“But far other is the fate of animals. For, alas! when they are plucked from the tree of Life, suddenly the withered blossoms of their beauty shrink to the chilly hand of Death. Quenched in his cold grasp expires the lamp of their loveliness, and struck by the livid blast of loathed putrefaction, their comely limbs are involved in ghastly horror. Shall we leave the living herbs to seek, in the den of death, an obscene aliment? Insensible to the blooming beauties of Pomona--unallured by the fragrant odours that exhale from her groves of golden fruits--unmoved by the nectar of Nature, by the ambrosia of innocence--shall the voracious vultures of our impure appetites speed along those lovely scenes and alight in the loathsome sink of putrefaction to devour the remains of other creatures, to load with cadaverous rottenness a wretched stomach?” He repeats Porphyry’s appeal to the consideration of human interests themselves-- “And is not the human race itself highly interested to prevent the habit of spilling blood? For, will the man, habituated to violence, be nice to distinguish the vital tide of a quadruped from that which flows from a creature with two legs? Are the dying struggles of a Lamb less affecting than the agonies of any animal whatever? Or, will the ruffian who beholds unmoved the supplicatory looks of innocence itself, and, reckless of the Calf’s infantine cries, pitilessly plunges in her quivering side the murdering knife, will he turn, I say, with horror from human assassination? ‘What more advance can mortals make in sin, So near perfection, who with blood begin? Deaf to the calf who lies beneath the knife, Looks up, and from the butcher begs her life. Deaf to the harmless kid who, ere he dies, All efforts to procure thy pity tries, And imitates, in vain, thy children’s cries. Where will he stop?’ “From the practice of slaughtering an innocent animal of another species to the murder of man himself the steps are neither many nor remote. This our forefathers perfectly understood, who ordained that, in a cause of blood, no butcher should be permitted to sit in jury.... “But from the nature of the very human heart arises the strongest argument in behalf of the persecuted beings. Within us there exists a rooted repugnance to the shedding of blood, a repugnance which yields only to Custom, and which even the most inveterate custom can seldom entirely overcome. Hence the ungracious task of shedding the tide of life (for the gluttony of the table) has, in every country, been committed to the lowest class of men, and their profession is, in every country, an object of abhorrence.