[656] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
Leo Tolstoy Speaks
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (arthurl@tiac.net)
Sun Sep 17 08:37:48 1995
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 95 04:37:05 -0700
From: arthurl@tiac.net
To: vsg@MIT.EDU
> Leo Tolstoy Speaks
>
> The following selection from Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910) is
> from his article "The First Step". This has recently been
> reprinted in the book, "THE VIEW FROM THE VEGETARIAN
> SIDE (published by Sant Bani Press). I came across it in
> this month's issue of local rag called "Common Ground".
>
> My first reading of Tolstoy occurred during my first year at
> university where we were required to read War and Peace in
> one week! Great novel and a challenging read to complete in
> a mere week, but I never realized until much later that
> Tolstoy was a vegetarian and was a strong voice for both
> compassion for humans and non-human animals. I'm still
> surprised by things like the following selection which
> exemplifies just a little of how very perspicacious and
> prescient Tolstoy happened to have been.
>
> Certainly, Tolstoy was a great novelist, dramatist, essayist
> and by far a very decent human being, one who had a lasting
> influence upon such people like Mahatma Gandhi (the young
> Gandhi corresponded with Tolstoy and was later to name of
> his South African centers "Tolstoy Farm".)
>
> Ted Altar
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> No long ago I had a talk with a retired soldier, a
> butcher, and he was surprised at my assertion that it
> was a pity to kill, and said the usual things about
> it's being ordained. But afterwards he agreed with me:
> `Especially when they are quiet, tame cattle. They
> come, poor things! trusting you. It is very pitiful.'
>
> This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the
> animals, but that a man suppresses in himself,
> unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity -- that
> of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like
> himself -- and by violating his own feelings becomes
> cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the
> injunction not to take life!
>
> Once, when walking from Moscow, I was offered a lift by
> some carters who were going to Serpukhov to a
> neighbouring forest to fetch wood. It was Thursday
> before Easter. I was seated in the first cart with a
> strong, red, coarse cartman, who evidently drank. On
> entering a village we saw a well-fed, naked, pink pig
> being dragged out of the first yard to be slaughtered.
> It squealed in a dreadful voice, resembling the shriek
> of a man. Just as we were passing they began to kill
> it. A man gashed its throat with a knife. The pig
> squealed still more loudly and piercingly, broke away
> from the men, and ran off covered with blood.
>
> Being near-sighted I did not see all the details. I
> saw only the human-looking pink body of the pig and
> heard its desperate squeal, but the carter saw all the
> details and watched closely. They caught the pig,
> knocked it down, and finished cutting its throat. When
> its squeals ceased the carter sighed heavily. `Do men
> really not have to answer for such things?' he said.
>
> So strong is humanity's aversion to all killing. But
> by example, by encouraging greediness, by the assertion
> that God has allowed it, and above all by habit, people
> entirely lose this natural feeling.
>
> I only wish to say that for a good life a certain order
> of good actions is indispensable; that if a man's
> aspirations toward right living be serious they will
> inevitably follow one definite sequence; and that in
> this sequence the first virtue a man will strive after
> will be self-control, self-restraint. And in seeking
> for self-control a man will inevitably follow one
> definite sequence, and it this sequence the first thing
> will be self-control of food. And if he be really and
> seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing
> from which he will abstain will always be the use of
> animal food, because, to say nothing of the excitation
> of the passions caused by such food, its use is simply
> immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which
> is contrary to moral feeling -- killing.
>
> "But why, if the wrongfulness of animal food was known
> to humanity so long ago, have people not yet come to
> acknowledge this law?" will be asked by those who are
> accustomed to be led by public opinion rather by
> reason. The answer to this question is that the moral
> progress of humanity -- which is the foundation of
> every other kind of progress -- is always slow; but
> that the sign of true, not casual, progress is its
> uninterruptedness and its continual acceleration.
>
> And the progress of vegetarianism is of this kind.
> That progress is expressed in the actual life of
> mankind, which from many causes is involuntarily
> passing more and more from carnivorous habits to
> vegetable food, and is also deliberately following the
> same path in a movement which shows evident strength,
> and which is growing larger and larger -- viz.
> vegetarianism. That movement has during the last ten
> years advanced more and more rapidly. More and more
> books and periodicals on this subject appear every
> year; one meets more and more people who have given up
> meat; and abroad, especially Germany, England, and
> America, the number of vegetarian hotels and
> restaurants increases year by year.
>
> This movement should cause special joy to those whose
> life lies in the effort to bring about the kingdom of
> God on earth, not because vegetarianism is in itself an
> important step towards that kingdom (all true steps are
> both important and unimportant), but because it is a
> sign that the aspiration of mankind towards moral
> perfection is serious and sincere, for it has taken the
> one unalterable order of succession natural to it,
> beginning with the first step.
>
> One cannot fail to rejoice at this, as people could not
> fail to rejoice who, after striving to reach the upper
> story of a house by trying vainly and at random to
> climb the walls from different points, should at last
> assemble at the first step of the staircase and crowd
> towards it, convinced that there can be no way up
> except by mounting this first step of stairs.
