Absolute Justice, Kindness and Kinship — Page 62
The Animal Kingdom 61 relates to the food consumption of man for his survival, we take up the question of the eating of animal flesh once again. If man had free choice, he could hunt any animal to satiate his basic urge for survival and also satisfy his personal tastes and likings. It is not possible to expect each man to achieve the same tenderness and taste as others, and so the spectrum of choices grows very wide. Also, this offers a good opportunity to compare man’s instinctive features to the lower stages of animal life. The food habits in the animal kingdom are specifically programmed and individual variation of taste and value play little role in their overall behaviour. In man, however, the widening of options and choices has greatly enlarged the field of his eating habits. Man has now evolved to a stage where, in spite of his urge for meat eating, he can control and suppress his desire in favour of other options—a completely different trend from other animal behaviour. Here his developed mental faculties and a much wider spectrum of awareness, make it possible for him to reject his inner impulses for the sake of a higher ideal. This ideal becomes so important for him that he is able to sacrifice his natural urges and find satisfaction in an alternative, and despite his strong urge for eating flesh, he can command himself not to submit to that urge. Animals are only controlled by their intuition while humans can make choices. They can behave