Moreover, what effect has the work of a slayer of animals upon his personal character and refinement? Can anyone imagine a sensitive-minded, finely-wrought _aesthetic_ nature doing anything else than revolt against the cold-blooded murdering of terrorised animals? It is significant that in some of the States of America butchers are not allowed to sit on a jury during a murder trial. Physiognomically the slaughterman carries his trade-mark legibly enough. The butcher does not usually exhibit those facial traits which distinguish a person who is naturally sympathetic and of an aesthetic temperament; on the contrary, the butcher's face and manner generally bear evidence of a life spent amid scenes of gory horror and violence; of a task which involves torture and death. A plate of cereal served with fruit-juice pleases the eye and imagination, but a plate smeared with blood and laden with dead flesh becomes disgusting and repulsive the moment we consider it in that light. Cooking may disguise the appearance but cannot alter the reality of the decaying _corpse_; and to cook blood and give it another name (gravy) may be an artifice to please the palate, but it is blood, (blood that once coursed through the body of a highly sensitive and nervous being), just the same. Surely a person whose olfactory nerves have not been blunted prefers the delicate aroma of ripe fruit to the sickly smell of mortifying flesh,--or fried eggs and bacon! Notice how young children, whose taste is more or less unperverted, relish ripe fruits and nuts and clean tasting things in general. Man, before he has become thoroughly accustomed to an unnatural diet, before his taste has been perverted and he has acquired by habit a liking for unwholesome and unnatural food, has a healthy appetite for Nature's sun-cooked seeds and berries of all kinds. Now true refinement can only exist where the senses are uncorrupted by addiction to deleterious habits, and the nervous system by which the senses act will remain healthy only so long as it is built up by pure and natural foods; hence it is only while man is nourished by those foods desired by his unperverted appetite that he may be said to possess true refinement. Power of intellect has nothing whatever to do _necessarily_ with the _aesthetic instinct_. A man may possess vast learning and yet be a boor. Refinement is not learnt as a boy learns algebra. Refinement comes from living a refined life, as good deeds come from a good man. The nearer we live according to Nature's plan, and in harmony with Her, the healthier we become physically and mentally. We do not look for refinement in the obese, red-faced, phlegmatic, gluttonous sensualists who often pass as gentlemen because they possess money or rank, but in those who live simply, satisfying the simple requirements of the body, and finding happiness in a life of well-directed toil. * * * * *