James Madison Allen

“ What right, I said to myself indignantly, have they to slaughter animals at all. Who gave them the right to kill, to 'slaughter' those harmless creatures? . . . 'Thou shalt not kill' is a divine command—divine to-day, yester-day and forever. If you say this applies to man only, I would reply that I believe I can find more of useless, harmful men upon the earth than of four-footed beasts. . . . If you must kill, will kill, then hunt the human brutes." Dr. Ditson.
If all who eat flesh were obliged to do the killing, or to witness it, few there are who would not speedily become vegetarians. ”

“ All who, from principle, have gone far in the diet reform, have enjoyed this blissful realization of being in accord with the voice of God in the soul—than which there can be nothing more delightful or more needful to the human race in every department of life. ”

“ It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparations, that it is rendered susceptible of easy mastication and digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices does not excite intolerable loathing, horror and disgust. Let the the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth, and, plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood. ”

“ Criminals confess that they cannot tell for their lives why they commit murder. This is why:—The very act of killing the animal transmits to the flesh eaten the taint of murder. The child, the youth, the man, goes heedlessly along eating of that taint until nurtured by kindred passion-making thoughts and acts, the terrible deed is done in a fit of abstraction, and the poor unfortunate is hung by the law as a warning to others. ”

“ In other words, will not the animal magnetism eventually be overcome, neutralized, displaced, superceded, swept away from the earth, by spiritual magnetism, and man emerge from his animalism, cast out the beast that is now within him, cease to be brutal, and cruel, and war-like, and, looking upward for guidance through the spiritual faculties, instead of downward through the animal, become at last truly human, and achieve for himself the glorious and peaceful destiny which Nature designed for him as a mortal being capacitated to walk hand in hand with the angels? ”

“ The use of animal food tends to develop the base of the brain prematurely, and gives rise to those passional outbursts of hate and lust, which darken human life and cover the earth with the offspring of unrestrained propensity, rather than with the tokens of mutual spiritual affection. The love which flesh-eating incites is the love of self, the love which the ferocious beast feels for his victim, the desire for self gratification regardles of effects upon others. It is unquestionable that animal food stimulates. ”

“ To see the convulsions, agonies, and tortures of a poor fellow-creature, whom they cannot restore or recompense, dying to gratify luxury, must require a rocky heart and a great degree of cruelty and ferocity. I cannot find any great difference, on the fact of natural reason and equity only, between feeding on human flesh and feeding on brute animal flesh, except custom and example ”

“ Luscious fruits, golden grain, wholesome vegetables, beautiful flowers, lovely fragrance, sunshine, birds singing, bees gathering honey, peace, harmony, beauty, life. Everything lovely, beautiful and healthful. Now the law of God, nature, or life, is that like produces like. ”

“ As regards laborers who seek strength and muscle in pork and beef, may we not refer them to the ox, the horse, the bison, the elephant, and ask if these powerful creatures get their majestic muscles from dead hogs, horses, sheep, cows and hens? Must the working ox digest three or four pounds of beef per day that he may keep up his strength? There is nothing more strikingly simple in Nature than the fact that other substances produce these results. ”

“ Every animal killed knows the one who takes its life, but it is helpless, yet it resists, but cannot escape the death blow; realizing the cruelty, and wrong, that makes every nerve cry out in remontrance, and its blood curdles and boils in its veins with fear and dread of what is coming; and this condition produces a high state of fever that poisons every atom of its flesh; and when eaten it causes disease that brings death to the eater, sooner or later." J. H. Neff.
"CIVILIZED CANNIBALS."
Murdering is the business of the people! ”

“ While the eating of animal food thus stimulates propensity, and unbalances the higher and lower natures, the act of slaughtering animals blunts moral sentiment, and is revolting to the most ennobling instincts and sympathies of human nature. Children invariably shrink with horror at sight of butchery—as do all persons whose native sympathies have not been habitually violated, blunted and crushed. ”

“ It is demonstrably and unmistakably true that the purest blood, the most substantial and efficient bone and muscle, the most symmetrical forms, and the most perfect and uninterrupted health and exquisite enjoyment of all the physical functions, are produced by a vegetable diet; especially whenever that diet has been well selected and applied through several successive generations. ”

“ A system of life which rejects animal food will include a system of agriculture which rejects animal fertilizers—at least until they have been returned to the inorganic condition, by decay, composting with lime etc. While the human (or animal) organism cannot be built up with unorganized substance, the plant world requires it and cannot be nourished with any other. Vegetable or animal substances used as fertilizers, until they may be mechanically absorbed as foreign matter, cannot be appropriated by the growing plant, until they have been decomposed and returned to the inorganic realm. ”

“ The masticating and digestive organs of the orang-outang may be easily mistaken for human. The differences are that the canine teeth are longer and more pointed and have intervals in the jaws to receive them when the jaws are closed, and the valvular folds of the stomach are wanting. But the orang is the true type by which to compare man to ascertain his dietic character. Now what are the facts about the orang? When left to choose his food, he is wholly frugiverous. Therefore comparative anatomy proves man to be not a flesh-eating animal. ”

