The Logic of Cannibalism

“The Logic of Vegetarianism.” Essays and Dialogues by Henry S. Salt. Second Edition, revised. George Bell and Sons. 1s. 6d. net.

Mr. Salt, who republishes with some improvements his essays in defence of the vegetarian position, is a man who no one can know without respecting as a figure full of courage and capacity and of a chivalry which, even if it be misdirected, is if anything all the more chivalrous on that account. We talk of Don Quixote tilting at windmills; but we have only to extend our sympathy equally to all forms of life, after the manner of Mr. Salt, in order to concede that Don Quixote had even a rational position. Don Quixote would have been indignant with tyrants for grinding the faces of the poor. Perhaps he was equally indignant with the windmills for grinding the ears of the corn. There is no earthly rational basis for asserting that corn has no sensation, and for all I know it may very dislike being made into bread. If I approve of making it into bread it is not because I assert the insensibility of corn; it is because I assert the rights and authority of the poor men who are to eat it as something quite sacred and exceptional. I approve it because I know that if you do not grind the corn you do grind the people.

There is really a vast amount of entertaining and quick-witted logic in the book called “The Logic of Vegetarianism.” But the logic is really all off the line because it deals at bottom with one thing that everybody admits, but omits altogether another and totally different thing that everyone knows. Anyone can see, of course, that you can if you like make a kind of slope or ladder with the vegetarian at one end and the cannibal at the other, and represent the cannibal as only a little more cruel than the man who eats meat. Similarly, by stretching the slope a little further, you can make the cannibal appear only a little more cruel than the vegetarian who tears the plants out of the earth. In a sense all of them are eating their fellow creatures; and in a sense none of them know what they do. If Mr. Salt thinks it odd to draw the line between men and beasts, I think it much odder to draw the line between beasts and vegetables. And a hundred other lines might be drawn, and posses quite as much validity—a line between beasts and birds, between birds and fishes, or between more complex and more simple vegetation. Mr. Salt admits that those vegetarians who have abolished milk and eggs are ahead of the other vegetarians in moral progress, and are to be regarded as pioneers. But if the egg eater can admire the bean eater (I will not say the beanfeaster), and yet go on eating eggs, why should not the meat eater admire the egg eater, and still go on eating meat? Why cannot I content myself with calling Mr. Salt a pioneer, and then give the waiter my order for five veal cutlets?

Surely, the thing is really very simple. It is as plain as daylight that if you are thinking along this line solely there is no definite division, neither Mr. Salt’s nor the ordinary human one. You begin with the mud and the stones at one end, and go up (or down, if there be no eternal dogma in the matter) to the thing called man. You start with the mineralist eating salt and go up to the Sandwich Islander eating Salt. But we do not argue only along this line. There is another kind of truth altogether. And to that other type of truth Mr. Salt goes suddenly and strangely blind.

A Difference of Kind.

This is, indeed, the singular quality of the very finest fanatics. They have one blind spot on the brain; and they cannot see something which is as assertive and as self-evident as the sun. There is one great mountainous thing, a thing like Mont Blanc, which Mr. Salt literally does not see at all. He explores the universe with the divine pity of the poet; he weeps for the wild beasts and shares the emotions of the microbe. But he literally cannot see a certain dominant and definite thing. The thing is called mankind. Mankind is not a tribe of animals to which we owe compassion. Mankind is a club to which we owe our subscription. Pity, the vague sentiment of the sunt lacrymæ rerum, is due indisputably to everything that lives. And as regards this the difference between our pity for suffering men and our pity for suffering animals is very possibly only a question of degree. But the difference between our moral relation to men and animals is not a difference of degree in the least. It is a difference of kind. What we owe to a human being we owe to a fellow-member of a fixed, responsible and reciprocal society. You may possibly pity an animal more than a man. But by pitying an animal you do not make him a member of humanity, any more than by pitying a man you make him a member of Parliament. The matter is easily tested by simply turning it round. If you want to know whether there is any contract or community between me and a flea, ask the flea. If there is one, he breaks it pretty constantly. This is the basic error upon which Mr. Salt’s school goes wrong. They will not see that when we talk of human superiority, we do not mean superiority in a degree or an inclined plane; we mean the existence of a certain definite society, different from everything else, and founded not on the sorrows of all living, but on the rights of man. Cruelty to men and cruelty to animals are too quite detestable but quite different sins. In one sense cruelty to men is much more excusable; because men can arouse normal sentiments of hatred and vengeance; whereas a man who placidly tortures an animal is, I should imagine, insane. As in all cases where there is a difference in kind, the one thing is better than the other in some ways, much worse in others. But the point is that the man who breaks a cat’s back breaks a cat’s back. The man who breaks a man’s back breaks an implied treaty. The tyrant to animals is a tyrant. The tyrant to men is a traitor. Nay, he is a rebel : for man is royal.

A Primary Fallacy.

It is because Mr. Salt leaves out at the start this mountainous fact that mankind is a society that I cannot get to any grips with the real argument. That mankind is a society does not prove that eating animals is allowable. But refusing to see that mankind is a society does make it impossible to prove to those who do see it that eating animals is wrong. Mr. Salt’s omission is an obstable in the way of his converting us. If he could prove to me that the orderly and decent killing of creature bred for the purpose was an inferno of ingenious torment, was in short a violation of a primary pity such as I feel for all animals (and plants), then he would be striking home. But when he simply says in effect “you think it horrid to eat men, why not think it horrid to eat pigs?” the words sound in [missing word…ars] exactly like a man saying “You recognise the right of man to vote, why not recognise the right of pigs to vote?” He is extending to [missing word] human thing which awakens all sorts of [missing word] sensibilities in me one particularly sensibility which, as far as I am concerned, is entirely human. I do not eat men because I am a man; and the members of this little club of ours happen to feel that this action (harmless enough in the abstract) is degrading to the dignity of the society. I do not refrain from cannibalism out of compassion in the least. As far as the animal life of humanity is concerned, as far as all the life I can judge of in animals is concerned, it might be a very kind thing to breed men to be kindly kept, painlessly killed, and eaten. I know it would not be kind because I know what is every human being’s sense of human dignity, and that this would feel being eaten as an insult. But Heaven only knows what is a pig’s sense of porkine dignity or what would insult it. Not being eaten, for all I know.

The greater danger which arises from good and able men like Mr. Salt thus treating the question entirely as one of degree is that it may possibly very gravely undermine the who human sentiment for human rights. It is of excessive importance in our political future that the idea should not get about that all you heave got to do for men is to be kind to them as we are kind to the lower animals. Aristocracies will be kind to us. Despotisms will be kind to us. Mr. Pierpont Morgan and the millionaires will be extra-ordinarily kind to us. But what we want is a thing wholly different in its nature from kindness, quite consistent in mere logic with coldness; we want citizenship, equality, certain perfectly precise powers. If you are going to give these to horses, say so. According to horse etiquette, they are probably regarded as marks of servitude. But if you are not, do not in any of your arguments mix up the rights of men with the sacred and essential needs of animals; for the two will merely fall together. Let us hear the logic of vegetarianism by all means; I am aware that it has innumerable excellent arguments. But it has nothing in the world to with the logic of cannibalism. If you level men with animals you will only in the long run level down. For one man who treats dogs like men there will be twenty who will treat men like dogs.