From the standpoint of economy alone vegetarianism ought to appeal powerfully to everyone possessed of undoubted sanity. If men would take the beautiful fruits of the soil, fresh from nature’s hand, instead of sitting down and devouring in the form of the accumulated residuum of ruminants an acre at a meal, the problem of the increasing density of mundane population would not be such a grave one. I am a vegetarian, therefore, because cannibalism is unnecessary. I can live just as well and be just as happy without drinking the blood of my fellows, and why _should_ I slay them? Why _should_ I not live and let live—especially when I can do it just as well as not? It is not _necessary_ that ten thousand creatures should give up their lives in order that I may keep mine, and if I make any pretensions to morality why should I require them to do it? If you say such a thing _is_ necessary in your case, I say to you it is not—and further, that if it were, it would be your duty as an ethical being to call on your undertaker. There is no sense in carnivora talking about ethics and justice and mercy, for their very existence is a travesty on such things. It makes me indignant and sad when I hear men deplore sin and prate about justice and love and mercy, when the very energy they expend in preaching justice and mercy is obtained from the skeletons and sensibilities of their fellows. It is a spectacle that ought to make the imps of netherdom tremble for their laurels—man, the remorseless glutton, going about with a tongue and a knife, with his tongue preaching peace, mercy, and love, and with his knife making the very earth sodden with blood. It may seem irreverent, but I say it, that if Christians can do these crimes and yet so act as to earn celestial ecstasies, hell will be uninhabited. I would like to retain respect for the religion of my boyhood, but when I see that religion look with equanimity and even levity upon a hemorrhage wide as the continents and horrible even to heathens, not only wink at it but actually perpetuate it, and even scaffold those few emancipated souls who are trying to curtail it—I almost despair of it.