“DO you think me a cannibal?” is the remark often made by a cheery flesh-eater, when enjoying his roast beef in the presence of a vegetarian; and it may not be denied that such is the thought which commonly suggests itself, for the more highly developed nonhuman animals are very closely akin to man. “We do not eat negroes,” says Mr. W. H. Hudson, “although their pigmented skin, flat feet and woolly heads proclaim them a different species—even monkey’s flesh is abhorrent to us, merely because we fancy that that creature, in its ugliness, resembles some old men and some women and children that we know. But the gentle, large-brained social cow ... we slaughter and feed on her flesh—monsters and cannibals that we are.” No apology, then, shall be made for the heading of this chapter. There is a very real likeness, not only between anthropophagy and other forms of flesh-eating, but between the excuses offered by cannibals and those offered by flesh-eaters.

Forty years ago, the possibility of living healthily on a non-flesh diet was by no means so generally admitted as it is now; and consequently very naÏve and artless objections used to be advanced against abstinence from butcher’s-meat. Mr. Kegan Paul told me that he had once heard a lady say to F. W. Newman: “But, Professor, don’t you feel very weak?” to which the Professor sturdily replied: “Madam, feel my calves.” “What on earth do you live on?” used to be a frequent question at Eton in those days, the implication being that there is no “variety” in the vegetarian diet; an amusing complaint, in view of what Richard Jefferies has described as “the ceaseless round of mutton and beef to which the dead level of civilization [sic] reduces us.” So obvious is this monotony in the orthodox repasts that the Spectator, a good many years ago, published an article headed, “Wanted, a New Meat,” in which it was explained that what is needed is some new and large animal, something which “shall combine the game flavour with the substantial solidity of a leg of mutton.” The Spectator’s choice ultimately fell upon the eland, but not before the claims of various other “neglected animals,” among them the wart-hog, had been conscientiously debated.

That the cannibal conscience is somewhat guilty and ill at ease seems evident from the nature of the arguments put forward by the apologists of flesh-eating; else why did Dr. P. H. Carpenter suggest that the lower animals were “sent” to us for food, when, as a scientist, he knew well the absurdity of that remark? Why not say frankly what Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in his English Notebook that “the best thing a man born in this island can do is to eat his beef and mutton, and drink his porter, and take things as they are, and think thoughts that shall be so beefish, muttonish, and porterish, that they shall be matters rather material than intellectual”? The reckless hardihood of a simple and barbarous people is essentially unconscious, just as the action of a hawk or weasel is unconscious when it seizes its prey; but when consciousness is once awakened, and a doubt arises as to the morality of the action, the habit begins of giving sophistical reasons for practices that cannot be justified. Herman Melville tells us in his Typee that the Polynesians, being aware of the horror which Europeans feel for anthropophagy, “invariably deny its existence, and, with the craft peculiar to savages, endeavour to conceal every trace of it.” The existence of flesh-eating cannot be denied; but do we not see a savage’s craft in the shifty and far-fetched reasons alleged for its continuance?

It is only fair to “the noble savage” to draw this distinction between the natural barbarism and the sophisticated, between the real necessity for killing for food and the pretended necessity. Commander Peary, the Arctic explorer, once wrote in the Windsor Magazine, under the title of “Hunting Musk Oxen near the Pole,” a story of the genuine hunger, and expressed a doubt whether a single one of his readers knew what hunger was. He was actually in a famishing state when a herd of Musk Oxen came in view: “The big black animals,” he said, “were not game, but meat, and every nerve and fibre in my gaunt body was vibrating with a savage lust for that meat, meat that should be soft and warm, meat into which the teeth could sink and tear and rend.” Here was a savagery that can at least be understood and respected, that did not need to postulate the “sending” of the oxen for its subsistence; yet, strange to say, Peary’s story would be voted disgusting in many a respectable household which orders its “home-killed meat” from the family butcher and employs a cook to disguise it. Certainly, if there is a “noble savage,” we must recognize also the ignoble variety that has developed the “conscience” of which I speak.

