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                          Transcriber’s Notes

This e-text is based on ‘The Ethics of Diet,’ from 1883. Inconsistent
and uncommon spelling and hyphenation have been retained; punctuation
and typographical errors have been corrected. Quotations, particularly
in languages other than English, have not been changed. Some footnote
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the position where they make sense on the page in question.

The succession of chapter titles in the table of contents has been
rearranged for chapters XLIII.–XLVII. to match the order of chapters
printed in the text. Neither the author Louis Lémery, referred to in
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reference has been retained, though.

Passages in italics have been surrounded by _underscores_; small
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                          THE ETHICS OF DIET.

                               A Catena
                                  OF
       AUTHORITIES DEPRECATORY OF THE PRACTICE OF FLESH-EATING.

                                  BY
                         HOWARD WILLIAMS, M.A.

   “Man by Nature was never made to be a carnivorous animal, nor is
                 he armed at all for prey and rapine.”
                               --_Ray._

 “Hommes, soyez _humains_! c’est votre premier devoir. Quelle sagesse
                y-a-t-il pour vous hors de l’humanité?”
                             --_Rousseau._

                     “Der Mensch ist was er isst.”
                          --_German Proverb._

       LONDON: F. PITMAN, 20, PATERNOSTER ROW; JOHN HEYWOOL, 11,
    PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, MANCHESTER: JOHN HEYWOOD, DEANSGATE AND
                              RIDGEFIELD.

                                 1883.

                       [_All Rights Reserved._]




CONTENTS.


       CHAP.                                                       PAGE.

             Preface                                              i.-vi.

          I. Hesiod                                                    1

        II. Pythagoras                                                 4

        III. Plato                                                    12

         IV. Ovid                                                     23

          V. Seneca                                                   27

         VI. Plutarch                                                 41

        VII. Tertullian                                               51

       VIII. Clement of Alexandria                                    56

         IX. Porphyry                                                 63

          X. Chrysostom                                               76

         XI. Cornaro                                                  83

        XII. Thomas More                                              90

       XIII. Montaigne                                                94

        XIV. Gassendi                                                100

         XV. Ray                                                     106

        XVI. Evelyn                                                  107

       XVII. Mandeville                                              113

      XVIII. Gay                                                     115

        XIX. Cheyne                                                  120

         XX. Pope                                                    128

        XXI. Thomson                                                 134

       XXII. Hartley                                                 138

      XXIII. Chesterfield                                            139

       XXIV. Voltaire                                                141

        XXV. Haller                                                  156

       XXVI. Cocchi                                                  157

      XXVII. Rousseau                                                159

     XXVIII. Linné                                                   164

       XXIX. Buffon                                                  166

        XXX. Hawkesworth                                             168

       XXXI. Paley                                                   169

      XXXII. St. Pierre                                              173

     XXXIII. Oswald                                                  179

      XXXIV. Hufeland                                                184

       XXXV. Ritson                                                  185

      XXXVI. Nicholson                                               190

     XXXVII. Abernethy                                               196

    XXXVIII. Lambe                                                   198

      XXXIX. Newton                                                  205

         XL. Gleïzès                                                 208

        XLI. Shelley                                                 218

       XLII. Phillips                                                235

      XLIII. Lamartine                                               245

       XLIV. Michelet                                                252

        XLV. Cowherd                                                 258

       XLVI. Metcalfe                                                260

      XLVII. Graham                                                  264

     XLVIII. Struve                                                  271

       XLIX. Daumer                                                  282

          L. Schopenhauer                                            286


  APPENDIX.

       I. Hesiod                                                     293

      II. The Golden Verses                                          294

     III. The Buddhist Canon                                         295

      IV. Ovid                                                       299

       V. Musonius                                                   303

      VI. Lessio                                                     305

     VII. Cowley                                                     308

    VIII. Tryon                                                      309

      IX. Hecquet                                                    314

       X. Pope                                                       318

      XI. Chesterfield                                               320

     XII. Jenyns                                                     322

    XIII. Pressavin                                                  324

     XIV. Schiller                                                   326

      XV. Bentham                                                    327

     XVI. Sinclair                                                   329

    XVII. Byron                                                      331




PREFACE.


At the present day, in all parts of the civilised world, the once
orthodox practices of cannibalism and human sacrifice universally are
regarded with astonishment and horror. The history of human development
in the past, and the slow but sure progressive movements in the present
time, make it absolutely certain that, with the same astonishment
and horror will the now prevailing habits of living by the slaughter
and suffering of the inferior species--habits different in degree
rather than in kind from the old-world barbarism--be regarded by an
age more enlightened and more refined than ours. Of such certainty
no one, whose _beau idéal_ of civilisation is not a State crowded
with jails, penitentiaries, reformatories, and asylums, and who does
not measure Progress by the imposing but delusive standard of an
ostentatious Materialism--by the statistics of commerce, by the amount
of wealth accumulated in the hands of a small part of the community,
by the increase of populations which are mainly recruited from the
impoverished classes, by the number and popularity of churches and
chapels, or even by the number of school buildings and lecture halls,
or the number and variety of charitable institutions throughout the
country--will pretend to have any reasonable doubt.

In searching the records of this nineteenth century--the minutes
and proceedings of innumerable learned and scientific societies,
especially those of Social and Sanitary Science Congresses--our more
enlightened descendants (let us suppose, of the 2001st century of the
Christian era), it is equally impossible to doubt, will observe with
amazement that, amid all the immeasurable talking and writing upon
social and moral science, there is discoverable little or no trace of
serious inquiry in regard to a subject which the more thoughtful Few,
in all times, have agreed in placing at the very foundation of all
public or private well-being. Nor, probably, will the astonishment
diminish when, further, it is found that, amid all the vast mass of
theologico-religious publications, periodical or other (supposing,
indeed, any considerable proportion of them to survive to that age),
no consciousness appeared to exist of the reality of such virtues as
Humaneness and Universal Compassion, or of any obligation upon the
writers to exhibit them to the serious consideration of the world: and
this, notwithstanding the contemporary existence of a long-established
association of humanitarian reformers who, though few in number, and
not in the position of dignity and power which compels the attention
of mankind, none the less by every means at their disposal--upon the
platform and in the press, by pamphlets and treatises appealing at once
to physical science, to reason, to conscience, to the authority of
the most earnest thinkers, to the logic of facts--had been protesting
against the cruel barbarisms, the criminal waste, and the demoralising
influences of Butchery; and demonstrating by their own example, and
by that of vast numbers of persons in the most different parts of the
globe, the entire practicability of Humane Living.

When, further, it is revealed in the popular literature, as well as in
the scientific books and journals of this nineteenth century, that the
innocent victims of the luxurious gluttony of the richer classes in
all communities, subjected as they were to every conceivable kind of
brutal atrocity, were yet, by the science of the time, acknowledged,
without controversy, to be beings essentially of the same physical and
mental organisation with their human devourers; to be as susceptible
to physical suffering and pain as they; to be endowed--at all events,
a very large proportion of them--with reasoning and mental faculties
in very high degrees, and far from destitute of moral perceptions, the
amazement may well be conjectured to give way to incredulity, that
such knowledge and such practices could possibly co-exist. That the
outward signs of all this gross barbarism--the entire or mangled bodies
of the victims of the Table--were accustomed to be put up for public
exhibition in every street and thoroughfare, without manifestations of
disgust or abhorrence from the passers-by--even from those pretending
to most culture or fashion--such outward proofs of extraordinary
insensibility on the part of all classes to finer feeling may,
nevertheless, scarcely provoke so much astonishment from an enlightened
posterity as the fact that every public gathering of the governors or
civil dignitaries of the country; every celebration of ecclesiastical
or religious festivals appeared to be made the special occasion of the
sacrifice and suffering of a greater number and variety than usual
of their harmless fellow-beings; and all this often in the near
neighbourhood of starving thousands, starving from want of the merest
necessaries of life.

Happily, however, there will be visible to the philosopher of the
Future signs of the dawn of the better day in this last quarter of the
nineteenth century. He will find, in the midst of the general barbarism
of life, and in spite of the prevailing indifferentism and infidelity
to truth, that there was a gradually increasing number of dissenters
and protesters; that already, at the beginning of that period, there
were associations of dietary reformers--offshoots from the English
parent society, founded in 1847--successively established in America,
in Germany, in Switzerland, in France, and, finally, in Italy; small
indeed in numbers, but strenuous in efforts to spread their principles
and practice; that in some of the larger cities, both in this country
and in other parts of Europe, there had also been set on foot _Reformed
Restaurants_, which supplied to considerable numbers of persons at once
better food and better knowledge.

If the truth or importance of any Principle or Feeling is to be
measured, not by its popularity, indeed--not by the _quod ab
omnibus_--but by the extent of its recognition by the most refined
and the most earnest thinkers in all the most enlightened times--by
the _quod a sapientibus_--the value of no principle has better been
established than that which insists upon the vital importance of a
radical reform in Diet. The number of the protesters against the
barbarism of human living who, at various periods in the known history
of our world, have more or less strongly denounced it, is a fact
which cannot fail to arrest the attention of the most superficial
inquirer. But a still more striking characteristic of this large body
of protestation is the _variety_ of the witnesses. Gautama Buddha and
Pythagoras, Plato and Epikurus, Seneca and Ovid, Plutarch and Clement
(of Alexandria), Porphyry and Chrysostom, Gassendi and Mandeville,
Milton and Evelyn, Newton and Pope, Ray and Linné, Tryon and Hecquet,
Cocchi and Cheyne, Thomson and Hartley, Chesterfield and Ritson,
Voltaire and Swedenborg, Wesley and Rousseau, Franklin and Howard,
Lambe and Pressavin, Shelley and Byron, Hufeland and Graham, Gleïzès
and Phillips, Lamartine and Michelet, Daumer and Struve--such are some
of the more or less famous, or meritorious, names in the Past to be
found among the prophets of Reformed Dietetics, who, in various degrees
of abhorrence, have shrunk from the _régime_ of blood. Of many of those
who have revolted from it, it may almost be said that they revolted _in
spite of themselves_--in spite, that is to say, of the most cherished
prejudices, traditions, and sophisms of Education.

If we seek the historical origin of anti-kreophagist philosophy, it is
to the Pythagorean School, in the later development of the Platonic
philosophy especially, that the western world is indebted for the
first systematic enunciation of the principle, and inculcation of the
practice, of anti-materialistic living--the first historical protest
against the _practical_ materialism of every-day eating and drinking.
How Christianity, which, in its first origin, owes so much to, and was
so deeply imbued with, on the one hand, Essenian, and, on the other,
Platonic principles, to the incalculable loss of all the succeeding
ages, has failed to propagate and develope this true and vital
spiritualism--in spite, too, of the convictions of some of its earliest
and best exponents, an Origen or Clemens, seems to be explained, in
the first instance, by the hostility of the triumphant and orthodox
Church to the “Gnostic” element which, in its various shapes, long
predominated in the Christian Faith, and which at one time seemed
destined to be the ruling sentiment in the Church; and, secondly,
by the natural growth of materialistic principles and practice in
proportion to the growth of ecclesiastical wealth and power; for,
although the virtues of “asceticism,” derived from Essenism and
Platonism, obtained a high reputation in the orthodox Church, they were
relegated and appropriated to the ecclesiastical order (theoretically
at least), or rather to certain departments of it.

Such was what may be termed the sectarian cause of this fatal
abandonment of the more spiritual elements of the new Faith, operating
in conjunction with the corrupting influences of wealth and power.
As regards the _humanitarian_ reason of anti-materialistic living,
the failure and seeming incapacity of Christianity to recognise this,
the most significant of all the underlying principles of reformation
in Diet--the cause is not far to seek. It lay, essentially, in the
(theoretical) depreciation of, and contempt for, _present_ as compared
with _future_ existence. All the fatal consequence of this theoretical
teaching (which yet has had no extensive influence, even in the way
it might have been supposed to act beneficially), in regard to the
status and rights of the non-human species, has been well indicated
by a distinguished authority. “It should seem,” writes Dr. Arnold,
“as if the primitive Christians, by laying so much stress upon a
future life, and placing the lower beings out of the pale of hope [of
extended existence], placed them at the same time out of the pale of
sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this utter disregard of
[other] animals in the light of our fellow-beings. Their definition
of _Virtue_ was the same as that of Paley--that it was good performed
for the sake of ensuring everlasting happiness; which, of course,
excluded all the [so-called] brute creatures.”[1] Hence it comes about
that Humanitarianism and, in particular, Humane Dietetics, finds no
place whatever in the religionism or pseudo-philosophy of the whole
of the ages distinguished as the _Mediæval_--that is to say, from
about the fifth or sixth to the sixteenth century--and, in fact,
there existed not only a negative indifferentism, but even a positive
tendency towards the still further depreciation and debasement of the
extra-human races, of which the great doctor of mediæval theology,
St. Thomas Aquinas (in his famous _Summa Totius Theologiæ_--the
standard text book of the orthodox church), is especially the exponent.
After the revival of reason and learning in the sixteenth century,
to Montaigne, who, following Plutarch and Porphyry, reasserted the
rights of the non-human species in general; and to Gassendi, who
reasserted the right of innocent beings to life, in particular,
among philosophers, belongs the supreme merit of being the first
to dispel the long-dominant prejudices, ignorance, and selfishness
of the common-place teachers of Morals and Religion. For orthodox
Protestantism, in spite of its high-sounding name, so far at least as
its theology is concerned, has done little in _protesting_ against the
infringement of the moral rights of the most helpless and the most
harmless of all the members of the great commonwealth of Living Beings.

The principles of Dietary Reform are widely and deeply founded upon the
teaching of (1) Comparative Anatomy and Physiology; (2) Humaneness, in
the two-fold meaning of Refinement of Living, and of what is commonly
called “Humanity;” (3) National Economy; (4) Social Reform; (5)
Domestic and Individual Economy; (6) Hygienic Philosophy, all of which
are amply displayed in the following pages. Various minds are variously
affected by the same arguments, and the force of each separate one
will appear to be of different weight according to the special bias
of the inquirer. The _accumulated_ weight of all, for those who are
able to form a calm and impartial judgment, cannot but cause the
subject to appear one which demands and requires the most serious
attention. To the present writer, the humanitarian argument appears
to be of double weight; for it is founded upon the irrefragable
principles of Justice and Compassion--universal Justice and universal
Compassion--the two principles most essential in any system of ethics
worthy of the name. That this argument seems to have so limited an
influence--even with persons otherwise humanely disposed, and of finer
feeling in respect to their own, and, also, in a general way, to other
species--can be attributed only to the deadening power of custom and
habit, of traditional prejudice, and educational bias. If they could be
brought to reflect upon the simple ethics of the question, divesting
their minds of these distorting media, it must appear in a light very
different from that in which they accustom themselves to consider it.
This subject, however, has been abundantly insisted upon with eloquence
and ability much greater than the present writer has any pretensions
to. It is necessary to add here, upon this particular branch of the
subject, only one or two observations. The popular objections to the
disuse of the flesh-diet may be classified under the two heads of
fallacies and subterfuges. Not a few candid inquirers, doubtless,
there are who sincerely allege certain _specious_ objections to the
humanitarian argument, which have a considerable amount of _apparent_
force; and these fallacies seem alone to deserve a serious examination.

In the general constitution of life on our globe, suffering and
slaughter, it is objected, are the normal and constant condition
of things--the strong relentlessly and cruelly preying upon the
weak in endless succession--and, it is asked, why, then, should the
human species form an exception to the general rule, and hopelessly
fight against Nature? To this it is to be replied, first: _that_,
although, too certainly, an unceasing and cruel internecine warfare
has been waged upon this atomic globe of ours from the first origin
of Life until now, yet, apparently, there has been going on a slow,
but not uncertain, progress towards the ultimate elimination of the
crueller phenomena of Life; _that_, if the _carnivora_ form a very
large proportion of Living Beings, yet the _non-carnivora_ are in the
majority; and, lastly, what is still more to the purpose, _that_ Man,
most evidently, by his origin and physical organisation, belongs not
to the former but to the latter; besides and beyond which, _that_ in
proportion as he boasts himself--and as he is seen _at his best_ (and
only so far) he boasts himself with justness--to be the highest of
all the gradually ascending and co-ordinated series of Living Beings,
so is he, in that proportion, bound to prove his right to the supreme
place and power, and his asserted claims to moral as well as mental
superiority, by his conduct. In brief, in so far only as he proves
himself to be the _beneficent ruler and pacificator_--and not the
selfish Tyrant--of the world, can he have any just title to the moral
pre-eminence.

If the philosophical fallacy (the _eidolon specûs_) thus vanishes under
a near examination; the next considerable objection, upon a superficial
view, not wholly unnatural, that, if slaughtering for food were to be
abolished, there would be a failure of manufacturing material for the
ordinary uses of social life, is, in reality, based upon a contracted
apprehension of facts and phenomena. For it is a reasonable and
sufficient reply, that the whole history of civilisation, as it has
been a history of the slow but, upon the whole, continuous advance
of the human race in the arts of Refinement, so, also, has it proved
that _demand creates supply_--that it is the absence of the former
alone which permits the various substances, no less than the various
forces, yet latent in Nature to remain uninvestigated and unused. Nor
can any thoughtful person, who knows anything of the history of Science
and Discovery, doubt that the resources of Nature and the mechanical
ingenuity of man are all but boundless. Already, notwithstanding
the absence of any demand for them, excepting within the ranks of
anti-kreophagists, various non-animal substances have been proposed, in
some cases used, as substitutes for the prepared skins of the victims
of the Slaughter-house; and that, in the event of a general demand
for such substitutes, there would spring up an active competition
among inventors and manufacturers in this direction there is not the
least reason for doubt. Besides, it must be taken into account that
the process of conversion of the flesh-eating (that is to say, of the
richer) sections of communities to the bloodless diet will, only too
certainly, be very slow and gradual.

As for the popular--perhaps the most popular--fallacy (the _eidolon
fori_), which exhibits little of philosophical accuracy, or, indeed,
of common reason, involved in the questions: “What is to become of
_the animals_?” and, “Why were they created, if they are not intended
for Slaughter and for human food?”--it is scarcely possible to
return a grave reply. The brief answer, of course, is--that those
variously-tortured beings have been brought into existence, and their
numbers maintained, by selfish human invention only. Cease to breed
for the butcher, and they will cease to exist beyond the numbers
necessary for lawful and innocent use; they were “created” indeed,
but they have been created by man, since he has vastly modified and,
by no means, for the benefit of his helpless dependants, the natural
form and organisation of the original types, the parent stocks of the
domesticated Ox, Sheep, and Swine, now very remote from the native
grandeur and vigour of the Bison, the Mouflon, and the wild Boar.

There remains one fallacy of quite recent origin. An association has
been formed--somewhat late in the day, it must be allowed--consisting
of a few sanitary reformers, who put forward, also, humane reasons, for
“Reform of the Slaughter-Houses,” one of the secondary propositions
of which is, that the savagery and brutality of the Butchers’ trade
could be obviated by the partial or general use of less lingering and
revolting modes of killing than those of the universal knife and axe.
No humanitarian will refuse to welcome any sign, however feeble, of
the awakening of the conscience of the Community, or rather of the
more thoughtful part of it, to the paramount obligations of common
Humanity, and of the recognition of the claims of the subject species
to _some_ consideration and to _some_ compassion, if not of the
recognition of the claims of Justice; or will refuse to welcome any
sort of proposition to lessen the enormous sum total of atrocities to
which the lower animals are constantly subjected by human avarice,
gluttony, and brutality. But, at the same time, no earnest humanitarian
can accept the sophism, that an attempt at a mitigation of cruelty and
suffering which, fundamentally, are _unnecessary_, ought to satisfy
the educated conscience or reason. Vainly do the more feeling persons,
who happen to have some scruples of conscience in respect to the
sanction of the barbarous practice of Butchering, think to abolish the
cruelties, while still indulging the appetite for the flesh luxuries,
of the Table. The vastness of the demands upon the butchers--demands
constantly increasing with the pecuniary resources of the nation,
and stimulated by the pernicious example of the wealthy classes; the
immensity of the traffic in “live stock” (as they complacently are
termed) by rail and by ship,[2] the frightful horrors of which it has
often been attempted, though inadequately, to describe; the utter
impossibility of efficiently supervising and regulating such traffic
and such slaughter--even supposing the desire to do so to exist to
any considerable extent--and the inveterate indifferentism of the
Legislature and of the influential classes, sufficiently declare the
futility of such expectation and of the indulgence of such comfortable
hope. It is, in brief, as with other attempts at patching and mending,
or at applying salves to a hopelessly festered and gangrened wound,
merely to put the “flattering unction” of compromise to the conscience.
“Diseases, desperate grown, by desperate appliances are relieved, or
not at all;” the foul stream of cruelty must be stopped at its source;
the fountain and origin of the evil--the Slaughter-House itself--must
be abolished. _Delendum est Macellum._

It has been well said by one of the most eloquent of the prophets
of Humane Living, that there are steps on the way to the summit of
Dietetic Reform, and, if only one step be taken, yet that that single
step will be not without importance and without influence in the world.
The step, which leaves for ever behind it the barbarism of slaughtering
our fellow-beings, the Mammals and Birds, is, it is superfluous to add,
the most important and most influential of all.

As for the plan of the present work, living writers and
authorities--numerous and important as they are--necessarily have been
excluded. Its bulk, already extended beyond the original conception
of its limits, otherwise would have been swollen to a considerably
larger size. For its entire execution, as well as for the collection
and arrangement of the matter, the compiler alone is responsible;
and, conscious that it must fall short of the completeness at which
he aimed, he can pretend only to the merits of careful research and
an eclectic impartiality. To the fact that the work already has
appeared in the pages of the _Dietetic Reformer_, to which it has been
contributed periodically during a space of time extending over five
years, is owing some repetition of matter, which also, necessarily, is
due to the nature of the subject. Errors of inadvertence, it is hoped,
will be found to be few and inconsiderable. For the rest, he leaves the
_Ethics of Diet_ to the candour of the critics and of the public.




THE ETHICS OF DIET.




I.

HESIOD. EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.


HESIOD--the poet _par excellence_ of peace and of agriculture,
as Homer is of war and of the “heroic” virtues--was born at Ascra, a
village in Bœotia, a part of Hellas, which, in spite of its proverbial
fame for beef-eating and stupidity, gave birth to three other eminent
persons--Pindar, the lyric poet, Epameinondas, the great military
genius and statesman, and Plutarch, the most amiable moralist of
antiquity.

The little that is known of the life of Hesiod is derived from his
_Works and Days_. From this celebrated poem we learn that his father
was an emigrant from Æolia, the Greek portion of the north-west corner
of the Lesser Asia; that his elder brother, Perses, had, by collusion
with the judges, deprived him of his just inheritance; that after this
he settled at Orchomenos, a neighbouring town--in the pre-historical
ages a powerful and renowned city. This is all that is certainly known
of the author of the _Works and Days_, and _The Theogony_. Of the
genuineness of the former there has been little or no doubt; that of
the latter--at least in part--has been called in question. Besides
these two chief works, there is extant a piece entitled _The Shield
of Herakles_, in imitation of the Homeric Shield (_Iliad_ xviii.) The
_Catalogues of Women_--a poem commemorating the heroines beloved by the
gods, and who were thus the ancestresses of the long line of heroes,
the reputed founders of the ruling families in Hellas--is lost.

The charm of the _Works and Days_--the first didactic poem extant--is
its apparent earnestness of purpose and simplicity of style. The
author’s frequent references to, and rebuke of, legal injustices--his
sense of which had been quickened by the iniquitous decisions of the
judges already referred to--are as _naïve_ as they are pathetic.

Of the _Theogony_, the subject, as the title implies, is the history of
the generation and successive dynasties of the Olympian divinities--the
objects of Greek worship. It may, indeed, be styled the Hellenic Bible,
and, with the Homeric Epics, it formed the principal theology of the
old Greeks, and of the later Romans or Latins. The “Proœmium,” or
introductory verses--in which the Muses are represented as appearing
to their votary at the foot of the sacred Helicon, and consecrating
him to the work of revealing the divine mysteries by the gift of a
laurel-branch--and the following verses, describing their return to the
celestial mansions, where they hymn the omnipotent Father, are very
charming. To the long description of the tremendous struggle of the
warring gods and Titans, fighting for the possession of heaven, Milton
was indebted for his famous delineation of a similar conflict.

The _Works and Days_, in striking contrast with the military spirit
of the Homeric epic, deals in plain and simple verse with questions
ethical, political, and economic. The ethical portion exhibits much
true feeling, and a conviction of the evils brought upon the earth by
the triumph of injustice and of violence. The well-known passages in
which the poet figures the gradual declension and degeneracy of men
from the golden to the present iron race, are the remote original of
all the later pleasing poetic fictions of golden ages and times of
innocence.

According to Hesiod, there are two everlastingly antagonistic agents
at work on the Earth; the spirit of war and fighting, and the peaceful
spirit of agriculture and mechanical industry. And in the apostrophe in
which he bitterly reproaches his unrighteous judges--

    “O fools! they know not, in their selfish soul,
    How far the half is better than the whole:
    The good which Asphodel and Mallows yield,
    The feast of herbs, the dainties of the field”--

he seems to have a profound conviction of the truth taught by
Vegetarianism--that luxurious living is the fruitful parent of
selfishness in its manifold forms.[3]

That Hesiod regarded that diet which depends mainly or entirely upon
agriculture and upon fruits as the highest and best mode of life is
sufficiently evident in the following verses descriptive of the “Golden
Age” life:--

    “Like gods, they lived with calm, untroubled mind,
    Free from the toil and anguish of our kind,
    Nor did decrepid age mis-shape their frame.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Pleased with earth’s unbought feasts: all ills removed,
    Wealthy in flocks,[4] and of the Blest beloved,
    Death, as a slumber, pressed their eyelids down:
    All Nature’s common blessings were their own.
    The life-bestowing tilth its fruitage bore,
    A full, spontaneous, and ungrudging store.
    They with abundant goods, ’midst quiet lands,
    All willing, shared the gatherings of their hands.
    When Earth’s dark breast had closed this race around,
    Great Zeus, as demons,[5] raised them from the ground;
    Earth-hovering spirits, they their charge began--
    The ministers of good, and guards of men.
    Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide,
    And compass Earth, and pass on every side;
    And mark, with earnest vigilance of eyes,
    Where just deeds live, or crooked ways arise,
    And shower the wealth of seasons from above.”[6]

The second race--the “Silver Age”--inferior to the first and wholly
innocent people, were, nevertheless, guiltless of bloodshed in the
preparation of their food; nor did they offer sacrifices--in the poet’s
judgment, it appears, a damnable error. For the third--the “Brazen
Age”--it was reserved to inaugurate the feast of blood:--

    “Strong with the ashen spear, and fierce and bold,
    Their thoughts were bent on violence alone,
    The deed of battle, and the dying groan.
    _Bloody their feasts, with wheaten food unblessed._”

According to Hesiod, who is followed by the later poets, the “immortals
inhabiting the Olympian mansions” feast ever on the pure and bloodless
food of _Ambrosia_, and their drink is _Nectar_, which may be taken to
be a sort of refined dew. He represents the divine Muses of Helicon,
who inspire his song, as reproaching the shepherds, his neighbours,
“that tend the flocks,” with the possession of “mere fleshly appetites.”

Ovid, amongst the Latins, is the most charming painter of the innocence
of the “Golden Age.” Amongst our own poets, Pope, Thomson, and
Shelley--the last as a prophet of the future and actual rather than the
poet of a past and fictitious age of innocence--have contributed to
embellish the fable of the Past and the hope of the Future.




II.

PYTHAGORAS. 570-470 B.C.


“A greater good never came, nor ever will come, to mankind, than
that which was imparted by the gods through Pythagoras.” Such is the
expression of enthusiastic admiration of one of his biographers. To
those who are unacquainted with the historical development of Greek
thought and Greek philosophy it may seem to be merely the utterance
of the partiality of hero-worship. Those, on the other hand, who know
anything of that most important history, and of the influence, direct
or indirect, of Pythagoras upon the most intellectual and earnest
minds of his countrymen--in particular upon Plato and his followers,
and through them upon the later Jewish and upon very early Christian
ideas--will acknowledge, at least, that the name of the prophet of
Samos is that of one of the most important and influential factors in
the production and progress of higher human thought.

There is a true and there is a false hero-worship. The latter, whatever
it may have done to preserve the blind and unreasoning subservience
of mankind, has not tended to accelerate the progress of the world
towards the attainment of truth. The old-world occupants of the popular
Pantheon--“the patrons of mankind, gods and sons of gods, destroyers
rightlier called and plagues of men”--are indeed fast losing, if they
have not entirely lost, their ancient credit, but their vacant places
have yet to be filled by the representatives of the most exalted
ideals of humanity. Whenever, in the place of the representatives of
mere physical and mental force, the _true_ heroes shall be enthroned,
amongst the moral luminaries and pioneers who have contributed to
lessen the thick darkness of ignorance, barbarism, and selfishness,
the name of the first western apostle of humanitarianism and of
spiritualism must assume a prominent position.

It is a natural and legitimate curiosity which leads us to wish to
know, with something of certainty and fulness, the outer and inner life
of the master spirits of our race. Unfortunately, the _personality_
of many of the most interesting and illustrious of them is of a vague
and shadowy kind. But when we reflect that little more is known of the
personal life of Shakspere than of that of Pythagoras or Plato--not to
mention other eminent names--our surprise is lessened that, in an age
long preceding the discovery of printing, the records of a life even so
important and influential as that of the founder of Pythagoreanism are
meagre and scanty.

The earliest account of his teaching is given by Philolaus (“Lover of
the People,” an auspicious name) of Tarentum, who, born about forty or
fifty years after the death of his master--was thus contemporary with
Sokrates and Plato. His _Pythagorean System_, in three books, was so
highly esteemed by Plato that he is said to have given £400 or £500
for a copy, and to have incorporated the principal part of it in his
_Timæus_. Sharing the fate of so many other valuable products of the
Greek genius, it has long since perished. Our remaining authorities
for the Life are Diogenes of Laerte, Porphyry, one of the most erudite
writers of any age, and Iamblichus. Of these, the biography of the
last is the fullest, if not the most critical; that of Porphyry wants
the beginning and the end; whilst of the ten books of Iamblichus _On
the Pythagorean Sect_ (Περὶ Πυθαγόρου Αἱρέσεως), of which only five
remain, the first was devoted to the life of the founder. Diogenes,
who seems to have been of the school of Epikurus, belongs to the
second, while Porphyry and Iamblichus, the well-known exponents of
Neo-Platonism, wrote in the third and fourth centuries of our era.

Pythagoras was born in the Island of Samos, somewhere about the year
570 B.C. At some period in his youth, Polykrates--celebrated by the
fine story of Herodotus--had acquired the _tyranny_ of Samos, and his
rule, like that of most of his compeers, has deserved the stigma of the
modern meaning of the Greek equivalent for princely and monarchical
government. The future philosopher, we are told, unable to descend to
the ordinary arts of sycophancy and dissimulation, left his country,
and entered, like the Sirian philosopher of Voltaire, upon an extensive
course of travels--extensive for the age in which he lived. How far he
actually travelled is uncertain. He visited Egypt, the great nurse of
the old-world science, and Syria, and it is not impossible that he may
have penetrated eastwards as far as Babylon, perhaps as the captive
of the recent conqueror of Egypt--the Persian Kambyses. It was in the
East, and particularly in Egypt, that he probably imbibed the dogma of
the immortality of the soul, or, as he chose to represent it to the
public, that of the _metempsychosis_--a fancy widely spread in the
eastern theologies.

It has been asserted that he had already abandoned the orthodox diet
at the age of nineteen or twenty. If this was actually the fact, he
has the additional merit of having adopted the higher life by his
own original force of mind and refinement of feeling. If not, he may
have derived the most characteristic as well as the most important
of his teachings from the Egyptians or Persians, or, through them,
even from the Hindus--the most religiously strict abstainers from
the flesh of animals. It is remarkable that the two great apostles
of abstinence--Pythagoras and Sakya-Muni, or Buddha--were almost
contemporaries; nor is it impossible that the Greek may, in whatever
way, have become acquainted with the sublime tenets of the Hindu
prophet, who had lately seceded from Brahminism, the established
sacerdotal and exclusive religion of the Peninsula, and promulgated his
great revelation--until then new to the world--that religion, at least
his religion, was to be “a religion of mercy to all beings,” human and
non-human.[7]

As the natural and necessary result of his pure living, we are told
by Iamblichus that “his sleep was brief, his soul vigilant and pure,
and his body confirmed in a state of perfect and invariable health.”
He appears to have passed the period of middle life when he returned
to Samos, where his reputation had preceded him. Either, however,
finding his countrymen hopelessly debased by the corrupting influence
of despotism, or believing that he would find a better field for the
propagandism of his new revelation, he not long afterwards set out for
Southern Italy, then known as “Great Greece,” by reason of its numerous
Greek colonies, or, rather, autonomous communities. At Krotona his
fame and eloquence soon attracted, it seems, a select if not numerous
auditory; and there he founded his famous society--the first historical
anti-flesh-eating association in the western world--the prototype, in
some respects, of the ascetic establishments of Greek and Catholic
Christendom. It consisted of about three hundred young men belonging to
the most influential families of the city and neighbourhood.

It was the practice of the Egyptian priestly caste and of other
exclusive institutions to reserve their better ideas (of a more
satisfactory sort, at all events, than the system of theology that was
promulgated to the mass of the community), into which only privileged
persons were initiated. This esoteric method, which under the name
of the _mysteries_ has exercised the learned ingenuity of modern
writers--who have, for the most part, vainly laboured to penetrate the
obscurity enveloping the most remarkable institution of the Hellenic
theology--was accompanied with the strictest vows and circumstances of
silence and secrecy. As for the priestly order, it was their evident
policy to maintain the superstitious ignorance of the people and to
overawe their minds, while in regard to the philosophic sects, it was
perhaps to shield themselves from the priestly or popular suspicion
that they shrouded their scepticism in this dark and convenient
disguise. The parabolic or esoteric method was, perhaps, almost a
necessity of the earlier ages. It is to be lamented that it should be
still in favour in this safer age, and that the old exclusiveness of
the _mysteries_ is in esteem with many modern authorities, who seem to
hold that to unveil the spotless Truth to the multitude is “to cast
pearls before swine.”

It was probably from the philosophic motive that the founder of the new
society instituted his grades of catechumens and probationary course,
as well as vows of the strictest secrecy. The exact nature of all his
interior instruction is necessarily very much matter of conjecture,
inasmuch as, whether he committed his system to writing or not, nothing
from his own hand has come down to us. However this may be, it is
evident that the general spirit and characteristic of his teaching
was self-denial or self-control, founded upon the great principles of
justice and temperance; and that communism and asceticism were the
principal aim of his sociology. He was the founder of communism in the
West--his communistic ideas, however, being of an aristocratic and
exclusive rather than of a democratic and cosmopolitan kind. “He first
taught,” says Diogenes, “that the property of friends was to be held in
common--that friendship is equality--and his disciples laid down their
money and goods at his feet, and had all things common.”

The moral precepts of the great master were much in advance of the
conventional morality of the day. He enjoined upon his disciples, the
same biographer informs us, each time they entered their houses to
interrogate themselves--“How have I transgressed? What have I done?
What have I left undone that I ought to have done?” He exhorted them to
live in perfect harmony, to do good to their enemies and by kindness
to convert them into friends. “He forbade them either to pray for
themselves, seeing that they were ignorant of what was best for them;
or to offer slain victims (σφαγια) as sacrifices; and taught them to
respect a _bloodless_ altar only.” Cakes and fruits, and other innocent
offerings were the only sacrifices he would allow. This, and the
sublime commandment “Not to kill or injure any innocent animal,” are
the grand distinguishing doctrines of his moral religion. So far did he
carry his respect for the beautiful and beneficent in Nature, that he
specially prohibited wanton injury to cultivated and useful trees and
plants.

By confining themselves to the innocent, pure, and spiritual dietary
he promised his followers the enjoyment of health and equanimity,
undisturbed and invigorating sleep, as well as a superiority of mental
and moral perceptions. As for his own diet, “he was satisfied,” says
Porphyry, “with honey or the honeycomb, or with bread only, and he did
not taste wine from morning to night (μεθ’ἣμεραν); or his principal
dish was often kitchen herbs, cooked or uncooked. Fish he ate rarely.”

Humanitarianism--the extension of the sublime principles of justice
and of compassion to all innocent sentient life, irrespective of
nationality, creed, or species--is a very modern and even now very
inadequately recognised creed; and, although there have been here and
there a few, like Plutarch and Seneca, who were “splendidly false,”
to the spirit of their age, the recognition of the obligation (the
_practice_ has always been a very different thing) of benevolence and
beneficence, so far from being extended to the non-human races, until
a comparatively recent time has been limited to the narrow bounds of
country and citizenship; and patriotism and internationalism are,
apparently, two very opposite principles.

The obligation to abstain from the flesh of animals was founded by
Pythagoras on mental and spiritual rather than on humanitarian grounds.
Yet that the latter were not ignored by the prophet of _akreophagy_ is
evident equally by his prohibition of the infliction of pain, no less
than of death, upon the lower animals, and by his injunction to abstain
from the bloody sacrifices of the altar. Such was his abhorrence of
the Slaughter-House, Porphyry tells us, that not only did he carefully
abstain from the flesh of its victims, but that he could never bring
himself to endure contact with, or even the sight of, butchers and
cooks.

While thus careful of the lives and feelings of the innocent non-human
races, he recognised the necessity of making war upon the ferocious
_carnivora_. Yet to such a degree had he become familiar with the
habits and dispositions of the lower animals that he is said, by the
exclusive use of vegetable food, not only to have tamed a formidable
bear, which by its devastations on their crops had become the terror
of the country people, but even to have accustomed it to eat that
food only for the remainder of its life. The story may be true or
fictitious, but it is not incredible; for there are well-authenticated
instances, even in our own times, of true _carnivora_ that have been
fed, for longer or shorter periods, upon the non-flesh diet.[8]

“Amongst other reasons, Pythagoras,” says Iamblichus, “enjoined
abstinence from the flesh of animals because it is conducive to
peace. For those who are accustomed to abominate the slaughter of
other animals, as iniquitous and unnatural, will think it still more
unjust and unlawful to kill a man or to engage in war.” Specially, he
“exhorted those politicians who are legislators to abstain. For if they
were willing to act justly in the highest degree, it was indubitably
incumbent upon them not to injure any of the lower animals. Since how
could they persuade others to act justly, if they themselves were
proved to be indulging an insatiable avidity by devouring these animals
that are allied to us. For through the communion of life and the
same elements, and the sympathy thus existing, they are, as it were,
conjoined to us by a fraternal alliance.”[9] Maxims how different from
those in favour in the present “year of grace,” 1877! If the refined
thinker of the sixth century B.C. were now living, what would be his
indignation at the enormous slaughter of innocent life for the public
banquets at which our statesmen and others are constantly _fêted_,
and which are recorded in our journals with so much magniloquence and
minuteness? His hopes for the regeneration of his fellow-men would
surely be terribly shattered. We may apply the words of the great Latin
satirist, Juvenal, who so frequently denounces in burning language the
luxurious gluttony of his countrymen under the Empire--“What would not
Pythagoras denounce, or whither would he not flee, could he see these
monstrous sights--he who abstained from the flesh of all other animals
as though they were human?” (_Satire_ xv.)

How long the communistic society of Krotona remained undisturbed is
uncertain. Inasmuch as its reputation and influence were widely spread,
it may be supposed that the outbreak of the populace (the origin of
which is obscure), by which the society was broken up and his disciples
massacred, did not happen until many years after its establishment.
At all events, it is commonly believed that Pythagoras lived to an
advanced age, variously computed at eighty, ninety, or one hundred
years.

It is not within our purpose to discuss minutely the scientific or
theological theories of Pythagoras. In accordance with the abstruse
speculative character of the Ionic school of science, which inclined
to refer the origin of the universe to some one primordial principle,
he was led by his mathematical predilections to discover the cosmic
element in numbers, or proportion--a theory which savours of John
Dalton’s philosophy, now accepted in chemistry, and a virtual
enunciation of what we now call _quantitative_ science. Pythagoras
taught the Kopernican theory prematurely. He regarded the sun as more
_divine_ than the earth, and therefore set it in the _centre_ of the
earth and planets. The argument was surely a mark of genius, but it
was too transcendental for his contemporaries, even for Plato and
Aristotle. His elder contemporary, the celebrated Thales of Miletus,
with whom in his early youth he may have been acquainted, may claim,
indeed, to be the remote originator of the famous nebular hypothesis
of Laplace and modern astronomy. Another cardinal doctrine of the
Pythagorean school was the musical, from whence the idea, so popular
with the poets, of the “music of the spheres.” To music was attributed
the greatest influence in the control of the passions. In its larger
sense, by the Greeks generally, the term “Music” (_Musice_--pertaining
to the Muses) denoted, it is to be remembered, not alone the “concord
of sweet sounds,” but also an artistic and æsthetic education in
general--all humanising and refining instruction.

The famous doctrine of the Metempsychosis or Transmigration of
Souls also was, doubtless, a prominent feature in the Pythagorean
system; but it is probable that we may presume that by it Pythagoras
intended merely to convey to the “uninstructed,” by parable, the
sublime idea that the soul is gradually purified by a severe course
of discipline until finally it becomes fitted for a fleshless life
of immortality.[10] We are chiefly concerned with his attitude in
regard to flesh eating. There can be no question that abstinence was
a fundamental part of his system, yet certain modern critics--little
in sympathy with so practical a manifestation of the higher life,
or, indeed, with self-denial of any kind--have sometimes affected
either to doubt the fact or to pass it by in contemptuous silence,
thus ignoring what for the after ages stands out as by far the most
important residuum of Pythagoreanism. In support of this scepticism
the fact of the celebrated athlete Milo, whose prodigies of strength
have become proverbial, has been quoted. Yet if these critics had been
at the pains of inquiring somewhat further, they would have learned,
on the contrary, that the non-flesh diet is exactly that which is
most conducive to physical vigour; that in the East there are at this
day non-flesh eaters, who in feats of strength might put even our
strongest men to the blush. The extraordinary powers of the porters
and boatmen of Constantinople have been remarked by many travellers;
and the Chinese coolies and others are almost equally notorious for
their marvellous powers of endurance. Yet their food is not only of
the simplest--rice, dhourra (_i.e._, millet), onions, &c.--but of the
scantiest possible. Moreover, the elder Greek athletes themselves, for
the most part, trained on vegetarian diet. Not to multiply details,
the fact that, upon a moderate calculation, two-thirds at least of the
population of our globe--including the mass of the inhabitants of these
islands--live, _nolentes, volentes_, on a dietary from which flesh is
almost altogether necessarily excluded, is on the face of it sufficient
proof in itself of the non-necessity of the diet of the rich.

While the general consent of antiquity and of later times has received
as undoubted the obligation of strict abstinence on the part of the
immediate followers of Pythagoras, it seems that as regards the
uninitiated, or (to use the ecclesiastical term) _catechumens_, the
obligation was not so strict. Indeed relaxation of the rules of the
higher life was simply a _sine quâ non_ of securing the attention of
the mass of the community at all; and, like one still more eminent than
himself in an after age, he found it a matter of necessity to present
a teaching and a mode of living not too exalted and unattainable by
the grossness and “hardness of heart” of the multitude. Hence, in all
probability, the seeming contradictions in his teaching on this point
found in the narratives of his followers.

If his critics had been more intent on discovering the excellence of
his rules of abstinence than on discussing, with frivolous diligence,
the probable or possible reasons of his alleged prohibition of beans,
it would have redounded more to their credit for wisdom and love of
truth. Assuming the fact of the prohibition, in place of collecting
all the most absurd gossip of antiquity, they might perhaps have found
a more rational and more solid reason in the hypothesis that the bean
being, as used in the ballot, a symbol and outward and visible sign of
political life, was employed by Pythagoras parabolically to dissuade
his followers from participating in the idle strife of party faction,
and to exhort them to concentrate their efforts upon an attempt to
achieve the solid and lasting reformation of mankind.[11] But to be
much concerned in a patient inquiry after truth unhappily has been not
always the characteristic of professional commentators.

Blind hero-worship or idolatry of genius or intellect, even when
directed to high moral aims, is no part of our creed; and it is
sufficient to be assured that he was human, to be free to confess
that the historical founder of _akreophagy_ was not exempt from human
infirmity, and that he could not wholly rise above the wonder-loving
spirit of an uncritical age. Deducting all that has been imputed to
him of the fanciful or fantastic, enough still remains to force us to
recognise in the philosopher-prophet of Samos one of the master-spirits
of the world.[12]




III.

PLATO. 428-347 B.C.


The most renowned of all the prose writers of antiquity may be said to
have been almost the lineal descendant, in philosophy, of the teacher
of Samos. He belonged to the aristocratic families of Athens--“the
eye of Greece”--then and for long afterwards the centre of art and
science. His original name was Aristokles, which he might well have
retained. Like another equally famous leader in literature, François
Marie Arouet, he abandoned his birth-name, and he assumed or acquired
the name by which he is immortalised, to characterise, as it is said,
either the breadth of his brow or the extensiveness of his mental
powers. In very early youth he seems to have displayed his literary
aptitude and tastes in the various kinds of poetry--epic, tragic, and
lyric--as well as to have distinguished himself as an athlete in the
great national contests or “games,” as they were called, the grand
object of ambition of every Greek. He was instructed in the chief
and necessary parts of a liberal Greek education by the most able
professors of the time. He devoted himself with ardour to the pursuit
of knowledge, and sedulously studied the systems of philosophy which
then divided the literary world.

In his twentieth year he attached himself to Sokrates, who was then
at the height of his reputation as a moralist and dialectician. After
the judicial murder of his master, 399, he withdrew from his native
city, which, with a theological intolerance extremely rare in pagan
antiquity, had already been disgraced by the previous persecution of
another eminent teacher--Anaxagoras--the instructor of Euripides and of
Perikles. Plato then resided for some time at Megara, at a very short
distance from Athens, and afterwards set out, according to the custom
of the eager searchers after knowledge of that age, on a course of
travels.

He traversed the countries which had been visited by Pythagoras, but
his alleged visit to the further East is as traditional as that of
his predecessor. The most interesting fact or tradition in his first
travels is his alleged intimacy with the Greek prince of Syracuse,
the elder Dionysius, and his invitation to the western capital of
the Hellenic world. The story that he was given up by his perfidious
host to the Spartan envoy, and by him sold into slavery, though not
disprovable, may be merely an exaggerated account of the ill-treatment
which he actually received.

His grand purpose in going to Italy was, without doubt, the desire to
become personally known to the eminent Pythagoreans whose headquarters
were in the southern part of the Peninsula, and to secure the best
opportunities of making himself thoroughly acquainted with their
philosophic tenets. At that time the most eminent representative of
the school was the celebrated Archytas, one of the most extraordinary
mathematical geniuses and mechanicians of any age. Upon his return to
Athens, at about the age of forty, he established his ever-memorable
school in the suburban groves or “gardens” known as Ἀκαδημία--whence
the well-known _Academy_ by which the Platonic philosophy is
distinguished, and which, in modern days, has been so much vulgarised.
All the most eminent Athenians, present and future, attended his
lectures, and among them was Aristotle, who was destined to rival the
fame of his master. From about 388 to 347, the date of his death, he
continued to lecture in the Academy and to compose his Dialogues.

In the intervals of his literary and didactic labours he twice visited
Sicily; the first time at the invitation of his friend Dion, the
relative and minister of the two Dionysii, the younger of whom had
succeeded to his father’s throne, and whom Dion hoped to win to justice
and moderation by the eloquent wisdom of the Athenian sage. Such hopes
were doomed to bitter disappointment. His second visit to Syracuse
was undertaken at the urgent entreaties of his Pythagorean friends,
of whose tenets and dietetic principles he always remained an ardent
admirer. For whatever reason, it proved unsuccessful. Dion was driven
into exile, and Plato himself escaped only by the interposition of
Archytas. Thus the only chance of attempting the realisation of his
ideal of a communistic commonwealth--if he ever actually entertained
the hope of realising it--was frustrated. Almost the only source of the
biographies of Plato are the _Letters_ ascribed to him, commonly held
to be fictitious, but maintained to be genuine by Grote. The narrative
of the first visit to Sicily is found in the seventh Letter.

We can refer but briefly to the nature of the philosophy and
writings of Plato. In the notice of Pythagoras it has been stated
that Plato valued very highly that teacher’s methods and principles.
Pythagoreanism, in fact, enters very largely into the principal
writings of the great disciple and exponent (and, it may safely
be added, improver) of Sokrates, especially in the _Republic_
and the _Timæus_. The four cardinal virtues inculcated in the
_Republic_--justice or righteousness (Δικαιοσύνη), temperance or
self-control (Εγκρατεία or Σωφροσύνη), prudence or wisdom (Φρονήσις),
fortitude (Ἀνδρεία)--are eminently pythagorean.

The characteristic of the purely speculative portion of Platonism
is the theory of _ideas_ (used by the author in the new sense of
_unities_, the original meaning being _forms_ and _figures_), of which
it may be said that its merit depends upon its poetic fancy rather
than upon its scientific value. Divesting it of the verbiage of the
commentators, who have not succeeded in making it more intelligible,
all that need be said of this abstruse and fantastic notion is, that by
it he intended to convey that all sensible objects which, according to
him, are but the shadows and phantoms of things unseen, are ultimately
referable to certain abstract conceptions or ideas, which he termed
_unities_, that can only be reached by pure thinking. Hence he asserted
that “not being in a condition to grasp the idea of the Good with
full distinctness, we are able to approximate to it only so far as
we elevate the power of thinking to its proper purity.” Whatever may
be thought of the premiss, the truth and utility of the deduction
may be allowed to be as unquestionable as they are unheeded. This
characteristic theory may be traced to the belief of Plato not only
in the immortality, but also in the past eternity of the soul. In the
_Phædrus_, under the form of allegory, he describes the soul in its
former state of existence as traversing the circuit of the universe
where, if reason duly control the appetite, it is initiated, as it
were, into the essences of things which are there disclosed to its
gaze. And it is this ante-natal experience, which supplies the fleshly
mind or soul with its ideas of the beautiful and the true.

The subtlety of the Greek intellect and language was, apparently, an
irresistible temptation to their greatest ornaments to indulge in the
nicest and most mystic speculation, which, to the possessors of less
subtle intellects and of a far less flexible language, seems often
strangely unpractical and hyperbolic. Thus while it is impossible
not to be lost in admiration of the marvellous powers of the Greek
_dialectics_, one cannot but at the same time regret that faculties so
extraordinary should have been expended (we will not say altogether
wasted) in so many instances on unsubstantial phantoms. If, however,
the transcendentalism of the Platonic and other schools of Greek
thought is matter for regret, how must we not deplore the enormous
waste of time and labour apparent in the theological controversies
of the first three or four centuries of Christendom--at least of
Greek Christendom--when the omission or insertion of a single letter
could profoundly agitate the whole ecclesiastical world and originate
volumes upon volumes of refined, indeed, but useless verbiage. Yet
even the ecclesiastical Greek writers of the early centuries may lay
claim to a certain originality and merit of style which cannot be
conceded to the “schoolmen” of the mediæval ages, and of still later
times, whose solemn trifling--under the proud titles of Platonists and
Aristotelians, or Nominalists and Realists, and the numerous other
appellations assumed by them--for centuries was received with patience
and even applause. Nor, unfortunately, is this war of Phantoms by any
means unknown or extinct in our day. It was the lament of Seneca,
often echoed by the most earnest minds, that all, or at least the
greater part of, our learning is expended upon words rather than upon
the acquisition of wisdom.[13]

Plato deserves his high place among the Immortals not so much on
account of any very definite results from his philosophy as on
account of its general _tendency_ to elevate and direct human
thought and aspirations to sublime speculations and aims. Of all his
_Dialogues_, the most valuable and interesting, without doubt, is
the _Republic_--the one of his writings upon which he seems to have
bestowed the most pains, and in which he has recorded the outcome of
his most mature reflections. Next may be ranked the _Phædo_ and the
_Phædrus_--the former, it is well known, being a disquisition on the
immortality of the soul. In spite of certain fantastic conceptions,
it must always retain its interest, as well by reason of its
speculations on a subject which is (or rather which ought to be) the
most interesting that can engage the mind, as because it purports to
be the last discourse of Sokrates, who was expecting in his prison the
approaching sentence of death. The _Phædrus_ derives its unusual merit
from the beauty of the language and style, and from the fact of its
being one of the few writings of antiquity in which the charms of rural
nature are described with enthusiasm.

The _Republic_, with which we are here chiefly concerned, since it
is in that important work that the author reproduces the dietetic
principles of Pythagoras, may have been first published amongst his
earlier writings, about the year 395; but that it was published in a
larger and revised edition at a later period is sufficiently evident.
It consists of ten Books. The question of Dietetics is touched upon
in the second and third, in which Plato takes care to point out the
essential importance to the well-being of his ideal state, that both
the mass of the community and, in a special degree, the _guardians_ or
rulers, should be educated and trained in proper dietetic principles,
which, if not so definitely insisted upon as we could wish them to have
been, sufficiently reveal the bias of his mind towards Vegetarianism.
In the second Book the discussion turns principally upon the nature
of Justice; and there is one passage which, still more significant
for the age in which it was written, is not without instruction
for the present. While Sokrates is discussing the subject with his
interlocutors, one of them is represented as objecting:

    “With much respect be it spoken, you who profess to be admirers
    of justice, beginning with the heroes of old, have every one
    of you, without exception, made the praise of Justice and the
    condemnation of Injustice turn solely upon the reputation and
    honour and gifts resulting from them. But what each is in itself,
    by its own peculiar force as it resides in the soul of its
    possessor, unseen either by gods or men, has never, in poetry or
    prose, been adequately discussed, so as to show that Injustice is
    the greatest bane that a soul can receive into itself, and Justice
    the greatest blessing. Had this been the language held by you all
    from the first, and had you tried to persuade us of this from our
    childhood, we should not be on the watch to check one another in
    the commission of injustice, because everyone would be his own
    watchman, fearful lest by committing injustice he might attach to
    himself the greatest of evils.”

Very useful and necessary for those times, and not wholly inapplicable
to less remote ages, is the incidental remark in the same book, that
“there are quacks and soothsayers who flock to the rich man’s doors,
and try to persuade him that they have a power at command which
they procure from heaven, and which enables them, by sacrifices and
incantations, performed amid feasting and indulgence, to make amends
for any crime committed either by the individual himself or by his
ancestors.... And in support of all these assertions they produce the
evidence of poets--some, to exhibit the facilities of vice, quoting the
words:--

    “Whoso wickedness seeks, may even in masses obtain it
    Easily. Smooth is the way, and short, for nigh is her dwelling.
    Virtue, heaven has ordained, shall be reached by the sweat of
        the forehead.”

    --_Hesiod_, _Works and Days_, 287.[14]

It is the fifth Book, however, which has always excited the greatest
interest and controversy, for therein he introduces his Communistic
views. Our interest in it is increased by the fact that it is the
original of the ideal Communisms of modern writers--the prototype of
the _Utopia_ of More, of the _New Atlantis_ of Francis Bacon, the
_Oceanica_ of Harrington, and the _Gaudentio_ of Berkeley, &c.

In maintaining the perfect natural equality of women to men,[15] and
insisting upon an identity of education and training, he advances
propositions which perhaps only the more advanced of the assertors
of women’s rights might be prepared to entertain. Whatever may have
been said by the various admirers of Plato, who have been anxious to
present his political or social views in a light which might render
them less in conflict with modern Conservatism, there can be no doubt
for any candid reader of the _Republic_ that the author published to
the world his _bonâ fide_ convictions. One of the _dramatis personæ_
of the dialogue, while expressing his concurrence in the Communistic
legislation of Sokrates, at the same time objects to the difficulty of
realising it in actual life, and desires Sokrates to point out whether,
and how, it could be really practicable. Whereupon Sokrates (who it is
scarcely necessary to remark, is the convenient mouthpiece of Plato)
replies: “Do you think any the worse of an artist who has painted the
_beau idéal_ of human beauty, and has left nothing wanting in the
picture, because he cannot prove that such a one as he has painted
might possibly exist? Were not we, likewise, proposing to construct,
in theory, the pattern of a perfect State? Will our theory suffer at
all in your good opinion if we cannot prove that it is _possible_ for a
city to be organised in the manner proposed?”

As has been well paraphrased by the interpreters to whom we are
indebted for the English version: “The possibilities of realising such
a commonwealth in actual practice is quite a secondary consideration,
which does not in the least affect the soundness of the method or the
truth of the results. All that can fairly be demanded of him is to
show how the imperfect politics at present existing may be brought
most nearly into harmony with the perfect State which has just been
described. To bring about this great result one fundamental change
is necessary, and only one: the highest political power must, by
some means or other, be vested in philosophers.” The next point
to be determined is, What is, or ought to be, implied by the term
_philosopher_, and what are the characteristics of the true philosophic
disposition? “They are--(1) an eager desire for the knowledge of all
real existence; (2) hatred of falsehood, and devoted love of truth; (3)
contempt for the pleasures of the body; (4) indifference to money; (5)
high-mindedness and liberality; (6) justice and gentleness; (7) a quick
apprehension and a good memory; (8) a musical, regular, and harmonious
disposition.” But how is this disposition to be secured? Under the
present condition of things, and the corrupting influences of various
kinds, where temptations abound to compromise truth and substitute
expediency and self-interest, it would seem wellnigh impossible and
Utopian to expect it.

“How is this evil to be remedied? The State itself must regulate the
study of philosophy, and must take care that the students pursue it on
right principles, and at a right age. And now, surely, we may expect
to be believed when we assert that if a State is to prosper it must be
governed by philosophers. If such a contingency should ever take place
(and why should it not?), our ideal State will undoubtedly be realised.
So that, upon the whole, we come to this conclusion: The constitution
just described is the best, if it can be realised; and to realise it is
difficult, but not impossible.” At this moment, when the question of
compulsory education, under the immediate superintendence of the State,
is being fought with so much fierceness--on one side, at least--to
recur to Plato might not be without advantage.

In the most famous dialogue of Plato--the _Republic_, or, as it might
be termed _On Justice_--the principal interlocutors, besides Sokrates,
are Glaukon, Polymachus, and Adeimantus; and the whole piece originates
in the chance question which rose between them, “What is Justice?”
In the second Book, from which the following passage is taken, the
discussion turns upon the origin of society, which gives opportunity
to Sokrates to develop his opinions upon the diet best adapted for the
community--at all events, for the great majority:--

    “‘They [the artisans and work-people generally] will live, I
    suppose, on barley and wheat, baking cakes of the meal, and
    kneading loaves of the flour. And spreading these excellent cakes
    and loaves upon mats of straw or on clean leaves, and themselves
    reclining on rude beds of yew or myrtle-boughs, they will make
    merry, themselves and their children, drinking their wine, weaving
    garlands, and singing the praises of the gods, enjoying one
    another’s society, and not begetting children beyond their means,
    through a prudent fear of poverty or war.’

    “Glaukon here interrupted me, remarking, ‘Apparently you describe
    your men feasting, without anything to relish their bread.’[16]

    “‘True,’ I said, ‘I had forgotten. Of course they will have
    something to relish their food. Salt, no doubt, and olives, and
    cheese, together with the country fare of boiled onions and
    cabbage. We shall also set before them a dessert, I imagine,
    of figs, pease, and beans: they may roast myrtle-berries and
    beech-nuts at the fire, taking wine with their fruit in moderation.
    And thus, passing their days in tranquillity and sound health,
    they will, in all probability, live to an advanced age, and dying,
    bequeath to their children a life in which their own will be
    reproduced.’

    “Upon this Glaukon exclaimed, ‘Why, Sokrates, if you were founding
    a community of swine, this is just the style in which you would
    feed them up!’

    “‘How, then,’ said I, ‘would you have them live, Glaukon?’

    “‘In a civilised manner,’ he replied. ‘They ought to recline on
    couches, I should think, if they are not to have a hard life of it,
    and dine off tables, and have the usual dishes and dessert of a
    modern dinner.’

    “‘Very good: I understand. Apparently we are considering the
    growth, not of a city merely, but of a _luxurious_ city. I dare
    say it is not a bad plan, for by this extension of our inquiry we
    shall perhaps discover how it is that justice and injustice take
    root in cities. Now, it appears to me that the city which we have
    described is the _genuine_ and, so to speak, _healthy_ city. But
    if you wish us also to contemplate a city that is suffering from
    inflammation, there is nothing to hinder us. Some people will not
    be satisfied, it seems, with the fare or the mode of life which we
    have described, but must have, in addition, couches and tables and
    every other article of furniture, as well as viands.... Swineherds
    again are among the additions we shall require--a class of persons
    not to be found, because not wanted, in our former city, but needed
    among the rest in this. We shall also need great quantities of all
    kinds of cattle for those who may wish to eat them, shall we not?’

