How _can_ man have a right to take away the life of an animal? The lower animals occupied the world before man, and man, a later comer, could not abrogate the prior rights of his predecessors. The use of animal food is unnatural. It is unhealthy. In feeding on other living creatures man degrades, corrupts, and then destroys himself. And vegetables, grains, and fruits should be taken in their natural state. The art of cooking is an unnatural innovation. The first of our race did not cook. Man is the only cooking animal, and he is the only sickly one. He is the only one that loses his teeth, or suffers from indigestion. Teetotalism is binding on all. Alcohol is an unnatural product. Man is the only being unnatural enough to drink it. Grapes are good, and so is grain; but wine, and beer, and spirits, are a trinity of devils, which destroy the bodies and torment the souls of unnatural men. "There is no God," said one. "Gods and devils are alike fantastic creatures of the erring mind of man." "But there _must_ be a God," said another. "All nature cries aloud there is a God. Our own hearts' instincts--our highest intuitions,--assure us there is. As well deny the universe, and the primal intuitions of humanity, as the being of God. A God and a future life are necessities of human nature. And there is, _without_ us, a supply for every want _within_ us. As soon will you find a race of beings with appetites for food, for whom no food is provided, as a race with longings for God and desires for immortality, while no God and immortality exist to meet those longings, to satisfy those desires." "But if there be a God to answer to our longings, and a blessed immortality to satisfy our desires, why not a devil to answer to our fears, and a hell to answer to our guilty terrors? And would a God leave us without a revelation of his will." "The instincts of our nature are the revelation of God's will. To obey our instincts is to obey the law of God." "Then is the law of God as various as men's natural tendencies? Does the murderer, whose tendency is to kill, obey the law of God, as well as the victim who struggles to escape his doom? And does the eagle obey the law of God in pouncing on the dove, and the dove in seeking to evade its talons? Is every tendency the law of God? If it be the will of God that the powerful tendencies of some should neutralize the feebler tendencies of others, is not might, right? And if might be right, why murmur at anything that is? For everything that is, exists by virtue of its might: and every thing that perishes, perishes in virtue of its weakness. Are you not sanctioning the doctrine of the Optimist, and saying with Pope, "In spite of sense, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear--whatever _is_, is RIGHT."