The Ethics of Diet

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The Ethics of Diet
Front cover of The Ethics of Diet (1883).jpg
First edition cover
Author Howard Williams
LanguageEnglish
Subject History of vegetarianism, ethics of eating meat
Publisher
Publication date
1883
Publication place United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Media typePrint
Pagesxii + 336
OCLC 1045396368
Text The Ethics of Diet at Project Gutenberg

The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating is an 1883 book by English humanitarian and writer Howard Williams. It presents a chronological anthology of historical figures who were critical of the practice of meat-eating, including philosophers, poets, physicians, religious leaders, and social reformers. Drawing from sources spanning from antiquity to the 19th century, the book compiles moral, philosophical, and literary arguments against the consumption of animal flesh. It contributed to early debates on the ethics of eating meat and played a significant role in the development of the Victorian vegetarian movement.

Contents

The Ethics of Diet was originally published in serial form in the journal of the Vegetarian Society between 1878 and 1883 before appearing in book form. It influenced several prominent figures, including Henry S. Salt, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Jaime de Magalhães Lima, and has since been recognised as a foundational text in the history of vegetarian thought. The book has been republished in revised editions and translated into multiple languages.

Overview

Howard Williams, from Fifty Years of Food Reform (1898) Howard Williams vegetarian.png
Howard Williams, from Fifty Years of Food Reform (1898)

Howard Williams (1837–1931) was an English writer and humanitarian who adopted vegetarianism in 1872 and later became an opponent of vivisection. Educated at St John's College, Cambridge, he supported himself through private means and occasional tutoring, devoting much of his life to literary and ethical pursuits. His interest in historical and moral arguments against flesh-eating led him to compile The Ethics of Diet. [1]

First published in book form in 1883, it presents a chronological anthology of influential voices who rejected meat-eating, including philosophers, poets, religious figures, physicians, and social reformers. Williams draws on sources from antiquity to the 19th century, offering a biographical and literary survey of arguments for ethical vegetarianism. By assembling this "catena of authorities", he aimed to demonstrate that opposition to flesh-eating had deep roots across cultures, traditions, and eras. [2]

Summary

Preface

In the preface, Williams likens the ethical awakening against animal slaughter to humanity's historical rejection of cannibalism and human sacrifice. He predicts that future generations will view the contemporary exploitation and killing of animals with the same horror, and he calls for a civilisation guided by compassion, refinement, and justice toward all sentient beings. He argues that the cruelties of butchery and the consumption of flesh degrade both individuals and society, contributing to insensibility, gluttony, and social injustice.

Main content

It has been well said … that there are steps on the way to the summit of Dietetic Reform, and, if only one step be taken, yet that single step will be not without importance and without influence in the world. The step, which leaves for ever behind it the barbarism of slaughtering our fellow-beings, the Mammals and Birds, is, it is superfluous to add, the most important and most influential of all.

— Howard Williams [3]

The main body of the work consists of biographical and philosophical sketches of over 150 figures, divided into fifty chapters. It begins with ancient Greek authors such as Hesiod, Pythagoras, and Plato, who are portrayed as early advocates of bloodless living. Pythagoras receives particular emphasis as a seminal figure in anti-carnivorous ethics, with his doctrine of metempsychosis and rejection of animal sacrifice presented as foundational. Plato's ideal republic is noted for its preference for simple, plant-based food and critique of luxurious diets.

Williams highlights the contributions of Roman authors like Ovid, Seneca, and Plutarch, the last of whom wrote two treatises specifically on abstinence from flesh. These classical writers are shown to have linked vegetarianism to moral purification, self-control, and resistance to cruelty. Christian figures such as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Chrysostom, and early ascetics are cited for their opposition to meat-eating as part of a spiritual discipline, although Williams also critiques the historical Church for abandoning this ethic in later centuries.

The Renaissance and Enlightenment chapters examine thinkers like Erasmus, Thomas More, Montaigne, and Rousseau. Williams gives special attention to Rousseau's assertion that pity is a natural human instinct, suppressed by the habits of flesh-eating. He includes numerous 17th- and 18th-century physicians and naturalists such as Gassendi, Cheyne, Ray, and Linnaeus, who used anatomical, physiological, and moral arguments to suggest that humans are not naturally carnivorous.

A major focus of the book is the Romantic and early modern era, with figures like William Cowherd, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Joseph Ritson, and William Lambe portrayed as pioneers of modern vegetarianism. Shelley's writings, in particular, are quoted at length for their passionate denunciations of the violence and degradation inherent in meat consumption. Williams also includes contemporaries such as Gleizes, Michelet, Lamartine, and Schopenhauer, as well as reformers associated with the Vegetarian Society (founded in 1847), including William Metcalfe and Sylvester Graham.

In addition to ethical and spiritual motives, Williams includes arguments based on hygiene, social economy, and compassion. He describes how the slaughterhouse, the use of animals for food, and the "barbarous custom" of flesh-eating have been denounced on grounds of health, waste, and moral coarseness. He maintains that true civilisation must reject the "reign of violence" over animals and replace it with a humane and rational mode of living.

Appendix

The book concludes with an appendix of additional authors and authorities not included in the main chapters, including excerpts from Buddhist scriptures and from later Western writers such as Jeremy Bentham and Lord Byron. Throughout, Williams combines historical narrative, excerpted texts, and his own editorial commentary to argue that ethical vegetarianism is not a modern fad but a deeply rooted moral tradition.