    “‘Of course we shall.’

    “‘Then shall we not experience the need of medical men also to a
    much greater extent under this than under the former _régime_?’

    “‘Yes, indeed.’

    “‘The country, too, I presume, which was formerly adequate to
    the support of its then inhabitants, will be now too small, and
    adequate no longer. Shall we say so?’

    “‘Certainly.’

    “‘Then must we not cut ourselves a slice of our neighbours’
    territory, if we are to have land enough both for pasture and
    tillage? While they will do the same to ours if they, like us,
    permit themselves to overstep the limit of necessaries, and plunge
    into the unbounded acquisition of wealth.’

    “‘It must inevitably be so, Sokrates.’

    “‘Will our next step be to go to war, Glaukon, or how will it be?’

    “‘As you say.’

    “At this stage of our inquiry let us avoid asserting either that
    war does good or that it does harm, confining ourselves to this
    statement--that we have further traced the origin of war to causes
    which are the most fruitful sources of whatever evils befall a
    State, either in its corporate capacity or in its individual
    members.” (Book II.)[17]

Justly holding that the best laws will be of little avail unless the
administrators of them shall be just and virtuous, Sokrates, in the
Third Book, proceeds to lay down rules for the education and diet of
the magistrates or executive, whom he calls--in conformity with the
Communistic system--_guardians_:--

    “‘We have already said,’ proceeds Sokrates, ‘that the persons in
    question must refrain from drunkenness; for a guardian is the last
    person in the world, I should think, to be allowed to get drunk,
    and not know where he is.’

    “‘Truly it would be ridiculous for a guardian to require a guard.’

    “‘But about eating: our men are combatants in a most important
    arena, are they not?’

    “‘They are.’

    “‘Then will the habit of body which is cultivated by the trained
    fighters of the Palæstra be suitable to such persons?’

    “‘Perhaps it will.’

    “‘Well, but this is a sleepy kind of regimen, and produces a
    precarious state of health; for do you not observe that men in the
    regular training sleep their life away, and, if they depart only
    slightly from the prescribed diet, are attacked by serious maladies
    in their worst form?’

    “‘I do.’

           *       *       *       *       *

    “‘In fact, it would not be amiss, I imagine, to compare this whole
    system of feeding and living to that kind of music and singing
    which is adapted to the panharmonicum, and composed in every
    variety of rhythm.’

    “‘Undoubtedly it would be a just comparison.’

    “‘Is it not true, then, that as in music variety begat
    dissoluteness in the soul, so here it begets disease in the body,
    while simplicity in gymnastic [diet] is as productive of health as
    in music it was productive of temperance?’

    “‘Most true.’

    “‘But when dissoluteness and diseases abound in a city, are not
    law courts and surgeries opened in abundance, and do not Law
    and Physic begin to hold their heads high, when numbers even
    of well-born persons devote themselves with eagerness to these
    professions?’

    “‘What else can we expect?’

           *       *       *       *       *

    “‘And do you not hold it disgraceful to require medical aid, unless
    it be for a wound, or an attack of illness incidental to the time
    of the year--to require it, I mean, owing to our laziness and the
    life we lead, and to get ourselves so stuffed with humours and
    wind, like quagmires, as to compel the clever sons of Asklepios to
    call diseases by such names as _flatulence_ and _catarrh_?’

    “‘To be sure, these are very strange and new-fangled names for
    disorders.’” (Book III.)

Elsewhere, in a well-known passage (in _The Laws_), Plato pronounces
that the springs of human conduct and moral worth depend principally
on diet. “I observe,” says he, “that men’s thoughts and actions are
intimately connected with the threefold need and desire (accordingly as
they are properly used or abused, virtue or its opposite is the result)
of eating, drinking, and sexual love.” He himself was remarkable for
the extreme frugality of his living. Like most of his countrymen, he
was a great eater of figs; and so much did he affect that frugal repast
that he was called, _par excellence_, the “lover of figs” (φιλόσυκος).

The Greeks, in general, were noted among the Europeans for their
abstemiousness; and Antiphanes, the comic poet (in Athenæus), terms
them “leaf-eaters” (φυλλοτρῶγες). Amongst the Greeks, the Athenians and
Spartans were specially noted for frugal living. That of the latter is
proverbial. The comic poets frequently refer, in terms of ridicule,
to what seemed to them so unaccountable an indifferentism to the
“good things” of life on the part of the witty and refined people of
Attica. See the _Deipnosophists_ (dinner-philosophers) of Athenæus (the
great repertory of the _bon-vivantism_ of the time), and Plutarch’s
_Symposiacs_.

It has been pointed out by Professor Mahaffy, in his recent work on
old Greek life, that slaughter-houses and butchers are seldom, or
never, mentioned in Greek literature. “The eating of [flesh] meat,” he
observes, “must have been almost confined to sacrificial feasts; for,
in ordinary language, butchers’ meat was called _victim_ (ἱερεῖον).
The most esteemed, or popular, dishes were _madsa_, a sort of porridge
of wheat or barley; various kinds of bread (see _Deipn._ iii.); honey,
beans, lupines, lettuce and salad, onions and leeks. Olives, dates,
and figs formed the usual fruit portion of their meals. In regard to
non-vegetable food, fish was the most sought after and preferred to
anything else; and the well-known term _opson_, which so frequently
recurs in Greek literature, was specially appropriated to it.

Contemporary with the great master of language was the great master of
medicine, Hippokrates, (460-357) who is to his science what Homer is
to poetry and Herodotus to history--the first historical founder of
the art of healing. He was a native of Kōs, a small island of the S.W.
coast of Lesser Asia, the traditional cradle and home of the disciples
of Asklepios, or Æsculapius (as he was termed by the Latins), the
semi-divine author and patron of medicine. And it may be remarked, in
passing, that the College of Asklepiads of Kōs were careful to exercise
a despotism as severe and exclusive as that which obtains, for the most
part, with the modern orthodox schools.

Amongst a large number of writings of various kinds attributed to
Hippokrates is the treatise _On Regimen in Acute Diseases_ (περὶ
Διαίτης Ὀξέων), which is generally received as genuine; and _On the
Healthful Regimen_ (περὶ Διαίτης Ὑγιεινῆς), which belongs to the same
age, though not to the _canonical_ writings of the founder of the
school himself. He was the author, real or reputed, of some of the
most valuable apophthegms of Greek antiquity. _Ars longa--Vita brevis_
(education is slow; life is short) is the best known, and most often
quoted. What is still more to our purpose is his maxim--“Over-drinking
is _almost as bad_ as over-eating.” Of all the productions of this most
voluminous of writers, his _Aphorisms_ (Ἀφορισμοί), in which these
specimens of laconic wisdom are collected, and which consists of some
four hundred short practical sentences, are the most popular.

About a century after the death of Plato appeared a popular exposition
of the Pythagorean teaching, in hexameters, which is known by the title
given to it by Iamblichus--the _Golden Verses_. “More than half of
them,” says Professor Clifford, “consist of a sort of versified ‘Duty
to God and my Neighbour,’ except that it is not designed by the rich to
be obeyed by the poor; that it lays stress on the laws of health; and
that it is just such sensible counsel for the good and right conduct of
life as an Englishman might now-a-days give to his son.”

Hierokles, an eminent Neo-Platonist of the fifth century, A.D., gave
a course of lectures upon them at Alexandria--which since the time of
the Ptolemies had been one of the chief centres of Greek learning and
science--and his commentary is sufficiently interesting. Suïdas, the
lexicographer, speaks of his matter and style in the highest terms of
praise. “He astonished his hearers everywhere,” he tells us, “by the
calm, the magnificence, the width of his superlative intellect, and
by the sweetness of his speech, full of the most beautiful words and
things.” The Alexandrian lecturer quotes the old Pythagorean maxims:

    “You shall honour God best by becoming godlike in your thoughts.
    Whoso giveth God honour as to one that needeth it, that man in his
    folly hath made himself greater than God. The wise man only is a
    priest, is a lover of God, is skilful to pray; ... for that man
    only knows how to worship, who begins by offering himself as the
    victim, fashions his own soul into a divine image, and furnishes
    his mind as a temple for the reception of the divine light.”

The following extracts will serve as a specimen of the religious or
moral character of the _Golden Verses_:--

    “Let not sleep come upon thine eyelids till thou hast pondered thy
    deeds of the day.

    “Wherein have I sinned? What work have I done, what left undone
    that I ought to have done?

    “Beginning at the first, go through even unto the last, and then
    let thy heart smite thee for the evil deeds, but rejoice in the
    good work.

    “Work at these commandments and think upon them: these commandments
    shalt thou love.

    “They shall surely set thee in the way of divine righteousness:
    yea, by Him who gave into our soul the _Tetrad_,[18] well-spring of
    life everlasting.

           *       *       *       *       *

    “Know so far as is permitted thee, that Nature in all things is
    like unto herself:

    “That thou mayest not hope that of which there is no hope, nor be
    ignorant of that which may be.

    “Know thou also, that _the woes of men are the work of their own
    hands_.

    “Miserable are they, _because they see not and hear not the good
    that is very nigh them_: and the way of escape from evil few there
    be that understand it.

           *       *       *       *       *

    “Verily, Father Zeus, thou wouldst free all men from much evil, if
    thou wouldst teach all men what manner of spirit they are of.

           *       *       *       *       *

    “Keep from the meats aforesaid, using judgment both in cleansing
    and setting free the soul.

    “Give heed to every matter, and set reason on high, who best
    holdeth the reins of guidance.[19]

    “Then when thou leavest the body, and comest into the free æther,
    thou shalt be a god undying, everlasting, neither shall death have
    any more dominion over thee.”

Referring to these verses, which inculcate that the human race is
itself responsible for the evils which men, for the most part, prefer
to regret than to remedy, Professor Clifford, to whom we are indebted
for the above version of the _Golden Verses_, remarks on the merits of
this teaching, that it reminds us that “men suffer from _preventible_
evils, that the people perish for lack of knowledge.”[20] Thus we find
that the principal obstructions, in all ages, to human progress and
perfectibility may be ever found in IGNORANCE and SELFISHNESS.




IV.

OVID. 43 B.C.--18 A.D.


The school of Pythagoras and of Plato, although it was not the
fashionable or popular religion of Rome, counted amongst its disciples
some distinguished Italians, and the name of Cicero, who belonged
to the “New Academy,” is sufficiently illustrious. The Italians,
however, who borrowed their religion as well as their literature from
the Greeks, were never distinguished, like their masters, for that
refinement of thought which might have led them to attach themselves
to the Pythagorean teaching. Under the bloody despotism of the Empire,
the philosophy which was most affected by the _literati_ and those who
were driven to the consolations of philosophy was the _stoical_, which
taught its disciples to consider _apathy_ as the _summum bonum_ of
existence. This school of philosophy, whatever its other merits, was
too much centred in self--paradoxical as the assertion may seem--to
have much regard for the rest of mankind, much less for the non-human
species. Nor, while they professed supreme contempt for the luxuries
and even comforts of life, did the disciples of the “Porch,” in
general, practice abstinence from any exalted motive, humanitarian or
spiritual. They preached indifference for the “good things” of this
life, not so much to elevate the spiritual and moral side of human
nature as to show their contempt for human life altogether.

That the Italian was essentially of a more barbarous nature than the
Greek is apparent in the national spectacles and amusements. The
savage scenes of gladiatorial and non-human combat and internecine
slaughter of the Latin amphitheatres, of which the famous Colosseum
in the capital was the model of many others in the provinces, were
abhorrent to the more refined Greek mind.[21] In view of scenes so
sanguinary--the “Roman holiday”--it is scarcely necessary to observe
that humanitarianism was a creed unknown to the Italians; and it
was not likely that a people, addicted throughout their career as
a dominant race to the most bloody wars, not only foreign but also
internecine, with whom fighting and slaughter of their own kind was an
almost daily occupation, should entertain any feeling of pity (to say
nothing of justice) towards their non-human dependants. Nevertheless,
even they were not wholly inaccessible, on occasion, to the prompting
of pity. Referring to a grand spectacle given by Pompeius at the
dedication of his theatre (B.C. 55), in which a large number
of elephants, amongst others, were forced to fight, the elder Pliny
tells us:--

    “When they lost the hope of escape, they sought the compassion
    of the crowd with an appearance that is indescribable, bewailing
    themselves with a sort of lamentation so much to the pain of
    the populace that, forgetful of the imperator and the elaborate
    munificence displayed for their honour, they all rose up in tears
    and bestowed imprecations on Pompeius, of which he soon after
    experienced the effect.”[22]

Cicero, who was himself present at the spectacle of the Circus, in a
letter to a friend, Marcus Marius, writes:--

    “What followed, for five days, was successive combats between a
    man and a wild beast. (_Venationes binæ._) It was magnificent.
    No one disputes it. But what pleasure can it be to a person of
    refinement, when either a weak man is torn to pieces by a very
    powerful beast, or a noble animal is struck through by a hunting
    spear?... The last day was that of the elephants, in which there
    was great astonishment on the part of the populace and crowd, but
    no enjoyment. Indeed there followed a degree of compassion, and a
    certain idea that there is a sort of fellowship between that huge
    animal and the human race.” (Cicero, _Ep. ad Diversos_ vii., 1.)

Testimonies which might induce one almost to think that, had not they
been systematically and industriously accustomed to these horrible
and gigantic butcheries by their rulers, even the Roman populace
might have been susceptible of better feelings and desires than those
inspired by their amphitheatres, though these savage exhibitions were
perhaps hardly worse than the combats and slaughter in the bull-rings
of Seville or Madrid, or at the courts of the Mohammedan princes of
India recently sanctioned by the presence of English royalty. It is
worth noting, in passing, that while the _gladiatorial_ slaughters were
discontinued some years after the triumph of Christianity, the other
part of the entertainment--the indiscriminate combats and slaughter
of the _non-human_ victims--continued to be exhibited to a much later
period.

If we reflect that the rise of the humanitarian spirit in Christian
Europe, or rather in the better section of it, is of very recent
origin, it might appear unreasonable to look for any distinct
exhibition of so exalted a feeling in the younger age of the
world. Yet, to the shame of more advanced civilisations, we find
manifestations of it in the writings of a few of the more refined
minds of Greece and Italy; and Plutarch and Seneca--the former
particularly--occupy a distinguished place amongst the first preachers
of that sacred truth.[23]

Publius Ovidius Naso, the Latin versifier of the Pythagorean
philosophy, was born B.C. 43. He belonged to the equestrian
order, a position in the social scale which corresponds with the
“higher middle class” of modern days. Like so many other names eminent
in literature, he was in the first instance educated for the law,
for which, also like many other literary celebrities, he soon showed
his genius to be unfitted and uncongenial. He studied at the great
University of that age--Athens--where he acquired a knowledge of
the Greek language, and probably of its rich literature. The most
memorable event in his life--which, in accordance with the fashion of
his contemporaries of the same rank, was for the most part devoted
to “gallantry” and the accustomed amatory licence--is his mysterious
banishment from Rome to the inhospitable and savage shores of the
Euxine, where he passed the last seven years of his existence, dying
there in the sixtieth year of his age. The cause of his sudden exile
from the Court of Augustus, where he had been in high favour, is one
of those secrets of history which have exercised the ingenuity of his
successive biographers. According to the terms of the imperial edict,
the freedom of the poet’s _Ars Amatoria_ was the offence. That this was
a mere pretext is plain, as well from the long interval of time which
had passed since the publication of the poem as from the character of
the fashionable society of the capital. Ovid himself attributes his
misfortune to the fact of his having become the involuntary witness of
some secret of the palace, the nature of which is not divulged.

His most important poems are (1) _The Metamorphoses_, in fifteen books,
so called from its being a collection of the numerous transformations
of the popular theology. It is, perhaps, the most _charming_ of Latin
poems that have come down to us. Particular passages have a special
beauty. (2) _The Fasti_, in twelve books, of which only six are extant,
is the Roman Calendar in verse. Its interest, apart from the poetic
genius of the author, is great, as being the grand repertory of the
Latin feasts and their popular origin. Besides these two principal
poems he was the author of the famous _Loves_, in three books; the
_Letters of the Heroines_, _The Remedies of Love_, and _The Tristia, or
Sad Thoughts_. He also wrote a tragedy--_Medea_--which, unfortunately
has not come down to us. All his poems are characterised by elegance
and a remarkable smoothness and regularity of versification, and in
much of his productions there is an unusual beauty and picturesqueness
of poetic ideas.

The following passage from the fifteenth book of the _Metamorphoses_
has been justly said by Dryden, his translator, to be the finest part
of the whole poem. It is almost impossible to believe but that, in
spite of his misspent life, he must have felt, in his better moments at
least, something of the truth and beauty of the Pythagorean principles
which he so exquisitely versifies. In the touching words which he puts
into the mouth of the jealous Medea--the murderess of her children--he
might have exclaimed in his own case--

                “Video meliora proboque
        Deteriora sequor.”[24]

    “He [Pythagoras], too, was the first to forbid animals to be served
    up at the table, and he was first to open his lips, indeed full
    of wisdom yet all unheeded, in the following words: ‘Forbear, O
    mortals! to pollute your bodies with such abominable food. There
    are the _farinacea_ (_fruges_), there are the fruits which bear
    down the branches with their weight, and there are the grapes
    swelling on the vines; there are the sweet herbs; there are those
    that may be softened by the flame and become tender. Nor is the
    milky juice denied you; nor honey, redolent of the flower of thyme.
    The lavish Earth heaps up her riches and her gentle foods, and
    offers you dainties without blood and without slaughter. The lower
    animals satisfy their ravenous hunger with flesh. And yet not
    all of them; for the horse, the sheep, the cows and oxen subsist
    on grass; while those whose disposition is cruel and fierce, the
    tigers of Armenia and the raging lions, and the wolves and bears,
    revel in their bloody diet.

    “‘Alas! what a monstrous crime it is (_scelus_) that entrails
    should be entombed in entrails; that one ravening body should grow
    fat on others which it crams into it; that one living creature
    should live by the death of another living creature! Amid so great
    an abundance which the Earth--that best of mothers--produces does,
    indeed, nothing delight you but to gnaw with savage teeth the sad
    produce of the wounds you inflict and to imitate the habits of
    the Cyclops? Can you not appease the hunger of a voracious and
    ill-regulated stomach unless you first destroy another being? Yet
    that age of old, to which we have given the name of _golden_, was
    blest in the produce of the trees and in the herbs which the earth
    brings forth, and the human mouth was not polluted with blood.

    “‘Then the birds moved their wings secure in the air, and the hare,
    without fear, wandered in the open fields. Then the fish did not
    fall a victim to the hook and its own credulity. Every place was
    void of treachery; there was no dread of injury--all things were
    full of peace. In later ages some one--a mischievous innovator
    (_non utilis auctor_), whoever he was--set at naught and scorned
    this pure and simple food, and engulfed in his greedy paunch
    victuals made from a carcase. It was he that opened the road to
    wickedness. I can believe that the steel, since stained with blood,
    was first dipped in the gore of savage wild beasts; and that was
    lawful enough. We hold that the bodies of animals that seek our
    destruction are put to death without any breach of the sacred laws
    of morality. But although they might be put to death they were
    not to be eaten as well. From this time the abomination advanced
    rapidly. The swine is believed to have been the first victim
    destined to slaughter, because it grubbed up the seeds with its
    broad snout, and so cut short the hopes of the year. For gnawing
    and injuring the vine the goat was led to slaughter at the altars
    of the avenging Bacchus. Its own fault was the ruin of each of
    these victims.

    “‘But how have you deserved to die, ye sheep, you harmless
    breed that have come into existence for the service of men--who
    carry nectar in your full udders--who give your wool as soft
    coverings for us--who assist us more by your life than by your
    death? Why have the oxen deserved this--beings without guile and
    without deceit--innocent, mild, born for the endurance of labour?
    Ungrateful, indeed, is man, and unworthy of the bounteous gifts of
    the harvest who, after unyoking him from the plough, can slaughter
    the tiller of his fields--who can strike with the axe that neck
    worn bare with labour, through which he had so often turned up the
    hard ground, and which had afforded so many a harvest.

    “‘And it is not enough that such wickedness is committed by men.
    They have involved the gods themselves in this abomination, and
    they believe that a Deity in the heavens can rejoice in the
    slaughter of the laborious and useful ox. The spotless victim,
    excelling in the beauty of its form (for its very beauty is the
    cause of its destruction), decked out with garlands and with gold
    is placed before their altars, and, ignorant of the purport of
    the proceedings, it hears the prayers of the priest. It sees the
    fruits which it cultivated placed on its head between its horns,
    and, struck down, with its life-blood it dyes the sacrificial knife
    which it had perhaps already seen in the clear water. Immediately
    they inspect the nerves and fibres torn from the yet living being,
    and scrutinise the will of the gods in them.

    “‘From whence such a hunger in man after unnatural and unlawful
    food? Do you dare, O mortal race, to continue to feed on flesh? Do
    it not, I beseech you, and give heed to my admonitions. And when
    you present to your palates the limbs of slaughtered oxen, know and
    feel that you are feeding on the tillers of the ground.’”--_Metam._
    xv., 73-142.




V.

SENECA. DIED 65 A.D.


Lucius Annæus Seneca, the greatest name in the stoic school of
philosophy, and the first of Latin moralists, was born at Corduba
(Cordova) almost contemporaneously with the beginning of the Christian
era. His family, like that of Ovid, was of the equestrian order. He was
of a weakly constitution; and bodily feebleness, as with many other
great intellects, served to intensify if not originate, the activity
of the mind. At Rome, with which he early made acquaintance, he soon
gained great distinction at the bar; and the eloquence and fervour he
displayed in the Senate before the Emperor Caligula excited the jealous
hatred of that insane tyrant. Later in life he obtained a prætorship,
and he was also appointed to the tutorship of the young Domitius,
afterwards the Emperor Nero. On the accession of that prince, at the
age of seventeen, to the imperial throne, Seneca became one of his
chief advisers.

Unfortunately for his credit as a philosopher, while exerting his
influence to restrain the vicious propensities of his old pupil, he
seems to have been too anxious to acquire, not only a fair proportion
of wealth, but even an enormous fortune, and his villas and gardens
were of so splendid a kind as to provoke the jealousy and covetousness
of Nero. This, added to his alleged disparagement of the prince’s
talents, especially in singing and driving, for which Nero particularly
desired to be famous, was the cause of his subsequent disgrace and
death. The philosopher prudently attempted to anticipate the will of
Nero by a voluntary surrender of all his accumulated possessions, and
he sought to disarm the jealous suspicions of the tyrant by a retired
and unostentatious life. These precautions were of no avail; his death
was already decided. He was accused of complicity in the conspiracy of
Piso, and the only grace allowed him was to be his own executioner. The
despair of his wife, Pompeia Paulina, he attempted to mitigate by the
reflection that his life had been always directed by the standard of a
higher morality. Nothing, however, could dissuade her from sharing her
husband’s fate, and the two faithful friends laid open their veins by
the same blow.

Advanced age and his extremely meagre diet had left little blood in
Seneca’s veins, and it flowed with painful slowness. His tortures were
excessive and, to avoid the intolerable grief of being witnesses of
each other’s suffering, they shut themselves up in separate apartments.
With that marvellous intrepid tranquillity which characterised some
of the old sages, Seneca calmly dictated his last thoughts to his
surrounding friends. These were afterwards published. His agonies being
still prolonged, he took hemlock; and this also failing, he was carried
into a vapour-stove, where he was suffocated, and thus at length ceased
to suffer.

In estimating the character of Seneca, it is just that we should
consider all the circumstances of the exceptional time in which his
life was cast. Perhaps there has never been an age or people more
utterly corrupt and abandoned than that of the period of the earlier
Roman Cæsars and that of Rome and the large cities of the empire.
Allowing the utmost that his detractors have brought against him, the
moral character of the author of the _Consolations_ and _Letters_
stands out in bright relief as compared with that of the immense
majority of his contemporaries of equal rank and position, who were
sunk in the depths of licentiousness and of selfish indifference to
the miseries of the surrounding world. That his public career was not
of so exalted a character altogether as are his moral precepts, is
only too patent to be denied and, in this shortcoming of a loftier
_ideal_, he must share reproach with some of the most esteemed of the
world’s luminaries. If, for instance, we compare him with Cicero or
with Francis Bacon, the comparison would certainly be not unfavourable
to Seneca. The darkest stigma on the reputation of the great Latin
moralist is his connivance at the death of the infamous Agrippina, the
mother of his pupil Nero. Although not to be excused, we may fairly
attribute this act to conscientious, if mistaken, motives. His best
apology is to be found in the fact that, so long as he assisted to
direct the counsels of Nero, he contrived to restrain that prince’s
depraved disposition from those outbreaks which, after the death of the
philosopher, have stigmatised the name of Nero with undying infamy.

The principal writings of Seneca are:--

1. _On Anger._ His earliest, and perhaps his best known, work.

2. _On Consolation._ Addressed to his mother, Helvia. An admirable
philosophical exhortation.

3. _On Providence; or, Why evils happen to good men though a divine
Providence may exist._

4. _On Tranquillity of Mind._

5. _On Clemency._ Addressed to Nero Cæsar. One of the most meritorious
writings of all antiquity. It is not unworthy of being classed with the
humanitarian protests of Beccaria and Voltaire. The stoical distinction
between clemency and pity (_misericordia_), in book ii., is, as Seneca
admits, merely a dispute about words.

6. _On the Shortness of Life._ In which the proper employment of time
and the acquisition of wisdom are eloquently enforced as the best
employment of a fleeting life.

7. _On a Happy Life._ In which he inculcates that there is no happiness
without virtue. An excellent treatise.

8. _On Kindnesses._

9. _Epistles to Lucilius._ 124 in number. They abound in lessons and
precepts in morality and philosophy, and, excepting the _De Irâ_, have
been the most read, perhaps, of all Seneca’s productions.

10. _Questions on Natural History._ In seven books.

Besides these moral and philosophic works, he composed several
tragedies. They were not intended for the stage, but rather as moral
lessons. As in all his works, there is much of earnest thought and
feeling, although expressed in rhetorical and declamatory language.

What especially characterises Seneca’s writings is their remarkably
_humanitarian_ spirit. Altogether he is imbued with this, for the
most part, very modern feeling in a greater degree than any other
writer, Greek or Latin. Plutarch indeed, in his noble _Essay on Flesh
Eating_, is more expressly denunciatory of the barbarism of the
Slaughter House, and of the horrible cruelties inseparably connected
with it, and evidently felt more deeply the importance of exposing
its evils. The Latin moralist, however, deals with a wider range of
ethical questions, and on such subjects, as, _e.g._, the relations of
master and slave, is far ahead of his contemporaries. His treatment of
_Dietetics_, in common with that of most of the old-world moralists, is
rather from the spiritual and ascetic than from the purely humanitarian
point of view. “The judgments on Seneca’s writings,” says the author
of the article on Seneca in Dr. Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and Latin
Biography_, “have been as various as the opinions about his character,
and both in extremes. It has been said of him that he looks best in
quotations; but this is an admission that there is something worth
quoting, which cannot be said of all writers. That Seneca possessed
great mental powers cannot be doubted. He had seen much of human life,
and he knew well what man is. His philosophy, so far as he adopted a
system, was the stoical; but it was rather an eclecticism of stoicism
than pure stoicism. His style is antithetical, and apparently laboured;
and where there is much labour there is generally affectation. Yet his
language is clear and forcible--it is not mere words--there is thought
always. It would not be easy to name any modern writer, who has treated
on morality and has said so much that is practically good and true, or
has treated the matter in so attractive a way.”

Jerome, in his _Ecclesiastical Writers_, hesitates to include him in
the catalogue of his saints only because he is not certain of the
genuineness of the alleged literary correspondence between Seneca and
St. Paul. We may observe, in passing, on the remarkable coincidence
of the presence of the two greatest teachers of the old and the new
faiths in the capital of the Roman Empire at the same time; and it is
possible, or rather highly probable, that St. Paul was acquainted with
the writings of Seneca; while, from the total silence of the pagan
philosopher, it seems that he knew nothing of the Pauline epistles
or teaching. Amongst many testimonies to the superiority of Seneca,
Tacitus, the great historian of the empire, speaks of the “splendour
and celebrity of his philosophic writings,” as well as of his “amiable
genius”--_ingenium amœnum_. (_Annals_, xii., xiii.) The elder Pliny
writes of him as “at the very head of all the learned men of that
time.” (xiv. 4.) Petrarch quotes the testimony of Plutarch, “that great
man who, Greek though he was freely confesses ‘that there is no Greek
writer who could be brought into comparison with him in the department
of _morals_.’”

The following passage is to be found in a letter to Lucilius, in which,
after expatiating on the sublimity of the teaching of the philosopher
Attalus in inculcating moderation and self-control in corporeal
pleasures, Seneca thus enunciates his _dietetic_ opinions:--

    “Since I have begun to confide to you with what exceeding ardour
    I approached the study of philosophy in my youth, I shall not be
    ashamed to confess the affection with which Sotion [his preceptor]
    inspired me for the teaching of Pythagoras. He was wont to
    instruct me on what grounds he himself, and, after him, Sextius,
    had determined to abstain from the flesh of animals. Each had a
    different reason, but the reason in both instances was a grand
    one (_magnifica_). Sotion held that man can find a sufficiency
    of nourishment without blood shedding, and that cruelty became
    habitual when once the practice of butchering was applied to the
    gratification of the appetite. He was wont to add that ‘It is our
    bounden duty to limit the materials of luxury. That, moreover,
    variety of foods is injurious to health, and not natural to our
    bodies. If these maxims [of the Pythagorean school] are true, then
    to abstain from the flesh of animals is to encourage and foster
    _innocence_; if ill-founded, at least they teach us frugality
    and simplicity of living. And what loss have you in losing your
    cruelty? (Quod istic crudelitatis tuæ damnum est?) I merely deprive
    you of the food of lions and vultures.’

    “Moved by these and similar arguments, I resolved to abstain from
    flesh meat, and at the end of a year the habit of abstinence was
    not only easy but delightful. I firmly believed that the faculties
    of my mind were more active,[25] and at this day I will not take
    pains to assure you whether they were so or not. You ask, then,
    ‘Why did you go back and relinquish this mode of life?’ I reply
    that the lot of my early days was cast in the reign of the emperor
    Tiberius. Certain foreign religions became the object of the
    imperial suspicion, and amongst the proofs of adherence to the
    foreign cultus or superstition was that of abstinence from the
    flesh of animals. At the entreaties of my father, therefore, who
    had no real fear of the practice being made a ground of accusation,
    but who had a hatred of philosophy,[26] I was induced to return to
    my former dietetic habits, nor had he much difficulty in persuading
    me to recur to more sumptuous repasts....

    “This I tell,” he proceeds, “to prove to you how powerful are the
    early impetuses of youth to what is truest and best under the
    exhortations and incentives of virtuous teachers. We err partly
    through the fault of our guides, who teach us _how to dispute_, not
    _how to live_; partly by our own fault in expecting our teachers
    to cultivate not so much the _disposition of the mind_ as the
    faculties of the intellect. Hence it is that in place of a love
    of wisdom there is only a love of words (Itaque quæ _philosophia_
    fuit, facta _philologia_ est).”--_Epistola_ cviii.[27]

Seneca here cautiously reveals the jealous suspicion with which the
first Cæsars viewed all foreign, and especially quasi-religious,
innovations, and his own _public_ compliance, to some extent, with the
orthodox dietetic practices. Yet that in private life he continued
to practise, as well as to preach, a radical dietary reformation
is sufficiently evident to all who are conversant with his various
writings. The refinement and gentleness of his ethics are everywhere
apparent, and exhibit him as a man of extraordinary sensibility and
feeling.

As for _dietetics_, he makes it a matter of the first importance, on
which he is never weary of insisting. “_We must so live, not as if we
ought to live for, but as though we could not do without, the body._”
He quotes Epikurus: “_If you live according to nature, you will never
be poor; if according to conventionalism, you will never be rich.
Nature demands little; fashion_ (opinio) _superfluity_.” In one of his
letters he eloquently describes the riotous feasting of the period
which corresponds to our festival of Christmas--another illustration of
the proverb, “History repeats itself”:--

    “December is the month,” he begins his letter, “when the city
    [Rome] most especially gives itself up to riotous living
    (_desudat_). Free licence is allowed to the public luxury. Every
    place resounds with the gigantic preparations for eating and
    gorging, just as if,” he adds, “the whole year were not a sort of
    _Saturnalia_.”

He contrasts with all this waste and gluttony the simplicity and
frugality of Epikurus, who, in a letter to his friend Polyænus,
declares that his own food does not cost him sixpence a day; while his
friend Metrodorus, who had not advanced so far in frugality, expended
the whole of that small sum:--

    “Do you ask if that can supply due nourishment? Yes; and pleasure
    too. Not, indeed, that fleeting and superficial pleasure which
    needs to be perpetually recruited, but a solid and substantial
    one. Bread and pearl-barley (_polenta_) certainly is not luxurious
    feeding, but it is no little advantage to be able to receive
    pleasure from a simple diet of which no change of fortune can
    deprive one.... Nature demands bread and water only: no one is poor
    in regard to those necessaries.”[28]

Again, Seneca writes:--

    “How long shall we weary heaven with petitions for superfluous
    luxuries, as though we had not at hand wherewithal to feed
    ourselves? How long shall we fill our plains with huge cities? How
    long shall the people slave for us unnecessarily? How long shall
    countless numbers of ships from every sea bring us provisions for
    the consumption of a single month? An Ox is satisfied with the
    pasture of an acre or two: one wood suffices for several Elephants.
    Man alone supports himself by the pillage of the whole earth and
    sea. What! Has Nature indeed given us so insatiable a stomach,
    while she has given us so insignificant bodies? No: it is not the
    hunger of our stomachs, but insatiable covetousness (_ambitio_)
    which costs so much. The slaves of the belly (as says Sallust) are
    to be counted in the number of the lower animals, not of men. Nay,
    not of them, but rather of the dead.... You might inscribe on their
    doors, ‘These have anticipated death.’”--(_Ep._ lx.)

The extreme difficulty of abstinence is oftentimes alleged:--

    “It is disagreeable, you say, to abstain from the pleasures of
    the customary diet. Such abstinence is, I grant, difficult at
    first. But in course of time the desire for that diet will begin
    to languish; the incentives to our unnatural wants failing, the
    stomach, at first rebellious, will after a time feel an aversion
    for what formerly it eagerly coveted. The desire dies of itself,
    and it is no severe loss to be without those things that you have
    ceased to long for. Add to this that there is no disease, no
    pain, which is not certainly intermitted or relieved, or cured
    altogether. Moreover it is possible for you to be on your guard
    against a threatened return of the disease, and to oppose remedies
    if it comes upon you.”--(_Ep._ lxxviii.)

On the occasion of a shipwreck, when his fellow-passengers found
themselves forced to live upon the scantiest fare, he takes the
opportunity to point out how extravagantly superfluous must be the
ordinary living of the richer part of the community:--

    “How easily we can dispense with these superfluities, which, when
    necessity takes them from us, we do not feel the want of....
    Whenever I happen to be in the company of richly-living people I
    cannot prevent a blush of shame, because I see evident proof that
    the principles which I approve and commend have as yet no sure
    and firm faith placed in them.... A warning voice needs to be
    published abroad in opposition to the prevailing opinion of the
    human race: ‘You are out of your senses (_insanitis_); you are
    wandering from the path of right; you are lost in stupid admiration
    for superfluous luxuries; you value no one thing for its proper
    worth.’”--(_Ep._ lxxxvii.)

Again:--

    “I now turn to you, whose insatiable and unfathomable gluttony
    (_profunda et insatiabilis gula_) searches every land and every
    sea. Some animals it persecutes with snares and traps, with
    hunting-nets [the customary method of the _battue_ of that period],
    with hooks, sparing no sort of toil to obtain them. Excepting
    from mere caprice or daintiness, there is no peace allowed to any
    species of beings. Yet how much of all these feasts which you
    obtain by the agency of innumerable hands do you even so much as
    touch with your lips, satiated as they are with luxuries? How much
    of that animal, which has been caught with so much expense or
    peril, does the dyspeptic and bilious owner taste? Unhappy even in
    this! that you perceive not that you hunger more than your belly.
    Study,” he concludes his exhortation to his friend, “not to know
    _more_, but to know _better_.”

Again:--

    “If the human race would but listen to the voice of reason, it
    would recognise that [fashionable] cooks are as superfluous as
    soldiers.... Wisdom engages in all useful things, is favourable to
    peace, and summons the whole human species to concord.”--(_Ep._ xc.)

    “In the simpler times there was no need of so large a supernumerary
    force of medical men, nor of so many surgical instruments or of
    so many boxes of drugs. Health was simple for a simple reason.
    Many dishes have induced many diseases. Note how _vast a quantity
    of lives one stomach absorbs_--devastator of land and sea.[29] No
    wonder that with so discordant diet disease is ever varying....
    Count the cooks: you will no longer wonder at the innumerable
    number of human maladies.”--(_Ep._ xcv.)

We must be content with giving our readers only one more of Seneca’s
exhortations to a reform in diet:--

    “You think it a great matter that you can bring yourself to live
    without all the apparatus of fashionable dishes; that you do not
    desire wild boars of a thousand pounds weight or the tongues of
    rare birds, and other portents of a luxury which now despises whole
    carcases,[30] and chooses only certain parts of each victim. I
    shall admire you then only when you scorn not plain bread, when
    you have persuaded yourself that herbs exist not for other animals
    only, but for man also--if you shall recognise that vegetables are
    sufficient food for the stomach into which we now stuff valuable
    lives, as though it were to keep them for ever. For what matters
    it what it receives, since it will soon lose all that it has
    devoured? The apparatus of dishes, containing the spoils of sea and
    land, gives you pleasure, you say.... The splendour of all this,
    heightened by art, gives you pleasure. Ah! those very things so
    solicitously sought for and served up so variously--no sooner have
    they entered the belly than one and the same foulness shall take
    possession of them all. Would you contemn the pleasures of the
    table? Consider their final destination” (_exitum specta_).[31]

If Seneca makes _dietetics_ of the first importance, he at the same
time by no means neglects the other departments of _ethics_, which, for
the most part, ultimately depend upon that fundamental reformation; and
he is equally excellent on them all. Space will not allow us to present
our readers with all the admirable _dicta_ of this great moralist. We
cannot resist, however, the temptation to quote some of his unique
teaching on certain branches of humanitarianism and philosophy little
regarded either in his own time or in later ages. Slaves, both in pagan
and Christian Europe, were regarded very much as the domesticated
non-human species are at the present day, as born merely for the will
and pleasure of their masters. Such seems to have been the universal
estimate of their _status_. While often superior to their lords,
nationally and individually, by birth, by mind, and by education,
they were at the arbitrary disposal of too often cruel and capricious
owners:--

    “Are they slaves?” eloquently demands Seneca. “Nay, they
    are men. Are they slaves? Nay, they live under the same roof
    (_contubernales_). Are they slaves? Nay, they are humble friends.
    Are they slaves? Nay, they are fellow-servants (_conservi_), if
    you will consider that both master and servant are equally the
    creatures of chance. I smile, then, at the prevalent opinion
    which thinks it a disgrace for one to sit down to a meal with
    his servant. Why is it thought a disgrace, but because arrogant
    _Custom_ allows a master a crowd of servants to stand round him
    while he is feasting?”

He expressly denounces their cruel and contemptuous treatment, and
demands in noble language (afterwards used by Epictetus, himself a
slave):--

    “Would you suppose that he whom you call a slave has the same
    origin and birth as yourself? has the same free air of heaven with
    yourself? that he breathes, lives, and dies like yourself?”

He denounces the haughty and insulting attitude of masters towards
their helpless dependants, and lays down the precept: “So live with
your dependant as you would wish your superior to live with you.” He
laments the use of the term “slaves,” or “servants” (_servi_), in place
of the old “domestics” (_familiares_). He declaims against the common
prejudice which judges by the _outward_ appearance:--

    “That man,” he asserts, “is of the stupidest sort who values
    another either by his dress or by his condition.” Is he a slave?
    He is, it may be, _free in mind_. He is the _true_ slave who is a
    slave to cruelty, to ambition, to avarice, to pleasure. “Love,”
    he declares, insisting upon humanity, “cannot co-exist with
    fear.”--(_Ep._ xlviii.)

He is equally clear upon the ferocity and barbarity of the gladiatorial
and other shows of the _Circus_, which were looked upon by his
contemporaries as not only interesting spectacles, but as a useful
school for war and endurance--much for the same reason as that on
which the “sports” of the present day are defended. Cicero uses this
argument, and only expresses the general sentiment. Not so Seneca. He
speaks of a chance visit to the Circus (the gigantic Colosseum was
not yet built), for the sake of mental relaxation, expecting to see,
at the period of the day he had chosen, only innocent exercises. He
indignantly narrates the horrid and bloody scenes of suffering, and
demands, with only too much reason, whether it is not evident that such
evil examples receive their righteous retribution in the deterioration
of character of those who encourage them:--

    “Ah! what dense mists of darkness do power and prosperity cast
    over the human mind. He [the magistrate] believes himself to be
    raised above the common lot of mortality, and to be at the pinnacle
    of glory, when he has offered so many crowds of wretched human
    beings to the assaults of wild beasts; when he forces animals of
    the most different species to engage in conflict; when in the
    full presence of the Roman populace he causes torrents of blood
    to flow, a fitting school for the future scenes of still greater
    bloodshed.”[32]

In his treatise _On Clemency_, dedicated to his youthful pupil Nero,
he anticipates the very modern theory--_theory_, for the prevalent
_practice_ is a very different thing--that _prevention_ is better than
_punishment_, and he denounces the cruel and selfish policy of princes
and magistrates, who are, for the most part, concerned only to punish
the criminals produced by unjust and unequal laws:--

    “Will not that man,” he asks, “appear to be a very bad father
    who punishes his children, even for the slightest causes, with
    constant blows? Which preceptor is the worthier to teach--the one
    who scarifies his pupils’ backs if their memory happens to fail
    them, or if their eyes make a slight blunder in reading, or he
    who chooses rather to correct and instruct by admonition and the
    influence of shame?... You will find that those crimes are most
    often committed which are most often punished.... Many capital
    punishments are no less disgraceful to a ruler than are many deaths
    to a physician. Men are more easily governed by mild laws. The
    human mind is naturally stubborn and inclined to be perverse, and
    it more readily follows than is forced. The disposition to cruelty
    which takes delight in blood and wounds is the characteristic of
    wild beasts; it is to throw away the human character and to pass
    into that of a denizen of the woods.”

Speaking of giving assistance to the needy, he says that the genuine
philanthropist will give his money--

    “Not in that insulting way in which the great majority of those who
    wish to seem merciful disdain and despise those whom they help, and
    shrink from contact with them, but as one mortal to a fellow-mortal
    he will give as though out of a treasury that should be common to
    all.”[33]

Next to the _De Clementiâ_ and the _De Irâ_ (“On Anger”), his treatise
_On the Happy Life_ is most admirable. In the abundance of what is
unusually good and useful it is difficult to choose. His warning (so
unheeded) against implicit confidence in authority and tradition cannot
be too often repeated:--

    “There is nothing against which we ought to be more on our guard
    than, like a flock of sheep, following the crowd of those who have
    preceded us--going, as we do, not where we ought to go, but where
    men have walked before. And yet there is nothing which involves
    us in greater evils than following and settling our faith upon
    authority--considering those dogmas or practices best which have
    been received heretofore with the greatest applause, and which have
    a multitude of great names. We live not according to reason, but
    according to mere fashion and tradition, from whence that enormous
    heap of bodies, which fall one over the other. It happens as in a
    great slaughter of men, when the crowd presses upon itself. Not
    one falls without dragging with him another. The first to fall are
    the cause of destruction to the succeeding ranks. It runs through
    the whole of human life. No-one’s error is limited to himself
    alone, but he is the author and cause of another’s error.... We
    shall recover our sound health if only we shall separate ourselves
    from the herd, for the crowd of mankind stands opposed to right
    reason--the defender of its own evils and miseries.[34] ... Human
    history is not so well conducted, that the better way is pleasing
    to the mass. The very fact of the approbation of the multitude is
    a proof of the badness of the opinion or practice. Let us ask what
    is _best_, not what is _most customary_; what may place us firmly
    in the possession of an everlasting felicity, not what has received
    the approbation of the vulgar--the worst interpreter of the
    truth. Now I call “the vulgar” _the common herd of all ranks and
    conditions_” (_Tam chlamydatos quam coronatos_).--(_De Vitâ Beatâ_
    i. and ii.)

Again:--

    “I will do nothing for the sake of opinion; everything for the sake
    of conscience.”

He repudiates the doctrines of Egoism for those of Altruism:--

    “I will so live, as knowing myself to have come into the world for
    others.... I shall recognise the _world_ as my proper country.
    Whenever nature or reason shall demand my last breath I shall
    depart with the testimony that I have loved a good conscience,
    useful pursuits--that I have encroached upon the liberty of no one,
    least of all my own.”

Very admirable are his rebukes of unjust and insensate anger in regard
to the non-human species:--

    “As it is the characteristic of a madman to be in a rage with
    lifeless objects, so also is it to be angry with dumb animals,[35]
    inasmuch as there can be no injury unless _intentional_. Hurt
    us they can--as a stone or iron--_injure_ us they cannot.
    Nevertheless, there are persons who consider themselves insulted
    when horses that will readily obey one rider are obstinate in
    the case of another; just as if they are more tractable to some
    individuals than to others of _set purpose_, not from custom or
    _owing to treatment_.”--(_De Irâ_ ii., xxvi.)

Again, of anger, as between human beings:--

    “The faults of others we keep constantly before us; our own we hide
    behind us.... A large proportion of mankind are angry, not with the
    _sins_, but with the _sinners_. In regard to reported offences;
    _many speak falsely to deceive, many because they are themselves
    deceived_.”

Of the use of self-examination, he quotes the example of his excellent
preceptor, Sextius, who strictly followed the Pythagorean precept to
examine oneself each night before sleep:--

    “Of what bad practice have you cured yourself to-day? What vice
    have you resisted? In what respect are you the better? Rash anger
    will be moderated and finally cease when it finds itself daily
    confronted with its judge. What, then, is more useful than this
    custom of thoroughly weighing the actions of the entire day?”

He adduces the feebleness and shortness of human life as one of the
most forcible arguments against the indulgence of malevolence:--

    “Nothing will be of more avail than reflections on the nature of
    mortality. Let each one say to himself, as to another, ‘What good
    is it to declare enmity against such and such persons, as though
    we were born to live for ever, and to thus waste our very brief
    existence? What profit is it to employ time which might be spent
    in honourable pleasures in inflicting pain and torture upon any of
    our fellow-beings?’ ... Why rush we to battle? Why do we provoke
    quarrels? Why, forgetful of our mortal weakness, do we engage in
    huge hatreds? Fragile beings as we are, why will we rise up to
    crush others?... Why do we tumultuously and seditiously set life
    in an uproar? Death stands staring us in the face, and approaches
    ever nearer and nearer. That moment which you destine for another’s
    destruction perchance may be for your own.... Behold! death comes,
    which makes us all equal. Whilst we are in this mortal life, let
    us cultivate humanity; let us not be a cause of fear or of danger
    to any of our fellow-mortals. Let us contemn losses, injuries,
    insults. Let us bear with magnanimity the brief inconveniences of
    life.”

Again, in dealing with the weak and defenceless:--

    “Let each one say to himself, whenever he is provoked, ‘What right
    have I to punish with whips or fetters a slave who has offended me
    by voice or manner? Who am I, whose ears it is such a monstrous
    crime to offend? Many grant pardon to their enemies; shall I not
    pardon simply idle, negligent, or garrulous slaves?’ Tender years
    should shield childhood--their sex, women--individual liberty, a
    stranger--the common roof, a domestic. Does he offend now for the
    first time? Let us think how often he may have pleased us.”--(_De
    Irâ_ iii., passim.)

As to the conduct of life:--

    “We ought so to live, as though in the sight of all men. We ought
    so to employ our thoughts, as though someone were able to inspect
    our inmost soul--and there is one able. For what advantages it that
    a thing is hidden from men; nothing is hidden from God. (_Ep._ 83.)
    ... Would you propitiate heaven? Be good. He worships the gods, who
    imitates [the higher ideal of] them. How do we act? What principles
    do we lay down? That we are to refrain from human bloodshed? Is it
    a great matter to refrain from injuring him to whom you are bound
    to do good? The whole of human and divine teaching is summed up in
    this one principle--we are all members of one mighty body. Nature
    has made us of one kin (_cognatos_), since she has produced us
    from the same elements and will resolve us into the same elements.
    She has implanted in us love one for another, and made us for
    living together in society. She has laid down the laws of right
    and justice, by which ordinance it is more wretched to injure than
    to be injured; and by her ordering, our hands are given us to help
    each the other.... Let us ask what things _are_, not what they _are
    called_. Let us value each thing on its own merits, without thought
    of the world’s opinion. Let us love temperance; let us, before all
    things, cherish justice.... Our actions will not be right unless
    the will is first right, for from that proceeds the act.”

Again:--

    “The will will not be right unless the _habits_ of mind are right,
    for from these results the will. The habits of thought, however,
    will not be at the best unless they shall have been based upon _the
    laws of the whole of life_; unless they shall have tried all things
    by the test of truth.”--(_Ep._ xcv.)

Excellent is his advice on the choice of books and of reading:--

    “Be careful that the reading of many authors, and of every sort of
    books, does not induce a certain vagueness and uncertainty of mind.
    We ought to linger over and nourish our minds with, writers of
    assured genius and worth, if we wish to extract something which may
    usefully remain fixed in the mind. A multitude of books distracts
    the mind. Read always, then, books of approved merit. If ever you
    have a wish to go for a time to other kinds of books, yet always
    return to the former.”[36]--(_Ep._ ii.)

In his 88th Letter Seneca well exposes the folly of a learning which
begins and ends in _mere words_, which has no real bearing on the
conduct of life and the instruction of the _moral_ faculties:--

    “In testing the value of books and writers, let us see whether
    or no they teach _virtue_.... You inquire minutely about the
    wanderings of Ulysses rather than work for the prevention of error
    in your own case. We have no leisure to hear exactly how and where
    he was tossed about between Italy and Sicily.... The tempests of
    the soul are ever tossing us, and evildoing urges us into all the
    miseries of Ulysses.... Oh marvellously excellent education! By
    it you can measure circles and squares, and all the distances of
    the stars. There is nothing that is not within the reach of your
    geometry. Since you are so able a mechanician, measure the human
    mind. Tell me how great it is, how small it is (_pusillus_). You
    know what a straight line is. What does it profit you, if you
    know not what is straight (_rectum_) in life.”[37] What then? Are
    liberal studies of no avail? For other things much; for virtue
    nothing.... They do not lead the mind to virtue--they only clear
    the way.

    “Humanity forbids us to be arrogant towards our fellows; forbids us
    to be grasping; shows itself kind and courteous to all, in word,
    deed, and thought; thinks no evil of another, but rather loves its
    own highest good, chiefly because it will be of good to another.
    Do liberal studies [always] inculcate these maxims? No more than
    they do simplicity of character and moderation; no more than they
    do frugality and economy of living; no more than they do mercy,
    which is as sparing of another’s blood as it is of its own, and
    recognises that man is not to use the services of his fellows
    unnecessarily or prodigally.

    “Wisdom is a great, a vast subject. It needs all the spare time
    that can be given to it.... Whatever amount of natural and moral
    questions you may have mastered, you will still be wearied with the
    vast abundance of questions to be asked and solved. So many, so
    great, are these questions, all superfluous things must be removed
    from the mind, that it may have free scope for exercise. Shall I
    waste my life in mere words (_syllabis_)? Thus does it come about
    that the learned are more anxious to talk than to live. Mark what
    mischief _excessive_ subtlety of mind produces, and how dangerous
    it may be to truth.”--(_Ep._ lxxxviii.)

Elsewhere he indignantly demands:--

    “What is more vile or disgraceful than a learning which catches at
    popular applause (_clamores_)?”--(_Ep._ lii.)

Anticipating the ultimate triumph of Truth, he well says:--

    “No virtue is really lost--that it has to remain hidden for a time
    is no loss to itself. A day will come which will publish the truth
    at present neglected and oppressed by the malignity (_malignitas_)
    of its age. He who thinks the world to be of his own age only, is
    born for the few. Many thousands of years, many millions of people,
    will supervene. Look forward to that time. Though the envy of
    your own day shall have condemned you to obscurity, there will
    come those who will judge you without fear or favour. If there is
    any reward for virtue from fame, that is imperishable. The talk of
    posterity, indeed, will be nothing to us. Yet it will revere us,
    even though we are insensible to its praise; and it will frequently
    consult us.... What now deceives has not the elements of duration.
    Falsehood is thinly disguised; it is transparent, if only you look
    close enough.”--(_Ep._ lxix.)

In his _Questions on Nature_, in which he often shows himself to have
been much in advance of his contemporaries, and, indeed, of the whole
mediæval ages, in scientific acumen, he takes occasion to reprobate the
common practice of glorifying the lives and deeds of worthless princes
and others, and exclaims in the modern spirit:--

    “How much better to try to extinguish the evils of our own age than
    to glorify the bad deeds of others to posterity! How much better
    to celebrate the works of Nature [_deorum_] than the piracies of
    a Philip or Alexander and of the rest who, become illustrious
    by the calamities of nations, have been no less the pests of
    mankind than an inundation which devastates a whole country, or a
    conflagration in which a large proportion of living creatures is
    consumed.”--(_Quæst. Nat._ iii.)

It will be sufficiently apparent, from what we have presented to our
readers, that Seneca, though nominally of the Stoic school, belonged in
reality to no special sect or party. _Nullius addictus jurare in verba
magistri._ Bound to the words of no one master, he sought for truth
everywhere. The authority whom he most frequently quotes with approval
is Epicurus, the arch-enemy of Stoicism. Wiser and more candid than
the great mass of sectaries, he scorns the tactics of partisanship. He
justly recognises the fact that the “luxurious egoists have not derived
their impulse or sanction from Epicurus; but, abandoned to their vices,
they disguise their selfishness in the name of his philosophy.” He
professes his own conviction to be “against the common prejudice of
the popular writers of my own school, that the teaching of Epicurus
was just and holy, and, on a close examination, essentially grave
and sober.... I affirm this, that he is ill-understood, defamed, and
depreciated.” (_De Vitâ Beatâ_, xii, xiii.)

It will also be sufficiently clear that the ethics of Seneca consist
of no mere trials of skill in logomachy; in finely-drawn distinctions
between words and names, as do so large a proportion both of modern
and ancient dialectics. If so daring a heresy may possibly be forgiven
us, we would venture to suggest that the authorities of our schools
and universities might, with no inconsiderable advantage, substitute
judicious excerpts from the _Morals_ of Seneca for the _Ethics_ of
Aristotle; or, as Latin literature is now in question, even for the
_De Officiis_ of Cicero. This, however, is perhaps to indulge Utopian
speculation too greatly. The mediæval spirit of scholasticism is not
yet sufficiently out of favour at the ancient schools of Aquinas and
Scotus.




VI.

PLUTARCH. 40-120 A.D. (?)


The years of the birth and death of the first of biographers and the
most amiable of moralists are unknown. We learn from himself that he
was studying philosophy at Athens under Ammonius, the Peripatetic, at
the time when Nero was making his ridiculous progress through Greece.
This was in 66 A.D., and the date of his birth may therefore
be approximately placed somewhere about the year 40. He was thus a
younger contemporary of Seneca. Chæronea, in Bœotia, claims the honour
of giving him birth.

He lived several years at Rome and in other parts of Italy, where,
according to the fashion of the age and the custom of the philosophic
rhetoricians (of whom, probably, he was one of the very few whose
_prælections_ were of any real value), he gave public lectures,
attended by the most eminent literary as well as social personages
of the time, among whom were Tacitus, the younger Pliny, Quintilian,
and perhaps Juvenal. These lectures may have formed the basis, if not
the entire matter, of the miscellaneous essays which he afterwards
published. When in Italy he neglected altogether the Latin language and
literature, and the reason he gives proves the estimation in which he
was held: “I had so many public commissions, and so many people came
to me to receive instruction in philosophy.... it was, therefore, not
till a late period in life that I began to read the Latin writers.” In
fact, the very general indifference, or at least silence, of the Greek
masters in regard to Latin literature is not a little remarkable.

It is asserted, on doubtful authority (Suidas), that he was preceptor
of Trajan, in the beginning of whose reign he held the high post
of Procurator of Greece; and he also filled the honourable office
of _Archon_, or Chief Magistrate of his native city, as well as of
priest of the Delphic Apollo. He passed the later and larger portion
of his life in quiet retirement at Chæronea. The reason he assigns
for clinging to that dull and decaying provincial town, although
residence there was not a little inconvenient for him, is creditable
to his citizen-feeling, since he believed that by quitting it he,
as a person of influence, might contribute to its ruin. In all the
relations of social life Plutarch appears to have been exemplary,
and he was evidently held in high esteem by his fellow-citizens. As
husband and father he was particularly admirable. The death of a young
daughter, one of a numerous progeny, was the occasion of one of his
most affecting productions--the _Consolation_--addressed to his wife
Timoxena. He himself died at an advanced age, in the reign of Hadrian.

Plutarch’s writings are sufficiently numerous. The _Parallel Lives_,
forty-six in number, in which he brings together a Greek and a Roman
celebrity by way of comparison, is perhaps the book of Greek and Latin
literature which has been the most widely read in all languages. “The
reason of its popularity,” justly observes a writer in Dr. Smith’s
_Dictionary_, “is that Plutarch has rightly conceived the business of a
biographer--his biography is true portraiture. Other biography is often
a dull, tedious enumeration of facts in the order of time, with perhaps
a summing up of character at the end. The reflections of Plutarch are
neither impertinent nor trifling; his sound good sense is always there;
his honest purpose is transparent; his love of humanity warms the
whole. His work is and will remain, in spite of all the fault that can
be found with it by plodding collectors of facts and small critics, the
book of those who can nobly think and dare and do.”

His miscellaneous writings--indiscriminately classed under the title
_Moralia_, or _Morals_, but including historical, antiquarian,
literary, political, and religious disquisitions--are about eighty in
number. As might be expected of so miscellaneous a collection, these
essays are of various merit, and some of them are, doubtless, the
product of other minds than Plutarch’s. Next to the _Essay on Flesh
Eating_[38] may be distinguished as amongst the most important or
interesting, _That the Lower Animals Reason_,[39] _On the Sagacity
of the Lower Animals_--highly meritorious treatises, far beyond the
ethical or intellectual standard of the mass of “educated” people even
of our day--_Rules for the Preservation of Health_, _A Discourse on
the Training of Children_, _Marriage Precepts, or Advice to the Newly
Married_, _On Justice_, _On the Soul_, _Symposiacs_--in which he deals
with a variety of interesting or curious questions--_Isis and Osiris_,
a theological disquisition; _On the Opinions of the Philosophers_,
_On the Face that Appears in the Moon_,[40] _Political Precepts_,
_Platonic Questions_, and last, not least, his _Consolation_, addressed
to Timoxena. Plutarch also wrote his autobiography. If it had come
down to us it would have been one of the most interesting remains
of Antiquity, dealing, as we may well imagine it did deal, with some
of the most important phenomena of the age. Possibly we might have
had the expression of his feeling and attitude in regard to the new
religion (established some 200 years later), which, strangely enough,
is altogether overlooked or ignored as well by himself as by the other
eminent writers of Greece and Italy.[41]

Plutarch was an especial admirer of Plato and his school, but he
attached himself exclusively to no sect or system. He was essentially
eclectic: he chose what his reason and conscience informed him to be
the most good and useful from the various philosophies. As to the
influence of his literary labours in instructing the world, it has been
truly remarked by the author of the article in the _Penny Cyclopædia_
that, “a kind, humane disposition, and a love of everything that is
ennobling and excellent, pervades his writings, and gives the reader
the same kind of pleasure that he has in the company of an esteemed
friend, whose singleness of heart appears in everything that he says
or does.” His personal character is, in fact, exactly reflected in his
publications. That he was somewhat superstitious and of a conservative
bias is sufficiently apparent;[42] but it is also equally clear, in his
case, that the moral perceptions were not obscured by a selfishness
which is too often the product of optimism, or self-complacent
contentment with things as they are. In metaphysics, with all earnest
minds oppressed by the terrible fact of the dominance of evil and
error in the world, he vainly attempted to find a solution of the
enigma in that prevalent Western Asiatic prejudice of a dualism of
contending powers. He found consolation in the persuasion that the two
antagonistic principles are not of _equal_ power, and that the Good
must eventually prevail over the Evil.

