  The system of nourishment that Nature has imposed upon the world is not only stupid and malicious, but also of a cannibalistic character. We, as frail human beings, are horrified and shocked to think that our ancestors trafficked in and delighted in eating the flesh of their race, and even to-day we are making a strenuous effort to discourage the barbarous custom of killing animals to eat their flesh, yet it seems a dictate of Nature that forces us to uphold that custom. Just think of it! Nourishment and life-sustaining forces are derived from eating the cooked flesh of a dead animal, the unborn fowl, the bowels of the lamb, and the eggs of the fish! Can you imagine the wildness of life in such a jungle of cannibalism? No wonder the savage instinct is so deeply implanted in us. To get a fair idea of the food we eat to sustain life and to please and satisfy our palates, we need but take a casual glance at any of our modern butcher shops. Although to-day you will not see human limbs on display and for sale, as they were years ago, you will be impressed with the following morsels put there to tempt your appetite: In our modern butcher shops you will find pigs' feet, calves' brains, ox tongues, breasts and legs of lamb, chicken livers, dogs ground to bits and sold as sausages, live and dead fish of all kinds and varieties and innumerable other portions of animal flesh. Fortunately we have got beyond the point where we eat the entrails of these animals, although we use their hoofs to make glue, their bones for powder, and we string our delicate musical instruments with their vitals. The things we consume, in turn consume the living forms that they capture and subdue. The lion, the tiger and the leopard will devour us more quickly, and with less ceremony and with more delight, than we devour other animals. We, being "civilized," boil the animal's flesh and season it with weeds that Nature allows to grow, to give it zest and flavor, while our wilder brothers eat us in the raw, natural manner, only removing our civilized clothes. Really, if getting nearer to God is getting back to Nature, the beasts of the fields have an advantage over us. And we know to-day that even the living things in the vegetable kingdom suffer alike from the fearful tortures and penalties of the world. They follow almost the identical routine of life that we follow. Birth, life, reproduction, and death are their lot as well as ours; so that, if man were only to practice the idealism of his cramped and feeble brain he would starve to death! |
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