The Russian language is like the English, which language is also very good, but only for discussing in “smoking rooms”, while sitting on an easy chair with legs out-stretched on another, the topic of Australian frozen meat or, sometimes, the Indian question. BTG I

“‘Although the turkey is a very useful bird for the household, because its meat — if of course the turkey is killed in that special way which people of old nations have there learned thanks to long centuries of practice — is better and more tasty than that of all other birds, yet, in its living state, the turkey is a very strange bird and has a certain very special psyche, to understand which, even though only approximately, is, especially for our people with their half passive minds, quite impossible. BTG XXXIV

“Afterwards we went through several more what are called ‘annexes’. One of them was the ‘cold storage’ for the meat that was ready; in another they destroyed the existence of quadruped beings simply with hammers and .also stripped off their hide — again in the manner usual in other slaughterhouses. BTG XLII

“This Haoorma on the continent Asia is prepared in a very simple manner, namely, small pieces of well-roasted meat are tightly packed into ‘earthenware jars’ or goatskin ‘Boordooks’. (A Boordook is the skin stripped in a special manner from the being called ‘goat’.) BTG XLII

“Melted sheep’s-tail fat is then poured over these roasted pieces of meat. BTG XLII

“Although the pieces of roasted meat thus covered with fat do also gradually deteriorate with time, yet over a relatively very long time they do not acquire in themselves any poison. BTG XLII

“In the latter case, it is as if the meat were freshly killed. BTG XLII

“‘”Had I not also been interested in this question for many years and had I not reached certain entirely different definite conclusions, then after all that our Brother in Christ Veggendiadi has said here, I should not hesitate a moment but should urge and conjure you all not to delay until tomorrow, but without looking behind to hasten back to your towns, and there in the public squares to cry aloud: ‘Stop! Stop! People! Consume no more meat for food! This practice of yours is not only contrary to all the commandments of God, but is the cause of all your diseases’. BTG XLII

“‘”Concerning the definite conclusion at which I have arrived I can now tell you only this, that it will never happen on the Earth that all people will profess one and the same religion. Hence, in addition to our Christian religion, other religions will always exist. And it is not possible to be certain that the followers of these other religions will also abstain from consuming meat. BTG XLII

“‘”But if we cannot now be certain that at some time or other all people on Earth will abstain from meat, then we must now, as regards the consumption of meat, take quite other more practicable measures, because if one part of mankind consumes meat and the other part does not, then according to the results of my experimental investigations, the greatest of evils — than which nothing could be worse — would befall the people who did not consume meat. BTG XLII

“‘”Namely, as my detailed experiments have shown me, among people who do not consume meat but who nevertheless live among those who do, the formation ceases of what is called ‘will power’. BTG XLII

“‘”My experiments proved to me that although when they abstain from meat people’s bodily health improves, nevertheless, when such abstainers find themselves mixing with those who consume meat, their psychic state inevitably grows worse, in spite of the fact that the state of their organism may at the same time sometimes improve. BTG XLII

“‘”Thus, a good result for people who abstain from meat can be obtained exclusively only if they live always in complete isolation. BTG XLII

“‘”As regards the people who constantly consume meat or those products which contain the element called ‘Eknokh’, although the appearance of the state of their organism undergoes no change, nevertheless their psyche, especially its chief feature which is sometimes designated by the general word the ‘character’ of man, gradually changes in regard to positiveness and morality for the worse, beyond all recognition. BTG XLII

“”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. BTG XLII

“‘”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. BTG XLII

Recalling my state during the period of the writing of that first chapter I cannot help adding here — owing to still another certain small weakness in me which consists of my always experiencing an inner satisfaction whenever I see appear on the faces of our estimable contemporary as they are called “representatives of exact science”, that very specific smile peculiar to them alone — that although my body after this accident was, as is said, “so battered and everything in it so mixed up” that for months it looked like a fragment of a general picture which might be described as “a bit of live meat in a clean bed”, nevertheless, and for all that, my correctly disciplined what is usually called “spirit”, even in that physical state of my body, was not in the least depressed, as it should have been according to their notions, but, on the contrary, its power was even intensified by the heightened excitation which had arisen in it just before the accident owing to my repeated disappointment in people, particularly in such people as are devoted, as they say to “science”, and also to my disappointment in those ideals which until then had been in me, and which had gradually been formed in my common presence, thanks chiefly to the commandment inculcated in me in my childhood, enjoining that “the highest aim and sense of human life is the striving to attain the welfare of one’s neighbor”, and that this is possible exclusively only by the conscious renunciation of one’s own. BTG XLVIII

No! We do all this in order to slaughter them one fine day and to obtain the meat we require, with as much fat as possible. BTG XLVIII