"Opposers of compassion urge: 'If we should live on vegetable food, what shall we do with our cattle? What would become of them? They would grow so numerous they would be prejudicial to us - they would eat us up if we did not kill and eat them!' But there is abundance of animals in the world whom men do not kill and eat; and yet we hear not of their injuring mankind, and sufficient room is found for their abode. Horses are not usually killed to be eaten, and yet we have not heard of any country overstocked with them. [...] Because some [animals] have no compassion, feeling, or reason, are we to possess no compassion, feeling, or reason?"

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