Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/The World Is Getting Better
THE WORLD IS GETTING BETTER
DR. JAGADES CHUNDER BOSE says that plants are almost as sensitive as human beings—they have feelings and susceptibilities, you know, and all that sort of thing.
Isn't it wonderful how the Hindus find these things out?
Soul speaking to soul, I suppose.
But I have scarcely been able to eat comfortably since I read it.
Every time I sit down to a salad it makes me feel quite like a cannibal!
And to think, I was just on the point of becoming a vegetarian, too!
I suppose to be on the safe side one should eat nothing but minerals.
But, of course, advanced thinkers will have to take the matter up seriously and discover a way out—some day we will live on aromas and electricity, no doubt.
Don't you think the world is growing kinder? A hundred years ago, for instance, no one would have cared whether plants suffer pain or not—people wouldn't have given it a second thought, you know.
And now, though they will have to keep on eating them until something else is invented, they will do it with a shudder and won't enjoy them near so much. The world is losing much of its cruelty and thoughtlessness. Upward! Onward! is the slogan.
Do you like my new coat? Unborn lamb skin, you know. Isn't it lovely!