of the nutrition contained in meat, it is right; it is wrong,
however, when it combats the partaking of meat as harmful and fatal,
mainly on sentimental grounds--such as "the nature of man forbids the
killing of animals and to partake of a corpse." In order to live
comfortably and undisturbed, we are compelled to declare war upon and
destroy a large number of living beings in the shape of all manner of
vermin; in order not to be ourselves eaten up, we must undertake the
killing and extirpating of wild animals. The quiet toleration of those
"good friends of man," the domestic animals, would increase the number
of these "good friends" in a few decades so immensely that they would
"devour" us by robbing us of food. Neither is the claim true that a
vegetarian diet produces mildness of temperament. The "beast" was
awakened even in the mild, vegetarian Hindoo when the severity of the
Englishmen drove him to mutiny.

In our opinion Sonderegger hits the nail on the head when he says:
"There is no order of rank in the matter of the different kinds of food;
but there is an unalterable law in the matter of combining their several
nutritious qualities." It is true that no one can nourish himself on an
exclusively meat diet, but that he can on an exclusively vegetal diet,
provided always he can select to suit; but neither would any one be
satisfied with one vegetable, let it be the most nutritive. Beans, for
instance, peas, lentils, in short, the leguminosae, are the most
nutritive of all food. Nevertheless, to be forced to feed exclusively on
them--which is said to be possible--were a torture. Karl Marx mentions
in "Capital" that the Chilian mine-owners compel their workingmen to eat
beans year in and year out, because the food imparts to them great
strength and enables them to carry burdens that they could not carry
with any other diet. Despite its nutrition, the workingmen turn against
such food, but get none other, and are thus obliged to rest content
therewith. Under no circumstances do the happiness and well-being of
people depend upon a certain diet, as is claimed by the fanatics among
the vegetarians. Climate, custom, individual tastes are the determining
factors.

In the measure that civilization advances, a vegetal diet progressively
takes the place of the exclusive meat diet, such as is indulged in by
hunting and pastoral peoples. A many-sided agriculture is a sign of
higher culture. On a given field, vegetal nutritive