h a view to his own advantage. Of all arguments for
vegetarianism, none is so weak as the argument from humanity. The pig
has a stronger interest than any one in the demand for bacon. If all
the world were Jewish, there would be no pigs at all. He has to pay for
his privileges by an early death; but he makes a good bargain of it. He
dies young, and, though we can hardly infer the "love of the gods," we
must admit that he gets a superior race of beings to attend to his
comforts, moved by the strongest possible interest in his health and
vigour, and induced by its own needs, perhaps, to make him a little too
fat for comfort, but certainly also to see that he has a good sty, and
plenty to eat every day of his life. Other races, again, are extirpated
as "ruthlessly" as in the merely instinctive struggle for existence. We
get rid of wolves and snakes as well as we can, and more systematically
than can be done by their animal competitors. The process does not
necessarily involve cruelty, and certainly does not involve a
diminution of the total of happiness. The struggle for existence means
the substitution of a new system of equilibrium, in which one of the
old discords has been removed, and the survivors live in greater
harmony. If the wolf is extirpated as an internecine enemy, it is that
there may be more sheep when sheep have become our allies and the
objects of our earthly providence. The result may be, perhaps I might
say must be, a state in which, on the whole, there is a greater amount
of life supported on the planet; and therefore, as those will think who
are not pessimists, a decided gain on the balance. At any rate, the
difference so far is that the condition which was in all cases
necessary, is now consciously recognised as necessary; and that we
deliberately aim at a result which always had to be achieved on penalty
of destruction. So far, again, as morality can be established on purely
prudential grounds, the same holds good of relations between human
beings themselves. Men begin to perceive that, even from a purely
personal point of view, peace is preferable to war. If war is unhappily
still prevalent, it is at least not war in which every clan is fighting
with its neighbours, and where conquest means slavery or extirpation.
Millions of men are at peace within the limits of a modern State, and
can go about their business without cutting each other's throats. When
they fight with other nations they do not enslave