The taste of young children is often cited by vegetarians to demonstrate the liking of an unsophisticated palate, but the primitive instinct is not wholly atrophied in man. Before man became a tool-using animal, he must have depended for direction upon what is commonly termed instinct in the selection of a diet most suitable to his nature. No one can doubt, judging by the way undomesticated animals seek their food with unerring certainty as to its suitability, but that instinct is a trustworthy guide. Granting that man could, in a state of absolute savagery, and before he had discovered the use of fire or of tools, depend upon instinct alone, and in so doing live healthily, cannot _what yet remains_ of instinct be of some value among civilized beings? Is not man, even now, in spite of his abused and corrupted senses, when he sees luscious fruits hanging within his reach, tempted to pluck them, and does he not eat them with relish? But when he sees the grazing ox, or the wallowing hog, do similar gustatory desires affect him? Or when he sees these animals lying dead, or when skinned and cut up in small pieces, does this same natural instinct stimulate him to steal and eat this food as it stimulates a boy to steal apples and nuts from an orchard and eat them surreptitiously beneath the hedge or behind the haystack? Very different is it with true carnivora. The gorge of a cat, for instance, will rise at the smell of a mouse, or a piece of raw flesh, but not at the aroma of fruit. If a man could take delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still living body apart with his teeth, sucking the warm blood, one might infer that Nature had provided him with carnivorous instinct, but the very _thought_ of doing such a thing makes him shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his 'mouth water,' and even in the absence of hunger he will eat fruit to gratify taste. A table spread with fruits and nuts and decorated with flowers is artistic; the same table laden with decaying flesh and blood, and maybe entrails, is not only inartistic--it is disgusting.