On the eating of flesh II (5)

Yet even if the argument of the migration of souls from body to body is not demonstrated to the point of complete belief, there is enough doubt to make us quite cautious and fearful. It is as though in a clash of armies by night[*] you had drawn your sword and were rushing at a man whose fallen body was hidden by his armour and should hear someone remarking that he wasn’t quite sure, but that he thought and believed that the prostrate figure was that of your son or brother or father or tent-mate - which would be the better course: to approve a false suspicion and spare your enemy as a friend, or to disregard an uncertain authority and kill your friend as a foe? The latter course you will declare to be shocking. Consider also Merope[*] in the play raising her axe against her son himself because she believes him to be that son’s murderer and saying

This blow I give you is more costly yet -

what a stir she rouses in the theatre as she brings them to their feet in terror lest she wound the youth before the old man can stop her! Now suppose one old man stood beside her saying, Hit him! He’s your enemy, and another who said, Don’t strike! He is your son: which would be the greater misdeed, to omit the punishment of an enemy because of the son, or to slay a child under the impulse of anger against an enemy? In a ease, then, where it is not hate or anger or self-defence or fear for ourselves that induces us to murder, but the motive of pleasure, and the victim stands there under our power with its head bent back and one of our philosophers says, Kill it! It’s only a brute beast; but the other says, Stop! What if the soul of some relative or friend has found its way into this body? - Good God! Of course the risk is equal or much the same in the two cases - if I refuse to eat flesh, or if I, disbelieving, kill my child or some other relative!