Erewhon
CHAPTER XXVI
THE VIEWS OF AN EREWHONIAN PROPHET
CONCERNING THE
RIGHTS OF ANIMALS
It will be seen from the foregoing chapters that the Erewhonians
are a meek and long-suffering people, easily led by the nose, and
quick to offer up common sense at the shrine of logic, when a
philosopher arises among them, who carries them away through his
reputation for especial learning, or by convincing them that their
existing institutions are not based on the strictest principles of
morality.
The series of revolutions on which I shall now briefly touch
shows this even more plainly than the way (already dealt with) in
which at a later date they cut their throats in the matter of
machinery; for if the second of the two reformers of whom I am
about to speak had had his way—or rather the way that he
professed to have—the whole race would have died of
starvation within a twelve-month. Happily common sense, though she
is by nature the gentlest creature living, when she feels the knife
at her throat, is apt to develop unexpected powers of resistance,
and to send doctrinaires flying, even when they have bound her down
and think they have her at their mercy. What happened, so far as I
could collect it from the best authorities, was as follows:-
Some two thousand five hundred years ago the Erewhonians were
still uncivilised, and lived by hunting, fishing, a rude system of
agriculture, and plundering such few other nations as they had not
yet completely conquered. They had no schools or systems of
philosophy, but by a kind of dog-knowledge did that which was right
in their own eyes and in those of their neighbours; the common
sense, therefore, of the public being as yet unvitiated, crime and
disease were looked upon much as they are in other countries.
But with the gradual advance of civilisation and increase in
material prosperity, people began to ask questions about things
that they had hitherto taken as matters of course, and one old
gentleman, who had great influence over them by reason of the
sanctity of his life, and his supposed inspiration by an unseen
power, whose existence was now beginning to be felt, took it into
his head to disquiet himself about the rights of animals—a
question that so far had disturbed nobody.
All prophets are more or less fussy, and this old gentleman
seems to have been one of the more fussy ones. Being maintained at
the public expense, he had ample leisure, and not content with
limiting his attention to the rights of animals, he wanted to
reduce right and wrong to rules, to consider the foundations of
duty and of good and evil, and otherwise to put all sorts of
matters on a logical basis, which people whose time is money are
content to accept on no basis at all.
As a matter of course, the basis on which he decided that duty
could alone rest was one that afforded no standing-room for many of
the old-established habits of the people. These, he assured them,
were all wrong, and whenever any one ventured to differ from him,
he referred the matter to the unseen power with which he alone was
in direct communication, and the unseen power invariably assured
him that he was right. As regards the rights of animals he taught
as follows:-
“You know, he said, “how wicked it is of you to kill
one another. Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple
about not only killing, but also eating their relations. No one
would now go back to such detestable practices, for it is notorious
that we have lived much more happily since they were abandoned.
From this increased prosperity we may confidently deduce the maxim
that we should not kill and eat our fellow-creatures. I have
consulted the higher power by whom you know that I am inspired, and
he has assured me that this conclusion is irrefragable.
“Now it cannot be denied that sheep, cattle, deer, birds,
and fishes are our fellow-creatures. They differ from us in some
respects, but those in which they differ are few and secondary,
while those that they have in common with us are many and
essential. My friends, if it was wrong of you to kill and eat your
fellow-men, it is wrong also to kill and eat fish, flesh, and fowl.
Birds, beasts, and fishes, have as full a right to live as long as
they can unmolested by man, as man has to live unmolested by his
neighbours. These words, let me again assure you, are not mine, but
those of the higher power which inspires me.
“I grant,” he continued, “that animals molest
one another, and that some of them go so far as to molest man, but
I have yet to learn that we should model our conduct on that of the
lower animals. We should endeavour, rather, to instruct them, and
bring them to a better mind. To kill a tiger, for example, who has
lived on the flesh of men and women whom he has killed, is to
reduce ourselves to the level of the tiger, and is unworthy of
people who seek to be guided by the highest principles in all, both
their thoughts and actions.
