget, “Foreword,” in Charles W. Forward, Food ofthe Future (London, 1904),

97, quoted in Kean, Animal Rights, 126. . Lady Florence Dixie, quotedin\Wynne-Tyson, ed., ExtendedCir cle, 108-9. . ood ReformersYear Book (1906), 6, and Humane Review, April 1905, cited in Kean, Animal Rights, 126.

. On Williams's admiration of Mayor, seeWilliams, Ethics ofDiet, 305. . Ibid. (4883 ed.), vili-ix, xii. | have here quoted from the 1883 edition because there

seems to be some problem withthe printing of pages xxvii-xxvili andxxixofthe preface in the 2003 reprint.

. Ibid. 883 ed.), x-xi.

. OnSalt and on Lind-af-Hageby, see Rod Preece, Awefor the Tiger, Lovefor theLamb: A ChronicleofSensibility toAnimals (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,

2002), 341-44 and 352-53, respectively.

, Annie WoodBesant, quotedin Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, vol. 1, 168.

. Besant, quoted in Philip Kapleau, Yo Cherish All Life (Rochester, NY: Zen Center, 1986), 81.

. Kingsford, quoted in Edward Maitland, Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters,Diary and Work, 3rd ed. (London: G. Redway, 1913), 45-46. . Anna Bonus Kingsford and Edward Maitland, Addresses and Essays on Vegetarianism

(1912; reprint, Kila,MT: Kessinger, n.d.), 65, original emphasis.

4Q,

Quoted in Kean, Animal Rights, 123. Kingsford and Maitland, Addresses and Essays, 170. “Trismegius,” or “Trismegistus,” means thrice-great Hermes andis the title given by the Greeks to the Egyptian god Thoth. Bylegend, Trismegius was the source of Egyptianpriestly asceticism.

. HenrySalt, quoted in Ritvo, Platypus, 199.

2. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Diet and Diet Reform (Ahmadebad: Navajivan, 1949),35. . Salt, quoted in Richard D. Ryder, Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes towards

. George Bernard Shaw, quoted in Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, vol. 1, 222.

ee

Noted Si

Speciesism, rev. ed. (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 123, original emphasis. . HenryS. Salt, “The Raison d’Etre ofVegetarianism,” from The Logic of Vegetarianism, in The SavourofSalt:AHenry Salt Anthology, ed. George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick (Fontwell,UK: Centaur, 1989), 24-28.

. Edward Carpenter, Civilisation: lis Cause and Cure, and Other Essays (1883; reprint, London: Allen and Unwin, 1919), 39. . Ibid., 45, original emphasis. . Samuel Butler, Erewhon, or Over the Range, 10th ed. (1872; reprint, London: Page and Company,1923), 284.

Notes to pages 284-293

369

39. George Bernard Shaw, “Preface” to The Doctors Dilemma, in The Doctors Dilemma,

Getting Married, and The Shewing-up ofBlanco Posnet (London: Constable, 1911), lviti-lix. 40. Shaw, quoted in Holroyd, Bernard Shaw,vol. 1, 87. 41. George Bernard Shaw, Fifteen SelfSketches (London: Constable, 1949), 53.

%

&

Pod

46. Shaw, quotedinibid., vol.

“na%

Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, vol. 1, 84. ibid., vol. 1, 86. ibid., vol. 1, 88. ibid., vol. 1, Fad

quoted in quotedin quotedin quotedin

a

Shaw, Shaw, Shaw, Shaw,

jot

42. 43. 44. 45.

47. Ibid., vol. 3, 457.

48. Shaw, quotedinibid., vol. 3, 214.

49. Shaw, quotedin ibid., vol. 1, 86. so. Franklyn Barnabas, quotedinibid., vol. 3, 45. si. Shaw, quotedin ibid., vol. 1, 268.

52. Andrew Linzey,Animal Theology (Urbana: University ofIllinois Press, 1995), 83.

53. H.G. Wells, Anna Veronica (1909; reprint, London: n.p., 1984), 109, quoted in Kean,

Animal Rights, 126.

54. Wells,Anna Veronica, 110-11, citedintbid., 126-27. ss. Janey Morris, via Fiona McCarthy, William Morris (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), 492, quoted in ibid., 127. Neither Kean nor McCarthyrecords Shaw’s response,al-

though McCarthy adds enigmatically: “In the subtle war between G.B.S. and Mrs Morris, perhaps this was his revenge.” 56. William L. Shirer, Love and Hatred: The Stormy Marriage ofLeo andSonya Tolstoy (New York: Simonand Schuster, 1994), 106.

7. Leo Tolstoy, quoted in Wynne-Tyson, ed., Extended Circle, 376.

58. Leo Tolstoy, “The First Step,” in Recollections and Essays by Leo Tolstoy, 4th ed., trans.

Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), sec. 9, 124-26, original emphasis. 59. [bid., sec. 10, 134. 60. Rod Preece and Lorna Chamberlain, Animal Welfare and Human Values (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992), 21.

