It may be said, however, that though man is fitted to co-operate peacefully with his fellows, he is not bound by any such ties of brotherhood to the lower animals, and that it is "natural" that he should prey on the non-human races, even if it be not natural that he should seek pleasure at the cost of his fellow-man. But, in reality, Nature knows no such bridgeless gulf between the human and the non-human intelligence; and it is impossible, in the light of modern science, to draw any such absolute line of demarcation between man and "the animals" as in the now discredited theory of Descartes. We are learning to get rid of these "anthropocentric" delusions, which, as has been pointed out by Mr. E. P. Evans, "treat man as a being essentially different and inseparably set apart from all other sentient creatures, to which he is bound by no ties of mental affinity or moral obligation"; whereas, in fact, "man is as truly a part and product of Nature as any other animal, and this attempt to set him up as an isolated point outside of it is philosophically false and morally pernicious."[10] Footnote 10: "Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology." The talk, then, about Nature being "one with rapine" is a mere form of special pleading, which will not stand examination in the full light of fact. If man is determined to play the part of tiger among his less powerful fellow-beings, he will have to go elsewhere than to Nature to obtain a warrant for his deeds, for as far as the indications of Nature carry weight, they suggest that man, by his physical structure and his compassionate instincts, belongs unmistakably to the sociable, and not the predatory tribes; and that by constituting himself a "beast of prey" on a vast artificial scale, he is doing the greatest possible wrong to nature (_i.e._, to _his own_ nature) instead of conforming to it. Our innate horror of bloodshed—a horror which only long custom can deaden, and which, in spite of past centuries of violence, is so powerful at the present time—is proof that we are not naturally adapted for a sanguinary diet; and, as has often been pointed out, it is only by delegating to others the detested work of slaughter, and by employing cookery to conceal the uncongenial truth, that thoughtful persons can tolerate the practice of flesh-eating. If Nature pointed us to such a diet, we should feel the same instinctive appetite for raw flesh as we now feel for ripe fruit, and a slaughter-house would be more delightful to us than an orchard. It is not Nature, but custom, that is the guardian deity of the flesh-eater. But we have not quite exhausted the appeal to Nature; we have still to speak of the common objection to vegetarianism that "it is necessary to take life." ANTHROPOLOGIST: I have a most important argument to put before you. Must you not face the fact that, in this imperfect world, it is necessary to take life? How can it be immoral to do what necessity imposes?