(p. 1)
[Note: This page number refers to the pages in
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BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE.
(1)
By Samuel Hopgood Hart
“All the earth is full of darkness and cruel
habitations.” (Psalm 74:20)
“I know that at some distant day, now, indeed,
perhaps very remote, the message we preach in a
corner will become a religion of great nations.”
(Anna Kingsford)
“Man’s whole idea and habit of life have become
to be so utterly at variance with all
possibility of the perfection of which his
existence is capable, that only by incessant and
unsparing denunciation can he be in any measure
impressed with their heinousness.” (Edward
Maitland)
ANNA KINGSFORD
was born on 16th September 1846, at
Stratford, in Essex. She was the daughter of
John Bonus, being the youngest of twelve
children. From her birth until her death she
suffered from ill-health, which she ascribed to
improper feeding by her ancestors, (2)
“her illness, weakness,
(p. 2)
and suffering surpassing anything conceivable,
save by those who had intimate knowledge of her
life.” But from her early childhood she believed
that she had come to this earth to accomplish
“some great and necessary work, on behalf both
of herself and of others, which she alone could
perform.” (1)
Deprived by her ill-health of the
usual outlets, she early took to writing, her
very first published production, a poem in
religious magazine, having appeared when she was
but nine years old; and her first book having
been written at the age of thirteen. (2)
So keen were her perceptions of the ideal, that
her disappointment with the actual, which she
felt throughout her life, was rendered all the
more bitter. Edward Maitland says: “Hatred of
injustice and its correlative cruelty,
especially towards animals, attained in her the
force and dignity of a passion,” and her
sensitiveness on this score was the cause of
“the chief mental misery of her life.” (3)
The death of her father in 1865 put her into
immediate possession of some £700 per annum, and
so made her independent as far as money was
concerned. (4)
In relating to Edward Maitland some
of the incidents of her early life, she said:
“Between my leaving school and being
married I was for a time passionately fond of
hunting, and, when not disabled by illness,
would spend the day in the saddle. (…) But
suddenly one day, while riding home after a
‘splendid run and finish,’ as it is called,
something in me asked me how I should like to be
served so myself, and set me looking at the
matter from the point of view of the hunted
creature, making me vividly to realise its wild
terror and breathless distress all the time it
is being pursued, and the ghastly horror of its
capture and death. It was even less, I believe,
my sense of pity than of justice that rebuked
and changed me. What right have I, I asked
myself, thus to ill-treat a creature simply
because it has a form which differs from my own?
Rather, if I am superior, do its weakness and
helplessness entitle it to my pity and
protection than justify me in seeking my own
gratification at its expense. And as for its
lower position on the ladder of evolution, if
there be evolution in one thing there must be in
another – if
(p. 3)
in the physical, then in the moral – so that for
a man to act thus is to renounce his moral gains
and abdicate his moral superiority. Of course
that was the end of my hunting, and thenceforth
I and my steed took our gallops by ourselves;
for however much I may like a thing, I can never
bring myself to do it while feeling it to be
wrong. In fact, such a feeling would prevent my
liking it.” (1)
It will be noticed from this and, in
fact, from all her writings how strong was her
sense of justice. Thus: “She would
recognise no hard-and-fast line between
masculine and feminine, human and animal, or
even between animal and plant. In her eyes,
everything that lived was humanity, only in
different stages of its unfoldment.” (2)
It was this sense of justice – “the essential of
which,” she said, “is a sense of solidarity” –
that also made her give up wearing furs. Shortly
before her death, when writing of “the horrors
of the seal-fishery,” she said:
“It is some years since I satisfied
myself that the fur trade, and the sealskin
trade in particular, were incompatible with the
gentle life it should be the aim of civilised
beings to lead, and since that time there have
been no furs in my wardrobe.” (3)
On the last day of 1867, she was
married to her cousin, Algernon Godfrey
Kingsford, who was then in the Civil Service,
but who shortly afterwards became a clergyman in
the Church of England; and being “full of the
ideas which possessed her respecting a work in
store [for her], she made it a special condition
of her marriage that it should not fetter her in
respect of any career to which she might be
prompted.” (4) Of this marriage
there was one child only – a daughter – who
survived her.
Some two or three years after her
marriage she undertook
(p. 4)
the risks and conduct, and became the proprietor
of the Lady’s Own Paper, a London weekly
magazine. (1) Her object in
running this magazine was not to make money, but
to make know her principles, which were
everything to her; but as these compelled her,
among other things, to exclude from the
advertising columns thereof notices of any wares
that failed to meet her approval, such as
preparations of meats, etc., “in fact, whatever
involved death in the procuring or ministered to
death in the using” – she was, “after a two
years’ trial and a loss of several hundred
pounds,” forced to abandon her enterprise.
(2)
When she renounced her magazine,
being “under the impression that such a step was
in some way related to the mission of which she
had received such and so many mysterious
intimations,” (3) she had already
come to the determination to devote herself to
the study of medicine, with a direct view to
qualify herself for accomplishing: first, the
abolition of vivisection – the existence of
which she, as editor of The Lady’s Own Paper,
had become aware of; and secondly, the abolition
of flesh-eating, she having, under the tuition
of her brother, Dr John Bonus, “adopted the
Pythagorean regimen of abstinence from
flesh-food, with such manifest advantage to
herself, physically and mentally, as to lead her
to see in it the only effectual means to the
world’s redemption, whether as regards men
themselves or the animals.” (4)
Writing, in 1879, to the Princess
Marie-Christina of Austria, she said: “I am
studying medicine in order to achieve the
abolition of the slaughter and torture of
animals, whether for food or for science.”
(5)
She must have given up flesh-eating
in, or prior to, the year 1871, for, in her
book, The Perfect Way in Diet, which was
published in 188I, she presented herself as an
example of “the beneficial effects of the
Pythagorean system of diet,” which, she said,
“for a period of ten years,” she had
“uninterruptedly maintained” (6)
and, in 1886, when writing of facts and
circunstances connected with her marvellous
dreaming faculty and experiences, she said:
“For the past
(p. 5)
fifteen years I have been an abstainer from
flesh-meats. Not a vegetarian, because during
the whole of that period I have used such animal
produce as butter, cheese, eggs, and milk.”