The _Lives_ has gone through numerous editions in all languages. Of the
_Morals_, the first translation in this country was made by Philemon
Holland, M.D., London, 1603 and 1657. The next English version was
published in 1684-1694, “by several hands.” The fifth edition, “revised
and corrected from the many errors of the former edition,” appeared
in 1718. The latest English version is that of Professor Goodwin, of
Harvard University (1870), with an introduction by R. W. Emerson. It
is, for the most part, a reprint of the revision of 1718, and consists
of five octavo volumes. It is a matter equally for surprise and
regret that, in an age of so much literary, or at least publishing,
enterprise, a judicious selection from the productions of so estimable
a mind has never yet been attempted in a form accessible to ordinary
readers.[43]

In his _Symposiacs_, discussing (_Quest._ ii.), “whether the sea
or land affords the better food,” and summing up the arguments, he
proceeds:--

    “We can claim no great right over land animals which are nourished
    with the same food, inspire the same air, wash in and drink the
    same water that we do ourselves; and when they are slaughtered
    they make us ashamed of our work by their terrible cries; and
    then, again, by living amongst us they arrive at some degree of
    familiarity and intimacy with us. But sea creatures are altogether
    strangers to us, and are brought up, as it were, in another world.
    Neither does their voice, look, or any service they have done us
    plead for their life. This kind of animals are of no use at all to
    us, nor is there any obligation upon us that we should love them.
    The element we inhabit is a hell to them, and as soon as ever they
    enter upon it they die.”

We may infer that Plutarch advanced gradually to the perfect knowledge
of the truth, and it is probable that his essay on _Flesh-eating_
was published at a comparatively late period in his life, since in
some of his miscellaneous writings, in alluding to the subject,
he speaks in less decided and emphatic terms of its barbarism and
inhumanity: _e.g._, in his _Rules for the Preservation of Health_,
while recommending moderation in eating, and professing abstinence from
flesh, he does not so expressly denounce the prevalent practice. Yet he
is sufficiently pronounced even here in favour of the reformed diet on
the score of health:--

    “Ill-digestion,” says he, “is most to be feared after flesh-eating,
    for it very soon clogs us and leaves ill consequences behind it. It
    would be best to accustom oneself _to eat no flesh at all_, for the
    earth affords plenty enough of things fit not only for nourishment
    but for delight and enjoyment; some of which you may eat without
    much preparation, and others you may make pleasant by adding
    various other things.”

That the non-Christian humanitarian of the first century was far
ahead--we will not say of his contemporaries, but of the common crowd
of writers and speakers of the present age in his estimate of the
just rights and position of the innocent non-human races--will be
sufficiently apparent from the following extract from his remarkable
essay entitled, _That the Lower Animals Reason_, to which Montaigne
seems to have been indebted. The essay is in the form of a dialogue
between Odysseus (Ulysses) and Gryllus, who is one of the transformed
captives of the sorceress Circe (see _Odyssey_ ix.) Gryllus maintains
the superiority of the non-human races generally in very many
qualities and in regard to many of their habits--_e.g._, in eating and
drinking:--

    “Being thus wicked and incontinent in inordinate desires, it is no
    less easy to be proved that men are more intemperate than other
    animals even in those things which are necessary--_e.g._, in eating
    and drinking--the pleasures of which we [the non-human races]
    always enjoy with some benefit to ourselves. But you, pursuing
    the pleasures of eating and drinking beyond the satisfaction of
    nature, are punished with many and lingering diseases[44] which,
    arising from the single fountain of superfluous gormandising,
    fill your bodies with all manner of wind and vapours not easy for
    purgation to expel. In the first place, all species of the lower
    animals, according to their kind, feed upon one sort of food which
    is proper to their natures--some upon grass, some upon roots,
    and others upon fruits. Neither do they rob the weaker of their
    nourishment. But man, such is his voracity, _falls upon all_ to
    satisfy the pleasures of his appetite, tries all things, tastes all
    things; and, as if he were yet to seek what was the most proper
    diet and most agreeable to his nature, among all animals is the
    only _all-devourer_.[45] He makes use of flesh _not out of want
    and necessity_, seeing that he has the liberty to make his choice
    of herbs and fruits, the plenty of which is inexhaustible; but
    out of luxury and being cloyed with necessaries, he seeks after
    impure and inconvenient diet, purchased by the slaughter of living
    beings; by this showing himself more cruel than the most savage of
    wild beasts. For blood, murder, and flesh are proper to nourish
    the kite, the wolf, and the serpent: _to men they are superfluous
    viands_. The lower animals abstain from most of other kinds and are
    at enmity with only a few, and that only compelled by necessities
    of hunger; but neither fish, nor fowl, nor anything that lives upon
    the land escapes your tables, though they bear the name of humane
    and _hospitable_.”

Reprobating the harshness and inhumanity of Cato the Censor, who is
usually regarded as the type of old Roman virtue, Plutarch, with his
accustomed good feeling, declares:--

    “For my part, I cannot but charge his using his servants like
    so many horses and oxen, or turning them off or selling them
    when grown old, to the account of a mean and ungenerous spirit,
    which thinks that the sole tie between man and man is interest or
    necessity. But goodness moves in a larger sphere than [so-called]
    justice. The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind,
    but kindness and beneficence should be extended to beings of every
    species. And these always flow from the breast of a well-natured
    man, as streams that flow from the living fountain.

    A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while
    they are young, but when old and past service. Thus the people of
    Athens, when they had finished the temple of _Hecatompedon_, set at
    liberty the lower animals that had been chiefly employed in that
    work, suffering them to pasture at large, free from any further
    service.... We certainly ought not to treat living beings like
    shoes or household goods, which, when worn out with use, we throw
    away; and _were it only to learn benevolence to human kind_, we
    should be compassionate to other beings. For my own part, I would
    not sell even an old ox that had laboured for me; much less would
    I remove, for the sake of a little money, a man, grown old in my
    service, from his accustomed place--for to him, poor man, it would
    be as bad as banishment, since he could be of no more use to the
    buyer than he was to the seller. But Cato, as if he took a pride
    in these things, tells us that, when Consul, he left his war-horse
    in Spain, to save the public the charge of his freight. Whether
    such things as these are instances of greatness or of littleness of
    soul, let the reader judge for himself.”[46]

If we shall compare these sentiments of the pagan humanitarian with the
every-day practices of modern christian society in the matter, _e.g._,
of “knackers’ yards,” and other similar methods of getting rid of dumb
dependants after a life-time of continuous hard labour--perhaps of bad
usage, and even semi-starvation--the comparison scarcely will be in
favour of christian ethics. From the essay _On Flesh-Eating_ we extract
the principal and most significant passages:--


PLUTARCH--ESSAY ON FLESH-EATING.

    “You ask me upon what grounds Pythagoras abstained from feeding
    on the flesh of animals. I, for my part, marvel of what sort of
    feeling, mind, or reason, that man was possessed who was the first
    to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the
    flesh of a murdered being: who spread his table with the mangled
    forms of dead bodies, and claimed as his daily food what were but
    now beings endowed with movement, with perception, and with voice.

    “How could his eyes endure the spectacle of the flayed and
    dismembered limbs? How could his sense of smell endure the horrid
    _effluvium_? How, I ask, was his taste not sickened by contact with
    festering wounds, with the pollution of corrupted blood and juices?
    ‘The very hides began to creep, and the flesh, both roast and
    raw, groaned on the spits, and the slaughtered oxen were endowed,
    as it might seem, with human voice.’[47] This is poetic fiction;
    but the actual feast of ordinary life is, of a truth, a veritable
    portent--that a human being should hunger after the flesh of oxen
    actually bellowing before him, and teach upon what parts one should
    feast, and lay down elaborate rules about joints and roastings and
    dishes. The first man who set the example of this savagery is the
    person to arraign; not, assuredly, that great mind which, in a
    later age, determined to have nothing to do with such horrors.

    “For the wretches who first applied to flesh-eating may justly be
    alleged in excuse their utter resourcelessness and destitution,
    inasmuch as it was not to indulge in lawless desires, or amidst the
    superfluities of necessaries, for the pleasure of wanton indulgence
    in unnatural luxuries that they [the primeval peoples] betook
    themselves to carnivorous habits.

    “If _they_ could now assume consciousness and speech they might
    exclaim, ‘O blest and God-loved men who live at this day! What a
    happy age in the world’s history has fallen to _your_ lot, you who
    plant and reap an inheritance of all good things which grow for
    you in ungrudging abundance! What rich harvests do you not gather
    in? What wealth from the plains, what innocent pleasures is it not
    in your power to reap from the rich vegetation surrounding you on
    all sides! _You_ may indulge in luxurious food without staining
    your hands with innocent blood. While as for us wretches, _our_
    lot was cast in an age of the world the most savage and frightful
    conceivable. _We_ were plunged into the midst of an all-prevailing
    and fatal want of the commonest necessaries of life from the period
    of the earth’s first genesis, while yet the gross atmosphere of the
    globe hid the cheerful heavens from view, while the stars were yet
    wrapped in a dense and gloomy mist of fiery vapours, and the sun
    [earth] itself had no firm and regular course. Our globe was then
    a savage and uncultivated wilderness, perpetually overwhelmed with
    the floods of the disorderly rivers, abounding in shapeless and
    impenetrable morasses and forests. Not for us the gathering in of
    domesticated fruits; no mechanical instrument of any kind wherewith
    to fight against nature. Famines gave us no time, nor could there
    be any periods of seed-time and harvest.

    “‘What wonder, then, if, contrary to nature, we had recourse to the
    flesh of living beings, when all our other means of subsistence
    consisted in wild corn [or a sort of grass--ἄγρωστιν], and the
    bark of trees, and even slimy mud, and when we deemed ourselves
    fortunate to find some chance wild root or herb? When we tasted
    an acorn or beech-nut we danced with grateful joy around the
    tree, hailing it as our bounteous mother and nurse. Such was the
    gala-feast of those primeval days, when the whole earth was one
    universal scene of passion and violence, engendered by the struggle
    for the very means of existence.

    “‘But what struggle for existence, or what goading madness has
    incited _you_ to imbrue your hands in blood--you who have, we
    repeat, a superabundance of all the necessaries and comforts of
    existence? Why do you belie the Earth [τὶ καταψεύοεσθε τῆς Γῆς]
    as though it were unable to feed and nourish you? Why do you
    do despite to the bounteous [goddess] Ceres, and blaspheme the
    sweet and mellow gifts of Bacchus, as though you received not a
    sufficiency from them?

    “‘Does it not shame you to mingle murder and blood with their
    beneficent fruits? Other _carnivora_ you call savage and
    ferocious--lions and tigers and serpents--while yourselves come
    behind them in no species of barbarity. And yet for them murder is
    the only means of sustenance; whereas to you it is a superfluous
    luxury and crime.’

    “For, in point of fact, we do not kill and eat lions and wolves,
    as we might do in self-defence--on the contrary, we leave them
    unmolested; and yet the innocent and the domesticated and helpless
    and unprovided with weapons of offence--these we hunt and kill,
    whom Nature seems to have brought into existence for their beauty
    and gracefulness....

    “Nothing puts us out of countenance [δυσωπεῖ], not the charming
    beauty of their form, not the plaintive sweetness of their voice
    or cry, not their mental intelligence [πανουργία ψυχῆς], not
    the purity of their diet, not superiority of understanding. For
    the sake of a part of their flesh only, we deprive them of the
    glorious light of the sun--of the life for which they were born.
    The plaintive cries they utter we affect to take to be meaningless;
    whereas, in fact, they are entreaties and supplications and prayers
    addressed to us by each which say, ‘It is not the satisfaction
    of your real necessities we deprecate, but the wanton indulgence
    [ὕβριν] of your appetites. Kill to eat, if you must or will, but do
    not slay me that you may feed _luxuriously_.’

    “Alas for our savage inhumanity! It is a terrible thing to see
    the table of rich men decked out by those layers out of corpses
    [νεκρόκοσμους], the butchers and cooks: a still more terrible sight
    is the same table _after_ the feast--for the wasted relics are even
    more than the consumption. These victims, then, have given up their
    lives uselessly. At other times, from mere niggardliness, the host
    will grudge to distribute his dishes, and yet he grudged not to
    deprive innocent beings of their existence!

    “Well, I have taken away the excuse of those who allege that they
    have the authority and sanction of Nature. For that man is not,
    by nature, carnivorous is proved, in the first place, by the
    external frame of his body--seeing that to none of the animals
    designed for living on flesh has the human body any resemblance. He
    has no curved beak, no sharp talons and claws, no pointed teeth,
    no intense power of stomach [κοιλίας εὐτονία] or heat of blood
    which might help him to masticate and digest the gross and tough
    flesh-substance. On the contrary, by the smoothness of his teeth,
    the small capacity of his mouth, the softness of his tongue, and
    the sluggishness of his digestive apparatus, Nature sternly forbids
    him [ἐξομνύται] to feed on flesh.

    “If, in spite of all this, you still affirm that you were intended
    by nature for such a diet, then, to begin with, kill _yourself_
    what you wish to eat--but do it yourself with your own _natural_
    weapons, without the use of butcher’s knife, or axe, or club. No;
    as the wolves and lions and bears themselves slay all they feed on,
    so, in like manner, do you kill the cow or ox with a gripe of your
    jaws, or the pig with your teeth, or a hare or a lamb by falling
    upon and rending them there and then. Having gone through all these
    preliminaries, _then_ sit down to your repast. If, however, you
    wait until the living and intelligent existence be deprived of
    life, and if it would disgust you to have to rend out the heart and
    shed the life-blood of your victim, why, I ask, in the very face
    of Nature, and in despite of her, do you feed on beings endowed
    with sentient life? But more than this--not even, after your
    victims have been killed, will you eat them just as they are from
    the slaughter-house. You boil, roast, and altogether metamorphose
    them by fire and condiments. You entirely alter and disguise the
    murdered animal by the use of ten thousand sweet herbs and spices,
    that your natural taste may be deceived and be prepared to take the
    unnatural food. A proper and witty rebuke was that of the Spartan
    who bought a fish and gave it to his cook to dress. When the latter
    asked for butter, and olive oil, and vinegar, he replied, ‘Why, if
    I had all these things, I should not have bought the fish!’

    “To such a degree do we make luxuries of bloodshed, that we call
    flesh ‘a delicacy,’ and forthwith require delicate sauces [ὄψων]
    for this same flesh-meat, and mix together oil and wine and honey
    and pickle and vinegar with all the spices of Syria and Arabia--for
    all the world as though we were embalming a human corpse. After all
    these heterogeneous matters have been mixed and dissolved and, in
    a manner, corrupted, it is for the stomach, forsooth, to masticate
    and assimilate them--if it can. And though this may be, for the
    time, accomplished, the natural sequence is a variety of diseases,
    produced by imperfect digestion and repletion.[48]

    “Diogenes (the Cynic) had the courage, on one occasion, to swallow
    a _polypus_ without any cooking preparation, to dispense with the
    time and trouble expended in the kitchen. In the presence of a
    numerous concourse of priests and others, unwrapping the morsel
    from his tattered cloak, and putting it to his lips, ‘For your
    sakes,’ cried he, ‘I perform this extravagant action and incur this
    danger.’ A self-sacrifice truly meritorious! Not like Pelopidas,
    for the freedom of Thebes, or like Harmodius and Aristogeiton,
    on behalf of the citizens of Athens, did the philosopher submit
    to this hazardous experiments; for _he_ acted thus that he might
    _unbarbarise_, if possible, the life of human kind.

    “Flesh-eating is not unnatural to our physical constitution only.
    The mind and intellect are made gross by gorging and repletion;
    for flesh-meat and wine may possibly tend to give robustness
    to the body, but it gives only feebleness to the mind. Not to
    incur the resentment of the prize-fighters [the _athletes_], I
    will avail myself of examples nearer home. The wits of Athens,
    it is well known, bestow on us Bœotians the epithets ‘gross,’
    ‘dull-brained,’ and ‘stupid,’ chiefly on account of our gross
    feeding. We are even called ‘hogs.’ Menander nicknames us the
    ‘jaw-people’ [οἱ γνάθους ἔχοντες]. Pindar has it that ‘mind is a
    very secondary consideration with them.’ ‘A fine understanding of
    clouded brilliancy’ is the ironical phrase of Herakleitus....

    “Besides and beyond all these reasons, does it not seem admirable
    to foster habits of philanthropy? Who that is so kindly and gently
    disposed towards beings of another species would ever be inclined
    to do injury to his own kind? I remember in conversation hearing,
    as a saying of Xenokrates, that the Athenians imposed a penalty
    upon a man for flaying a sheep alive, and he who tortures a living
    being is little worse (it seems to me) than he who needlessly
    deprives of life and murders outright. We have, it appears, clearer
    perceptions of what is contrary to propriety and custom than of
    what is contrary to nature....

    “Reason proves both by our thoughts and our desires that we are
    (comparatively) new to the reeking feasts [ἕωλα] of kreophagy. Yet
    it is hard, as says Cato, to argue with stomachs since they have
    no ears; and the inebriating potion of Custom[49] has been drunk,
    like Circe’s, with all its deceptions and witcheries. Now that men
    are saturated and penetrated, as it were, with love of pleasure,
    it is not an easy task to attempt to pluck out from their bodies
    the flesh-baited hook. Well would it be if, as the people of Egypt
    turning their back to the pure light of day disembowelled their
    dead and cast away the offal, as the very source and origin of
    their sins, we, too, in like manner, were to eradicate bloodshed
    and gluttony from ourselves and purify the remainder of our lives.
    If the irreproachable diet be impossible to any by reason of
    inveterate habit, at least let them devour their flesh as driven
    to it by hunger, not in luxurious wantonness, but with feelings of
    shame. Slay your victim, but at least do so with feelings of pity
    and pain, not with callous heedlessness and with torture. And yet
    that is what is done in a variety of ways.

    “In slaughtering swine, for example, they thrust red-hot irons into
    their living bodies, so that, by sucking up or diffusing the blood,
    they may render the flesh soft and tender. Some butchers jump upon
    or kick the udders of pregnant sows, that by mingling the blood and
    milk and matter of the _embryos_ that have been murdered together
    in the very pangs of parturition, they may enjoy the pleasure of
    feeding upon unnaturally and highly inflamed flesh![50] Again, it
    is a common practice to stitch up the eyes of cranes and swans, and
    shut them up in dark places to fatten. In this and other similar
    ways are manufactured their dainty dishes, with all the varieties
    of sauces and spices [καρυκείαις--Lydian sauces, composed of blood
    and spices]--from all which it is sufficiently evident that men
    have indulged their lawless appetites in the pleasures of luxury,
    not for necessary food, and from no necessity, but only out of the
    merest wantonness, and gluttony, and display....”[51]


Among the illustrious earlier contemporaries of Plutarch who practised
no less than preached rigid abstinence, Apollonius of Tyana, the
Pythagorean, one of the most extraordinary men of any age, deserves
particular notice. He came into the world in the same year with the
founder of Christianity, B.C. 4. The facts and fictions of his life we
owe to Philostratus, who wrote his memoirs at the express desire of the
Empress Julia Domna, the wife of Severus.

Apollonius, according to his biographer, came of noble ancestry. He
early applied himself to severe study at the ever memorable Tarsus,
where he may have known the great persecutor, and afterwards second
founder, of Christianity. Disgusted with the luxury of the people, he
soon exiled himself to a more congenial atmosphere, and applied himself
to the examination of the various schools of philosophy--the Epicurean,
the Stoic, the Peripatetic, &c.--finally giving the preference to the
Pythagorean. He embraced the strictest ascetic life, and travelled
extensively, visiting, in the first instance, Nineveh, Babylon, and, it
is said, India, and afterwards Greece, Italy, Spain, and Roman Africa
and Ethiopia. At the accession of Domitian, he narrowly escaped from
the hands of that tyrant, after having voluntarily given himself up
to his tribunal, by an exertion of his reputed supernatural power. He
passed the last years of his life at Ephesus, where, according to the
well-known story, he is said to have announced the death of Domitian
at the very moment of the event at Rome. His alleged miracles were so
celebrated, and so curiously resemble the Christian miracles, that they
have excited an unusual amount of attention.[52]

Unfortunately, the life by Philostratus, in accordance with the taste
of a necessarily uncritical age, is so full of the preternatural and
marvellous that the real fact that the pythagorean philosopher had
acquired and possessed extraordinary mental as well as moral faculties,
which might well be deemed supernatural at that period, is too apt to
be discredited. The Life was composed long after the death of the hero,
and thus a considerable amount of inventive license was possible to the
biographer; but that it rested upon an undoubted substratum of actual
occurrences will scarcely be disputed. There is one passage which
deserves to be transcribed as of wider application. The people of a
town in Pamphylia (in the Lesser Asia), where the great Thaumaturgist
chanced to be staying, were starving in the midst of plenty by the
selfish policy of the monopolists of grain, and, driven to desperation,
were on the point of attacking the responsible authorities. Apollonius,
at this crisis, wrote the following address, and gave it to the
magistrates to read aloud:--

    “Apollonius to the Monopolists of Corn in Aspendos, greeting: The
    Earth is the common mother of all, for she is just.[53] You are
    unjust, for you have made her the mother of _yourselves only_.
    If you will not cease from acting thus, I will not suffer you to
    remain upon her.”

Philostratus assures us that “intimidated by these indignant words they
filled the market with grain, and the city recovered from its distress.”




VII.

TERTULLIAN. 160-240 (?) A.D.


The earliest of the Latin Fathers extant is, also, one of the most
esteemed by the Church,[54] notwithstanding the well-known heterodoxy
of his later life, as the first Apologist of Christianity in the
Western and Latin world. He was a native of Carthage, the son of an
officer holding an important post under the imperial government. The
facts of his life known to us are very few, nor is it ascertained at
what period he became a convert to the new religion, or when he was
ordained as _presbyter_. The ill-treatment to which he was subjected by
his clerical brethren at Rome induced him, it seems, to throw in his
lot with the Montanist sect, in whose defence he wrote several books.
He lived to an advanced age.

Of his numerous works the best known (by name at least) is his
_Apologeticus_ (“An Apology for Christianity”). Amongst his other
treatises we may enumerate _De Spectaculis_ (“On Shows”), _On
Idolatry_, _On the Soldier’s Crown_ (in which Tertullian raises
the question of the lawfulness of the “violent and sanguinary
occupation” of the soldier, but rather, however, for the reason of
the circumstances of the pagan ceremonial), _On Monogamy_, _On the
Dress of Women_ (upon the extravagance of which the “Old Fathers” were
eloquently denunciative), _Address to his Wife_. The treatise which
here concerns us is his _De Jejuniis Adversus Psychicos_.[55]

Tertullian sets himself to expose the subterfuge of a large
proportion of the professing Christians in his day who appealed
to the pretended authority of Christ and his Apostles for the
lawfulness of flesh-eating. Especially does he refute the (supposed)
defence of kreophagy in I. _Tim._ iv., 3.[56] As to the celebrated
verse in _Genesis_ which solemnly enjoins the vegetable diet, the
opponents of abstinence allege the permission afterwards given to the
“post-diluvians.”

    “To this we reply,” says Tertullian, “that it was not proper that
    man should be burdened with an express command to abstain, who had
    not been able in fact, to support even so slight a prohibition as
    that of not to eat one single species of fruit; and, therefore,
    he was released from that stringency that, by the very enjoyment
    of freedom, he might learn to acquire strength of mind; and after
    the ‘flood,’ in the reformation of the human species, the simple
    command to abstain from blood sufficed, and the use of other things
    was freely left to his choice. Inasmuch as God had displayed
    his judgment through the ‘flood,’ and had threatened, moreover,
    exquisition of blood, whether at the hand of man or of beast,
    giving evident proof beforehand of the justice of his sentence,
    he left them liberty of choice and responsibility, supplying the
    material for discipline by the freedom of will, intending to enjoin
    abstinence by the very indulgence granted, in order, as we have
    said, that the primordial offence might be the better expiated
    by greater abstinence under the opportunity of greater license.”
    (_Quo magis, ut diximus, primordiale delictum expiaretur majoris
    abstinentiæ operatione in majoris licentiæ occasione._)

He quotes the various passages in the Jewish Scriptures, in which the
causes of the idolatrous proclivities and the crimes of the earlier
Jews are connected by Jehovah and his prophets with flesh-eating and
gross living:--

    “Whether or no,” he proceeds, “I have unreasonably explained the
    cause of the condemnation of the ordinary food by God, and of the
    obligation upon us, through the divine will, to denounce it, let us
    consult the common conscience of men. Nature herself will inform
    us whether, before gross eating and drinking, we were not of much
    more powerful intellect, of much more sensitive feeling, than
    when the entire domicile of men’s interior has been stuffed with
    meats, inundated with wines, and, fermenting with filth in course
    of digestion, turned into a mere preparatory place for the draught
    (_Præmeditatorium latrinarum_).[57]

    “I greatly mistake (_mentior_) if God himself, upbraiding the
    forgetfulness of himself by Israel, does not attribute it to
    fulness of stomach. In fine, in the book of Deuteronomy, bidding
    them to be on their guard against the same cause, he says, ‘Lest
    when thou hast eaten and art full--when thy flocks and thy herds
    multiply,’ &c. He makes the enormity of gluttony an evil superior
    to any other corrupting result of riches.... So great is the
    privilege (prerogative) of a circumscribed diet that it makes God
    a dweller with men (_contubernalem_--literally, ‘a fellow-guest’),
    and, indeed, to live (as it were) on equal terms with them. For if
    the eternal God--as he testifies through Isaiah--feels no hunger,
    man, too, may become equal to the Deity when he subsists without
    gross nourishment.”

He instances Daniel and his countrymen, “who preferred vegetable
food and water to the royal dishes and goblets, and so became more
comely than the rest, in order that no one might fear for his personal
appearance; while, at the same time, they were still more improved in
understanding.” As to the priesthood:--

    “God said to Aaron, ‘Wine and strong liquor shall ye not drink,
    you and your sons after you,’ &c. So, also, he upbraids Israel:
    ‘And ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink.’ (Amos ii., 3.) Now this
    prohibition of drink is essentially connected with the vegetable
    diet. Thus, where abstinence from wine is required by God, or is
    vowed by man, there, too, may be understood suppression of gross
    feeding, _for as is the eating, so is the drinking_ (_qualis enim
    esus, talis et potus_). It is not consistent with truth that a man
    should sacrifice _half_ of his stomach (_gulam_) only to God--that
    he should be sober in drinking, but intemperate in eating.[58]

    “You reply, finally, that this [abstinence] is to be observed
    according to the will of each individual, not by imperious
    obligation. But what sort of thing is this, that you should allow
    to your arbitrary inclinations what you will not allow to the will
    of God? Shall more licence be conceded to the human inclinations
    than to the divine power? I, for my part, hold that, free from
    obligation to follow the fashions of the world, I am not free from
    obligation to God.”

In regard to St. Paul’s well-known sentences (_Rom._ xiv., 1, &c.),
Tertullian maintains that he refers to certain teachers of abstinence
who acted from pride, not from a sense of right:--

    “And even if he has handed over to you the keys of the
    slaughter-house or butcher’s shop (_Macelli_) in permitting you
    to eat all things, excepting sacrifices to idols, at least he
    has not made the kingdom of heaven to consist in _butchery_;
    ‘for,’ says he, ‘eating and drinking is not the kingdom of God,
    and food commends us not to God.’ You are not to suppose it said
    of vegetable, but of gross and luxurious, food, since he adds,
    ‘Neither if we eat have we anything the more, nor if we eat not
    have we anything the less.’[59] How unworthily, too, do you press
    the example of Christ as having come ‘eating and drinking’ into the
    service of your lusts. I think that He who pronounced not the full
    but the hungry and thirsty ‘blessed,’ who professed His work to be
    (not as His disciples understood it) the completion of His Father’s
    will, I think that He was wont to abstain--instructing them to
    labour for that ‘meat’ which lasts to eternal life, and enjoining
    in their common prayers petition, not for rich and gross food, but
    for bread only.

    “And if there be One who prefers the works of justice, not,
    however, without sacrifice--that is to say, a spirit exercised by
    abstinence--it is surely that God to whom neither a gluttonous
    people nor priest was acceptable--monuments of whose concupiscence
    remain to this day, where was buried [a large proportion of] a
    people greedy and clamorous for flesh-meats, gorging quails even to
    the point of inducing jaundice.[60]

    “Your belly is your god,” [thus he indignantly reproaches the
    apologists of kreophagy,] “your liver is your temple, your paunch
    is your altar, the cook is your priest, and the fat steam is your
    Holy Spirit; the seasonings and the sauces are your chrisms,
    and your eructations are your prophesyings. I ever,” continues
    Tertullian with bitter irony, “recognise Esau the hunter as a man
    of taste (_sapere_), and as his were so are your whole skill and
    interest given to hunting and trapping--just like him you come in
    ‘from the field’ of your licentious chase. Were I to offer you
    ‘a mess of pottage,’ you would, doubtless, straightway sell all
    your ‘birthright.’ It is in the cooking-pots that your love is
    inflamed--it is in the kitchen that your faith grows fervid--it is
    in the flesh dishes that all your hope lies hid.... Who is held in
    so much esteem with you as the frequent giver of dinners, as the
    sumptuous entertainer, as the practised toaster of healths?

    “Consistently do you men of flesh reject the things of the spirit.
    But if your prophets are complacent towards such persons, they are
    not _my_ prophets. Why preach _you_ not constantly, ‘Let us eat
    and drink, _for_ to-morrow we die,’ just as _we_ preach, ‘Let us
    abstain, brothers and sisters, _lest_ to-morrow, perchance, we die’?

    “Let us openly and boldly vindicate our teaching. We are sure
    that they ‘who are in the flesh cannot please God.’[61] Not,
    surely, meaning ‘in the covering or substance of the flesh,’
    but in the care, the affection, the desire for it. As for us,
    less grossness (_macies_) of the body is no cause of regret, for
    neither does God give _flesh by weight_ any more than he gives
    _spirit by measure_.... Let prize-fighters and pugilists fatten
    themselves up (_saginentur_)--for them a mere corporeal ambition
    suffices. And yet even they become stronger by living on vegetable
    food (_xerophagia_--literally, ‘eating of dry foods’). But other
    strength and vigour is our aim, as other contests are ours, who
    fight not against flesh and blood. Against our antagonists we
    must fight--not by means of flesh and blood, but with faith and
    a strong mind. For the rest, a grossly-feeding Christian is akin
    (_necessarius_) to lions and bears rather than to God, although
    even as against wild beasts it should be our interest to practice
    abstinence.”[62]




VIII.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. DIED 220 (?) A.D.


The attitude of the first great Christian writers and apologists in
regard to total abstinence was somewhat peculiar. Trained in the
school of Plato, in the later development of neo-platonism, their
strongest convictions and their personal sympathies were, naturally,
anti-kreophagistic. The traditions, too, of the earliest period in the
history of Christianity coincided with their pre-Christian convictions,
since the immediate and accredited representatives of the Founder
of the new religion, who presided over the first Christian society,
were commonly held to have been, equally with their predecessors and
contemporaries the Essenes, strict abstinents from flesh-eating.[63]

Moreover, the very numerous party in the Church--the most diametrically
opposed in other respects to the Jewish or Ebionite Christians--the
Gnostics or philosophical Christians, “the most polite, the most
learned, and the most wealthy of the Christian name,” for the most
part agreed with their rivals for orthodox supremacy in aversion from
flesh, and, as it seems, for nearly the same reason--a belief in the
essential and inherent evil of matter, a persuasion, it may be said,
however unscientific, not unnatural, perhaps, in any age, and certainly
not surprising in an age especially characterised by the grossest
materialism, selfishness, and cruelty. But the creed of the Christian
church, which eventually became the prevailing and ruling dogma, like
that of the English Church at the Revolution of the sixteenth century,
was a compromise--a compromise between the two opposite parties of
those who received and those who rejected the old Jewish revelation.

On the one hand Christianity, in its later and more developed form,
had insensibly cast off the rigid formalism and exclusiveness of
Mosaism, and, on the other, had stamped with the brand of heresy the
Greek infusion of philosophy and liberalism. Unfortunately, unable
clearly to distinguish between the true and the false--between the
accidental and fanciful and the permanent and real--timidly cautious
of approving anything which seemed connected with heresy--the leaders
of the dominant body were prone to seek refuge in a middle course, in
regard to the question of flesh-eating, scarcely consistent with strict
logic or strict reason. While advocating abstinence as the highest
spiritual exercise or aspiration, they seem to have been unduly anxious
to disclaim any motives other than _ascetic_--to disclaim, in fine,
humanitarian or “secular” reason, such as that of the Pythagoreans.

Such was the feeling, apparently, of the later orthodox church, at
least in the West. While, however, we thus find, occasionally, a
certain constraint and even contradiction in the _theory_ of the
first great teachers of the Church, the _practice_ was much more
consistent. That, in fact, during the first three or four centuries
the most esteemed of the Christian heroes and saints were not only
non-flesh-eaters but Vegetarians of the extremest kind (far surpassing,
if we give any credit to the accounts we have of them, the _most
frugal_ of modern abstainers) is well known to everyone at all
acquainted with ecclesiastical and, especially, eremitical history--and
it is unnecessary to further insist upon a notorious fact.[64]

Titus Flavius Clemens, the founder of the famous Alexandrian school of
Christian theology, and at once the most learned and most philosophic
of all the Christian Fathers, is generally supposed to have been a
native of Athens. His Latin name suggests some connexion with the
family of Clemens, cousin of the emperor Domitian, who is said to have
been put to death for the crime of _atheism_, as the new religion was
commonly termed by the orthodox pagans.

He travelled and studied the various philosophies in the East and West.
On accepting the Christian faith he sought information in the schools
of its most reputed teachers, of whom the name of Pantænus is the only
one known to us. At the death of Pantænus, in 190, Clement succeeded
to the chair of theology in Alexandria, and at the same time, perhaps,
he became a presbyter. He continued to lecture with great reputation
till the year 202, when the persecution under Severus forced him to
retire from the Egyptian capital. He then took refuge in Palestine, and
appears not to have returned to Alexandria. The time and manner of his
death are alike unknown. He is supposed to have died in the year 220.
Amongst his pupils by far the most famous, hardly second to himself
in learning and ability, was Origen, his successor in the Alexandrian
professorship.

His three great works are: _A Hortatory Discourse Addressed to
the Greeks_ (Λόγος Προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἓλληνας), _The Instructor_
(_Paidagogos_--strictly, _Tutor_, or Conductor to school), and the
_Miscellanies_ (_Stromateis_, or _Stromata_--lit. “Patch-work”).[65]
The three works were intended to form a graduated and complete
initiation and instruction in Christian theology and ethics. The
first is addressed to the pagan Greek world, the second to the recent
convert, and in the last he conducts the initiated to the higher
_gnosis_, or knowledge. The _Miscellanies_ originally consisted
of eight books, the last of which is lost. The whole series is of
unusual value, not only as the record of the opinions of the ablest
and most philosophical of the mediators between Greek philosophy and
the Christian creed, but also as containing an immense amount of
information on Greek life and literature. Eloquence, earnestness, and
erudition equally characterise the writings of Clement.

He assumes the name and character of a _Gnostic_,[66] or philosophic
Christian, not in the historical but in his own sense of the word,
and professes himself an eclectic--as far as a liberal interpretation
of his religion admitted. “By philosophy,” he says, “I do not mean
the Stoic, the Platonic, the Epicurean, or the Aristotelian, but all
that has been well said in each of those sects teaching righteousness
with religious science--all this selected truth (τοῦτο σύμπαν τὸ
ἐκλεκτικὸν) I call philosophy.” Again, he echoes the sentiments of
Seneca in lamenting that “we incline more to beliefs that are in
repute (τὰ ἔνδοξα), even when they are contradictory, than to the
truth” (_Miscellanies_, i. and vii.). “It would have been well for
Christianity if the principles, which he set forth with such an array
of profound scholarship and ingenious reasoning, had been adopted
more generally by those who came after him.... If anyone, even in a
Protestant community, were to assert the liberal and comprehensive
principles of the great Father of Alexandria, he would be told that he
wished to compromise the distinctive claims of theology, and that he
was little better than a heathen and a publican.”[67]

It is in his second treatise, the _Instructor_ or _Tutor_, that Clement
displays his opinions on the subject of flesh-eating:--

    “Some men live that they may eat, as the irrational beings ‘whose
    life is their belly and nothing else.’ But the Instructor enjoins
    us to eat that we may live. For neither is food our business,
    nor is pleasure our aim. Therefore discrimination is to be used
    in reference to food: it must be plain, truly simple, suiting
    precisely simple and artless children--as ministering to life
    not to luxury. And the life to which it conduces consists of two
    things, health and strength: to which plainness of fare is most
    suitable, being conducive both to digestion and lightness of
    body, from which come growth, and health, and right strength: not
    strength that is violent or dangerous, and wretched, as is that of
    the _athletes_ which is produced by artificial feeding.”

Referring to the injunction of Jesus, “When thou makest an
entertainment, call the poor,” for “whose sake chiefly a supper ought
to be made,” Clement says of the rich:--

    “They have not yet learned that God has provided for his creature
    (man, I mean) food and drink for _sustenance_ not for pleasure:
    since the body derives no advantage from extravagance in viands. On
    the contrary, those _who use the most frugal fare are the strongest
    and the healthiest, and the noblest_: as domestics are healthier
    and stronger than their masters, and agricultural labourers than
    proprietors, and not only more vigorous but wiser than rich men.
    For they have not buried the mind beneath food. Wholly unnatural
    and inhuman is it for those who are of the earth, fattening,
    themselves like cattle, to _feed themselves up for death_.[68]
    Looking downwards on the earth, bending ever over tables, leading
    a life of gluttony, burying all the good of existence here in a
    life that by and by will end for ever: so that cooks are held in
    higher esteem than the tillers of the ground. We do not abolish
    social intercourse, but we look with suspicion on the snares of
    Custom and regard them as a fatal mischief. Therefore daintiness
    must be spurned, and we are to partake of few and necessary
    things.... Nor is it suitable to eat and drink simultaneously. For
    it is the very extreme of intemperance to confound the times whose
    uses are discordant. And ‘whether ye eat or drink, do all to the
    glory of God,’ aiming after true frugality, which Christ also seems
    to me to have hinted at when he blessed the loaves and the cooked
    fishes with which he feasted the disciples, introducing a beautiful
    example of simple diet. And the fish which, at the command of the
    Lord, Peter caught, points to digestible and God-given and moderate
    food....

    We must guard against those sorts of food which persuade us to
    eat when we are not hungry, bewitching the appetite. For is
    there not, within a temperate simplicity, a wholesome variety of
    eatables--vegetables, roots, olives, herbs, milk, cheese, fruits,
    and all kinds of dry food? ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ said
    the Lord to the disciples after the resurrection: and they, as
    taught by Him to practice frugality, ‘gave him a piece of broiled
    fish,’ and besides this, it is not to be overlooked that those who
    feed according to the Word are not debarred from dainties--such as
    honey combs. For of sorts of food those are the most proper which
    are fit for immediate use without fire, since they are readiest:
    and second to these _are those which are the simplest_, as we said
    before. But those who bend around inflammatory tables, nourishing
    their own diseases, are ruled by a most licentious disease which
    I shall venture to call the demon of the belly: and the worst and
    most vile of demons. It is far better to be happy than to have a
    devil dwelling in us: and happiness is found only in the practice
    of virtue. Accordingly the Apostle Matthew lived upon seeds and
    nuts, (Ακρόδρυα--hard-shelled fruits) and vegetables without the
    use of flesh. And John, who carried temperance to the extreme, ‘ate
    locusts and wild honey.’”


As to the Jewish laws: “The Jews,” says Clement, “had frugality
enjoined on them by the Law in the most systematic manner. For the
Instructor, by Moses, deprived them of the use of innumerable things,
adding reasons--the spiritual ones hidden, the carnal ones apparent--to
which latter, indeed, they have trusted”:--

    “So that, altogether, but a few [animals] were left proper for
    their food. And of those which he permitted them to touch, he
    prohibited such as had died, or were offered to idols, or had been
    strangled: inasmuch as to touch these was unlawful.... Pleasure
    has often produced in men harm and pain, and full feeding begets
    in the soul uneasiness, and forgetfulness, and foolishness. It is
    said, moreover, that the bodies of children, when shooting up to
    their height, are made to grow right by abstinence in diet; for
    then the spirit which pervades the body, in order to its growth,
    is not checked by abundance of food obstructing the freedom of
    its course. Whence that truth-seeking philosopher, Plato, fanning
    the spark of the Hebrew philosophy, when condemning a life of
    luxury, says: ‘On my coming hither [to Syracuse] the life which
    is here called happy pleased me not by any means. For not one man
    under heaven, if brought up from his youth in such practices, will
    ever turn out a _wise_ man, with however admirable genius he may
    be endowed.’ For Plato was not unacquainted with David,[69] who
    placed the sacred ark in his city in the midst of the tabernacle,
    and bidding all his subjects rejoice ‘before the Lord, divided to
    the whole host of Israel, men and women, to each a loaf of bread,
    and baked bread, and a cake from the frying-pan.’[70] This was the
    _sufficient_ sustenance of the Israelites. But that of the Gentiles
    was over-abundant, and no one who uses it will ever study to
    become temperate, burying, as he does, his mind in his belly, very
    like the fish called _onos_ which, Aristotle says, alone of all
    creatures has its heart in its stomach. This fish Epicharmus, the
    comic poet, calls ‘monster-paunch.’ Such are the men who believe in
    their stomach, ‘whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their
    shame, who mind earthly things.’ To them the apostle predicted no
    good when he said ‘whose end is destruction.’”[71]

In treating of the subject of sacrifices, upon which he uses a good
deal of sarcasm (in regard to the _pagan_ sacrifices at least), Clement
incidentally allows us to see, still further, his opinion respecting
gross feeding. He quotes several of the Greek poets who ridicule the
practice and pretence of sacrificial propitiation, _e.g._, Menander:--

                            “the end of the loin,
    The gall, the bones uneatable, they give
    Alone to Heaven: the rest _themselves_ consume.”

“If, in fact,” remarks Clement, “the savour is the special desire of
the Gods of the Greeks, should they not first deify the _cooks_, and
worship the Chimney itself which is still closer to the much-prized
savour?”

    “If,” he justly adds, “the deity need nothing, what need has he
    of food? Now, if nourishing matters taken in by the nostrils
    are diviner than those taken in by the mouth, yet they imply
    respiration. What then do they say of God? Does He _exhale_, like
    the oaks, or does he only _inhale_, like the aquatic animals by the
    dilatation of the gills, or does he breathe all around like the
    insects?”

The only innocent altar he asserts to be the one allowed by
Pythagoras:--

    “The very ancient altar in Delos was celebrated for its purity, to
    which alone, as being undefiled by slaughter and death, they say
    that Pythagoras would permit approach. And will they not believe
    us when we say that the righteous soul is the truly sacred altar?
    But I believe that sacrifices were invented by men _to be a pretext
    for eating flesh_, and yet, without such idolatry, they might have
    partaken of it.”

He next glances at the _popular_ reason for the Pythagorean abstinence,
and declares:--

    “If any righteous man does not burden his soul by the eating
    of flesh, he has the advantage of a rational motive, not, as
    Pythagoras and his followers dream, of the transmigration of the
    soul. Now Xenokrates, treating of ‘Food derived from Animals,’[72]
    and Polemon in his work ‘On Life according to Nature,’[72] seem
    clearly to affirm that animal food is unwholesome. If it be said
    that the lower animals were assigned to man--and we partly admit
    it--yet it was not entirely for food; nor were all animals, but
    _such as do not work_. And so the comic poet, Plato, says not badly
    in the drama of _The Feasts_:--

        ‘For of the quadrupeds we should not slay
        In future aught but swine. For they have flesh
        Most delicate: and about the swine is nought
        For us: excepting bristles, dirt, and noise.’

    Some eat them as being useless, others as destructive of fruits,
    and others do not eat them because they are said to have strong
    propensity to coition. It is alleged that the greatest amount of
    fatty substance is produced by swine’s flesh: it may, then, be
    appropriate for those whose ambition is for the body; it is not so
    for those who cultivate the soul, by reason of the dulling of the
    faculties resulting from eating of flesh. The Gnostic, perhaps,
    too, will abstain for the sake of training, and that the body
    may not grow wanton in amorousness. ‘For wine,’ says Andokides,
    ‘and gluttonous feeds of flesh make the body strong, but the
    soul more sluggish.’ Accordingly such food, in order to a clear
    understanding, is to be rejected.”[73]

In a chapter in his _Miscellanies_, discussing the comparative merits
of the Pagan and of the Jewish code of ethics, he displays much
eloquence in attempting to prove the superiority of the latter. In the
course of his argument he is led to make some acknowledgment of the
claims of the lower animals which, however incomplete, is remarkable
as being almost unique in Christian theology. He quotes certain of the
“Proverbs,” _e.g._, ‘The merciful man is long-suffering, and in every
one who shows solicitude there is wisdom,’ and proceeds (assuming the
indebtedness of the Greeks to the Jews):--

    “Pythagoras seems to me to have derived his mildness towards
    irrational animals from the Law. For instance, he interdicted the
    employment of the young of sheep and goats and cows for some time
    after their birth; not even on the pretext of sacrifice allowing
    it, on account both of the young ones and of the mother; training
    men to gentleness by their conduct towards those beneath them.
    ‘Resign,’ he says, ‘the young one to the mother for the proper
    time.’ For if nothing takes place without a cause, and milk is
    produced in large quantity in parturition for the sustenance of the
    progeny, he who tears away the young one from the supply of the
    milk and the breast of the mother, dishonours Nature.”

Reverting to the Jewish religion, he asserts:--

    “The Law, too, expressly prohibits the slaying of such animals as
    are pregnant till they have brought forth, remotely restraining the
    proneness of men to do wrong to men; and thus also it has extended
    its clemency to the irrational animals, that by the exercise of
    humanity to beings of different races we may practise amongst those
    of the same species a larger abundance of it. Those too that kick
    the bellies of certain animals before parturition, in order to
    feast on flesh mixed with milk, make the womb created for the birth
    of the fœtus its grave, though the Law expressly commands ‘but
    neither shalt thou seethe a lamb in his mother’s milk.’[74] For the
    nourishment of the living animal, it is meant, may not be converted
    into sauce for that which has been deprived of life; and that which
    is the cause of life may not co-operate in the consumption of its
    flesh.”[75]




IX.

PORPHYRY. 233-306 (?) A.D.


One of the most erudite, as well as one of the most spiritual, of the
_literati_ of any age or people, and certainly the most estimable of
all the extant Greek philosophers after the days of Plutarch, was
born either at Tyre or at some neighbouring town. His original name,
Malchus, the Greek form of the Syrian Melech (king), and the name by
which he is known to us, Porphyrius (purple-robed), we may well take
deservedly to mark his philosophic superiority. He was exceptionally
fortunate in his preceptors--Longinus, the most eloquent and elegant
of the later Greek critics, under whom he studied at Athens; Origen,
the most independent and learned of the Christian Fathers, from whom,
probably, he derived his vast knowledge of theological literature;
and, finally, Plotinus, the famous founder of New-Platonism, who had
established his school at Rome in the year 244.

Upon first joining the school of Plotinus, he had ventured to contest
some of the characteristic doctrines of his new teacher, and he even
wrote a book to refute them. Amerius, his fellow-disciple, was
chosen to reply to this attack. After a second trial of strength by
each antagonist, Amerius, by weight of argument induced Porphyry to
confess his errors, and to read his recantation before the assembled
Platonists. Porphyry ever after remained an attached and enthusiastic
follower of the beloved master, with the final revision and edition
of whose voluminous works he was entrusted. He had lived with him
six years when, becoming so far unsettled in his mind as even to
contemplate suicide in order to free himself from the shackles of the
flesh, by the persuasion of his preceptor he made a voyage to Sicily
for the restoration of his health and serenity of mind. This was in
270, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. Returning to the capital
upon the death of his master, he continued the amiable but vain work
of attempting the reform of the established religion, which had then
sunk to its lowest degradation, and to this labour of love he may be
said to have devoted his whole life. At an advanced age he married
Marcella, the widow of one of his friends, who was a Christian and the
mother of a rather numerous progeny, with the view, as he tells us, of
superintending the education of her children.

About sixty separate works of Porphyry are enumerated by Fabricius,
published, unpublished, or lost; the last numbering some forty-three
distinct productions. The most important of his writings are--

(1) _On Abstinence from the Flesh of Living Beings_,[76] in four books,
addressed to a certain Firmus Castricius, a Pythagorean, who for some
reason or other had become a renegade to the principles, or at least to
the practice, of his old faith. Next to the inculcation of abstinence
as a spiritual or moral obligation, Porphyry’s “chief object seems to
have been to recommend a more spiritual worship in the place of the
sacrificial system of the pagan world, with all its false notions and
practical abuses. This work,” adds Dr. Donaldson, “is valuable on many
accounts, and full of information.”

(2) His criticism on Christianity, which he entitled a _Treatise
against the Christians_--his most celebrated production. It was divided
into fifteen books. All our knowledge of it is derived from Eusebius,
Jerome, and other ecclesiastical writers. Several years after its
appearance the courtly Bishop of Cæsarea, the well-known historian of
the first ages of Christianity, replied to it in a work extending to
twenty-five books. More than a century later, Theodosius II. caused
the obnoxious volume to be publicly burned, and Porphyry’s criticism
shared the fate of those “many elaborate treatises which have since
been committed to the flames” by the theological or political zeal of
orthodox emperors and princes.[77]

(3) _The Life of Pythagoras_--a fragment, but, as far as it goes, the
most interesting of the Pythagorean biographies.

(4) _On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of his Works._ It is
to this biography we are indebted for our knowledge of the estimable
elaborator of New-Platonism. We learn that he was the pupil of
Ammonius, who disputes with Numenius the fame of having originated
the principles of the new school of thought of which Plotinus,
however, was the St. Paul--the actual founder. Of a naturally feeble
constitution, he had early betaken himself to the consolations of
divine philosophy. After vainly seeking rest for his truth-loving and
aspiring spirit in other systems, he at last found in Ammonius the
teacher and teaching which his intellectual and spiritual sympathies
demanded. His great ambition was to visit the country of Buddha and of
Zerdusht or Zoroaster, and, for that purpose, he joined the expedition
of the Emperor Gordian against the Persians. The defeat and death
of that prince frustrated his plans. He then settled at Rome, where
he established his school, and he remained in Italy until his death
in 270. By the earnest solicitations of his disciples, Porphyry and
Amerius, he was induced with much reluctance to publish his oral
discourses, and eventually they appeared in fifty-four books, edited by
Porphyry, who gave them the name of the _Enneads_, as being arranged in
six groups of _nine_ treatises. Perhaps no teacher ever engaged to so
unbounded an extent the admiration and affection of his followers.

    “During the long period of his residence at Rome, Plotinus enjoyed
    an estimation almost approaching to a belief in his superhuman
    wisdom and sanctity. His ascetic virtue, and the mysterious
    transcendentalism of his conversation, which made him the Coleridge
    of the day, seems to have carried away the minds of his associates,
    and raised them to a state of imaginative exaltation. He was
    regarded as a sort of prophet, divine himself, and capable of
    elevating his disciples to a participation in his divinity....
    These coincidences or collusions [his alleged miracles] show how
    sacred a character had attached to Plotinus. And we see the same
    evidenced in his social influence. Men and women of the highest
    rank crowded round him, and his house was filled with young persons
    of both sexes whom their parents when dying had committed to his
    care. Rogatian, a senator and prætor-elect, gave up his wealth
    and dignities, and lived as the humble bedesman of his friends,
    devoting himself to ascetic and contemplative philosophy. His
    self-denial obtained for him the approbation of Plotinus, who
    held him up as a pattern of philosophy; and he gained the more
    solid advantage of a perfect cure from the worst kind of rheumatic
    gout. The influence of Plotinus extended to the imperial throne
    itself. The weak-minded Gallienus, and his Empress Salonina, were
    so completely guided by the philosopher, that he had actually
    obtained permission to convert a ruined City of Campania into a
    _Platonopolis_, in which the laws of Plato’s _Republic_ were to be
    tested by a practical experiment; and the philosopher had promised
    to retire thither accompanied by his chief friends.”

The “practical common sense” (which usually may be interpreted to mean
cynical indifferentism), of the statesmen and politicians of the day
interposed to prevent this attempt at a realisation of Plato’s great
ideal; and, considering the prematurity of such ideas in the then
condition of the world--and, it must be added, the extravagance of some
of them--we can, perhaps, hardly regret that his “Republic” was never
instituted. As to the essence and spirit of the teaching of Plotinus,

    “He cannot be termed, strictly or exclusively, a Neo-Platonist: he
    is equally a Neo-Aristotelian and a _Neo-Philosopher_ in general.
    He has himself one pervading idea, to which he is always recurring,
    and to which he accommodates, as far as he can, the reasonings of
    all his predecessors. It is his object to proclaim and exalt the
    immanent divinity of man, and to raise the soul to a contemplation
    of the good and the true, and to vindicate its independence of
    all that is sensuous, transitory, and special. With an enthusiasm
    bordering on fanaticism, he proclaims his philosophical faith in
    an unseen world: and, rejecting with indignation the humiliating
    attempt to make out that the spiritual world is no better than an
    essence or elixir drained off from the material--that thoughts
    are ‘merely the shadows and ghosts of sensations,’ he tells his
    disciples that the inward eyes of consciousness and conscience were
    to be purged and unsealed at the fountain of heavenly radiance,
    before they can discern the true form and colours and value of
    spiritual objects.”

The personal humility of this sublime teacher, we may add, seems to
have equalled the loftiness of his inspiration.

Of the other writings of Porphyry, space allows us to refer only to
his _Epistle to Anebo_--a critical refutation of some of the popular
prejudices of Pagan theology, such as the grosser dæmonism, necromancy,
and incantation,[78] and, above all, animal sacrifice, to which his
keen spiritual sense was essentially antagonistic. It is known only by
fragments preserved in Eusebius. As to the theological or metaphysical
opinions of Porphyry, “it is clear,” remarks Dr. Donaldson, “that he
had but little faith in the old polytheism of the Greeks. He expressly
tells his wife (Letter to Marcella) that outward worship does neither
good nor harm.” In truth, as regards the better parts of Christianity,
he was nearer to the religion of Jesus than of Jupiter, although he
found himself in opposition to what he considered the evils or errors
of dogmatic Christian theology. In common with most of the principal
expounders of Neo-Platonism,[79] his sympathies were with much that
was contained in the Christian Scriptures, and, in particular, with
the fourth Gospel, the sublime beginning of which, we are assured,
the disciples of Plato regarded as “an exact transcript of their own
opinions,” and which, as St. Augustin informs us (_De Civ. Dei_ x.,
29), they declared to be worthy to be written in letters of gold, and
inscribed in the most conspicuous place in every Christian church.

As for the learning, as well as lofty ideas, of the author of the
treatise _On Abstinence_, there has been a general consensus of opinion
even from his theological opponents. Augustin, himself among the most
learned of the Latin Fathers, styles him _doctissimus philosophorum_
(“the most learned of the philosophers”), and, again, _philosophus
nobilis_ (“a noble philosopher”), “a man of no common mind” (_De
Civit. Dei_); and elsewhere he calls him “the great philosopher of the
heathen.” Even Eusebius, his immediate antagonist, concedes to him
the titles of “the noble philosopher,” “the wonderful theologian,”
“the great prophet of ineffable doctrines” (ὁ τῶν ἀποῤῥητων μύστης).
Donaldson, endorsing the common admiration of the moderns, describes
his learning and erudition as “stupendous.”

Amongst modern testimonies to the merits of Porphyry’s treatise,
_On Abstinence_, the sympathising remarks of Voltaire are worth
transcribing:--

    “It is well known that Pythagoras embraced this humane doctrine
    [of abstinence from flesh-eating] and carried it into Italy. His
    disciples followed it through a long period of time. The celebrated
    philosophers, Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Porphyry, recommended
    and practised it, although it is sufficiently rare to practice
    what one preaches. The work of Porphyry, written in the middle of
    our third century, and very well translated into our language by
    M. de Burigni, is much esteemed by the learned--but he has made
    no more converts amongst us than has the book of the physician
    Hecquet.[80] It is in vain that Porphyry alleges the example of
    the Buddhists and Persian Magi of the first class, who held in
    abhorrence the practice of engulfing the entrails of other beings
    in their own--he is followed at present only by the Fathers of La
    Trappe.[81] The treatise of Porphyry is addressed to one of his old
    disciples, named Firmus, who became a Christian, it is said, to
    recover his liberty to eat flesh and drink wine.

    “He remonstrates with Firmus, that in abstaining from flesh and
    from strong liquors the health of the soul and of the body is
    preserved; that one lives longer and with more innocence. All
    his reflections are those of a scrupulous theologian, of a rigid
    philosopher, and of a gentle and sensitive spirit. One might
    believe, in reading him, that this great enemy of the Church is a
    Father of the Church. He does not speak of the _Metempsychosis_,
    but he regards other animals as our brothers--_because_ they are
    endowed with life as we, _because_ they have the same _principles_
    of life, the same feelings, ideas, memory, industry, as we. Speech
    alone is wanting to them. If they had it, should we dare to kill
    and eat them? Should we dare to commit those fratricides? What
    barbarian is there who would cause a lamb to be slaughtered and
    roasted, if that lamb conjured him, by an affecting appeal, not to
    be at once assassin and cannibal?

    “This book, at least, proves that there were, among the ‘Gentiles,’
    philosophers of the strictest and purest virtue. Yet they could
    not prevail against the butchers and the _gourmands_. It is to
    be remarked that Porphyry makes a very beautiful eulogy on the
    Essenians. At that time the rivalship was who could be the most
    virtuous--Essenians, Pythagoreans, Stoics, Christians. When
    churches form but a small flock their manners are pure; they
    degenerate as soon as they get powerful.”[82]

Of this famous treatise there is, it appears, only one English
translation, that of Taylor (1851), long out of print; and there is
a German version by Herr Ed. Baltzer, President of the Vegetarian
Society of Germany; thus we have to lament for Porphyry, no less than
for Plutarch, the indifferentism of the publishers, or rather of the
public, which allows a production, of an inspiration far above that of
the common herd of writers, to continue to be a sealed book for the
community in general.

It has been already stated that it consists of four Divisions. The
first treats of Abstinence from the point of view of Temperance and
Reason. In the second is considered the lawfulness or otherwise of
animal sacrifice. In the third Porphyry treats the subject from the
side of Justice. In the fourth he reviews the practice of some of
the nations of antiquity and of the East--of the Egyptians, Hindus,
and others. This last Book, by its abrupt termination, is evidently
unfinished.

Porphyry begins with an expression of surprise and regret at the
apostasy of the Pythagorean renegade:--

    “For when I reflect with myself upon the cause of your change of
    mind [so he addresses his former associate], I cannot believe,
    as the vulgar herd will suppose, that it has anything to do
    with reasons of health or strength, inasmuch as you yourself
    were used to assert that the fleshless diet is more consonant
    to healthfulness and to an even and proportionate endurance of
    philosophic toils (σύμμετρον ὑπομονὴν τῶν περὶ φιλοσοφίαν πόνων),
    and experience fully proved the truth of your conviction. Whether
    then it was through some other fallacy or delusion, or through a
    later notion that this or that diet makes no difference to the
    intellectual powers, or whether it was from the fear of incurring
    odium by opposition to orthodox customs, or what the reason may
    have been, I am unable to conjecture.”

He expresses his hope, or rather his belief, that, at least, the lapse
was not due in this case to natural intemperance, or regret for the
gluttonous habits (λαιμαργίας) of flesh-eating.

He then proceeds to quote and refute the fallacies of the ordinary
systems and sects, and, in particular, the objections of one Clodius,
a Neapolitan, who had published a treatise against Pythagoreanism. He
professes that he does not hope to influence those who are engaged in
sordid and selfish, or in sanguinary, pursuits. Rather he addresses
himself to the man

    “Who considers what he is, whence he came, and whither he ought
    to tend; and who, in what pertains to the nourishment of the body
    and other necessary concerns, is of really thoughtful and earnest
    mind--who resolves that he shall not be led astray and governed
    by his passions. And let such a man tell me whether a rich flesh
    diet is more easily procured, or incites less to the indulgence of
    irregular passions and appetites, than a light vegetable dietary.
    But if neither he, nor a physician, nor, indeed, any reasonable man
    whosoever, dares to affirm this, why do we persist in oppressing
    ourselves with gross feeding? And why do we not, together with that
    luxurious indulgence, throw off the encumbrances and snares which
    attend it?

