“ If a man can get no other food it is more natural for him to kill another man and eat him than to starve. ”
Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912). copy citation
| Author | Samuel Butler |
|---|---|
| Source | The Note-Books of Samuel Butler |
| Topic | food killing |
| Date | 1912 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6173/6173-h/6173-h.htm |
Context
“For there will be an element of habitual and legitimate custom even in the most unhabitual and detestable things that can be done at all.
Cannibalism
Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.
Abnormal Developments
If a man can get no other food it is more natural for him to kill another man and eat him than to starve. Our horror is rather at the circumstances that make it natural for the man to do this than at the man himself. So with other things the desire for which is inherited through countless ancestors, it is more natural for men to obtain the nearest thing they can to these, even by the most abnormal means if the ordinary channels are closed, than to forego them altogether.”
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