(1)
In the spring of 1873 she commenced
to study medicine. She had scarcely commenced
her studies when she had a very remarkable
experience. She received a letter from a lady
(who signed herself “Anna Wilkes”) who lived at
a distance from, and who was a complete stranger
to her. The writer stated that she had read with
profound interest and admiration In My Lady’s
Chamber (2) – a story written by Anna
Kingsford – and that after reading it she had
received from the Holy Spirit a message for her
(Anna Kingsford) which was to be delivered in
person, and would Mrs Kingsford receive her, and
when? After some hesitation, Anna Kingsford
asked her correspondent to come and see her, and
she subsequently gave to Edward Maitland the
following account of the meeting. She said:
“At the hour named I met her on the
way while she was driving from the station, and
was at once struck by her manner and appearance,
and subsequently by her conversation, as much as
I had been by her previous communication. She
was tall, erect, distinguished looking, with
hair of iron-grey, and strangely brilliant eyes.
She told me that she had received a distinct
message from the Holy Spirit, and had been so
strongly impressed to come and deliver it to me
in person that she could not refrain. Her
message was to the effect that for five years to
come I was to remain in retirement, continuing
the studies on which I was engaged, whatever
they might be, and the mode of life on which I
had entered, suffering nothing and no one to
draw me asside from them. And when these
probationary and preparatory five years were
past, the Holy Spirit would drive me forth from
my seclusion to teach and to preach, and that a
great work would be given me to do. All this she
uttered with a rapt and inspired expression, as
though she had been some sibyl delivering na
oracle. And when she had ended, seeing, no
doubt, my look of surprise, she asked me if I
thought her mad – a question to which I was at
some loss to reply, for I had encountered
nothing of the kind before, and was disposed to
share the impression which all ordinary and
worldly folk
(p. 6)
have always had concerning those who profess to
be prophets. Having delivered her message, my
prophetess kissed me on both cheeks and
departed.” (1)
In the summer of the same year there
appeared in the Examiner, with a notice
of a tale by Anna Kingsford, a notice of a book,
By and by: an Historical Romance of
the Future, by Edward Maitland. This led to
her reading the book, with which she found
herself so much in sympathy that she wrote to
Edward Maitland – with whom she was then
entirely unacquainted –proposing an interchange
of ideas. (2)
Some correspondence followed, and
later, Edward Maitland received an invitation to
visit her and her husband at their home at
Atcham, near Shrewsbury, her husband having been
appointed Vicar of Atcham. This invitation he
was not at the time able to accept, owing to
great age and infirmity of his mother, with whom
he then lived at Brighton, and the necessity of
his almost constant attendance on her.
Writing on 4th August
1873 to Edward Maitland, she said:
“I have been the editor of a woman’s
paper, and have addressed public meetings from
platforms. By adoption and profession I am a
member of that most conservative of churches,
the Roman Catholic, (3) but by
conviction I am rather a pantheist than anything
else; and my mode of life is that of a
fruit-eater. In other words, I have a horror of
flesh as food, and belong to the Vegetarian
Society. At present I am studying medicine with
the view of ultimately entering the profession,
– not for the sake of practice, but for
scientific purposes.” (4)
In a subsequent letter (dated 14th
August 1873) to Edward Maitland, referring to
her “peculiar ideas respecting diet,” she said:
“These ideas are, I am very well
persuaded, the future creed of a nobler and
gentler race. I laugh when I hear folks talk
hopefully on the coming age, which will decide
all the quarrels of the world by means of
international arbitration; and I have myself
been scores of times invited to take part in
‘Women’s Peace Conventions’ and the like. These
(p. 7)
poor deluded creatures cannot see that universal
peace is absolutely impossible to a carnivorous
race! If men feed like lions and tigers, they
will, by the necessity of things, retain the
nature of lions and tigers. (1)
(...) I want to establish my theory about diet,
and a few others belonging to the same category.
Several physicians are on the same track, and
all things appear to me indicate that the real
salvation of the human race lies in a return to
its ancient obedience to Nature. This primitive
condition is depicted in the Hebrew allegory
about the Garden of Eden. Man has no carnivorous
teeth. The whole formation of his internal
organs plainly presupposes his subsistence on
fruits, grains, and vegetables. He has the
rudiment of the third intestine peculiar to the
vegetable-eating creatures, and his
saliva-producing glands are those of the same
race. But he has degenerated it by his habits in
regard to diet, and debased himself.
Nevertheless, his moral instincts are still
against the habit he has adopted. For what
little child, what gentle woman, or even what
noble man, likes to see a sentient creature,
full of health and life, immolated by knife or
cord? Much less who, save a butcher, would care
to do the murder necessary (?) for a single
civilised dinner? I would like to force everyone
who feeds on flesh to slay his or her own prey.
I would like to oblige the fine lady to go and
cut the throat of the innocent lamb or the
pretty rabbit she wants to eat for her dinner.
If she really had the nature she imitates, that
would be a pleasant task to her. But she has it
not; because she is by nature a being of higher
race than the tiger or vulture.
I could bring forward endless proofs
of my theory, proofs collected by dint of long
and careful observation. And I know that
in proportion as man abandons the diet of flesh
and blood, and observers that of fruit and
grain, his spirit becomes purer, higher, and
diviner. So true is it that the body makes the
soul.” (2)
A notice of Anna Kingsford in
Light (3) says:
“The keynote
(p. 8)
to her teaching was the word Purity. She held
that man, like everything else, is only at his
best when pure. And her insistence upon a
vegetable diet – which she justified upon
grounds at once physiological, chemical,
hygienic, economical, moral, and spiritual – was
based upon the necessity to his perfection of a
purity of blood and tissue attainable only upon
a regimen drawn direct from the fruits of the
earth, and excluding the products of the
slaughter of innocent creatures.” (1)
In the autumn she passed her
preliminary examination at the Apothecary’s
Hall, “with success so great as to fill her with
high hopes of a triumphant passage through the
course of her student life.” (2)
In a letter (dated 24th
November) to Edward Maitland, she said:
“I see everywhere in the universe
inflexible, unchangeable Law; but Love I fail to
see, unless the Law involves it in its course. I
see everywhere prevailing the Rule of the
Strong. In the depths of the sea, in the remote
wilderness, in the open air of heaven, the swift
and the powerful gain the battle of life. The
dove is torn by the hawk, the fawn is murdered
by the tiger, the tiny goldfish is victimised by
some voracious cannibal of the waters. I see
everywhere slaughter, suffering, and terror; and
I score one to the theologians. For throughout
Nature, Life is continued by means of Death. Is
not the God who made all this just the very God
who would delight in the death of an innocent
victim? Is not the God who voluntarily surrounds
himself with carnage and misery just the very
God whom the sight of Calvary’s Cross would
please? Some years ago I wrote these words in an
essay for a magazine: ‘True religion is the
infelt sense of harmony with the universe.’