CHAPTER 12: VEGETARIANS AND VEGANS IN THE DWENTIETH CENTURY

1. Charlotte Shaw, quoted in Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, vol. 3 (Harmondsworth:

foe

Penguin, 1990), 234. . See RodPreece, Brute Souls, Happy Beasts, and Evolution: The Historical Status ofAnimats (Vancouver: University of British ColumbiaPress, 2005), ch. 4. 3. Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe, trans. G. Cannan (New York: Random House,

1938), 327-28. 4. Albert Schweitzer, “Feeling for Animal Life,” in A Treasury ofAlbert Schweitzer, ed.

nd

‘Thomas Kiernan (New York: Gramercy, 1994), 15. s. Ibid. 6. Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics (London: A. &C. Black, 1923), 259. . Ubid., 256.

Notes to pages 294-307

370

. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Diet and Diet Reform (Ahmadebad: Navajivan, 1949), 35-36. 9, For example, by Colin Spencer, Vegetarianism: A History, 2nd ed. (NewYork: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002), 283ff; and by Boria Sachs, Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust (New York: Continuum, 2000), 35.

TO.

Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within:Animals in theMiddle Ages (New York: Routledge, 1994), 170, cited in Sachs, Animals in the Third Reich, 35.

. HJ.Marschiert: Das neue Hitler-Jugend-Buch(Berlin: Paul Franke Verlag, n.d.). . Symon Gould, quoted in Karen lacobbo and Michael lacobbo, Vegetarzan America: A

History (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 159.

. William H. Drummond, The Rights ofAnimals and Mans Obligation to Treat Them

with Humanity, ed. Rod Preece and Chien-hui Li (1838; reprint, Lampeter: Mellen,

2005). . See Rod Preece, Awefor the Tiger, Lovefor theLamb: A Chronicle ofSensibility to Animals (Vancouver: Universityof British Columbia Press, 2002), 108, 109.

go,

. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. (New York: New York Reviewof Books, 1990), i-il. . WR. Inge, “The Rights of Animals,” in Lay Thoughts ofa Dean (London: Knickerbocker, 1926), 199. . AndrewLinzey, Animal Theology (Urbana: UniversityofIllinois Press, 1995), 83.

. Harriet Ritvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid and Other Fragmentsofthe Classifying lmagination (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 199. . Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1978), 496. Lam indebted to Renzo Llorente and John Sanbonmatsufor the information on whichthis and thefollowingtwo references are based. . Friedrich Engels, Onthe History ofEarly Christianity, in Marx and Engels on Religion (NewYork: Schocken Books, 1964), 322. ads Leon Trotsky, quoted in Steven Lukes,Marxism and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 23. . William Hazlitt, 7e Plain Speaker, quoted in Keith Thomas, “The First Vegetarians,”in Kelly Wand, ed., Zhe Animal RightsMovement (San Diego: GreenhavenPress, 2003), 32. . Peter Singer, “All Animals Are Equal,” Philosophic Exchange 1 (Summer 1974): 103-9,

excerpted at muchgreater length in Kerry S.Walters and Lisa Portmess, eds., Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter Singer (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999), 166, 167. Singer repeats essentially the same message in Animal Liberation and evenhas a chapterthere entitled “AllAnimals Are Equal,” but thearticle in Philosophic Exchangeis the earliest printed statementofhis position. Stephen Clark, The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 40-41, excerpted in DanielDombrowski, Not Even A Sparrow Falls: The PhilosophyofStephen RL. Clark (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000), 163-64.

Jon Wynne-Tyson, “Dietethics: Its Influence on Future Farming Patterns,” in Richard Ryder and David Patterson, eds.,Animal Rights:A Symposium (London: Centaur,

1979), excerptedat muchgreaterlength inWalters and Portmess, eds., Ethical Vegetar1ANISM, 235-36.

2.6. a

Spencer, Vegetarianism, 303.

On HenrySalt, see page 281; on Lewis Gompertz, see pages 264-65.

28. See pages 17-18.

. George Bernard Shaw, quoted in Holroyd, Bernard Shaw,vol. 1,85.

Notes to pages 308-325

371

CHAPTER 13: VEGETARIANISM IN NoRTH AMERICA

ona

»

“db

»

*

oe

*

a

. Karen Iacobbo and Michael lacobbo, Vegetarian America:A History (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004). AndrewLinzey, “Foreword,” in ibid.,x. See page 174.

See page 28, Colin Spencer, Vegetarianism: A History, 2nd ed. (NewYork: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002), 256.

. lacobbo andlacobbo, Vegetarian America,30. Om oJ

. See page 270.

. Erasmus Darwin, 7he Temple of Nature, vol. 4, 428, via Sylvester Graham, Graham

quotationis slightly incorrect in that Grahamhas substituted “our” for “his” twice.

9. Alexander Pope, “Universal Prayer,” stanzau, line 1. 10. William A. Alcott, Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages (NewYork: Fowlers and Wells, 1848), 264-65. Ti. Compare Odell Shepard, TheJournals ofBronson Alcott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1938),

115, quoted in lacobbo and lacobbo, Vegetarian America, 57, with Alexander Pope, Guardian (London), 21 May 1713, especially the paragraph beginning: “But if our

sports are destructive.” . lacobbo and lacobbo, Vegetarian America, 58. . See pages 37-43.

. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, together with Civil Disobedience, ed. Philip Van Doren Stern (NewYork: Barnes and Noble, 1970), 339, 346.

. Angus Taylor,Magpies, Monkeys and Morals: What Philosophers Say aboutAnimal Lib-

eration (Peterborough: Broadview, 1999), 71. The statementis still includedin the 2003 revised edition witha differenttitle: Animals and Ethics: An Overviewofthe Ethical Debate, 93. . On Lecky, see pages 123, 315. . Secretary of the Kensington Physiological Society, “A Lecture on the First Step in

Physical and Moral Reform Delivered before the Kensington Physiological Society, in the Bible-Christian Church, on the Evening ofthe 14th ofApril, 1842” (Philadelphia, PA: William Metcalfe, 1842), 21, quoted in lacobbo and lacobbo, Vegetarian America, 62.

18,

OnAuguste Comte, see Rod Preece, Awefor the Tiger, Lovefor the Lamb: A Chronicle

19.

Committee of the Philadelphia Bible-Christian Church, History ofthe Philadelphia Bible-Christian Churchfor the First Centuryoftts Existence (Philadelphia: J.L. Lippincott, 1922). According to the preface, one memberofthe committee was ninety-two years of age, perhaps Clubb himself, who died in the same year the book was published. See lacobbo and lacobbo, Vegetarian America, 120. George [. Angell, Autobiographical Sketches and Personal Recollections (Boston:AHES,

20. al.

ofSensibility to Animals (Vancouver: Universityof British Columbia Press, 2002), 251-53.

[18922]),Appendix, 32. There was anearlier, but less complete, editionin1884.

. Jay Dinshah, OutoftheJungle (1967), quotedonthe International Vegetarian Union website at WWW. LVU.Oroe

. Dinshah, Ahimsa (1971), quotedatibid. See ]. Howard Moore, The NewEthics (London: E. Bell, 1907); and J.Howard Moore,

372

Notes to pages 325-333

The Universal Kinship, ed. Charles Magel (1906; reprint, Fontwell, UK: Centaur,

fd

No,

1992).

. |. Howard Moore, “Why I am avegetarian,” Chicago Vegetarian, September1897, This was one ofaseries offive 1897 articlesMoore wrote for the Chicago Vegetarian. rO the best of my knowledge, he did not write directly on vegetarianism elsewhere.

26. Moore, correspondence with HenrySalt, quoted in Charles Magel, “Introduction,” in

Moore, Universal Kinship,ix, xiv.

27. Moore, “Why I amaVegetarian,”to.

28. For a valuable analysis ofUpton Sinclairs The Jungle and a comparison with Roald Dahl's “The Pig P ” seeeMarianSc oem AnI imal Victims in1Modern Fiction: From

logical Theory, ed. Jay B.McDaniel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), and in The Three

Generations (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991).

30. Carol J. Adams, “The Sexual Politics of Meat,” in Sapontzis, ed., Foodfor Thought,

249. The argument is repeated from her The Sexual Politics of Meat: A FeministVegetarian Critical Theory (NewYork: Continuum, 1990).

POSTSCRIPT: PROSPECTS

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2. Ibid., 26.

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Abbott, John, 198 Ackroyd, Peter, 200, 240 Acton, Lord, 144 Adams, Carol]., xiv, 326

Aristoxenus, 82, 83

Asoka, 69-70 Athanasius, Saint, 127 Athenaeus, 82

Attic Club, 298, 299

Addison,Joseph, 149, 186

Aelian, 110, 244 Ainu, 46 Albigensian crusade, 140-41 Alcott, Bronson, 268, 312, 314, 315, 317 Alcott, William, 270, 312, 314, 316-17, 318

Augustine, Saint, 28, 134-35, 147

Aurelius, Marcus, 110

Australopithecus afarensis, 33-34 BabrahamInstitute, 5

Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 169

Bacon, Francis, 170, 180

Angell, George Thorndike, 321

Barnes, Jonathan, xiv, 81, 84, 88

Angermeyer, Johanna, 343 Animal: experimentation, 164-69, 229, 23839, 243; apes?278, 284, 287, 321; sacrifice,

Basil, Saint, 130, 169 Bassari, 40

Ballantyne, Archibald, 214 Ban Kulin, 139 Barnabas, Franklyn, 286

American VeganSociety, 323-24 American Vegetarian Party, 323-24 Anaximander, 77, 78

Bauthumley, Jacob, 172

46-52, §6, 63, 64, 66, 69, 71, 74, 91, 95,

Baxter, Ron, 141

Bayle, Pierre, 184

105, 106, 118, 121, 122; worship, 46-48

Anthony, Saint, 127 Apollonius, 76

Behn, Aphra, 174

Beissel, Johann, 308 Benedict XVI, Pope, 135 Bentham, Jeremy,1, 21, 178, 339 Berrow, Capel, 184 Besant,AnnieWood, 77, 268, 277 bestiaries, 141

Appleseed, Johnny, 309 Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 83, 108, 121, 145,

147, 152, 219 Arbuthnot, John, 177, 201, 204, 359

Aristophanes, 96

Bhagavad Gita, 61

35 94, 96, OF»