    “It is not from those who have lived on innocent foods that
    murderers, tyrants, robbers, and sycophants have come, but from
    eaters of flesh. The necessaries of life are few and easily
    procured, without violation of justice, liberty, or peace of mind;
    whereas luxury obliges those ordinary souls who take delight in
    it to covet riches, to give up their liberty, to sell justice, to
    misspend their time, to ruin their health, and to renounce the
    satisfaction of an upright conscience.”

In condemning animal sacrifice, he declares that “it is by means of
an exalted and purified intellect alone that we can approximate to
the Supreme Being, to whom nothing material should be offered.” He
distinguishes four degrees of virtue, the lowest being that of the man
who attempts to moderate his passions; the highest, the life of pure
reason, by which man becomes one with the Supreme Existence.

In the third book, maintaining that other animals are endowed with high
degrees of reasoning and of mental faculties, and, in some measure,
even with moral perception, Porphyry proceeds logically to insist that
they are, _therefore_, the proper objects of Justice:--

    “By these arguments, and others which I shall afterwards adduce in
    recording the opinions of the old peoples, it is demonstrated that
    [many species of] the lower animals are rational. In very many,
    reason is imperfect indeed--of which, nevertheless, they are by no
    means destitute. Since then justice is due to rational beings, as
    our opponents allow, how is it possible to evade the admission also
    that we are bound to act justly towards the races of beings below
    us? We do not extend the obligations of justice to plants, because
    there appears in them no indication of reason; although, even in
    the case of these, while we eat the fruits we do not, with the
    fruits, cut away the trunks. We use corn and leguminous vegetables
    when they have fallen on the earth and are dead. But no one uses
    for food the flesh of dead animals, unless they have been killed by
    violence, so that there is in these things a radical injustice. As
    Plutarch says, it does not follow, because we are in need of many
    things, that we should therefore act unjustly towards _all beings_.
    Inanimate things we are allowed to injure to a certain extent, to
    procure the necessary means of existence--if to take anything from
    plants while they are growing can be said to be an injury--but to
    destroy living and conscious beings merely for luxury and pleasure
    is truly barbarous and unjust. And to refrain from killing them
    neither diminishes our sustenance nor hinders our living happily.
    If indeed the destruction of other animals and the eating of flesh
    were as requisite as air and water, plants and fruits, then there
    could be no injustice, as they would be necessary to our nature.”

Porphyry, it is scarcely necessary to remark, by these arguments proves
himself to have been, in moral as well as mental perception, as far
ahead of the average thinkers of the present day as he was of his own
times. He justly maintains that

    “Sensation and perception are the principle of the kinship of
    all living beings. And [he reminds his opponents] Zeno and
    his followers [the Stoics] admit that alliance or _kinship_
    (οἰκειώσις)[83] is the foundation of justice. Now, to the lower
    animals pertain perception and the sensations of pain and fear
    and injury. Is it not absurd, then, whereas we see that many of
    our own species live by brute sense alone, and exhibit neither
    reason nor intellect, and that very many of them surpass the most
    terrible wild beasts in cruelty, rage, rapine; that they murder
    even their own relatives; that they are tyrants and the tools of
    tyrants--seeing all this, is it not absurd, I say, to hold that
    we are obliged by nature to act leniently towards them, while no
    kindness is due from us to the Ox that ploughs, the Dog that is
    brought up with us, and those who nourish us with their milk and
    cover our bodies with their wool? Is not such a prejudice most
    irrational and absurd?”

To the objection of Chrysippus (the second founder of the school of the
Porch) that the gods made us for themselves and for the sake of each
other, and that they made the non-human species for us--a convenient
subterfuge by no means unknown to writers and talkers of our own
times--Porphyry unanswerably replies:--

    “Let him to whom this sophism may appear to have weight
    or probability, consider how he would meet the dictum of
    Karneades[84] that ‘everything in nature is benefited, when it
    obtains the ends to which it is adapted and for which it was
    generated.’ Now, _benefit_ is to be understood in a more general
    way as meaning what the Stoics call _useful_. ‘The hog, however,’
    says Chrysippus, ‘was produced by nature for the purpose of being
    slaughtered and used for food, and when it undergoes this, it
    obtains the end for which it is adapted, and it is therefore
    benefited!’ But if God brought other animals into existence for the
    use of men, what use do we make of flies, beetles, lice, vipers,
    and scorpions? Some of these are hateful to the sight, defile the
    touch, are intolerable to the smell, while others are actually
    destructive to human beings who fall in their way.[85] With respect
    to the _cetacea_, in particular, which Homer tells us live by
    myriads in the seas, does not the Demiurgus[86] teach us that they
    have come into being for the good of things in general? And unless
    they affirm that all things were indeed made for us and on our
    sole account, how can they escape the imputation of wrong-doing in
    treating injuriously beings that came into existence according to
    the _general arrangement_ of Nature?

    “I omit to insist on the fact that, if we depend on the argument of
    necessity or utility, we cannot avoid admitting by implication that
    we ourselves were created only for the sake of certain destructive
    animals, such as crocodiles and snakes and other monsters, for
    we are not in the least _benefited_ by them. On the contrary,
    they seize and destroy and devour men whom they meet--in so doing
    acting not at all more cruelly than we. Nay, _they_ act thus
    savagely through want and hunger; _we_ from insolent wantonness
    and luxurious pleasure[87], amusing ourselves as we do also in the
    Circus and in the murderous sports of the chase. By thus acting,
    a barbarous and brutal nature becomes strengthened in us, which
    renders men insensible to the feeling of pity and compassion.
    Those who first perpetrated these iniquities fatally blunted the
    most important part of the civilised mind. Therefore it is that
    Pythagoreans consider kindness and gentleness to the lower animals
    to be an exercise of philanthropy and gentleness.”

Porphyry unanswerably and eloquently concludes this division of his
subject with the _à fortiori_ argument:--

    “By admitting that [selfish] pleasure is the legitimate end of our
    action, justice is evidently destroyed. For to whom must it not be
    clear that the feeling of justice is fostered by abstinence? He
    who abstains from injuring other species will be so much the more
    careful not to injure his own kind. For he who loves all animated
    Nature will not hate any one tribe of innocent beings, and by how
    much greater his love for the whole, by so much the more will he
    cultivate justice towards a part of them, and to that part to which
    he is most allied.”

In fine, according to Porphyry, he who extends his sympathies to _all_
innocent life is nearest to the Divine nature. Well would it have
been for all the after-ages had this, the only sure foundation of any
code of ethics worthy of the name, found favour with the constituted
instructors and rulers of the western world. The fourth and final
Book reviews the dietetic habits of some of the leading peoples of
antiquity, and of certain of the philosophic societies which practised
abstinence more or less rigidly. As for the Essenes, Porphyry describes
their code of morals and manner of living in terms of high praise. We
can here give only an abstract of his eloquent eulogium:--

    “They are despisers of mere riches, and the communistic principle
    with them is admirably carried out. Nor is it possible to find
    amongst them a single person distinguished by the possession of
    wealth, for all who enter the society are obliged by their laws
    to divide property for the common good. There is neither the
    humiliation of poverty nor the arrogance of wealth. Their managers
    or guardians are elected by vote, and each of them is chosen with
    a view to the welfare and needs of all. They have no city or town,
    but dwell together in separate communities.... They do not discard
    their dress for a new one, before the first is really worn out by
    length of time. There is no buying and selling amongst them. Each
    gives to each according to his or her wants, and there is a free
    interchange between them.... They come to their dining-hall as to
    some pure and undefiled temple, and when they have taken their
    seats quietly, the baker sets their loaves before them in order,
    and the cook gives them one dish each of one sort, while their
    priest first recites a form of thanksgiving for their pure and
    refined food (τροφῆς ἁγνῆς οὖσης καὶ καθαρᾶς).”

The testimony of the national historian of the Jews, it is interesting
to observe, is equally favourable to those pioneers of the modern
communisms. “The Essenes, as we call a sect of ours,” writes
Josephus, “pursue the same kind of life as those whom the Greeks call
Pythagoreans. They are long-lived also, insomuch that many of them
exist above a hundred years by means of their simplicity of diet and
the regular course of their lives” (_Antiquities of the Jews._). Upon
entering the society and partaking of the common meal (which, with
baptism, was the outward and visible sign of initiation) three solemn
oaths were administered to each aspirant:--

    “First, that he would reverence the divine ideal (τὸ θεῖον);
    second, that he would carefully practise justice towards his
    fellow-beings and refrain from injury, whether by his own or
    another’s will; that he would always hate the Unjust and fight
    earnestly on the side of (συναγωνιζεσθαι) the Just and lovers of
    justice; keep faith with all men; if in power, never use authority
    insolently or violently; nor surpass his subordinates in dress and
    ornaments; above all things always to love Truth.”

As for their food, while they seem not to have been bound to total
abstinence from every kind of flesh, they may be considered to have
been almost Vegetarian in practice. To kill any innocent individual
of the non-human species that had sought refuge or an asylum amongst
them was a breach of the most sacred laws: to spare the domesticated
races, or fellow-workers with man, even in an enemy’s country, was a
solemn duty. For, says Porphyry, their founder had no groundless fear
that there could be any overabundance of life productive of famine to
ourselves, inasmuch as he knew, first, that those animals who bring
forth many young at a time are short lived, and, secondly, that their
too rapid increase is kept down by other hostile animals. “A proof of
which is,” he continues, “that though we abstain from eating very many,
such as dogs, wild beasts, rats, lizards, and others, there is yet no
fear that we should ever suffer from famine in consequence of their
excessive multiplication; and, again, it is one thing to have to kill,
and another to eat, since we have to kill many ferocious animals whom
we do not also eat.”

He quotes the historians of Syria who allege that, in the earlier
period, the inhabitants of that part of the world abstained from all
flesh, and, therefore, from sacrifice; and that when, afterwards,
to avert some impending misfortune they were induced to offer up
propitiatory victims, the practice of flesh-eating was by no means
general. And Asklepiades says, in his History of Cyprus and Phœnicia,
that “no living being was sacrificed to heaven, nor was there even
any express law on the subject, _since it was forbidden by the law
of Nature_ (νομῷ φυσικῷ):” that, in course of time, they took to
occasional propitiatory sacrifice: and that, at one of these times,
the sacrificing priest happened to place his blood-smeared finger on
his mouth, was tempted to repeat the action, and thus introduced
the habit of flesh-eating, whence the general practice. As for the
Persian _Magi_ (the successors of Zerdusht), we are informed that the
principal and most esteemed of their order neither eat nor kill any
living being, while those of the second class eat the flesh of some,
but not of domesticated, animals; nor do even the third order eat
indiscriminately. Instances are adduced of certain peoples who, being
compelled by necessity to live upon flesh, have evidently deteriorated
and been rendered savage and ferocious, “from which examples it is
clearly unbecoming men of good disposition to belie their human nature
(τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης καταψεύδεσθαι φύσεως).”

Amongst individuals he instances the example of the traditionary
Athenian legislator Triptolemus--

    “Of whom Hermippus, in his second book on the legislators, writes:
    Of his laws, according to Xenokrates the philosopher, the three
    following remain in force at Eleusis--‘to gratify Heaven with
    the offering of fruits,’ ‘to harass or harm no [innocent] living
    being.’ ... As to the third, he is in doubt for what particular
    reason Triptolemus charged them to abstain--whether from believing
    it to be criminal to kill those that have an identical origin with
    ourselves (ὁμογενὲς), or from a consciousness that the slaughter
    of all the most useful animals would be the inevitable consequence
    of addiction to it, and wishing to render human life mild and
    innocent, and to preserve those species that are tame and gentle
    and domesticated with man.”[88]

       *       *       *       *       *

Somewhat later than Porphyry, the name of Julian (331-363), the
Roman emperor, may here be fitly introduced. During his brief reign
of sixteen months he proved himself, if not always a judicious, yet a
sincere and earnest reformer of abuses of various kinds, and he may
claim to be one of the very few virtuous princes, pagan or christian.
Unfortunately the just blame attaching to his ill-judged attempt to
suppress the religion of Constantine, from whose family his relatives
and himself had suffered the greatest injury and insult, has enabled
the lovers of party rather than of truth successfully to conceal from
view his undoubted merits.

In his manner of living, with which alone we are now concerned, he
seems to have almost rivalled the most ascetic of the Platonists
or of the Christian anchorets. One of his most intimate friends,
the celebrated orator, Libanius, who had often shared the frugal
simplicity of his table, has remarked that his “light and sparing diet,
which was usually of the vegetable kind, left his mind and body always
free and active for the various and important business of an author,
a pontiff, a magistrate, a general, and a prince.” That his _frugal_
diet had not impaired his powers, either physical or mental, may
sufficiently appear from the fact that--

    “In one and the same day he gave audience to several ambassadors,
    and wrote or dictated a great number of letters to his generals,
    his civil magistrates, his private friends, and the different
    cities of his dominions. He listened to the memorials which had
    been received, considered the subject of the petitions, and
    signified his intentions more rapidly than they could be taken in
    shorthand by the diligence of his secretaries. He possessed such
    flexibility of thought, and such firmness of attention, that he
    could employ his hand to write, his ear to listen, and his voice to
    dictate, and pursue at once three several trains of ideas without
    hesitation and without error. While his ministers reposed, the
    prince flew with agility from one labour to another, and, after a
    hasty dinner, retired into his library till the public business,
    which he had appointed for the evening, summoned him to interrupt
    the prosecution of his studies. The supper of the emperor was
    still less substantial than the former meal; his sleep was never
    clouded by the fumes of indigestion.... He was soon awakened by
    the entrance of fresh secretaries who had slept the preceding day,
    and his servants were obliged to wait alternately, while their
    indefatigable master allowed himself scarcely any other refreshment
    than the change of occupation. The predecessors of Julian, his
    uncle, his brother, and his cousin, indulged their puerile taste
    for the games of the circus under the specious pretence of
    complying with the inclination of the people, and they frequently
    remained the greater part of the day as idle spectators.... On
    solemn festivals Julian, who felt and professed an unfashionable
    dislike to these frivolous amusements, condescended to appear
    in the Circus, and, after bestowing a careless glance on five
    or six of the races, he hastily withdrew with the impatience of
    a philosopher who considered every moment as lost that was not
    devoted to the advantage of the public, or the improvement of
    his own mind. By this avarice of time he seemed to protract the
    short duration of his reign, and, if the dates were less securely
    ascertained, we should refuse to believe that only _sixteen months_
    elapsed between the death of Constantius and the departure of his
    successor for the Persian war in which he perished.”[89]

Following the principles of Platonism, “he justly concluded that the
man who presumes to reign should aspire to the perfection of the divine
nature--that he should purify his soul from her mortal and terrestrial
part--that he should extinguish his appetites, enlighten his
understanding, regulate his passions, and subdue the wild beast which,
according to the lively metaphor of Aristotle, seldom fails to ascend
the throne of a despot.” With all these virtues, unfortunately for his
credit as a philosopher and humanitarian, the imperial Stoic allowed
his natural goodness of heart to be corrupted by superstition and
fanaticism. Conceiving himself to be the special and chosen instrument
of the Deity for the restoration of the fallen religion, which he
regarded as the true faith, he made it the foremost object of his
pious but misdirected ambition to re-establish its sumptuous temples,
priesthoods, and sacrificial altars with all their imposing ritual, and
“he was heard to declare, with the enthusiasm of a missionary, that
if he could render each individual richer than Midas and every city
greater than Babylon, he should not esteem himself the benefactor of
mankind, unless at the same time he could reclaim his subjects from
their impious revolt against the immortal gods.”[90] Inspired by this
religious zeal, he forgot the maxims of his master, Plato, so far as to
rival, if not surpass, the ancient Jewish or Pagan ritual in the number
of the sacrificial victims offered up in the name of religion and of
the Deity. Happily for the future of the world, the fanatical piety of
this youthful champion of the religion of Homer proved ineffectual to
turn back the slow onward march of the Western mind, through fearful
mazes of evil and error indeed, towards that “diviner day” which is yet
to dawn for the Earth.




X.

CHRYSOSTOM. 347-407 A.D.


The most eloquent, and one of the most estimable, of the “Fathers” was
born at Antioch, the Christian city _par excellence_. His family held
a distinguished position, and his father was in high command in the
Syrian division of the imperial army. He studied for the law, and was
instructed in oratory by the famous rhetorician Libanius (the intimate
friend and counsellor of the young Emperor Julian), who pronounced
his pupil worthy to succeed to his chair, if he had not adopted the
Christian faith. He soon gave up the law for theology, and retired to a
monastery, near Antioch, where he passed four years, rigidly abstaining
from flesh-meat and, like the Essenes, abandoning the rights of private
property and living a life of the strictest asceticism.

Having submitted himself in solitude to the severest austerities during
a considerable length of time, he entered the Church, and soon gained
the highest reputation for his extraordinary eloquence and zeal. On the
death of the Archbishop of Constantinople, he was unanimously elected
to fill the vacant Primacy. The _nolo me episcopari_ seems, in his
case, to have been no unmeaning formula. His beneficence and charity
in the new position attracted general admiration. From the revenues of
his See he founded a hospital for the sick--one of the very first of
those rather modern institutions. The fame of the “Golden-mouthed” drew
to his cathedral immense crowds of people, who before had frequented
the theatre and the circus rather than the churches, and the building
constantly resounded with their enthusiastic plaudits. He was, however,
no mere popular preacher; he fearlessly exposed the corrupt and selfish
life of the large body of the clergy. At one time he deposed, it is
said, no less than thirteen bishops, in Lesser Asia, from their Sees;
and in one of his _Homilies_ he does not hesitate to charge “the whole
ecclesiastical body with avarice and licentiousness, asserting that the
number of bishops who could be saved bore a very small proportion to
those who would be damned.”[91]

At length, his repeated denunciations of the too notorious scandals
of the Court and the Church excited the bitter enmity of his
brother-prelates, and, by their intrigues at the Imperial Court of
Constantinople, he was deposed from his See and exiled to the wildest
parts of the Euxine coasts, where, exposed to every sort of privation,
he caught a violent fever and died. So far did the hostility of the
Episcopacy extend, that one of his rivals, a bishop, named Theophilus,
in a book expressly written against him, amongst other vituperative
epithets had proceeded to the length of styling him “a filthy demon,”
and of solemnly consigning his soul to Satan. With the poor, however,
Chrysostom enjoyed unbounded popularity and esteem. His greatest fault
was his theological intolerance--a fault, it is just to add, of the age
rather than of the man.

The writings of Chrysostom are exceedingly voluminous--700 homilies,
orations, doctrinal treatises, and 242 epistles. Their “chief value
consists in the illustrations they furnish of the manners of the
fourth and fifth centuries--of the moral and social state of the
period. The circus, spectacles, theatres, baths, houses, domestic
economy, banquets, dresses, fashions, pictures, processions, tight-rope
dancing, funerals--in fine, everything has a place in the picture of
licentious luxury which it is the object of Chrysostom to denounce.”
Next to his profession of faith in the efficacy and virtues of a
non-flesh diet, amongst the most interesting of his productions is
his _Golden Book_ on the education of the young. He recommends that
children should be inured to habits of temperance, by abstaining, at
least, twice a week from the ordinary grosser food with which they
are supplied. As might be expected from the age, and from his order,
the practice of Chrysostom, and of the numerous other ecclesiastical
abstinents from the gross diet of the richer part of the community,
reposed upon ascetic and traditionary principles, rather than on the
more secular and modern motives of justice, humanity, and general
social improvement. So, in fact, Origen, one of the most learned
of the Fathers, expressly says (_Contra Celsum_, v.): “We [the
Christian leaders] practise abstinence from the flesh of animals
to buffet our bodies and treat them as slaves (ὑπωπιάζομεν καί
δουλαγωγοῦμεν), and we wish to mortify our members upon earth,” &c.

Accordingly, the _Apostolical Canons_ distinguished, as Bingham
(_Antiquities of the Christian Church_) reports them, between
abstinents, διὰ τὴν ἀσκησιν and διὰ τὴν βδελυπίαν, _i.e._, between
those who abstained to exercise self-control, and those who did so from
disgust and abhorrence of what, in ordinary and orthodox language,
are too complacently and confidently termed “the good creatures of
God.” This distinction, it must be added, holds only of the prevailing
sentiment of the Orthodox Church as finally established. During several
centuries--even so late as the Paulicians in the seventh, or even
as the Albigeois of the thirteenth, century--_Manicheism_, as it is
called, or a belief in the inherent evil of all matter, was widely
spread in large and influential sections of the Christian Church--nor,
indeed, were some of its most famous Fathers without suspicion of this
heretical taint. According to the _Clementine Homilies_, “the unnatural
eating of flesh-meat is of demoniacal origin, and was introduced by
those giants who, from their bastard nature, took no pleasure in
pure nourishment, and only lusted after blood. Therefore the eating
of flesh is as polluting as the heathen worship of demons, with its
sacrifices and its impure feasts; through participation in which, a man
becomes a fellow-dietist (ὁμοδίαιτος) with demons.”[92] That
superstition was often, in the minds of the followers both of Plato
and of St. Paul, mixed up with, and, indeed, usually dominated over,
the reasonable motives of the more philosophic advocates of the higher
life, there can be no sort of doubt; nor can we claim a monopoly of
rational motives for the mass of the adherents of either Christian or
Pythagorean abstinence. Yet an impartial judgment must allow almost
equal credit to the earnestness of mind and purity of motive which,
mingled though they undoubtedly were with (in the pre-scientific
ages) a necessary infusion of superstition, urged the followers of
the better way--Christian and non-Christian--to discard the “social
lies” of the dead world around them. At all events, it is not for the
selfish egoists to sneer at the sublime--if error-infected--efforts of
the earlier pioneers of moral progress for their own and the world’s
redemption from the bonds of the prevailing vile materialism in life
and dietary habits.

We have already shown that the earliest Jewish-Christian communities,
both in Palestine and elsewhere--the immediate disciples of the
original Twelve--enjoined abstinence as one of the primary obligations
of the New Faith; and that the earliest traditions represent the
foremost of them as the strictest sort of Vegetarians.[93] If then we
impartially review the history of the practice, the teaching, and the
traditions of the first Christian authorities, it cannot but appear
surprising that the Orthodox Church, ignoring the practice and highest
ideal of the most sacred period of its annals, has, even within its own
Order, deemed it consistent with its claim of being representative of
the Apostolic period to substitute partial and periodic for total and
constant abstinence.

The following passages in the _Homilies_, or Congregational Discourses,
of Chrysostom will serve as specimens of his feeling on the propriety
of dietary reform. The eloquent but diffusive style of the Greek
Bossuet, it must be noted, is necessarily but feebly represented in the
literal English version:--

    “No streams of blood are among them [the ascetics]; no butchering
    and cutting up of flesh; no dainty cookery; no heaviness of head.
    Nor are there horrible smells of flesh-meats among them, or
    disagreeable fumes from the kitchen. No tumult and disturbance and
    wearisome clamours, but bread and water--the latter from a pure
    fountain, the former from honest labour. If, at any time, however,
    they may wish to feast more sumptuously, the sumptuousness consists
    in fruits, and their pleasure in these is greater than at royal
    tables. With this repast [of fruits and vegetables], even angels
    from Heaven, as they behold it, are delighted and pleased. For if
    over one sinner who repents they rejoice, over so many just men
    imitating them what will they not do? No master and servant are
    there. All are servants--all free men. And think not this a mere
    form of speech, for they are servants one of another and masters
    one of another. Wherein, therefore, are we different from, or
    superior to, Ants, if we compare ourselves with them? For as they
    care for the things of the body only, so also do we. And would
    it were for these alone! But, alas! it is for things far worse.
    For not for necessary things only do we care, but also for things
    superfluous. Those animals pursue an innocent life, while we follow
    after all covetousness. Nay, we do not so much as imitate the ways
    of Ants. _We follow the ways of Wolves, the habits of Tigers; or,
    rather, we are worse even than they. To them Nature has assigned
    that they should be thus_ [carnivorously] _fed, while God has
    honoured us with rational speech and a sense of equity. And yet we
    are become worse than the wild beasts._”[94]

Again he protests:--

    “Neither am I leading you to the lofty peak of total renunciation
    of possessions [ἀκτημοσύνη]; but for the present I require you to
    cut off superfluities, and to desire a sufficiency alone. Now,
    the boundary of sufficiency is the using those things which it
    is impossible to live without. No one debars you from these, nor
    forbids you your daily food. I say ‘food,’ not ‘luxury’ [τροφὴν οὐ
    τρυφὴν λέγω]--‘raiment,’ not ‘ornament.’ Rather, this frugality--to
    speak correctly--is, in the best sense, luxury. For consider who
    should we say more truly feasted--he whose diet is herbs, and who
    is in sound health and suffered no uneasiness, or he who has the
    table of a Sybarite and is full of a thousand disorders? Clearly,
    the former. Therefore let us seek nothing more than these, if we
    would at once live luxuriously and healthfully. And let him who
    can be satisfied with pulse, and can keep in good health, seek for
    nothing more. But let him who is weaker, and needs to be [more
    richly] dieted with other vegetables and fruits, not be debarred
    from them.... We do not advise this for the harm and injury of men,
    but to lop off what is superfluous--and that is superfluous which
    is more than we need. When we are able to live without a thing,
    healthfully and respectably, certainly the addition of that thing
    is a superfluity.”--_Hom._ xix. 2 _Cor._

Denouncing the grossness of the ordinary mode of living, he eloquently
descants on the evil results, physical as well as mental:--

    “A man who lives in pleasure [_i.e._, in selfish luxury] is dead
    while he lives, for he lives only to his belly. In his other senses
    he lives not. He sees not what he ought to see; he hears not what
    he ought to hear; he speaks not what he ought to speak.... Look not
    at the superficial countenance, but examine the interior, and you
    will see it full of deep dejection. If it were possible to bring
    the soul into view, and to behold it with our bodily eyes, that of
    the luxurious would seem depressed, mournful, miserable, and wasted
    with leanness, for the more the body grows sleek and gross, the
    more lean and weakly is the soul. The more the one is pampered,
    the more is the other hampered [θάλπεται--θάπτεται: the latter
    meaning, literally, buried]. As when the pupil of the eye has the
    external envelope too thick, it cannot put forth the power of
    vision and look out, because the light is excluded by the dense
    covering, and darkness ensues; so when the body is constantly full
    fed, the soul must be invested with grossness. The dead, say you,
    corrupt and rot, and a foul pestilential humour distils from them.
    So in her who lives in pleasure may be seen rheums, and phlegm,
    and catarrh, hiccough, vomiting, eructations, and the like, which,
    as too unseemly, I forbear to name. For such is the despotism of
    luxury, it makes us endure things which we do not think proper even
    to mention....

    “‘She that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.’ Hear this,
    ye women[95] who pass your time in revels and intemperance, and who
    neglect the poor, pining and perishing with hunger, whilst you are
    destroying yourselves with continual luxury. Thus you are the cause
    of two deaths--of those who are dying of want and of your own, both
    through ill-measure. If, out of your fulness, you tempered their
    want, you would save two lives. Why do you thus gorge your own body
    with excess, and waste that of the poor with want? Consider what
    comes of food--into what it is changed. Are you not disgusted at
    its being named? Why, then, be eager for such accumulations? The
    increase of luxury is but the multiplication of filth.[96] For
    Nature has her limits, and what is beyond these is not nourishment,
    but injury and the increase of ordure.

    “Nourish the body, but do not destroy it. Food is called
    nourishment, to show that its purpose is not to hurt, but to
    support us. For this reason, perhaps, food passes into excrement
    that we may not be lovers of luxury. If it were not so--if it were
    not useless and injurious to the body, we should hardly abstain
    from devouring one another. If the belly received as much as it
    pleased, digested it, and conveyed it to the body, we should see
    battles and wars innumerable. Even as it is, when part of our food
    passes into ordure, part into blood, part into spurious and useless
    phlegm, we are, nevertheless, so addicted to luxury that we spend,
    perhaps, whole estates on a meal. The more richly we live, the more
    noisome are the odours with which we are filled.”--_Hom._ xiii.
    _Tim._ v.[97]

       *       *       *       *       *

From this period--the fifth century A.D. down to the
sixteenth--Christian and Western literature contains little or
nothing which comes within the purpose of this work. The merits of
monastic asceticism were more or less preached during all those ages,
although constant abstinence from flesh was by no means the general
practice even with the inmates of the stricter monastic or conventual
establishments--at all events in the Latin Church. But we look in vain
for traces of anything like the humanitarian feeling of Plutarch or
Porphyry. The mental intelligence as well as capacities for physical
suffering of the non-human races--necessarily resulting from an
organisation in all essential points like to our own--was apparently
wholly ignored; their just rights and claims upon human justice were
disregarded and trampled under foot. Consistently with the universal
estimate, they were treated as beings destitute of all feeling--as
if, in fine, they are the “automatic machines” they are alleged to
be by the Cartesians of the present day. In those terrible ages of
gross ignorance, of superstition, of violence, and of injustice--in
which human rights were seldom regarded--it would have been surprising
indeed if any sort of regard had been displayed for the _non-human_
slaves. And yet an underlying and latent consciousness of the falseness
of the general estimate sometimes made itself apparent in certain
extraordinary and perverse fancies.[98] To Montaigne, the first to
revive the humanitarianism of Plutarch, belongs the great merit of
reasserting the natural rights of the helpless slaves of human tyranny.

While Chrysostom seems to have been one of the last of Christian
writers who manifested any sort of consciousness of the inhuman, as
well as unspiritual nature of the ordinary gross foods, Platonism
continued to bear aloft the flickering torch of a truer spiritualism;
and “the golden chain” of the prophets of the dietary reformation
reached down even so late as to the end of the sixth century.
Hierokles, author of the commentary on the _Golden Verses_ of
Pythagoras, to which reference has already been made, and who lectured
upon them with great success at Alexandria; Hypatia, the beautiful and
accomplished daughter of Theon the great mathematician, who publicly
taught the philosophy of Plato at the same great centre of Greek
science and learning, and was barbarously murdered by the jealousy
of her Christian rival Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria; Proklus,
surnamed the Successor, as having been considered the most illustrious
disciple of Plato in the latter times, who left several treatises
upon the Pythagorean system, and “whose sagacious mind explored the
deepest questions of morals and metaphysics”;[99] Olympiodorus, who
wrote a life of Plato and commentaries on several of his dialogues,
still extant, and lived in the reign of Justinian, by whose edict the
illustrious school of Athens was finally closed, and with it the last
vestiges of a sublime, if imperfect, attempt at the purification of
human life--such are some of the most illustrious names which adorned
the days of expiring Greek philosophy. Olympiodorus and six other
Pythagoreans determined, if possible, to maintain their doctrines
elsewhere; and they sought refuge with the Persian Magi, with whose
tenets, or, at least, manner of living, they believed themselves
to be most in accord. The Persian customs were distasteful to the
purer ideal of the Platonists, and, disappointed in other respects,
they reluctantly relinquished their fond hopes of transplanting the
doctrines of Plato into a foreign soil, and returned home. The Persian
prince, Chosroes, we may add, acquired honour by his stipulation with
the bigoted Justinian, that the seven sages should be allowed to
live unmolested during the rest of their days. “Simplicius and his
companions ended their lives in peace and obscurity; and, as they left
no disciples, they terminated the long list of Grecian philosophers who
may be justly praised, notwithstanding their defects, as the wisest and
most virtuous of their contemporaries. The writings of Simplicius are
now extant. His physical and metaphysical commentaries on Aristotle
have passed away with the fashion of the times, but his moral
interpretation of Epiktetus is preserved in the library of nations as
a classical book excellently adapted to direct the will, to purify the
heart, and to confirm the understanding, by a just confidence in the
nature both of God and Man.”[100]




XI.

CORNARO. 1465-1566.


After the extinction of Greek and Latin philosophy in the fifth
century, a mental torpor seized upon and, during some thousand years,
with rare exceptions, dominated the whole Western world. When this
torpor was dispelled by the influence of returning knowledge and
reason evoked by the various simultaneous discoveries in science and
literature--in particular by the achievements of Gutenberg, Vasco da
Gama, Christopher Colon, and, above all, Copernik--the moral sense
then first, too, began to show signs of life. The renascence of the
sixteenth century, however, with all the vigour of thought and action
which accompanied it, proved to be rather a revival of mere verbal
learning than of the higher moral feeling of the best minds of old
Greece and Italy. Men, fettered as they were in the trammels of
theological controversy and metaphysical subtleties, for the most part
expended their energies and their intellect in the vain pursuit of
phantoms. With the very few splendid exceptions of the more enlightened
and earnest thinkers, _Ethics_, in the real and comprehensive meaning
of the word, was an unknown science; and a long period of time was
yet to pass away before a perception of the universal obligations of
Justice and of Right dawned upon the minds of men. In truth, it could
not have been otherwise. Before the moral instincts can be developed,
reason and knowledge must have sufficiently prepared the way. When
attention to the importance of the neglected science of _Dietetics_ had
been in some degree aroused, the interest evoked was little connected
with the higher sentiments of humanity.

Of all dietary reformers who have treated the subject from an
exclusively sanitarian point of view, the most widely known and most
popular name, perhaps, has been that of Luigi Cornaro; and it is as
a vehement protester against the follies, rather than against the
barbarism, of the prevailing dietetic habits that he claims a place
in this work. He belonged to one of the leading families of Venice,
then at the height of its political power. Even in an age and in a
city noted for luxuriousness and grossness of living of the rich and
dominant classes, he had in his youth distinguished himself by his
licentious habits in eating and drinking, as well as by other excesses.
His constitution had been so impaired, and he had brought upon himself
so many disorders by this course of living, that existence became a
burden to him. He informs us that from his thirty-fifth to his fortieth
year he passed his nights and days in continuous suffering. Every sort
of known remedy was exhausted before his new medical adviser, superior
to the prejudices of his profession and of the public, had the courage
and the good sense to prescribe a total change of diet. At first
Cornaro found his enforced regimen almost intolerable, and, as he tells
us, he occasionally relapsed.

These relapses brought back his old sufferings, and, to save his life,
he was driven at length to practise entire and uniform abstinence, the
yolk of an egg often furnishing him the whole of his meal. In this way
he assures us that he came to relish dry bread more than formerly he
had enjoyed the most exquisite dishes of the ordinary table. At the
end of the first year he found himself entirely freed from all his
multiform maladies. In his eighty-third year he wrote and published his
first exhortation to a radical change of diet under the title of _A
Treatise on a Sober Life_,[101] in which he eloquently narrates his own
case, and exhorts all who value health and immunity from physical or
mental sufferings to follow his example. And his _exordium_, in which
he takes occasion to denounce the waste and gluttony of the dinners of
the rich, might be applied with little, or without any, modification of
its language to the public and private tables of the present day:--

    “It is very certain,” he begins, “that Custom, with time, becomes
    a second nature, forcing men to use that, whether good or bad, to
    which they have been habituated; and we see custom or habit get
    the better of reason in many things.... Though all are agreed that
    intemperance (_la crapula_) is the offspring of gluttony, and sober
    living of abstemiousness, the former nevertheless is considered a
    virtue and a mark of distinction, and the latter as dishonourable
    and the badge of avarice. Such mistaken notions are entirely owing
    to the power of Custom, established by our senses and irregular
    appetites. These have blinded and besotted men to such a degree
    that, leaving the paths of virtue, they have followed those of
    vice, which lead them imperceptibly to an old age burdened with
    strange and mortal diseases....

    “O wretched and unhappy Italy! [thus he apostrophises his own
    country] can you not see that gluttony murders every year more of
    your inhabitants than you could lose by the most cruel plague or
    by fire and sword in many battles? Those truly shameful feasts (_i
    tuoi veramente disonesti banchetti_), now so much in fashion and
    so intolerably profuse that no tables are large enough to hold
    the infinite number of the dishes--those feasts, I say, are so
    many battles.[102] And how is it possible _to live_ amongst such a
    multitude of jarring foods and disorders? Put an end to this abuse,
    in heaven’s name, for there is not--I am certain of it--a vice more
    abominable than this in the eyes of the divine Majesty. Drive away
    this plague, the worst you were ever afflicted with--this new [?]
    kind of death--as you have banished that disease which, though it
    formerly used to make such havoc, now does little or no mischief,
    owing to the laudable practice of attending more to the goodness
    of the provisions brought to our markets. Consider that there are
    means still left to banish intemperance, and such means, too, that
    every man may have recourse to them without any external assistance.

    “Nothing more is requisite for this purpose than to live up to the
    simplicity, dictated by nature, which teaches us to be content with
    little, to pursue the practice of holy abstemiousness and divine
    reason, and _accustom ourselves to eat no more than is absolutely
    necessary to support life_; considering that what exceeds this
    is disease and death, and done merely to give the palate a
    satisfaction which, though but momentary, brings on the body a long
    and lasting train of disagreeable diseases, and at length kills it
    along with the soul. How many friends of mine--men of the finest
    understanding and most amiable disposition--have I seen carried off
    by this plague in the flower of their youth! who, were they now
    living, would be an ornament to the public, and whose company I
    should enjoy with as much pleasure as I am now deprived of it with
    concern.”

He tells us that he had undertaken his arduous task of proselytising
with the more anxiety and zeal that he had been encouraged to it by
many of his friends, men of “the finest intellect” (_di bellissimo
intelletto_), who lamented the premature deaths of parents and
relatives, and who observed so manifest a proof of the advantages of
abstinence in the robust and vigorous frame of the dietetic missionary
at the age of eighty. Cornaro was a thorough-going hygeist, and he
followed a reformed _diet_ in the widest meaning of the term, attending
to the various requirements of a healthy condition of mind and body:--

    “I likewise,” he says with much candour, “did all that lay in my
    power to avoid those evils which we do not find it so easy to
    remove--melancholy, hatred, and other violent passions which appear
    to have the greatest influence over our bodies. However, I have not
    been able to guard so well against either one or the other kind of
    these disorders [passions] as not to suffer myself now and then to
    be hurried away by many, not to say all, of them; but I reaped one
    great benefit from my weakness--that of knowing by experience that
    these passions have, in the main, no great influence over bodies
    governed by the two foregoing rules of eating and drinking, and
    therefore can do them but very little harm, so that it may, with
    great truth, be affirmed that whoever observes these two capital
    rules is liable to very little inconvenience from any other excess.
    This Galen, who was an eminent physician, observed before me.
    He affirms that so long as he followed these two rules relative
    to eating and drinking (_perchè si guardava da quelli due della
    bocca_) he suffered but little from other disorders--so little that
    they never gave him above a day’s uneasiness. That what he says is
    true I am a living witness; and so are many others who know me, and
    have seen how often I have been exposed to heats and colds and such
    other disagreeable changes of weather, and have likewise seen me
    (owing to various misfortunes which have more than once befallen
    me) greatly disturbed in mind. For not only can they say of me that
    such mental disturbance has affected me little, but they can aver
    of many others who did not lead a frugal and regular life that such
    failure proved very prejudicial to them, among whom was a brother
    of my own and others of my family who, trusting to the goodness of
    their constitution, did not follow my way of living.”

At the age of seventy a serious accident befel him, which to the vast
majority of men so far advanced in life would probably have been fatal.
His coach was overturned, and he was dragged a considerable distance
along the road before the horses could be stopped. He was taken up
insensible, covered with severe wounds and bruises and with an arm and
leg dislocated, and altogether he was in so dangerous a state that his
physicians gave him only three days to live. As a matter of course
they prescribed bleeding and purging as the only proper and effectual
remedies:--

    “But I, on the contrary, who knew that the sober life I had led
    for many years past had so well united, harmonised, and dispersed
    my humours as not to leave it in their power to ferment to such
    a degree [as to induce the expected high fever], refused to be
    either bled or purged. I simply caused my leg and arm to be set,
    and suffered myself to be rubbed with some oils, which they said
    were proper on the occasion. Thus, without using any other kind
    of remedy, I recovered, as I thought I should, without feeling
    the least alteration in myself or any other bad effects from the
    accident, a thing which appeared no less than miraculous in the
    eyes of the physicians.”

It is, perhaps, hardly to be expected that “The Faculty” will endorse
the opinions of Cornaro, that any person by attending strictly to
his regimen “could never be sick again, as it removes every cause of
illness; and so, for the future, would never want either physician or
physic”:--

    “Nay, by attending duly to what I have said he would become his own
    physician, and, indeed, the best he could have, since, in fact, no
    man can be a perfect physician to anyone but himself. The reason of
    which is that any man may, by repeated trials, acquire a perfect
    knowledge of his own constitution and the most hidden qualities of
    his body, and what food best agrees with his stomach. Now, it is
    so far from being an easy matter to know these things perfectly
    of another that we cannot, without much trouble, discover them
    in ourselves, since a great deal of time and repeated trials are
    required for that purpose.”

Cornaro’s second publication appeared three years later than his
first, under the title of _A Compendium of a Sober Life_ and the
third, _An Earnest Exhortation to a Sober and Regular Life_,[103] in
the ninety-third year of his age. In these little treatises he repeats
and enforces in the most earnest manner his previous exhortations
and warnings. He also takes the opportunity of exposing some of the
plausible sophisms employed in defence of luxurious living:--

    “Some allege that many, without leading such a life, have lived
    to a hundred, and that in constant health, although they ate a
    great deal and used indiscriminately every kind of viands and
    wine, and therefore flatter themselves that they shall be equally
    fortunate. But in this they are guilty of two mistakes. The first
    is, that it is not one in one hundred thousand that ever attains
    that happiness; the other mistake is, that such persons, in the
    end, most assuredly contract some illness which carries them off,
    nor can they ever be sure of ending their days otherwise, so that
    the safest way to obtain a long and healthy life is, at least after
    forty, to embrace abstinence. This is no difficult matter, since
    history informs us of very many who, in former times, lived with
    the greatest temperance, and I know that the present Age furnishes
    us with many such instances, reckoning myself one of the number.
    Now let us remember that we are human beings, and that man, being a
    rational animal, is himself master of his actions.”

Amongst others:--

    “There are old gluttons (_attempati_) who say that it is necessary
    they should eat and drink a great deal to keep up their natural
    heat, which is constantly diminishing as they advance in years,
    and that it is therefore necessary for them to eat heartily and of
    such things as please their palates, and that were they to lead a
    frugal life it would be a short one. To this I answer that our kind
    mother, Nature, in order that old men may live to a still greater
    age, has contrived matters so that they should be able to subsist
    on little, as I do, for large quantities of food cannot be digested
    by old and feeble stomachs. Nor should such persons be afraid of
    shortening their lives by eating too little, _since when they are
    indisposed they recover by eating the smallest quantities_. Now,
    if by reducing themselves to a very small quantity of food they
    recover from the jaws of death, how can they doubt but that, with
    an increase of diet, still consistent, however, with sobriety, they
    will be able to support nature when in perfect health?

    “Others say that it is better for a man to suffer every year three
    or four returns of his usual disorders, such as gout, sciatica, and
    the like than to be tormented the whole year by not indulging his
    appetite, and eating everything his palate likes best, since by a
    good regimen alone he is sure to get the better of such attacks. To
    this I answer that, our natural heat growing less and less as we
    advance in years, no regimen can retain virtue enough to conquer
    the malignity with which disorders of repletion are ever attended,
    so that he must die at last of these periodical disorders, because
    they abridge life as health prolongs it. Others pretend that it is
    much better to live ten years less than not indulge one’s appetite.
    My reply is that longevity ought to be highly valued by men of
    genius and intellect; as to others it is of no great matter if it
    is not duly prized by them, since it is they who brutalise the
    world (_perchè questi fanno brutto il mondo_), so that _their_
    death is rather of service to mankind.”

Cornaro frequently interrupts his discourse with apostrophes to the
genius of Temperance, in which he seems to be at a loss for words to
express his feeling of gratitude and thankfulness for the marvellous
change effected in his constitution, by which he had been delivered
from the terrible load of sufferings of his earlier life, and by which
moreover he could fully appreciate, as he had never dreamed before,
the beauties and charms of nature of the external world, as well as
develope the mental faculties with which he had been endowed:--

    “O thrice holy Sobriety, so useful to man by the services thou
    renderest him! Thou prolongest his days, by which means he may
    greatly improve his understanding. Thou moreover freest him from
    the dreadful thoughts of death. How greatly is thy faithful
    disciple indebted to thee, since by thy assistance he enjoys this
    beautiful expanse of the visible world, which is really beautiful
    to such as know how to view it with a philosophic eye, as thou
    hast enabled me to do!... O truly happy life which, besides these
    favours conferred on an old man, hast so improved and perfected
    him that he has now a better relish for his dry bread than he had
    formerly for the most exquisite dainties. And all this thou hast
    effected by acting rationally, knowing that bread is, above all
    things, man’s proper food when seasoned by a good appetite.... It
    is for this reason that dry bread has so much relish for me; and
    I know from experience, and can with truth affirm, that I find
    such sweetness in it that I should be afraid of sinning against
    temperance were it not for my being convinced of the absolute
    necessity of eating of it, and that we cannot make use of a more
    natural food.”

The fourth and last of his appearances in print was a “Letter to
Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia,” written at the age of ninety-five.
It describes in a very lively manner the health, vigour, and use
of all his faculties of mind and body, of which he had the perfect
enjoyment. He was far advanced in life when his daughter, his only
child, was born, and he lived to see her an old woman. He informs us,
at the age of ninety-one, with much eloquence and enthusiasm of the
active interest and pleasure he experienced in all that concerned the
prosperity of his native city: of his plans for improving its port;
for draining, recovering, and fertilizing the extensive marshes and
barren sands in its neighbourhood. He died, having passed his one
hundredth year, calmly and easily in his arm-chair at Padua in the
year 1566.[104] His treatises, forming a small volume, have been “very
frequently published in Italy, both in the vernacular Italian and in
Latin. It has been translated into all the civilised languages of
Europe, and was once a most popular book. There are several English
translations of it, the best being one that bears the date 1779.
Cornaro’s system,” says the writer in the _English Cyclopædia_ whom we
are quoting, “has had many followers.” Recounting his many dignities
and honours, and the distinguished part he took in the improvement of
his native city, by which he acquired a great reputation amongst his
fellow-citizens, the Italian editor of his writings justly adds:--

    “But all these fine prerogatives of Luigi Cornaro would not have
    been sufficient to render his name famous in Europe if he had not
    left behind him the short treatises upon Temperance, composed at
    various times at the advanced ages of 85, 86, 91, and 95. The
    candour which breathes through their simplicity, the importance
    of the argument, and the fervour with which he urges upon all to
    study the means of prolonging our life, have obtained for them so
    great good fortune as to be praised to the skies by men of the
    best understanding. The many editions which have been published
    in Italy, and the translations which, together with an array of
    physiological and philological notes, have appeared out of Italy,
    at one time in Latin, at another in French, again in German, and
    again in English, prove their importance. These discourses, in
    fact, enjoyed all the reputation of a classical book, and, although
    occasionally somewhat unpolished, as ‘_Poca favilla gran fiamma
    seconda_,’ they have sufficed to inspire (_riscaldare_) a Lessio,
    a Bartolini, a Ramazzini, a Cheyne, a Hufeland, and so many others
    who have written works of greater weight upon the same subject.”

Addison (_Spectator_ 195) thus refers to him:--

    “The most remarkable instance of the efficacy of temperance
    towards the procuring long life is what we meet with in a little
    book published by Lewis Cornaro, the Venetian, which I the rather
    mention because it is of undoubted credit, as the late Venetian
    Ambassador, who was of the same family, attested more than once in
    conversation when he resided in England.... After having passed
    his one hundredth year he died without pain or agony, and like one
    who falls asleep. The treatise I mention has been taken notice of
    by several eminent authors, and is written with such a spirit
    of cheerfulness, religion, and good sense as are the natural
    concomitants of temperance and sobriety. The mixture of the old man
    in it is rather a recommendation than a discredit to it.”

In fact he has exposed himself, it must be confessed, to the taunts of
the “devotees of the Table” often cast at the _abstinents_, that they
are too much given to parading their health and vigour, and certainly
if any one can be justly obnoxious to them it is Luigi Cornaro.




XII.

SIR THOMAS MORE. 1480-1535.


During part of the period covered by the long life of Cornaro there
is one distinguished man, all reference to whose opinions--intimately
though indirectly connected as they are with dietary reform--it would
be improper to omit--Sir Thomas More. His eloquent denunciation of the
grasping avarice and the ruinous policy which were rapidly converting
the best part of the country into grazing lands, as well as his
condemnation of the slaughter of innocent life, commonly euphemised by
the name of “sport,” are as instructive and almost as necessary for the
present age as for the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Son of Sir John More, a judge of the King’s Bench, he was brought up in
the palace of the Cardinal Lord Chancellor Morton, an ecclesiastic who
stands out in favourable contrast with the great majority of his order,
and, indeed, of his contemporaries in general. In his twenty-first year
he was returned to the House of Commons, where he distinguished himself
by opposing a grant of a subsidy to the king (Henry VII.). In 1516 he
published (in Latin) his world-famed _Utopia_--the most meritorious
production in sociological literature since the days of Plutarch.
In 1523 he was elected Speaker of the House of Commons, and again
he displayed his courage and integrity in resisting an illegal and
oppressive subsidy bill, by which he was not in the way to advance his
interests with Henry VIII. and his principal minister, Wolsey. Seven
years later, however, upon the disgrace of the latter personage, Sir
Thomas More succeeded to the vacant Chancellorship, in which office he
maintained his reputation for integrity and laborious diligence. When
the amorous and despotic king had determined upon the momentous divorce
from Catherine, he resigned the Seals rather than sanction that
equivocal proceeding; and soon afterwards he was sent to the Tower for
refusing the Oath of Supremacy. After the interval of a year he was
brought to trial before the King’s Bench, and sentenced to the block
(1535). In private life and in his domestic relations he exhibits a
pleasing contrast to the ordinary harsh severity of his contemporaries.
In learning and ability he occupies a foremost place in the annals of
the period.

Unfortunately for his reputation with after ages, as Lord Chancellor
he seems to have forgotten the maxims of toleration (political and
theological) of his earlier career, so well set forth in his _Utopia_;
and he supplies a notable instance, not too rare, of retrogression with
advancing years and dignities, and of “a head grown grey in vain.” In
fact, he belonged, ecclesiastically, to the school of conservative
sceptics, of whom his intimate friend Erasmus was the most conspicuous
representative, rather than to the party of practical reform. Yet, in
spite of so lamentable a failure in practical philosophy, More may
claim a high degree of merit both for his courage and for his sagacity
in propounding views far in advance of his time.

In the _Utopia_ his ideas in regard to labour and to crime exhibit
him, indeed, as in advance of the received dogmas even of the present
day. As to the former he held that the labourer, as the actual basis
and support of the whole social system, was justly entitled to some
consideration, and to a more rational existence than usually allowed
him by the policy of the ruling classes; and, in limiting the daily
period of labour to nine hours, he anticipated by 350 years the tardy
legislation on that important matter. In exposing the equal absurdity
and iniquity of the criminal code he preached the despised doctrine
of _prevention_ rather than punishment, and denounced the monstrous
inequality of penalties by which thieving was placed in the same
category with murder and crimes of violence:--

    “For great and horrible punishments be awarded to thieves, whereas
    much rather provision should have been made that there were some
    means whereby they might get their living, so that no man should
    be driven to this extreme necessity--first to steal and then to
    die.... By suffering your youth to be wantonly and viciously
    brought up and to be infected, even from their tender age, by
    little and little with vice--then, in God’s name, to be punished
    when they commit the same faults after being come to man’s state,
    which from their youth they were ever like to do--in this point,
    I pray you, _what other thing do you than make thieves and then
    punish them_.”[105]

What we are immediately concerned with here is his feeling in regard to
slaughter. The Utopians condemn--

    “Hunters also and hawkers (falconers), for what delight can there
    be, and not rather displeasure, in hearing the barking and howling
    of dogs? Or what greater pleasure is there to be felt when a dog
    follows a hare than when a dog follows a dog? For one thing is done
    by both--that is to say, running, if you have pleasure in that. But
    if the hope of slaughter and the expectation of tearing the victim
    in pieces pleases you, you should rather be moved with pity to see
    an innocent hare murdered by a dog--the weak by the strong, the
    fearful by the fierce, the innocent by the cruel and pitiless.[106]
    Therefore this exercise of hunting, as a thing unworthy to be used
    of free men, the Utopians have rejected to their butchers, to the
    which craft (as we said before) they appoint their bondsmen. For
    they count hunting the lowest, the vilest, and most abject part of
    butchery; and the other parts of it more profitable and more honest
    as bringing much more commodity, in that they (the butchers) kill
    their victims from necessity, whereas the hunter seeks nothing
    but pleasure of the seely [simple, innocent] and woful animal’s
    slaughter and murder. The which pleasure in beholding death, they
    say, doth rise in wild beasts, either of a cruel affection of mind
    or else by being changed, in continuance of time, into cruelty by
    long use of so cruel a pleasure. These, therefore, and all such
    like, which be innumerable, though the common sort of people do
    take them for pleasures, yet they, seeing that there is no natural
    pleasantness in them, plainly determine them to have no affinity
    with true and right feeling.”

In telling us that his model people “permit not their free citizens to
accustom themselves to the killing of ‘beasts’ through the use whereof
they think clemency, gentlest affection of our nature, by little and
little to decay and perish,”[107] More for ever condemns the immorality
of the Slaughter-House, whether he intended to do so _in toto_ or no.
In relegating the business of slaughter to their bondsmen (criminals
who had been degraded from the rights of citizenship), the Utopians,
we may observe, exhibit less of justice than of refinement. To devolve
the trade of slaughter upon a pariah-class is not the least immoral of
the necessary concomitants of the shambles. That the author of _Utopia_
should feel an instinctive aversion from the coarseness and cruelty of
the shambles is not surprising; that he should have failed to banish
it entirely from his ideal commonwealth is less to be wondered at
than to be lamented. That he had at least a _latent_ consciousness of
the indefensibility of slaughter for food appears sufficiently clear
from his remark upon the Utopian religion that “they kill no living
animal in sacrifice, nor do they think that God has delight in blood
and slaughter, _Who has given life to animals to the intent they should
live_.”

Wiser than ourselves, the ideal people do not waste their corn in the
manufacture of alcoholic drinks:--

    “They sow corn only for bread. For their drink is either wine
    made of grapes, or else of apples or pears, or else it is clear
    water--and many times mead made of honey or liquorice sodden in
    water, for of that they have great store.”

The selfish policy of converting arable into grazing land is
emphatically denounced by More:--

    “They (the oxen and sheep) consume, destroy, and devour whole
    fields, houses, and cities. For look in what parts of the realm
    doth grow the finest and therefore the dearest wool. There noblemen
    and gentlemen, yea, and certain abbots, holy men no doubt, not
    contenting themselves with the yearly revenues and profits that
    were wont to grow to their forefathers and predecessors of their
    lands, nor being content that they live in rest and pleasure
    nothing profiting, yea, much annoying, the public weal, leave no
    land for tillage--they enclose all into pasture, they throw down
    houses, they pluck down towns and leave nothing standing, but only
    the church to be made a sheep house; and, as though you lost no
    small quantity of ground by forests, chases, lands, and parks,
    those good holy men turn dwelling-places and all glebe land into
    wilderness and desolation.... For one shepherd or herdsman is
    enough to eat up that ground with cattle, to the occupying whereof
    about husbandry many hands would be requisite. And this is also the
    cause why victuals be now in many places dearer; yea, besides this,
    the price of wool is so risen that poor folks, which were wont to
    work it and make cloth thereof, be now able to buy none at all,
    and by this means very many be forced to forsake work and to give
    themselves to idleness. For after that so much land was enclosed
    for pasture, an infinite multitude of sheep died of the rot, such
    vengeance God took of their inordinate and insatiable covetousness,
    sending among the sheep that pestiferous murrain which much more
    justly should have fallen on the sheep-masters’ own heads; and
    though the number of sheep increase never so fast, yet the price
    falleth not one mite, because there be so few sellers,” &c.

These sagacious and just reflections upon the evil social consequences
of carnivorousness may be fitly commended to the earnest attention
of our public writers and speakers of to-day. The periodical cattle
plagues and foot-and-mouth diseases, which, in theological language,
are vaguely assigned to national sins, might be more ingenuously and
truthfully attributed to the one sufficient cause--to the general
indulgence of selfish instincts, which closes the ear to all the
promptings at once of humanity and of reason, and is, in truth, a
national sin of the most serious character.[108]

The “wisdom of our ancestors,” which has been so often invoked, both
before and since the days of More, and which Bentham has so mercilessly
exposed, apparently did not subdue the reason of the author of
_Utopia_; yet, with no little amount of applause it has been made to
serve as a very conclusive argument against dietetic reformation, as
against many other changes:--

    “‘These things,’ say they, ‘pleased our forefathers and
    ancestors--would to God we could be so wise as they were!’ And, as
    though they had wittily concluded the matter, and with this answer
    stopped every man’s mouth, they sit down again as who should say,
    ‘It were a very dangerous matter if a man in any point should be
    found wiser than his forefathers were.’ And yet be we content
    to suffer the best and wittiest [wisest] of their decrees to be
    unexecuted; but if in anything a better order might have been taken
    than by them was, there we take fast hold, finding therein many
    virtues.”[109]




XIII.

MONTAIGNE. 1533-1592.


The modern Plutarch and the first of essayists deserves his place
in this work, if not so much for express and explicit denunciation,
_totidem verbis_, of the barbarism of the Slaughter-House, at least
for a sort of argument which logically and necessarily arrives at
the same conclusion. In truth, if he had not “seen and approved the
better way” (even though, with too many others, he may not have had the
courage of his convictions), he would be no true disciple of the great
humanitarian. It is necessary to remember that the “perfect day” was
not yet come; that a few rays only here and there enlightened the thick
darkness of barbarism; that, in fine, not even yet, with the light of
truth shining full upon us, have reason and conscience triumphed, as
regards the mass of the community, either in this country or elsewhere.

Michel de Montaigne descended from an old and influential house in
Périgord (modern Périgeaux, in the department of the Dordogne). His
youth was carefully trained, and his early inclination to learning
fostered under his father’s diligent superintendence. He became a
member of the provincial parliament, and, by the universal suffrage of
his fellow-citizens, was elected chief magistrate of Bordeaux, from the
official routine of whose duties he soon retired to the more congenial
atmosphere of study and philosophic reflection. In his château, at
Montaigne, his studious tranquillity was violently interrupted by the
savage contests then raging between the opposing factions of Catholics
and Huguenots, from both of whom he received ill-treatment and loss.
To add to his troubles, the plague, which appeared in Guienne in 1586,
broke up his household and compelled him, with his family, to abandon
his home. Together they wandered through the country, exposed to the
various dangers of a civil war; and he afterwards for some time settled
in Paris. He had also travelled in Italy. Montaigne returned to his
home when the disturbances and atrocities had somewhat subsided, and
there he died with the philosophic calmness with which he had lived.

The _Essais_--that book of “good faith,” “without study and artifice,”
as its author justly calls it--appeared in the year 1580. It is a book
unique in modern literature, and the only other production to which
it may be compared is the _Moralia_ of Plutarch. “It is not a book we
are reading, but a conversation to which we are listening.” “It is,”
as another French critic observes, “less a book than a journal divided
into chapters, which follow one another without connexion, which bear
each a title without much regard to the fulfilment of their promise.”

Montaigne treats of almost every phase of human thought and action; and
upon every subject he has something original and worth saying. Living
in a savagely sectarian and persecuting age, he kept himself aloof and
independent of either of the two contending theological sections, and
contents himself with the _rôle_ of a sceptical spectator. It must be
admitted that he is not always satisfactory in this character, since
he sometimes seems to give forth an “uncertain sound.” Considering
the age, however, his assertion of the proper authority of Reason
deserves our respectful admiration, and is in pleasing contrast with
the attitude of most of his contemporaries. A few, like his friend De
Thou, or the Italian Giordano Bruno--the latter of whom, indeed, had
more of the martyr-spirit than Montaigne--contributed to keep alight
the torch of Truth and Reason. But we have only to recollect that it
was the age _par excellence_ of Diabolism in Catholic and Protestant
theology alike, and of all the horrible superstitions and frightful
tortures, both bodily and mental, of which the universal belief in the
Devil’s actual reign on earth was the fruitful cause. About the very
time of the appearance of the _Essais_, one of the most learned men of
the period, the lawyer Jean Bodin published a work which he called the
_Démonomanie des Sorciers_ (the “Diabolic Inspiration of Witches”), in
which he protested his unwavering faith in the most monstrous beliefs
of the creed, and vehemently called upon the judges, ecclesiastical and
civil, to punish the reputed criminals (accused of an _impossible_
crime) with the severest tortures. We have only to recognise this fact
alone (the most astounding of all the astounding facts and phases in
the history of Superstition) to do full justice to the reason and
courage of this small band of protesters.