(...) I must confess that I have lately moved
from this standpoint of opinion. I do not find
myself, when at my highest altitude of feeling,
in harmony with the prevailing sentiment of
Nature. If I were, I should not be a vegetarian.
I should slay and eat, like the rest of my
species. But, nevertheless, I know well that
gentleness and horror of bloodshed characterise
all noble and great dispositions, even though
all these may not carry their ideas to a logical
and practical issue as I do. How, then,
reconcile this tenderness of soul with an
admiration of Nature’s dispensations? Is not the
morality of civilised man alone the
morality of
(p. 9)
Nature? Yet what a horrible inconsistency! What
a ludicrous anomaly! For is not Nature the
manifestation of God? And how, then, is it
possible for man, who is part of God, to be more
moral than the whole of which he is a fraction?
How, in Christian phrase, can man be more just
than his maker?” (1)
In replying, Edward Maitland said:
“I suggest that – supposing the
Supreme Cause to be intelligent and feeling in
our sense – it is not unimaginable that He may
totally disregard physical pain and death as of
no consequence in themselves, and look solely to
the evolution, through them, of the moral
nature. If the human conscience be the supremest
result of the universe, and the sole end worth
attaining, may it not be that such discipline as
is inseparable from the idea of pain is
essential to the production of that end?”
(2)
To this, Anna Kingsford replied:
“Once or twice I have fancied that
the key to the secret of the Universe might be
found in the Transmigration theory of wise old
Pythagoras. It has long been my serious and
profound conviction that if men have
immortal spirits, so also have all living
creatures. We cannot logically arrogate
perpetuity of being to our own species. And it
is just possible that the germ of the soul,
existing, perhaps, rudimentarily in the lowest
forms of vegetation, may gather strength to
itself by passing upwards through numberless
modes of being, until it culminates in man (...)
and at length mounts into higher atmospheres,
and departs to inhabit the many ‘many mansions’
of the Father among the starry spheres. But
this, of course, is the merest conjecture,
avowedly set forth to account for the fact of
earthly suffering among men and other living
creatures. (...) As your son has a taste for
medical study, it would be interesting and
useful to him to investigate the influences of
diet upon the system, and the relation of the
human digestive organs to food. This is one of
the most important items of the ‘sublime
science’ I mean to study it specially myself,
and am going to Paris for this purpose next
March. Women are admitted to the medical schools
there. I am disappointed to think there
is so small a chance of our meeting soon. I
comfort myself with the knowledge, however, that
we certainly shall meet some time.”
(3)
In the following January Edward
Maitland met Anna
(p. 10)
Kingsford for a short time one afternoon in
London. (1) In the Life of Anna
Kingsford he gives an interesting account of
this their first meeting. She then told him that
“justice as between men and women, human and
animal, were her foremost aims. For all
injustice was cruelty, and cruelty was, for her,
the one unpardonable sin. It was their cruelty
that more than anything else made her own kind
hateful to her. For she was not a lover of
humanity, if by that word be meant men and
women; her love was all principles, not for
persons.” (2) The meeting was
sufficient to convince him of the “unusual
character of the personality” with which he had
come into contact, and, at parting, he found
himself pledged to visit Anna Kingsford and her
husband at the earliest opportunity. This, as
will be seen, occurred in the following
February, and the importance of the visit cannot
be overrated, for it was from that time that the
collaboration between Anna Kingsford and Edward
Maitland which has been so much to the world may
be said to have begun. (3)
Edward Maitland was born on 27th
October 1824 at Ipswich. He was the son of the
Rev. Charles David Maitland, Perpetual Curate of
St. James’ Chapel, Brighton. When he first met
Anna Kingsford, his position was as follows: he,
too, had been conscious from an early age of
having “a mission in life”; (4) an
idea that had remained with him, gathering force
and consistency, until it was made clear to him
that “not destruction merely, but construction,
not the exposure of error, but the demonstration
of truth, was comprised in it.” (5)
He was bent on penetrating the secret of things
at first hand, and by means of a thought
absolutely free. He had been brought up in the
strictest of evangelical sects, and had, even as
a lad, begun to be revolted by the creed in
which he was reared – specially the tenets of
the depravity of man and vicarious atonement,
which he regarded as “a libel nothing short of
blasphemous against both God an man”: and he
early came to feel that “no greater boon could
be bestowed on the world that its emancipation
from the bondage of belief so degrading and so
destructive of any lofty ideal”: and that only
in such measure as he might be the means of
(p. 11)
their abolition would his life be a success and
a satisfaction to himself. He says:
“It even seemed to me that my own
credit was involved in the matter, and that in
disproving such beliefs I should be vindicating
my own character. For if God were evil, as those
doctrines made Him, I could by no possibility be
good, since I must have my derivation from Him.
And I knew that, however weak and unwise I might
be, I was not evil.” (1)
His life, too, like Anna
Kingsford’s, had been one of much isolation and
meditation. He says:
“I had felt myself a stranger even
with my closest intimates. For I was always
conscious of a difference which separated me
from them, and of a side to which they could not
have access. I had graduated at Cambridge with
the design of taking orders; but only to find
that I could not do so conscientiously, and to
feel that to commit myself to any conditions
incompatible with absolute freedom of thought
and expression would be a treachery against both
myself and my kind – for it was for no merely
personal end that I wanted to discover the
truth.” (2)
And so, after taking his degree, he
joined the band of “Forty-niners” to the then
newly discovered placers of California, and
remained abroad – from America passing to
Australia – for nearly ten years, during which
time he “experienced well-nigh every vicissitude
and extreme which might serve to heighten the
consciousness, toughen the fibre, and try the
soul of man.” (3)
While in Australia he married, “only
to be widowered after a year’s wedlock.”
