The ethics of diet : a catena of authorities deprecatory of the practice of flesh-eating / by Howard Williams.

  • Williams, Howard, 1837-1931.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ethics of diet : a catena of authorities deprecatory of the practice of flesh-eating / by Howard Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    in the light of our fellow-beings. Their definition of Virtue was the same as that of Paley—that it was good performed for the sake of ensuring everlasting happiness; which, of course, excluded all the [so-called] brute creatures.* Hence it comes about that Humanitarianism and, in particular, Humane Dietetics, finds no place whatever in the religionism or pseudo- philosophy of the whole of the ages distinguished as the Mediaeval—that is to say, from about the fifth or sixth to the sixteenth century—and, in fact, there existed not only a negative indifferentism, but even a positive tendency towards the still further depreciation and debasement of the extra-human races, of which the great doctor of medieeval theology, St. Thomas Aquinas (in his famous Summa Totius Theologies—the standard text book of the orthodox church), is especially the exponent. After the revival of reason and learning in the sixteenth century, to Montaigne, who, following Plutarch and Porphyry, reasserted the rights of the non- human species in general; and to Gassendi, who reasserted the right of innocent beings to life, in particular, among philosophers, belongs the supreme merit of being the first to dispel the long-dominant prejudices, ignorance, and selfishness of the common-place teachers of Morals and Religion. For orthodox Protestantism, in spite of its high-sounding name, so far at least as its theology is concerned, has done little in protesting against the infringement of the moral rights of the most helpless and the most harmless of all the members of the great commonwealth of Living Beings. The principles of Dietary Reform are widely and deeply founded upon the teaching of (1) Comparative Anatomy and Physiology; (2) Humane- ness, in the two-fold meaning of Refinement of Living, and of what is commonly called Humanity; (3) National Economy; (4) Social Reform; (5) Domestic and Individual Economy; (6) Hygienic Philo- sophy, all of which are amply displayed in the following pages. Various minds are variously affected by the same arguments, and the force of each separate one will appear to be of different weight according to the special bias of the inquirer. The accumulated weight of all, for those who are able to form a calm and impartial judgment, cannot but cause the subject to appear one which demands and requires the most serious attention. To the present writer, the humanitarian argument appears to be of * Quoted by Sir Arthur Helps in his Animals and their Masters. (Strahan, 1873.) The further just remark of Arnold upon this subject may here, be quoted:— Kind, loving, submissive, conscientious, much-enduring we know them to be ; but because we deprive them of all stake in ths future—because they have no selfish, calculated aims—these are not virtues. Yet, if we say a 'vicious' Horse, why not say a 'virtuous' Horse?