If, for instance,
there is such a thing as a vegetarian nation; if there is a great united
mass of men who wish to live by the vegetarian morality, then I say in
the emphatic words of the arrogant French marquis before the French
Revolution, "Let them eat grass." Perhaps that French oligarch was a
humanitarian; most oligarchs are. Perhaps when he told the peasants to
eat grass he was recommending to them the hygienic simplicity of a
vegetarian restaurant. But that is an irrelevant, though most
fascinating, speculation. The point here is that if a nation is really
vegetarian let its government force upon it the whole horrible weight of
vegetarianism. Let its government give the national guests a State
vegetarian banquet. Let its government, in the most literal and awful
sense of the words, give them beans. That sort of tyranny is all very
well; for it is the people tyrannising over all the persons. But
"temperance reformers" are like a small group of vegetarians who should
silently and systematically act on an ethical assumption entirely
unfamiliar to the mass of the people. They would always be giving
peerages to greengrocers. They would always be appointing Parliamentary
Commissions to enquire into the private life of butchers.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25