how that
vegetables are only animals under another name, but have not stated his
case in anything like the fullness with which he laid it before the
public. The conclusion he drew, or pretended to draw, was that if it was
sinful to kill and eat animals, it was not less sinful to do the like by
vegetables, or their seeds. None such, he said, should be eaten, save
what had died a natural death, such as fruit that was lying on the ground
and about to rot, or cabbage-leaves that had turned yellow in late
autumn. These and other like garbage he declared to be the only food
that might be eaten with a clear conscience. Even so the eater must
plant the pips of any apples or pears that he may have eaten, or any plum-
stones, cherry-stones, and the like, or he would come near to incurring
the guilt of infanticide. The grain of cereals, according to him, was
out of the question, for every such grain had a living soul as much as
man had, and had as good a right as man to possess that soul in peace.

Having thus driven his fellow countrymen into a corner at the point of a
logical bayonet from which they felt that there was no escape, he
proposed that the question what was to be done should be referred to an
oracle in which the whole country had the greatest confidence, and to
which recourse was always had in times of special perplexity. It was
whispered that a near relation of the philosopher's was lady's-maid to
the priestess who delivered the oracle, and the Puritan party declared
that the strangely unequivocal answer of the oracle was obtained by
backstairs influence; but whether this was so or no, the response as
nearly as I can translate it was as follows:-

"He who sins aught
Sins more than he ought;
But he who sins nought
Has much to be taught.
Beat or be beaten,
Eat or be eaten,
Be killed or kill;
Choose which you will."

It was clear that this response sanctioned at any rate the destruction of
vegetable life when wanted as food by man; and so forcibly had the
philosopher shown that what was sauce for vegetables was so also for
animals, that, though the Puritan party made a furious outcry, the acts
forbidding the use of meat were repealed by a considerable majority.
Thus, after several hundred years of wandering in the wilderness of
philosophy, the country reached the conclusions that common sense had
long since arrived at. Even the Puritans after a vain attempt to subsist
on a kind of j