Page:Thirty-nine reasons why I am a vegetarian.djvu/14

 5. Lambs, sheep, and all the most useful creatures whose labor and products are useful, the ox, the camel, the horse, the elephant and the like, are docile and perform their labor on a strictly vegetarian diet. Flesh food is repugnant to their nature.

6. Man is gifted with freedom and intelligence. He can, by indulging his propensities, sink himself to a level with the lower animals or by cultivating intelligently his higher faculties and adopting habits of life conducive thereto, he can rise out of and above the animal instincts; become receptive of the higher nature and eventually enjoy the rapture of the spiritual and celestial life.

7. This freedom of choice is essential to human development, as without it man would be merely automatic and could not attain the higher powers.

8. This freedom should not be regarded an authority to continue in the animal plain of existence, but an inducement to adopt such habits as are conducive to the ideal or spiritual life.

9. The flesh, even of healthy animals, contains from the physiological operations incident to construction and reconstruction, a considerable quantity of decaying material forming uric acid and ptomaine poisons that cannot be taken as food without rendering the person so using it liable to the most distressing diseases; hence the prevalence of rheumatism, gout, apoplexy and those many