Bhagavatam, 62 oo

Aristotle, 10, 25, 91, 92, 101-4, 106, 114, 141

Index

386

Bhima Swarea, 67 Bible-Christian Church, 267-70, 309, 310,

Cambridge, University of, 117, 162, 209, 229, 248, 261, 268, 275, 279, 282, 299

Cambridge Platonists, 184

316, 318, 319, 320

Blake, William, 229, 240 blood, 119, 132, ISI Boas, George, 129, 132

BodyofLiberties, 183, 185 Boehme, Jakob, 155-56, 171, 173, 176 Bogomils, 136-39 Boinvilles, 250 Bolingbroke, Lord, 63, 163, 201, 215

SS

Bonaventure, Saint, 142-43 Bonnet, Charles, 184 Booth, Bramwell, 2277 Booth,¢Catherine, 2 Booth, William, 2 Borelli,Giovanni,2 35 Borwick, Robert, 1 a,

mamp Colin, 46 Campbell, Joseph, 63 Canning, George, 234 Carpenter, Edward, 268, 282-83, 324 caste, 56

Castricano, Jodey, xiv Cathars, 139-41 Cavendish, Margaret, 183, 191-93 Cavendish, William, 192

Cervantes, Miguelde, 153 Cézanne, Paul, 181-82 Chamberlain, Lorna, xiv, 289 Chambre, Marin Cureau cdela, 160 Chanet, Pierre, 159 Chapman, John, 309

Bowle, John, 197

Charleton, Walter, 170, 192 Chateaubriand, Viscount, 223

Boyle, Robert, 165-66

Chesterfield, Earl of, 179, 180, 188

Boswell, James, 180, 188, 195, 199, 211, 222

Brambell Committee, 302 Bramly, Serge, 151 Bronté, Charlotte, 21, 240 Bronté family, 240

BrookFarm, 318 Brooke, Henry, 183 Brooke, Rupert, 268 Broome, Arthur, 263

Brophy, Brigid, 299 Brotherton, Joseph, 176, 269-70, 271 Brougham, Henry, 246 Brown, Stephanie, xiv Bruno, Giordano, 155-56 Buckner, Elyah, 38 Buddha (Gautama) , 68-69 Buddhism, 68-73 Buffon, comte de, 189, 211, 216-18, 225 Burke, Edmund, 182, 185, 211, 212, 233, 260 Burkert, Walter, 80 Bushell,Thomas, 171 Butler, Joseph, 184 Butler, Samuel, 284 Byrom, John, 209 Byron, Lord, 189, 229, 259, 260-61

Cain and Abel, 51

Cheyenne, 24, 31-32, 42-43

Cheyne, George, 19, 177-79, 180, 193, 194, 200, 207, 239

Chrysippus, 88

Chrysostom, Saint John, 130 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 83, 96, 104, 110-11

Cideville, conseiller de, 213 CivilWar: England, 196; US, 320 Clare ofAssisi, Saint, 143 Clark, James, 270, 309 Clark, Stephen, 300, 302, 303 Clausewitz, Carl von, 51 Clement of Alexandria, 19, 119, 125 Clubb, Henry, 318-19

Cobbe, Frances Power, 239 Cocchi, Antonio Celestina, 174-75, 212 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 207, 209, 234, 235, 239, 241-42, 318

Collura, Randall, 42, 43 Comte, Auguste, 225, 317

Congreve, William, 203

Corderoy, Géraud de, 159 Cornaro, Luigi, 148-50, 191, 177 Cornelius, Saint, 131 Corsali,Andrea, 151 Cottingham, John, 159

Cowherd, William, 176, 267-69, 309 Cowper, William, 183, 203, 233, 239

Crab, Roger, 119, 172 Cranston, Maurice, xii, 219, 221

Culdeans, 129 Cultural vegetarianism, 17, 57-58, 59, 66, 68, 280

Cumberland, Richard, 194, 211 Cyparissus, 88

3

NJ

CRO

Index Earthsave, 328 Ebionites, 124, 126 Eden andArcadia, 37-43, 49, 52, 314 Edwards, Thomas, 172 Ehrenreich, Barbara, xili, 49, 52 Einstein, Albert, 20 Eliade, Mircea, 39, 4 Eliot, George, 272-7 Emerson, Ralph Wz‘Ido,21, 315-16 Empedocles, 38, 82, 83, 90, 92-93, 106

Epic ofGileamesh, 39

Dalai Lama, 4, 188 Dante, Alighieri, 148 Dart, Raymond, 26

Epicharides, 82

Darwin, Charles, 20, 21, 43, 166, 229, 284 Darwin, Erasmus, 234, 251, 313

Epiphanius, 124, 125, 138 Erasmus, Desiderius, 134 Erskine, Lord, 120, 248, 263

Dean, Richard, 178, 184 Defoe, Daniel, 183

Essenes, 119, 123-24, 126, 129

Democritus, 77, 154

Eusebius, 119

Denny, A., 159

Evans, Edward Payson,120

Depression (Great), 296, 322-23 Descartes, René, 158-64, 165, 166, 167 3

Evans, Joshua, 309 Evelyn, John, 170, 183, 195-97

Eton, 252, 279, 280

1goQ-

91, 192, 206

Ezra, 118

Despard, Charlotte, 274

Dhammapada, 72-73

Diamond, Jared, 30

Farm Animal Reform Movement

Dicaerchus, 25, 101, 102, 104, 106, 107

(FARM), 327 Fénelon, Francois, 182

Digby, Kenelm, 162, 164

Fielding, Henry, 10, 93, 183, 186, 339

Dinshah, Jay, 323-24, 332 Diocletian, 134 Dives et Pauper, 143-44, 181 Dixie, Lady Florence, 274-7