“The unseen power who has revealed himself to me alone
among you, has told me to tell you that you ought by this time to
have outgrown the barbarous habits of your ancestors. If, as you
believe, you know better than they, you should do better. He
commands you, therefore, to refrain from killing any living being
for the sake of eating it. The only animal food that you may eat,
is the flesh of any birds, beasts, or fishes that you may come upon
as having died a natural death, or any that may have been born
prematurely, or so deformed that it is a mercy to put them out of
their pain; you may also eat all such animals as have committed
suicide. As regards vegetables you may eat all those that will let
you eat them with impunity.”
So wisely and so well did the old prophet argue, and so terrible
were the threats he hurled at those who should disobey him, that in
the end he carried the more highly educated part of the people with
him, and presently the poorer classes followed suit, or professed
to do so. Having seen the triumph of his principles, he was
gathered to his fathers, and no doubt entered at once into full
communion with that unseen power whose favour he had already so
pre-eminently enjoyed.
He had not, however, been dead very long, before some of his
more ardent disciples took it upon them to better the instruction
of their master. The old prophet had allowed the use of eggs and
milk, but his disciples decided that to eat a fresh egg was to
destroy a potential chicken, and that this came to much the same as
murdering a live one. Stale eggs, if it was quite certain that they
were too far gone to be able to be hatched, were grudgingly
permitted, but all eggs offered for sale had to be submitted to an
inspector, who, on being satisfied that they were addled, would
label them “Laid not less than three months” from the
date, whatever it might happen to be. These eggs, I need hardly
say, were only used in puddings, and as a medicine in certain cases
where an emetic was urgently required. Milk was forbidden inasmuch
as it could not be obtained without robbing some calf of its
natural sustenance, and thus endangering its life.
It will be easily believed that at first there were many who
gave the new rules outward observance, but embraced every
opportunity of indulging secretly in those flesh-pots to which they
had been accustomed. It was found that animals were continually
dying natural deaths under more or less suspicious circumstances.
Suicidal mania, again, which had hitherto been confined exclusively
to donkeys, became alarmingly prevalent even among such for the
most part self-respecting creatures as sheep and cattle. It was
astonishing how some of these unfortunate animals would scent out a
butcher’s knife if there was one within a mile of them, and
run right up against it if the butcher did not get it out of their
way in time.
Dogs, again, that had been quite law-abiding as regards domestic
poultry, tame rabbits, sucking pigs, or sheep and lambs, suddenly
took to breaking beyond the control of their masters, and killing
anything that they were told not to touch. It was held that any
animal killed by a dog had died a natural death, for it was the
dog’s nature to kill things, and he had only refrained from
molesting farmyard creatures hitherto because his nature had been
tampered with. Unfortunately the more these unruly tendencies
became developed, the more the common people seemed to delight in
breeding the very animals that would put temptation in the
dog’s way. There is little doubt, in fact, that they were
deliberately evading the law; but whether this was so or no they
sold or ate everything their dogs had killed.
Evasion was more difficult in the case of the larger animals,
for the magistrates could not wink at all the pretended suicides of
pigs, sheep, and cattle that were brought before them. Sometimes
they had to convict, and a few convictions had a very terrorising
effect—whereas in the case of animals killed by a dog, the
marks of the dog’s teeth could be seen, and it was
practically impossible to prove malice on the part of the owner of
the dog.
Another fertile source of disobedience to the law was furnished
by a decision of one of the judges that raised a great outcry among
the more fervent disciples of the old prophet. The judge held that
it was lawful to kill any animal in self-defence, and that such
conduct was so natural on the part of a man who found himself
attacked, that the attacking creature should be held to have died a
natural death. The High Vegetarians had indeed good reason to be
alarmed, for hardly had this decision become generally known before
a number of animals, hitherto harmless, took to attacking their
owners with such ferocity, that it became necessary to put them to
a natural death. Again, it was quite common at that time to see the
carcase of a calf, lamb, or kid exposed for sale with a label from
the inspector certifying that it had been killed in self- defence.
Sometimes even the carcase of a lamb or calf was exposed as
“warranted still-born,” when it presented every
appearance of having enjoyed at least a month of life.
