The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues
by
(Author)
Title: | The Logic of Vegetarianism: Essays and Dialogues |
Published: | 1899 |
Publisher: | Idea Publishing Union Ltd., London |
Edition: | First Edition |
Pages: | 116 |
Subject: | |
Other Editions: |
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Why “Vegetarian”?
The Raison D'être of Vegetarianism
The Past and Present of Vegetarianism
Structural Evidence
The Appeal of Nature
The Humanitarian Argument
Palliations and Sophistries
The Consistency Trick
The Degradation of the Butcher
The Aestetic Argument
The Hygenic Argument
Digestion
Conditions of Climate
Flesh Meat and Morals
The Economic Argument
Doubts and Difficulties
Bible and Beef
The Flesh-Eater's Kith and Kin
Vegetarianism as Related to Other Reforms
Conclusions
Index
Information
Arguments for vegetarianism: moral, scientific, economic, health, social, and aesthetic. Amazingly comprehensive, devastating critiques of 31 anti-vegetarian arguments (some so silly they are humorous, but many of these arguments still in use).
The arguments or claims made by opponents of vegetarianism:
(1) Consuming
eggs and diary products contradicts the meaning of "vegetarian."
(2) There is
no difference between roasting an ox and boiling an egg.
(3) Vegetarians who
do not immediately and completely shun all animal products are hypocrites.
(4)
No great empires (Roman, British) were ever founded by vegetarians.
(5) Human
canine teeth prove the necessity of flesh-eating.
(6) The human stomach is much
different than that of true herbivore.
(7) History shows that humans are omnivorous.
(8) Vegetarianism is contrary to the laws of nature, red in tooth and claw;
to kill is natural.
(9) It is necessary to destroy life in order to live.
(10)
Raising food animals in pleasant conditions and killing them painlessly is not
cruel.
(11) Eating animals is no worse than using them for labour.
(12) The
rapid death of food animals is preferable to the agonising death of humans.
(13) Food animals, free of the fears and dangers experienced by wild animals,
are happier.
(14) It is better for animals that we use them for food than that
they do not exist at all.
(15) Vegetarians who eat eggs and diary products are
inconsistent.
(16) Consistent vegetarians could never kill lice or germs.
(17)
Flesh-eating is just as aesthitic as vegetarianism.
(18) Vegetarians are sentimentalists.
(19) Meat eating is necessary for strength.
(20) Flesh-food is easier digested
than vegetarian food.
(21) Flesh diet is necessary in cold climates ("What would
become of Eskimoes if all became vegetarians?").
(22) What difference does it
make whether we eat flesh or non-flesh, so long as the spirit in which we eat
be a proper one?
(23) Vegetarianism is economically impractical.
(24) Vegetarianism
is an inconvenient diet.
(25) Eating flesh is necessary for developing a manly
spirit.
(26) How could we exist without leather? Soup? Candles?
(27) How could
land be fertilised without manure from food animals?
(28) If the life of animals
be regarded as sacred as human life, civilisation will revert to a primitive
condition.
(29) If we turn loose all the food animals they will over-populate,
overrun the land, starve, lie dead on highways and in the suburbs.
(30) We were
given permission by God to eat animals.
(31) Vegetarians do not give sufficient
priority to more important social reforms (war, poverty, etc.).
Reprints:
Idea Publishing Union Ltd., London, 1899
George Bell & Sons Ltd., London, 1906, 116 pages
George Bell & Sons Ltd., London, 1918
(Revised
and abridged edition) London Vegetarian Society, London, 1932 and 1933
Reviews
- The Logic of Vegetarianism The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review, January 1933