Dodd, Jan, 3 Dombrowski, Daniel, xii, xiv, 43, 100, 101, 107, 110, 308, 326

Domna, Julia, 108

Donne, John, 93, 156 Dorrell, William, 309 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 44 Doukhobors, 330, 331 Drummond, William, 77, 120

Dryden, John, 93

Du Pre, L., 309 Dufty, Edward, 218 Dunkers, 308-9 Dyer, John, 183

Finch, Anne, 183

five freedoms, §

Flaubert, Gustave, 37 Fludd, Robert, 131 Fontaine, Jean de La, 28 Fontenelle, Bernard, 163 Ford, Henry, 323 Forster, E.M., 57, 244 Forster, Thomas, 234, 265-66 Fox, George, 299 Fox, Helen M., 195 Fox, Michael Allen, xi-xii, 143, 308 Francione, Gary, 158 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 142-43 Franklin, Benjamin, 174, 180, 188-89, 207, 308 French Revolution, 19, 55, 148, 182, 223,

230, 232, 233-35, 237; 238, 267

frugivores, 32

Early Christianity, 125-33

Fruitarians, 13, 16

Index

Gaffney, James, 3, 60 Gagging Acts, 234 Galen, 165 Gandhi, MohandasK., 3, 58, 62-63, 66,

67, 189, 229, 280, 291, 293-94, 315 Gangra, Council of, 135 Garrick, David, 211 Gaskell, Elizabeth, 240 Gassendi, Pierre, 160-62, 190-91 Gautama, Siddhartha, 68-69 Gay, John, 6, 93, 177, 183, 202-5 Gellius, 244 genetic engineering, 305 genetically modified organisms (GMQs), 305

Gesner, Konrad, 169

Gibbon, Edward, 185

Gillray, James, 234 Girard, René, 50, 51, §2 gladiators, 14

Glassite dissenters, 259 Gleizés, Jean Antoine, 168

Gnostics, 125, 130-33, 208 Godlovitch, Rosalind, 300 Godlovitch, Stanley, 300

Godwin, Joscelyn, 239-40 Godwin, William, 45, 246, 250, 258, 259 Godwincircle, 189

Hale, Stephen, 166

Hampden clubs, 272 Handel, GeorgeFrideric, 203 Hardy, Thomas, 43 Hare Krishna, 67 Harris, John, 300 Harrison, Ruth, 299, 300, 302 Hart, Donna, xii, 33, 46

Hartley, David, 19, 207-9 Harvey, William, 165 Haslewood, Joseph, 246 Hawkesworth, John, 197-99

Haydon, Benjamin Robert 258 Hazlitt, William, 241, 302 Hecquet, Philippe, 177 Hegel, G.W.E, 235

ie

388

Helmont, Jan Baptista van, 161 Helvétius, Claude Adrien, 219 Heraclitus, 81 Hershaft, Alex, 327 Hesiod, 38 Hierocles, 78 Hildrop, John, 184

Hinayana Buddhism, 70-71 Hinde, William, 183

Hinduism, 57-68, 213 Hitler, Adolf, 294-96

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 235

Hitopadesa, 51

GoldenAge, 26, 35-44, 100, 104, 118, 128,

Hobbes, Thomas, 29, 47, 182, 192, 193 Hogarth, William, 185 Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, 249, 250, 258 Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d’, 219 Holdridge, Herbert, 323 Holmes, Richard, 255

155, 176, 195, 199, 242, 244, 255, 283

Goldsmith, Oliver, 6, 180, 183, 188, 210-12, 240, 289 Gompertz, Lewis, 234, 236, 263-65, 311 Gould, Symon, 295, 323 Graham, Sylvester, 270, 271, 310-13, 316-17, 318

Holroyd, Michael, 282 Homer, 38, 80,a 99

Grand, Antoinele, 159

Hooker, J.D

Granger, James, 184

Howard, Joht an, 6

Great Depression, 296, 322-23

Hugo, Victor, 43

Great War (1914-19), 48, 290, 32 Greaves, James Pierrepont, 568-70

Hume, David, 184-85, 207, 221, 222

Greenpeace, 305

Grosskurth, Phyllis, 261 Grotius, Hugo, 179 Grunland, Lawrence, 320 Guenther, Mathias, 341 Guerber, Héléne, 35-36

Hunt, Leigh, 258 hunting, 48, 50, 52, 70, 74 Hutcheson, Frances, 185, 199 Huxley, T1H., 179 hydropathy (water-cure), 317, 319

lacobbo, Karen, xii-xili, 308, 311, 314

389

Index

lacobbo, Michael, xti-xiti, 308, 311, 314 lamblichus, 78, 79, 81, 91, 240 Inge, Dean, 300 International Vegetarian Union (IVU), 21,