As for the flesh of animals that had bona fide died a natural
death, the permission to eat it was nugatory, for it was generally
eaten by some other animal before man got hold of it; or failing
this it was often poisonous, so that practically people were forced
to evade the law by some of the means above spoken of, or to become
vegetarians. This last alternative was so little to the taste of
the Erewhonians, that the laws against killing animals were falling
into desuetude, and would very likely have been repealed, but for
the breaking out of a pestilence, which was ascribed by the priests
and prophets of the day to the lawlessness of the people in the
matter of eating forbidden flesh. On this, there was a reaction;
stringent laws were passed, forbidding the use of meat in any form
or shape, and permitting no food but grain, fruits, and vegetables
to be sold in shops and markets. These laws were enacted about two
hundred years after the death of the old prophet who had first
unsettled people’s minds about the rights of animals; but
they had hardly been passed before people again began to break
them.
I was told that the most painful consequence of all this folly
did not lie in the fact that law-abiding people had to go without
animal food—many nations do this and seem none the worse, and
even in flesh-eating countries such as Italy, Spain, and Greece,
the poor seldom see meat from year’s end to year’s end.
The mischief lay in the jar which undue prohibition gave to the
consciences of all but those who were strong enough to know that
though conscience as a rule boons, it can also bane. The awakened
conscience of an individual will often lead him to do things in
haste that he had better have left undone, but the conscience of a
nation awakened by a respectable old gentleman who has an unseen
power up his sleeve will pave hell with a vengeance.
Young people were told that it was a sin to do what their
fathers had done unhurt for centuries; those, moreover, who
preached to them about the enormity of eating meat, were an
unattractive academic folk, and though they over-awed all but the
bolder youths, there were few who did not in their hearts dislike
them. However much the young person might be shielded, he soon got
to know that men and women of the world—often far nicer
people than the prophets who preached abstention—continually
spoke sneeringly of the new doctrinaire laws, and were believed to
set them aside in secret, though they dared not do so openly. Small
wonder, then, that the more human among the student classes were
provoked by the touch-not, taste-not, handle-not precepts of their
rulers, into questioning much that they would otherwise have
unhesitatingly accepted.
One sad story is on record about a young man of promising
amiable disposition, but cursed with more conscience than brains,
who had been told by his doctor (for as I have above said disease
was not yet held to be criminal) that he ought to eat meat, law or
no law. He was much shocked and for some time refused to comply
with what he deemed the unrighteous advice given him by his doctor;
at last, however, finding that he grew weaker and weaker, he stole
secretly on a dark night into one of those dens in which meat was
surreptitiously sold, and bought a pound of prime steak. He took it
home, cooked it in his bedroom when every one in the house had gone
to rest, ate it, and though he could hardly sleep for remorse and
shame, felt so much better next morning that he hardly knew
himself.
Three or four days later, he again found himself irresistibly
drawn to this same den. Again he bought a pound of steak, again he
cooked and ate it, and again, in spite of much mental torture, on
the following morning felt himself a different man. To cut the
story short, though he never went beyond the bounds of moderation,
it preyed upon his mind that he should be drifting, as he certainly
was, into the ranks of the habitual law-breakers.
All the time his health kept on improving, and though he felt
sure that he owed this to the beefsteaks, the better he became in
body, the more his conscience gave him no rest; two voices were for
ever ringing in his ears—the one saying, “I am Common
Sense and Nature; heed me, and I will reward you as I rewarded your
fathers before you.” But the other voice said: “Let not
that plausible spirit lure you to your ruin. I am Duty; heed me,
and I will reward you as I rewarded your fathers before
you.”
Sometimes he even seemed to see the faces of the speakers.
Common Sense looked so easy, genial, and serene, so frank and
fearless, that do what he might he could not mistrust her; but as
he was on the point of following her, he would be checked by the
austere face of Duty, so grave, but yet so kindly; and it cut him
to the heart that from time to time he should see her turn pitying
away from him as he followed after her rival.
The poor boy continually thought of the better class of his
fellow- students, and tried to model his conduct on what he thought
was theirs. “They,” he said to himself, “eat a
beefsteak? Never.” But they most of them ate one now and
again, unless it was a mutton chop that tempted them. And they used
him for a model much as he did them. “He,” they would
say to themselves, “eat a mutton chop? Never.” One
night, however, he was followed by one of the authorities, who was
always prowling about in search of law- breakers, and was caught
coming out of the den with half a shoulder of mutton concealed
about his person. On this, even though he had not been put in
prison, he would have been sent away with his prospects in life
irretrievably ruined; he therefore hanged himself as soon as he got
home.