Why I Am a Vegetarian
An Address Delivered Before theChicago Vegetarian Society
By J. Howard Moore
Frances L. Dusenberry
McVicker’s Theatre Building
Chicago
Preface.
The human race is like a snake—it sheds. Ever and anon, as theages bloom, old forms of thought are superseded by intellectualbran-news. Shrines at which one generation adores become to thesucceeding desolate and despised.
This little brochure has a mission. It is not a formidable one,but it is. It goes out with the hope that it may help, if ever soinfinitesimally, in ridding the human of that terrific instinct ofinconsideration toward the sub-human races. Solidarity isits plea, human and universal.
It would be inexcusable to suppose it to be exhaustive. It isnot even defensive. It is a projectile, and projectiles do notapologize.
It intends to be followed.
J. H. M.
Chicago, May, 1895.
“What more advance can mortals make in sin?
Deaf to the calf that lies beneath the knife,
Looks up and from the butcher begs her life.
Deaf to the harmless kid, who, ere he dies,
All efforts to procure thy pity tries,
And imitates in vain thy children’s cries.”
— Anonymous.
“No flocks that range the valley free,
To slaughter I condemn;
Taught by the Power that pities me,
I learn to pity them.”
— Goldsmith.
“It is a vulgar error to regard meat in any form as necessary tohuman life.”
— Sir HenryThompson.
“The anthropoids and all the quadrumana derive theiralimentation from fruits, grains, and other succulent vegetalsubstances, and the strict analogy between the structure of thoseanimals and that of man clearly demonstrates his frugivorousnature.”
— Owen.
“Does it not shame you to mingle blood and murder with nature’sbeneficent fruits? Other carnivora you call savage andferocious—lions, tigers and serpents—while yourselves come behindthem in no species of barbarity. And yet for them murder is theonly means of sustenance, whereas to you it is a superfluous luxuryand crime.”
— Plutarch.
Why I Am a Vegetarian.
I am not here to convert you to vegetarianism. I know too wellthe nature of mind to commit any such blunder. I am here to talkEnglish and, if possible, give you glimpses. I can not hope in halfa hundred minutes to rinse from your brains sand bars that havebeen ages in depositing. It is no holiday matter to emancipateone’s self from an old, inveterate slavery. It is a task soformidable that few do it withou