As for the influence of Montaigne on the modes of thought of after
times, and especially of his countrymen, it can scarcely be over
estimated. He is the literary progenitor of the most famous French
writers of the humanitarian eighteenth century. The most eminent of
them, Voltaire, perhaps, most resembles him, but naturally the style of
the eighteenth century philosopher is more concise and incisive, and
his opinions are more pronounced. “Both,” says a French critic, “laugh
at the human species; but the laughter of Voltaire is more bitter; his
railleries are more terrible. Both, nevertheless, breathe the love
of humanity. That of Voltaire is more ardent, more courageous, more
unwearied. The hatred of both of them for charlatanism and hypocrisy
is well known. Their morality has for its first principle benevolence
towards others, without distinction of country, of manners, or of
religious beliefs; warning us not to think that we alone hold the
deposit of justice and of truth. It transports our soul, by contempt of
mortal things and by enthusiasm for great truths.” It is to be lamented
that the countrymen of Montaigne and of Voltaire have not profited
to a larger extent by their humanitarian teaching and tendencies. In
reference to the almost incredible atrocities of war, and especially of
civil war, Montaigne protests:--

    “Scarcely could I persuade myself, before I had seen it with
    my own eyes, that there could be souls so ferocious as for the
    simple pleasure of murder to be ready to perpetrate it; to hack
    and dismember the limbs of others; to ransack their invention to
    discover unheard-of tortures and new kinds of deaths--and that
    without the incentive of enmity or of profit--with the mere view of
    enjoying the pleasant spectacle of pitiable actions and movements,
    of groans and lamentations, of a man dying in agony. For this is
    the climax to which cruelty can attain--‘for a man without anger,
    without fear, to kill another merely to witness his sufferings.’

    “For my part I have never been able to see, without displeasure, an
    innocent and defenceless animal, from whom we receive no offence
    or harm, pursued and slaughtered. And when a deer, as commonly
    happens, finding herself without breath and strength, without other
    resource, throws herself down and surrenders, as it were, to her
    pursuers, begging for mercy by her tears,

                ‘Questuque cruentus
        Atque imploranti similis.’[110]

    This has always appeared to me a very displeasing spectacle. I
    seldom, or never, take an animal alive whom I do not restore to the
    fields. Pythagoras was in the habit of buying their victims from
    the fowlers and fishermen for the same purpose.

                        ‘Primâque a cæde ferarum
        Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum.’[111]

    “Dispositions sanguinary in regard to other animals testify a
    natural inclination to cruelty towards their own kind. After they
    had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacle of the murders
    [_meurtres_] of other animals, they proceeded to those of men and
    gladiators. Nature has, I fear, herself attached some instinct
    of inhumanity to man’s disposition. No one derives any amusement
    from seeing other animals enjoy themselves and caressing one
    another; and no one fails to take pleasure in seeing them torn in
    pieces and dismembered. That I may not [he is cautious enough to
    add] be ridiculed for this sympathy which I have for them, even
    theology enjoins some respect for them,[112] and considering that
    one and the same Master has lodged us in this palatial world for
    his service, and that they are, as we, members of His family, it
    is right that it should enjoin some respect and affection towards
    them.”

Quoting instances of the extreme respect in which some of the
non-human races were held by people in Antiquity,[113] and Plutarch’s
interpretation of the meaning of the divine honours sometimes paid to
them--that they adored certain qualities in them as types of divine
faculties--Montaigne declares for himself that:--

    “When I meet, amongst the more moderate opinions, arguments which
    go to prove our close resemblance to other animals, and how much
    they share in our greatest privileges, and with how much of
    probability they are compared to us, of a truth I abate much from
    our common presumption, and willingly abdicate that _imaginary_
    royalty which they assign us over other beings.”

Wiser than the majority in later times, Montaigne well rebukes the
arrogant presumption of the human animal who affects to hold all other
life to be brought into being for his sole use and pleasure:--

    “Let him shew me, by the most skilful argument, upon what
    foundations he has built these excessive prerogatives which he
    supposes himself to have over other existences. Who has persuaded
    him that that admirable impulse of the celestial vault, the eternal
    brightness of those Lights rolling so majestically over our heads,
    the tremendous motions of that infinite sea of Globes, were
    established and have continued so many ages for his advantage and
    for his service. Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous
    as that this pitiful [_chétive_], miserable creature, who is not
    even master of himself, exposed to injuries of every kind, should
    call itself master and lord of the universe, of which, so far from
    being lord of it, he knows but the smallest part?... Who has given
    him this sealed charter? Let him shew us the ‘letters patent’ of
    this grand commission. Have they been issued [_octroyées_] in
    favour of the wise only? They affect but the few in that case. The
    fools and the wicked--are they worthy of so extraordinary a favour,
    and being the worst part of the world [_le pire pièce du monde_],
    do they deserve to be preferred to all the rest? Shall we believe
    all this?

    “Presumption is our natural and original disease. The most
    calamitous and fragile of all creatures is man, and yet the most
    arrogant.[114] It is through the vanity of this same imagination
    that he equals himself to a god, that he attributes to himself
    divine conditions, that he picks himself out and separates himself
    from the crowd of other creatures, curtails the just shares of
    other animals his brethren [_confrères_] and companions, and
    assigns to them such portions of faculties and forces as seems to
    him good. How does he know, by the effort of his intelligence, the
    interior and secret movements and impulses of other animals? By
    what comparison between them and us does he infer the stupidity
    [_la bétise_] which he attributes to them?”

Montaigne quotes the example of his master, the just and benevolent
Plutarch, who made it a matter of justice and conscience not to sell
or send to the slaughter-house (according to the common selfish
ingratitude) a Cow who had served him faithfully and profitably for so
many years. With Plutarch and Porphyry he never wearies of denouncing
the unreasoning opinions, or rather prejudices, prevalent amongst men
as to the mental qualities of many of the non-human races, and, as we
have already seen, insists that the difference between them and us is
of _degree_ and not of _kind_:--

    “Plato, in his picture of the ‘Golden Age,’ reckons amongst the
    chief advantages of the men of that time the communication they had
    with other animals, by investigating and instructing themselves in
    whose nature they learned their true qualities and the differences
    between them, by which they acquired a very perfect knowledge and
    intelligence, and thus made their lives more happy than we can make
    ours. Is a better test needed by which to judge of human folly in
    regard to other species?

    “I have said all this in order to bring us back and reunite
    ourselves to the crowd [_presse_]. We are [in the accidents of
    mortality] neither above nor below the rest. ‘All who are under
    the sky,’ says the Jewish sage, ‘experience a like law and fate.’
    There is some difference, _there are orders and degrees_, but
    they are under the aspect of one and the same nature. Man must be
    constrained and ranged within the barriers of this police [_Il
    faut contraindre l’homme, et le ranger dans les barrières de cette
    police_]. The wretch has no right to encroach [_d’enjamber_]
    beyond these; he is fettered, entangled, he is subjected to like
    necessities with other creatures of his order, and in a very
    mean condition without any true and essential prerogative and
    pre-excellence. That which he confers upon himself by his own
    opinion and fancy has neither sense nor substance; and if it be
    conceded to him that he alone of all animals has that freedom of
    imagination and that irregularity of thought representing to him
    what he is, what he is not, and what he wants, the false and the
    true, it is an advantage which has been very dearly sold to him,
    and of which he has very little to boast, for from that springs the
    principal source of the evils which oppress him--crime, disease,
    irresolution, trouble, despair.”

Rejecting the still received prejudice which will not allow our humble
fellow-beings the privilege of reason, but invents an imaginary faculty
called “instinct,” he repeats that--

    “There is no ground for supposing that other beings do by
    _natural and necessary inclination_ the same things that we do
    by choice, and while we are bound to infer from like effects
    like faculties--nay, from greater effects, greater faculties--we
    are forced to confess, consequently, that that same reason, that
    same method which we employ in action are also employed by the
    lower animals, or else that they have some still better reason
    or method. Why do we fancy in them that natural necessity or
    impulse [_contrainte_]--_we_ who have no experience of that sort
    ourselves.[115]

    “As for use in eating, it is with us as with them, natural
    and without instruction. Who doubts that a child, arrived at
    the necessary strength for feeding itself, could find its own
    nourishment? The earth produces and offers to him enough for his
    needs without artificial labour, and if not for all seasons,
    neither does she for the other races--witness the provisions
    which we observe the ants and others collecting for the sterile
    seasons of the year. Those nations whom we have lately discovered
    [the peoples of Hindustan and of parts of America], so abundantly
    furnished with natural meat and drink without care and without
    labour, have just instructed us that bread is not our sole food,
    and that without toil our mother Nature has furnished us with every
    plant we need, to shew us, as it seems, how superior she is to all
    our _artificiality_; while the extravagance of our appetite outruns
    all the inventions by which we seek to satisfy it.”[116]




XIV.

GASSENDI. 1592-1655.


Gassendi, one of the most eminent men, and, what is more to the
purpose, the most meritorious philosophic writer of France in
the seventeenth century, claims the unique honour of being the
first directly to revive in modern times the teaching of Plutarch
and Porphyry. Other minds, indeed, of a high order, like More and
Montaigne, had, as already shown, implicitly condemned the inveterate
barbarism. But Gassendi is the writer who first, since the extinction
of the Platonic philosophy, expressly and unequivocally attempted to
enlighten the world upon this fundamental truth.

He was born of poor parents, near Digne, in Provence. In his earliest
years he gave promise of his extraordinary genius. At nineteen he was
professor of philosophy at Aix. His celebrated “Essays against the
Aristotleians” (_Exercitationes Paradoxicæ Adversus Aristoteleos_)
was his first appearance in the philosophic world. Written some years
earlier, it was first published, in part, in the year 1624. It divides
with the _Novum Organon_ of Francis Bacon, with which it was almost
contemporary, the honour of being the earliest effectual assault upon
the old scholastic jargon which, abusing the name and authority of
Aristotle, during some three or four centuries of mediæval darkness
had kept possession of the schools and universities of Europe. It at
once raised up for Gassendi a host of enemies, the supporters of the
old orthodoxy, and, as has always been the case in the exposure of
falsehood, he was assailed with a torrent of virulent invective. Five
of the Books of the _Exercitationes_, by the advice of his friends,
who dreaded the consequences of his courage, had been suppressed. In
the Fourth Book, besides the heresy of Kopernik (which Bacon had not
the courage or the penetration to adopt), the doctrine of the eternity
of the Earth had been maintained, as already taught by Bruno; while
the Seventh, according to the table of contents, contained a formal
recommendation of the Epicurean theory of morals, in which Pleasure and
Virtue are synonymous terms.

In the midst of the obloquy thus aroused the philosopher devoted
himself, by way of consolation, to the study of anatomy and astronomy,
as well as to literary studies. “As the result of his anatomical
researches he composed a treatise to prove that man was intended to
live upon vegetables, and that animal food, as contrary to the human
constitution, is baneful and unwholesome.”[117] He was the first to
observe the transit of the planet Mercury over the Sun’s disc (1631),
previously calculated by Kepler. He next appears publicly as the
opponent of Descartes in his _Disquisitiones Anticartesianæ_ (1643)--a
work justly distinguished, according to the remark of an eminent
German critic, as a model of controversial excellence. The philosophic
world was soon divided between the two hostile camps. It is sufficient
to observe here that Descartes, whatever merit may attach to him in
other respects, by his equally absurd and mischievous paradox that
the non-human species are possessed only of unconscious sensation and
perception, had done as much as he well could to destroy his reputation
for common sense and common reason with all the really thinking part
of the world. Yet this “animated machine” theory, incredible as it
may appear, has recently been revived by a well-known physiologist
of the present day, in the very face of the most ordinary facts and
experience--a theory about which it needs only to be said that it
deserves to be classed with some of the most absurd and monstrous
conceptions of mediævalism. As though, to quote Voltaire’s admirable
criticism, God had given to the lower animals reason and feeling to the
end _that they might not feel and reason_. It was not thus, as the same
writer reminds us, that Locke and Newton argued.[118]

In 1646 Gassendi became Regius Professor of Mathematics in the
University of Paris, where his lecture-room was crowded with listeners
of all classes. His _Life and Morals of Epikurus_ (_De Vitâ et Moribus
Epicuri_), his principal work, appeared in the year 1647. It is a
triumphant refutation of the prejudices and false representations
connected with the name of one of the very greatest and most virtuous
of the Greek Masters, which had been prevalent during so many ages.
Neither his European reputation, nor the universal respect extorted
by his private as well as public merits, could corrupt the simplicity
of Gassendi; and his sober tastes were little in sympathy with the
luxurious or literary trifling of Paris:--

    “He had only with difficulty resolved to quit his southern home,
    and being attacked by a lung complaint, he returned to Digne, where
    he remained till 1653. Within this period falls the greater part
    of his literary activity and zeal in behalf of the philosophy of
    Epikurus, and simultaneously the positive extension of his own
    doctrines. In the same period Gassendi produced, besides several
    astronomical works, a series of valuable biographies, of which
    those of Kopernik and Tycho Brahe are especially noteworthy. He
    is, of all the most prominent representatives of Materialism,
    the only one gifted with a historic sense, and that he has in an
    eminent degree. Even in his _Syntagma Philosophicum_ he treats
    every subject, at first historically from all points of view....
    Gassendi did not fall a victim to Theology, because he was destined
    to fall a victim to Medicine. Being treated for a fever in the
    fashion of the time, he had been reduced to extreme debility. He
    long, but vainly, sought restoration in his southern home. On
    returning to Paris he was again attacked by fever, and thirteen
    fresh blood-lettings ended his life. He died October 24th, 1655.”

Lange, from whom we have quoted this brief notice, proceeds to
vindicate his position as a physical philosopher:--

    “The reformation of Physics and Natural Philosophy, usually
    ascribed to Descartes, was at least as much the work of Gassendi.
    Frequently, in consequence of the fame which Descartes owed to his
    Metaphysics, those very things have been credited to Descartes
    which ought properly to be assigned to Gassendi. It was also a
    result of the peculiar mixture of difference and agreement, of
    hostility and alliance, between the two systems that the influences
    resulting from them became completely interfused.”[119]

Although of extraordinary erudition his learning did not, as too often
happens, obscure the powers of original thought and reason. Bayle,
writing at the end of the seventeenth century, has characterised him as
“the greatest philosopher amongst scholars, and the greatest scholar
amongst philosophers;” and Newton conceived the same high esteem for
the great vindicator of Epikurus.[120]

It is in his celebrated letter to his friend Van Helmont, that Gassendi
deals with the irrational assertions of certain physiologists,
apparently more devoted to the defence of the orthodox diet than to the
discovery of unwelcome truth, as to the character of the human teeth:--

    “I was contending,” he writes to his medical friend, “that from
    the conformation of our teeth we do not appear to be adapted by
    Nature to the use of a flesh diet, since all animals (I spoke of
    terrestrials) which Nature has formed to feed on flesh have their
    teeth long, conical, sharp, uneven, and with intervals between
    them--of which kind are lions, tigers, wolves, dogs, cats, and
    others. But those who are made to subsist only on herbs and fruits
    have their teeth short, broad, blunt, close to one another, and
    distributed in even rows. Of this sort are horses, cows, deer,
    sheep, goats, and some others. And further--that men have received
    from Nature teeth which are unlike those of the first class, and
    resemble those of the second. It is therefore probable, since men
    are land animals, that Nature intended them to follow, in the
    selection of their food, not the carnivorous tribes, but those
    races of animals which are contented with the simple productions
    of the earth.... Wherefore, I here repeat that from the primæval
    institution of our nature, the teeth were destined to the
    mastication, not of flesh, but of fruits.

    As for flesh, true, indeed, it is that man is sustained on flesh.
    But _how many things_, let me ask, _does man do every day which are
    contrary to, or beside, his nature_? So great, and so general, is
    the perversion of his mode of life, which has, as it were, eaten
    into his flesh by a sort of deadly contagion (_contagione veluti
    quâdam jam inusta est_), that he appears to have put on another
    disposition. Hence, the whole care and concern of philosophy and
    moral instruction ought to consist in leading men back to the paths
    of Nature.”

Helmont, it seems, had rested his principal argument for flesh-eating,
not altogether in accordance with _Genesis_, and certainly not in
accordance with Science, on the presumption that man was formed
expressly for carnivorousness. To this Gassendi replied that, without
ignoring theological argument, he still maintained comparative Anatomy
to be a satisfactory and sufficient guide. He then applies himself to
refute the physiological prejudice of Helmont about the teeth, &c.
(as already quoted), and begins by warning his friend that he is not
to wonder if the self-love of men is constantly viewed by him with
suspicion.[121]

    “For, in fact, we all, with tacit consent, conspire to extol our
    own nature, and we do this commonly with so much arrogance that, if
    people were to divest themselves of this traditional and inveterate
    prejudice, and seriously reflect upon it, their faces must be
    immediately suffused with burning shame.”

He repeats Plutarch’s unanswerable challenge:--

    “Man lives very well upon flesh, you say, but, if he thinks this
    food to be natural to him, why does he not use it as it is, as
    furnished to him by Nature? But, in fact, he shrinks in horror from
    seizing and rending living or even raw flesh with his teeth, and
    lights a fire to change its natural and proper condition. Well, but
    if it were the intention of Nature that man should eat _cooked_
    flesh, she would surely have provided him with ready-made cooks;
    or, rather, she would have herself cooked it as she is wont to
    do fruits, which are best and sweetest without the intervention
    of fire. Nature, surely, does not fail in providing necessary
    provision for her children, according to the common boast. But what
    is more necessary than to make food pleasurable? And, as she does
    in the case of sexual love by which she procures the preservation
    of the _species_, so would she procure the preservation of the
    _genus_.

    “Nor let anyone say that Nature in this is corrected, since, to
    pass over other things, that is tantamount to convicting her of
    a blunder. Consider how much more benevolent she would be proved
    to be, in that case, towards the savage beasts than towards us.
    Again, since our teeth are not sufficient for eating flesh, even
    when prepared by fire, the invention of knives seems to me to be
    a strong proof. Because, in fact, we have no teeth given us for
    rending flesh, and we are therefore forced to have recourse to
    those _non-natural_ organs, in order to accomplish our purpose. As
    if, forsooth, Nature would have left us destitute in so essential
    things! I divine at once your ready reply: ‘think that Nature
    has given man reason to supply defects of this kind.’ But this,
    I affirm, is always to accuse Nature, _in order to_ defend our
    unnatural luxury. So it is about dress--so it is about other things.

    “What is clearer [he sums up] than that man is not furnished for
    hunting, much less for eating, other animals? In one word, we seem
    to be admirably admonished by Cicero that man was destined for
    other things than for seizing and cutting the throats of other
    animals. If you answer that ‘that may be said to be an industry
    ordered by Nature, by which such weapons are invented,’ then,
    behold! it is by the very same artificial instrument that men make
    weapons for mutual slaughter. Do they this at the instigation of
    Nature? Can a use so noxious be called _natural_? Faculty is given
    by Nature, but it is our own fault that we make a perverse use of
    it.”

He, finally, refutes the popular objection about the strength-giving
properties of flesh-meat, and instances Horses, Bulls, and others.[122]

In his _Ethics_ (affixed to his Books on _Physics_) he quotes and
endorses the opinions of Epikurus on the slaughter of innocent life:--

    “There is no pretence,” he asserts, “for saying that any right has
    been granted us by law to kill any of those animals which are not
    destructive or pernicious to the human race, for there is no reason
    why the innocent species should be allowed to increase to so great
    a number as to be inconvenient to us. They may be restrained within
    that number which would be harmless, and useful to ourselves.”[123]

With that Great Master he thus rebukes the fashionable “hospitality”:--

    “I, for my part, to speak modestly of myself, lived contented
    with the plants of my little garden, and have pleasure in that
    diet, and I wish inscribed on my doors: ‘Guest, here you shall
    have good cheer! here the _summum bonum_ is Pleasure. The guardian
    of this house, _humanely_ hospitable, is ready to entertain you
    with pearl-barley (_polenta_), and will furnish you abundantly
    with water. These little gardens do not increase hunger, but
    extinguish it; nor do they make thirst greater by the very
    potations themselves, but satisfy it by a natural and gratuitous
    remedy.’”[124]


There is one name which, in reputation, occupies a pre-eminent
position in philosophy, belonging to this period--Francis Bacon. But,
for ourselves, for whom true ethical and humanitarian principles have
a much deeper significance than mere mental force undirected to the
highest aims of truth and of justice, the name of the modern assertor
of the truths of Vegetarianism will challenge greater reverence than
even that of the author of the _New Instrument_.

That Bacon should exhibit himself in the character of an advocate
of the rights of the lower races is hardly to be expected from the
selfish and unscrupulous promoter of his own private interests at the
expense at once of common gratitude and common feeling. His remarks on
Vivisection (where he questions whether experiments on human beings
are defensible, and suggests the limitation of scientific torture to
the non-human races)[125] are, in fact, sufficient evidence of his
indifferentism to so unselfish an object as the advocacy of the claims
of our defenceless dependants. When we consider his unusual sagacity
in exposing the absurd quasi-scientific methods of his predecessors,
and of the prevailing (so-called) philosophical system and the many
profound remarks to be found in his writings, it must be added that we
are reluctantly compelled to believe that the opinions elsewhere which
he publishes inconsistent with those principles were inspired by that
notorious servility and courtiership by which he flattered the absurd
and pedantic dogmatism of one of the most contemptible of kings.

One passage there is, however, in his writings which seems to give us
hope that this eminent compromiser was not altogether insensible to
higher and better feeling:--

    “Nature has endowed man with a noble and excellent principle of
    compassion, which extends [? ought to extend] itself also to the
    dumb animals--whence this compassion has some resemblance to
    that of a prince towards his subjects. And it is certain that the
    noblest souls are the most extensively compassionate, for narrow
    and degenerate minds think that compassion belongs not to them; but
    a great soul, the noblest part of creation, is ever compassionate.
    Thus, under the old laws, there were numerous precepts (not merely
    ceremonial) enjoining mercy--for example, the not eating of
    flesh with the blood, &c. So, also, the sects of the Essenes and
    Pythagoreans totally abstained from flesh, as they do also to this
    day, with an inviolate religion, in some parts of the empire of the
    Mogul [Hindustan]. Nay, the Turks, though a savage nation, both in
    their descent and discipline, give alms to the dumb animals, and
    suffer them not to be tortured.”[126]

If Bacon had lived longer (he died in 1626) we may entertain the hope
that the powerful arguments of his illustrious contemporary might have
inspired him with more sound and satisfactory ideas on Dietetics than
the somewhat crude ones which he published in his _De Augmentis_ (iv.,
2). As for Medicine, he had, reasonably enough, not conceived a high
opinion of the methods of its ordinary professors. He says:--

    “Medicine has been more professed than laboured, and more laboured
    than advanced; rather circular than progressive; for I find great
    repetition, and but little new matter in the writers of Physic.”




XV.

RAY. 1627-1705.


John Ray, the founder of Botanical and, only in little less degree, of
Zoological Science, was an _alumnus_ of the University of Cambridge. He
was elected Fellow of Trinity College in 1649, and Lecturer in Greek
in the following year. While at Cambridge he formed a collection of
plants growing in the neighbourhood, a catalogue of which he published
in 1660. Three years later, with his friend Francis Willoughby, he
travelled over a large part of Europe, as during his academical life
he had traversed the greater part of these islands, in pursuit of
botanical and zoological science--an account of which tour he published
in 1673.

He had been one of the first Fellows of the recently founded Royal
Society. In 1682 appeared his _New Method of Plants_, which formed a
new era in botany, or rather, which was the first attempt at making
it a real science. It is the basis of the subsequent classification
of Jussieu, which is still received; and its author was the first to
propose the division of plants into _monocotyledons_ and _dicotyledons_.

His principal work is the _Historia Plantarum_, 1686-1704. “In it
he collected and arranged all the species of plants which had been
described by botanists. He enumerated 18,625 species. Haller, Sprengel,
Adamson, and others speak of this work as being the produce of immense
labour, and as containing much acute criticism.”

What, however, is more interesting to us is the fact that “in zoology
Ray ranks almost as high as in botany, and his works on this subject
are even more important, as they still, in great measure, preserve
their utility. Cuvier says that ‘they may be considered as the
foundation of modern zoology, for naturalists are obliged to consult
them every instant for the purpose of clearing up the difficulties
which they meet with in the works of Linnæus and his copyists.’”

Between 1676-1686 appeared _Ornithologia_ and _Historia Piscium_,
the materials of which had been left him by his friend Willoughby.
To his extraordinary erudition and industry the world was indebted
for _A Methodical Synopsis of Quadrupeds_ as well as a very valuable
history of Insects. Conspicuous amongst his merits are his accuracy
of observation and his philosophical method of classification. With
others, Buffon is largely indebted to the most meritorious of the
pioneers of zoological knowledge.

Ray has delivered his profession of faith in the superiority and
excellence of the non-flesh diet in the following eloquent passage
which has been quoted with approval by his friend John Evelyn:--

    “The use of plants is all our life long of that universal
    importance and concern that we can neither live nor subsist with
    any decency and convenience, or be said, indeed, to live at
    all without them. Whatsoever food is necessary to sustain us,
    whatsoever contributes to delight and refresh us, is supplied and
    brought forth out of that plentiful and abundant store. And ah! [he
    exclaims] how much more innocent, sweet, and healthful is a table
    covered with those than with all the reeking flesh of butchered and
    slaughtered animals. Certainly man by nature was never made to be
    a carnivorous animal, nor is he armed at all for prey and rapine,
    with jagged and pointed teeth and crooked claws sharpened to rend
    and tear, but with gentle hands to gather fruit and vegetables, and
    with teeth to chew and eat them.”[127]




XVI.

EVELYN. 1620-1706.


John Evelyn, the representative of the more estimable part of the
higher middle life of his time, who has so eloquently set forth the
praises of the vegetable diet, also claims with Ray the honour of
having first excited, amongst the opulent classes of his countrymen,
a rational taste for botanical knowledge. Especially meritorious and
truly patriotic was his appeal to the owners of land, by growing trees
to provide the country with useful as well as ornamental timber for the
benefit of posterity. He was one of the first to treat gardening and
planting in a scientific manner; and his own cultivation of exotic and
other valuable plants was a most useful example too tardily followed by
ignorant or selfish landlords of those and succeeding times. It would
have been well indeed for the mass of the people of these islands,
had the owners of landed property cared to develope the teaching
of Evelyn by stocking the country with various fruit trees, and so
supplied at once an easy and wholesome food. _O fortunatos nimium, sua
si bona nôrint, Agricolas!... Fundit humo facilem victum justissima
Tellus._[128]

The family of Evelyn was settled at Wooton, in Surrey. During the
struggle between the Parliament and the Court he went abroad, and
travelled for some years in France and in Italy, where he seems to have
employed his leisure in a more refined and useful way than is the wont
of most of his travelling countrymen. He returned home in 1651. At the
foundation of the Royal Society, some ten years later, Evelyn became
one of its earliest Fellows. His first work was published in 1664,
_Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber_.
Its immediate cause was the application of the Naval Commissioners to
the Royal Society for advice in view of the growing scarcity of timber,
especially of oak, in England. A large quantity of the more valuable
wood now existing is the practical outcome of his timely publication.

In 1675, appeared his _Terra: a Discourse of the Earth Relating to the
Culture and the Improvement of it, to Vegetation and the Propagation
of Plants_. The book by which he is most popularly known is his _Diary
and Correspondence_, one of the most interesting productions of the
kind. Besides its value as giving an insight into the manner of life
in the fashionable society of the greater part of the seventeenth
century, it is of importance as an independent chronicle of the public
events of the day. The work which has the most interest and value for
us is his _Acetaria_ (Salads, or Herbs eaten with vinegar), in which
the author professes his faith in the truth and excellence of the
Vegetarian diet. Unfortunately, according to the usual perversity of
literary enterprise, it is one of those few books which, representing
some profounder truth, are nevertheless the most neglected by those who
undertake to supply the mental and moral needs of the reading public.

Evelyn held many high posts under the varying Governments of the day;
and being, by tradition and connexion, attached to the monarchical
party, he attracted (contrary to the general experience) the grateful
recognition of the restored dynasty.

Having adduced other arguments for abstinence from flesh, Evelyn
continues:--

    “And now, after all we have advanced in favour of the herbaceous
    diet, there still emerges another inquiry, viz., whether the use of
    crude herbs and plants is so wholesome as is alleged? What opinion
    the prince of physicians had of them we shall see hereafter; as
    also what the sacred records of olden times seem to infer, before
    there were any flesh-shambles in the world; together with the
    reports of such as are often conversant among many nations and
    people, who, to this day, living on herbs and roots, arrive to
    an incredible age in constant health and vigour, which, whether
    attributable to the air and climate, custom, constitution, &c.,
    should be inquired into.”

Cardan--the pseudo-savant of the sixteenth century--had written, it
seems, in favour of flesh-meat. Evelyn informs us that:--

    “This, [the alleged superiority of flesh] his learned antagonist,
    utterly denies. Whole nations--flesh devourers, such as the
    farthest northern--become heavy, dull, inactive, and much more
    stupid than the southern; and such as feed more on plants are more
    acute, subtle, and of deeper penetration. Witness the Chaldeans,
    Assyrians, Egyptians, &c. And he further argues from the short
    lives of most carnivorous animals, compared with grass feeders, and
    the ruminating kind, as the Hart, Camel, and the longævus Elephant,
    and other feeders on roots and vegetables.

    “As soon as old Parr came to change his simple homely diet to
    that of the Court and Arundel House, he quickly sank and drooped
    away; for, as we have shewn, the stomach easily concocts plain and
    familiar food, but finds it a hard and difficult task to vanquish
    and overcome meats of different substances. Whence we so often see
    temperate and abstemious persons of a collegiate diet [of a distant
    age, we must suppose] very healthy; husbandmen and laborious
    people more robust and longer-lived than others of an uncertain,
    extravagant habit.”

He appeals to the biblical reverence of his readers, and tells them:--

    “Certain it is, Almighty God ordaining herbs and fruit for the food
    of man, speaks not a word concerning flesh for two thousand years;
    and when after, by the Mosaic constitution, there were distinctions
    and prohibitions about the legal uncleanness of animals, plants
    of what kind soever were left free and indifferent for everyone
    to choose what best he liked. And what if it was held indecent
    and unbecoming the excellency of man’s nature, before sin entered
    and grew enormously wicked, that any creature should be put to
    death and pain for him who had such infinite store of the most
    delicious and nourishing fruit to delight, and the tree of life to
    sustain him? Doubtless there was no need of it. Infants sought the
    mother’s nipples as soon as born, and when grown and able to feed
    themselves, ran naturally to fruit, and still will choose to eat it
    rather than flesh, and certainly might so persist to do, did not
    Custom prevail even against the very dictates of Nature.[129]

    “And now to recapitulate what other prerogatives the hortulan
    provision has been celebrated for besides its antiquity, and the
    health and longevity of the antediluvians--viz., that temperance,
    frugality, leisure, ease, and innumerable other virtues and
    advantages which accompany it, are no less attributable to it. Let
    us hear our excellent botanist, Mr. Ray.”

He then quotes the profession of faith of the father of English
botany and zoology; and goes on eloquently to expatiate on the varied
pleasures of a non-flesh and fruit diet:--

    “To this might we add that transporting consideration, becoming
    both our veneration and admiration, of the infinitely wise and
    glorious Author of Nature, who has given to plants such astonishing
    properties; such fiery heat in some to warm and cherish; such
    coolness in others to temper and refresh; such pinguid juice to
    nourish and feed the body; such quickening acids to compel the
    appetite, and grateful vehicles to court the obedience of the
    palate; such vigour to renew and support our natural strength; such
    ravishing flavours and perfumes to recreate and delight us; in
    short, such spirituous and active force to animate and revive every
    part and faculty to all kinds of human and, I had almost said,
    heavenly capacity.

    “What shall we add more? Our gardens present us with them all: and,
    while the Shambles are covered with gore and stench, our Salads
    escape the insults of the summer-fly, purify and warm the blood
    against winter rage. Nor wants there variety in more abundance than
    any of the former ages could show.”

Evelyn produces an imposing array of the “Old Fathers”:--

    “In short, so very many, especially of the Christian profession,
    advocate it [the bloodless food] that some even of the ancient
    fathers themselves have thought that the permission of eating flesh
    to Noah and his sons was granted them no otherwise than repudiation
    of wives was to the Jews--namely--for the hardness of their hearts
    and to satisfy a murmuring generation.”[130]

He is “persuaded that more blood has been shed between Christians”
through addiction to the sanguinary food than by any other cause:--

    “Not that I impute it _only_ to our eating blood; but I
    sometimes wonder how it happened that so strict, so solemn, and
    famous a sanction--not upon a ceremonial account, but (as some
    affirm) a moral and perpetual one, for which also there seem
    to be fairer proofs than for most other controversies agitated
    amongst Christians--should be so generally forgotten, and give
    place to so many other impertinent disputes and cavils about
    superstitious fopperies which frequently end in blood and cutting
    of throats.”[131]


It is opportune here to refer to the sentiments of Evelyn’s
contemporary and political and ecclesiastical opposite--the great
Puritan poet and patriot--one of the very greatest names in all
literature. Milton’s feeling, so far as he had occasion to express
it, is quite in unison with the principles of dietetic reform, and in
sympathy with aspirations after the more spiritual life.

In one of his earliest writings, on the eve of the production of one
of the finest poems of its kind in the English language--the _Ode to
Christ’s Nativity_, composed at the age of twenty-one--he thus writes
in Latin verse to his friend Charles Deodati, recommending the purer
diet at all events to those who aspired to the nobler creations of
poetry:--

    “Simply let those, like him of Samos, live:
    Let herbs to them a _bloodless_ banquet give.
    In beechen goblets let their beverage shine,
    Cool from the crystal spring their sober wine!
    Their youth should pass in innocence secure
    From stain licentious, and in manners pure.

           *       *       *       *       *

    For these are sacred bards and, from above,
    Drink large infusions from the mind of Jove.”[132]

To readers of his master-piece the _Paradise Lost_, it is perhaps a
work of supererogation to point out the charming passages in which he
sympathetically describes the food of the Age of Innocence:--

              “Savoury fruits, of taste to please
    True appetites.”

In Raphael’s discourse with his terrestrial entertainers, the ethereal
messenger utters a prophecy (as we may take it) of the future general
adoption by our race of “fruit, man’s nourishment,” and we may
interpret his intimation:--

            “time may come when men
    With angels may participate, and find
    No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare.
    And from those corporal nutriments perhaps
    Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
    Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend
    Ethereal as we; or may, at choice,
    _Here_, or in heavenly paradises, dwell,”

as a picture of the true earthly paradise to be--“the Paradise of
Peace.”

With these exquisite pictures of the life of bloodless feasts and
ambrosial food we may compare the fearful picture of the Court of
Death, displayed in prospective vision before the terror-stricken
gaze of the traditional progenitor of our species, where, amongst the
occupants, the largest number are the victims of “intemperance in meats
and drinks, which on the earth shall bring diseases dire.” In this
universal lazar-house might be seen--

                          “all maladies
    Of ghastly Spasm, or racking torture, Qualms
    Of heart-sick agony, all Feverous kinds,
    Convulsions, Epilepsies, fierce Catarrhs,
    Intestine Stone and Ulcer, Colic pangs,
    Demoniac Phrensy, moping Melancholy,
    And moon-struck Madness, pining Atrophy,
    Marasmus, and wide-wasting Pestilence,
    Dropsies and Asthmas, and joint-racking Rheums.”[133]

Very different, in other respects, from those of the author of
the _History of the Reformation in England_ the sentiments of his
celebrated contemporary Bossuet, whose eloquence gained for him the
distinguishing title of the “Eagle of Méaux,” as to the degrading
character of the prevalent human nourishment in the Western world,
are sufficiently remarkable to deserve some notice. The _Oraisons
Funêbres_ and, particularly, his _Discours sur L’Histoire Universelle_
have entitled him to a high rank in French literature. But a single
passage in the last work, we shall readily admit, does more credit to
his heart than his most eloquent efforts in oratory or literature do
to his intellect. That, in common with other theologians, Catholic and
Protestant, he has thought it necessary to assume the intervention of
the Deity to sanction the sustenance of human life by the destruction
of other innocent life, does not affect the weight of intrinsic
evidence derivable from the natural feeling as to the debasing
influence of the Slaughter-House. It is thus that he, impliedly at
least, condemns the barbarous practice:--

    “Before the time of the Deluge the nourishment which without
    violence men derived from the fruits which fell from the trees
    of themselves, and from the herbs which also ripened with equal
    ease, was, without doubt, some relic of the first innocence and
    of the gentleness (_douceur_) for which we were formed. Now to
    get food we have to shed blood in spite of the horror which it
    naturally inspires in us; and all the refinements of which we avail
    ourselves, in covering our tables, hardly suffice to disguise
    for us the bloody corpses which we have to devour to support
    life. But this is but the least part of our misery. Life, already
    shortened, is still further abridged by the savage violences which
    are introduced into the life of the human species. Man, whom in
    the first ages we have seen spare the life of other animals,
    is accustomed henceforward to spare the life not even of his
    fellow-men. It is in vain that God forbade, immediately after the
    Deluge, the shedding of human blood; in vain, in order to save some
    vestiges of the first mildness of our nature, while permitting the
    feeding on flesh did he prohibit consumption of the blood. Human
    murders multiplied beyond all calculation.”

Bossuet, a few pages later, arrives at the necessary and natural
consequence of the murder of other animals, when he records that “the
brutalised human race could no longer rise to the true contemplation of
intellectual things.”[134]




XVII.

BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. 1670-1733.


The most paradoxical of moralists, born at Dort, in Holland. He was
brought up to the profession of medicine, and took the degree of M.D.
He afterwards settled and practised in London.

It was in 1714 that he published his short poem called _The Grumbling
Hive: or, Knaves Turned Honest_, to which he afterwards added long
explanatory notes, and then republished the whole under the new and
celebrated title of _The Fable of the Bees_. This work “which, however
erroneous may be its views of morals and of society, is written in a
proper style, and bears all the marks of an honest and sincere inquiry
on an important subject, exposed its author to much obloquy, and met
with answers and attacks.... It would appear that some of the hostility
against this work, and against Mandeville generally, is to be traced to
another publication, recommending the public licensing of ‘stews,’ the
matter and manner of which are certainly exceptionable, though, at the
same time, it must be stated that Mandeville earnestly and with seeming
sincerity commends his plan as a means of diminishing immorality, and
that he endeavoured, so far as lay in his power, by affixing a high
price and in other ways, to prevent the work from having a general
circulation.” In fact, Mandeville is one of those injudicious but
well-meaning reformers who, by their propensity to perverse paradox,
have injured at once their reputation and their usefulness for after
times.

A second part of _The Fable_ appeared at a later period. Amongst other
numerous writings were two entitled, _Free Thoughts on Religion, the
Church, and National Happiness_, and _An Enquiry into the Origin of
Honour_, and the _Usefulness of Christianity in War_. He appears to
have been enabled to pursue his literary career in great measure by the
liberality of his Dutch friends, and he was a constant guest of the
first Earl of Macclesfield. “_The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices
Public Benefits_ may be received in two ways,” says the writer in the
_Penny Cyclopædia_, whom we have already quoted, “as a satire on men,
and as a theory of society and national prosperity. So far as it is a
satire, it is sufficiently just and pleasant, but received in its more
ambitious character of a theory of society, it is altogether worthless.
It is Mandeville’s object to show that national greatness depends on
the prevalence of fraud and luxury; and for this purpose he supposes
‘a vast hive of bees’ possessing in all respects institutions similar
to those of men; he details the various frauds, similar to those among
men, practised by bees one upon another in various professions....
His hive of bees having thus become wealthy and great, he afterwards
supposes a mutual jealousy of frauds to arise, and Fraud to be, by
common consent, dismissed; and he again assumes that wealth and luxury
immediately disappear, and that the greatness of the society is gone.”
For our part, in place of “greatness,” we should have rather written
_misery_, as far as concerns the mass of communities.

Strange, as it may appear, that views of this kind should be seriously
put forth, “it is yet more so that they should come from one whose
object always was, however strange the way in which he set about it, to
promote good morals, for there is nothing in Mandeville’s writings to
warrant the belief that he sought to encourage vice.”[135]

Mandeville, like Swift, in the piece entitled _An Argument against
Abolishing Christianity_; or like De Foe, in his _Shortest Way with the
Dissenters_, which were taken _au sérieux_ almost universally at the
time of their appearance, may have used the style of grave irony, so
far as the larger portion of his Fable is concerned, for the purpose of
making a stronger impression on the public conscience. If such were his
purpose, the irony is so profound that it has missed its aim. Yet that
his purpose was true and earnest is sufficiently evident in his opinion
of the practice of slaughtering for food:--

    “I have often thought [writes Mandeville] if it was not for the
    tyranny which Custom usurps over us, that men of any tolerable
    good nature could never be reconciled to the killing of so many
    animals for their daily food, so long as the bountiful Earth so
    plentifully provides them with varieties of vegetable dainties. I
    know that Reason excites our compassion but faintly, and therefore
    I do not wonder how men should so little commiserate such imperfect
    creatures as cray-fish, oysters, cockles, and, indeed, all fish in
    general, as they are mute, and their inward formation, as well as
    outward figure, vastly different from ours: they express themselves
    unintelligently to us, and therefore ’tis not strange that their
    grief should not affect our understanding which it cannot reach;
    for nothing stirs us to pity so effectually as when the symptoms of
    misery strike immediately upon our senses, and I have seen people
    moved at the noise a live lobster makes upon the spit who could
    have killed half a dozen fowls with pleasure.

    “But in such perfect animals as Sheep and Oxen, in whom the heart,
    the brain, and the nerves differ so little from ours, and in whom
    the separation of the spirits from the blood, the organs of sense,
    and, consequently, feeling itself, are the same as they are in
    human creatures, I cannot imagine how a man not hardened in blood
    and massacre, is able to see a violent death, and the pangs of it,
    without concern.

    “In answer to this [he continues], most people will think it
    sufficient to say that things being allowed to be made for the
    service of man, there can be no cruelty in putting creatures to the
    use they were designed for,[136] but I have heard men make this
    reply, while the nature within them has reproached them with the
    falsehood of the assertion.

    “There is of all the multitude not one man in ten but will own
    (if he has not been brought up in a slaughter-house) that of all
    trades he could never have been a _butcher_; and I question whether
    ever anybody so much as killed a chicken without reluctancy the
    first time. Some people are not to be persuaded to taste of any
    creatures they have daily seen and been acquainted with while they
    were alive; others extend their scruples no further than to their
    own poultry, and refuse to eat what they fed and took care of
    themselves; yet all of them feed heartily and without remorse on
    beef, mutton, and fowls when they are bought in the market. In this
    behaviour, methinks, there appears something like a _consciousness
    of guilt_; it looks as if they endeavoured to save themselves from
    the imputation of a crime (which they know sticks somewhere) by
    removing the cause of it as far as they can from themselves; and I
    discover in it some strong marks of primitive pity and innocence,
    which all the arbitrary power of Custom, and the violence of
    Luxury, have not yet been able to conquer.”[137]




XVIII.

GAY. 1688-1732.


The intimate friend of Pope and Swift is best known by his charming
and instructive _Fables_. He was born at Barnstaple, in Devonshire,
and belonged to the old family of the Le Gays of that county. His
father, reduced in means, apprenticed him to a silk mercer in the
Strand, London, in whose employment he did not long remain. The first
of his poems, _Rural Sports_, appeared in 1711. In the following year
he became secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth, and he served for a
short time as secretary to the English embassy in Hanover. His next
work was his _Shepherd’s Week, in Six Pastorals_, in which he ridicules
the sentimentality of the “pastorals” of his own and preceding age. It
contains much naturalness as well as humour, and it was the precursor
of Crabbe’s rural sketches. In 1726 he published the most successful of
his works, the _Beggars’ Opera_--the idea of which had been suggested
to him by the Dean of St. Patrick’s. It was received with unbounded
applause, and it originated the (so-called) English opera, which for a
time supplanted the Italian.

The _Fables_ first appeared in 1726. They were supplemented afterwards
by others, and the volume was dedicated to the young Duke of
Cumberland, famous in after years by his suppression of the Highland
rising of 1745. Gay’s death, which happened suddenly, called forth the
sincere laments of his devoted friends Swift and Pope. The former, in
his letters, frequently refers to his loss with deep feeling; and Pope
has characterised him as--

    “Of manners gentle, of affections mild--
    In wit a man, simplicity a child.”

Of his _Fables_--the best in the language--one of the most interesting
is the well-known _Hare and Many Friends_, in which he seems to record
some of his own experiences. _The Court of Death_, suggested probably
by Milton’s fine passage in the _Paradise Lost_, is one of his most
forcible. When the principal Diseases have severally advanced their
claims to pre-eminence, Death calls upon _Intemperance_:--

    “All spoke their claim, and hoped the wand.
    Now expectation hushed the band,
    When thus the monarch from the throne:
    Merit was ever modest known--
    What! no physician speak his right!
    None here? But fees their toils requite.
    Let then Intemperance take the wand,
    Who fills with gold their jealous hand.
    You, Fever, Gout, and all the rest
    (Whom wary men as foes detest)
    Forego your claim. No more pretend--
    Intemperance is esteemed a friend.
    He shares their mirth, their social joys,
    And as a courted guest destroys.
    The charge on him must justly fall
    Who finds employment for you all.”

It is in the following fable that Gay especially satirises the
sanguinary diet:--

    “Pythagoras rose at early dawn,
    By soaring meditation drawn;
    To breathe the fragrance of the day,
    Through flow’ry fields he took his way.
    In musing contemplation warm,
    His steps misled him to a farm:
    Where, on the ladder’s topmost round,
    A peasant stood. The hammer’s sound
    Shook the weak barn. ‘Say, friend, what care
    Calls for thy honest labour there?’

    “The clown, with surly voice, replies:
    ‘Vengeance aloud for justice cries.
    This kite, by daily rapine fed,
    My hens’ annoy, my turkeys’ dread,
    At length his forfeit life hath paid.
    See on the wall his wings displayed,
    Here nailed, a terror to his kind.
    My fowls shall future safety find,
    My yard the thriving poultry feed,
    And my barn’s refuse fat the breed.’

    “‘Friend,’ says the Sage, ‘the doom is wise--
    For public good the murderer dies.
    But if these tyrants of the air
    Demand a sentence so severe,
    _Think how the glutton, man, devours;
    What bloody feasts regale his hours!
    O impudence of Power and Might!_
    Thus to condemn a hawk or kite,
    When thou, perhaps, carnivorous sinner,
    Had’st pullets yesterday for dinner.’

    “‘Hold!’ cried the clown, with passion heated,
    ‘Shall kites and men alike be treated?
    When heaven the world with creatures stored,
    Man was ordained their sovereign lord.’
    ‘Thus tyrants boast,’ the Sage replied,
    ‘Whose murders spring from power and pride.
    Own then this man-like kite is slain
    _Thy greater luxury to sustain_--
    For petty rogues submit to fate
    That great ones may enjoy their state.’”[138]

This is not the only apologue in which the rhyming moralist exposes
at once the inconsistency and the injustice of the human animal who,
himself choosing to live by slaughter, yet hypocritically stigmatises
with the epithets “cruel” and “bloodthirsty” those animals whom Nature
has evidently _designed_ to be predaceous. In _The Shepherd’s Dog and
the Wolf_ he represents the former upbraiding the ravisher of the
sheepfolds for attacking “a weak, defenceless kind”:--

    “‘Friend,’ says the Wolf, ‘the matter weigh:
    Nature designed _us_ beasts of prey.
    As such, when hunger finds a treat,
    ’Tis necessary wolves should eat.
    If, mindful of the bleating weal,
    Thy bosom burn with real zeal,
    Hence, and thy tyrant lord beseech--
    To _him_ repeat thy moving speech.
    A wolf eats sheep but now and then--
    _Ten thousands are devoured by men_!
    An open foe may prove a curse,
    But a pretended friend is worse.’”

In _The Philosopher and the Pheasants_ the same truth is conveyed with
equal force:--

    “Drawn by the music of the groves,
    Along the winding gloom he roves.
    From tree to tree the warbling throats
    Prolong the sweet, alternate notes.
    But where he passed he terror threw;
    The song broke short--the warblers flew:
    The thrushes chattered with affright,
    And nightingales abhorred his sight.
    All animals before him ran,
    To shun the hateful sight of man.
      ‘Whence is this dread of every creature?
    Fly they our figure or our nature?’
      As thus he walked, in musing thought,
    His ear imperfect accents caught.
    With cautious step, he nearer drew,
    By the thick shade concealed from view.
    High on the branch a Pheasant stood,
    Around her all her listening brood:
    Proud of the blessings of her nest,
    She thus a mother’s care expressed:--
      ‘No dangers here shall circumvent;
    Within the woods enjoy content.
    Sooner the hawk or vulture trust
    Than man, of animals the worst.
    In him ingratitude you find--
    A vice peculiar to the kind.
    The Sheep, whose annual fleece is dyed
    To guard his health and serve his pride,
    Forced from his fold and native plain,
    Is in the cruel shambles slain.
    The swarms who, with industrious skill,
    His hives with wax and honey fill,
    In vain whole summer days employed--
    Their stores are sold, their race destroyed.
    What tribute from the Goose is paid?
    Does not her wing all science aid?
    Does it not lovers’ hearts explain,
    And drudge to raise the merchant’s gain?
    What now rewards this general use?
    He takes the quills and eats the Goose!’”

           *       *       *       *       *


In another parable Gay, in some sort, gives the victims of the Shambles
their revenge:--

    “Against an elm a Sheep was tied:
    The butcher’s knife in blood was dyed--
    The patient flock, in silent fright,
    From far beheld the horrid sight.
    A savage Boar, who near them stood,
    Thus mocked to scorn the fleecy brood:--
      ‘All cowards should be served like you.
    See, see, your murderer is in view:
    With purple hands and reeking knife,
    He strips the skin yet warm with life.
    Your quartered sires, your bleeding dams,
    The dying bleat of harmless lambs,
    Call for revenge. O stupid race!
    The heart that wants revenge is base.’
      ‘I grant,’ an ancient Ram replies,
    ‘We bear no terror in our eyes.
    Yet think us not of soul so tame,
    Which no repeated wrongs inflame--
    Insensible of every ill,
    Because we want thy tusks to kill--
    Know, _those who violence pursue
    Give to themselves the vengeance due_,
    For in these massacres they find
    The two chief plagues that waste mankind--
    Our skin supplies the wrangling bar:
    It wakes their slumbering sons to war.
    And well Revenge may rest contented,
    Since drums and parchment were invented.’”[139]




XIX.

CHEYNE. 1671-1743.


One of the most esteemed of English physicians, and one of the first
medical authorities in this country who expressly wrote in advocacy of
the reformed diet, descended from an old Scottish family. He studied
medicine at Edinburgh--then and still a principal school of medicine
and surgery--where he was a pupil of Dr. Pitcairn. At about the age of
thirty he removed to London, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society,
and took his M.D. degree, commencing practice in the metropolis.

The manner of life of a medical practitioner in the first half of
the last century differed considerably from the present fashion. Not
only personal inclination, but even professional interest, usually
led him to frequent taverns and to indulge in all the excesses of
“good living;” for in such boon companionship he most easily laid the
foundation of his practice. Cheyne’s early habits of temperance thus
gave way to the double temptation, and soon by this indulgence he
contracted painful disorders which threatened his life. An enormous
weight of flesh, intermittent fevers, shortness of breath, and lethargy
combined to enfeeble and depress him.

His first appearance in literature was the publication of his _New
Theory of Fevers_, written in defence and at the suggestion of his old
master Dr. Pitcairn, who was at war with his brethren on the nature of
epidemics. The author, while in after life holding that it contained,
though in a crude form, some valuable matter, wisely allowed it to fall
into oblivion. The Mechanical or _Iatro-Mathematical_ Theory, as it was
called, of which Cheyne was one of the earliest and most distinguished
expounders, by which it was attempted to apply the laws of Mechanics to
vital phenomena, had succeeded to the principles of the old Chemical
School. On the Continent the new theory had the support of the eminent
authority of Boerhaave, Borelli, Sauvages, Hoffman, and others. The
natural desire to discover some definite and simple _formulæ_ of
medical science lay at the root of this, as of many other hypotheses.
Cheyne, himself, it is right to observe, ridiculed the notion that all
vital processes can be explained on mechanical principles.

In 1705 he published his _Philosophical Principles of Natural
Religion_, a book which had some repute in its day, apparently, since
it was in use in the Universities. Between this and his next essay in
literature a long interval elapsed, during which he had to pay the
penalty of his old habits in apoplectic giddiness, violent headaches,
and depression of spirits. Happily, it became for him the turning-point
in his life, and eventually rendered him so useful an instructor of
his kind. He had now arrived at a considerable amount of reputation
in the profession. He seems to have been naturally of agreeable
manners and of an amiable disposition, as well as of lively wit which,
improved by study and reading, made him highly popular; and amongst his
scientific and professional friends he was in great esteem. He had now,
however--not too soon--determined to abandon his _bon-vivantism_, and
speedily “even those who had shared the best part of my profusions,”
he tells us, “who, in their necessities had been relieved by my false
generosity, and, in their disorders, been relieved by my care, did now
entirely relinquish and abandon me.” He retired into solitude in the
country and, almost momentarily expecting the termination of his life,
set himself to serious and earnest reflection on the follies and vices
of ordinary living.

At this time it seems that, although he had reduced his food to
the smallest possible amount, he had not altogether relinquished
flesh-meat. He repaired to Bath for the waters and, by living in the
most temperate way and by constant and regular exercise, he seemed to
have regained his early health. At Bath he devoted himself to cases
of nervous diseases which most nearly concerned his own state, and
which were most abundant at that fashionable resort. About the year
1712, or in the forty-second year of his age, his health was fairly
re-established, and he began to relax in the milk and vegetable regimen
which he had previously adopted.

His next publication was _An Essay on the Gout and Bath Waters_ (1720),
which passed through seven editions in six years. In it he commends the
vegetable diet, although not so radically as in his latest writings.
His relaxation of dietetic reform quickly brought back his former
maladies, and he again suffered severely. During the next ten or
twelve years he continued to increase in corpulency, until he at last
reached the enormous weight of thirty-two stones, and he describes his
condition at this time as intolerable.[140] In 1725 he left Bath for
London, to consult his friend Dr. Arbuthnot, whose advice probably
renewed and confirmed his old inclination for the rational mode of
living. At all events, within two years, by a strict adherence to the
milk and vegetable regimen his maladies finally disappeared; nor did he
afterwards suffer by any relapse into dietetic errors.

In the preceding year had appeared his first important and original
work--his well-known _Essay of Health and a Long Life_. In the preface
he declares that it is published for the benefit of those weakly
persons who

    “are able and willing to abstain from everything hurtful, and to
    deny themselves anything their appetites craved, to conform to
    any rules for a tolerable degree of health, ease, and freedom
    of spirits. It is for these, and these only,” he proceeds, “the
    following treatise is designed. The robust, the luxurious, the
    pot-companions, &c., have here no business; their time is not yet
    come.”

It is generally acknowledged to be one of the best books on the
subject. Haller pronounced it to be “the best of all the works bearing
upon the health of sedentary persons and invalids.” It went through
several editions in the space of two years, and in 1726 was enlarged by
the author and translated by his friend and pupil John Robertson M.A.
into Latin, and three or four editions were quickly exhausted in France
and Germany. In this book, while reducing flesh-meat to a _minimum_,
and insisting upon the necessity of abstinence from grosser food and of
the use of vegetables only, at the morning and evening meals, he had
not advanced as yet so far as to preach the truth in its entirety. He
arrived at it only by slow and gradual conviction. Expatiating on the
follies and miseries of _bon-vivantism_, he proceeds to affirm that--

    “All those who have lived long, and without much pain, have lived
    abstemiously, poor, and meagre. Cornaro prolonged his life and
    preserved his senses by almost starving in his latter days; and
    some others have done the like. They have, indeed, thereby, in some
    measure, weakened their natural strength and qualified the fire
    and flux of their spirits, but they have preserved their senses,
    weakened their pains, prolonged their days, and procured themselves
    a gentle and quiet passage into another state.... All the rest
    will be insufficient without this [a frugal diet]; and this alone,
    without these [medicines, &c.], will suffice to carry on life as
    long as by its natural flame it was made to last, and will make the
    passage easy and calm, as a taper goes out for want of fuel.”

While the _Essay of Health_ added greatly to his reputation with all
thinking people, it also exposed him (as was to be expected) to a storm
of small wit, ridicule, and misrepresentation:--

    “Some good-natured and ingenious retainers to the Profession,” he
    tells us, “on the publication of my book on _Long Life and Health_,
    proclaimed everywhere that I was turned mere enthusiast, advised
    people to turn monks, to run into deserts, and to live on roots,
    herbs, and wild fruits! in fine, that I was, at bottom, a mere
    leveller, and for destroying order, ranks, and property, everyone’s
    but my own. But that sneer had its day, and vanished into smoke.
    Others swore that I had eaten my book, recanted my _doctrine_ and
    _system_ (as they were pleased to term it), and was returned again
    to the devil, the world, and the flesh. This joke I have also
    stood. I have been slain again and again, both in prose and verse;
    but, I thank God, I am still alive and well.”

His next publication was his _English Malady: or, a Treatise of Nervous
Diseases of all kinds_, which was also well received, going through
four editions in two years. The incessant ridicule with which the
_gourmands_ had assailed his last work seems to have made him cautious
in his next attempt to revolutionise dietetics; and he is careful to
advertise the public that his milk and vegetable system was for those
in weak health only. Denouncing the use of sauces and provocatives
of unnatural appetite, “contrived not only to rouse a sickly stomach
to receive the unnatural load, but to render a naturally good one
incapable of knowing when it has enough,” he asks, “Is it any wonder
then that the diseases which proceed from idleness and fulness of meat
should increase in proportion?” He is bold enough by this time to
affirm that, for the cure of many diseases, an entire abstinence from
flesh is indisputably necessary:--

    “There are some cases wherein a vegetable and milk diet seems
    absolutely necessary, as in severe and habitual gouts, rheumatisms,
    cancerous, leprous, and scrofulous disorders; extreme nervous
    colics, epilepsies, violent hysteric fits, melancholy, consumptions
    (and the like disorders, mentioned in the preface), and towards the
    last stages of all chronic distempers. In such distempers _I have
    seldom seen such a diet fail of a good effect at last_.”

Six years later, in 1740, appeared his _Essay on Regimen: together
with Five Discourses Medical Moral and Philosophical, &c._ Since his
last exhortation to the world Cheyne had evidently convinced himself,
by long experience as well as reflection, of the great superiority of
the vegetable diet for all--sound as well as sick; and, accordingly,
he speaks in strong and clear language of the importance of a general
reform. As a consequence of this plain speaking, his new book met with
a comparatively cold reception. Perhaps, too, its mathematical and
somewhat abstruse tone may have affected its popularity. As regards its
moral tone it was a new revelation, doubtless, for the vast majority of
his readers. He boldly asserts:--

    “The question I design to treat of here is, whether animal or
    vegetable food was, in the original design of the Creator, intended
    for the food of animals, and particularly of the human race. And I
    am almost convinced it _never was intended, but only permitted as
    a curse or punishment_.... At what time animal [flesh] food came
    first in use is not certainly known. He was a bold man who made the
    first experiment.

            _Illi robur et æs triplex
        Circa pectus erat._

    To see the convulsions, agonies, and tortures of a poor
    fellow-creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to
    gratify luxury, and tickle callous and rank organs, must require a
    rocky heart, and a great degree of cruelty and ferocity. I cannot
    find any great difference, _on the foot of natural reason and
    equity only, between feeding on human flesh and feeding on brute
    animal flesh, except custom and example_.

    I believe some [more] rational creatures would suffer less in being
    fairly butchered than a strong Ox or red Deer; and, in natural
    morality and justice, the _degrees of pain_ here make the essential
    difference, for as to other differences, _they are relative only_,
    and can be of no influence with an infinitely perfect Being. Did
    not use and example weaken this lesson, and make the difference,
    reason alone could never do it.”--_Essay on Regimen, &c._ 8vo.
    1740. Pages 54 and 70.

