s section it might be pointed out that the curious
prejudice which is always manifested when men are asked to consider any
new thing is as strongly in evidence against food reform as in other
innovations. For example, flesh-eating is sometimes defended on the
ground that vegetarians do not look hale and hearty, as healthy persons
should do. People who speak in this way probably have in mind one or two
acquaintances who, through having wrecked their health by wrong living,
have had to abstain from the 'deadly decoctions of flesh' and adopt a
simpler and purer dietary. It is not fair to judge meat abstainers by
those who have had to take to a reformed diet solely as a curative
measure; nor is it fair to lay the blame of a vegetarian's sickness on
his diet, as if it were impossible to be sick from any other cause. The
writer has known many vegetarians in various parts of the world, and he
fails to understand how anyone moving about among vegetarians, either in
this country or elsewhere, can deny that such people look as healthy and
cheerful as those who live upon the conventional omnivorous diet.

If a vegetarian, owing to inherited susceptibilities, or incorrect
rearing in childhood, or any other cause outside his power to prevent,
is sickly and delicate, is it just to lay the blame on his present
manner of life? It would, indeed, seem most reasonable to assume that
the individual in question would be in a much worse condition had he not
forsaken his original and mistaken diet when he did. The writer once
heard an acquaintance ridicule vegetarianism on the ground that Thoreau
died of pulmonary consumption at forty-five! One is reminded of Oliver
Wendell Holmes' witty saying:--'The mind of the bigot is like the pupil
of the eye: the more it sees the light, the more it contracts.'

In conclusion, there is, as we have seen in our review of typical
vegetarian peoples and classes throughout the world, the strongest
evidence that those who adopt a sensible non-flesh dietary, suited to
their own constitution and environment, are almost invariably healthier,
stronger, and longer-lived than those who rely chiefly upon flesh-meat
for nutriment.

III

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The primary consideration in regard to the question of diet should be,
as already stated, the hygienic. Having shown that the non-flesh diet is
the more natural, and the more advantageous from the point of view of
health, let us now consider which o