306, 332

Intestines, 44, 170 Inuit, 52 Isaac the Syrian, Saint, 130 lshopanishad, 60-61 Isocrates, 85

Jainism, 73-75 Jenyns, Soame, 93, 184, 185 Jerome, Saint, 124, 127, 128 Jha, D.N., xiii, 58-59, 62, 69, 70, 71 John the Baptist, 124 JohnofSalisbury, 141 Johnson,J., 237, 238 Johnson, Samuel, 167, 180, 186, 194, 198, 199, 211, 212, 239, 246

Josephus, Flavius, 122, 124

Lamb, Charles, 233, 234, 271 Lambe, William, 234, 248-49, 250, 252 Lambert, Malcolm, 137, 139 Lamm, Martin, 175-76 Langland, William,142, 181 Langrish, Browne, 167

Lappé, Frances Moore, 324 Lavington,Margaret, 268 Law, William, 171 Lawrence, D.H., 181-82

Lawrence, John, 199 Laws ofManu, 64, 65, 133 Lecky,W.E.H., 123, 315 Leibniz, GottfriedWilhelm, 184 Leiden, Universityof, 169

Lessius, Leonard, 150 Levasseur, Uhérése, 221, 224 Lind-af-Hageby, Louise, 276 Linnaeus, Carolus, 31, 170 Linzey, Andrew, 120, 129, 300, 302, 308 locavores, 17

Joynes, J.L., 280

Locke, John, 170-71, 184

Judaism, 118-25

LondonZoological Society, 317 Lucius Apuleius, 77

Jung, Carl, 42

Kahn, Charles H., xiii, 78, 79, 80, 81, 90-91 Kalechofsky, Roberta, 119, 122-23 Kant, Immanuel, 43, 121, 148, 219 Karkeek, William,1 Kausitaki, Brahmana, 51 Kean, Hilda, 2, 274 Keats, John, 259

Kellogg, Ella Eaton, 322

Kellogg, John, 320, 322 Kensington Physiological Society, 316 Kenyon-Jones, Christine, 256 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 36 Kingsford,Anna Bonus, 270, 273-74, 27879, 286-87

Klopstock, Friedrich, 235 Kruuk, Hans, 45 Kwakiuatl, no Laertius, Diogenes, 79, 81, 83, 84, 105

Lal, Basant K., 64 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 28

Lamartine, Alphonse de, 6, 189, 225-27

Lucretius, 154 Luther, Martin, 21 Lyman, Howard, 329 Macarius, Saint, 128

Machiavelli, Niccold, 150 Mack, Maynard, 40, 199, 201, 202 Mackenzie, John, 61, 64, 65

Macrobiotic vegetarians, 16 Macrobius, 244 Mahabharata, 60, 61, 245

Mahabraphu, Chaitanya, 67 Mahayana Buddhism, 70

Maimonides, Moses, 128, 178 Maitland, Edward, 279 Makritare, 24, 39-40 Malebranche, Nicolas, 159, 161, 164, 176 Malthus, Thomas, 251 Mandeville, Bernard, 6, 110, 188, 205-7, 213, 246

Manicheism, 90, 133-34 manliness, 8 Manu, Lawsof, 64, 65, 133

Index

390

Map, Walter, 141 Marcion, 132

Maritain, Jacques, 147

Martin, Richard, 263, 264 Martyr, Peter, 55 Marvell, Andrew, 183 Marx,Karl, 301 Mascaré, Juan, 61 Mattal, Sushil, 3 Maury, Pierre, 140 Maxwell, John, 323 Mayor, J.E.B., 275 McCarthy, Mary, 1 Meggott, Richard, 184 Messalians, 138 Metcalfe, Susanna, 270, 309, 310 Metcalfe, William, 270, 309-10, 316-17, 318 metempsychosis, 97, 99, 134, 240 Middle Path (Buddhism), 68

Midgley, Mary, 7

Mill, John Stuart, 207 Millington, Barry, 22 Milton, John, 21, 31 Minto,William, u Moderatus, 80 Moffat, W., 150 Montaigne, Michel de, 55, 154-55, 161, 178, 180, 188, 200-1, 244

Montanists, 132 Monthly Review, 167 Moore, ]. Howard, 325-26

Moore, Mary Tyler, 14-15 Moore, Thomas, 261

More, Henry, 162, 184, 235 Morris, Desmond, 30 Morris, Janey, 287

Nazarenes, 124 Nazism, 294-96 Nazoreans of Mount Carmel, 12.4 Neri, Philip Romolo, 153 Nero, 107 NewLeft Review, 301 Newkirk, Ingrid, 327 Newman, Francis William, 12, 13, 272-74, 282

Newton, Isaac, 19, 21, 25, 55 Newton, John Frank, 13, 234, 248, 249-51, 252, 271 Nicholson, George, 13, 22, 25, 30, 40, 95, 166-67, 168, 234, 242-45, 253 Nokes, David, 203 Norris, John, 163-64 Novation, 128, 131-32 O'Meara, Dominic, 80, 91, 92