(4) Of this marriage there was one
child, a son, who survived him, but who has
since died.
In 1857 he returned to England, and
after an interval devoted himself to literature
– writing for ideal reasons; but he did not
leave his trials behind him, for “vicissitudes
and struggles, and trials and ordeals,” awaited
him at home, and he was made to learn by
experience that only “by the bruising of the
outer, the inner is set free,” and that “man is
alive only so far as he has felt.” (5)
His books of this period brought him into
immediate fame. They were The Pilgrim
and the Shrine and Higher Law, and
the book to which I have referred, By and By.
(p. 12)
On visiting the Shropshire parsonage
in February 1874, Edward Maitland received from
Anna Kingsford and her husband a welcome “more
than cordial.” (1) He found that
she had laid aside all other pursuits for
science, and “her work-table was covered with
the insignia of her new engrossment”; (2)
but, in order that he might not have any
misconception on the subject, she again told him
that it was not for men and women – who seemed
to be her natural enemies – that she was taking
up medicine and science, not to cure their
ailments, but “for the animals and for knowledge
generally.” She said: “I want to rescue the
animals from cruelty and injustice, which are
for me the worst, if not the only sins. And I
can’t love both the animals and those who
systematically ill-treat them.” (3)
In connection with this, however, it must be
borne in mind that (as Edward Maitland has
pointed out), though she may not have loved men
and women, “she ardently loved that which men
and women are either in the making or in the
marring, in that her enthusiasm was for
Humanity”: and “Man, carnivorous and sustaining
himself by slaughter and torture, was not for
her man at all in any true sense of the term.
Neither intellectually nor physically could he
be at this best while thus nourished.” (4)
One great difficulty stood in the
way of Anna Kingsford carrying out her
determination to obtain a medical degree – at
any rate, in this country. Immediately after she
had passed her preliminary examination, the
medical authorities had seen fit to close their
schools against women students; and owing to
asthma, from which she was a great sufferer, she
could not, for the greater part of the year,
live in the country. It was essential then for
her to be in a large city. The nearest country
abroad where women were then admitted to medical
degrees was France, and Paris was a city in
which, when other places would be impossible for
her, she would be able to live, and in Paris she
would be able to prosecute her studies. Her
husband “desired only that she be happy in her
own way, and follow what career she preferred,
as by the terms of their engagement, as well,
also, as by her endowments and aspirations, he
considered her entitled to do”: (5)
but as was natural, and very rightly, he would
not consent to her
p. 13)
going alone and unprotected to Paris. He could
not himself leave his work to accompany her, and
neither of them knew of any person, relative or
friend, who was available for the purpose; nor
did they know of any family in Paris with whom
she could make a home. This was a difficulty
which none of them were then able to solve.
Meanwhile, Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland
“saw truth alike,” and it proved to be the same
with their respective aims in life. Edward
Maitland says:
“As I was bent on the construction
of a system of thought at once scientific,
philosophic, moral, and religious, and
recognisable by the understanding as indubitably
true, by reason of its being founded in first
principles; she was bent on the construction of
a rule of life equally obvious and binding, and
recognisable by the sentiments as alone
according with them, its basis being that sense
of perfect justice which springs from perfect
sympathy. By which it will be seen that while it
was her aim to establish a perfect practice,
which might or might not consist with a perfect
doctrine, it was my aim to establish a perfect
doctrine which would inevitably issue in a
perfect practice, by at once defining it and
supplying an all-compelling motive for its
observance.” (1)
During this visit, which lasted
nearly a fortnight, one subject especially
occupied them: this was the subject of
vivisection, of which he then heard for the
first time. It was a discovery which filled him
with “unspeakable horror and amazement,” and he
resolved to make the abolition of vivisection,
and the system represented by it, thenceforth
the leading aim of his life and work. (2)
As regards the question of diet:
Edward Maitland had “never been fully content
with the prevailing mode of sustaining our
organisms.” It had always struck him as
“inconsistent with the perfection conceivable as
possible, that man, the highest product of the
visible world, should be so constituted as to be
able to sustain himself only by doing violence,
not only to his sensitive fellow-creatures, but
to his own higher feeling.” (3)
Consequently, he was favourably disposed to give
practical heed to the arguments put before him
on behalf of the vegetarian regimen; and the
further consideration that
(p. 14)
only as an abstainer from flesh-food could he
with entire consistency contend against
vivisection, was a potent factor in his
decision. He recognised the distinction between
“death and torture as a broad one.” (1)
“But,” he says, “the statistics I now for the
first time perused, of the slaughter-house and
cattle traffic, shewed beyond question that
torture, and this prolonged and severe, is
involved in the use of animals for food as well
as for science.” (2)
Thus, the first important result of
this visit was that Edward Maitland became a
vegetarian.
The change in his mode of life was
soon productive of good results. It was, he
says, accompanied by “increased accessibility to
ideas,” and consequent enhanced capacity for
entering into relation with the region whence
ideas have their derivation. (3)
He says:
“Had we been in any degree
instructed in spiritual or occult science, we
should have known that the renunciation of
flesh-food, though in itself a physical act, has
ever been recognised by initiates as the prime
essential in the unfoldment of the spiritual
faculties; since only when man is purely
nourished can he attain clearness and fullness
of spiritual perception. (4) As it
was, neither of us had [then] even heard of
occult science, or of the necessity of such a
regimen to the perfectionment of faculty. She
had adopted it on grounds physiological,
chemical, hygienic, aesthetic, and moral; not on
grounds mental or spiritual. I undertook to
adopt it partly on the same grounds which had
influenced her, and partly with a view to
enhance and consolidate the sympathy subsisting
between us.” (5)
Referring to his “increased
accessibility to ideas,” he says:
“It is mainly to the increased
sensibility of my mental surfaces, through the
elimination from my system of all unsuitable
substances, that I ascribe the increased
accessibility to ideas of which I have spoken.
