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ness to animals, abstention from brutal treatment of them, and causing them no needless suffering.
As regards animal food, I may remind you that, the Buddhists were principally abstainers from it, as long as Buddhism flourished in India. But as soon as it spread in Northern countries, Buddhists too took to animal food, not I think for its taste, but because in the long run they found out that they could not live an active life in an inclement climate without it. And so it is with us. Besides, the production of vegetable iood causes unavoidable destruction of countless insects by tilling the ground, and it would be impossible (at least in this part of the globe ) to rear most vegetables and fruit without waging a continuous war against noxious animals. I make this remark in order to explain, why Europeans take a different view of what you think about these matters.
But let us not urge what divides us, but emphasize what unites us and all those that earnestly search for the truth. Notwithstanding differences of creed, we are at one, all over the world, about what is really essential.
With repeated thanks for your kind words, believe me to be,
Your sincere friend, 59, Niebuhrstrasse
H. JACOBI. Bonn, 8th April 1910.
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