B1019 <=> B1021 [BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1020]

“’”May our CREATOR multiply his flocks!

“’”Well then, when, thanks to these experimental researches of mine, I became clearly convinced that if people continue to consume meat for their food it will be very bad for them, and that on the other hand if only some of them should abstain, no good would come of this either; I thereafter devoted myself entirely for a time to finding out what could nevertheless be done for the future welfare of the majority of the people.

“’”At the outset I then established for myself two categorical propositions; the first, that people accustomed for so many centuries to consuming meat for their food would never, with their weak wills, be able to make themselves cease consuming it in order to overcome this criminal tendency of theirs; and the second, that even if people should decide not to eat meat and should in fact keep their decision for a certain time, and should even lose the habit of eating meat, they would nevertheless never be able to abstain from eating it for a sufficient length of time to acquire a total aversion to it. They would not be able to do so because never on the Earth will it occur that all people will have the same religion or form a single government, without which condition there can never exist common to all, any suggestive, prohibitive, penal, or other kind of compulsory influence, owing to which alone people possessing in general the property of being stimulated by example, aroused by envy, and influenced magnetically, might be enabled to keep forever a resolution once taken.

“’”Notwithstanding these two facts, incontestably clear in my conviction, I nevertheless, with these facts as the basis of my subsequent researches, persevered in my search for some possible way of escape from the unhappy situation confronting people.