A Brief Account of the First Concordium, or Harmonious Industrial College (1843)

AUTHOR: Anonymous. The attribution of authorship to "HAM" may indicate collective authorship on the part of the community at Ham Common.

PUBLICATION: Published at the Concordium, 1843.
https://archive.org/details/briefaccountoffi00hams

The text explicitly advocates ethical veganism, not just dietary veganism.

KEYWORDS: food, animals, ethical veganism, spirituality and religion, education, health

This short pamphlet expounds the philosophy and principles of the community (Concordium) based at Alcott House in Ham, a district of Richmond in Surrey, England. The creation of the Vegetarian Society in England in 1847 owed much to supporters of this community and several members of the Ham Concordium—most notably Charles Lane—participated in the Fruitlands experiment in New England. The principle of ethical abstention practiced at Ham and Fruitlands is explored in this text specifically in relation to veganism.

Opening the discussion is the claim that “with Love, Wisdom, Power, the triune universe law, all principles must accord; that on the immutable basis whence this law emanates man is sustained, and that submission to it in all motives, and obedience to it in all acts are primarily important. Taking, then, their rules from this highest law, the inmates proceed to the practical working in accordance with it, and in so doing, find it needful to adopt the most simple and industrious habits of life, as being the best conditions for the evolution of good in the moral, intellectual, and physical spheres” (1).

“The general reason for their abstinence from the accustomed dietary, and other modes and usages of the world, is, that the universe law may not be transgressed by unnecessary cruelty; that the development of the moral and intellectual faculties in connexion with the Universe Spirit, may be uninterrupted; that life may not be attracted solely to the physical organs and the enjoyment of the senses. Sensuous gratifications are obstructive to the expansion both of the intellectual faculties, the divine sympathies, and the establishment of Being affinities with the divine nature” (3). “Instead of cultivating the breed of animals for amusement and use, and, by feeding upon them, exciting a barbarous desire for torture, slaughter, and death—instead of these every-day acts of barbarity, they fain would prepare for the intellectual faculties such conditions as will draw forth the reasoning powers, the clear perceptions of all varied truths” (3).

In other words, a vegan lifestyle is part and parcel of “prepar[ing] the soul for its highest destiny, that we may have noble designs, holy objects, derived from the extensive and intensive developments of the nobler portion of our Being in direct and harmonious association with Love” (3-4). The aim is to foster “a glowing affection” for “all beings, human, animate, and inanimate” (4). “If his love for goodness and his fellow creatures be strong, he will not reluctantly sacrifice his own personal conveniences for the sake of lessening the evils of an ignorant, a starving, a perishing world; while he will daily more deeply feel the joy that is opened in the affections, the intelligence in the understanding, and the energy in the action, of those whose nature is wholly submissive to the Spirit in its three-fold aspect.” (5)

Many particular and concrete reasons can be given in favor of ethical veganism, but the most important reason concerns the severing from triune universality. Veganism is a way of re-attuning humans to the “universal laws” (6). “Therefore, with the Concordist it is not health or pleasure that decides the food question, but submission to the Love-law, and its inwardly wrought sensibilities—submission to the inward voice, which, since the world began, has pleaded for purity, and declared that self, with its appetites, must be denied, if the inner man, the Spirit Love, is to rule in holiness, chastity, and glory.” (6)

 

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