Noble and courageous words! Courageous as coming from an eminent member
of a profession--which almost rivals the legal or even the clerical,
in opposition to all change in the established order of things. In Dr.
Cheyne’s days such interested or bigoted opposition was even stronger
than in the present time. From the period of the final establishment of
his health, about 1728, little is known of his life excepting through
his writings. Almost all we know is, that he continued some fifteen
years to practise in London and in Bath with distinguished reputation
and success. He had married a daughter of Dr. Middleton of Bristol by
whom he had several children. His only son was born in 1712. Amongst
his intimate friends was the celebrated Dr. Arbuthnot, a Scotchman like
himself, and we find him meeting Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Mead at the
bedside of his friend and relative Bishop Burnet. Both Dr. Arbuthnot
and Sir Hans Sloane, we may remark in passing, have given evidence
in favour of the purer living. His own diet he thus describes in his
_Author’s Case_, written towards the end of his life:--

    “My regimen, at present, is milk, with tea, coffee, bread and
    butter, mild cheese, salads, fruits and seeds of all kinds, with
    tender roots (as potatoes, turnips, carrots), and, in short,
    _everything that has not life_, dressed or not, as I like it, _in
    which there is as much or a greater variety than in animal foods_,
    so that the stomach need never be cloyed. I drink no wine nor any
    fermented liquors, and am rarely dry, most of my food being liquid,
    moist, or juicy.[141] Only after dinner I drink either coffee
    or green tea, but seldom both in the same day, and sometimes a
    glass of soft, small cider. The thinner my diet, the easier, more
    cheerful and lightsome I find myself; my sleep is also the sounder,
    though perhaps somewhat shorter than formerly under my full animal
    diet; but then I am more alive than ever I was. As soon as I wake I
    get up. I rise commonly at six, and go to bed at ten.”

As for the effect of this regimen, he tells us that “since that
time [his last lapse] I thank God I have gone on in one constant
tenor of diet, and enjoy as good health as, at my time of life
(being now sixty), I or any man can reasonably expect.” When we
remember the complicity of maladies of which he had been the victim
during his adhesion to the orthodox mode of living, such experience
is sufficiently significant. Some ten years later he records his
experiences as follows:--

    “It is now about sixteen years since, for the last time, I entered
    upon a milk and vegetable diet. At the beginning of this period,
    this light food I took as my appetite directed, without any
    measures, and found myself easy under it. After some time, I found
    it became necessary to lessen this quantity, and I have latterly
    reduced it to one-half, at most, of what I at first seemed to
    bear; and if it should please God to spare me a few years longer,
    in order to preserve, in that case, that freedom and clearness
    which by his presence I now enjoy, I shall probably find myself
    obliged to deny myself one-half of my present daily sustenance,
    which, precisely, is three Winchester pints of new milk, and six
    ounces of biscuit, made without salt or yeast, baked in a quick
    oven.”[142]--[_Natural Method of Curing Diseases_, &c., page 298;
    see also Preface to _Essay on Regimen_].

The last production of Dr. Cheyne was his “_Natural Method of Curing
the Diseases of the Body, and the Disorders of the Mind Depending
on the Body_. In three parts. Part I.--General Reflections on the
Economy of Nature in Animal Life. Part II.--The Means and Methods for
Preserving Life and Faculties; and also Concerning the Nature and Cure
of Acute, Contagious, and Cephalic Disorders. Part III.--Reflections
on the Nature and Cure of Particular Chronic Distempers. 8vo. Strahan,
London, 1742.” It is dedicated to the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, who
records his grateful recognition of the benefits he had experienced
from his methods. He writes: “I read with great pleasure your book,
which your bookseller sent me according to your direction. The physical
part is extremely good, and the metaphysical part _may be_ so too, for
what I know, and I believe it is, for as I look upon all metaphysics
to be guess work of imagination, I know no imagination likelier to hit
upon the right than yours, and I will take your guess against any other
metaphysician’s whatsoever. That part which is founded upon knowledge
and experience I look upon as a work of public utility, and for which
the present age and their posterity may be obliged to you, if they will
be pleased to follow it.” Lord Chesterfield, it will be seen below,
was one of those more refined minds whose better conscience revolted
from, even if they had not the courage or self-control to renounce, the
Slaughter House.

The _Natural Method_ its author considers as a kind of supplement
to his last book, containing “the practical inferences, and the
conclusions drawn from [its principles], in particular cases and
diseases, confirmed by forty years’ experience and observation.”
It is the most practical of all his works, and is full of valuable
observations. Very just and useful is his rebuke of that sort of
John-Bullism which affects to hold “good living” not only as harmless
but even as a sort of merit--

    “How it may be in other countries and religions I will not say, but
    among us good Protestants, abstinence, temperance, and moderation
    (at least in eating), are so far from being thought a virtue, and
    their contrary a vice, that it would seem that not eating the
    fattest and most delicious, and _to the top_, were the only vice
    and disease known among us--against which our parents, relatives,
    friends, and physicians exclaim with great vehemence and zeal. And
    yet, if we consider the matter attentively we shall find there is
    no such danger in abstinence as we imagine, but, on the contrary,
    the greatest abstinence and moderation nature and its external laws
    will suffer us to go into and practise for any time, will neither
    endanger our health, nor weaken our just thinking, be it ever so
    unlimited or unrestrained.... And it is a wise providence that
    Lent time falls out at that season which, if kept according to its
    original intention, in seeds and vegetables well dressed and not in
    rich high-dressed fish, would go a great way to preserve the health
    of the people in general, as well as dispose them to seriousness
    and reflection--so true it is that ‘godliness has the promise of
    this life, and of that which is to come,’ and it is very observable
    that in all civil and established religious worships hitherto
    known among polished nations Lents, days of abstinence, seasons of
    fasting and bringing down the brutal part of the rational being,
    have had a large share, and been reckoned an indispensable part
    of their worship and duty, except among a wrong-headed part of
    our Reformation, where it has been despised and ridiculed into a
    total neglect. And yet it seems not only natural and convenient for
    health, but strongly commended both in the Old and New Testament,
    and might allow time and proper disposition for more serious and
    weighty purposes. And this ‘Lent,’ or times of abstinence, is one
    reason of the cheerfulness or serenity of some Roman Catholic
    or Southern countries, which would be still more healthy and
    long-lived were it not for their excessive use of aromatics and
    opiates, which are the worst kind of dry drams, and the cause of
    their unnatural and unbridled lechery and shortness of life.”

Denouncing the general practice of the Profession of encouraging their
patients in indulging vitiated habits and tastes, he reminds them:--

    “That such physicians do not consider that they are accountable
    to the community, to their patients, to their conscience, and to
    their Maker, for every hour and moment they shorten and cut off
    their patients’ lives _by their immoral and murderous indulgence_:
    and the patients do not duly ponder that suicide (which this is
    in effect) is the most mortal and irremissible of all sins, and
    neither have sufficiently weighed the possibility that the patient,
    if not quickly cut off by both these preposterous means, may linger
    out miserably, and be twenty or thirty years a-dying, under these
    heart and wheel-breaking miseries thus exasperated; whereas, by the
    methods I propose, if they obtain not in time a perfect cure, yet
    they certainly lessen their pain, lengthen their days, and continue
    under the benign influence of ‘the Sun of Righteousness, who has
    healing in His wings,’ and, at worst, soften and lighten the
    anguish of their dissolution, as far as the nature of things will
    admit.”

Not the least useful and instructive portions of his treatise are his
references to the proper regimen for mental diseases and disordered
brains, which, he reasonably infers, are best treated by the adoption
of a light and pure dietary. He despairs, however, of the general
recognition, or at least adoption, of so rational a method by the
“faculty” or the public at large,

    “Who do not consider that _nine parts in ten_ of the whole mass
    of mankind are necessarily confined to this diet (of farinacea,
    fruits, &c.), or pretty nearly to it, and yet live with the use of
    their senses, limbs, and faculties, without diseases or with but
    few, and those from accidents or epidemical causes; and that there
    have been nations, and now are numbers of tribes, who voluntarily
    confine themselves to vegetables only, ... and that there are whole
    villages in this kingdom whose inhabitants scarce eat animal food
    or drink fermented liquors a dozen times a year.”

In regard to all nervous and brain diseases, he insists that the
reformed diet would

    “Greatly alleviate and render tolerable original distempers derived
    from diseased parents, and that it is absolutely necessary for the
    deep-thinking part of mankind, who would preserve their faculties
    ripe and pregnant to a green old age and to the last dregs of life;
    and that it is the true and real antidote and preservative from
    wrong-headedness, irregular and disorderly intellect and functions,
    from loss of the rational faculties, memory, and senses, as far
    as the ends of Providence and the condition of mortality will
    allow.”--(_Nat. Method_, page 90.)

This benevolent and beneficent dietetic reformer, according to the
testimony of an eye-witness, exemplified by his death the value of
his principles--relinquishing his last breath easily and tranquilly,
while his senses remained entire to the end. During his last illness
he was attended by the famous David Hartley, noticed below. He was
buried at Weston, near Bath. His character is sufficiently seen in his
writings which, if they contain some metaphysical or other ideas which
our reason cannot always endorse, in their _practical_ teaching prove
him to have been actuated by a true and earnest desire for the best
interests of his fellow-men. One of the merits of Cheyne’s writings is
his discarding the common orthodox _esoteric_ style of his profession,
who seem jealously to exclude all but the “initiated” from their sacred
mysteries. One of his biographers has remarked upon this point that
“there is another peculiarity about most of Dr. Cheyne’s writings
which is worthy of notice. Although there are many passages that are
quite unintelligible to the reader unless he possesses a considerable
knowledge, not only of medicine but also of mathematics, yet there
is no doubt but that the greater part of his works were intended for
popular perusal, and in this undertaking he is one of the few medical
writers who have been completely successful. His productions, which
were much read and had an extensive influence in their day, procured
him a considerable degree of reputation, not only with the public, but
also with the members of his own profession. If they present to the
reader no great discoveries (?) they possess the merit of putting more
prominently forward some useful but neglected truths; and though now,
probably, but little read, they contain much matter that is well worth
studying, and have obtained for their author a respectable place in the
history of medical literature.”[143]

Our notice of the author of the _Essay on Regimen_, &c., would
scarcely be complete without some reference to his friendship with
two distinguished characters--John Wesley and Samuel Richardson,[144]
the author of _Pamela_. It was to Dr. Cheyne that Wesley, as he tells
us in his journals, was indebted for his conversion to those dietetic
principles to which he attributes, in great measure, the invigoration
of his naturally feeble constitution, and which enabled him to undergo
an amount of fatigue and toil, both mentally and bodily, seldom or
never surpassed. Of Cheyne’s friendship for Richardson there are
several memorials preserved in his familiar letters to that popular
writer; and his free and naïve criticisms of his novels are not a
little amusing. The novelist, it seems, was one of his patients,
and that he was not always a satisfactory one, under the abstemious
regimen, appears occasionally from the remonstrances of his adviser.




XX.

POPE. 1688-1744.


The most epigrammatic, and one of the most elegant, of poets. He was
also one of the most precocious. His first production of importance
was his _Essay on Criticism_, written at the age of twenty-one,
although not published until two years later. But he had composed, we
are assured, several verses of an Epic at the age of twelve; and his
_Pastorals_ was given to the world by a youth of sixteen. Its division
into the Four Seasons is said to have suggested to Thomson the title of
his great poem. The MS. passed through the hands of some distinguished
persons, who loudly proclaimed the merits of the boy-poet.

In the same year with his fine mock-heroic _Rape of the Lock_ (1712)
appeared _The Messiah_, in imitation of Isaiah and of Virgil (in his
well-known _Eclogue_ IV.), both of whom celebrate, in similar strains,
the advent of a “golden age” to be. The “Sybilline” prophecy, which
Pope supposes the Latin poet to have read, existed, it need scarcely
be added, only in the imagination of himself and of the authorities on
whom he relied. _Windsor Forest_ (1713) deserves special notice as one
of the earliest of that class of poems which derive their inspiration
directly from Nature. It was the precursor of _The Seasons_, although
the anti-barbarous feeling is less pronounced in the former. We find,
however, the germs of that higher feeling which appears more developed
in the _Essay on Man_; and the following verses, descriptive of the
usual “sporting” scenes, are significant:--

    “See! from the brake the whirring Pheasant springs,
    And mounts exulting on triumphant wings:
    Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound,
    Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground.
    Ah, what avail his glossy, varying dyes,
    His purple crest and scarlet-circled eyes--
    The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,
    His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold?

           *       *       *       *       *

    To plains with well-breathed beagles they repair,
    And trace the mazes of the circling Hare.
    Beasts, urged by us, their fellow-beasts pursue,
    And learn of man each other to undo.
    With slaughtering guns the unwearied fowler roves,
    When frosts have whitened all the naked groves,
    Where Doves, in flocks, the leafless trees o’ershade,
    And lonely Woodcocks haunt the watery glade--
    He lifts the tube, and level with his eye,
    Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky.
    Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath,
    The clamorous Lapwings feel the leaden death:
    Oft, as the mounting Larks their notes prepare,
    They fall and leave their little lives in air.”

His _Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard_ (a romantic version of a very
realistic story), _Temple of Fame_, _Imitations of Chaucer_,
translation of the _Iliad_ (1713-1720)--characterised by Gibbon as
having “every merit but that of likeness to its original”--an edition
of Shakspere, _The Dunciad_ (1728), translation of the _Odyssey_, are
some of the works which attest his genius and industry. But it is with
his _Moral Essays_--and in particular the _Essay on Man_ (1732-1735),
the most important of his productions--that we are especially concerned.

As is pretty well known, these _Essays_ owe their conception, in great
part, to his intimate friend St. John Bolingbroke. Although the author
by birth and, perhaps, still more from a feeling of pride which might
make him reluctant to abandon an unfashionable sect (such it was at
that time), belonged nominally to the Old Church, the theology and
metaphysics of the work display little of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. The
pervading principles of the _Essay on Man_ are natural theology or,
as Warburton styles it, “Naturalism” (_i.e._, the putting aside human
assertion for the study of the attributes of Deity through its visible
manifestations) and Optimism.[145]

The merits of the _Essay_, it must be added, consist not so much in the
philosophy of the poem as a whole as in the many fine and true thoughts
scattered throughout it, which the author’s epigrammatic terseness
indelibly fixes in the mind. Of the whole poem the most valuable
part, undoubtedly, is its ridicule of the common arrogant (pretended)
belief that all other species on the earth have been brought into
being for the benefit of the human race--an egregious fallacy, by the
way, which, ably exposed as it has been over and over again, still
frequently reappears in our popular theology and morals. To the writers
and talkers of this too numerous class may be commended the rebukes of
Pope:--

    “Nothing is foreign--parts relate to whole:
    One all-extending, all-preserving soul
    Connects each being, greatest with the least--
    Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast:
    All served, all serving--nothing stands alone.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Has God, thou fool, worked solely for thy good,
    Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?

           *       *       *       *       *

    Is it for thee the Lark ascends and sings?
    Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
    Is it for thee the Linnet pours his throat?
    Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
    The bounding Steed you pompously bestride
    Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Know Nature’s children all divide her care,
    The fur that warms a monarch warmed a Bear.
    While Man exclaims, ‘See all things for my use!’
    ‘See Man for mine!’ replies a pampered Goose.
    And just as short of reason he must fall,
    Who thinks _all made for one, not one for all_.”

He then paints the picture of the “Times of Innocence” of the Past, or
rather (as we must take it) of the Future:--

    “_No murder clothed him, and no murder fed._
    In the same temple--the resounding wood--
    All vocal beings hymned their equal God.
    The shrine, with gore unstained, with gold undrest,
    Unbribed, unbloody, stood the blameless priest.
    Heaven’s attribute was universal care,
    And man’s prerogative to rule but spare.
    Ah, how unlike the man of times to come--
    _Of half that live the butcher and the tomb_!
    Who, foe to Nature, hears the general groan,
    Murders their species, and betrays his own.
    But just disease to luxury succeeds,
    And every death its own avenger breeds:
    The fury-passions from that blood began,
    And turned on man a fiercer savage, man.”

Again, depicting the growth of despotism and superstition, and
speculating as to--

    “Who first taught souls enslaved and realms undone
    The enormous faith of Many made for One?”

he traces the gradual horrors of sacrifice beginning with other, and
culminating in that of the human, species:--

    “She [Superstition] from the rending earth and bursting skies
    Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise:
    Here fixed the dreadful, there the blest, abodes--
    Fear made her devils and weak Hope her gods--
    Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
    Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust--
    Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
    And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Altars grew marble then, and reeked with gore;
    _Then first the Flamen tasted living food,
    Next his grim idol smeared with human blood_.
    With Heaven’s own thunders shook the earth below,
    And played the God an engine on his foe.”

Whenever occasion arises, Pope fails not to stigmatise the barbarity of
slaughtering for food; and the _sæva indignatio_ urges him to upbraid
his fellows with the slaughter of--

    “The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed,

           *       *       *       *       *

    Who licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.”

And, again, he expresses his detestation of the selfishness of our
species who--

    “Destroy all creatures for their sport or gust.”

That all this was no mere affectation of feeling appears from his
correspondence and contributions to the periodicals of the time:--

    “I cannot think it extravagant,” he writes, “to imagine that
    mankind are no less, in proportion, accountable for the ill use
    of their dominion over the lower ranks of beings, than for the
    exercise of tyranny over their own species. The more entirely the
    inferior creation is submitted to our power, the more answerable
    we must be for our mismanagement of them; and the rather, as the
    very condition of Nature renders them incapable of receiving any
    recompense in another life for ill-treatment in this.”[146]

Consistently with the expression of this true philosophy, he declares
elsewhere that--

    “Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens
    sprinkled with blood, and abounding with the cries of expiring
    victims, or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up
    here and there. It gives one the image of a giant’s den in romance,
    bestrewed with scattered heads and mangled limbs.”[147]

The personal character of Pope, we may add, has of late been subjected
to minute and searching criticism. Some meannesses, springing from an
extreme anxiety for fame with after ages, have undoubtedly tarnished
his reputation for candour. His excessive animosity towards his public
or private enemies may be palliated in part, if not excused, by his
well-known feebleness of health and consequent mental irritability.
For the rest, he was capable of the most sincere and disinterested
attachments; and not his least merit, in literature, is that in an age
of servile authorship he cultivated literature not for place or pay,
but for its own sake.

       *       *       *       *       *

Amongst Pope’s intimate friends were Dr. Arbuthnot, Dean Swift,
and Gay. The first of these, best known as the joint author with
Pope and Swift of _Martinus Scriblerus_, a satire on the useless
pedantry prevalent in education and letters, and especially as the
author of the _History of John Bull_ (the original of that immortal
personification of beef, beer, and prejudice), published his _Essay
Concerning Aliments_, in which the vegetable diet is commended as a
preventive or cure of certain diseases, about the year 1730. Not the
least meritorious of his works was an epitaph on the notorious Colonel
Chartres--one of the few epitaphs which are attentive less to custom
than to truth, and, we may add, in marked contrast with that typical
one on his unhistorical contemporary Captain Blifil.

In the _Travels of Lemuel Gulliver_ the reader will find the _sæva
indignatio_ of Swift--or, at all events, of the Houyhnhnms--amongst
other things, launched against the indiscriminating diet of his
countrymen:--

    “I told him” [the Master-Horse], says Gulliver, “we fed on a
    thousand things which operated contrary to each other--that we
    eat when we are not hungry, and drink without the provocation of
    thirst ... that it would be endless to give him a catalogue of all
    diseases incident to human bodies, for they could not be fewer than
    five or six hundred, spread over every limb and joint--in short,
    every part, external and intestine, having diseases appropriated to
    itself--to remedy which there was a sort of people bred up among us
    in the profession or pretence of curing the sick.”

Among the infinite variety of remedies and prescriptions, in the
human _Materia Medica_, the astounded Houyhnhnm learns, are reckoned
“serpents, toads, frogs, spiders, dead men’s flesh and bones, birds,
beasts, fishes”--no mere travellers’ tales (it is perhaps necessary
to explain), but sober fact, as any one may discover for himself by
an examination of some of the received and popular medical treatises
of the seventeenth century, in which the most absurd “prescriptions,”
involving the most frightful cruelty, are recorded with all
seriousness:--

    “My master, continuing his discourse, said there was nothing
    that rendered the Yahoos more odious than their undistinguishing
    appetite to devour everything that came in their way, whether
    herbs, roots, berries, the _corrupted flesh of animals, or all
    mingled together_; and that it was peculiar in their temper that
    they were fonder of what they could get by rapine or stealth at a
    greater distance than much better food provided for them at home.
    If their prey held out, they would eat till they were ready to
    burst.”

Although unaccustomed to the better living, and finding it “insipid at
first,” the human slave of the Houyhnhnm (a word which, by the way, in
that language, means “the perfection of nature”) records as the result
of his experience, in the first place, how little will sustain human
life; and, in the second place, the fact of the superior healthfulness
of the vegetable food.[148]

About this period or a little earlier, Philippe Hecquet, a French
physician, published his _Traité des Dispenses du Carême_ (“Treatise
on Dispensations in Lent”), 1709, in which he gave in his adhesion
to the principles of Vegetarianism--at all events, so far as health
is concerned. He is mentioned by Voltaire, and is supposed to be the
original of the doctor Sangrado of Le Sage.[149] If this conjecture
have any truth, the author of _Gil Blas_ is open to the grave charge
of misrepresentation, of sacrificing truth to effect, or (what is still
worse and still more common) of pandering to popular prejudices.[150]




XXI.

THOMSON. 1700-1748.


In the long and terrible series of the Ages the distinguishing glory of
the eighteenth century is its _Humanitarianism_--not visible, indeed,
in legislation or in the teaching of the ordinarily-accredited guides
of the public faith and morals, but proclaimed, nevertheless, by the
great prophets of that era. As far as ordinary life was concerned,
the last age is only too obnoxious to the charge of selfishness and
heartlessness. Callousness to suffering, as regards the non-human
species in particular, is sufficiently apparent in the common
amusements and “pastimes” of the various grades of the community.

Yet, if we compare the tone of even the common-place class of writers
with that of the authors of quasi-scientific treatises of the preceding
century--in which the most cold-blooded atrocities on the helpless
victims of human ignorance and barbarity are prescribed for the
composition of their medical _nostrums_, &c., with the most unconscious
audacity and ignoring of every sort of feeling--considerable advance is
apparent in the slow onward march of the human race towards the goal of
a true morality and religion.

To the author of _The Seasons_ belongs the everlasting honour of being
the first amongst modern poets earnestly to denounce the manifold
wrongs inflicted upon the subject species, and, in particular, the
savagery inseparable from the Slaughter-House--for Pope did not publish
his _Essay on Man_ until four years after the appearance of _Spring_.

James Thomson, of Scottish parentage, came to London to seek his
fortune in literature, at the age of 25. For some time he experienced
the poverty and troubles which so generally have been the lot of
young aspirants to literary, especially poetic, fame. _Winter_--which
inaugurated a new school of poetry--appeared in March, 1726. That the
publisher considered himself liberal in offering three guineas for the
poem speaks little for the taste of the time; but that a better taste
was coming into existence is also plain from the fact of its favourable
reception, notwithstanding the obscurity of the author. Three editions
appeared in the same year. _Summer_, his next venture, was published
in 1727, and the (Four) _Seasons_ in 1730, by subscription--387
subscribers enrolling their names for copies at a guinea each.

Natural enthusiasm, sympathy, and love for all that is really beautiful
on Earth (a sort of feeling not to be appreciated by vulgar minds)
forms his chief characteristic. But, above all, his sympathy with
suffering in all its forms (see, particularly, his reflections after
the description of the snowstorm in _Winter_), not limited by the
narrow bounds of nationality or of species but extended to all innocent
life--his indignation against oppression and injustice, are what most
honourably distinguish him from almost all of his predecessors and,
indeed, from most of his successors. _The Seasons_ is the forerunner
of _The Task_ and the humanitarian school of poetry. _The Castle of
Indolence_ in the stanza of Spenser, has claims of a kind different
from those of _The Seasons_; and the admirers of _The Faerie Queen_
cannot fail to appreciate the merits of the modern romance. Besides
these _chefs-d’œuvre_ Thomson wrote two tragedies, _Sophonisba_ and
_Liberty_, the former of which, at the time, had considerable success
upon the stage. In the number of his friends he reckoned Pope and
Samuel Johnson, both of whom are said to have had some share in the
frequent revisions which he made of his principal production.

It is with his _Spring_ that we are chiefly concerned, since it is in
that division of his great poem that he eloquently contrasts the two
very opposite diets. Singing the glories of the annual birth-time and
general resurrection of Nature, he first celebrates

                      “The living Herbs, profusely wild,
    O’er all the deep-green Earth, beyond the power
    Of botanist to number up their tribes,
    (Whether he steals along the lonely dale
    In silent search, or through the forest, rank
    With what the dull incurious weeds account,
    Bursts his blind way, or climbs the mountain-rock,
    Fired by the nodding verdure of its brow).
    With such a liberal hand has Nature flung
    Their seeds abroad, blown them about in winds,
    Innumerous mixed them with the nursing mould,
    The moistening current and prolific rain.

      But who their virtues can declare? Who pierce,
    With vision pure, into those secret stores
    Of health and life and joy--the food of man,
    While yet he lived in innocence and told
    A length of golden years, unfleshed in blood?
    A stranger to the savage arts of life--
    Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease--
    The Lord, and not the Tyrant, of the world.”

And then goes on to picture the feast of blood:--

      “And yet the wholesome herb neglected dies,
    Though with the pure exhilarating soul
    Of nutriment and health, and vital powers
    Beyond the search of Art, ’tis copious blessed.
    For, with hot ravin fired, ensanguined Man
    Is now become the Lion of the plain
    And worse. The Wolf, who from the nightly fold
    Fierce drags the bleating Prey, ne’er drank her milk,
    Nor wore her warming fleece; nor has the Steer,
    At whose strong chest the deadly Tiger hangs,
    E’er ploughed for him. They, too, are tempered high,
    With hunger stung and wild necessity,
    Nor lodges pity in their shaggy breast.

      But Man, whom Nature formed of milder clay,
    With every kind emotion in his heart,
    And taught alone to weep; while from her lap
    She pours ten thousand delicacies--herbs
    And fruits, as numerous as the drops of rain
    Or beams that gave them birth--shall he, fair form,
    Who wears sweet smiles and looks erect on heaven,
    E’er stoop to mingle with the prowling herd
    And dip his tongue in gore? The beast of prey,
    Blood-stained, deserves to bleed. But you, ye Flocks,
    What have you done? Ye peaceful people, what
    To merit death? You who have given us milk
    In luscious streams, and lent us your own coat
    Against the winter’s cold? And the plain Ox,
    That harmless, honest, guileless animal,
    In what has he offended? He, whose toil,
    Patient and ever ready, clothes the land
    With all the pomp of harvest--shall he bleed,
    And struggling groan beneath the cruel hands
    E’en of the clowns he feeds, and that, perhaps,
    To swell the riot of the autumnal feast
    Won by his labour?”[151]

And again in denouncing the _amateur_ slaughtering (euphemised by the
mocking term of _Sport_) unblushingly perpetrated in the broad light of
day:--

      “When beasts of prey retire, that all night long,
    Urged by necessity, had ranged the dark,
    As if their conscious ravage shunned the light,
    Ashamed. Not so [he reproaches] the steady tyrant Man,
    Who with the thoughtless insolence of Power,
    Inflamed beyond the most infuriate wrath
    Of the worst monster that e’er roamed the waste,
    For Sport alone pursues the cruel chase,
    Amid the beamings of the gentle days.
        Upbraid, ye ravening tribes, our _wanton_ rage,
    For hunger kindles _you_, and lawless want;
    But lavish fed, in Nature’s bounty rolled--
    To joy at anguish, and delight in blood--
    Is what your horrid bosoms never knew.”[152]

We conclude these extracts from _The Seasons_ with the poet’s indignant
reflection upon the selfish greed of Commerce, which barbarously
sacrifices by thousands (as it does also the innocent mammalia of the
seas) the noblest and most sagacious of the terrestrial races for the
sake of a superfluous luxury:--

    “Peaceful, beneath primeval trees, that cast
    Their ample shade o’er Niger’s yellow stream,
    And where the Ganges rolls his sacred waves;
    Or mid the central depth of blackening woods,
    High raised in solemn theatre around,
    Leans the huge Elephant, wisest of _brutes_!
    O truly wise! with gentle might endowed:
    Though powerful, not destructive. Here he sees
    Revolving ages sweep the changeful Earth,
    And empires rise and fall: regardless he
    Of what the never-resting race of men
    Project. Thrice happy! could he ’scape their guile
    Who mine, from cruel avarice, his steps:
    Or with his towering grandeur swell their state--
    The pride of kings!--or else his strength pervert,
    And bid him rage amid the mortal fray,
    Astonished at the madness of mankind.”[153]




XXII.

HARTLEY. 1705-1757.


Celebrated as the earliest writer of the utilitarian school of morals.
At the age of fifteen he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, of which
he was afterwards elected a Fellow. Scruples of conscience about the
“Thirty-nine Articles” would not allow him to subscribe them and take
orders, and he turned to the medical profession, in which he reached
considerable eminence.

His _Observations on Man: his Frame, his Duties, and his Expectations_,
appeared in 1748. The principal interest in the book consists in the
fact of its containing the germs of that school of moral philosophy of
which Paley, Bentham, and Mill have been the most able expositors. He
had imbibed the teaching of Locke upon the origin of ideas, which that
first of English metaphysicians founded in Sensation and Reflection
or Association, in contradiction to the old theory of _Innateness_.
Although now universally received, it is hardly necessary to remark
that at its first promulgation it met with as great opposition as all
rational ideas experience long after their first introduction; and
Locke’s controversy with the Bishop of Worcester is matter of history.

It has already been stated that David Hartley was the friend of Dr.
Cheyne, whom he attended in his last illness, and he numbered amongst
his acquaintances some of the most eminent personages of the day. His
character appears to have been singularly amiable and disinterested.
His theology is, for the most part, of unsuspected orthodoxy. The
following sentences reveal the bias of his mind in the matter of
_kreophagy_:--

    “With respect to animal diet, let it be considered that taking
    away the lives of [other] animals in order to convert them into
    food, _does great violence to the principles of benevolence and
    compassion_. This appears from the frequent hard-heartedness and
    cruelty found among those persons whose occupations engage them
    in destroying animal life, as well as from the uneasiness which
    others feel in beholding the butchery of [the lower] animals. It
    is most evident, in respect to the larger animals and those with
    whom we have a familiar intercourse--such as Oxen, Sheep, and
    domestic Fowls, &c.--so as to distinguish, love, and compassionate
    individuals. They resemble us greatly in the make of the body in
    general, and in that of the particular organs of circulation,
    respiration, digestion, &c.; also in the formation of their
    intellects, memories, and passions, and in the signs of distress,
    fear, pain, and death. They often, likewise, win our affections by
    the marks of peculiar sagacity, by their instincts, helplessness,
    innocence, nascent benevolence, &c., &c., and, if there be any
    glimmering of hope of an hereafter for them--if they should
    prove to be our _brethren and sisters_ in this higher sense, in
    immortality as well as mortality--in the permanent principle of our
    minds as well as in the frail dust of our bodies--this ought to be
    still further reason for tenderness for them.

    “This, therefore, seems to be nothing else,” he concludes, “than an
    argument to stop us in our career, to make us sparing and tender
    in this article of diet, and put us upon consulting experience
    more faithfully and impartially in order to determine what is most
    suitable to the purposes of life and health, our compassion being
    made, by the foregoing considerations in some measure, a balance to
    our impetuous bodily appetites.”[154]

Dr. Hartley is not the only theologian who has suggested the
possibility or probability of a future life for all or some of the
non-human races. This question we must leave to the theologians. All
that we here remark is, that Hartley is one of the very few amongst his
brethren who have had the consistency and the courage of their opinions
to deduce the inevitable inference.




XXIII.

CHESTERFIELD. 1694-1773.


Notwithstanding his strange self-deception as to the “general order
of nature,” by which he attempted (sincerely we presume) to silence
the better promptings of conscience, the remarkably strong feeling
expressed by Lord Chesterfield gives him some right to notice here.
His early _instinctive_ aversion for the food which is the product
of torture and murder is much better founded, we shall be apt to
believe, than the fallacious sophism by which he seems eventually to
have succeeded in stifling the voices of Nature and Reason in seeking
refuge under the shelter of a superficial philosophy. At all events
his example is a forcible illustration of Seneca’s observation that
the better feelings of the young need only to be evoked by a proper
education to conduct them to a true morality and religion.[155]

As it is we have to lament that he had not the greater light (of
science) of the present time, if, indeed, the “deceitfulness of riches”
would not have been for him, as for the mass of the rich or fashionable
world, the shipwreck of just and rational feeling.

Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield, succeeded to the family title in
1726. High in favour with the new king--George II.--he received the
appointment of Ambassador-extraordinary to the Court of Holland in
1728, and amongst other honours that of the knighthood of the Garter.
In 1745 he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in which post,
during his brief rule, he seemed to have governed with more success
than some of his predecessors or successors. He was soon afterwards a
Secretary of State: ill-health obliged him to relinquish this office
after a short tenure. He wrote papers for _The World_--the popular
periodical of the time--besides some poetical pieces, but he is
chiefly known as an author by his celebrated _Letters to his Son_,
which long served as the text-book of polite society. It contains some
remarks in regard to the relations of the sexes scarcely consonant
with the custom, or at least with the outward code of sexual morals of
the present day. His sentiments upon the subject in question are as
follow:--

    “I remember, when I was a young man at the University, being so
    much affected with that very pathetic speech which Ovid puts into
    the mouth of Pythagoras against the eating of the flesh of animals,
    that it was some time before I could bring myself to our college
    mutton again, with some inward doubt whether I was not making
    myself an accomplice to a murder. My scruples remained unreconciled
    to the committing of so horrid a meal, till upon serious reflection
    I became convinced of its legality[156] from the general order of
    Nature which has instituted the universal preying [of the stronger]
    upon the weaker as one of her first principles: though to me it has
    ever appeared an incomprehensible mystery that she, who could not
    be restrained by any want of materials from furnishing supplies for
    the support of her numerous offspring, should lay them under the
    necessity of devouring one another.[157]

    “I know not whether it is from the clergy having looked upon this
    subject as too trivial for their notice, that we find them more
    silent upon it than could be wished; for as slaughter is at present
    no branch of the priesthood, it is to be presumed that they have as
    much compassion as other men. The _Spectator_ has exclaimed against
    the cruelty of roasting lobsters alive, and of whipping pigs to
    death, but the misfortune is the writings of an Addison are seldom
    read by cooks and butchers. As to the _thinking_ part of mankind,
    it has always been convinced, I believe, that however conformable
    to the _general_ rule of nature our devouring animals may be,
    we are nevertheless under indelible obligation to prevent their
    suffering any degree of pain more than is absolutely unavoidable.

    “But this conviction lies in such heads that I fear _not one
    poor creature in a million has ever fared the better for it_,
    and, I believe, never will: since people of condition, the only
    source from whence [effectual] pity is to flow, are so far from
    inculcating it to those beneath them, that a very few years ago
    they suffered themselves to be entertained at a public theatre
    by the performances of an unhappy company of animals who could
    only have been made actors by the utmost energy of whipcord and
    starving.”[158]

The writer might have instanced still more frightful results of this
insensibility on the part of the influential classes of the community:
nor indeed, the better few always excepted, were he living now could he
present a much more favourable picture of the morals (in this the most
important department of them) of the ruling sections of society.

Ritson supplements the virtual adhesion of Lord Chesterfield to
the principles of Humanity, with some remarks of Sir W. Jones, the
eminent Orientalist, who (protesting against the selfish callousness
of “Sportsmen” and even of “Naturalists” in the infliction of pain)
writes: “I shall never forget the couplet of Ferdusi[159] for which
Sadi,[160] who cites it with applause, pours blessings on his departed
spirit:--

    “Ah! spare yon emmet, rich in hoarded grain:
    He lives with pleasure and he dies with pain.”

To which creditable expression of feeling we would append a word
of astonishment at that very common inconsistency, and failure in
elementary logic, which permits men--while easily and hyperbolically
commiserating the fate of an emmet, a beetle, or a worm--to ignore
the necessarily infinitely greater sufferings of the highly-organised
victims of the _Table_.”




XXIV.

VOLTAIRE. 1694-1778.


Of the life and literary productions of the most remarkable name in
the whole history of literature--if at least we regard the extent and
variety of his astonishing genius, as well as the immense influence,
contemporary and future, of his writings--only a brief outline can
be given here. Yet, as the most eminent humanitarian prophet of the
eighteenth century, the principal facts of his life deserve somewhat
larger notice than within the general scope of this work.

François Marie Arouet--commonly known by his assumed name of
Voltaire--on his mother’s side of a family of position recently
ennobled, was born at Chatenay, near Paris. He was educated at the
Jesuits’ College of Louis XIV., where, it is said, the fathers already
foretold his future eminence. Like many other illustrious writers he
was originally destined for the “Law,” which was little adapted to his
genius, and, like his great prototype, Lucian, and others, he soon
abandoned all thought of that profession for letters and philosophy.
He had the good fortune, at an early age, to gain the favour of the
celebrated Ninon de Lenclos, who left him a legacy of 2,000 livres for
the purchase of a library--an important event which was doubtless the
means of confirming his intellectual bias.

Voltaire’s first literary conceptions were formed in the Bastile, that
infamous representative of despotic caprice, to which some verses of
which he was the reputed author, satirising the licentious extravagance
of the Court of the late king, Louis XIV., had consigned him at the age
of twenty. Soon afterwards appeared the tragedy of _Ædipe_ (founded
upon the well-known dramas of Sophocles), the first modern drama in
which the universal and traditional love scenes were discarded. This
contempt for the conventionalities, however, excited the indignation
of the play-goers, and the _Ædipe_ was, at its first representation,
hissed off the stage. The author found himself forced to sacrifice
to the popular tastes, and his tragedy was received with applause.
Two memorable verses indicated the bias of the future antagonist of
ecclesiastical orthodoxy, and naturally provoked the hostility of the
profession which he had dared so openly to assail:--

    “Nos prêtres ne sont pas ce qu’un vain peuple pense:
    Notre credulité fait toute leur science.”

It was during this imprisonment, too, that he formed the first idea
of the _Henriade_ (or _The League_, as it was originally called),
the only epic poem worthy of the name in the French language. A
chance quarrel with an insolent courtier was the cause of Voltaire’s
second incarceration in the Bastile with, at the end of six months, a
peremptory order to absent himself from the capital. These experiences
of despotic caprice and of sophisticated society he long afterwards
embodied in two of his best romances, _L’Ingénu_ and _Micro-mégas_ (the
“Little-Big Man”), one of the most exquisite productions of Satire.

The youthful victim of these malicious persecutions determined upon
seeking refuge in England, whose freer air had already inspired
Newton, Locke, Shaftesbury, and other eminent leaders of Thought. A
flattering welcome awaited him--and subscriptions to the _Henriade_,
better received here than in France, gratified his pride and filled
his purse. During his sojourn of three years in this country, he made
the most of his time in studying its best literature, and cultivating
the acquaintance of its most eminent living writers. His tragedy of
_Brutus_ was followed by _La Mort de César_ which, from its taint of
liberalism, was not allowed to be printed in France. Upon his return
to Paris he published his _Zaïre_--finished in eighteen days--the first
tragedy in which, deserting the footsteps of Corneille and Racine, he
ventured to follow the bent of his own genius. The plan of _Zaïre_ has
been pronounced to be one of the most perfect ever contrived for the
stage.

More important, by its influence upon contemporary thought, was
his famous _Letters on the English_--a work designed to inform his
countrymen generally of the literature, thought, and political and
theological parties of the rival nation, and, more especially, of the
discoveries of Newton and Locke. Descartes, at this moment supreme
in France, had succeeded to the vacant throne of the so-called
Aristotelian Schoolmen. His system, a great advance upon the old,
broached some errors in physics, amongst others the theory of
“Vortices” to explain the planetary movements. A much more pernicious
and reprehensible error was his absurd denial of conscious feeling
and intelligence to the lower races, which was admirably exposed by
Voltaire in his _Elémens de Newton_ and elsewhere. In England, Newton’s
extraordinary discoveries had already made Descartes obsolete, as far
as the _savans_ were concerned at least, but the French scientific
world still clung, for the most part, to the Cartesian principles. As
for Locke, he had overturned the orthodox creed of “innate ideas,”
supplying instead sensation and reflection. This advocacy of the new
philosophy, added to the success of his tragedies for the theatre,

    “Drew [says Voltaire in his _Mémoires_] a whole library of
    pamphlets down upon me, in which they proved I was a bad poet,
    an atheist, and the son of a peasant. A history of my life was
    printed in which this genealogy was inserted. An industrious German
    took care to collect all the tales of that kind which had been
    crammed into the libel, they had published against me. They imputed
    adventures to me with persons I never knew, and with others who
    never existed. I have found while writing this a letter from the
    Maréchal de Richelieu which informed me of an impudent lampoon
    where it was proved his wife had given me an elegant couch, with
    something else, at a time when he had no wife. At first I took
    some pleasure in making collections of these calumnies, but they
    multiplied to such a degree I was obliged to leave off. Such are
    the fruits I gathered from my labours. I, however, easily consoled
    myself, sometimes in my retreat at Cirey, and at other times in
    mixing with the best society.”

Amongst other subjects the _Lettres_ (a masterpiece of criticism and
sort of essays, since often imitated but seldom or never, perhaps,
equalled in their kind) contains an admirable essay upon the Quakers,
to whom he did justice. He introduces one of them in conversation with
him, thus apologising for his _eccentricities_:

    “Confess that thou hast had some trouble to prevent thyself from
    laughing when I answered all thy civilities with my hat upon my
    head and with thouing and thee-ing thee (_en te tutoyant_). Yet
    thou seemest to me too well informed to be ignorant that, in
    the time of Christ, no nation fell into the ridiculousness of
    substituting the _plural_ for the singular. They used to say to
    Cæsar-Augustus: ‘I love thee,’ ‘I pray thee,’ ‘I thank thee.’ He
    would not allow himself to be called ‘Monsieur’ (_dominus_). It was
    only a long time after him that men thought of causing themselves
    to be addressed as _you_ in place of _thou_, as though they
    were double, and of usurping impertinent titles of grandeur, of
    eminence, of holiness, of divinity even, which earthworms give to
    other earthworms, while assuring them with a profound respect (and
    with an infamous falseness), they are their _very humble and very
    obedient servants_. It is in order to be upon our guard against
    this unworthy commerce of lies and of flatteries that we ‘thee’ and
    ‘thou’ equally kings and kitchen-maids: that we give the ordinary
    compliments to no one, having for men only charity, and reserving
    our respect for the laws. We wear a dress a little different from
    other men, in order that it may be for us a continual warning not
    to resemble them. Others wear marks of their dignities, we those
    of Christian humility. We never use _oaths_, not even in law
    courts: we think that the name of the _Most High_ ought not to be
    pronounced in the miserable debates of men. When we are forced to
    appear before the magistrates on others’ business (for we never
    have law suits ourselves), we affirm the truth by a ‘yes’ or a
    ‘no,’ and the judges believe us upon our simple word, while so many
    other Christians perjure themselves upon the _Gospel_. We never
    go to war. It is not that we fear death, but it is because we are
    neither tigers, nor wolves, nor dogs, but men, but Christians. Our
    God, who has told us to love our enemies and to suffer without a
    murmur, doubtless would not have us cross the sea to go and cut
    the throats of our brothers, because assassins, clothed in red
    and in hats of two feet high, enrol citizens to the accompaniment
    of a noise produced by two little sticks upon the dried skin of
    an ass. And when, after battles won, all London is brilliant with
    illuminations, when the sky is in flames with musket shots, when
    the air re-echoes with sounds of thanksgiving, with bells, with
    organs, with cannons, we groan in silence over the murders which
    cause the public light-heartedness.” (_Lettre II._)

About this period, frequenting less the fashionable and trifling
society of the capital, and contenting himself with the company of a
few congenial minds, he formed amongst others a sympathetic friendship
with the Marquise de Châtelet, a lady of extraordinary talents.

    “I was tired [thus he begins his unfinished _Mémoires_], I was
    tired of the lazy and noisy life led at Paris, of the multitude
    of _petit-maîtres_, of bad books printed with the approbation
    of censors and the privilege of the king, of the cabals and
    parties among the learned, and of the mean arts of plagiarism and
    book-making which dishonour Literature.”

The lady was the equal of Madame Dacier in knowledge of the Greek
and Latin languages, and she was familiar with all the best modern
writers. She wrote a commentary on Leibnitz. She also translated the
_Principia_. Her favourite pursuits, however, were mathematics and
metaphysics.

    “She was none the less fond of the world and those amusements
    familiar to her age and sex. She determined to leave them all and
    bury herself in an old ruinous château on the borders of Champagne
    and Lorraine, situated in a barren and unhealthy soil. This old
    château she ornamented with sufficiently pretty gardens. I built
    a gallery, and formed a very good collection of natural history,
    added to which we had a library not badly furnished. We were
    visited by several of the _savans_, who came to philosophise in our
    retreat.... I taught English to Madame de Châtelet, who, in about
    three months understood it as well as I did, and read Newton, and
    Locke, and Pope, with equal ease. We read all the works of Tasso
    and Ariosto together, so that when Algerotti came to Cirey, where
    he finished his _Newtonianism for Women_, he found her sufficiently
    skilful in his own language to give him some very excellent
    information by which he profited.”

Voltaire had already (1741) given to the world his _Elémens de
Newton_--a work which, in conjunction with other parts of his writings,
proves that had he chosen to apply himself wholly to natural philosophy
or to mathematics he might have reached the highest fame in those
departments of science. It is in the _Elémens_ that Voltaire records
his noble protest at the same time against the monstrous hypothesis of
Descartes, to which we have already referred, and against the selfish
cruelty of our species.

    “There is in man a disposition to compassion as generally diffused
    as his other instincts. Newton had _cultivated_ this sentiment of
    humanity, and he extended it to the lower animals. With Locke he
    was strongly convinced that God has given to them a proportion
    of ideas, and the same feelings which he has to us. He could not
    believe that God, who has made nothing in vain, would have given to
    them organs of feeling _in order that they might have no feeling_.

    “He thought it a very frightful inconsistency to believe that
    animals feel and _at the same time to cause them to suffer_. On
    this point his morality was in accord with his philosophy. _He
    yielded but with repugnance to the barbarous custom of supporting
    ourselves upon the blood and flesh of beings like ourselves_, whom
    we caress, and he never permitted in his own house the putting them
    to death by slow and exquisite [_recherchées_] modes of killing for
    the sake of making the food more delicious. This compassion, which
    he felt for other animals, culminated in true charity for men. In
    truth, _without humanity, a virtue which comprehends all virtues_,
    the name of philosopher would be little deserved.”[161]

At Cirey some of his best tragedies were composed--_Alzire_, _Mérope_,
and _Mehemet_; the _Discours sur l’Homme_, a moral poem in the style of
Pope’s Essays, pronounced to be one of the finest monuments of French
poetry; an _Essay on Universal History_, (for his friend’s use, to
correct as well as supplement Bossuet’s splendid but little philosophic
history), the foundation of perhaps his most admirable production the
_Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations_, and many lesser pieces,
including a large correspondence. Besides these literary works, he
engaged in mathematical and scientific studies, which resulted in some
_brochures_ of considerable value.

About this time (1740) news arrived of the death of Friedrich Wilhelm
of Prussia. Most readers know the extraordinary character of this
strange personage, who caned the women and his clergy in the streets
of his capital, and who was with difficulty dissuaded from ordering
his son’s execution. Narrowly escaping with his life the prince had
devoted himself to literary pursuits, and had kept up a correspondence
with the leading men of letters of France, and above all with the
author of _Zaïre_ whom he regarded as little less than divine. The new
king set about inspecting his territories, and proceeded _incognito_ to
Brussels, where the first interview between the two future most eminent
persons in Europe took place. Repairing to his majesty’s quarters--

    “One soldier was the only guard I found. The Privy-Councillor
    and Minister of State was walking in the court-yard blowing his
    fingers. He had on a large pair of coarse ruffles, a hat all
    in holes, and a judge’s old wig, one side of which hung into
    his pocket and the other scarcely touched his shoulder. They
    informed me that this man was charged with a state affair of
    great importance, and so indeed he was. I was conducted into his
    majesty’s apartments, in which I found nothing but four bare walls.
    By the light of a taper I perceived a small truckle-bed two feet
    and a half wide in a closet, upon which lay a little man wrapped in
    a morning dressing-gown of blue cloth. It was his majesty who lay
    perspiring and shaking beneath a miserable coverlet in a violent
    ague fit. I made my bow, and began my acquaintance by feeling his
    pulse, as if I had been his first physician. The fit left him, and
    he rose, dressed himself, and sat down to table with Algerotti,
    Maupertuis, the ambassador of the States-general, and myself. At
    supper he treated most profoundly of the soul, natural liberty,
    and the _Androgynes_ of Plato. I soon found myself attached to
    him, for he had wit, an agreeable manner, and moreover was a king,
    which is a circumstance of seduction hardly to be vanquished by
    human weakness. Generally speaking, it is the employment of men of
    letters to flatter kings, but in this instance I was praised by
    a king from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet at the
    same time that I was libelled at least once a week by the Abbé
    Desfontaines and other Grub-street poets of Paris.”

Voltaire received a pressing invitation to Berlin.

    “But I had before given him to understand I could not come to stay
    with him; that I deemed it a duty to prefer friendship to ambition;
    that I was attached to Mdlle. de Châtelet, and that, between
    philosophers, I loved a lady better than a king. He approved of the
    liberty I took, though, for his part, he did not love the ladies.
    I went to pay him a visit in October, and the Cardinal de Fleury
    [the French premier] wrote me a long letter, full of praises of the
    _Anti-Machiavel_, and of the author [Friedrich], which I did not
    forget to let him see.”

The French court wished to secure the alliance of Friedrich. No one
seemed a more fitting mediator than his early counsellor, who was
induced to accept the mission, and to set out for Berlin, where an
enthusiastic welcome awaited him, apartments in the palace being
placed at his disposal. Yet, in spite of the success of this and other
public services, his enemies in Paris remained in full possession of
the field. For the second time Voltaire sought admission into the
_Académie_--an empty honour, the granting or refusal of which could
neither add to nor detract from his fame. The prestige of that society,
however, he seemed to consider essential to his safety against the
increasing violence and formidable array of his enemies, who were bent
on crushing him, by whatever means. It was only by submitting to the
mortification of qualifying some of his opinions that he at length
succeeded in his object. Notwithstanding the address with which he
manages his language, it were better, as his biographer--the Marquis de
Condorcet--justly remarks, he had renounced the _Académie_ than have
had the weakness to submit to so evident a farce.

On succeeding to a vacant chair it was customary, besides a eulogy
upon the deceased member, to speak in set terms of praise of Richelieu
and Louis XIV. This traditional and servile practice the new
Academician was the first to break through. Philosophy and literature
were treated of in unaccustomed strains of freedom, and his good
example has been influential on after generations.

    “I was deemed worthy [writes Voltaire] to be one of the forty
    useless members of the _Académie_, was appointed historiographer of
    France, and created by the king one of the gentlemen in ordinary
    of his chamber. From this I concluded it was better, in order to
    make the most trifling fortune, to speak four words to a king’s
    mistress, than to write a hundred volumes.”

A sort of experience he has finely illustrated in his romance of
_Zadig_.

Stanislaus, the ex-king of Poland, was keeping his Court at Luneville,
not far from Cirey, where he divided his time between his mistress and
his confessor. To this royal retreat the friends of Cirey were invited,
and the whole of the year 1749 was passed there. Meanwhile Madame de
Châtelet died, and Voltaire, much affected by his loss, returned to
Paris. Friedrich redoubled his solicitation with new hope.

    “I was destined to run from king to king, although I loved liberty
    to idolatry.... He was well assured that in reality his verse and
    prose were superior to my verse and prose; though as to the former,
    he thought there was a certain something that I, in quality of
    academician, might give to his writings, and there was no kind of
    flattery, no seduction, he did not employ to engage me to come.”

The philosopher at length set out for Berlin, and his reception must
have reached his highest expectations. We have no intention to repeat
the account of this singular episode in his life, which has been
so often narrated. Evenings of the most agreeable kind, abundance
of wit, unrestrained conversation, the society of some of the most
distinguished men of science of the time, the unbounded adoration
of a royal host, eager, above all things, to retain so brilliant a
guest--such were the pleasures of this palace of Alcina, as he calls
it. But the imperious tempers of the two unequal friends soon proved
the impossibility of a lasting _entente_, and rivalries amongst the
literary courtiers hastened, if they did not effect, the final rupture.

After his escape from Berlin Voltaire passed a few weeks with the
Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, “the best of princesses, full of gentleness,
discretion, and equanimity, and who, God be thanked, did not make
verses” (alluding to his late host’s proclivities), and some days with
the Landgrave of Hesse on his way to Frankfort. Literature had not
suffered during the life at Berlin. Finishing touches were put to many
of the tragedies--the _Âge de Louis XIV._ was completed, part of the
_Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations_ written, _La Pucelle_
(the least worthy of all his productions) corrected, and a poem, _Sur
la Loi Naturelle_, composed (a work of a far better inspiration than
the poem just mentioned, but which was publicly burned at Paris by the
misdirected zeal of the bigots). In a later poem on the destruction of
Lisbon, as well as in the romance of _Candide_, fired with indignation
at the hypocrisies and mischiefs of the easy-going creed of Optimism
(as generally understood), so welcome to self-complacent orthodoxy,
he displayed all his vast powers of sarcasm in exposing its fatal
absurdities. Leibnitz had been one of its most strenuous apologists.
In the person of the wretched Pangloss the theory of “the best of
all possible worlds,” and of the “eternal fitness of things,” is
overwhelmed, indeed, with an excess of ridicule. It is to be lamented
that the satirist allowed his _sæva indignatio_ to overpower a
proper sense of the proprieties of language and expression.

Voltaire was now become a potentate more dreaded than a
sovereign-prince on his throne, an object of hatred and terror to
political and other oppressors. After some hesitation he had chosen
for his retreat the ever-memorable Ferney--a place within French
territory, on the borders of Switzerland--and also a spot near Geneva,
where he alternately resided, escaping at pleasure either from Catholic
intolerance or from Puritanic rigour, with his niece--Madame Denis,
who had anxiously attended him during a recent illness. From these
retreats he made himself heard over all Europe in defence of reason and
humanity. It was about this time (1756) that he employed his eloquence
to save Admiral Byng, a victim to ministerial necessities, who was
nevertheless condemned, as his advocate expresses it in _Candide_,
“pour encourager les autres.” A like philanthropic effort, equally
vain, was made on behalf of the still more unfortunate Comte de Lally.

The year 1757 is memorable in literature as that in which he gave
to the world an accurate edition of his already published works,
enriched by one of his most meritorious productions, the _Essai sur
les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations_, which now appeared in its complete
form. History, the author justly complained, had hitherto been but a
uniform chronicle of kings, courts, and court intrigues. The history
of legislation, arts, sciences, commerce, morals, had been always, or
almost always, neglected.

    “We imagine [says Condorcet], while we read such histories, that
    the human race was created only to exhibit the political or
    military talents of a few individuals, and that the object of
    society is not the happiness of the Species but the pleasure of the
    Few.”

If the best historical works of the present day are a considerable
improvement upon those which were in fashion before Voltaire’s
_critiques_, the remarks of Condorcet are not altogether inapplicable
to the popular and school manuals still in vogue. At all events this
style of composing “history,” ridiculed by the wit of Lucian sixteen
centuries before, was the universal method down to the appearance of
the celebrated _Essai_.

Beginning with Charlemagne, it presents, in a rapid, concise, and
philosophic style, the most important and interesting features, not
only of European but of the world’s history, adorned with all the grace
and ease of which he was always so consummate a master. Many there
always are who conceive of philosophy and erudition only as enveloped
in verbosity and obscurity. Dulness and learning in the common mind
are convertible terms. The very transparency and clearness of his
style were reproached to him as a sign of superficiality and want
of exactness--the last faults which could be justly imputed to him.
However, the influence of Voltaire became apparent in the productions
of the English historical school, till then unknown, which soon
afterwards arose. The Italian Vico, and Beaufort, in France, in the
particular branch of Roman antiquity, and Bayle in general, had already
contributed in some degree towards the founding of a critical school;
but these attempts were partial only. To Voltaire belongs the honour
of having applied the principles of criticism at once universally and
popularly.

In reviewing the history and manners of the Hindus he repeatedly
expresses his sympathy, more or less directly, with their aversion from
the coarser living of the West:--

    “The Hindus, in embracing the doctrine of the _Metémpsychosis_, had
    one restraint the more. The dread of killing a father or mother, in
    killing men and other animals, inspired in them a terror of murder
    and every other violence, which became with them a second nature.
    Thus all the peoples of India, whose families are not allied either
    to the Arabs or to the Tartars, are still at this day the mildest
    of all men. Their religion and the temperature of their climate
    made these peoples entirely resemble those peaceful animals whom we
    bring up in our sheep pens and our dove cotes for the purpose of
    cutting their throats at our good will and pleasure....

    “The Christian religion, which these _primitives_ [the Quakers]
    alone follow out to the letter, is as great an enemy to bloodshed
    as the Pythagorean. But the Christian peoples have never practised
    _their_ religion, and the ancient Hindu castes have always
    practised theirs. It is because Pythagoreanism is the only religion
    in the world which has been able to educe a religious feeling from
    the horror of murder and slaughter....

    “Some have supposed the cradle of our race to be Hindustan,
    alleging that the feeblest of all animals must have been born in
    the softest climate, and in a land which produces without culture
    the _most nourishing and most healthful fruits_, like dates and
    cocoa nuts. The latter especially easily affords men the means
    of existence, of clothing and of housing themselves--and of what
    besides has the inhabitant of that Peninsula need?... Our Houses of
    Carnage, which they call Butcher-Shops [_boucheries_], where they
    sell so many carcases to feed our own, would import the plague into
    the climate of India.

    “These peoples need and desire pure and refreshing foods. Nature
    has lavished upon them forests of citron trees, orange trees, fig
    trees, palm trees, cocoa-nut trees, and plains covered with rice.
    The strongest man can need to spend but one or two sous a day for
    his subsistence.[162] Our workmen spend more in one day than a
    Malabar native in a month....

    “In general, the men of the South-East have received from Nature
    gentler manners than the people of our West. Their climate
    disposes them to abstain from strong liquors and from the flesh
    of animals--foods which excite the blood and often provoke
    ferocity--and, although superstition and foreign irruptions have
    corrupted the goodness of their disposition, nevertheless all
    travellers agree that the character of these peoples has nothing of
    that irritability, of that caprice, and of that harshness which it
    has cost much trouble to keep within bounds in the countries of the
    North.”

In noticing the comparative progress of the various foreign religions
in India, Voltaire observes that--

    “The Mohammedan religion alone has made progress in India,
    especially amongst the richer classes, because it is the religion
    of the Prince, and because it teaches but the divine unity
    conformably to the ancient teaching of the first Brahmins.
    Christianity [he adds, only too truly] has not had the same
    success, notwithstanding the large establishments of the
    Portuguese, of the French, of the English, of the Dutch, of the
    Danes. It is, in fact, the conflict of these nations which has
    injured the progress of our Faith. As they all hate each other,
    and as several of them often make war one upon the other in their
    climates, what they teach is naturally hateful to the peaceful
    inhabitants. Their customs, besides, revolt the Hindus. Those
    people are scandalised at seeing us drinking wine and eating flesh,
    which they themselves abhor.”[163]

This--one of the chief obstacles to the spread of Christian
civilisation in the East, and especially in India, viz., the eating of
flesh and the drinking of alcohol, its legitimate attendant--has been
acknowledged by Christian missionaries themselves of late years.

Employed as he was in various literary undertakings he had been
watching with great interest, not, perhaps, without a secret wish
for vengeance, the important political and military complications of
Europe. After some brilliant successes the Prussian king had been
reduced to the last extremity. At this juncture the former friends
agreed to forget, as far as possible, their old quarrel, and Voltaire
enjoyed the satisfaction of having succeeded in dissuading Friedrich
from suicide. The victories of Rosbach and Breslau not long afterwards
changed the condition of things once again. From this time the prince
and the philosopher resumed the name, if not the cordiality, of
friends. A curious accident put the arbitrament of peace and war
for some weeks into the hands of Voltaire. The Prussian king, while
inactive in his fortified camp, wrote, as his custom was, a quantity
of verse and sent the packet to Ferney. Amongst the mass--good, bad,
and indifferent--was a satire on Louis and his mistress. The packet had
been opened before reaching its destination.

    “Had I been inclined to amuse myself, it depended only on me to
    set the King of France and the King of Prussia to war in rhyme,
    which would have been a novel farce on earth. But I enjoyed another
    pleasure--that of being more prudent than Friedrich. I wrote him
    word that his Ode was beautiful, but that he ought not to publish
    it.... To make the pleasantry complete I thought it possible to lay
    the foundation of the peace of Europe on these poetical pieces.
    My correspondence with the Duc de Choiseul [the French Premier]
    gave birth to that idea, and it appeared so ridiculous, so worthy
    of the transactions of the times, that I indulged it, and had the
    satisfaction of proving on what weak and invisible pivots the
    destinies of nations turn.”

Several letters passed between the three before the danger was averted.