All my experience goes to show that it is not to
any original or unavoidable defect of material
or structure, but to the coarseness and
unsuitability of the food on which we are in the
habit of sustaining our organisms, that our
general insensibility to the finer influences
which pervade
(p. 15)
the universe – and by the operation of which
alone man becomes redeemable from exclusive
engrossment by the lower planes of his nature –
is ascribable. It is, I am confident, because
our sympathetic faculties are so dulled and
narrowed through our cruel and unnatural mode of
sustaining ourselves, that we have lost that
sense of oneness both with the whole of which we
are parts, and with our fellow-parts of the same
whole, in the due recognition and culture of
which religion and morality respectively
consist. We are accustomed to over-materialise
ourselves to such a degree as to lose all
cognisance of the immaterial and essential part
of us.” (1)
Edward Maitland considered that the
evils suffered by the world during the cycle
known as the historical, are “due to no inherent
defect, either of constitution or of
circumstance, but to a temporary and remediable
lapse from normal health through the misconduct
of life, and, primarily, through disobedience to
the laws of Purity (...) man must be made clean
outwardly in respect of his flesh by the washing
of water,” and “he must be made clean inwardly
in respect of his organism (...) by the
abjuration of a diet of blood and of all
poisonous infusions whatsoever, and by the
return to his natural sustenance – at once food
and medicine – the grains and herbs, the juices
of fruits, and vegetable oils; for so only will
he deposit tissues possessed of perfect
soundness, and have an organism capable of
attaining its full development in respect of all
the faculties of humanity, and build up his body
to be a pure temple and abode of the soul.”
(2)
A few weeks after Edward Maitland
had returned home from his visit to Atcham, he
received from Mr. Kingsford a letter informing
him that the time had come for his wife to go to
Paris, and, as he could not possibly quit his
duties to accompany her, asking him if he
(Edward Maitland) would do so; for, in default
of his compliance, she would be forced to
renounce her proposed career, and the
disappointment would be more than she could
bear, so entirely had she set her heart on it.
He added that the exposition would occupy only a
few days, the purpose being the preliminary one
of enrolment. Edward Maitland fell in with the
suggestion, and, after a few days sojourn in
Paris, they returned to England, she having
become a regularly enrolled student of the
University of Paris; and while in Paris, after
having overcome “obstacles which
(p. 16)
would have daunted any one of weaker will or
meaner purpose,” she obtained a permit from the
Minister of Public Education, accepting the
preliminary examination already passed by her in
London in lieu of the usual entrance examination
at Paris. This left her free to study where she
pleased until the commencement of the academic
year in the following autumn, when she would
again have to return to Paris. (1)
Edward Maitland says: “On returning
to England, she at once set to work on her
subjects for the autumn term at Paris, dividing
the time between her home and London. For,
although the schools were closed against her
sex, she could still obtain private tuition. The
death of my mother, which took place in the
summer of this year, set me free to leave
Brighton and go into chambers in London, where I
was in a position to be of service to my charge,
and to follow the lines of study in which we
were mutually interested.” While in London,
Edward Maitland spent much time at the British
Museum studying and analysing “the various
religious systems of antiquity.” He says:
“As I pursued my analysis of the
various systems of religion, steadfastly
following the while my reformed mode of diet, I
found myself, to my inexpressible delight,
coming into possession of a strangely entranced
faculty of ideation, which manifested itself in
a power of insight into problems which had
hitherto baffled me. It was as if my mental
surfaces had been cleansed and sensitised in
such wise as to render them accessible to
impressions and suggestions which formerly had
been too subtle and refined to obtain
recognition.” (2)
When the time arrived for her to
return to Paris for the autumn term, Edward
Maitland accompanied her and resumed his office
of escort as on the previous occasion. She then
settled down to prepare for he first examen
under the tuition of a professor who had
been recommended to her; and Edward Maitland
followed her course of studies with her, and
enabled her by dint of logical processes to
detect the philosophical fallacies enunciated by
her professor, who, though a man of a great
talent, was a thorough-going materialist, and an
adept in the elaboration of specious arguments.
(3)
Notwithstanding serious inroads made
on her time and strength by ill-heath, “she
worked to such excellent purpose as to pass her
examen with the highest credit, and to
rouse her
(p. 17)
professor’s enthusiasm to the utmost pitch,” and
he procured for her a magisterial permit
enabling her to pursue her studies at home until
the following autumn. They then returned to her
home at Atcham for Christmas, after which she
went to London, and studied physiology at the
school then recently opened in Henrietta Street
for women students of medicine, attended classes
in botany at Regent’s Park School, and took
private lessons in other subjects required.
(1)
In the autumn of 1875 she returned
to Paris, this time accompanied by her husband
and daughter, Edward Maitland remaining in
London. They took up their residence, near to
the medical schools, with a family or Irish
ladies, under whose care she was left when her
husband and daughter returned home for
Christmas. An interesting account of her first
experiences as a hospital student is to be found
in the Life of Anna Kingsford.
(2) While her success in her work was
remarkable, one thing brought her into constant
conflict with her tutor, and that was her
refusal to allow him to vivisect or experiment
on animals at her lessons. Her persistent
refusal led at length to his withdrawal,
compelling her to engage another.
Meanwhile, despite her hard work,
she from time to time reported to Edward
Maitland such of her hospital experiences as
were likely to interest him. In a letter,
written in 1876, she related the following: –
“In the hospital yesterday – at the
surgical consultation of La Pitié – there was a
man with a broken péroné, who fell to my
share.
‘Describe to me the accident which
caused this,’ said I.
‘I slipped. My leg slid under me,
and I fell.’
‘How came you to slip?’
‘The floor was swimming in blood,
and I slipped on the blood.’
‘Blood!’ cried I. ‘What blood?’
‘Madame, I am a slaughter-man by
trade. I had just been killing, and all the
slaughter-house was covered with blood.’
Oh, then, my heart was hardened. I
looked in the man’s face. It was of the lowest
type, deep beetle-brows, a wide, thick, coarse
mouth, a red skin – ‘savage’ was stamped on
every line of it.
(p. 18)
The world revolts me. My business is
not here. All the earth is full of violence and
cruel habitations. Elsewhere I shall find peace,
and there will I go to wait for you, and for the
few pure and merciful souls yet remaining here.
(...) What of life remains to me I will live in
doing my utmost against every form of cruelty.
