The Old Cabbage Again!

IN the lately published book, with an odious title, “Brutes and Beasts,”* the cause of vegetarianism finds itself attacked from the side of those who might have been expected to be its friends. Mr. Swain has written what is practically a history of cruelty to animals, a real “thriller,” in fact; and on all the subjects he touches, except those of vivisection and butchery, he arrives at entirely humane conclusions. On the need of improved methods of slaughter he has excellent remarks; and even of the practice of not eating flesh-food he does not wholly disapprove, so long as it is not carried too far! What troubles him is the belief, held by us “cranks,” that vegetarianism as a system is either humane in itself, or of any practical benefit to the animals. Here at once we come to that dear old Cabbage whom we know so well.

“The vegetarian theory,” he says, “so far as it relates to cruelty, can be reduced to an absurdity by the mere fact that it is impossible to draw a line between where vegetable life ends and animal life begins. It is probably just as cruel to eat a cabbage as a humanely destroyed partridge. . . . This may seem absurd to lay opinion, but it is a very real thing to a scientist.”

It is amusing to note in what request the “scientist” is held by anyone who is employing some very muddled argument! What “seems absurd” to lay opinion—to rational opinion—is of course not the undoubted affinity between animal and vegetable life, but the childish pretence that the fact of that affinity has any bearing whatever on the ethical question involved in vegetarianism. If the kinship between partridge and cabbage made it as little cruel to eat the one as the other, the much closer kinship between man and “beast” would wholly absolve a cannibal of cruelty. Mr. Swain would say, perhaps, that there are other objections to the eating of human flesh, besides the mere suffering it causes. So likewise there are to the eating of animals, but it has suited his purpose to ignore them.

It is evident from a reading of his book that Mr. Swain is very ignorantly prejudiced against humane diet-reform. He refers to it s “the self-abuse of vegetarianism”; asserts, quite unjustifiably, that many vegetarians admit that “fish were certainly provided [sic] for our consumption”; and dismisses, as “not worth arguing about,” the claim that abstinence from flesh-eating, if universally adopted, would benefit the animals themselves. There, in that last point, I agree with him. Whatever may be thought of the possibility, the advisability, of not slaughtering animals for food, it is something worse than foolish, in view of the horrors (many recorded by Mr. Swain himself) arising from the practice of butchery, to pretend that its discontinuance would not be a great step in humaneness. And to dispose so pleasantly of the vegetarian contention, much more will be needed than that absurd old Cabbage on whom Mr. Swain relies.

*“Brutes and Beasts,” by John Swain, author of “The Pleasures of the Torture Chamber.” (Noel Douglas, 12s. 6d.)

Henry S. Salt

The Vegetarian News, June 1933, p. 172