Now, at the outset, it should be said that the well-worn method of trying to discredit new principles by "wanting to know" beforehand exactly how everything will happen, is in many cases a foolish and fraudulent device. There are, of course, certain quite legitimate questions, as to the general scope and practicability of any proposed reform, to which reformers must be prepared to make answer before they can expect to prevail, and to such questions vegetarians have a convincing reply; but when the inquisition takes the form of asking for a present explanation of future developments, and for a foreknowledge of details which, in the very nature of things, are unknowable, then it is well to make it clear from the beginning that we will be no parties to any such waste of time. Reasonable foresight is one thing, the gift of prophecy is another; and it is in no wise the duty of those who are working towards a more or less distant goal, to give a precise geometrical survey of their Promised Land. In the case of vegetarianism the answerable doubts and difficulties fall mostly under two heads, relating first to the alarming discomforts which the loss of flesh-food would entail upon mankind, and secondly to the not less grievous straits to which the animals themselves would be reduced under so misguided a régime. Let us take the selfish view first, as containing, perhaps, a modicum of real feeling, which can scarcely be found in that suspicious concern for the animals. There are some folk, it seems, over whose troubled minds there really _does_ hang, like a nightmare, the alarmist's vision of a world impoverished and dismantled by vegetarianism—a world _sans_ leather, _sans_ bone, _sans_ soap, _sans_ candles, _sans_ manure, _sans_ everything. ALARMIST: But this is mere trifling. It is idle to talk of the humanity, the wholesomeness, the economy of a vegetarian diet, while you are overlooking the disastrous consequences that stare you in the face. We may perhaps be able, as you say, to exist without meat, but what could we do without leather and the other animal substances on which civilisation depends? VEGETARIAN: Well, I suppose we should take care _not_ to be without them, or something just as good. ALARMIST: How could we do that, if there were no carcases to supply us with hides, bone, and tallow? In your devotion to an ideal you seem to forget that if your principles prevailed, we might wake up some fine morning to find ourselves confronted by the dislocation of the boot trade, the bookbinding trade, the harness trade, and a hundred others. Thousands of men and women would be thrown out of work, and we should soon have no boots, no portmanteaus, no soap, no candles, no knife-handles. It would be a downright relapse into barbarism.