VEGETARIAN: We do not say that it is immoral to "take life," but that it is immoral to take life _unnecessarily_. It is not immoral, for instance, to destroy rats and mice, because it is necessary to do so. It _is_ immoral to kill animals for the table, because it is _not_ necessary to do so. Did you ever tread on a beetle? ANTHROPOLOGIST: Yes, by accident. I could not help it. I am a most humane man. VEGETARIAN: Of course. But supposing that you wished to murder someone, would you think yourself justified in doing so because you had trodden on beetles—because, in fact, sometimes it is "necessary to take life?" ANTHROPOLOGIST: Certainly not. How can you suspect me of being so immoral? There is a great difference between taking the life of a beetle by accident and of a man by design. There are _degrees_ of responsibility, you know. VEGETARIAN: Ah! you have got your answer, then. How is it, we wonder, that rational beings can commit themselves to such irrational arguments as this appeal to what is called "Nature" but is in reality only an isolated section of Nature, viewed apart from the rest? Let Benjamin Franklin himself supply the answer. For in narrating that incident of the cod-fish to which I have alluded, he humorously hints that his philosophical conclusion, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we may not eat you," was not uninfluenced by the fact that he had been "a great lover of fish" in early life, and that the fish smelt "admirably well" as it came out of the frying-pan; and he sagely adds that one of the advantages to man of being a "reasonable creature" is that he can find or make a "reason" for anything he has a mind to do. Such is the logic of the flesh-eater, in which the wish is father to the thought, and mixed thinking leads by a convenient process to a mixed diet. THE HUMANITARIAN ARGUMENT