slaughtering of animals for food, or the killing off of animal pests,
or the trapping, shooting, or hunting of animals for sport or profit,
nor yet would he seek to prevent their utilisation of animals for the
acquirement of knowledge.

He would direct his efforts to reducing the pain which is inflicted,
and to preserving everywhere measure and scale--not sentimentally
forbidding in connexion with one form of utilisation of animals what
is freely allowed in connexion with another--but differentiating, if
differentiating at all in favour of permitting the infliction of
proportionately greater suffering in the case where national and
humanitarian interests, than in the case where mere recreation and
luxury and personal profit, are at stake.

Having recognised what reason would prescribe to the legislative
reformer, we have next to inquire how far the man voter conforms to
these prescriptions of reason, and how far the woman reformer would do
so if she became a voter.

Let it be noted that the man in the street makes no question about
falling in with the fact that he is born into a world of violence, and
he acquiesces in the principle that the State, and, failing the State,
the individual, may employ force and take life in defence of vital
material interests. And he frankly falls in with it being a matter of
daily routine to kill and inflict suffering upon animals for human
profit or advantage.

Even if these principles are not formulated by the man in the street
in quite such plain terms, he not only carries them out in practice,
but he conducts all his thinking upon these presuppositions.