The Writer's Reasons for not Eating Animal Food.
(Month. Mag.)
I. BECAUSE being mortal himself, and holding his life on the same uncertain and precarious tenure as all other sensitive beings, he does not feel himself justified by any supposed superiority or inequality of condition, in destroying the vital enjoyment of any other mortal, except in the necessary defence of his own life.
II.—Because the desire of life is so paramount, and so affectingly cherised in all sensitive beings, that he canot reconcile it to his feelings to destroy, or become a voluntary party in the destruction of any living creature, however much in his power, or apparently insignificant.
III.—Because he feels an utter and unconquerable repugnance against receiving into his stomach the flesh or juices of deceased animal organization.
IV.—Because he feels the same abhorrence against devouring flesh in general, that he hears carnivorous men express against eating human flesh, or the flesh of dogs, cats, horses, or other animals, which in some countries it is not customary for carnivorous men to devour.
V.—Because Nature appears 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, seed, and pulse, and in the oleaginous matter of the stalks, leaves, and pericars of numerous vegetables.
VI.—Because the destruction of the mechanical organization of vegetables inflicts no sensitive suffering, nor violates any moral feeling, while vegetables serve to sustain his health, strength, an spirits, above those of most carnivorous men.
VII.—Because during thirty years of rigid abstinence from the flesh and juices of deceased sensitive beings, he finds that he has not suffered a day's serious illness; that his animal strength and vigour have been equal, or superior to that of other men; and that his mind has been fully equal to numerous shocks, which it has had to encounter from malice, envy, and various acts of turpitude in his fellow-men[1].
- ↑ The Author at twelve years old, when a school-boy at Chiswick, abstained from eating animal food from a cause which it is said led Dr. Franklin to resume the practice. He saw a fish opened which had small fish within it, recently devoured; and when that fish was afterwards brought to table, he was forcibly struck with the idea of eating the very animal, which but yesterday had been devouring others. The practice of the fish was, he felt, that of a creature without reason or humanity, and no justification to him for doing what he thought wrong. His appetite also revolted at the idea of eating part of a creature so lately and so palpably enjoying itself in its own element. He therefore excused himself, and has to this time persevered in rigid abstinence.