October Revolution, 290 Ontario S.PC.A., 15

Orphics, 87-88

Oswald, John, 232, 234, 236-38, 242, 263 Overton, Richard, 171, 172, 184 Ovid, 38, 77, 79, 87-88, 95, 106, 143, 171, 175, 179, 188, 191, 195

Oviedo, 55 Owen, Robert, 235-36 Oxford, Universityy of, 235, 252, 299 Pacheco, Alex, 327

Paget, Lady, 274 Paine, Thomas, 246 Paley, William, 117-18, 185, 236 Pancatantra, 47, 60 Pantisocracy, 318

Morris,Wiliam, 287

Paranthropus boisei, 44

Morton, H.V., 128 Morton, Timothy, 254 Moschus, John, 12.7 Moses, abbot, 43, 127 Murray, Oswyn, 95

Paré,Ambroise, 172 Parr, Thomas, 172

Mussey, Reuben Dimond, 313-14

Paul, Saint, 15, 18-19, 137 Paulicians, 136-37 Peacock, Thomas, 257, 259 Peoplefor the Ethical Treatment of Ani-

Naganathan, G., 60

Pepys, Samuel, 166, 183, 196

Nash, Roderick Frazier, 120

Peterloo, 272 Petrarch, Francis, 147, 148

Natural hygienists, 16-17 e

4,

3

mals (PETA), 327, 328

Index

391

Philips, Richard, 207, 234, 250, 262-63, 267 Philo Judaeus (Philo ofAlexandra), 12.4, 128 Philolaus, 79

Rogers, Samuel, 242, 261 Rolland, Romain, 291 Rolle of Hampole, Richard, 141

Photius, 82

Romanlegions, 14

Physiologus, 169 Pius V, Pope, 153 Plato, 19, 21, 38, 42, 43, 47, 78, 80-81, 83,

Rome, 88, 89, 94, 106, 109, TIO, 134, 136 Rosen, Steven J., 59-60, 62, 63, 64, 65 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 6, 13, 21, 38, 110,

96, 97-101, 106, 110, 154, 162

Pliny the Elder, 25, 36, 110, 154 Plotinus, 28, 112-13 Plutarch, 25, 78, 82, 107, 110-12 197, 200, 221, 222, 271 Poor Clares, 143 Pope, Alexander, 6, 21, 166, 178, 183, 199-

2.03, 204, 206, 215, 314 Porphyry, 28, 43, 46, 79, 82, 90-91, 92, 103, 104, 105, 107, 110, 112-16, 118, 12.4, 136,

Portmess, Lisa, 146, 308

Ryder, Richard, 302

Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 224-25, 232

Salmon, George, 8

Salt, HenryS., 66, 268, 276, 279-82, 285, 293, 311, 325, 326

Sambrook, James, 194

Sapontzis, Steve FE, xii, 326

Satapatha Brahmana, 64

78, 184, 245

Prince Charles, 21

Prine, Ranchor, 59-60 pseudo-Clementine, 125 Punch, 12, 270-71, 275, 312 Puritans, 182-83

Pythagoras, xi, xiii, 13, 69, 76-86, 94, 108, UW1O-Il, 112, 113, U5, 194, 159, 164, 175, 180, I87, 202, 225, 229, 239, 240

Schneider, ].M., 331 chochet, Elijah Judah, 120 cheolemeijer, Marian, 229 Sc-hopenhauer, Arthur, 21, 240 Schure, Edouard, 78, 89 Schwartz, Richard, 120 Schweitzer, Albert, 292-93, 323

1A

Priestley, Joseph, 207, 318-19 Prince, David, 317

232, 246, 292, 261, 282

Sarna, Vishnu, 60 Sassanians, Zoroastrian, 134

146, 154, 213, 239, 240, 271

Primatt, Humphry,

174, 178, 188, 212, 213, 216, 217, 218-25,

Scruton, Roger, 8

Seidimayer, Michael, 147 sentience, 2, 14, 105, 121, 122, 148, 154, 156, 158-60, 162, 164, 278, 304, 329

07 quietism, 62, 1

44 Quincey, Thomas de, 2

Serpell, James, 55 Seventh Day Adventists, 319-20, 322, Sévigné, Mmede, 162-63

Rajan, Chandra, 61

Sextus Empiricus, 90, 91, 110

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 184 Shakespeare, William, 156, 181 Shaw, George Bernard,5, 13-14, 43, 74, “Ny,

Rawfooders, 16, 291 Rawls, John, 43 Ray, John, 31, 170, 235, 251

189, 253, 257, 260, 268, 277, 282, 284-86,

Regan, Tom, 326

Reynol ds, Joshua, 211, 212 a,

Richardson, Samuel, 179 Ridgway, R.S., 216 Ritson, Joseph, 150, 179, 207,

294, 307

234, 245-48,

252 Ritvo, Harriet, 270, 272, 300-1

Robbins, John, 327, 328 Robins, John, 170

Shaw Festival (Canada), 286 Shelley, Harriet, 257, 258 Shelley, Mary, 216, 250, 256, 257, 259-60 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 12-13, 66, 116, 146, 147-48, I89, 209, 218, 233, 234, 236, 240, 246, 250, 252-60, 267, 276, 280, 284, 366

