Of the many dense prejudices through which, as through a snowdrift, vegetarianism has to plough its way before it can emerge into the field of free discussion, there is none perhaps more inveterate than the common appeal to "Nature." A typical instance of the remarkable misuse of logic which characterises such argument may be seen in the anecdote related by Benjamin Franklin, in his "Autobiography," of the incident which induced him to return, after years of abstinence, to a flesh diet. He was watching some companions sea-fishing, and observing that some of the fish caught by them had swallowed other fish, he concluded that, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we may not eat you"—a confusion of ichthyology and morals which is ludicrous enough as narrated by Franklin, but not essentially more foolish than the attempt so frequently made by flesh-eaters to shuffle their personal responsibility on to some supposed "natural law."

But let the carnivorous anthropologist speak for himself:

Anthropologist: Now, understand me! I think this vegetarianism is well enough as a sentiment; I fully appreciate your aspiration. But you have overlooked the fact that it is contrary to the laws of Nature. It is beautiful in theory, but impossible in practice.

Vegetarian: Indeed! That puts me in an awkward position, as I have been practising it for twenty years.

Anthropologist: It is not the individual that I am speaking of, but the race. A man may practise it perhaps; but mankind cannot do so with impunity.

Vegetarian: And why?

Anthropologist: Because, as the poet says, "Nature is one with rapine." It is natural to kill. Do you dare to impugn Nature?

Vegetarian: Not at all. What I dare to impugn is your incorrect description of Nature. There is a great deal more in Nature than rapine and slaughter.

Anthropologist: What? Do not the beasts and birds prey on one another? Do not the big fish eat the little fish? Is it not all one universal struggle for existence, one internecine strife?

Vegetarian: No; that is just what it is not. There are two principles at work in Nature—the law of competition and the law of mutual aid. There are carnivorous animals and non-carnivorous, predatory races and sociable races; and the vital question is—to which does man belong? You obscure the issue by these vague and meaningless appeals to the "laws of Nature," when, in the first place, you are quoting only part of Nature's ordinance, and, secondly, have not yourself the least intention of conforming even to that part.

Anthropologist: I beg your pardon. In what do I not conform to Nature?

Vegetarian: Well, are you in favour of cannibalism, let us say, or the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes?

Anthropologist: Good gracious, my dear sir! I must entreat you——

Vegetarian: Exactly! You are horrified at the mere mention of such things. Yet these habits are as easily justified as flesh-eating, if you take "Nature" as your model, without specifying whose nature? The nature of the conger and the dog-fish, or the nature of civilised man? Pray tell me that, Mr. Anthropologist, and then our conversation may not be wholly irrelevant.

The idea that the Darwinian doctrine of the "struggle of life" justifies any barbarous treatment of inferior races is ridiculed by so distinguished an authority as Prince Kropotkin, who points out that Darwin does not teach this. "He proves that there is a struggle for existence in order to put a check on the inordinate increase of species. But this struggle is not to be understood in a crude and exclusive sense; there is a law of competition, but there is also—what is still more important—a law of mutual aid, and as soon as the scientist leaves his laboratory, and comes out into the open woods and meadows, he sees the importance of this law. Only those animals who are mutually helpful are really fitted to survive; it is not the strong, but the co-operative species that endure."^[8] So, too, with reference to the strange notion that a guide for human conduct may be deduced from some particular animal instinct, taken at haphazard from its surroundings, a timely warning is addressed to such crude reasoners by Professor J. Arthur Thomson: "What we must protest against is that one-sided interpretation, according to which individualistic competition is Nature's sole method of progress.... The precise nature of the means employed and ends attained must be carefully considered, when we seek from the records of animal evolution support or justification for human conduct."^[9]

It may be said, however, that though man is fitted to co-operate peacefully with his fellows, he is not bound by any such ties of brotherhood to the lower animals, and that it is "natural" that he should prey on the non-human races, even if it be not natural that he should seek pleasure at the cost of his fellow-man. But, in reality, Nature knows no such bridgeless gulf between the human and the non-human intelligence; and it is impossible, in the light of modern science, to draw any such absolute line of demarcation between man and "the animals" as in the now discredited theory of Descartes. We are learning to get rid of these "anthropocentric" delusions, which, as has been pointed out by Mr. E. P. Evans, "treat man as a being essentially different and inseparably set apart from all other sentient creatures, to which he is bound by no ties of mental affinity or moral obligation"; whereas, in fact, "man is as truly a part and product of Nature as any other animal, and this attempt to set him up as an isolated point outside of it is philosophically false and morally pernicious."^[10]

The talk, then, about Nature being "one with rapine" is a mere form of special pleading, which will not stand examination in the full light of fact. If man is determined to play the part of tiger among his less powerful fellow-beings, he will have to go elsewhere than to Nature to obtain a warrant for his deeds, for as far as the indications of Nature carry weight, they suggest that man, by his physical structure and his compassionate instincts, belongs unmistakably to the sociable, and not the predatory tribes; and that by constituting himself a "beast of prey" on a vast artificial scale, he is doing the greatest possible wrong to nature (i.e., to his own nature) instead of conforming to it. Our innate horror of bloodshed—a horror which only long custom can deaden, and which, in spite of past centuries of violence, is so powerful at the present time—is proof that we are not naturally adapted for a sanguinary diet; and, as has often been pointed out, it is only by delegating to others the detested work of slaughter, and by employing cookery to conceal the uncongenial truth, that thoughtful persons can tolerate the practice of flesh-eating. If Nature pointed us to such a diet, we should feel the same instinctive appetite for raw flesh as we now feel for ripe fruit, and a slaughter-house would be more delightful to us than an orchard. It is not Nature, but custom, that is the guardian deity of the flesh-eater.

But we have not quite exhausted the appeal to Nature; we have still to speak of the common objection to vegetarianism that "it is necessary to take life."

Anthropologist: I have a most important argument to put before you. Must you not face the fact that, in this imperfect world, it is necessary to take life? How can it be immoral to do what necessity imposes?

Vegetarian: We do not say that it is immoral to "take life," but that it is immoral to take life unnecessarily. It is not immoral, for instance, to destroy rats and mice, because it is necessary to do so. It is immoral to kill animals for the table, because it is not necessary to do so. Did you ever tread on a beetle?

Anthropologist: Yes, by accident. I could not help it. I am a most humane man.

Vegetarian: Of course. But supposing that you wished to murder someone, would you think yourself justified in doing so because you had trodden on beetles—because, in fact, sometimes it is "necessary to take life?"

Anthropologist: Certainly not. How can you suspect me of being so immoral? There is a great difference between taking the life of a beetle by accident and of a man by design. There are degrees of responsibility, you know.

Vegetarian: Ah! you have got your answer, then.

How is it, we wonder, that rational beings can commit themselves to such irrational arguments as this appeal to what is called "Nature" but is in reality only an isolated section of Nature, viewed apart from the rest? Let Benjamin Franklin himself supply the answer. For in narrating that incident of the cod-fish to which I have alluded, he humorously hints that his philosophical conclusion, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we may not eat you," was not uninfluenced by the fact that he had been "a great lover of fish" in early life, and that the fish smelt "admirably well" as it came out of the frying-pan; and he sagely adds that one of the advantages to man of being a "reasonable creature" is that he can find or make a "reason" for anything he has a mind to do. Such is the logic of the flesh-eater, in which the wish is father to the thought, and mixed thinking leads by a convenient process to a mixed diet.