Page:WhyIamAVegetarian.pdf/26

universe. Instead of becoming the models and school-masters of the world in which they have outstripped, and striving to repair the clumsy natures and regulate the straying feet of those by means of whom they have been hoisted into distinction, they have become colossal pedants and assassins, proclaiming themselves the pets and gods of creation and teaching each other that other races are mere fixtures to furnish food and amusement for themselves. They inculcate as a rule of conduct—and they preach it valiantly—that each should act upon others as he himself would choose to be acted upon. This ideal of social rectitude has been promulgated by the sages of the species for more than 2,000 years. But with miserable pusillanimity they confine its application to the members of their own species. No non-human is too innocent or too interesting or too wonderful to escape the most frightful humiliations,