Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/83

Rh sources. This process would, of course, be a gradual one, keeping pace exactly with the gradual change from a diet of animal to vegetable food: at no period would there be the smallest confusion or inconvenience to anybody. In the meantime, Vegetarians need not seriously trouble themselves with the foolish charge of “inconsistency.” They use leather, etc., now, not from any personal preference for such substances, but because, owing to the unpleasant dietetic habits of other people, it so happens that they can at present get nothing else. It is important, however, for Food Reformers to feel sure that the adoption of their principles would cause no real and permanent deficiencies in the appliances of civilised life ; and on this point I think they may feel easy. We hear of many trivial and hardly serious objections, but I do not think any really necessary or important animal production can be mentioned for which as good a substitute could not easily be supplied from the vegetable or mineral kingdom. It may afford some pleasant mental exercise to our carnivorous friends to tax their ingenuity on this point.

7. And now we come to two of the most amusing and characteristic arguments of our F