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12. EVENTUAL.
The trend of the world is towards a non-animal diet. Numerous vegetarian eating-houses, boarding houses and sanitariums have been established in Germany, Austria, France, England and the United States, with excellent results. Vegetarian societies in Europe and America, periodicals and books, are also among the agencies now rapidly disseminating the Vegetarian Philosophy—the Gospel of Peace on Earth as applied to the Diet of Man. 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.
(Already is this prospective necessity become a present one in China; in which country, according to Sir John Davis, the raising of cattle and all other kinds of stock is explicitly discouraged, on the ground that it exhausts the soil, and tends to lessen its capacity to produce food for man. In New England the density of population is restricting the local production of meats to a quantity far below the present demand.)
And it will then become necessary to balance the births and deaths; which, in the pure, spiritual and intuitive conditions accompanying the universal elevation of man to a fruit diet and consequent passional self-control, will be practicable and easy.
Then will the earth become one vast garden of fruits and flowers, where purity, love and innocence may repose in peaceful bowers; and the perhaps mythical "Eden" of the past will become a substantial verity at last! In that garden, each Adam and Eve will hear the voice of God within, and will not be "ashamed," nor "hide themselves." No butcher "Satan" shall be there
