and ability much greater than the present writer has any pretensions to. It is necessary to add here, upon this particular branch of the subject, only one or two observations. The popular objections to the disuse of the flesh-diet may be classified under the two heads of fallacies and subterfuges. Not a few candid inquirers, doubtless, there are who sincerely allege certain _specious_ objections to the humanitarian argument, which have a considerable amount of _apparent_ force; and these fallacies seem alone to deserve a serious examination. In the general constitution of life on our globe, suffering and slaughter, it is objected, are the normal and constant condition of things--the strong relentlessly and cruelly preying upon the weak in endless succession--and, it is asked, why, then, should the human species form an exception to the general rule, and hopelessly fight against Nature? To this it is to be replied, first: _that_, although, too certainly, an unceasing and cruel internecine warfare has been waged upon this atomic globe of ours from the first origin of Life until now, yet, apparently, there has been going on a slow, but not uncertain, progress towards the ultimate elimination of the crueller phenomena of Life; _that_, if the _carnivora_ form a very large proportion of Living Beings, yet the _non-carnivora_ are in the majority; and, lastly, what is still more to the purpose, _that_ Man, most evidently, by his origin and physical organisation, belongs not to the former but to the latter; besides and beyond which, _that_ in proportion as he boasts himself--and as he is seen _at his best_ (and only so far) he boasts himself with justness--to be the highest of all the gradually ascending and co-ordinated series of Living Beings, so is he, in that proportion, bound to prove his right to the supreme place and power, and his asserted claims to moral as well as mental superiority, by his conduct. In brief, in so far only as he proves himself to be the _beneficent ruler and pacificator_--and not the selfish Tyrant--of the world, can he have any just title to the moral pre-eminence.