Would you consider it wise or Theosophical, or right to enforce the collection of a debt by law. Would it not be better to lose than to stir up bad feeling; pitying our debtor rather than hating him?
Would it not be Theosophical to send a receipt in full to all our debtors who show themselves unwilling to pay?
In the first place what is wise is Theosophical, and what is wise and Theosophical must be right. Under the present organization of society ownership is necessary, and it is therefore right for one to protect himself in his lawful ownership. If a debtor is able and refuses to pay a just debt he should be compelled to pay. To collect a debt, justly due, by process of law does not indicate hatred of the debtor by the creditor, but rather a desire for justice from the debtor. To send receipts in full to debtors refusing to pay would be only an encouragement of injustice. He who justly owes and refuses to pay brings upon himself the karma of that refusal, whether it be a suit at law, or the ruin of his credit. Justice is more than a sentiment, it is a principle. Forgiveness is a sentiment only. To "forgive" a just debt and allow it to go unpaid because of the refusal of the debtor is to make ourselves the agent for deferring Karma, which might have been entirely exhausted by the payment of his debt. We are thus hindering rather than helping him. — Paul.
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Is it consistent for a meat-eater to be an anti-vivisectionist?
Suppose we grant for a moment that it is not consistent. But why should we draw the line at meat-eating? Is it right to take life at all? Then where shall we stop? Plants and vegetables have their life too! Why cut down a plant or uproot a vegetable if in so doing you destroy its life! Will you any longer pluck flowers and cut short their beauty and fragrance that you may adorn yourself? Or will you refuse to destroy vermin? Then go a step farther, will you continue to breathe when you learn that with every breath you draw you destroy myriads of creatures? Every vital process of the body implies the destruction of living forms.
It maybe thought that this is going to extremes and you may say that breathing is essential to the maintenance of life, that too the body requires food but that life can be supported without meat-eating. Yet it is only by viewing the question in all its aspects that we can hope to come to a correct solution of it.
In my judgment the test of right and wrong and of consistency in this as in all matters is duty. If the performance of duty requires bodily health and if in certain cases this cannot be maintained save by meat-eating then, I say, eat meat by all means. It is of no avail to say that some can maintain health without meat-eating or that all could do so if they went about it in the right way; the fact remains that as at present constituted the majority of men and women cannot maintain health without meat-eating.
I fully believe there will come a time in the evolution of the race when meat-eating will no longer be necessary or desired, but it is folly for us to pretend that we have yet attained to that point. The majority of men and women in the Western world both desire meat, and cannot maintain health or perform their duties without it.
Apply the same test of duty to vivisection. Is this practice essential to the performance of duty? Has it benefitted man, has it advanced science? The great majority of the medical profession are opposed to vivisection, and some of the most eminent physicians deny that any good has come from its practice. (See article "A Great Unpunished Crime," published in Theosophy, July, 1897.) Meat-eating and vivisection do not come in the same category.
Yet as the ideas of Brotherhood spread, as men and women begin to realize that they live not for themselves alone, but for all people and all creatures, as we purify our thoughts and ennoble our lives, gradually the present conditions will change, tastes will become simpler, the animal nature more controlled and there will no longer be a desire for meat. Surely the natural and right way to bring about this condition is to transform one's nature and elevate one's life, — to strike at the cause of the desire, not at the effect.
Mr. Judge once said "it is not a question of what we eat, but of how we eat."
Do we eat for the sake of enjoyment and gratification of the palate or with the view of fitting ourselves to perform our duties? The primal question is one of duty. If this be followed, all minor questions such as that of meat-eating will fall naturally into place and find ready solution.