A Vindication of Natural Diet.Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Philosophy
A Vindication of Natural Diet.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Vegetarianism
The most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now actually
cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and waste of aliment
absolutely incapable of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, to
any great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural craving for dead
flesh, and they pay for the greater licence of the privilege, by
subjection to supernumerary diseases. Again, the spirit of the nation
that should take the lead in this great reform would insensibly become
agricultural: commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corruption,
would gradually decline; more natural habits would produce gentler
manners, and the excessive complication of political relations would be
so far simplified that every individual might feel and understand why he
loved his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare. How
would England, for example, depend on the caprices of foreign rulers, if
she contained within herself all the necessaries, and despised whatever
they possessed of the luxuries of life? How could they starve her into
compliance with their views? Of what consequence would it be that they
refused to take her woollen manufactures, when large and fertile tracts
of the island ceased to be allotted to the waste of pasturage? On a
natural system of diet, we should require no spices from India; no wines
from Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira; none of those multitudinous
articles of luxury, for which every corner of the globe is rifled, and
which are the causes of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous
and sanguinary national disputes.
In the history of modern times, the avarice of commercial monopoly, no
less than the ambition of weak and wicked chiefs, seems to have fomented
the universal discord, to have added stubbornness to the mistakes of
cabinets, and indocility to the infatuation of the people. Let it ever
be remembered, that it is the direct influence of commerce to make the
interval between the richest and the poorest man wider and more
unconquerable. Let it be remembered that it is a foe to every thing of
real worth and excellence in the human character. The odious and
disgusting aristocracy of wealth, is built upon the ruins of all that is
good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a
barbarism scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to realize a state of
society, where all the energies of man shall be directed to the
production of his solid happiness?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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