Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered Before the Chicago Vegetarian Society — John Shaqi
Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered Before the Chicago Vegetarian SocietyMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered Before the Chicago Vegetarian Society
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism appeals not to the selfish but to the noble. It is for
beings who love justice, liberty, reciprocity. It teaches the Golden
Rule in its only sensible sense. It recognizes the moral progress of
the past and points to those still higher highlands toward which the
ages have ever heaved. It teaches to do as you would be done by.
“To whom?” Not to the black man and the white woman alone, but
to the sorrel horse and the gray squirrel as well. Yes, do as you
would be done by—not to creatures of your own anatomy or your own
guild only, _but to all creatures._ In a world like this, with its
tangles and irrationalities, it is impossible to act in every
particular at all times and to all creatures ideally. This is not an
ideal world, and if we are to judge of the universe by the clod we
root and ride on, the whole thing is not a flattering affair. Our
relations to our fellow _men_ are not ideal, and from the nature of
things _they never can be_. But we think we can do amply when we do
the best we can. The difference between him who attempts honestly
and faithfully to do just the best he can and him who knows little
and cares less is as great as the difference between January and
June.
Enjoy and let others enjoy. Live and let live. Do more. _Live and
help live._ Do to beings below you as you would be done by beings
above you. Pity the grub and the ladybug, and have mercy on the
mole. Poor, defenceless, undeveloped, untaught creatures. They are
our fellow mortals. They are enmeshed in the same mighty processes
as we. They came from the same source and are destined to the same
end. They lived, moved and breathed on primeval land fragments when
the continents we creep over were sleeping in the seas. They are our
ancestors. They are the forms of being that have made you and me
possible. Let us be brothers and sisters to them, not ruffians; pity
them and help them and pray for their untaught natures. Let us be
consistent, for we have but one life to live. We are striving for
the amelioration of this suffering world. Let us be economical. Let
us not with one hand pour oil upon its agonies and with the other
inflict gashes. Let us vow allegiance to the principles of universal
courtesy and love, whether to the lone worm wandering in the
twilight of consciousness, the feathered forms of the fields and
forest, the heifer of the meadows, the simple savage on the banks of
the gladed river, the political slaves whom men call wives, or the
economic exiles of industry. The same spirit of sympathy and
fraternity that broke the black man’s manacles and is today
melting the white woman’s chains will tomorrow emancipate the
workingman and the heifer, and as the ages bloom and the great
wheels of the centuries grind on, the same spirit of leaven shall
banish _Selfishness_ from the earth and convert the planet finally
to one unbroken and unparalleled spectacle of _Peace_, _Justice and
Solidarity._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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