The limited space at our disposal will allow us only rapidly to notice
some of the remaining _chefs-d’œuvre_ of Voltaire. The celebrated
_Encyclopédie_, under the auspices of D’Alembert and Diderot, had been
lately commenced. To this great work, to which he looked with some hope
as promising a severe assault on ignorance and prejudice, Voltaire
contributed a few articles. It is not the place here to narrate the
history of the fierce war of words to which the _Encyclopédie_ gave
birth. It was completed in about fifteen years, in 1775--a memorable
year in literature.

    “Several men of letters [thus Voltaire briefly describes the
    project], most estimable by their learning and character, formed
    an association to compose an immense Dictionary of whatever could
    enlighten the human mind, and it became an object of commerce with
    the booksellers. The Chancellor, the Ministry, all encouraged so
    noble an enterprise. Seven volumes had already appeared, and were
    translated into English, German, Dutch, and Italian. This treasure,
    opened by the French to all nations, may be considered as what did
    us most honour at the time, so much were the excellent articles in
    the _Encyclopédie_ superior to the bad, which also were tolerably
    numerous. One had little to complain of in the work, except too
    many puerile declamations unfortunately adopted by the editors, who
    seized whatever came to hand to swell the work. But all which those
    editors wrote themselves was good.”

The article which was particularly selected by the prosecution was
that on the Soul, “one of the worst in the work, written by a poor
doctor of the Sorbonne, who killed himself with declaiming, rightly
or wrongly, against materialism.” The writers, as “encyclopédistes”
and “philosophers” were long marked by those titles for the public
opprobrium. This general persecution had the effect of uniting that
party for common defence. For Voltaire himself an important advantage
was secured. Most of the principal men of letters and science, up to
this time either avowed enemies or coldly-distant friends, henceforward
enrolled themselves under his undisputed leadership.

About the same period he published a number of pieces, prose and
verse, directed against his enemies of various kinds, theatrical as
well as theological. Amongst the latter, conspicuous by their attacks,
but still more so by their punishment, were Fréron and Desfontaines,
whose chastisement was such that, according to Macaulay’s hyperbolic
expression, “scourging, branding, pillorying would have been a trifle
to it.” It is more pleasing, however, to turn from this fierce war of
retaliation, in which neither party was free from blame, to proofs
of the real benevolence of his disposition. We can merely note the
strenuous efforts he made, unsolicited, on behalf of Admiral Byng and
the Comte de Lally, and the still more meritorious labours in the
less well-known histories of Calas and Serven. Not by these public
acts alone did the man, who has been accused of malignity, discover
the humanity of his character: to whose ready assistance in money, as
well as in counsel, the unfortunate of the literary tribe and others
acknowledged their obligations.

His _Philosophie de l’Histoire_, the prototype of its successors
in name at least, was designed to expose that long-established and
prevailing idolatry of Antiquity, which received everything bequeathed
by it with astounding credulity. The _Philosophie_ called forth a
numerous host of small critics, to which men who knew, or ought to
have known better, allied themselves. Their curious way of maintaining
the credit of Antiquity afforded, as may be imagined, the author of
the _Defence of my Uncle_, under which title Voltaire chose to defend
himself, full scope for the exercise of his unrivalled powers of irony.
Warburton, the pedant Bishop of Gloucester, with his odd theories about
the “Divine Legation,” comes in for a share of this Dunciad sort of
immortalisation.

A work of equal merit with the _Philosophie_ are the _Questions_,
addressed to the lovers of science, upon the _Encyclopædia_, wherein,
in the form of a dictionary, he treats, as the Marquis de Condorcet
eloquently describes,

    “Successively of theology, grammar, natural philosophy, and
    literature. At one time he discusses subjects of Antiquity; at
    another questions of policy, legislation, and public economy.
    His style, always animated and seductive, clothed these various
    subjects with a charm hitherto known to himself alone, and which
    springs chiefly from the licence with which, yielding to his
    successive emotions, adapting his style less to his subject than
    to the momentary disposition of his mind, sometimes he spreads
    ridicule over objects which seem capable of inspiring only
    horror, and almost instantaneously hurried away by the energy and
    sensibility of his soul, he vehemently and eloquently exclaims
    against abuses which he had just before treated with mockery. His
    anger is excited by false taste; he quickly perceives that his
    indignation ought to be reserved for interests more important, and
    he finishes by laughing in his usual way. Sometimes he abruptly
    leaves a moral or political discussion for a literary criticism,
    and in the midst of a lesson on taste he pronounces abstract maxims
    of the profoundest philosophy, or makes a sudden and terrible
    attack on fanaticism and tyranny.”

It is with his romances that we are here chiefly concerned, since it is
in those lighter productions of his genius that he has most especially
allowed us to see his opinions upon flesh-eating. In the charming tale
of _The Princess of Babylon_, her attendant _Phœnix_ thus accounts to
his mistress for the silence of his brethren of the inferior races:--

    “It is because men fell into the practice of eating us in place of
    holding converse with and being instructed by us. The barbarians!
    Ought they not to have convinced themselves that, having the same
    organs as they, the same power of feeling, the same wants, the same
    desires, we have what they call _soul_ as well as themselves, that
    we are their brethren, and that only the wicked and bad deserve to
    be cooked and eaten? We are to such a degree your brethren that the
    Great Being, the Eternal and Creative Being, having made a covenant
    with men[164], expressly comprised us in the treaty. He forbad
    _you_ to feed yourselves upon our blood, and _us_ to suck yours.
    The fables of your Lokman, translated into so many languages, will
    be an everlasting witness of the happy commerce which you formerly
    had with us. It is true that there are many women among you who are
    always talking to their Dogs; but they have resolved never to make
    any answer, from the time that they were forced by blows of the
    whip to go hunting and to be the accomplices of the murder of our
    old common friends, the Deer and the Hares and the Partridges. You
    have still some old poems in which Horses talk and your coachmen
    address them every day, but with so much grossness and coarseness,
    and with such infamous words, that Horses who once loved you now
    detest you.... The shepherds of the Ganges, born all equal, are
    the owners of innumerable flocks who feed in meadows that are
    perpetually covered with flowers. They are never slaughtered there.
    It is a horrible crime in the country of the Ganges to kill and eat
    one’s fellows [_semblables_]. Their wool, finer and more brilliant
    than the most beautiful silk, is the greatest object of commerce in
    the Orient.”

A certain king had the temerity to attack this innocent people:--

    “The king was taken prisoner with more than 600,000 men. They
    bathed him in the waters of the Ganges; they put him on the
    salutary _régime_ of the country, which consists in vegetables,
    which are lavished by Nature for the support of all human beings.
    Men, fed upon carnage and drinking strong drinks, have all an
    empoisoned and acrid blood, which drives them mad in a hundred
    different ways. Their principal madness is that of shedding the
    blood of their brothers, and of devastating fertile plains to reign
    over cemeteries.”

Her admirable instructor caused the princess to enter

    “A dining-hall, whose walls were covered with orange-wood. The
    under-shepherds and shepherdesses, in long white dresses girded
    with golden bands, served her in a hundred baskets of simple
    porcelain, with a hundred delicious meats, among which was seen
    no disguised corpse. The feast was of rice, of sago, of semolina,
    of vermicelli, of maccaroni, of omelets, of eggs in milk, of
    cream-cheeses, of pastries of every kind, of vegetables, of fruits
    of perfume and taste of which one has no idea in other climates,
    and a profusion of refreshing drinks superior to the best wines.”

Having occasion to visit the land _par excellence_ of flesh-eaters, and
being entertained at the house of a certain English lord, the hero, the
amiable lover of the princess, is questioned by his host

    “Whether they ate ‘good roast beef’ in the country of the people
    of the Ganges. The Vegetarian traveller replied to him with his
    accustomed politeness that they did not eat their brethren in that
    part of the world. He explained to him the system and diet which
    was that of Pythagoras, of Porphyry, of Iamblichus; whereupon
    _milord_ went off into a sound slumber.”[165]

Amabed, a young Hindu, writes from Europe to his affianced mistress
his impressions of the Christian sacred books and, in particular, of
Christian carnivorousness:--

    “I pity those unfortunates of Europe who have, at the most, been
    created only 6,940 years; while our era reckons 115,652 years [the
    Brahminical computation]. I pity them more for wanting pepper, the
    sugar-cane, and tea, coffee, silk, cotton, incense, aromatics, and
    everything that can render life pleasing. But I pity them still
    more for coming from so great a distance, among so many perils, to
    ravish from us, arms in hand, our provisions. It is said at Calicut
    they have committed frightful cruelties only to procure pepper.
    It makes the Hindu nature, which is in every way different from
    theirs, shudder; their stomachs are carnivorous, they get drunk on
    the fermented juices of the vine, which was planted, they say, by
    their Noah. Father Fa-Tutto [one of the missionaries], polished
    as he is, has himself cut the throats of two little chickens; he
    has caused them to be boiled in a cauldron, and has devoured them
    without pity. This barbarous action has drawn upon him the hatred
    of all the neighbourhood, whose anger we have appeased only with
    much difficulty. May God pardon me! I believe that this stranger
    would have eaten our sacred Cows, who give us milk, if he had
    been allowed to do so. A promise has been extorted from him that
    he will commit no more murders of Hens, and that he will content
    himself with fresh eggs, milk, rice, and our excellent fruits
    and vegetables--pistachio nuts, dates, cocoa nuts, almond cakes,
    biscuits, ananas, oranges, and with everything which our climate
    produces, blessed be the Eternal!”

In another letter to his old Hindu teacher from Rome, whither he had
been induced to go by the missionaries, speaking of the feasts in that
“citadel of the faith,” he writes:--

    “The dining-hall was grand, convenient, and richly ornamented. Gold
    and silver shone upon the sideboards. Gaiety and wit animated the
    guests. But, meantime, in the kitchens blood and fat were streaming
    in one horrible mass; skins of quadrupeds, feathers of birds and
    their entrails, piled up pell-mell, oppressed the heart, and spread
    the infection of fevers.”[166]

That one who hated and denounced injustice of all kinds, and who
sympathised with the suffering of all innocent life, should thus
characterise the cruelty of the Slaughter-House is what we might
naturally look for; as also that he should denounce the kindred and
even worse atrocity of the physiological Laboratory. And it is a
strange and unaccountable fact that, amongst the humanitarians of
his time, he stands apparently alone in condemnation of the secret
tortures of the vivisectionists and pathologists--although, perhaps,
the almost universal silence may be attributable, in part, to the
very secresy of the experiments which only recent vigilance has fully
detected. Exposing the equally absurd and arrogant denial of reason and
intelligence to other animals, and instancing the dog, he proceeds:--

    “There are barbarians who seize this dog, who so prodigiously
    surpasses man in friendship, and nail him down to a table, and
    dissect him alive to shew you the mezaraic veins. You discover
    in him all the same organs of feeling as in yourself. Answer me,
    Machinist [_i.e._, supporter of the theory of mere mechanical
    action], has Nature really arranged all the springs of feeling in
    this animal _to the end that he might not feel_? Has he nerves
    _that he may be incapable_ of suffering? Do not suppose that
    impertinent contradiction in Nature.”[167]

To the final triumph which in Paris awaited this champion of the weak,
at the advanced age of 84, and the unexampled enthusiasm of the people,
and the closing act of his eventful life, we can here merely refer.
In Berlin, Friedrich ordered a solemn mass in the cathedral church in
commemoration of his genius and virtues. A more enduring monument than
any conventional mark of human vanity is the legacy which he left to
posterity, which will last as long as the French language, and, still
more, the humanity embodied in one of his later verses:--

    “J’ai fait un peu de bien, c’est mon meilleur ouvrage.”

The faults of his character and writings which, for the most part, lie
on the surface (one of the most regretable of which was his sometimes
servile flattery of men in power, and the only excuse for which was his
eagerness to gain them over to moderation and justice) will be deemed
by impartial criticism to have been more than counterbalanced by his
real and substantial merits. That he allowed his ardent indignation to
overmaster the sense of propriety in too many instances, in dealing
with subjects which ought to be dealt with in a judicial and serious
manner, is that fault in his writings which must always cause the
greatest regret. In his discourse at his reception by the French
Academy he remarks that “the art of instruction, when it is perfect, in
the long run, succeeds better than the art of sarcasm, because Satire
dies with those who are the victims of it; while Reason and Virtue are
eternal.” It would have been well, in many instances, had he practised
this principle. But, however objectionably his convictions were
sometimes expressed, his ardent love of truth and hatred of injustice
have secured for him an imperishable fame; while Göthe’s estimate of
his intellectual pre-eminence--that he has the greatest name in all
Literature--is not likely soon to be disputed by Posterity.




XXV.

HALLER. 1708-1777.


The founder of Modern Physiology was born at Berne. In 1723 he went
to Tübingen to study medicine, afterwards to Leyden, where the famous
Boerhaave was at the height of his reputation. Twelve years later he
received the appointment of physician to the hospital at Berne; but
soon afterwards he was invited by George II., as Elector of Hanover, to
accept the professorship of anatomy and surgery at the University of
Göttingen.

His scientific writings are extraordinarily numerous. From 1727 to 1777
he published nearly 200 treatises. His great work is his _Elements
of the Physiology of the Human Body_ (in Latin), 1757-1766--the most
important treatise on medical science--or at least on anatomy and
surgery--up to that time produced. The _Icones Anatomicæ_ (“Anatomical
Figures”) is “a marvellously accurate, well-engraved representation of
the principal organs of the human body.” His writings are marked by
unusual clearness of meaning, as well as by accurate and deep research.

We wish that we could here stop; but the force of truth compels us
to affirm that, for us at least, his reputation, great as it is in
science, has been for ever tarnished by his sacrifices--with frightful
torture--of innocent victims on the altars of a selfish and sanguinary
science.

One plea in extenuation of this callousness in regard to the suffering
of other animals, and only one, can be offered in his defence. At this
very moment, after all the humanitarian doctrine that has been preached
during the century since the death of Haller, tortures of the most
cold-blooded kind are being inflicted on tens of thousands of horses,
deer, dogs, rabbits, and others, in all the “laboratories” of Europe;
while he had neither the prolonged experience of the uselessness of
all such unnatural experimentation, of which the vivisectors and
pathologists of our day are in possession, nor the same indoctrination
of a higher morality, which has been the heritage of these latter days.
The scientific barbarity of Haller does not affect the nature of his
physiological testimony, which, it might be presumed, ought to be of
some weight with his disciples and representatives of the present day.
He asserts:--

    “This food, then, that I have hitherto described, in which flesh
    has no part, is salutary; inasmuch as it fully nourishes a man,
    protracts life to an advanced period, and prevents or cures such
    disorders as are attributable to the acrimony or the grossness of
    the blood.”[168]




XXVI.

COCCHI. 1695-1758.


It might justly provoke expression of feeling stronger than that of
astonishment, when we have to record that in South Europe (where
climate and soil unite to recommend and render a _humane_ manner of
living[169] still more easy than in our colder regions) the followers,
or, at all events, the prophets of the Reformed Diet have been
conspicuously few. Since, by the _à fortiori_ argument, if abundant
experience and teaching have proved it to be more conducive to health
in higher latitudes, much more is it evident that it must be fitting
for the people of those parts of the globe nearer to the Equator.

Italy, which has produced Seneca, Cornaro, and Cocchi, is
less obnoxious to the reproach of indifferentism in this most
vitally-important branch of ethics than the western peninsula. But the
“paradise of Europe” has yet to deserve the more glorious title of
“the paradise of Peace,” and to atone (if, indeed, it be possible) for
the cruel shedding of innocent, and in an especial degree superfluous,
blood.

An eminent professor of medicine and of surgery, Antonio Cocchi
distinguished himself also as a philologist. He was born at Benevento.
Before giving himself up to the practice of medicine he devoted several
years to the study of the old and the modern languages of Europe. His
knowledge of English helped to bring him into contact with many men
of science in England, some of whom he met on his visit to London.
Returning to Italy he was named Professor of Medicine at Pisa. He
soon left that University for Florence, where he held the chair of
Anatomy as well as of Philosophy. To him Florence was indebted for its
Botanical Society, with which, in conjunction with Micheli, he endowed
it.

He was a voluminous writer.[170] His _Greek Surgical Books_[171]
contain valuable extracts from the Greek writers on medicine
and surgery not before published. Amongst other writings may
be distinguished his _Treatise on the Use of Cold Baths by the
Ancients_.[172] The treatise which gives him a place in this work was
published at Florence under the title of _The Pythagorean Diet: for the
Use of the Medical Faculty_.[173]

Dr. Cocchi begins his little treatise with a eulogy and defence of the
great reformer of Samos, and of his radical revolution in food. He
cites the Greek and Latin writers, and especially the earlier Roman
Laws, the Fannian and the Licinian. He proceeds:--

    “True and constant vigour of body is the effect of health, which
    is much better preserved with watery, herbaceous, frugal, and
    tender food, than with _vinous_, abundant, hard, and gross flesh
    (_che col carneo vinoso ed unto abundante e duro_). And in a sound
    body, a clear intelligence, and desire to suppress the mischievous
    inclinations (_voglie dannose_), and to conquer the irrational
    passions, produces true worth.”

Cocchi cites the examples of the Greeks and of the Romans as proof that
the non-flesh diet does not diminish courage or strength:--

    “The vulgar opinion, then, which, on health reasons, condemns
    vegetable food and so much praises animal food, being so
    ill-founded, I have always thought it well to oppose myself to it,
    moved both by experience and by that refined knowledge of natural
    things which some study and conversation with great men have given
    me. And perceiving now that such my constancy has been honoured by
    some learned and wise physicians with their authoritative adhesion
    (_della autorevole sequela_), I have thought it my duty publicly
    to diffuse the reasons of the Pythagorean diet, regarded as useful
    in medicine, and, at the same time, as full of innocence, of
    temperance, and of health. And it is none the less accompanied with
    a certain delicate pleasure, and also with a refined and splendid
    luxury (_non è privo nemmeno d’una certa delicate voluttà e d’un
    lusso gentile e splendido ancora_), if care and skill be applied in
    selection and proper supply of the best vegetable food, to which
    the fertility and the natural character of our beautiful country
    seem to invite us. For my part I have been so much the more induced
    to take up this subject, because I have persuaded myself that I
    might be of service to intending diet-reformers, there not being,
    to my knowledge, any book of which this is the sole subject, and
    which undertakes exactly to explain the origin and the reasons of
    it.”

His special motive to the publication of his treatise, however, was to
vindicate the claims of the reformer of Samos upon the gratitude of
men:--

    “I wished to show that Pythagoras, the first founder of the
    vegetable regimen, was at once a very great physicist and a very
    great physician; that there has been no one of a more cultured
    and discriminating humanity; that he was a man of wisdom and of
    experience; that his motive in commending and introducing the new
    mode of living was derived not from any extravagant superstition,
    but from the desire to improve the health and the manners of
    men.”[174]




XXVII.

ROUSSEAU. 1712-1778.


Few lives of writers of equal reputation have been exposed to our
examination with the fulness and minuteness of the life of this the
most eloquent name in French literature. With the exception of the
great Latin father, St. Augustine, no other leader of thought, in
fact, has so entirely revealed to us his inner life, his faults and
weaknesses (often sufficiently startling), no less than the estimable
parts of his character, and we remain in doubt whether more to lament
the infirmities or to admire the candour of the autobiographer.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, son of a Genevan tradesman, had the misfortune
to lose his mother at a very early age. It is to this want of maternal
solicitude and fostering care that some of the errors in his after
career may perhaps be traced. After a short experience of school
discipline he was apprenticed to an engraver, whose coarse violence
must injuriously have affected the nervous temperament of the sensitive
child. Ill-treatment forced him to run away, and he found refuge with
Mde. de Warens, a Swiss lady, a convert to Catholicism, who occupies a
prominent place in the first period of his _Confessions_. Influenced
by her kindness, and by the skilful arguments of his preceptors at the
college at Turin, where she had placed him, the young Rousseau (like
Bayle and Gibbon, before and after him, though from a different motive)
abjured Protestantism, and, for the moment, accepted, or at least
professed, the tenets of the old Orthodoxy. Dismissed from the college
because he refused to take orders, he engaged himself as a domestic
servant or valet. He did not long remain in this position, and he
resought the protection of his friend Mde. de Warens at Chambéry. His
connexion with his too indulgent patroness terminated in the year 1740.
For some years after this his life was of a most erratic, and not
always edifying, kind. We find him employed in teaching at Lyons, and
at another time acting as secretary to the French Embassy at Venice. In
1745 he came to Paris. There he earned a living by copying music. About
this time he met with Therèse Levasseur, the daughter of his hostess,
with whom he formed a lasting but unhappy connexion.

It was in 1748, at the age of 36, that he made the acquaintance, at
the house of Mde. d’Epinay, of the editors of the _Encyclopédie_,
D’Alembert and Diderot, who engaged him to write articles on music
and upon other subjects in that first of comprehensive dictionaries.
His first independent appearance in literature was in his essay on
the question, “Whether the progress of science and of the arts has
been favourable to the morals of mankind,” in which paradoxically he
maintains the negative. It was the eloquence, we must suppose, rather
than the reasoning, which gained him the prize awarded by the Académie
of Dijon. His next production--a more important one--was his _Discours
sur l’Inegalité parmi les Hommes_ (“Discourse upon Inequality amongst
Men”). In this treatise--the prelude to his more developed _Contrat
Social_--Rousseau affirms the paradox of the _natural_ school, as it
may be termed, which alleged the state of nature--the life of the
uncivilised man--to be the ideal condition of the species. His thesis
that all men are born with equal rights takes a much more defensible
position. In this _Discours_ diet is assigned its due importance in
relation to the welfare of communities.

The romance of _Julie: ou la Nouvelle Héloise_, which excited
an unusual amount of interest, appeared in 1759. _Emile: ou de
l’Education_, was given to the world three years later. It is the most
important of his writings. In the education of Emile, or Emilius, he
propounds his ideas upon one of the most interesting subjects which
can engage attention--the right training of the young. The earlier
part of the book is almost altogether admirable and useful. The later
portion is more open to criticism, although not upon the grounds upon
which was founded the hostility of the authorities of the day who
unjustly condemned the book as irreligious and immoral. Rousseau begins
with laying down the principles of a new and more rational method of
rearing infants, agreeing, in many particulars, with the system of
his predecessor, Locke. At least some of his protests against the
unnatural treatment of children were not altogether in vain. Mothers
in fashionable ranks of life began to recognise the mischief arising
from the common practice of putting their infants out to nurse in
place of suckling them themselves. They began also to abandon the
absurd custom of confining their limbs in mummy-like bandages. Nor,
though long in bearing adequate fruit, were his denunciations of the
barbarous severity of parents and schoolmasters without some result. He
insists upon the incalculable evils of inoculating the young, according
to the almost universal custom, with superstitious beliefs and fancies
which grow with the growth of the recipient until they become radically
fixed in the mind as by a natural development. Most important of all
his innovations in education, and certainly the most heretical, is his
recommendation of a pure dietary.

The publication of his treatise on education brought down a storm
of persecution and opprobrium upon the author. The _Contrat Social_
(in which he seemed to aim at subverting the political and social
traditions, as he had in _Emile_ the educational prejudices of the
venerated Past) appearing soon afterwards added fuel to the flames.
Rousseau found himself forced to flee from Paris, and he sought shelter
in the territory of Geneva. But the authorities, unmindful of the old
reputation of the land of freedom, refusing him an asylum, he proceeded
to Neuchâtel, then under Prussian rule, where he was well received.
From this retreat he replied to the attacks of the Archbishop of Paris,
and addressed a letter to the magistrates of Geneva renouncing his
citizenship. He also published _Letters Written from the Mountain_,
severely criticising the civil and church government of his native
canton. These acts did not tend to conciliate the goodwill of the
rulers of the people with whom he had taken refuge. At this moment an
object of dislike to all the Continental sovereign powers, he gladly
embraced the offer of David Hume to find him an asylum in England. The
social and political revolutionist arrived in London in 1766, and took
up his residence in a village in Derbyshire. He did not remain long in
this country, his irritable temperament inducing him too hastily to
suspect the sincerity of the friendship of his host.

The next eight years of his life were passed in comparative obscurity,
and in migrating from one place to another in the neighbourhood of
Paris. In his solitude gardening and botanising occupied a large part
of his leisure hours. It was at this period he made the acquaintance of
Bernardin St. Pierre, his enthusiastic disciple, and immortalised as
the author of _Paul et Virginie_. His end came suddenly. He had been
settled only a few months in a cottage given him by one of his numerous
aristocratic friends and admirers, when one morning, feeling unwell, he
requested his wife to open the window that he “might once more look on
the lovely verdure of the fields,” and as he was expressing his delight
at the exquisite beauty of the scene and of the skies he fell forward
and instantly breathed his last. At his special request his place of
burial was chosen on an island in a lake in the Park of Ermondville, a
fitting resting-place for one of the most eloquent of the high priests
of Nature.

His character (as we have already remarked) is revealed in his
_Confessions_--which was written, in part, during his brief exile
in England. It, as well as his other productions, shews him to us
as a man of extraordinary sensibility, which, in regard to himself,
occasionally degenerated into a sort of disease or, in popular
language, _morbidness_ (a word, by the way, constantly abused by the
many who seem to excuse their own insensibility to surrounding evils
by stigmatising with that vague expression the acuter feeling of the
few), which sometimes assumed the appearance of partial unsoundness of
mind. This it was that caused him to suspect and quarrel with his best
friends, and which, we may suppose, led him, in his minute dissection
of himself, to exaggerate his real moral infirmities.

In summing up his personal character we shall perhaps impartially judge
him to have been, on the whole, amiable rather than admirable, of good
impulses, and of a naturally humane disposition, cultivated by reading
and reflection, but to have been wanting in firmness of mind and in
that virtue so much esteemed in the school of Pythagoras--self control.
His philosophy is distinguished rather by refinement than by vigour or
depth of thought.

It is in the education of the young that Rousseau exerts his eloquence
to enforce the importance of a non-flesh diet:--

    “One of the proofs that the taste of flesh is not natural to man
    is the indifference which children exhibit for that sort of meat,
    and the preference they all give to vegetable foods, such as
    milk-porridge, pastry, fruits, &c. It is of the last importance
    not to _denaturalise_ them of this primitive taste (_de ne pas
    dénaturer ce goût primitif_), and not to render them carnivorous,
    if not for health reasons, at least _for the sake of their
    character_. For, however the experience may be explained, it is
    certain that great eaters of flesh are, in general, more cruel and
    ferocious than other men. This observation is true of all places
    and of all times. English coarseness is well known.[175] The
    Gaures, on the contrary, are the gentlest of men. All savages are
    cruel, and it is not their morals that urge them to be so; this
    cruelty proceeds _from their food_. They go to war as to the chase,
    and treat men as they do bears. Even in England the butchers are
    not received as legal witnesses any more than surgeons.[176] Great
    criminals harden themselves to murder by drinking blood.[177] Homer
    represents the _Cyclopes_, who were flesh-eaters, as frightful
    men, and the Lotophagi [Lotus-eaters] as a people so amiable that
    as soon as one had any dealing with them one straightway forgot
    everything, even one’s country, to live with them.”

Rousseau, in a free translation, here quotes a considerable part of
Plutarch’s _Essay_. He insists, especially, that children should be
early accustomed to the pure diet:--

    “The further we remove from a natural mode of living the more
    do we lose our natural tastes; or rather habit makes a _second_
    nature, which we substitute to such a degree for the first that
    none among us any longer knows what the latter is. It follows from
    this that the most simple tastes must also be the most natural,
    for they are those which are most easily changed, while by being
    sharpened and by being irritated by our whims they assume a form
    which never changes. The man who is yet of no country will conform
    himself without trouble to the customs of any country whatever,
    but the man of one country never becomes that of another. This
    appears to me true in every sense, and still more so applied to
    taste properly so-called. Our first food was milk. We accustom
    ourselves only by degrees to strong flavours. At first they are
    repugnant to us. Fruits, vegetables, kitchen herbs, and, in fine,
    often broiled dishes, without seasoning and without salt, composed
    the feasts of the first men. The first time a savage drinks wine
    he makes a grimace and rejects it; and even amongst ourselves,
    whoever has lived to his twentieth year without tasting fermented
    drinks, cannot afterwards accustom himself to them. We should all
    be abstinents from alcohol if we had not been given wines in our
    early years. In fine, the more simple our tastes are the more
    universal are they, and the most common repugnance is for made-up
    dishes. Does one ever see a person have a disgust for water or
    bread? Behold here the impress of nature! Behold here, then, our
    rule of life. Let us preserve to the child as long as possible his
    primitive taste; let its nourishment be common and simple; let not
    its palate be familiarised to any but natural flavours, and let
    no exclusive taste be formed.... I have sometimes examined those
    people who attached importance to _good living_, who thought, upon
    their first awaking, of what they should eat during the day, and
    described a dinner with more exactitude than Polybius would use
    in describing a battle. I have thought that all these so-called
    men were but children of forty years without vigour and without
    consistence--_fruges consumere nati_.[178] Gluttony is the vice of
    souls that have no solidity (_qui n’ont point d’étoffe_). The soul
    of a gourmand is in his palate. He is brought into the world but to
    devour. In his stupid incapacity he is at home only at his table.
    His powers of judgment are limited to his dishes. Let us leave him
    in his employment without regret. Better that for him than any
    other, as much for our own sakes as for his.”[179]

In the _Julie: ou la Nouvelle Heloise_ he describes his heroine as
preferring the innocent feast:--

    “Although luxurious in her repasts she likes neither flesh-meat nor
    ragoûts. Excellent vegetable dishes, eggs, cream, fruits--these
    constitute her ordinary food; and, excepting fish, which she likes
    as much, she would be a true Pythagorean.”[180]

Although he was not a thorough or consistent abstainer, Rousseau speaks
with enthusiasm of the pleasures of his frugal repasts, in which,
it seems, when he was not seduced by the sumptuous dinners of his
fashionable admirers, flesh, as a rule, had no part:--

    “Who shall describe, who shall understand, the charm of these
    repasts, composed of a quartern loaf, of cherries, of a little
    cheese, and of a half-pint of wine, which we drank together.
    Friendship, confidence, intimacy, sweetness of soul, how delicious
    are your seasonings!”[181]




XXVIII.

LINNÉ. 1707-1778.


Karl von Linné, or (according to the antiquated fashion of _Latinising_
eminent names still retained) Linnæus, the distinguished Swedish
naturalist, and the most eminent name in botanical literature, in a
notable manner arrived at his destined immortality in spite of friends
and fortune. Prophecies do not always fulfil themselves, and the
estimate of his teachers that he was a hopeless “blockhead,” and the
prediction that he would be of no intellectual worth in the world (they
had advised his parents to apprentice him to a handicraft trade), are
a conspicuous instance of the falsification of prophecy. After one
year’s course of study at the University of Lund--where he had access
to a good library and collections of natural history--he proceeded to
the University of Upsala. There, upon an allowance by his father of £8
a year to meet all his expenses of living, he struggled desperately
against the almost insuperable obstacles of extreme poverty, which
forced him often to reduce his diet to one meal during the day. He was
then at the age of 20. At length, by the hospitable friendship of the
professor of botany, and a small income derived from a few pupils,
Linné found himself free to devote himself to the great labour of his
life. It was in the house of his host (Rudbeck) that he sketched the
subject-matter of the important works he afterwards published. In 1731
he was commissioned by his university to explore the vegetable life
of Lapland. Within the space of five months he traversed alone, and
with slender provision, some 4,000 miles. The result of this laborious
expedition was his _Flora Laponica_.

Three years later, with the sum of fifteen pounds, which he had with
great difficulty gathered together, he set out in search of some
university where he might obtain the necessary degree of doctor in
medicine at the least outlay, in order to gain a living by the practice
of physic. He found the object of his search in Holland. In that
country he met with a hospitable reception. During his residence in
Holland he came over to England, and visited the botanical collections
at Oxford and Eltham, with which the Swedish _savant_, it seems, had
not much reason to be satisfied. Returning to Sweden, he began practice
as a physician at the age of 31, and he lectured, by Government
appointment, upon botany and mineralogy at Stockholm. His fame had now
become European. He was in correspondence with some of the most eminent
scientific men throughout the world. Books and collections were sent to
him from every quarter, and his pupils supplied him with the results
of their explorations in the three continents. He was elected to the
Professorship of Medicine at Upsala, and (a vain addition to his real
titles) he was soon afterwards “ennobled.”

The productions of his genius and industry during the twenty years
from 1740 were astonishingly numerous. Besides his _Systema Naturæ_
and _Species Plantarum_, his two most considerable works, he wrote a
large number of dissertations, afterwards collected under the title of
_Amœnitates Academicæ_--“Academic Delights.” Everything he wrote was
received with the greatest respect by the scientific world. Upon his
death the whole University of Upsala united in showing respect to his
memory; sixteen doctors of medicine, old pupils, bearing the “pall,”
and a general mourning was ordered throughout the land of his birth.

The scientific merits of Linné are his exactness and conciseness in
classification. He reduced to something like order the chaotic and
pedantic systems of his predecessors, which were prolix and overladen
with names and classes. If the science still labours under the stigma
of needless pedantry, the fault lies not with himself, but with his
successors. Linné’s evidence to the scientific truth of Vegetarianism
is brief but _pregnant_:--

    “This species of food [fruits and farinacea] is that which _is most
    suited_ to man, as is proved by the series of quadrupeds, analogy,
    wild men, apes, the structure of the mouth, of the stomach, and of
    the hands.”[182]




XXIX.

BUFFON. 1707-1788.


An eminent instance of perversity of logic--of which, by the way, the
history of human thought supplies too many examples--is that of the
well-known author of the _Histoire Naturelle_, a work which (highly
interesting as it is, and always will be, by reason of the detailed
and generally accurate delineation of the characters and habits of the
various forms of animated nature, and by reason of the graces of style
of that French classic) is, from a strictly scientific point of view,
of not always the most reliable authority. Although Buffon has depicted
as forcibly as well can be conceived the low position in Nature of
the carnivorous tribes, and not a few of the evils arising from human
addiction to carnivorousness, yet, by a strange perversion of the facts
of comparative physiology, he has chosen to enlist himself amongst the
apologists of that degenerate mode of living. But facts are stronger
than prejudices, and his very candid _admissions_, which we shall here
quote, speak sufficiently for themselves:--

    “Man [says he] knows how to use, as a master, his power over
    [other] animals. He has selected those whose flesh _flatters his
    taste_. He has made domestic slaves of them. He has multiplied them
    more than Nature could have done. He has formed innumerable flocks,
    and by the cares which he takes in propagating them he _seems_[183]
    to have acquired the right of sacrificing them for himself. But he
    extends that right _much beyond_ his needs. For, independently of
    those species which he has subjected, and of which he disposes at
    his will, he makes war also upon wild animals, upon birds, upon
    fishes. He does not even limit himself to those of the climate
    he inhabits. He seeks at a distance, even in the remotest seas,
    new meats, and entire Nature seems scarcely to suffice for his
    intemperance and the inconsistent variety of his appetites.

    “_Man alone consumes and engulfs more flesh than all other animals
    put together. He is, then, the greatest destroyer, and he is
    so more by abuse than by necessity._ Instead of enjoying with
    moderation the resources offered him, in place of dispensing them
    with equity, in place of repairing in proportion as he destroys,
    of renewing in proportion as he annihilates, the rich man makes
    all his boast and glory in _consuming_, all his splendour in
    destroying, in one day, at his table, more material (_plus de
    biens_) than would be necessary for the support of several
    families. He abuses equally other animals and his own species, the
    rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only
    to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable
    vanity of this human being who, _destroying others by want,
    destroys himself by excess_.

    “And yet Man might, like other animals, live upon vegetables.
    _Flesh is not a better nourishment than grains or bread._ What
    constitutes true nourishment, what contributes to the nutrition,
    to the development, to the growth, and to the support of the body,
    is not that brute matter which, to our eyes, composes the texture
    of flesh or of vegetables, but it is those organic molecules which
    both contain; since the ox, in feeding on grass, acquires as much
    flesh as man or as animals who live upon flesh and blood.... The
    essential source is the same; it is the same matter, it is the same
    organic molecules which nourish the Ox, Man, and all animals....
    It results from what we have just said that Man, whose stomach
    and intestines are not of a very great capacity relatively to the
    volume of his body, could not live simply upon grass. Nevertheless
    _it is proved by facts that he could well live upon bread,
    vegetables, and the grains of plants_, since we know entire nations
    and classes of men to whom religion forbids to feed upon anything
    that has life.”

To the ordinary apprehension all this might seem _primâ facie_
conclusive evidence of the non-necessariness of the food of the
richer classes of the community. But, unhappily, Buffon seems to have
considered himself as holding a brief to defend his clients, the
flesh-eaters, in the last resort, and, accordingly, in spite of these
admissions, which to an unbiassed mind might appear conclusive argument
for the relinquishment of flesh as food, he proceeds to contradict
himself by adding:--

    “But these examples, supported even by the authority of Pythagoras
    [and he might have added many later names of equal authority], and
    recommended by some physicians too friendly to a reformed diet
    (_trop amis de diète!_), appear to me not sufficient to convince us
    that it would be for the advantage of human health (_qu’il y eût à
    gagner pour la santè des hommes_) and for the multiplication of the
    human species to live upon vegetables and bread only, for so much
    the stronger reason, that the poor country people, whom the luxury
    of the cities and towns and the extravagant waste of tables reduce
    to this mode of living, languish and die off sooner than persons
    of the middle class, to whom inanition and excess are equally
    unknown!”[184]

In stigmatising, in the following sentence, the cruel rapacity of the
lower carnivorous tribes, Buffon consciously or unconsciously stamps
the same stigma upon the carnivorous human animal:--

    “_After Man_, the animals who live only upon flesh are the greatest
    destroyers. They are at once the enemies of Nature and the rivals
    of Man.”[185]




XXX.

HAWKESWORTH. 1715-1773.


Best known as the editor of _The Adventurer_--a periodical in imitation
of the _Spectator_, _Rambler_, &c.--which appeared twice a week during
the years 1752-54. Johnson, Warton, and others assisted him in this
undertaking, which has the honour of being one of the first periodicals
which have ventured to denounce the cruel barbarism of “Sport,” and the
papers by Hawkesworth upon that subject are in striking contrast with
the usual tone and practice of his contemporaries and, indeed, of our
own times.

In 1761 he published an edition of Swift’s writings, with a life which
received the praise of Samuel Johnson (in his _Lives of the Poets_),
and it is a passage in that book which entitles him to a place here.
In 1773 he was entrusted by the Government of the day with the task
of compiling a history of the recent voyages of Captain Cook. He also
translated the _Aventures de Télémaque_ of Fénélon. The coarseness
and repulsiveness of the dishes of the common diet seldom have been
stigmatised with greater force than by Dr. Hawkesworth. His expressions
of abhorrence are conceived quite in the spirit of Plutarch:--

    “Among other dreadful and disgusting images which Custom has
    rendered familiar, are those which arise from eating animal food.
    He who has ever turned with abhorrence from the skeleton of a
    beast which has been picked whole by birds or vermin, must confess
    that _habit_ alone could have enabled him to endure the sight of
    the mangled bones and flesh of a dead carcase which every day
    cover his table. And he who reflects on the _number_ of lives that
    have been sacrificed to sustain his own, should enquire by _what_
    the account has been balanced, and whether his life is become
    proportionately of more value by the exercise of virtue and by the
    superior happiness which he has communicated to [more] reasonable
    beings.”[186]




XXXI.

PALEY. 1743-1805.


With the exception of Joseph Butler, perhaps the ablest and most
interesting of English orthodox theologians. As one of the very few
of this numerous class of writers who seem seriously to be impressed
with the difficulty of reconciling orthodox _dietetics_ with the higher
moral and religious instincts, Paley has for social reformers a title
to remembrance, and it is as a moral philosopher that he has a claim
upon our attention.

The son of a country curate, Paley began his career as tutor in an
academy in Greenwich. He had entered Christ’s College, Cambridge,
as “sizar.” Being senior wrangler of his year, he was afterwards
elected a Fellow of his college. His lectures on moral philosophy at
the University contained the germs of his most useful writing. After
the usual previous stages, finally he received the preferment of the
Archdeaconry of Carlisle. The failure of the most eminent of the modern
apologists of dogmatic Christianity to attain the highest rewards of
ecclesiastical ambition, and the refusal of George III. to promote
“pigeon” Paley when it was proposed to that reactionary prince to make
so skilful a controversialist a bishop--a refusal founded on the famous
apology for monarchy in the _Moral and Political Philosophy_--is well
known.

The most important, by far, of his writings, is the _Elements of
Moral and Political Philosophy_ (1785). He founds moral obligation
upon principles of utility. In politics he asserts the grounds of the
duties of rulers and ruled to be based upon the same far-reaching
consideration, and upon this principle he maintains that as soon
as any Government has proved itself corrupt or negligent of the
public good, whatever may have been the alleged legitimacy of its
original authority, the right of the governed to put an end to it is
established. “The final view of all national politics,” he affirms,
“is [ought to be] to produce the greatest quantity of happiness.”
The comparative boldness, indeed, of certain of his disquisitions
on Government alarmed not a little the political and ecclesiastical
dignitaries of the time. His adhesion to the programme of Clarkson and
the anti-slavery “fanatics” (as that numerically insignificant band of
reformers was styled) did not tend, it may be presumed, to counteract
the damaging effects of his political philosophy.

In his _Natural Theology_ (1802), his best theological production, he
labours to establish the fact of benevolent design from observation
of the various phenomena of nature and life. Whatever estimate may be
formed of the success of this undertaking, there can be no question
of the ability and eloquence of the accomplished pleader; and the
book proves him, at least, to have acquired a surprising amount
of physiological and anatomical knowledge. It is justly described
by Sir J. Mackintosh as “the wonderful work of a man who, after
sixty, had studied anatomy in order to write it.” Of the _Evidences_
(1790-94)--the most popularly known of his writings--the considerable
literary merit is in somewhat striking contrast, in regard to clearness
and simplicity of style, with the ordinary productions of the
evidential school.

We are concerned now with the _Moral and Political Philosophy_. It
has been already stated that it is based upon the principles of
utilitarianism. As for personal moral conduct, he justly considered it
to be vastly influenced by early custom; or, as he expresses it, the
art of life consists in the right “setting of our habits.”

On the subjoined examination of the question of the lawfulness or
otherwise of flesh-eating, his ultimate refuge in an alleged biblical
authority (forced upon him, apparently, by the necessity of his
position rather than by personal inclination) confirms rather than
weakens his preceding candid _admissions_, which sufficiently establish
our position:--

    “A right to the flesh of animals. This is a _very different claim_
    from the former [‘a right to the fruits or vegetable produce of
    the earth’]. _Some_ excuse seems necessary for the pain and loss
    which we occasion to [other] animals by restraining them of their
    liberty, mutilating their bodies, and, at last, putting an end to
    their lives for our pleasure or convenience.

    “The reasons alleged in vindication of this practice are the
    following--that the several species of animals being created to
    prey upon one another[187] affords a kind of analogy to prove that
    the human species were intended to feed upon them; that, if let
    alone, they would overrun the earth, and exclude mankind from the
    occupation of it;[188] that they are requited for what they suffer
    at our hands by our care and protection.

    “Upon which reasons I would observe that the analogy contended
    for _is extremely lame_, since [the carnivorous] animals have no
    power to support life by any other means, and _since we have, for
    the whole human species might subsist entirely upon fruit, pulse,
    herbs, and roots, as many tribes of Hindus[189] actually do_. The
    two other reasons may be valid reasons, as far as they go, for,
    no doubt, if men had been supported entirely by vegetable food a
    great part of those animals who die to furnish our tables would
    never have lived[190] but they by no means justify our right over
    the lives of other animals to the extent to which we exercise it.
    What danger is there, _e.g._, of fish interfering with us in the
    occupation of their element, or what do we contribute to their
    support or preservation?

    “_It seems to me that it would be difficult to defend this right
    by any arguments which the light and order of Nature afford_, and
    that we are beholden for it to the permission recorded in Scripture
    (_Gen._ ix., 1, 2, 3). To Adam and his posterity had been granted,
    at the creation, ‘every green herb for meat,’ and nothing more.
    In the last clause of the passage now produced the old grant is
    recited and extended to the flesh of animals--‘even as the green
    herb, have I given you all things.’ But this was not until after
    the Flood. The inhabitants of the antediluvian world had therefore
    no such permission that we know of. Whether they actually refrained
    from the flesh of animals is another question. Abel, we read, was
    a keeper of sheep, and for what purpose he kept them, except for
    food, is difficult to say (unless it were sacrifice). Might not,
    however, some of the stricter sects among the antediluvians be
    scrupulous as to this point? And might not Noah and his family
    be of this description? For, it is not probable that God should
    publish a permission to authorise a practice which had never been
    disputed.”[191]

Thus far as regards the _moral_ aspect of the subject. Dealing with the
social and economical view, Paley, untrammelled by professional views,
is more decided. In his chapter, _Of Population and Provision, &c._, he
writes:--

    “The natives of Hindustan being confined, by the laws of their
    religion, to the use of vegetable food, and requiring little except
    rice, which the country produces in plentiful crops; and food, in
    warm climates, composing the only want of life, these countries are
    populous under all the injuries of a despotic, and the agitations
    of an unsettled, Government. If any revolution, or what would be
    called perhaps _refinement of manners (!)_, should generate in
    these people a taste for the flesh of animals, similar to what
    prevails amongst the Arabian hordes--should introduce flocks and
    herds into grounds which are now covered with corn--should teach
    them to account a certain portion of this species of food amongst
    the necessaries of life--the population from this single change
    would suffer in a few years a great diminution, and this diminution
    would follow in spite of every effort of the laws, or even of any
    improvement that might take place in their civil condition. In
    Ireland the simplicity of living alone maintains a considerable
    degree of population under great defects of police, industry,
    and commerce.... Next to the mode of living, we are to consider
    ‘the quantity of provision suited to that mode, which is either
    raised in the country or imported into it,’ for this is the order
    in which we assigned the causes of population and undertook to
    treat of them. Now, if we measure the quantity of provision by the
    number of human bodies it will support in due health and vigour,
    this quantity, the extent and quality of the soil from which it
    is raised being given, will depend greatly upon the _kind_. For
    instance, a piece of ground capable of supplying animal food
    sufficient for the subsistence of ten persons _would sustain, at
    least, the double of that number with grain, roots, and milk_.

    “The first resource of savage life is in the flesh of wild animals.
    Hence the numbers amongst savage nations, compared with the tract
    of country which they occupy, are universally small, because this
    species of provision is, of all others, supplied in the slenderest
    proportion. The next step was the invention of pasturage, or the
    rearing of flocks and herds of tame animals. This alteration
    added to the stock of provision much. But the last and _principal
    improvement was to follow, viz., tillage, or the artificial
    production of corn, esculent plants, and roots_. This discovery,
    whilst it changed the quality of human food, augmented the quantity
    in a vast proportion.

    “So far as the state of population is governed and limited by
    the quantity of provision, perhaps there is no single cause that
    affects it so powerfully as the kind and quality of food which
    chance or usage hath introduced into a country. In England,
    notwithstanding the produce of the soil has been of late
    considerably increased by the enclosure of wastes and the adoption,
    in many places, of a more successful husbandry, yet we do not
    observe a corresponding addition to the number of inhabitants, the
    reason of which appears to me to be the more general consumption
    of animal food amongst us. Many ranks of people whose ordinary
    diet was, in the last century, prepared almost entirely from milk,
    roots, and vegetables, now require every day a considerable portion
    of the flesh of animals. _Hence a great part of the richest lands
    of the country are converted to pasturage._ Much also of the
    bread-corn, which went directly to the nourishment of human bodies,
    now only contributes to it by fattening the flesh of sheep and
    oxen. _The mass and volume of provisions are hereby diminished_,
    and what is gained in the amelioration of the soil is lost in the
    quality of the produce.

    “This consideration teaches us that tillage, as an object of
    national care and encouragement, is universally preferable to
    pasturage, because the kind of provision which it yields goes
    much farther in the sustentation of human life. Tillage is also
    recommended by this additional advantage--that it _affords
    employment to a much more numerous peasantry_. Indeed pasturage
    seems to be the art of a nation, either imperfectly civilised, as
    are many of the tribes which cultivate it in the internal parts
    of Asia, or of a nation, like Spain, declining from its summit by
    luxury and inactivity.”[192]

Elsewhere Paley asserts that “luxury in dress or furniture is
universally preferable to luxury _in eating_, because the articles
which constitute the one are more the production of human art and
industry than those which supply the other.”




XXXII.

ST. PIERRE. 1737-1814.


Principally known as the author of the most charming of all idyllic
romances--_Paul et Virginie_. Beginning his career as civil engineer
he afterwards entered the French army. A quarrel with his official
superiors forced him to seek employment elsewhere, and he found it
in the Russian service, where his scientific ability received due
recognition.

Encouraged by the esteem in which he was held, he formed the project
of establishing a colony on the Caspian shores, which should be under
just and equal laws. St. Pierre submitted the scheme to the Russian
Minister, who, as we should be apt to presume, did not receive it too
favourably. He then went to Poland in the vain expectation of aiding
the people of that hopelessly distracted country in throwing off the
foreigners’ yoke. Failing in this undertaking, and despairing, for
the time, of the cause of freedom, we next find him in Berlin and
in Vienna. He had also previously visited Holland, in which great
refuge of freedom he had been received with hospitality. In Paris,
upon his return to France, his project of a free colony found better
reception than in St. Petersburg--owing, perhaps, to the not altogether
disinterested sympathy of the Government with the recently revolted
American colonies. To further his plans he accepted an official post in
the Ile de France, intending eventually to proceed to Madagascar, where
was to be realised his long-cherished idea. On the voyage he discovered
that his associates had formed a very different design from his
own--to engage in the slave traffic. Separating from these nefarious
speculators, he landed in the Ile de France, where he remained two
years. It is to the experiences of this part of his life that we owe
his _Paul et Virginie_, the scenes of which are laid in that tropical
island.

Returning home once again, he made the acquaintance of D’Alembert
and of other leading men of letters in Paris, and, particularly,
of Rousseau, his philosophical master. At the period of the Great
Revolution of 1789, St. Pierre lost his post as superintendent of the
Royal Botanical Gardens under the old Bourbon Government, and he found
himself reduced to poverty; and although his sympathies were with the
party of constitutional, though not of radical, reform, the supremacy
of the extreme revolutionists (1792-1794) exposed him to some hazard by
reason of his known deistic convictions. Upon the establishment of the
reactionary revolution of the Empire, St. Pierre recovered his former
post, and, with the empty honour of the Imperial Cross, he received the
more solid benefit of a pension and other emoluments.

His writings have been collected and published in two quarto volumes
(Paris, 1836). Of these, after his celebrated romance, perhaps the most
popular is _La Chaumière Indienne_ (“The Indian or Hindu Cottage”). His
principal productions are _Etudes de la Nature_ (“Studies of Nature”),
_Vœux d’un Solitaire_ (“Aspirations of a Recluse”), _Voyage à L’Ile
de France_ (“Voyage to Mauritius”), and _L’Arcadie_ (“Arcadia”).
His merits consist in a certain refinement of feeling, in charming
eloquence in description of natural beauty, and in the humane spirit
which breathes in his writings. Of the _Paul et Virginie_ he tells us--

    “I have proposed to myself great designs in that little work....
    I have desired to reunite to the beauty of Nature, as seen in the
    tropics, the moral beauty of a small society of human beings. I
    proposed to myself thereby to demonstrate several great truths;
    amongst others this--that our happiness consists in living
    according to Nature and Virtue.”

He assures us that the principal characters and events he describes
are by no means only the imaginings of romance. In truth, it seems
difficult to believe that the genius of the author alone could have
impressed so wonderful an air of reality upon merely fictitious scenes.
The popularity of the story was secured at once in the author’s own
country, and it rapidly spread throughout Europe. _Paul et Virginie_
was successively translated into English, Italian, German, Dutch,
Polish, Russian, and Spanish. It became the fashion for mothers to give
to their children the names of its hero and heroine, and well would
it have been had they also adopted for them that method of innocent
living which is the real, if too generally unrecognised, secret of the
fascinating power of the book.

It is thus that he eloquently calls to remembrance the _natural_ feasts
of his young heroine and hero:--

    “Amiable children! thus in innocence did you pass your first days.
    How often in this spot have your mothers, pressing you in their
    arms, thanked Heaven for the consolation you were preparing for
    them in their old age, and for the happiness of seeing you enter
    upon life under so happy auguries! How often, under the shadow
    of these rocks, have I shared, with them, your out-door repasts
    _which had cost no animals their lives_. Gourds full of milk, of
    newly-laid eggs, of rice cakes upon banana leaves, baskets laden
    with potatoes, with mangoes, with oranges, with pomegranates,
    with bananas, with dates, with ananas, offered at once the most
    wholesome meats, the most beautiful colours, and the most agreeable
    juices. The conversation was as refined and gentle as their food.”

The humaneness of their manners had attracted to the charming arbour,
which they had formed for themselves, all kinds of beautiful birds,
who sought there their daily meals and the caresses of their human
protectors. Our readers will not be displeased to be reminded of this
charming scene:--

    “Virginie loved to repose upon the slope of this fountain, which
    was decorated with a pomp at once magnificent and wild. Often
    would she come there to wash the household linen beneath the shade
    of two cocoa-nut trees. Sometimes she led her goats to feed in this
    place; and, while she was preparing cheese from their milk, she
    pleased herself in watching them as they browsed the herbage upon
    the precipitous sides of the rocks, and supported themselves in
    mid-air upon one of the jutting points as upon a pedestal. Paul,
    seeing that this spot was loved by Virginie, brought from the
    neighbouring forest the nests of all sorts of birds. The fathers
    and mothers of these birds followed their little ones, and came
    and established themselves in this new colony. Virginie would
    distribute to them from time to time grains of rice, maize, and
    millet. As soon as she appeared, the blackbirds, the _bengalis_,
    whose flight is so gentle, the cardinals, whose plumage is of the
    colour of fire, quitted their bushes; parroquets, green as emerald,
    descended from the neighbouring lianas, partridges ran along under
    the grass--all advanced pell-mell up to her feet like domestic
    hens. Paul and she delighted themselves with their transports of
    joy, with their eager appetites, and with their loves.”

In his views upon national education, St. Pierre invites the serious
attention of legislators and educators to the importance of accustoming
the young to the nourishment prescribed by Nature:--

    “They [the true instructors of the people] will accustom children
    to the vegetable _régime_. The peoples living upon vegetable foods,
    are, of all men, the handsomest, the most vigorous, the least
    exposed to diseases and to passions, and they whose lives last
    longest. Such, in Europe, are a large proportion of the Swiss. The
    greater part of the peasantry who, in every country, form the most
    vigorous portion of the people, eat very little flesh-meat. The
    Russians have multiplied periods of fasting and days of abstinence,
    from which even the soldiers are not exempt; and yet they resist
    all kinds of fatigues. The negroes, who undergo so many hard blows
    in our colonies, live upon manioc, potatoes, and maize alone. The
    Brahmins of India, who frequently reach the age of one hundred
    years, eat only vegetable foods. It was from the Pythagorean sect
    that issued Epaminondas, so celebrated by his virtues; Archytas,
    by his genius for mathematics and mechanics; Milo of Crotona, by
    his strength of body. Pythagoras himself was the finest man of his
    time, and, without dispute, the most enlightened, since he was the
    father of philosophy amongst the Greeks. Inasmuch as the non-flesh
    diet introduces many virtues and excludes none, it will be well to
    bring up the young upon it, since it has so happy an influence upon
    the beauty of the body and upon the tranquility of the mind. This
    regimen prolongs childhood, and, by consequence, human life.[193]

    “I have seen an instance of it in a young Englishman aged fifteen,
    and who did not appear to be twelve years of age. He was of a most
    interesting figure, of the most robust health, and of the most
    sweet disposition. He was accustomed to take very long walks. He
    was never put out of temper by any annoyance that might happen. His
    father, Mr. Pigott, told me that he had brought him up entirely
    upon the Pythagorean regimen, the good effects of which he had
    known by his own experience. He had formed the project of employing
    a part of his fortune, which was considerable, in establishing
    in English America a society of dietary reformers who should be
    engaged in educating, under the same regimen, the children of
    the colonists in all the arts which bear upon agriculture. Would
    that this educational scheme, worthy of the best and happiest
    times of Antiquity, might succeed! Physically, it suits a warlike
    people no less than an agricultural one. The Persian children, of
    the time of Cyrus, and by his orders, were nourished upon bread,
    water, and vegetables.... It was with these children, become men,
    that Cyrus made the conquest of Asia. I observe that Lycurgus
    introduced a great part of the physical and moral regimen of the
    Persian children into the education of those of the Lacedemonians.”
    (_Etudes._)[194]

       *       *       *       *       *

Of the many practical witnesses of this period, more or less
interesting, for the sufficiency, or rather superiority, of the
reformed regimen, four names stand out in prominent relief--Franklin,
Howard, Swedenborg, Wesley--prominent either for scientific ability or
for philanthropic zeal. To his early resolution to betake himself to
frugal living, Benjamin Franklin, then in a printer’s office in Boston,
attributes mainly his future success in life.[195]

It was to his pure dietary that the great Prison Reformer assigns
his immunity, during so many years, from the deadly jail-fever, to
the infection of which he fearlessly exposed himself in visiting
those hotbeds of _malaria_--the filthy prisons of this country and of
continental Europe. (See the correspondence of John Howard--_passim_.)
Equally significant is the testimony of the eminent founder of
Methodism whose almost unexampled energy and endurance, both of mind
and body, during some fifty years of continuous persecution, both legal
and popular, were supported (as he informs us in his _Journals_) mainly
by abstinence from gross foods; while, in regard to Emanuel Swedenborg,
if abstinence does not assume so prominent a place in his theological
or other various writings as might have been expected from his special
opinions, the cause of such silence must be referred not to personal
addiction to an _anti-spiritualistic_ nourishment (for he himself was
notably frugal) but to preoccupation of mental faculties which seem to
have been absorbed in the elaboration of his well-known spiritualistic
system.

The limits of this work do not permit us to quote all the many writers
of the eighteenth century whom philosophy, science, or profounder
feeling urged _incidentally_ to question the necessity or to suspect
the barbarism of the Slaughter-House. But there are two names, amongst
the highest in the whole range of English philosophic literature, whose
expression of opinion may seem to be peculiarly noteworthy--the author
of the _Wealth of Nations_ and the historian of the _Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire_.

    “It may, indeed, be doubted [writes the founder of the science of
    Political Economy] whether butchers’ meat is _anywhere_ a necessary
    of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese,
    and butter, or oil (where butter is not to be had), it is known
    from experience, can, _without any butchers’ meat, afford the most
    plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most
    invigorating diet_.”[196]

As for the reflections of the first of historians, who seems always
carefully to guard himself from the expression of any sort of
emotion not in keeping with the character of an impartial judge and
unprejudiced spectator, but who, on the subject in question, cannot
wholly repress the _natural_ feeling of disgust, they are sufficiently
significant. Gibbon is describing the manners of the Tartar tribes:--

    “The thrones of Asia have been repeatedly overturned by the
    shepherds of the North, and their arms have spread terror and
    devastation over the most fertile and warlike countries of Europe.
    On this occasion, as well as on many others, the sober historian is
    forcibly awakened from a pleasing vision, and is compelled, with
    some reluctance, to confess that the pastoral manners, which have
    been adorned with the fairest attributes of peace and innocence,
    are much better adapted to the fierce and cruel habits of a
    military life.

