THE MEAT FETISH. 19
by careful selection on account of the size of its udder. Conceive of doing the same thing with any other female animal—the dog or cat or horse—and you will see what a monstrosity the prize cow is. The sooner such a distortion of animalhood passes away the better. And how is it with sheep? The wild sheep, like the chamois and wild goat, is a swift, alert, discerning creature, full of life and alacrity. We demoralise him until after generations of human companionship he hardly knows his head from his tail, and moves about in idiotic masses with about as much intelligence as a globule of quicksilver on a table. Sheep are silly, indeed, but we have made them so. We can continue to raise them for wool, if we will, but that does not oblige us to eat them. We do not eat silkworms. Nor would we have much reason to deplore the departure of the domestic pig. In his wild state as a boar he is a lean, self-respecting animal, and as clean as the average quadruped. It is only after associating with men that he makes a hog of himself. We might well dispense with him and with all the other animals which we raise for food. Their loss would be nothing to deplore.
And so we see that really there !s very little to be said in favour of eating flesh, fish, and fowl, and almost everything to be said against it. I have endeavoured to bring forward no argument that was not sound, for the temptation of the advocates of every reform is to claim too much and vegetarians are no exception to this rule. They will tell you that abstention from meat will cure all diseases. It will not. I once angered a vegetarian orator, who was proceeding on this line, by reminding him that even such good vegetarians as horses and cows were sometimes ill. They will assure you that a vegetarian diet will make a bad man good. It will not. I doubt if it has any effect upon a man's morals except by removing the degrading environment of butchery and ravin. It is true that the most famous of American haunts of vice is known as the "Tenderloin" of New York, and that the name of "joints,"
