clipped from: enjoyment.independent.co.uk The principal motivations for vegetarianism have been constant throughout its history. One is that animals, as sentient beings, belong to the same moral universe as humans, and merit respect and good treatment therefore, which includes their not being killed and eaten. Another is that to eat meat is to make the human body a graveyard for dead animal flesh, which is polluting and unhealthy. A third is that meat production is wasteful and ecologically damaging, as shown by the swathes of rain forest felled every year for beef pasturage, and the fact that an acre of grazing can produce food for only two people whereas the same extent of arable land can feed 20.
But the visitors were thereby disregarding the strong theme of vegetarianism in the Western and even Christian tradition itself, as Stuart shows, and which, even as its Indian version was being "discovered" in the 17th century, was flourishing among Dissenters, for whom radical religion and radical politics were the same thing.
There are many paths into history, and it is a delight to find that this one is so illuminating about matters as seemingly unconnected as ancient Greek philosophy, 17th-century English Dissent, India, Richardson's Clarissa, the French Revolution, Malthus (who thought it a bad thing that more people could be fed on grain than meat, since this exacerbated the population problem), Shelley, and much besides, with nudist vegetarians popping up recurringly in their midst, and with beautifully inane theological quarrels at every turn.