Preliminary Observations.
HE VEGETARIAN MOVEMENT is assuming such prominence in Europe and America that a convenient and inexpensive Manual or Text Book, systematically arranged, covering the entire field of arguments in behalf of the Vegetarian Philosophy has become a necessity.
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; preparations of oat milk, etc., the sap of the South American "cow tree," nuts, vegetable oils, etc., substituted.
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.
The object of the following essay, however, is simply to answer in a concise but comprehensive and decisive manner the question involved in its title; leaving untouched entirely or mostly other branches of the general subject Diet—such as the use of animals products not requiring slaughter, tea, coffee, salt and other conditions, etc., the objections to which though valid, are not so serious as to the use of flesh.
