This reminds us of the differences of point of view between the Persian and the Indian humanitarian. The Indian, in theory at least, simply forbade taking animal life. He had the great advantage of the argument of the straight line. The Zoroastrian was handicapped by his moderation. It is easier far to teach extraordinary than ordinary well-doing; every moralist who has set out to improve mankind has found that. Zoroaster had not the smallest doubt about his contention that man has imperative duties in regard to what used to be called “the brute creation.” Man could not live as man at all without it: we who have harnessed steam and trapped the electric spark might entertain such a possibility, but to Zoroaster the idea would have seemed absurd. As we owe so much to animals, the least we can do is to treat them well. Yet, though he included wanton and useless slaughter in “ill-treatment,” he allows the killing of animals for food. Herodotus remarked that, unlike the Egyptians, the Magian priests did not think it pollution to kill animals with their own hands—except dogs and oxen. It is to be supposed that the framers of Zoroastrian law believed that animal food was necessary for man’s health and strength, perfect health being the state most acceptable to the Creator. Believing this, they could not forbid the temperate use of it. Gargantuan feasts were not dreamt of; if they had been, they would have received the condemnation given to all excesses. We are apt to fall into the way of thinking of sacred books which is that of their own adepts; we think of them as written by unpremeditated impulse. But commonly this was not the case. The Avesta, especially, bears signs of conclusions reached by patient reasoning. While, however, the Magians permitted the slaughter of animals, they bowed to the original scruple which has no race-limits, by ordering that such slaughter should be accompanied by an expiatory rite without the performance of which it was unlawful. This was the offering of the head of the animal to Homa: regarded, in this instance, as the archetype of the “wine of life”—the sacred or sacramental juice of the plant which has been identified with the Indian Soma. The Homa juice was much the most sacred thing that could be eaten or drunk; if it is true that it contained alcohol, the little jet of flame that would start upwards as it was thrown on the sacrificial fire might seem actually to bear with it the spirit of the offering. Whatever was the exact idea implied by the dedication of slaughtered animals to Homa, the fact that they were killed for food did not, of course, in any way affect their extra-mortal destiny. The “souls of our cattle”—their archetypes—could not suffer death.