y this
Christmas; and it is not in the least true (as the vegetarians say) that
I shall do it because I do not realise what I am doing, or because I do
what I know is wrong, or that I do it with shame or doubt or a
fundamental unrest of conscience. In one sense I know quite well what I
am doing; in another sense I know quite well that I know not what I do.
Scrooge and the Cratchits and I are, as I have said, all in one boat;
the turkey and I are, to say the most of it, ships that pass in the
night, and greet each other in passing. I wish him well; but it is
really practically impossible to discover whether I treat him well. I
can avoid, and I do avoid with horror, all special and artificial
tormenting of him, sticking pins in him for fun or sticking knives in
him for scientific investigation. But whether by feeding him slowly and
killing him quickly for the needs of my brethren, I have improved in his
own solemn eyes his own strange and separate destiny, whether I have
made him in the sight of God a slave or a martyr, or one whom the gods
love and who die young--that is far more removed from my possibilities
of knowledge than the most abstruse intricacies of mysticism or
theology. A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and
archangels In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world,
he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us
what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an
hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather
increased than diminished.

End of Project Gutenberg's All Things Considered, by G. K. Chesterton

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