(...) More and more every day it appears to my
mind that I am not of this world. Visions float
about me in the night that seem to warn me of
some unknown change perhaps awaiting me. I do
not know; but my state of mind of late has been
singularly clear and expectant. I fancy that
there is a future, and that I am meant to have
some special work beyond this plane of
existence, something for which I have been put
to school here.” (1)
Soon after this she passed her
second examen “with high credit.” Her
health, however, which was then in “an utterly
bad state,” necessitated a month at the seaside,
with “entire cessation of work,” and after a few
more weeks, which were divided between her own
home and her mother’s, the time came when it was
needful for her to return to her work in Paris.
She was again accompanied by her husband, who
this time had arranged to remain with her for a
prolonged period, his bishop having assented to
his engaging a substitute during his absence.
But shortly after their arrival she was taken so
ill that it was “impossible to say when, if
ever, she would be able to resume work.” They
accordingly decided to return to England at the
earliest opportunity, and:
“(…) permission was sought and obtained for her
to pursue her studies at home during the coming
winter without detriment to her academic
position, attendance at an English hospital
being accepted as an equivalent for attendance
for the same period at a French one. This was a
special favour granted, in consideration of the
circumstances, by the Minister of Public
Education, in compliance with a formal
application on her behalf from the authorities
of the university. She accordingly returned
home, and when sufficiently recovered to resume
her studies, took up her abode with a relative
at Chelsea, and obtained permission to attend
the Children’s Hospital in Great Ormond Street,
Bloomsbury.” (2)
Chelsea, however, did not agree with
her; and she, subsequently, in January 1877,
after having gone home for Christmas, removed
from Chelsea and became the guest of
(p. 19)
Letitia Going, a vegetarian lady and a
spiritualist, who lived in Jermyn Street; and
here she had the additional advantage of being
nearer to Edward Maitland than she had been when
at Chelsea. (1)
During the Christmas interval, which
he had spent with Anna Kingsford and her husband
at their home in Shropshire, Edward Maitland
made the following note, describing the aspect
at the time of a certain village which struck
him as “singularly illustrative of our condition
as a people.” He says:
“In the towns I had, of course, been
accustomed to see the festival of the nativity
of the Divine Life that had been born into the
world celebrated by the public exhibition in the
provision shops of the hecatombs of animal
corpses stripped of their skins. But this fair
village among the peaceful hills far surpassed
in sacrificial enthusiasm any homage which a
town could render to the gory Moloch of our
national orthodoxies. For some days before
Christmas the population had been engaged in the
annual killing of their pigs, a process which
for that whole period had involved the incessant
piercing of the skies by the agonised screams of
the innocents thus massacred in advance.
The slaughter was finished by
Christmas Eve, and the village sent out its
carollers over the country round to sing
hallelujahs about the ‘Lord of Life,’ and ‘It
was the joy of One,’ and ‘How beautiful upon the
mountains’; and the next morning saw them
flocking to the village church to do further
homage to the Genius of the day by reciting
services to the key-note of ‘Peace on earth, and
good will towards men!’ A thin fleece of
new-fallen snow covered the ground, as if sent
expressly to signify that Nature, even if she
had not condoned the violence done to her in the
persons of her porcine offspring, was anxious at
least for that sacred day to efface all evidence
of the deed. But the attempt was unsuccessful.
For in the gutters between the whitened foot-way
and road the blood ran in streams, while every
here and there a large ensanguined patch of snow
indicated the place of a standing pool of blood.
The decorations of the church, and the vigour of
the devotions of the congregation, whose
responses were fairly roared out, served to
aggravate the incongruity of the whole, and to
remind one that that rough little village was
but an epitome and résumé of all Christendom,
inasmuch as it
(p. 20)
was precisely the combination of lip-service and
blood-service, which ever constitute for a
priest-constructed orthodoxy the realisation of
perfection. And I wondered whether the Laureate
could have had such a scene in his mind when he
made his Harold ask of one who had turned
renegade –
‘What dost thou here,
Trampling thy mother’s bosom into blood?’”
(1)
(p. 21)
Reference has been made to the
increased accessibility to ideas which Edward
Maitland, after his renunciation of flesh-foods,
found himself possessed of. New faculties now
began to manifest themselves, and in them both.
For, in 1876, Edward Maitland and Anna Kingsford
found themselves possessed of psychic faculties
in such measure that “no longer did the veil
which divides the world sensible from the world
spiritual constitute an impassable barrier, but
both were open to view, and the latter was as
real and accessible as the former.” Edward
Maitland says:
“It was about the middle of 1876
that this remarkable accession of faculty began
to manifest itself in plenitude, I being the
first to experience it, notwithstanding my
previous total lack of any faculty of the kind,
or of the belief in the possibility of my having
it. (...) I found myself – without seeking for
or expecting it – spiritually sensitive in
respect of sight, hearing, and touch, and in
open, palpable relations with a world which I
had no difficulty in recognising as of celestial
nature; so far did it transcend everything of
which I had heard or read in the annals of the
contemporary spiritualism; so entirely did it
accord with my conceptions of the divine.”
Edward Maitland, so far as he was
concerned, ascribed this accession of faculty
to, in part, the purification that his physical
system had undergone by means of his new dietary
regimen. (1)
In this connection, Edward Maitland
relates the following interesting occurrence
which happened early in 1877, and which, he
says, “while in itself singular in the extreme,
threw an unexpected light on an obscure part of
the Bible and on the spiritual significance of
certain animal forms.” He and Anna Kingsford
were in London, which place they had arranged to
leave on the evening of 29th March,
on a visit to her mother at Hastings. When she
awoke on the morning of the day in question, she
suddenly saw before her in waking vision a
collection of dragons, scorpions, serpents,
lobsters, and various creeping things, large and
small, while a voice said to her, “Keep him
[Edward Maitland] from touching these; if he
touch the flesh of these, you must not suffer
him to come
(p. 22)
near to you.” Edward Maitland says:
“She told me of this vision in the
course of the day, and drew for me some of the
forms of the animals; for so vivid had been the
sight, that she had every detail perfectly
impressed on her mind. But through some
interruption to our conversation she omitted to
tell me of the prohibition. She had, moreover,
no apprehension of any of the animals shewn
coming in my way, or of my eating of them should
they do so.
In the afternoon, however, owing to
the presence of a visitor who desired something
different from the diet usual in the house, a
lobster appeared on the table. At this she [Anna
Kingsford] was somewhat dismayed, for it gave
rise to the suggestion that her vision might be
prophetic and have an unanticipated
significance. Even now, she did not tell me of
the positive prohibition, but imagined it was
intended as a test; and that if I
partook, she was not go on her journey with me.
