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.You may eat or drink anything essential to your stage of evolution, so long as you are evolving toward a clearer and cleaner ideal of bodily life.If,” he said gravely, “I may employ a phrase of flippancy, I would say that you may eat six dozen oysters today, but I should strongly advise five dozen oysters tomorrow.For how else has all progress in public or private manners been achieved? Would not the primitive cannibals be surprised at the strange distinction we draw between men and beasts? All historians pay high honour to the Huguenots, and the great Huguenot Prince, Henri Quatre.None need deny that his aspiration that every Frenchman should have a chicken in his pot was, for his period, a high aspiration.It is no disrespect to him that we, mounting to higher levels, and looking down longer perspectives, consider the chicken.And this august march of discovery passes figures higher than that of Henry of Navarre.I shall always give a high place, as Islam has always given a high place, to that figure, mythical or no, which we find presiding over the foundations of Christianity.I cannot doubt that the fable, incredible and revolting otherwise, which records the rush of swine into the sea, was an allegory of his early realisation that a spirit, evil indeed, does reside in all animals in so far as they tempt us to devour them.I cannot doubt that the Prodigal leaving his sins among the swine is another illustration of the great thesis of the Prophet of the Moon.But here, also, progress and relativity are relentless in their advance; and not a few of us may have risen today to the point of regretting that the joyful sounds around the return of the Prodigal should be marred by the moaning of a calf.“For the rest, he who asks us whither we go knows not the meaning of Progress.If we come at last to live on light, as men said of the chameleon, if some cosmic magic closed to us now, as radium was but recently closed, allows us to transmute the very metals into flesh without breaking into the bloody house of life, we shall know these things when we have achieved them.It is enough for us now if we have reached a spiritual station, in which at least the living head we lop has not eyes to reproach us; and the herbs we gather cannot cry against our cruelty like the mandrake.”Lord Ivywood resumed his seat, his colourless lips still moving.By some previous arrangement, probably, Mr.Leveson rose to move a motion about Vegetarianism.Mr.Leveson was of opinion that the Jewish and Moslem veto on pork had been the origin of Vegetarianism.He thought it was a great step, and showed how progressive the creed could be.He thought the persecution of the Hindoos by Moslems had probably been much exaggerated; he thought our experience in the Indian Mutiny showed we considered the feeling of Easterners too little in such matters.He thought Vegetarianism in some ways an advance on orthodox Christianity.He thought we must be ready for yet further advances; and he sat down.And as he had said precisely, clause by clause, everything that Lord Ivywood had said, it is needless to say that that nobleman afterward congratulated him on the boldness and originality of his brilliant speech.At a similar sort of preconcerted signal, Hibbs However rose rather vaguely to his feet to second the motion.He rather prided himself on being a man of few words, in the vocal sense; he was no orator, as Brutus was.It was only with pen in hand, in an office lined with works of reference, that he could feel that sense of confused responsibility that was the one pleasure of his life.But on this occasion he was brighter than usual; partly because he liked being in a lord’s house; partly because he had never tasted champagne before, and he felt as if it agreed with him; partly because he saw in the subject of Progress an infinite opportunity of splitting hairs.“Whatever,” said Hibbs, with a solemn cough, “whatever we may think of the old belief that Moslems have differed from Buddhism in a regrettable way, there can be no doubt the responsibility lay with the Christian Churches [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]