"impracticable" for the strange reason that, unlike most _isms_, it asks them to do something individually which they know they _could_ do—if they wished! It is impracticable because it does not suit them to practise it. REFORMER: Let me entreat you; give up this fanciful scheme of vegetarianism and come and work for social reform. VEGETARIAN: Social reform without food reform! Is not that rather a lame and lop-sided business? REFORMER: Not at all. When we have so many things to do we must do the most important ones first. VEGETARIAN: And what are the most important? REFORMER: Well, there is international peace and arbitration. You will admit that our first duty is to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. VEGETARIAN: Ah, I see! And the habit of _living_ by bloodshed doesn't come within your scope! REFORMER: Then there is the land question, and the need of relieving the congestion of our crowded cities by the revival of agriculture. VEGETARIAN: So, of course, you can't attend to a diet-system which would bring people back to the land! REFORMER: There is also the temperance problem—the terrible evils of the drink crave. VEGETARIAN: Which would disappear for the most part if we left off eating flesh. REFORMER: And the welfare of animals—for to that also I devote myself. We need some stringent legislation for the better prevention of cruelty. VEGETARIAN: We do. But as such legislation would leave your reformers dinnerless, don't you think you should revise your dietary meantime? Your reforms are excellent, I grant you; but what of _self-reform_? Does not reform, like charity, begin at home? REFORMER: Well, well; to everyone his taste—reform or self-reform. I prefer the former; you the latter, I suppose. VEGETARIAN: No; that is just where you are mistaken. I prefer both at once. Reform _and_ self-reform, not reform _or_ self-reform—that is the true key to the solution of the social question. The work that we can do ourselves is the most wholesome condiment for the work that we can only do through society. And here let me express the hope that, as a matter of policy, vegetarians will stand aloof from all "philanthropic" schemes of _vicarious_ food reform in prisons, reformatories, and workhouses; for there is no surer way of making a principle unpopular than by forcing it on the poor and helpless, while carefully avoiding it one's self. Philanthropists, if they be philanthropists, will practise what they preach; by their practice we shall know them.