At the very outset, the country was startled by the publication of a book by a college professor, famed as a leading sociologist, in which the case was presented without any attempt at sophistication. It was a fact, needing no attestation, that the mass of mankind had always lived in a state of slavery. At the present hour, under the forms of democracy, there were a quarter of a million men killed every year in industry, and half a million women living by prostitution, and two million children earning wages, and ten million people in want; and in comparison with these things, how humane was the new cult, how honest and above-board, how clean and economical! For the first time there could be offered to the submerged tenth a real social function to be performed. Once let the new teaching be applied upon a world-wide scale, and the proletariat might follow its natural impulse to multiply without limit; there would be no more “race-suicide” to trouble the souls of eminent statesmen. And this at the time when the attention of the community was focussed upon the new _cause célèbre_! When the public prints were filled with an acrimonious discussion as to the meaning of the instructions given to the jury. If anyone chose to will his body to a purchaser, said the judge, and then go and commit suicide, there was no law to prevent him; and, of course, the subsequent purposes of the purchaser had nothing to do with the point at issue. This was a matter of taste--here the learned justice rapped for order--a matter of prejudice, largely, and the question at issue was one of law. There was no law controlling a man’s dietetic idiosyncrasies, and it was to be doubted if constitutionally any such law would stand--certainly not in a federal court, unless it chanced to be a matter of interstate commerce. In their bewilderment and dismay, the people turned to the Church. Surely the doctrines of Christianity would stand like a barricade against this monstrous cult. But already within the Church there had been rumors and disturbances; and now suddenly a bishop arose and voiced his protest against this attempt “to drag the Church into the mire of political controversy.” It must be made perfectly clear, said the bishop, that Christianity was a religion, and not a dietetic dogma. Its purpose was to save the souls of men, and not to concern itself with their bodies. It had been stated that we should have the poor always with us; which made clear the futility of attempting to change the facts of Nature. Also it was certain that the founder of Christianity had been a meat-eater; and though there might be more than one interpretation placed upon his command concerning little children---