The custom which prevailed so widely on vanished Atlantis of offering animals and slaughtering prisoners during the periodical religious rituals, and which was carried over by the survivors into African, American, and Asiatic civilizations of historic times, has died out as purer and more rational concepts of religion have risen. But the custom of offering animals to please not a divine being but a human one, is just as prevalent today as the stupid Atlantean barbarity formerly was. Men still breed hapless four-legged creatures by the million only to slay them in the end and serve them at meals. Such destruction is carried out without feeling, without conscience, and without real necessity. And what right does any of these human beings have to destroy the existence of such a multitude of creatures who have their own place, function, and purpose in the divine World-Idea? In claiming for himself such a right, man arrogantly proclaims himself wiser than his Creator and in disturbing the creation itself by his bloody habits of eating, he violates sacred laws for which he is duly punished. His health suffers, his passions are never allayed, and his violence in war is never ended.
-- Notebooks Category 5: The Body > Chapter 3 : Diet > # 101
