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32
Why I Am A Vegetarian.

old story. We can see behind us but not around us. After so many centuries the solidarity of our species has dimly dawned on us, but we can not discern the solidarity of all the animal world. We go on daily committing crimes as horrible as those we execrate. And we do it for the very same reason our long line of ancestors have done it, because the human mind is too feeble to be conscious of all the complicated relations which it is called upon to be conscious of.

The apology of the criminals has always been the same as it is today—that the crucified creatures were of a different order of being—that a chasm yawned between the persecutors and the persecuted—that there was not a solidarity. The Gaul had no rights because he was a "barbarian." The fact that he had a nervous system and a love of life had nothing to do with it. The black man had no rights that were inconvenient to respect because he had no