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and prophets of the day to the lawlessness of the people in
the matter of eating forbidden flesh. On this, there was a
reaction; stringent laws were passed, forbidding the use
of meat in any form or shape, and permitting no food but
grain, fruits, and vegetables to be sold in shops and markets.
These laws were enacted about two hundred years after the
death of the old prophet who had first unsettled people’s
minds about the rights of animals; but they had hardly been
passed before people again began to break them.
I was told that the most painful consequence of all this
folly did not lie in the fact that law-abiding people had to
go without animal food—many nations do this and seem
none the worse, and even in flesh-eating countries such as
Italy, Spain, and Greece, the poor seldom see meat from
year’s end to year’s end. The mischief lay in the jar which
undue prohibition gave to the consciences of all but those
who were strong enough to know that though conscience as
a rule boons, it can also bane. The awakened conscience of
an individual will often lead him to do things in haste that
he had better have left undone, but the conscience of a na-
tion awakened by a respectable old gentleman who has an
unseen power up his sleeve will pave hell with a vengeance.
Young people were told that it was a sin to do what their
fathers had done unhurt for centuries; those, moreover,
who preached to them about the enormity of eating meat,
were an unattractive academic folk, and though they over-
awed all but the bolder youths, there were few who did not
in their hearts dislike them. However much the young per-
son might be shielded, he soon got to know that men and

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