Consequently, after a general remark from her,
intended as a dissuasion against the eating of
anything that had to be put to so cruel a death
as is reputed of the lobster, I, regarding it as
fish and ‘cold-blooded,’ and therefore, in the
absence of a sufficiency of perfectly
insensitive food, allowable, partook of it, but
through some cause I could not define did no
more than taste it. Shortly after this she rose,
and quitted the room, saying she should not be
able to go that evening.
After venting her disappointment
alone – for she had been eagerly looking forward
to he holiday – she returned, and said that she
saw now that she had been wrong in not having
told me the whole vision; but that she had
mistaken the meaning of the words uttered, and
that, as she now perceived, they were not a
test, but a positive prohibition. And we then
sat down to consult our Genii (1)
through the planchette (2)
concerning the occurrence, deeming it likely
that the vision had been of their sending.
(p. 23)
We both, as usual, placed our hands
on the instrument; but, after waiting for some
time, there was no response. I then withdrew my
hand in order to reduce the amount of the light
in the room, but sat down again without doing so
on finding that the writing had begun. On
replacing my hand, it ceased. I withdrew it, and
it went on again. And so again the third time.
Thereupon I withdrew it altogether. It then
wrote:
‘Let him go. We can do nothing with
him now.’
‘For how long is this? Can we go
tomorrow?’ we asked.
To which it wrote:
‘If he purge himself tonight, you
may go; but he may ask nothing of us for seven
days.’
‘What is the meaning of this
prohibition?’
‘The spirits who hold intercourse
with you belong to an order which can have no
dealings with eaters of reptiles, whether of sea
or land. For all things which move upon the
belly are cursed for the sake of the evil one,
whose seal is set on all serpents, dragons, and
scorpions, such as we shewed you.’
In answer to further questioning,
they said:
‘If he take a purge, you may go with
him tomorrow.’
I complied with their injunction,
and the next morning we asked some further
questions respecting this strange affair. Among
other queries, we inquired whether they endorsed
the whole of the Levitical code, for we had
recognised and found a passage corresponding to
the above. To this they replied:
‘No, else you would have been
destroyed already.’
‘Is it right to eat flesh?’ was then
asked; to which it was replied:
‘We do not say it is right; and even
for you it would be unlawful to eat flesh.’”
(1)
On another occasion, they were, in
like manner, informed by their Genii
that:
(p. 24)
“Man’s perfect diet is grain, the
juice of fruits, and the oil of nuts:” (1)
When the time came for her return to
Paris, she was accompanied by her husband, her
daughter, and her daughter’s governess; her
husband remaining with them until they were
settled. Some weeks later, in July, she then
being very unwell, Edward Maitland, at her
husband’s suggestion and her request, joined her
until her husband could replace him, which he
did in the following month, when Edward Maitland
returned to London.
During the time that Edward Maitland
was with her, they received, through the
planchette, the following message: –
“Teach the doctrine of the Universal
Soul and the Immortality of all creatures.
Knowledge of this is what the world most needs,
and this is the key-note of your joint mission.
On this you must build; it is the key-stone of
the arch. The perfect life is not attainable for
man alone. The whole world must be redeemed
under the new gospel you are to teach.”
(2)
In September Anna Kingsford returned
home for a short time. The following extract
from a letter, dated 23rd September
1877, written by her to Edward Maitland, records
another of her wonderful experiences: one which
has important bearing on the subject of this
book, and which she regarded as “a new
revelation of great import and of an astonishing
nature”: and which, Edward Maitland says,
“contained several things which, at the time,
were beyond not only our own but the world’s
knowledge, for their meaning had long been
lost.” (3) In her letter she says:
“You must know that I passed
yesterday afternoon in reading through the book
Fruit and Bread, which had been sent me
anonymously. The book struck me much, but I am
bound to say that I did not attach any great
importance to it, and never dream that it had
come into my hands in any other than an ordinary
chance fashion. I was not, therefore,
exclusively in my thoughts when night came; and
I was by no means prepared for the vision which
the (full) moonlight brought me after I had gone
to rest. I might keep it till we meet, but as
possibly it might by that time lose something of
its vividness, or some of the words spoken might
slip my
(p. 25)
memory, I think it best to commit it at once to
paper while it is fresh in my mind.
I saw in my sleep a great table
spread upon a beautiful mountain, the distant
peaks of which were covered with snow, and
brilliant with a bright light. (1)
Around the table reclined twelve persons, six
male, six female, some of whom I recognised at
once, the others afterwards. Those whom I
recognised at once were Zeus, Hera, Pallas
Athena, Phoebus Apollo, and Artemis. (2)
I knew them by the symbols they wore. The table
was covered with all kinds of fruit, of great
size, including nuts, almonds, and olives, with
flat cakes of bread, and cups of gold, into
which, before drinking, each divinity poured two
sorts of liquid, one of which was wine, the
other water. As I was looking on, standing on a
step a little below the top of the flight which
led to the table, I was startled by seeing Hera
suddenly fix her eyes on me, and say: ‘What
seest thou at the lower end of the table?’ And I
looked, and answered: ‘I see two vacant seats.’
Then she spoke again and said: ‘When you are
able to eat of our food and to drink of our cup,
you also shall sit and feast with us.’ Scarcely
had she uttered these words, when Athena, who
sat facing me, added: ‘When you are able to eat
of our food and to drink of our cup, then you
shall know as you are known.’ And immediately
Artemis, whom I knew by the moon upon her head,
continued: ‘When you are able to eat of our food
and drink of our cup, all things shall become
pure to you, and ye shall be made virgins.’
(3)
Then I said: ‘O Immortals, what is
your food and your drink, and how does your
banquet differ from ours, seeing that we also
eat no flesh, and blood has no place in our
repasts?’
Then one of Gods, whom at the time I
did not know, but have since recognised as
Hermes, (4) rose from the table
and,
(p. 26)
coming to me, put into my hands a branch of a
fig-tree bearing upon it ripe fruit, and said:
‘If you would be perfect, and able to know and
to do all things. Quit the heresy of Prometheus.
