Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/89

Rh “For Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal, The May-ﬂy is torn by the swallow, the sparrow is speared by the Shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey."

This being so, “is it right,” asks our pious and scrupulous friend “to refuse to conform to the dictates of Nature ?”

The fallacy here consists in advancing as a binding and universal law of Nature that which is in reality only a special and partial one. It is true that some animals are carnivorous ; if a cat were to refuse a mouse, her conduct might conceivably be argued to be unnatural, and, therefore, immoral. But it is equally true that other animals are not carnivorous ; we are not so unreasonable as to expect a horse to eat rats and mice—why, then, should it be unnatural or ungrateful in a man to decline to prey upon the lower animals? The flesh-eater must prove that man is actually a carnivorous rather than a frugivorous being; and this, we imagine, would be rather a difficult task.

The absurd assertion so often made, that animals were “sent” us as food may be classed under this same head. The mere fact that we