SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen):

The early chapters on ethics and attitudes repeat the ideas that are addressed in The Universal Kinship. Moore describes the relation between humans and non-human animals in the chapter, "Our Four-Footed Slaves": “Man has directed more than he has actually done things. … Man has harnessed the herds that roamed about him, and forced them to groan for him, and the winds and waves he has made into menials” (56). “The horse, the mule, the camel, the donkey, the elephant, and the ox have pretty nearly made man what he is. … In return for all this they are, as a rule, regularly and systematically robbed” (58). He makes an explicit parallel between the two classes of exploited beings. First, human workers under capitalism: “Man feeds and shelters those who aid and serve him for the same reason that the capitalist feeds and shelters the human slaves who aid and serve him, which is the same reason precisely that impels the farmer to protect his machines, simply to make them more effecting and lasting” (60). When they are spent, “he casts them out, as the employer does his worn-out workmen, to starve and rot” (61). And then he links the potential liberation of human workers to that of non-human animals: “Oh, men! you who are struggling and longing for that which is denied you and that which belongs to you – the right to live, to be free, and to enjoy your legitimate share of the only world you have access to – will you not open your hearts to this plea – this plea for beings whose lot, like yours, is a bitter one, and whose miseries spring from the same cruel sources as your own miseries? … Shake off your own chains! Be free! Take your inalienable rights! Is this not your world as much as anybody’s? Be men, not doormats! Light the red hell of revolution, if need be! For what is life if it is but the accursed privilege of wearing yourselves out in the service of cannibals, of man-eating millionaires, of monsters who eat you up alive, you and your wives and children? But don’t forget to grant to your poor broken co-sufferers in harness the same blessed measure you claim for yourselves” (65-66).

In Chapter V: "The Cost of a Skin" he argues: “Furs are luxuries, and it cannot be said in apology for the wrongs done in obtaining them that they are essential to human life” (67). “Skins and deceased birds are not half so beautiful, anyway, as flowers, or ribbons, or velvets, or mohair. They are popular because they are barbaric. … No one but a vulgarian would attempt to adorn herself by putting the dead bodies of birds on her head, or muddling her shoulders in grinning weasels and dangling mink-tails. … She is a concourse of unnecessary funerals. She is about as fascinating, about as choice and ingenious in her decorations, as she would be embellished in a necklace of human scalps” (68). Moore points to the existence of plant-based alternatives: “Furs just as warm and beautiful as murderous sealskin may be made of plush; and vegetable silk as fine and lustrous as ever was spun by the oak-eating babes of Polyphemus can be made of wood” (74). “Vegetal leather has been manufactured in London with the polish and durability of calfskin” (75).

Chapter VI poses the question, "What Shall We Eat?" and Moore contends that despite mankind’s curiosity, most humans remain purposefully uncurious about the appropriate human diet; they do not want to know what they do and do not need to survive. “Discussing this subject is a good deal like butting one’s head against a stone wall – the chief effects take place in the one who carries on the activity” (77). “For if human beings can hold on to the feeling that the flesh and blood of their fellows are in some way necessary to them, they are comparatively immune from those disturbances which the most cowed conscience is at times disposed to stir up” (78). Moore defines foods as “the matters of organic supply, including oxygen, water, and minerals” (78). Food is fuel (79). “But there are a good many people who, I am confident, expend on their eating a great deal more concern than they need to. They make a fad of it. It is their specialty. They always eat in the greatest alarm for fear they will eat or will not eat just what they should eat or avoid, or will not take just the amount of this or that kind of food that is prescribed in the dietaries” (82). He claims that “We eat too much – of that I am sure – and bathe too little, and eat foods that are too satanically concocted, and associate too little with our food when we eat it, and are too unconcerned about fresh air and exercise” (85).

Moore advocates for many of the same diet and health reforms as the Grahamites and water-cure advocates. Answering the question, where does food come from he explains that starch and sugar are plant products, fat consists in meat, nuts, cheese, oil, and butter, and protein is foud in muscle, wheats, nuts, eggs, cheese, and legumes. “There are an almost endless variety of whole-wheat breads, gluten biscuits, and breakfast foods that may be classed as protein foods. The foods of this kind prepared by the Battle Creek (Michigan) Sanitarium are especially fine” (88).

The plant and the animal are socialists. They co-operate with each other. The plant is fixed and passive. … The animal is detached and active. … The plant and the animal are not two separate domains. They are bound together by common interests and reciprocal necessities. They are the supplemental halves of the organic whole (100-1).

In Chapter VII, Moore turns to the question, "Is Man a Plant-Eater?" asking: “Are human beings fitted structurally to use plants and plant products as food? Is man anatomically a phytivore?” (103). He argues that animal structure adapts to its surroundings and that species have switched their diets regularly: “these vacillations, this crossing and reticulating of the lines of evolution, have mongrelised the structures of most animals, and rendered the differences between the carnivore and the phytivore in many instances vague” (103-104). “The structure of a species, therefore, does not depend solely on what sort of food the species eats, nor on what kind of life it leads, but also on what its ancestors ate and did” (106). He delves into the details of teeth and digestive tracts in carnivores v.ersus herbivores (108); human teeth compared to animal teeth (113-114); and the human digestive tract versus that of non-human animals (115-116). Noting that primates are largely herbivores (117-118), he cites other scientists to the effect that humans are herbivores (120-121) and offers the observations that children prefer fruit to meat (121-123), ancient civilizations were vegetarian (124-125), and humanity’s diet has changed from herbivore to carnivorous and back to vegetarian (126).

In Chapter VIII, "The Food of the Future," Moore proposes “A diet of fruits, grains, nuts, and vegetables, with dairy products and eggs, is the ideal diet of man. ... A carnivorous animal is not an ideal animal, and never can be. The life of a carnivorous animal is a perpetual onslaught. Every meal is a murder” (131).

And an animal whose life is an unbroken succession of such necessities, whose stomach is the grave of hundreds and thousands, and even tens of thousands, of his fellow-beings, may be meritorious in other respects – may preach the Golden rule, decry war, give money to the missionary, and rail at the rich – but so long as he continues to fill himself every few hours with the blood and vitals of others, he is not only not an ideal animal, but has in reality no just claims on life (131-132).

Moore references the strength of the Japanese on largely rice diet (132), the diseases caused by meat in European and American populations (133), the fast healing of Injuries on a vegetarian diet (134). He describes veganism as the thinkers’ diet: Pythagoras, Plutarch, Buddha, Shelley, Tolstoy, Wagner, Thoreau (137), and provides anecdotal evidence of athletes who followed a vegan diet (140-143). “It is doubtful whether alcohol, tobacco, flesh foods, or Christianity have, any of them, unless possibly the last, contributed on the whole anything of an affirmative character to the development of what we call modern civilisation” (145).