To this “cannibal’s conscience” we owe those delightful excuses, those flowers of sophistry, which strew the path of the flesh-eater and lend humour to an otherwise very gruesome subject. By far the most entertaining of them is what may be called the academical fallacy, inasmuch as it seems to have a special attraction for learned men—the argument that it is a kindness to the animals themselves to kill and eat them, because otherwise they would not be bred at all, and so would miss the pleasures of existence. This “Canonization of the Ogre,” as it has been named, was propounded by Professor D. G. Ritchie, Sir Leslie Stephen, Sir Henry Thompson, Dr. Stanton Coit, and other distinguished publicists,[14] every one of whom, with the single exception of Dr. Coit, prudently evaded discussion of the question when the flaw in his reasoning was pointed out, viz. that existence cannot be compared with non-existence. Of existence it is possible to predicate certain qualities—good or bad, happiness or unhappiness—but of non-existence we can predicate nothing at all; we must first have the actual ground of existence to argue from, and he who bases his reasoning on the non-existent is building upon the treacherous sands.

“The Pig has a stronger interest than anyone in the demand for bacon,” wrote Sir Leslie Stephen in his Social Rights and Duties. Sir Leslie was repeatedly invited to make some answer to the criticisms which this dictum called forth; but courageous champion of intellectual freedom though he was, he preferred in this instance to take refuge in silence. To no one but Dr. Stanton Coit has philosophy been indebted for a full exposition of a comfortable theory which may be expressed (with the alteration of one word) in Coleridge’s famous lines:

“If the motive that might produce the greatest number of happiest cattle,” said Dr. Coit, “would be the eating of beef, then beef-eating, so far, must be commended. And while heretofore the motive has not been for the sake of cattle, it is conceivable that, if vegetarian convictions should spread much further, love for cattle would (if it be not psychologically incompatible) blend with the love of beef, in the minds of the opponents of vegetarianism.”[15] According to this ethical dictum, it will be seen, mankind will continue to eat cows, sheep, pigs, and other animals for conscience sake—we must be, not conscientious objectors to butchery, but conscientious promoters of it. So far, Dr. Coit only set forth in greater detail the argument stated by Professor Ritchie, Sir Leslie Stephen, and the other casuists in cannibalism; but now we come to that “psychological incompatibility” to which in a parenthesis he referred.

Nothing in controversy ever gave me keener satisfaction than to have drawn this “surmise,” this pearl of great price, from Dr. Stanton Coit in the very serious columns of the Ethical World. It shows clearly, I think, why his co-adjutors in the metaphysic of the larder were wise in their avoidance of discussion.

It seems to be a benign provision of Nature that those who allege altruistic reasons for selfish actions invariably make themselves ridiculous. “What would become of the Esquimaux?” was one of the questions often put to advocates of vegetarianism; probably it is the only instance on record of any solicitude for the welfare of that remote people. Then, again, we were frequently asked: “What would become of the animals?” the implication being that under a vegetarian regime there would be large numbers of uneaten and neglected quadrupeds left straying about the earth. An artist friend of mine once drew an amusing picture to illustrate this “Flesh-Eaters’ Dilemma.” A gentleman and lady, sitting at a well-ordered dinner-table, are terribly inconvenienced by an invasion, through the conservatory door, of a number of such superfluous animals: a cow is putting her head through the window; a sheep is snatching at the bread; a pig is playing with a rabbit on the floor; and in the distance a forlorn ox is seen lying in desperation against the garden gate.

Such are some of the sophisms of which cannibal’s conscience is prolific. They belong to that class of subterfuge which Bacon designated eidola specus, “idols of the cave,” as lurking in the inmost and darkest recesses of the human mind. “Fallacies of the Cave-Dweller” might perhaps be a fitting name for them; for they seem to be characteristic of the more primitive and uncivilized intelligence.