Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/38

Rh of narrow Stalls at the rear of the slaughter-houses. The scene is here busy enough, and the celerity. with which the work is done sufficiently remarkable—at the one end the ﬁne great beasts go in, at the other emerge great sides of beef, hoofs, hides, and horns. There is much less uproar over the sheep, which are killed and dressed with great celerity.”

Pitiable indeed must be the mental and moral condition of those who can read such an account as this without loathing and disgust. And if the mere mention of it is well-nigh intolerable, what is to be said of the system which necessitates the continual enactment of such scenes? Can any thoughtful man, in the face of such horrors, deliberately choose to be a ﬂesh-eater? Must be not rather turn with relief to a vegetarian diet, with which alone can exist that widely sympathetic intellectual gentleness which recognises the rights, not of man only, but of all the animal creation. To repeat the oft-quoted but seldom-appreciated lines of Coleridge—

“He prayeth best that loveth best All things, both great and small: For the dear God, who loveth us, He made and loveth all."