I was told that the most painful consequence of all this folly did not
lie in the fact that law-abiding people had to go without animal
food--many nations do this and seem none the worse, and even in flesh-
eating countries such as Italy, Spain, and Greece, the poor seldom see
meat from year's end to year's end. The mischief lay in the jar which
undue prohibition gave to the consciences of all but those who were
strong enough to know that though conscience as a rule boons, it can also
bane. The awakened conscience of an individual will often lead him to do
things in haste that he had better have left undone, but the conscience
of a nation awakened by a respectable old gentleman who has an unseen
power up his sleeve will pave hell with a vengeance.
Young people were told that it was a sin to do what their fathers had
done unhurt for centuries; those, moreover, who preached to them about
the enormity of eating meat, were an unattractive academic folk, and
though they over-awed all but the bolder youths, there were few who did
not in their hearts dislike them. However much the young person might be
shielded, he soon got to know that men and women of the world--often far
nicer people than the prophets who preached abstention--continually spoke
sneeringly of the new doctrinaire laws, and were believed to set them
aside in secret, though they dared not do so openly.
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