VEGETARIAN: Then you had better think over Mr. W. E. Forster's reply, which puts the case in a nut-shell. He said that Sir Herbert Maxwell "made one very amusing appeal, by asking him [the member who introduced the Bill] to put himself in the position of a blue-rock. But this would be difficult, for the position was not a blue-rock in existence, but a blue-rock before it was born." Whereat the House laughed, and sophistry was for the moment disconcerted. But for the moment only; for there have since sprung up many other professors of this metaphysic of the larder, though none of them, with the exception of Dr. Stanton Coit, have had the hardihood to expound their theory in detail—a wise reticence, perhaps, when it is seen how Dr. Coit fared in his conscientious but humourless essay on "The Bringing of Sentient Beings into Existence." "If the motive," he opined, "that might produce the greatest number of the happiest cattle would be the eating of beef, then beef-eating, so far, must be commended. And while, heretofore, the motive has not been for the sake of cattle, it is conceivable that, if vegetarian convictions should spread much further, love for cattle would (if it be not psychologically incompatible) blend with the love of beef in the minds of the opponents of vegetarianism. With deeper insight, new and higher motives may replace or supplement old ones, and perpetuate but ennoble ancient practices."[14] Footnote 14: The _Ethical World_, May 7, 1898. The "Ox in a Tea-cup," be it observed, may henceforth become the emblem of the concentrated humanity of the ethical societies! "But we frankly admit," continues Dr. Coit, "that it is a question whether the love of cattle, intensified to the imaginative point of individual affection for each separate beast, would not destroy the pleasure of eating beef, and render this time-honoured custom psychologically impossible. _We surmise that bereaved affection at the death of a dear creature would destroy the flavour._"[15] Footnote 15: _Ibid._ What a picture is conjured up by the sentence I have italicised—the bereaved moralist, knife and fork in hand, swayed in different directions by the call of duty and the scruples of affection! And then Dr. Coit goes on to express a fear that mankind, if they adopted vegetarianism, might become "less powerful in thought"! I respectfully submit that, in view of the arguments quoted, there is not the smallest possibility of _that_.