Let fire warm and comfort you externally; it is
Heaven’s gift. But do not wrest it from its
rightful purpose, as did that betrayer of your
race, to fill the veins of humanity with its
contagion, and to consume your interior being
with its breath. All of you are men of clay, as
was the image which Prometheus made. Ye are
nourished with stolen fire, and it consumes you.
Of all the evil uses of Heaven’s good gifts,
none is so evil as the internal use of fire. For
your hot foods and drinks have consumed and
dried up the magnetic power of your nerves,
sealed your senses, and cut short your lives.
Now, you neither see nor hear; for the fire in
your organs consumes your senses. Ye are all
blind and deaf, creatures of clay. We have sent
you a book to read. Practice its precepts, and
your senses shall be opened. (...)’
‘Do you, then,’ I asked, ‘desire the
whole world to abandon the use of fire in
preparing food and drink?’
Instead of answering my question, he
said: ‘We shew you the excellent way.
(...) We have told you all that can be shewn you
on the level on which you stand. But our perfect
gifts, the fruits of the Tree of Life, are
beyond your reach now. We cannot give them to
you until you are purified and have come up
higher. The conditions are GOD’S; the will is
with you.’
These last words seemed to be
repeated from the sky overhead, and again from
beneath my feet. And at the instant I fell, as
if shot down like a meteor from a vast height;
and with the swiftness and shock of the fall I
awoke.
You may guess how full my heart was!
(...) I suspect that (...) we shall really have
to abandon the use of cooked foods, and to live
like John the Baptist and the old desert saints,
before we can get what the Gods promise. Have
you courage sufficient for this? When one thinks
what it is one is buying at the price,
the sacrifice seems a slight thing indeed. And
in view of your consenting, I will ask you to
get some packets of ‘crushed wheat,’ instead of
the tea we were going to take out – the plain
crushed wheat, I mean. I felt curiously guilty
this morning as I ate my egg and drank my hot
coffee! And I had always considered my food so
simple and pure! Now I regard myself as a mere
groveller – a worm and an ‘image of clay.’ My
mind is full of the Gods and of Prometheus,
(p. 27)
and I can’t think of anything else for five
minutes together. (...)”
During the year 1877, she passed her
first Doctorat examen with distinction.
(1)
Allied to the question of the
slaughter of animals for food, is that of the
slaughter of animals for sacrifice. There are
some who believe – or profess to believe – that,
many years ago, God commanded Moses to have
animals slaughtered for religious sacrifices!
They base this belief on certain passages –which
they invariably interpret literally – that are
to be found in the Bible; and this alone, for
them, is final and conclusive, and settles the
matter; and they argue that “as God commanded
that animals were to be killed for sacrificial
purposes, it cannot be wrong for man to kill
them for other purposes, such as food, etc.”
These Biblical advocates for animal slaughter,
flesh-eating, and other cruelties, never pray to
be delivered from “blood-guiltiness,” or try to
understand what “blood-guiltiness” and
“blood-thirstiness” mean; (2) nor
do they lay any, the least, stress on the fact
that only those Statutes are of the Lord (and
therefore right), that “rejoice the heart”;
(3) nor do they believe that it has
ever entered into the Divine Providence to “save
both man and beast,” (4) much less
do they consider it to be the distinguishing
mark of “a righteous man” that he should regard
“the life of his beast”; (5) and
as to believing or feeling that “it is good not
to eat flesh nor drink wine” (6) –
such thoughts, though to be found expressed in
language most explicit in the Bible, are far
from them. It is sufficient for them that there
are to be found in the self-same Bible some
passages which, apparently, justify flesh-eating
and other barbarous customs of which they
approve: and this leads to the question whether
they rightly interpret the Bible or the part
thereof to which they appeal in justification of
their wrong-doing.
In June 1878, Anna Kingsford
received, in sleep, an instruction Concerning
the Interpretation of the Mystical Scriptures,
(7) which has a very important
bearing on the subject of Biblical
interpretation in connection with animal
sacrifice. A portion of this instruction she
read in a book, in a library purporting to be
that of Emanuel Swedenborg. The remainder
(p. 28)
of it she heard delivered as a lecture “by a man
in priestly garb, in an amphitheatre of white
stone, to a class of students (of whom she was
one), who took notes of it.” What she had read,
she wrote down immediately on waking, and the
notes that she had taken of what she had heard,
she was also, on waking, able to reproduce from
memory, her memory having been abnormally
enhanced, for “the words presented themselves
again to her as she wrote, and stood out
luminously to view.” (1) The gist
of the Instruction was that the “Books of
Moses the Prophet” are not historical but
mystical, and ought, therefore, to receive not a
literal but a mystic or allegorical
consideration; and a considerable portion of it
was used by Edward Maitland in his Lecture on
Vegetarianism and the Bible, (2)
which appears in another part of this book.
The following passage on the
sacrifices said to have been offered up by Cain
and Abel respectively is of interest: –
“It is not to be supposed that the
two sacrifices offered to God by the sons of
Adam were real sacrifices, any more than it is
to be supposed that the Apple which caused the
Doom of Mankind was a real apple. It ought to be
known, indeed, for the right Understanding of
the Mystical Books, that in their esoteric sense
they deal, not with material Things, but with
spiritual Realities; and that as Adam is not a
Man, nor Eve a Woman, nor the Tree a Plant in
its true signification, so also are not the
Beasts named in the same Books real Beasts, but
that the Mystic Intention of them, is implied.
When, therefore, it is written that Abel took of
the Firstlings of his Flock to offer unto the
Lord, it is signified that he offered that which
a Lamb implies, and which is the holiest and
highest of Spiritual Gifts. Nor is Abel himself
a real Person, but the Type and spiritual
Presentation of the Race of the Prophets; of
whom, also, Moses was a Member, together with
the Patriarchs. (...)
They are Idolaters who understand
the Things of Sense where the Things of the
Spirit are alone implied.” (3)
At the beginning of June 1878, her
second Doctorat examen, which she was
anxious to pass with as much distinction as she
had passed her first, was pending. The date
originally fixed for this examination was 5th
June, “but her professor, distrusting
(p. 29)
the examiners appointed for the occasion, partly
because of the known hostility of some of them
to women students, and partly because he had
prepared her from books other than those written
by the examiners themselves – a circumstance
likely to be resented by them – had persuaded
her to get the date of her examination postponed
for a few da
