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into liquid poison the golden grain intended for his food? Why should there continue to rise from the earth a chorus of pain, the cries of the creatures who are tortured and slain, to gratify his needless desires? When man puts to himself with seriousness and responsibility Shelley's question, "How can the advantages of intellect and civilisation be reconciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural life?"—it is difficult to see how it is to be answered, except with the response that Shelley gave, and by striving for the simplification of life, the avoidance of cruelty and slaughter, the arrangement of the community for the common good, the realisation of "a state of society where all the energies of man shall be directed to the production of his solid happiness." Such was Shelley's Vegetarianism, not a mere dietetic whim, but an endeavour after a higher and better life for mankind, an attempt to realise the "City of God," a city of justice, pity, and mercy; an endeavour to bring the universe into sympathetic harmony, and to provide a bounteous feast from which none should be excluded or turned away. Shelley's work in this direction will not be lost.
It will last,—and shine transfigured
In the final reign of Right;
It will pass into the splendours
Of the City of the Light.
