Page:BehindtheScenesinSlaughterHouses.pdf/6

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ment, this natural repugnance is of course vastly increased.

If this is the attitude the mind instinctively takes up towards the act of killing a fellow-creature, it would seem to follow that man is more allied in his instincts to the cow or the horse than to the tiger. The mere smell of blood, as is well known, drives a horse nearly frantic with terror.The combined smell and sight of blood, which at the Deptford abattoir, is allowed to trickle down into gutters through the hoofs of the animals waiting their turn to be slaughtered, produces all the symptoms of panic fear. I have stood and watched splendid American bullocks, with great intelligent eyes, trembling in every limb, panting and gasping in the extremity of their almost human fear outside these Deptford shambles.

Now if the allegation of those who assert man's dependence on a meat diet be correct, the sight and smell of blood ought to be rather pleasing than otherwise to him. The "unseemly savour of a slaughter-house" would rejoice the heart of a tiger; it produces a feeling of oppression and nausea on any human being who enters the building for the first time. We may admit that this fact, taken by itself does not prove that meat-eating is not the proper and legitimate method for man's bodily nourishment. It only shows that, supposing meat-eating to be required by nature, then nature requires us to perform an act which is distasteful to everybody, and would be positively impossible to men endowed with great refinement of character.

It appears to be quite self-evident that those who indulge in the practice of flesh-eating are morally bound to see that