It _is_ a monstrous doctrine; and what are we to think of a man of science who attributes such absurdities to vegetarians, and thereupon holds them up to public contempt as inconsistent, when by making inquiry he might at once have learnt that the blunder was on his own side? Once more, then, be it stated that it is not the mere "taking of life," but the taking of life _unnecessarily_ that the vegetarian deprecates, and that no criticism of vegetarianism can be of any relevance if it ignores the fact that all forms of life are not of equal value, but that the higher the sensibility of the animal, and the closer his affinity to ourselves, the stronger his claim on our humaneness. Before leaving this question of "consistency," as affected by the _gradations_ of our duty of humaneness to animals, a few words may be said on the practice of fish-eating. It was humorously suggested by Sir Henry Thompson, who, as I have proved in the second chapter of this work, wrote in complete ignorance of the facts and dates of the vegetarian movement, that, as vegetarians have "added" milk and eggs to their diet since their society was founded (a statement quite devoid of truth), they may perhaps still further enlarge their dietary so as to include fish. Here, again, Sir H. Thompson only showed his unfamiliarity with the subject, for his novel proposition was in fact an old one, which has been debated and rejected by the Vegetarian Society in its adherence to its original rule of excluding fish, flesh, and fowl, and nothing else, from its dietary. So far, then, as organised vegetarianism is concerned, those who eat fish are not within the pale of membership; but looked at from the purely _humane_ standpoint, it must be admitted that there is an immense difference between flesh-eating and fish-eating, and that those unattached food reformers, not few in number, who for humane reasons abstain from flesh, but feel justified in eating fish, hold a perfectly intelligible position. And I would further note that the very fact of there having been some disposition, wise or unwise, within the vegetarian ranks to recognise the comparative harmlessness of fish-eating, corroborates what I have asserted throughout—that the _raison d'être_ of vegetarianism has not been a pedantic hard-and-fast crusade against "animal" substances, but a practical desire to abolish the horrors of the slaughter-house.