Shelleyism, 13, 253, 280

392

Index

Shrigley, Elsie, 297-99

Thomas, Keith, xii, 25-26, 143, 170, I71,

Siculus, Diodorus, 82, 244 Simpson, James, 269, 271

172, 258

Sinclair, Upton, 326 Singer, Peter, 120, 300, 302-3 slavery, $4 Smart, Christopher, 183 Smith, Adam, 185

Smollett, Tobias, 183

Socrates, 19, 21, 47, 9§-97, 100-1 Southey, Robert, 234, 235, 318 Spencer, Colin, xi-xti, 79, 83, 84, 109, 110,

Thomas of Celano, 142-43 Thompson, William, 236 ‘Thomson, James, 183, 188, 193-95, 204

Thoreau, Henry David, 20, 21, 314-15 Thursby, Gene, 3 TimothyofAlexandria, 134 Tolstoy, Leo, 229, 287-89, 291, 316, 331 Topsell, Edward, 169 Torajah, 47-48 ‘Torrey, Norman, 214 ‘Traske, John, 171 ‘Trotsky, Leon, 301

126, 1§6, 274, 304, 308

Spinoza, Baruch, 190-91

Tryon, Thomas, 19, 25, 77, 173-74, 180,

Sport, 49-50 St. Clair, William, 189, 258 Stark, Marianne, 226 Stasinus, 47 Steele, Richard, 183-84 Steiner, Gary, 159 Stewart, John, 243-44 Stoics, 106, 108, 113-16, 154 Stuart, [ristram, xu

253, 263, 299, 325, 339

‘Tuamoton, 46 ‘Tweddell, John, 230

Unger, P., 34 Upanishads, 64, 76 Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, 30

Sundarban delta, 29, 45 Sussman, Robert W., xuli, 33, 46 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 175-76, 240, 309 Swift, Jonathan, 183, 198, 203, 204 Tacitus, 23 ‘Taoism, 73 Taylor, Angus, 315 ‘Taylor, John, 93 ‘Taylor,Thomas, 239 ‘leaford, a 34 teeth, 25, 33, 34, 43, 44, 108, 111, 161, 170, 247, 251, 254, 312 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 6, 189, 229, 261 ‘Tertullian, 117, 119, 128, 131, 132 ‘Thales, 77, 81, 84 Theodosius, 134. Theon, 127 Theophilus, 126

Theophrastus, 25, 101, 102, 104-6, 107

‘Theraputae, 124

Theravada Buddhism, 69, 70-71 Theriot,Nicolas-Claude, 214

Valentinus, 131 Varley, Rosemary, 4

Vasari, Giorgio, 151, 152 Vegan Society: England, 297-99; United States, 323-24 Veganism, 14, 15, 16, 174, 297-99, 323-24 Vegetarian Society: England, 4, 12, 13, 93, 176, 232, 250, 267-70, 271, 273-75, 276-

77, 278, 282, 290, 293, 296, 304, 310; JS, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320

co:

eos

Stylites, Saint Simon, 127-28

Vegetus, 12, 274 é

Vesalius, Andreas, 165 Vinaya Pitaka, 68 Vinci, Leonardo da, 19, 43, 147»

254

TSi-55, 189,

Virgil, 38, 193 Voltaire, 6, 9-10, 21, 37, 55, 93, 174, 188, 204, 212-16, 218, 219, 224, 246 Waddell, Helen, 127, 129 Wagner, Richard, 6, 227-29, 295 Wallis, John, 170 Walpole, Robert, 203 Walters, Kerry S., 146, 308

Index Ward, Beneclicta, 126 Ward,William, 183 Warton, Thomas, 246

Watson, Donald, 7, 297-99 Webb, Beatrice, 268 Webb, Sidney, 268

393

Wilmot, John, 93, 183

Winstanley, Gerard, 183

Wollaston,William, 184 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 239, 250 Woolman, John, 184

Wordsworth, Dorothy, 240, 241

Webb, Stephen H., 125, 129 Weber, Max, 37

Wordsworth, William, 21, 42, 45, 180, 209, 230, 234, 235, 240, 241, 244, 287, 3.43

Ween, Francis, 36

Wyche, Richard de, 141-42 Wynne-Tyson, Jon, 303-4

Weis, René, 137 Wells, H.G., 21, 286-87

Wesley, John, 38, 179, 184, 239 West, Martin L., 38, 78, 81

Whiston,William, 209

White, Ellen, 319, 320 White, James, 319, 320 Wilde, Oscar, 282

Willey, Basil, 207 Williams, Edward, 257

Williams, Howard, xiv, 79, 80, 82, 89, 95,

Xenophanes, 79

Xenophon, 10, 96, 97, 107

Yooa Shastra, 74 Youatt, William, 1

Young, Uhomas, 117, 185 Zachner, R.C., 60-61

Zeller, Eduard, 79

100, IOI, ILO, 130, 136, 149, 168, 177, 195,

Zeno, 105-6

197, 212, 218, 242, 250, 269, 275-76, 287,

Zimmer, Heinrich, 74-75 Zola, Emile, to-11 Zoroaster, 86-87

308, 343

Willughby, Francis, 170