“ A vegetable-eating person is seldom sick on account of his diet. Flesh-eaters are disposed to all kinds of maladies, take contagious diseases and succumb to epidemics readily. The reason is, they take into their systems the decayed and broken-down tissues of the animal—which are always present in the economy, parsing to the excretory organs—and hence the tissues of their own body change with great rapidity and are less substantial than those of a vegetable-eating person. ”

“ Did you ever think how much the American people work for the animal world? To raise hogs, cattle, calves, mutton, poultry etc., constitutes half of a farmer's labor. Think also of the amount of consumption in grain and vegetables to feed these. Were these farmers vegetarians they could live well on half the labor they now expend. Then again, when we contemplate the number of butchers and traffickers in flesh, the scene becomes truly appalling. ”

“ The result is that the purifying organs have more to do than they can perform; some portion of the waste matter remains in the blood, is circulated and re-deposited, and the tissues and organs become laden with humors and diseases of every form and every degree of severity and loathsomeness. How much better to conform to Nature's physiological chemistry and not attempt to nourish life with the elements of death! ”

“ Whether cattle are, in civilized countries, a blessing or a curse, we will not now argue. We have our private opinion that the whole tribe of domestic animals, in all places where the earth's surface will admit of general cultivation, are, with the single exception of a few of the working creatures, not only a nuisance to the human race, but a source of national poverty, and a cause of epidemics, diseases, and frequent pestilences. ”

“ Four classes of substances are necessary for the maintenance of life—the albuminoids, the carbohydrates, the fats, the minerals. Now meat contains but three of these, while the vegetables contain all four. Vegetable food is also necessary for our intellectual life: the phosphorus contained in vegetable food is almost double the amount contained in animal food. . . . Those who believe that meat gives the rose color to the cheeks and lips are in error. As professor Mussa has shown, the amount of iron oxide contained in vegetable food is much greater than that found in meat. ”

“ The Soul of Things is a reality which finds a responsive recognition in the inner life of man. Spirituality or animality, refinement or grossness, in our surroundings, induces a corresponding condition in ourselves: we are magnetized by the objects, by the life around us. ”

“ I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual inprovement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other, when they come in contact with the more civilized."
Under a true system of civilization, cannibalism towards animals would seem as abhorrent as does now cannibalism towards humans. ”

“ The advantage of a reform in diet is obviously greater than that of any other. It strikes at the root of the evil. To remedy the abuses of legislation, before we regulate the propensities by which they are produced, is to suppose that by taking away the effect, the cause will cease to operate. ”

“ Animal food develops the war spirit. Note the well-known ferocity of butcher's dogs, and the taming of the tiger by farinaceous food.
"The natural diet of all animals is constitutionally calculated to develop their respective natures; and as the paramount characteristic of all carnivorous animals is rapacity and ferocity, therefore animal food, eaten by man, naturally and necessarily develops a like rapacious fiercenes in him also, whereas a vegetable diet is constitutionally adapted to foster docility and goodness." ”

“ The food of human beings, except infants, should be derived directly and wholly from the Plant Kingdom—embracing an almost limitless variety of tree fruits and small fruits, nuts, grains, roots, tubers, tender leaves and stalks, saps, etc., which may be used in their natural state, or when necessary cooked and prepared in simple, wholesome ways, without the use of animal admixtures, or of mineral except perhaps salt.
No food should be used which necessitates slaughter. Even animal milk and its products, and eggs, would better be discarded ”

“ There is no organ of the body which, under the use of vegetable food, does not receive an increase of sensibility, or of that power which is thought to be imparted to it by the nervous system. The senses, the memory, the understanding and the imagination have been observed to be improved by a vegetable diet. ”

“ All the chemical elements of nutrition required for health, strength, and longevity, are present and combined in best proportions in the plant kingdom; and we may wisely relieve ourselves entirely from the maintenance and care of all food animals, and from the injurious, brutalizing, and debasing influences connected with killing, cooking and devouring them. ”

“ When the earth becomes everywhere densely populated, it will become necessary to economize the soil, which can best be done by ceasing to keep animals for food—for the reason that a vastly greater population can be sustained by the direct productions of the soil, than when those productions are converted into flesh. The race will then become from necessity, if it shall not already have become so from choice or moral conviction, vegetarians. ”

“ What could the lion, or tiger, or butcher do with active Benevolence, or Conscientiousness (or Spirituality) ? . . . No one faculty should ever be so exercised as to clash with the normal function of any other. . . . . Animal food is therefore (unnatural, improper, and injurious,) because it can be procured only by violating man's moral constitution. ”

“ Celsus affirms that the bodies which are filled with much animal food become the most quickly old and diseased. It was proverbial that the ancient athletes were the most stupid of men. The cynic Diogenes, being asked what was the cause of this stupidity, is reported to have answered, 'Because they are wholly formed of the flesh of swine and oxen.' Contagions act with greater virulence upon bodies prepared by a full diet of animal food. ”

“ Animal food, in general, digests sooner than most kinds of vegetables; and not being so much in accordance with man's nature, constitution and moral character, it is very liable to generate disease, inflammation, or fever, even when it is not taken to excess. ”

“ The use of animal food by man is contrary to the evident design of Nature, as indicated by his anatomical structure, which is in all respects nearly identical with that of the orang-outang and other varieties of the Simiadæ or "monkey-tribe," which are naturally frugiverous (fruit and nut-eating) animals. ”