Reception

The Ethics of Diet has been recognised as an important contribution to the growth of the Victorian vegetarian movement. [4] It influenced several leading figures in the movement, including Henry S. Salt, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Tolstoyan writer Jaime de Magalhães Lima. [5] [6]

Gandhi later recalled the book's influence in his autobiography: [7]

My faith in vegetarianism grew on me from day to day. Salt's book Plea for Vegetarianism whetted my appetite for dietetic studies. I went in for all books available on vegetarianism and read them. One of these, Howard Williams' The Ethics of Diet, was a 'biographical history of the literature of humane dietetics from the earliest period to the present day'.

Tolstoy regarded the book highly, [8] : 83  writing:

The precise reason why abstinence from animal food will be the first act of fasting and of a moral life is admirably explained in the book, The Ethics of Diet; and not by one man only, but by all mankind in the persons of its best representatives during all the conscious life of humanity. [8] : 91–92 

Salt praised the book as "by far the most scholarly and exhaustive" of recent works on animal rights in his 1892 Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress . [9] Lima also drew heavily on Williams' work in his 1912 lecture O Vegetarismo e a Moralidade das Raças ("Vegetarianism and the Morality of the Races"). [6]

Publication history

The Ethics of Diet was first published in serial form between 1878 and 1883 in The Dietetic Reformer and Vegetarian Messenger , the monthly journal of the Vegetarian Society. [10] [11] It was first issued in book form in 1883 by F. Pitman in London and John Heywood in Manchester. [12]

A revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1896 under the new title, The Ethics of Diet: A Biographical History of the Literature of Human Dietetics, From the Earliest Period to the Present Day. [10] This edition included additional chapters on figures such as Asoka, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry David Thoreau, Richard Wagner, and Anna Kingsford. [13] In 1907, Albert Broadbent published an abridged version. [14]

Translations of the book were also published. A Russian edition appeared in 1892, featuring a foreword by Leo Tolstoy titled "The First Step". [10] A Swedish translation by Victor Pfeiff was published in Stockholm in 1900. [15]

Over time, the book became a rarity, available only in select libraries. [16] In 2003, the University of Illinois Press published a new edition, edited by feminist and animal rights author Carol J. Adams. [17] In her introduction, Adams wrote that Williams' work "reinstates vegetarianism as an ethical imperative within history by giving it a history". [18]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Smith, Virginia (23 September 2004). "Williams, Howard". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/41000.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ↑ Original edition: Williams, Howard (1883). The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating. London, Manchester: F. Pitman, John Heywood.
    2003 edition: Williams, Howard (May 2003) [1883]. Adams, Carol J. (ed.). The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating (includes the revisions and expansions of the 1896 edition). Introduction by Carol J. Adams. University of Illinois Press. ISBN   978-0-252-07130-0.
  3. ↑ Williams, Howard (1883). The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating. London, Manchester: F. Pitman, John Heywood.
  4. ↑ Gregerson, Jon (1994). Vegetarianism: A History. Fremont, Calif.: Jain Pub. Co. p. 78. ISBN   0-87573-030-2. OCLC   30073027. Not unimportant in the momentum gathered by the Vegetarian Movement in late Victorian England was a book by one Howard Williams entitled The Ethics of Diet, which was published in 1890.
  5. ↑ Calvert, Samantha Jane (June 2012). Eden's Diet: Christianity and Vegetarianism 1809–2009 (PDF) (PhD thesis). University of Birmingham. p. 203. Retrieved 13 July 2025.
  6. 1 2 Lima, Jaime de Magalhães (17 January 2008) [1912]. O Vegetarismo e a Moralidade das Raças [Vegetarianism and the Morality of the Races] (in Portuguese). Project Gutenberg.
  7. ↑ Gandhi, Mohandas (1948). "Part 1, chapter 15". The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press.
  8. 1 2 Tolstoy, Leo (1911). Essays and Letters. Translated by Maude, Aylmer. London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
  9. ↑ Salt, Henry Stephens; Leffingwell, Albert (1894). Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress. New York, London: Macmillan & Co. p. 128.
  10. 1 2 3 "Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910): The First Step". International Vegetarian Union . Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  11. ↑ Young, Liam (2017). Eating Serials: Pastoral Power, Print Media, and the Vegetarian Society in England, 1847–1897 (PhD thesis). University of Alberta. p. 63. doi:10.7939/R3JD4Q54B . Retrieved 18 January 2025.
  12. ↑ "History of Vegetarianism - The Ethics of Diet". International Vegetarian Union . Retrieved 18 January 2025.
  13. ↑ Williams, Howard (1896). The Ethics of Diet: A Biographical History of the Literature of Human Dietetics, From the Earliest Period to the Present Day (Revised and enlarged ed.). London: Sonnenschein. OCLC   1051591106.
  14. ↑ "The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams". The London Quarterly Review . 6 (108): 18. 1907.
  15. ↑ Williams, Howard (1900). Vegetarismen såsom lifsåskådning hos några dess förnämsta förkämpar i såväl gamla som nyare tider[Vegetarianism as a Worldview Among Some of Its Foremost Advocates in Both Ancient and Modern Times] (in Swedish). Translated by Pfeiff, Victor. Stockholm: Wilhelmsson. OCLC   186140665.
  16. ↑ "The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-Eating". UI Press. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  17. ↑ "Ethical Eating" . Gastronomica. 4 (4): 104–105. 1 November 2004. doi:10.1525/gfc.2004.4.4.104. ISSN   1529-3262.
  18. ↑ Williams, Howard (2003). Adams, Carol J. (ed.). The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN   0-252-02851-1. OCLC   50773643.

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