“Can we really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part, I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man ever did so; the first man who ever touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature — the first man who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call them food — the first man who called nourishment those bodies that had a little before bellowed and cried and moved and lived … How could that man’s eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides were flayed and limbs were torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench of needless death? How was it that the vile pollution thereof not turn away his taste when he made contact with the sores of others and sucked the juices from mortal wounds?

 

You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, and yet you yourselves, by your own foul slaughter, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, while yours is a mere appetizer of convenience.

 

And it is certainly not lions and panthers who we eat out of self defense. On the contrary, we ignore these creatures and instead slaughter the harmless, tame beings who have neither stings nor claws nor fangs to harm us; creatures who, I swear, Nature appears to have produced sheerly for the sake of their beauty and grace… And yet nothing abashes us: not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the cleanliness of their habits, not even the unusual intelligence that is ever found in these poor wretches. No, for the simple sake of a little flesh we deprive them of the sun, of the light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being.” ~ inspired by Plutarch

Filed under: Sanctifying Sentience by Scaughdt