    “To illustrate this observation, I shall now proceed to consider a
    nation of shepherds and of warriors in the three important articles
    of (1) their diet, (2) their habitations, and (3) their exercises.
    1. The corn, or even the rice, which constitutes the ordinary
    and wholesome food of a civilised people, can be obtained only
    by the patient toil of the husbandman. Some of the happy savages
    who dwell between the tropics are plentifully nourished by the
    liberality of Nature; but in the climates of the North a nation
    of shepherds is reduced to their flocks and herds. The skilful
    practitioners of the medical art will determine (if they are able
    to determine) how far the temper of the human mind may be affected
    by the use of animal or of vegetable food; and whether the common
    association of carnivorous and cruel deserves to be considered
    in any other light than that of an innocent, perhaps a salutary,
    prejudice of humanity. Yet if it be true that the sentiment of
    compassion is imperceptibly weakened by the sight and practice of
    domestic cruelty, we may observe that _the horrid objects which
    are disguised by the arts of European refinement_ are exhibited in
    their naked and most disgusting simplicity in the tent of a Tartar
    shepherd. The Oxen or the Sheep are slaughtered by the same hand
    from which they were accustomed to receive their daily food, and
    the bleeding limbs are served, with very little preparation, on the
    table of their unfeeling murderers.”[197]

To the poets, who claim to be the interpreters and priests of
Nature, we might, with justness, look for celebration of the
anti-materialist living. Unhappily we too generally look in vain.
The prophet-poets--Hesiod, Kalidâsa, Milton, Thomson, Shelley,
Lamartine--form a band more noble than numerous. Of those who, not
having entered the very sanctuary of the temple of humanitarianism,
have been content to officiate in its outer courts, Burns and Cowper
occupy a prominent place. That the latter, who felt so keenly

          “The persecution and the pain
    That man inflicts on all inferior kinds
    Regardless of their plaints,”

and who has denounced with so eloquent indignation the pitiless wars
“waged with defenceless innocence,” and the protean shapes of human
selfishness, should yet have stopped short of the _final_ cause of
them all, would be inexplicable but for the blinding influence of
habit and authority. Nevertheless, his picture of the savagery of
the Slaughter-House, and of some of its associated cruelties, is too
forcible to be omitted:

                “To make him sport,
    To justify the phrensy of his wrath,
    _Or his base gluttony_, are causes good
    And just, in his account, why bird and beast
    Should suffer torture, and the stream be dyed
    With blood of their inhabitants impaled.
    Earth groans beneath the burden of a war
    Waged with defenceless Innocence: while he,
    _Not satisfied to prey on all around,
    Adds tenfold bitterness to death by pangs
    Needless, and first torments ere he devours_.
    Now happiest they who occupy the scenes
    The most remote from his abhorred resort.

           *       *       *       *       *

                Witness at his feet
    The Spaniel dying for some venial fault,
    Under dissection of the knotted scourge:
    _Witness the patient Ox, with stripes and yells
    Driven to the slaughter, goaded as he runs
    To madness, while the savage at his heels
    Laughs at the frantic sufferer’s fury spent
    Upon the heedless passenger o’erthrown_.
    He, too, is witness--noblest of the train
    Who waits on Man--the flight-performing Horse:
    With unsuspecting readiness he takes
    His murderer on his back, and, pushed all day,
    With bleeding sides, and flanks that heave for life,
    To the far-distant goal arrives, and dies!
    So little mercy shows, who needs so much!
    Does Law--so jealous in the cause of Man[?]--
    Denounce no doom on the delinquent? None.”[198]




XXXIII.

OSWALD. 1730-1793.


Amongst the less known prophets of the new Reformation the author
of the _Cry of Nature_--one of the most eloquent appeals to justice
and right feeling ever addressed to the conscience of men--deserves
an honourable place. Of the facts of his life we have scanty record.
He was a native of Edinburgh. At an early age he entered the English
army as a private soldier, but his friends soon obtained for him
an officer’s commission. He went to the East Indies, where he
distinguished himself by his remarkable courage and ability. He did not
long remain in the military life; and, having sold out, he travelled
through Hindustan to inform himself of the principles of the Brahmin
and Buddhist religions of the peninsula, whose dress as well as milder
manners he assumed upon his return to England.

During his stay in this country he uniformly abstained from all
flesh meats, and so great, we are told, was his abhorrence of the
Slaughter-House, that, to avoid it or the butcher’s shop, he was
accustomed to make a long _détour_. His children were brought up in
the same way. In 1790, like some others of the more enthusiastic
class of his countrymen, he espoused the cause of the Revolution, and
went to Paris. By introducing some useful military reforms he gained
distinction amongst the Republicans, and he received an important post.
He seems to have fallen, with his sons, fighting in La Vendée for the
National Cause.

The author, in his preface, tells us that--

    “Fatigued with answering the inquiries and replying to the
    objections of his friends with respect to the singularity of his
    mode of life, he conceived that he might consult his ease by
    making, once for all, a public apology for his opinions.... The
    author is very far from entertaining a presumption that his slender
    labours (crude and imperfect as they are now hurried to the press)
    will ever operate an effect on the public mind; and yet, when
    he considers the natural bias of the human heart to the side of
    mercy,[199] and observes, on all hands, the barbarous governments
    of Europe giving way to a better system of things, he is inclined
    to hope that the day is beginning to approach when the growing
    sentiment of peace and goodwill towards men will also embrace, in a
    wide circle of benevolence, the lower orders of life.

    “At all events, the pleasing persuasion that his work may have
    contributed to _mitigate_ the ferocities of prejudice, and to
    _diminish_, in some degree, the great mass of misery which
    oppresses the lower animal world, will, in the hour of distress,
    convey to the author’s soul a consolation which the tooth of
    calumny will not be able to empoison.”

A noble and true inspiration nobly and eloquently used! The arguments,
by which he attempts to reach the better feeling of his readers, are
drawn from the deepest source of morality. Having given a beautiful
picture of the tempting and alluring character of Fruits, he exclaims
in his poetic-prose:--

    “But far other is the fate of animals. For, alas! when they are
    plucked from the tree of Life, suddenly the withered blossoms of
    their beauty shrink to the chilly hand of Death. Quenched in his
    cold grasp expires the lamp of their loveliness, and struck by
    the livid blast of loathed putrefaction, their comely limbs are
    involved in ghastly horror. Shall we leave the living herbs to
    seek, in the den of death, an obscene aliment? Insensible to the
    blooming beauties of Pomona--unallured by the fragrant odours that
    exhale from her groves of golden fruits--unmoved by the nectar of
    Nature, by the ambrosia of innocence--shall the voracious vultures
    of our impure appetites speed along those lovely scenes and alight
    in the loathsome sink of putrefaction to devour the remains of
    other creatures, to load with cadaverous rottenness a wretched
    stomach?”

He repeats Porphyry’s appeal to the consideration of human interests
themselves--

    “And is not the human race itself highly interested to prevent the
    habit of spilling blood? For, will the man, habituated to violence,
    be nice to distinguish the vital tide of a quadruped from that
    which flows from a creature with two legs? Are the dying struggles
    of a Lamb less affecting than the agonies of any animal whatever?
    Or, will the ruffian who beholds unmoved the supplicatory looks
    of innocence itself, and, reckless of the Calf’s infantine cries,
    pitilessly plunges in her quivering side the murdering knife, will
    he turn, I say, with horror from human assassination?

    ‘What more advance can mortals make in sin,
    So near perfection, who with blood begin?
    Deaf to the calf who lies beneath the knife,
    Looks up, and from the butcher begs her life.
    Deaf to the harmless kid who, ere he dies,
    All efforts to procure thy pity tries,
    And imitates, in vain, thy children’s cries.
    Where will he stop?’

    “From the practice of slaughtering an innocent animal of another
    species to the murder of man himself the steps are neither many nor
    remote. This our forefathers perfectly understood, who ordained
    that, in a cause of blood, no butcher should be permitted to sit in
    jury....

    “But from the nature of the very human heart arises the strongest
    argument in behalf of the persecuted beings. Within us there
    exists a rooted repugnance to the shedding of blood, a repugnance
    which yields only to Custom, and which even the most inveterate
    custom can seldom entirely overcome. Hence the ungracious task of
    shedding the tide of life (for the gluttony of the table) has, in
    every country, been committed to the lowest class of men, and their
    profession is, in every country, an object of abhorrence.

    “They feed on the carcass without remorse, because the dying
    struggles of the butchered victim are secluded from their
    sight--because his cries pierce not their ears--because his
    agonising shrieks sink not into their souls. But were they forced,
    with their own hands, to assassinate the beings whom they devour,
    who is there among us who would not throw down the knife with
    detestation, and, rather than embrue his hands in the murder of
    the lamb, consent for ever to forego the accustomed repast? What
    then shall we say? Vainly planted in our breast is this abhorrence
    of cruelty--this sympathetic affection for innocence? Or do
    the feelings of the heart point to the command of Nature more
    unerringly than all the elaborate subtlety of a set of men who, at
    the shrine of science, have sacrificed the dearest sentiments of
    humanity?”

This eloquent vindicator of the rights of the oppressed of the
non-human races here addresses a scathing rebuke to the torturers
of the vivisection-halls, as well as to those who abuse Science by
attempting to enlist it in the defence of slaughter.

    “You, the sons of modern science, who court not Wisdom in her
    walks of silent meditation in the grove--who behold her not in
    the living loveliness of her works, but expect to meet her in the
    midst of obscenity and corruption--you, who dig for knowledge in
    the depths of the dunghill, and who expect to discover Wisdom
    enthroned amid the fragments of mortality and the abhorrence of
    the senses--you, that with cruel violence interrogate trembling
    Nature, who plunge into her maternal bosom the butcher-knife, and,
    in quest of your nefarious science, delight to scrutinise the
    fibres of agonising beings, you dare also to violate the human
    form, and holding up the entrails of men, you exclaim, ‘Behold the
    bowels of a carnivorous animal!’ Barbarians! to these very bowels
    I appeal against your cruel dogmas--to these bowels which Nature
    hath sanctified to the sentiments of pity and of gratitude, to the
    yearnings of kindred, to the melting tenderness of love.

                          ‘Mollissima corda
    Humano generi dare se Natura fatetur,
    Quæ _lachrymas_ dedit: hæc nostri pars optima sensus.’[200]

    “Had Nature intended man to be an animal of prey, would she have
    implanted in his breast an instinct so adverse to her purpose?...
    Would she not rather, in order to enable him to brave the piercing
    cries of anguish, have wrapped his ruthless heart in ribs of brass,
    and with iron entrails have armed him to grind, without shadow of
    remorse, the palpitating limbs of agonising life? But has Nature
    winged the feet of men with fleetness to overtake the flying prey?
    And where are his fangs to tear asunder the beings destined for
    his food? Does the lust of carnage glare in his eye-balls? Does he
    scent from afar the footsteps of his victim? Does his soul pant for
    the feast of blood? Is the bosom of men the rugged abode of bloody
    thoughts, and from the den of Death rush forth, at sight of other
    animals, his rapacious desires to slay, to mangle, and to devour?

    “But come, men of scientific subtlety, approach and examine with
    attention this dead body. It was late a playful Fawn, who skipping
    and bounding on the bosom of parent Earth, awoke in the soul of
    the feeling observer a thousand tender emotions. But the butcher’s
    knife has laid low the delight of a fond mother, and the darling
    of Nature is now stretched in gore upon the ground. Approach, I
    say, men of scientific subtlety, and tell me, does this ghastly
    spectacle whet your appetite? But why turn you with abhorrence?
    Do you then yield to the combined evidence of your senses, to
    the testimony of conscience and common sense; or with a show of
    rhetoric, pitiful as it is perverse, will you still persist in your
    endeavour to persuade us that to murder an innocent being is not
    cruel nor unjust, and that to feed upon a corpse is neither filthy
    nor unfitting?”

Amid the dark scenes of barbarism and cold-blooded indifferentism
to suffering innocence, there are yet the glimmers of a better
nature, which need but the life-giving impulse of a true religion and
philosophy:--

    “And yet those channels of sympathy for inferior animals, long--a
    very long--custom has not been able altogether to stifle. Even now,
    notwithstanding the narrow, joyless, and hard-hearted tendency of
    the prevailing superstitions; even now we discover, in every corner
    of the globe, some good-natured _prejudice_ in behalf of [certain
    of] the persecuted animals; we perceive, in every country, certain
    privileged animals, whom even the ruthless jaws of gluttony dare
    not to invade. For, to pass over unnoticed the vast empires of
    India and of China, where the lower orders of life are considered
    as relative parts of society, and are protected by the laws and
    religion of the natives,[201] the Tartars abstain from several
    kinds of animals; the Turks are charitable to the very dog, whom
    they abominate; and even the English peasant pays towards the
    _red-breast_ an inviolable respect to the rights of hospitality.

    “Long after the perverse practice of devouring the flesh of animals
    had grown into inveterate habit among peoples, there existed still
    in almost every country, and of every religion, and of every sect
    of philosophy, a wiser, a purer, and more holy class of men who
    preserved by their institutions, by their precepts, and by their
    example, the memory of primitive innocence [?] and simplicity. The
    Pythagoreans abhorred the slaughter of any animal life; Epicurus
    and the worthiest part of his disciples bounded their delights with
    the produce of their garden; and of the first Christians several
    sects abominated the feast of blood, and were satisfied with the
    food which Nature, unviolated, brings forth for our support....

    “Man, in a state of nature, is not, apparently, much superior to
    other animals. His organisation is, without doubt, extremely happy;
    but then the dexterity of his figure is counterpoised by great
    advantages in other beings. Inferior to the Bull in force, and in
    fleetness to the Dog, the _os sublime_, or erect front, a feature
    he bears in common with the Monkey, could scarcely have inspired
    him with those haughty and magnificent ideas which the pride of
    human refinement thence endeavours to deduce. Exposed, like his
    fellow-creatures, to the injuries of the air, urged to action by
    the same physical necessities, susceptible of the same impressions,
    actuated by the same passions, and equally subject to the pains of
    disease and to the pangs of dissolution, the simple savage never
    dreams that his nature was so much more noble, or that he drew his
    origin from a purer source or more remote than the other animals in
    whom he saw a resemblance so complete.

    “Nor were the simple sounds by which he expressed the singleness
    of his heart at all fitted to flatter him into that fond sense
    of superiority over the beings whom the unreasoning insolence of
    cultivated ages absurdly styles _mute_. I say absurdly styles
    _mute_; for with what propriety can that name be applied, for
    example, to the little sirens of the groves, to whom Nature has
    granted the strains of ravishment--the soul of song? Those charming
    warblers who pour forth, with a moving melody which human ingenuity
    vies with in vain, their loves, their anxiety, their woes. In
    the ardour and delicacy of his amorous expressions, can the most
    impassioned, the most respectful, human lover surpass the ‘glossy
    kind,’ as described by the most beautiful of all our poets?

    “And, indeed, has not Nature given to almost every being the same
    spontaneous signs of the various affections? Admire we not in other
    animals whatever is most eloquent in man--the tremor of desire, the
    tear of distress, the piercing cry of anguish, the pity-pleading
    look--expressions which speak to the soul with a feeling which
    words are feeble to convey?”

The whole of the little book of which the above extracts are properly
representative, breathes the spirit of a true religion. We shall only
add that it exhibits almost as much learning and valuable research as
it exhibits justness of thought and sensibility--enriched, as it is, by
copious illustrative notes.[202]




XXXIV.

HUFELAND. 1762-1836.


Not entitled to rank among the greater prophets who have had the
penetration to recognise the _essential_ barbarism, no less than the
unnaturalness, of Kreophagy (disguised, as it is, by the arts of
civilisation), this most popular of all German physicians, with the
Cornaros and Abernethys, may yet claim considerable merit as having, in
some degree, sought to stem the tide of unnatural living, which, under
less gross forms indeed than those of the darker ages of dietetics,
and partially concealed in the refinements of Art, is more difficult
to be resisted by reason of its very disguise. If the renaissance of
Pythagorean dietetics had already dawned for the deeper thinkers,
the age of science and of reason, as regards the mass of accredited
teachers, was yet a long way off; and to all pioneers, even though they
failed to clear the way entirely, some measure of our gratitude is due.

Christian Wilhelm Hufeland is one of the most prolific of medical
writers. Having studied medicine at Jena and at Gottingen he took the
degree of doctor in 1783. At Jena he occupied a professorial chair
(1793), and came to Berlin five years later, where he was entrusted
with the superintendence of the Medical College. Both as practical
physician and as professor, Hufeland attained a European reputation.
The French Academy of Sciences elected him one of its members. His
numerous writings have been often reprinted in Germany. Among the most
useful are: (1) _Popular Dissertations upon Health_ (Leipsig, 1794);
(2) _Makrobiotik: oder die Kunst das Menschliche Leben zu Verlängern_
(Jena, 1796), a celebrated work which has been translated into all
the languages of Europe[203]; (3) _Good Advice to Mothers upon the
most Important Points of the Physical Education of Children in the
First Years_ (Berlin, 1799); (4) _History of Health, and Physical
Characteristics of our Epoch_ (Berlin, 1812)[204]. Of Hufeland’s
witness to the general superiority of the _Naturgemässe Lebensweise_
the following sentences are sufficiently representative:

    “The more man follows Nature and obeys her laws the longer will he
    live. The further he removes from them (_je weiter er von ihnen
    abweicht_) the shorter will be his duration of existence....
    Only inartificial, simple nourishment promotes health and long
    life, while mixed and rich foods but shorten our existence.... We
    frequently find a very advanced old age amongst men who from youth
    upwards have lived, for the most part, upon the vegetable diet,
    and, perhaps, have never tasted flesh.”[205]




XXXV.

RITSON. 1761-1830.


Known to the world generally as an eminent antiquarian and, in
particular, as one of the earliest and most acute investigators of
the sources of English romantic poetry, for future times his best and
enduring fame will rest upon his at present almost forgotten Moral
Essay upon Abstinence--one of the most able and philosophical of the
ethical expositions of anti-kreophagy ever published.

His birthplace was Stockton in the county of Durham. By profession a
conveyancer, he enjoyed leisure for literary pursuits by his income
from an official appointment. During the twenty years from 1782 to 1802
his time and talents were incessantly employed in the publication of
his various works, antiquarian and critical. His first notable critique
was his _Observations_ on Warton’s _History of English Poetry_, in the
shape of a letter to the author (1782), in which his critical zeal
seems to have been in excess of his literary amenity. Of other literary
productions may be enumerated his _Remarks on the Commentators of
Shakspere_; _A Select Collection of English Songs, with a Historical
Essay on the Origin and Progress of National Songs_ (1783); _Ancient
Songs from the Time of King Henry III. to the Revolution_ (1790),
reprinted in 1829--perhaps the most valuable of his archæological
labours; _The English Anthology_ (1793); _Ancient English Metrical
Romances_, and _Bibliographia Poetica_, a catalogue of English poets
from the 12th to the 16th century, inclusive, with short notices of
their works. These are only some of the productions of his industry and
genius.

We give the origin of his adhesion to the Humanitarian Creed as
recorded by himself in one of the chapters of his Essay, in which,
also, he introduces the name of an ardent and well-known humanitarian
reformer:--

    “Mr. Richard Phillips,[206] the publisher of this compilation, a
    vigorous, healthy, and well-looking man, has desisted from animal
    food for upwards of twenty years; and the compiler himself, induced
    to serious reflection by the perusal of Mandeville’s _Fable of the
    Bees_, in the year 1772, being the 19th year of his age, has ever
    since, to the revisal of these sheets [1802], firmly adhered to a
    milk and vegetable diet; having, at least, never tasted, during the
    whole course of those thirty years, any flesh, fowl, or fish, or
    anything, to his knowledge, prepared in or with those substances
    or any extract from them, unless, on one occasion, when tempted
    by wet, cold, and hunger in the south of Scotland, he ventured
    to eat a few potatoes dressed under roasted flesh, nothing less
    repugnant to his feelings being obtainable; or, except by ignorance
    or imposition, unless, it may be, in eating eggs, which, however,
    deprives no animal of life, although it may prevent some from
    coming into the world to be murdered and devoured by others.”[207]

Ritson begins his Essay with a brief review of the opinions of some of
the old Greek and Italian philosophers upon the origin and constitution
of the world, and with a sketch of the position of man in Nature
relatively to other animals. Amongst others he cites Rousseau’s Essay
_Upon Inequality Amongst Men_. He then demonstrates the unnaturalness
of flesh-eating by considerations derived from Physiology and Anatomy,
and from the writings of various authorities; the fallacy of the
prejudice that flesh-meats are necessary or conducive to strength of
body, a fallacy manifest as well from the examples of whole nations
living entirely, or almost entirely, upon non-flesh food, as from
those of numerous individuals whose cases are detailed at length. He
quotes Arbuthnot, Sir Hans Sloane, Cheyne, Adam Smith, Volney, Paley,
and others. Next he insists upon the ferocity or coarseness of mind
directly or indirectly engendered by the diet of blood:--

    “That the use of animal food disposes man to cruel and ferocious
    actions is a fact to which the experience of ages gives ample
    testimony. The Scythians, from drinking the blood of their cattle,
    proceeded to drink that of their enemies. The fierce and cruel
    disposition of the wild Arabs is supposed chiefly, if not solely,
    to arise from their feeding upon the flesh of camels: and as
    the gentle disposition of the natives of Hindustan is probably
    owing, in great degree, to temperance and abstinence from animal
    food, so the common use of this diet, with other nations, has, in
    the opinion of M. Pagès, intensified the natural tone of their
    passions; and he can account, he says, upon no other principle,
    for the strong, harsh features of the Mussulmen and the Christians
    compared with the mild traits and placid aspect of the Gentoos.
    ‘Vulgar and uninformed men,’ it is observed by Smellie, ‘when
    pampered with a variety of animal food, are much more choleric,
    fierce, and cruel in their tempers, than those who live chiefly
    upon vegetables.’ This affection is equally perceptible in other
    animals--‘An officer, in the Russian service, had a bear whom
    he fed with bread and oats, but never gave him flesh. A young
    hog, however, happening to stroll near his cell, the bear got
    hold of him and pulled him in; and, after he had once drawn
    blood and tasted flesh, he became unmanageable, attacking every
    person who came near him, so that the owner was obliged to kill
    him.’--[_Memoirs of P. H. Bruce._] It was not, says Porphyry,
    from those who lived on vegetables that robbers, or murderers, or
    tyrants have proceeded, but from flesh-eaters.[208] Prey being
    almost the sole object of quarrel amongst carnivorous animals,
    while the frugivorous live together in constant peace and harmony,
    it is evident that if men were of this latter kind, they would find
    it much more easy to subsist happily.”

    “The barbarous and unfeeling sports (as they are called) of the
    English--their horse-racing, hunting, shooting, bull and bear
    baiting, cock-fighting,[209] prize-fighting, and the like, all
    proceed from their immoderate addiction to animal food. Their
    natural temper is thereby corrupted, and they are in the habitual
    and hourly commission of crimes against nature, justice, and
    humanity, from which a feeling and reflective mind, unaccustomed
    to such a diet, would revolt, but in which they profess to take
    delight. The kings of England have from a remote period, been
    devoted to hunting; in which pursuit one of them, and the son
    of another lost his life. James I., according to Scaliger, was
    merciful, except at the chase, where he was cruel, and was very
    much enraged when he could not catch the Stag. ‘God,’ he used
    to say, ‘is enraged against me, so that I shall not have him.’
    Whenever he had caught his victim, he would put his arm all entire
    into his belly and entrails. This anecdote may be paralleled with
    the following of one of his successors: ‘The hunt on Tuesday last,
    (March 1st, 1784), commenced near Salthill, and afforded a chase
    of upwards of fifty miles. His Majesty was present at the death of
    the stag near Tring, in Herts. It is the first deer that has been
    ran to death for many months; and when opened, the heart strings
    were found to be quite rent, as is supposed, with the force of
    running.’[210] _Siste, vero, tandem carnifex!_ The slave trade,
    that abominable violation of the rights of Nature, is most probably
    owing to the same cause, as well as a variety of violent acts,
    both national and personal, which usually are attributed to other
    motives. In the sessions of Parliament, 1802, a majority of the
    members voted for the continuance of bull-baiting, and some of them
    had the confidence to plead in favour of it.”[211]

Ritson enforces his observations upon this head by citing Plutarch,
Cowper, and Pope (in the _Guardian, No. 61_--a most forcible
and eloquent protest against the cruelties of “sport” and of
gluttony).[212] In his fifth chapter he traces the origin of human
sacrifices to the practice of flesh eating:--

    “Superstition is the mother of Ignorance and Barbarity. Priests
    began by persuading people of the existence of certain invisible
    beings, whom they pretended to be the creators of the world and
    the dispensers of good and evil; and of whose wills, in fine,
    they were the sole interpreters. Hence arose the necessity of
    sacrifices [ostensibly] to appease the wrath or to procure the
    favour of imaginary gods, but in reality to gratify the gluttonous
    and unnatural appetites of _real_ demons. Domestic animals were
    the first victims. These were immediately under the eye of the
    priest, and he was pleased with their taste. This satisfied for a
    time; but he had eaten of the same things so repeatedly, that his
    luxurious appetite called for variety. He had devoured the sheep,
    and he was now desirous of devouring the shepherd. The anger of
    the gods--testified by an opportune thunderstorm, was not to be
    assuaged but by a sacrifice of uncommon magnitude. The people
    tremble, and offer him their enemies, their slaves, their parents,
    their children, to obtain a clear sky on a summer’s day, or a
    bright moon by night. When, or upon what particular occasion, the
    first human being was made a sacrifice is unknown, nor is it of
    any consequence to enquire. Goats and bullocks had been offered up
    already, and the transition was easy from the ‘brute’ to the man.
    The practice, however, is of remote antiquity and universal extent,
    there being scarcely a country in the world in which it has not, at
    some time or other, prevailed.”

He supports this probable thesis by reference to Porphyry, the most
erudite of the later Greeks, who repeats the accounts of earlier
writers upon this matter, and by a comparison of the religious rites
of various nations, past and present. Equally natural and easy was the
step from the use of non-human to that of human bodies:--

    “As human sacrifices were a natural effect of that superstitious
    cruelty which first produced the slaughter of other animals, so is
    it equally natural that those accustomed to eat the ‘brute’ should
    not long abstain from the man. More especially as, when roasted or
    broiled upon the altar, the appearance, savour, and taste of both,
    would be nearly, if not entirely the same. But, from whatever cause
    it may be deduced, nothing can be more certain than that the eating
    of human flesh has been a practice in many parts of the world from
    a very remote period, and is so, in some countries, at this day.
    That it is a consequence of the use of other animal food there can
    be no doubt, as it would be impossible to find an instance of it
    among people who were accustomed solely to a vegetable diet. The
    progress of cruelty is rapid. Habit renders it familiar, and hence
    it is deemed _natural_.

    “The man who, accustomed to live on roots and vegetables, first
    devoured the flesh of the smallest mammal, committed a greater
    violence to his own nature than the most beautiful and delicate
    woman, accustomed to other animal flesh, would feel in shedding
    the blood of her own species for sustenance; possessed as they are
    of exquisite feelings, a considerable degree of intelligence, and
    even, according to her own religious system, of a _living soul_.
    That this is a principle in the social disposition of mankind,
    is evident from the deliberate coolness with which seamen, when
    their ordinary provisions are exhausted, sit down to devour such
    of their comrades as chance or contrivance renders the victim of
    the moment; a fact of which there are but too many, and those too
    well-authenticated instances. Such a crime, which no necessity
    can justify, would never enter the mind of a starving Gentoo,
    nor, indeed, of anyone who had not been previously accustomed to
    other animal flesh. Even among the Bedouins, or wandering Arabs
    of the desert--according to the observation of the enlightened
    Volney--though they so often experience the extremity of hunger,
    the practice of devouring human flesh was never heard of.”

In the two following chapters Ritson traces a large proportion of human
diseases and suffering, physical and mental, to indulgence in unnatural
living. He cites Drs. Buchan, Goldsmith, Cheyne, Stubbes (_Anatomy of
Abuses_, 1583), and Sparrman the well-known pupil of Linné (_Voyages_).

In his ninth chapter, he gives a copious catalogue of “nations and of
individuals, past and contemporary, subsisting entirely upon vegetable
foods”--not the least interesting part of his work. Some of the most
eminent of the old Greek and Latin philosophers and historians are
quoted, as well as various modern travellers, such as Volney and
Sparrman. Especially valuable are the enquiries of Sir F. M. Eden
(_State of the Poor_), who, in a comparison of the dietary of the
poor, in different parts of these islands, proves that flesh has, or
at all events _had_, scarcely any share in it--a fact which is still
true of the agricultural districts, manifest not only by the commonest
observation, but also by scientific and official enquiries of late
years.

Of individual cases, two of the most interesting are those of John
Williamson of Moffat, the discoverer of the famous chalybeate spring,
who lived almost to the age of one hundred years, having abstained
from all flesh-food during the last fifty years of his life,[213] and
of John Oswald, the author of _The Cry of Nature_. It is in this part
of his work that Ritson narrates the history of his own conversion and
dietetic experiences, and of his well-known publisher, Mr. R. Phillips.




XXXVI.

NICHOLSON. 1760-1825.


Among the least known, but none the less among the most estimable,
of the advocates of the rights of the oppressed species and the
heralds of the dawn of a better day, the humble Yorkshire printer, who
undertook the unpopular and unremunerative work of publishing to the
world the sorrows and sufferings of the non-human races, claims our
high respect and admiration. He has also another title (second only to
his humanitarian merit) to the gratitude of posterity as having been
the originator of cheap literature of the best class, and of the most
instructive sort, which, alike by the price and form, was adapted for
wide circulation.

George Nicholson was born at Bradford. He early set up a printing
press, and began the publication of his _Literary Miscellany_,
“which is not, as the name might lead one to suppose, a magazine,
but a series of choice anthologies, varied by some of the gems of
English literature. The size is a small 18mo., scarcely too large for
the waistcoat pocket. The printing was a beautiful specimen of the
typographic art, and for the illustrations he sought the aid of the
best artists. He was one of the patrons of Thomas Bewick, some of whose
choicest work is to be found in the pamphlets issued by Nicholson.
He also issued 125 cards, on which were printed favourite pieces,
afterwards included in the _Literary Miscellany_. This ‘assemblage of
classical beauties for the parlour, the closet, the carriage, or the
shade,’ became very popular, and extended to twenty volumes. The plan
of issuing them in separate numbers enabled individuals to make their
own selection, and they are found bound up in every possible variety.
Complete sets are now rare, and highly prized by collectors.”

Of his many useful publications may be enumerated--_Stenography:
The Mental Friend and Rational Companion, consisting of Maxims and
Reflections relating to the Conduct of Life_. 12mo. _The Advocate and
Friend of Woman._ 12mo. _Directions for the Improvement of the Mind._
12mo. _Juvenile Preceptor._ Three vols., 12mo. The books which concern
us now are--_On the Conduct of Man to Inferior Animals_ (Manchester,
1797: this was adorned by a woodcut from the hand of Bewick). And his
_magnum opus_, which appeared in the year 1801, under the title of
_The Primeval Diet of Man: Arguments in Favour of Vegetable Food; with
Remarks on Man’s Conduct to [other] Animals_ (Poughnill, near Ludlow).

The value of _The Primeval Diet_ was enhanced by the addition, in a
later issue, of a tract _On Food_ (1803), in which are given recipes
for the preparation of “one hundred perfectly palatable and nutritious
substances, which may easily be procured at an expense much below the
price of the limbs of our fellow animals.... Some of the recipes, on
account of their simple form, will not be adopted even by those in
the middle rank of life. Yet they may be valuable to many of scanty
incomes, who desire to avoid the evils of want, or to make a reserve
for the purchasing of books and other mental pleasures.” He also
published a tract _On Clothing_, which contains much sensible and
practical advice on an important subject.

Nicholson resided successively in Manchester, Poughnill, and Stourport,
and died at the last-named place in the year 1825. “He possessed,” says
a writer in _The Gentleman’s Magazine_ (xcv.), “in an eminent degree,
strength of intellect, with universal benevolence and undeviating
uprightness of conduct.” The learned bibliographer, to whom we are
indebted for this brief notice, thus sums up the character of his
labours: “In all his writings the purity and benevolence of his
intentions are strikingly manifest. Each subject he took in hand was
thought out in an independent manner, and without reference to current
views or prejudices.”[214]

In his brief preface the author thus expresses his sad conviction of
the probable futility of his protests:--

    “The difficulties of removing deep-rooted prejudices, and the
    inefficiency of reason and argument, when opposed to habitual
    opinions established on general approbation, are fully apprehended.
    Hence the cause of humanity, however zealously pleaded, will
    not be materially promoted. Unflattered by the hope of exciting
    an impression on the public mind, the following compilation is
    dedicated to the sympathising and generous Few, whose opinions
    have not been founded on implicit belief and common acceptation:
    whose habits are not fixed by the influence of false and pernicious
    maxims or corrupt examples: who are neither deaf to the cries of
    misery, pitiless to suffering innocence, nor unmoved at recitals of
    violence, tyranny, and murder.”

In the whole literature of humanitarianism, nothing can be more
impressive for the sympathising reader than this putting on record
by these nobler spirits their profound consciousness of the moral
torpor of the world around them, and their sad conviction of the
prematureness of their attempt to regenerate it. In both his principal
works, he judiciously chooses, for the most part, the method of
compilation, and of presenting in a concise and comprehensive form
the opinions of his humane predecessors, of various minds and times,
rather than the presentation of his own individual sentiments. He
justly believed that the large majority of men are influenced more by
the authority of great names than by arguments addressed simply to
their conscience and reason. He intersperses, however, philosophic
reflections of his own, whenever the occasion for them arises. Thus,
under the head of “Remarks on Defences of Flesh-eating,” he well
disposes of the common excuses:--

    “The reflecting reader will not expect a formal refutation of
    common-place objections, which _mean nothing_, as, ‘There would be
    more unhappiness and slaughter among animals did we not keep them
    under proper regulations and government. Where would they find
    pasture did we not manure and enclose the land for them? &c.’ The
    following objection, however, may deserve notice:--‘Animals must
    die, and is it not better for them to live a short time in plenty
    and ease, than be exposed to their enemies, and suffered in old
    age to drag on a miserable life?’ The lives of animals in _a state
    of nature_ are very rarely miserable, and it argues a barbarous
    and savage disposition to cut them _prematurely_ off in the midst
    of an agreeable and happy existence; especially when we reflect
    on the _motives_ which induce it. Instead of a friendly concern
    for promoting their happiness, your aim is the gratification of
    your own sensual appetites. How inconsistent is your conduct with
    the fundamental principle of pure morality and true goodness
    (which some of you ridiculously profess)--_whatsoever you would
    that others should do to you, do you even so to them_. No man
    would willingly become the food of other animals; he ought not
    therefore to prey on _them_. Men who consider themselves members
    of universal nature, and links in the great chain of Being, ought
    not to usurp power and tyranny over others, beings naturally free
    and independent, however such beings may be inferior in intellect
    or strength.... It is argued that ‘man has a permission, proved by
    the practice of mankind, to eat the flesh of other animals, and
    consequently to kill them; and as there are many animals which
    subsist wholly on the bodies of other animals, the practice is
    sanctioned among mankind.’ By reason of the at present very low
    state of morality of the human race, there are many evils which
    it is the duty and business of enlightened ages to eradicate. The
    various refinements of civil society, the numerous improvements in
    the arts and sciences, and the different reformations in the laws,
    policy, and government of nations, are proofs of this assertion.
    That mankind, in the present stage of _polished_ life, act in
    direct violation of the principles of justice, mercy, tenderness,
    sympathy, and humanity, in the practice of eating flesh, is
    obvious. To take away the life of any happy being, to commit
    acts of depredation and outrage, and to abandon every refined
    feeling and sensibility, is to degrade the human kind beneath its
    professed dignity of character; but to _devour_ or eat any animal
    is an additional violation of those principles, because it is the
    _extreme_ of brutal ferocity. Such is the conduct of the most
    savage of wild beasts, and of the most uncultivated and barbarous
    of our own species. Where is the person who, with calmness, can
    hear himself compared in disposition to a lion, a hyæna, a tiger or
    a wolf? And yet, how exactly similar is his disposition.

    “Mankind affect to revolt at murders, at the shedding of blood, and
    yet eagerly, and without remorse, feed on the corpse after it has
    undergone the culinary process. What mental blindness pervades the
    human race, when they do not perceive that every feast of blood
    is a _tacit encouragement_ and licence to the very crime their
    pretended delicacy abhors! I say _pretended_ delicacy, for that
    it is pretended is most evident. The profession of sensibility,
    humanity, &c., in such persons, therefore, is egregious folly. And
    yet there are respectable persons among everyone’s acquaintance,
    amiable in other dispositions, and advocates of what is commonly
    termed the cause of humanity, who are weak or prejudiced enough to
    be satisfied with such arguments, on which they ground apologies
    for their practice! Education, habit, prejudice, fashion, and
    interest, have blinded the eyes of men, and seared their hearts.

    “Opposers of compassion urge: ‘If we should live on vegetable food,
    what shall we do with our _cattle_? What would become of them? They
    would grow so numerous they would be prejudicial to us--they would
    eat us up if we did not kill and eat them.’ But there is abundance
    of animals in the world whom men do not kill and eat; and yet we
    hear not of their injuring mankind, and sufficient room is found
    for their abode. Horses are not usually killed to be eaten, and yet
    we have not heard of any country overstocked with them. The raven
    and redbreast are seldom killed, and yet they do not become too
    numerous. If a decrease of cows, sheep, and others were required,
    mankind would readily find means of reducing them. Cattle are at
    present an article of trade, and their numbers are _industriously_
    promoted. If cows are kept solely for the sake of milk, and if
    their young should become too numerous, let the evil be nipped in
    the bud. Scarcely suffer the innocent young to feel the pleasure
    of breathing. Let the least pain possible be inflicted; let its
    body be deposited entire in the ground, and let a sigh have vent
    for the calamitous necessity that induced the painful act....
    Self-preservation justifies a man in putting noxious animals to
    death, yet cannot warrant the least act of cruelty to any being.
    By suddenly despatching one when in extreme misery, we do a kind
    office, an office which reason approves, and which accords with our
    best and kindest feelings, but which (such is the force of custom)
    we are denied to show, though solicited, to our own species. When
    they can no longer enjoy happiness, they may perhaps be deprived
    of life. Do not suppose that in this reasoning an intention is
    included of _perverting_ nature. No! some animals are savage and
    unfeeling; but let not _their_ ferocity and brutality be the
    standard and pattern of the conduct of _man_. Because _some_ of
    them have no compassion, feeling, or reason, are _we_ to possess no
    compassion, feeling, or reason?”

In another section of his book Nicholson undertakes to expose the
inconsistencies of flesh-eaters, and the strange illogicalness of the
position of many protestors against various forms of cruelty, who
condone the greatest cruelty of all--the (necessary) savagery of the
butchers:--

    “The inconsistencies of the conduct and opinions of mankind in
    general are evident and notorious; but when ingenious writers fall
    into the same glaring errors, our regret and surprise are justly
    and strongly excited. Annexed to the impressive remarks by Soame
    Jenyns, to be inserted hereafter, in examining the conduct of man
    to [other] animals, we meet with the following passage:--

    “‘God has been pleased to create numberless animals intended for
    our sustenance, and that they are so intended, the agreeable
    flavour of their flesh to our palates, and the wholesome nutriment
    which it administers to our stomachs, are sufficient proofs; these,
    as they are formed for our use, propagated by our culture, and fed
    by our care, we have certainly a right to deprive of life, because
    it is given and preserved to them on that _condition_.’

    “Now, it has already been argued that the bodies of animals are
    _not_ intended for the sustenance of man; and the decided opinions
    of several eminent medical writers and others sufficiently
    disprove assertions in favour of the wholesomeness of the flesh
    of animals. The _agreeable taste_ of food is not always a proof
    of its _nourishing_ or _wholesome_ properties. This truth is too
    frequently experienced in mistakes, ignorantly or accidentally
    made, particularly by children, in eating the fruit of the deadly
    nightshade, the taste of which resembles black currants, and is
    extremely inviting by the beauty of its colour and shape.[215]

    “That we have a right to make attacks on the existence of any being
    _because_ we have assisted and fed such being, is an assertion
    opposed to every established principle of justice and morality. A
    ‘condition’ cannot be made without the mutual consent of parties,
    and, therefore, what this writer terms ‘a condition,’ is nothing
    less than an unjust, arbitrary, and deceitful imposition. ‘Such is
    the deadly and stupifying influence of habit or custom,’ says Mr.
    Lawrence, ‘of so poisonous and brutalising a quality is prejudice,
    that men, perhaps no way inclined by nature to acts of barbarity,
    may yet live insensible of the constant commission of the most
    flagrant deeds.’ ... A cook-maid will weep at a tale of woe, while
    she is skinning a living eel; and the devotee will mock the Deity
    by asking a blessing on food supplied by murderous outrages against
    nature and religion! Even women of education, who readily weep
    while reading an affecting moral tale, will clear away clotted
    blood, still warm with departed life, cut the flesh, disjoint
    the bones, and tear out the intestines of an animal, without
    sensibility, without sympathy, without fear, without remorse.
    What is more common than to hear this _softer_ sex talk of, and
    assist in, the cookery of a deer, a hare, a lamb or a calf (those
    acknowledged emblems of innocence) with perfect composure? Thus
    the female character, by nature soft, delicate, and susceptible of
    tender impressions, is debased and sunk. It will be maintained that
    in other respects they still possess the characteristics of their
    sex, and are humane and sympathising. The inconsistency then is the
    more glaring. To be virtuous in some instances does not constitute
    the moral character, but to be uniformly so.”

We can allow ourselves space only for one or two further quotations
from this excellent writer. The remarks upon the common usage of
language, by which it is vainly thought to conceal the true nature of
the dishes served up upon the tables of the rich, are particularly
noteworthy, because the inaccurate expression condemned is almost
universal, and that even, from force of habit, amongst reformed
dietists themselves:--

    “There is a natural horror at the shedding of blood, and some
    have an aversion to the practice of devouring the carcase of an
    innocent sufferer, which bad habits improper education, and silly
    prejudices have not overcome. This is proved by their affected and
    absurd refinement of calling the dead bodies of animals _meat_. If
    the meaning of words is to be regarded, this is a gross mistake;
    for the word _meat_ is a universal term, applying equally to all
    nutritive and palatable substances. If it be intended to express
    that all other kinds of food are comparatively not meat, the
    intention is ridiculous. The truth is that the proper expression,
    _flesh_, conveys ideas of murder and death. Neither can it easily
    be forgotten that, in grinding the body of a fellow animal,
    substances which constitute _human_ bodies are masticated. This
    reflection comes somewhat home, and is recurred to by eaters of
    flesh in spite of themselves, but recurred to _unwillingly_. They
    attempt, therefore, to pervert language in order to render it
    agreeable to the ear, as they disguise animal flesh by cookery in
    order to render it pleasing to the taste.”

His reflections upon the essential injustice (to use no stronger term)
of delegating the work of butchering to a particular class of men (to
which frequent reference has already been made in these pages) are
equally admirable:--

    “Among butchers, and those who qualify the different parts of an
    animal into food, it would be easy to select persons much further
    removed from those virtues which should result from reason,
    consciousness, sympathy, and animal sensations, than any savages
    on the face of the earth! In order to avoid all the generous and
    spontaneous sympathies of compassion, the office of shedding
    blood is committed to the hands of a set of men who have been
    educated in inhumanity, and whose sensibility has been blunted and
    destroyed by early habits of barbarity. Thus men _increase_ misery
    in order to avoid the sight of it, and because they cannot endure
    being obviously cruel themselves, or commit actions which strike
    painfully on their senses, they commission those to commit them who
    are formed to delight in cruelty, and to whom misery, torture, and
    shedding of blood is an amusement! They appear not once to reflect
    that _whatever we do by another we do ourselves_.”

    “When a large and gentle Ox, after having resisted a ten times
    greater force of blows than would have killed his murderers, falls
    stunned at last, and his armed head is fastened to the ground with
    cords; as soon as the wide wound is made, and the jugular veins
    are cut asunder, what mortal can, without horror and compassion,
    hear the painful bellowings, intercepted by his flow of blood,
    the bitter sighs that speak the sharpness of his anguish, and the
    deep-sounding groans with loud anxiety, fetched from the bottom of
    his strong and palpitating heart. Look on the trembling and violent
    convulsions of his limbs; see, whilst his reeking gore streams from
    him, his eyes become dim and languid, and behold his strugglings,
    gasps, and last efforts for life.

    “When a being has given such convincing and undeniable proofs of
    terror and of pain and agony, is there a disciple of Descartes
    so inured to blood, as not to refute, by his commiseration, the
    philosophy of that vain reasoner?”[216]

In his previous essay, _On the Conduct of Men to Inferior Animals_,
Nicholson has collected from various writers, both humane and
inhumane, a fearful catalogue of atrocities of different kinds
perpetrated upon his helpless dependants by the being who delights to
boast himself (at least in civilised countries) to be made “in the
image and likeness of God.” Among these the hellish tortures of the
vivisectionists and “pathologists” hold, perhaps, the bad pre-eminence,
but the cruel tortures of the Slaughter-House come very near to them in
wanton atrocity.




XXXVII.

ABERNETHY. 1763-1831.


Distinguished as a practical surgeon and as a physiologist, Abernethy
has earned his lasting reputation as having been one of the first
to attack the old prejudice of the profession as to the origin of
diseases, and as having sought for such origin, not in mere local and
accidental but, in general causes--in the constitution and habits of
the body.

A pupil of John Hunter, in 1786 he became assistant surgeon at St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital, and shortly afterwards he lectured on anatomy
and surgery at that institution, which to his ability and genius owes
the fame which it acquired as a school of surgery. As a lecturer he
had a reputation and popularity seldom or perhaps never before so well
earned in the medical schools--founded, as they were, upon a rare
penetration and logical method, united with clearness and perspicuity
in communicating his convictions. In honesty, integrity, and in the
domestic virtues his character was unimpeachable, but the gentleness
of deportment for which he was noted in his home he was far from
exhibiting in public and towards his patients. His roughness and even
coarseness of manner in dealing with capricious valetudinarians,
indeed, became notorious.

_The Constitutional Origin and Treatment of Local Diseases_--his
principal work--in comparison with the vast mass of medical literature
up to that time put forth, stands out in favourable relief. In it two
great principles are laid down--that “local diseases are symptoms of
a disordered constitution, not primary and independent maladies, and
that they are to be cured by remedies calculated to make a salutary
impression on the _general frame_, not by local treatment, nor by
any mere manipulations of surgery.” This single principle changed
the aspect of the entire field of surgery, and elevated it from a
manual art into the rank of a science. And to this first principle
he added a second, the range of which is, perhaps, less extensive,
but the practical importance of which is scarcely inferior to that of
the first--namely, that “this disordered state of the constitution
either originates from, or is rigorously allied with, derangement of
the stomach and bowels, and that it can only be reached by remedies
which first exercise a curative influence upon these organs.” It will
not detract from the merit of Abernethy to add to this account that
his predecessor, Dr. Cheyne, and his contemporary, Dr. Lambe, have
most satisfactorily and radically carried out into practice these just
principles; or to remark that great public reputations ought not to
be allowed, as too often is the fact, to overwhelm less known but not
therefore less meritorious labours.

As to _dietetics_, the theory of Abernethy seems to have been better
than his practice. When reproached with the inconsistency that the
reformed diet which he so forcibly commended to others he himself
failed to follow, he is related to have used the well-known simile of
the sign-post with his usual readiness of repartee.

It was while Dr. Lambe was at the Aldersgate Street Dispensary that
Abernethy formed the acquaintance of that unostentatious but true
reformer--an acquaintance which was destined to have no unimportant
influence upon the medical theories of the great surgeon. Abernethy
was at that time writing his _Observations on Tumours_, and he had
intrusted to his friend one of his cancer patients to be treated by
the non-flesh and distilled water regimen. He carefully watched the
effects, and he has thus given us the results of his observations:--

    “There can be no subject which I think more likely to interest
    the mind of a surgeon than that of an endeavour to amend and
    alter the state of a cancerous constitution. The best timed and
    best conducted operation brings with it nothing but disgrace if
    the diseased propensities of the constitution are active and
    powerful. It is after an operation that, in my opinion, we are
    most particularly concerned to regulate the constitution, lest
    the disease should be revived or renewed by its disturbance. In
    addition to that attention, to tranquillise and invigorate the
    nervous system, and keep the digestive organs in as healthy a
    state as possible (which I have recommended in my first volume),
    I believe general experience sanctions the recommendation of a
    more vegetable because less stimulating diet, with the addition of
    so much milk, broth, and eggs, as seems necessary to prevent any
    declension of the patient’s strength.

    “Very recently Dr. Lambe has proposed a method of treating
    cancerous diseases, which is _wholly_ dietetic. He recommends
    the adoption of a strict vegetable regimen, to avoid the use of
    fermented liquors, and to substitute water purified by distillation
    in the place of common water as a beverage, and in all parts of
    diet in which common water is used, as tea, soups, &c. The grounds
    upon which he founds his opinion of the propriety of this advice,
    and the prospects of benefit which it holds out, may be seen in his
    _Reports on Cancer_, to which I refer my readers.

    “My own experience on the effects of this regimen is of course
    very limited. Nor does it authorise me to speak decidedly on the
    subject. But I think it right to observe that, in one case of
    cancerous ulceration in which it was used, the symptoms of the
    disease were, in my opinion, rendered more mild, the erysipelatous
    inflammation surrounding the ulcer was removed, and the life
    of the patient was, in my judgment, considerably prolonged. The
    more minute details of the facts constitute the sixth case of Dr.
    Lambe’s _Reports_. It seems to me very proper and desirable that
    the powers of the regimen recommended by Dr. Lambe should be fairly
    tried, for the following reasons:--

    “Because I know some persons who, whilst confined to such diet,
    have enjoyed very good health; and further, I have known several
    persons, who did try the effects of such a regimen, declare that
    it was productive of considerable benefit. They were not, indeed,
    afflicted with cancer, but they were induced to adopt a change of
    diet to allay a state of nervous irritation and correct disorder of
    the digestive organs, upon which medicine had but little influence.

    “Because _it appears certain, in general, that the body can be
    perfectly nourished by vegetables_.

    “Because all great changes of the constitution are more likely
    to be effected _by alterations of diet and modes of life than by
    medicine_.

    “Because it holds out a source of hope and consolation to the
    patient in a disease in which medicine is known to be unavailing,
    and in which surgery affords no more than a temporary relief.”[217]

“The above opinion of Mr. Abernethy,” remarks an experienced authority
upon the subject, “is most valuable, for he watched the case for three
and a half years under Dr. Lambe’s regimen, which is directly opposed
to the system of diet which he had advocated, before he met Dr. Lambe,
in the first volume of his work on _Constitutional Diseases_, and from
his rough honesty there is no doubt that had Dr. Abernethy lived to
publish a second edition he would have corrected his mistake.” As it
is, the candour by which so distinguished an authority was impelled to
alter or modify opinions already put forth to the world, claims our
respect as much as the too general want of it deserves censure.




XXXVIII.

LAMBE. 1765-1847.


One of the most distinguished of the hygeistic and scientific promoters
of the reformed regimen, Dr. Lambe, occupies an eminent position in
the medical literature of vegetarianism, and he divides with his
predecessor, Dr. Cheyne, the honour of being the founder of scientific
_dietetics_ in this country.

His family had been settled some two hundred years in the county of
Hereford, in which they possessed an estate that descended to Dr.
William Lambe, and is now held by his grandson. He early gave promise
of his future mental eminence. Head boy of the Hereford Grammar School,
he proceeded, in due course, to St. John’s College, Cambridge. In
1786, being then in the twenty-first year of his age, he graduated
as fourth wrangler of his year. As a matter of course, he soon was
elected a Fellow of his college, where he continued to reside until his
marriage in 1794. During this period of learned leisure he devoted his
time to the study of medicine, and the MS. notes in the possession of
his biographer, Mr. Hare, “prove the diligence with which he studied
his profession, and there we see the origin of his enlarged views
of the causes of disease, so much insisted on by these fathers of
medicine, and so much neglected by modern physicians in their search
for chemical remedies.” After his marriage he went to reside and
practise in Warwick, where he was the intimate friend of Parr, the
well-known Greek critic, and of Walter Savage Landor, who writes of him
as “very communicative and good humoured. I had enough talk with Lambe
to assure myself that he is no ordinary man.” It was to the discoveries
of Dr. Lambe, and to his publications reporting the curative value of
its mineral waters, that Leamington owed its fame and popularity; and
Dr. Jefferson, in his address to the British Medical Association a few
years ago, thus eulogises him:--

    “It was not until the end of the last century that any really
    scientific research ever was recorded on this subject [impure
    water]. About this period Dr. Lambe was engaged in practice in
    Warwick. Somewhat eccentric in some of his practical views, Dr.
    Lambe was not the less a scientific man, an intelligent observer
    of nature, and an accomplished physician, and was, moreover,
    one of the most elegant medical writers of his day. The springs
    of the neighbouring village of Leamington did not escape his
    observation, and, having carefully studied and analysed the waters,
    he published an account of them, in 1797, in the fifth volume of
    the _Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Manchester_,
    a society embracing the respected names of Priestley, Dalton,
    Watt, and others, and not inferior, perhaps, to any contemporary
    association in Europe.”

Like many other seceders from orthodox dietetics both before and after
him, Dr. Lambe found himself impelled to experiment in the non-flesh
diet by ill-health. His bodily disorders, indeed, were so complicated
and of such a nature, as to excite astonishment that not only he
greatly mitigated their violence, but that also he survived to an
advanced age. In an exceedingly minute and conscientious narrative of
his own case in his _Additional Reports_ (writing in the third person),
he informs us, that having during several years--from his eighteenth
year--suffered greatly and with constantly aggravated symptoms:--

    “He resolved, therefore, finally to execute what he had been
    contemplating for some time--to abandon animal food altogether,
    and everything analogous to it, and to confine himself wholly to
    vegetable food. This determination he put in execution the second
    week of February, 1806, and he has adhered to it with perfect
    regularity to the present time. His only subject of repentance with
    regard to it has been that it had not been adopted much earlier in
    life. He never found the smallest real ill-consequence from this
    change. He sank neither in strength, flesh, nor in spirits. He
    was at all times of a very thin and slender habit, and so he has
    continued to be, but upon the whole he has rather gained than lost
    flesh. He has experienced neither indigestion nor flatulence even
    from the sort of vegetables which are commonly thought to produce
    flatulence, nor has the stomach suffered from any vegetable matter,
    though unchanged by culinary art or uncorrected by condiments. The
    only unpleasant consequence of the change was a sense of emptiness
    of stomach, which continued many months. In about a year, however,
    he became fully reconciled to the new habit, and felt as well
    satisfied with his vegetable meal as he had been formerly with his
    dinner of flesh. He can truly say that since he has acted upon
    this resolution no year has passed in which he has not enjoyed
    better health than in that which preceded it. But he has found
    that the changes introduced into the body by a vegetable regimen
    take place with extreme slowness; that it is in vain to expect
    any _considerable_ amendment in successive weeks or in successive
    months. We are to look rather to the intervals of _half-years or
    years_.”

With extreme candour as well as carefulness, this patient and
philosophic experimentalist details every particular circumstance of
his own _diagnosis_. After a minute report of the various symptoms of
his maladies and his gradual subjugation of them, he deduces the only
just inference:--

    “Granting this representation of facts to be correct, and the
    nature of this case to, be truly determined, I must be permitted
    to ask, What other method than that which has been adopted would
    have produced the same benefit? If such methods exist, I confess
    my ignorance of them.... But though these pains [in the head]
    still recur in a trifling degree, the relief given to the brain in
    general has been decided and most essential. It has appeared in
    an increased sensibility of all the organs, particularly of the
    senses--the touch, the taste, and the sight, in greater muscular
    activity, in greater freedom and strength of respiration, greater
    freedom of all the secretions, and in increased intellectual power.
    It has been extended to the night as much as to the day. The sleep
    is more tranquil, less disturbed by dreams, and more refreshing.
    Less sleep, upon the whole, appears to be required; but the loss
    of quantity is more than compensated by its being sound and
    uninterrupted....

    “The hypochondriacal symptoms continued to be occasionally very
    oppressive during the second year, particularly during the earlier
    part of it, but they afterwards very sensibly declined, and at
    present he enjoys more uniform and regular spirits than he had
    done for many years upon the mixed diet. From the whole of these
    facts it follows that all the organs, and indeed every fibre of
    the body, are simultaneously affected by the matters habitually
    conveyed into the stomach, and that it is the incongruity of these
    matters to the system, which gradually forms that morbid diathesis,
    which exists alike both in apparent health and in disease. I might
    illustrate this fact still more minutely by observations on the
    teeth, on the hair, and on the skin. I might show that by a steady
    attention to regimen, the skin of the palm of the hand becomes of a
    firmer and stronger texture, that even an excrescence which had for
    twenty years and upwards been growing more fixed, firm, and deep,
    had, first, its habitudes altered, and, finally, was softened and
    disappeared. But, perhaps, enough has been said already to give
    a pretty clear idea both of the kind of change introduced into
    the habit by diet, and of the extent to which it may be carried.
    I proceed, therefore, to relate some new phenomena which took
    place during the course of this regimen, which are both curious in
    themselves and lead to important conclusions.”

The author then goes on to record further gradual diminution of painful
symptoms. From long and careful observation of himself, amongst other
important deductions, Dr. Lambe infers that:--

    “We may conclude that it is the property of this regimen, and, in
    particular, of the vegetable diet, to transfer diseased action from
    the _viscera_ to the exterior parts of the body--from the central
    parts of the system to the periphery. Vegetable diet has often been
    charged with causing cutaneous diseases; in common language, they
    are, in these cases, said to proceed from poorness of blood.[218]
    In some degree the charge is probably just, and the observation I
    have already made may give us some insight into the causes of it.
    But this charge, instead of being a just cause of reproach, is
    _a proof of the superior salubrity of vegetable diet_. Cutaneous
    eruptions appear, because disease is translated from the internal
    organs to the skin.”

For all brain disease abandonment of the gross and stimulating
flesh-meats is shown to be of the first importance. At the same time,
that it involves any loss of actual bodily strength is a fallacy:--

    “We see, then, how ill-founded is the notion that inaction and
    loss of power are induced by a vegetable diet. In fact, all the
    observations that have been made have shewn the very reverse to be
    the truth. Symptoms of plenitude and oppression have continued in
    considerable force for at least five years; and the consequence of
    this peculiar regimen has been an increase of strength and power,
    and not a diminution. In the subject of this case the pulse, which
    may be deemed, perhaps, the best idea of the condition of all the
    other functions, is at present much more strong and full than under
    the use of animal food. It is also perfectly calm and regular.”

His personal experience of satisfaction derivable from vegetables
and fruits as affording, for the most part, sufficient liquids in
themselves, without use of extraneous drinks, is of importance:--

    “He had, when living on the common diet, been habitually thirsty,
    and, like most persons inclined to studious and sedentary habits,
    was much attached to tea-drinking. But for the last two or three
    years he has almost wholly relinquished the use of liquids, and by
    the substitution of fruit and recent vegetables he has found that
    the sensation of thirst has been in a manner abolished. Even tea
    has lost its charms, and he very rarely uses it. He is therefore
    certain, from his own experience, that the habit of employing
    liquids is an artificial habit, and not necessary to any of the
    functions of the animal economy.”

Whatever may be thought of the theory of the possibility of entire
abstinence from all _extraneous_ liquids, there is not the least doubt
that a judicious use of vegetable foods reduces to a _minimum_ the
feeling of thirst and craving for artificial drinks, an experience, we
imagine, almost universal with abstinents from flesh-dishes.

Dr. Lambe concludes the first part of his valuable _diagnosis_ with
the assurance, “that if those for whose service these labours are
principally designed, I mean persons suffering under habitual and
chronic illness, are able to go along with me in my argument to form a
general correct notion of what they are to expect from [a reformed]
regimen, and, above all, to arm their minds with firmness, patience,
and perseverance, I shall not readily be induced to think that I have
written one superfluous line.”[219]

In 1805, at the age of forty, we find him established in practice in
London. Five years later he was physician to the General Dispensary,
Aldersgate Street. He was also elected Fellow and Censor of the College
of Physicians, whose meetings he regularly attended. His peculiar
opinions did not tend to secure popularity for him, and the adhesion
of such men as Dr. Abernethy, Dr. Pitcairn, Lord Erskine, and of
Mr. Brotherton, M.P. (one of the earliest members of the Vegetarian
Society), served only to make the indifference of the mass of the
community more conspicuous.

Not the least interesting fact in his life is his share in the
conversion of Shelley, and his friendship with J. F. Newton and his
interesting family, at whose house these earlier pioneers of the New
Reformation were accustomed to meet, and celebrate their charming
_réunions_ with vegetarian feasts. A cardinal part of the dietetic
system of Dr. Lambe was his insistance upon the use of _distilled_
water. In his _Reports on Regimen_ he writes of the Newton family: “I
am well acquainted with a family of young children who have scarcely
ever touched animal food, and who now for three years have drunk only
distilled water. For clearness and beauty of complexion, muscular
strength, fulness of habit free from grossness, hardiness, healthiness,
and ripeness of intellect these children are unparalleled.”[220]

We have already mentioned Lord Erskine as one of the many eminent
friends of Dr. Lambe. That more humane and distinguished lawyer, in
a letter to his friend acknowledging the receipt of the _Reports_,
writes as follows: “I am of opinion that both this work and the other
referred to in it are deserving of the highest consideration. I read
them both with more interest and attention from the abuse of the
_British Critic_ [one of the periodicals of the day] mentioned in the
preface, as no periodical criticism ever published in this country is
so uniformly unjust, ignorant, and impudent.” Dr. Abernethy’s testimony
to the efficacy of abstinence in cases of cancer will be found in
the notice of that eminent practitioner. Amongst the most interesting
correspondence of his later years is his interchange of ideas with
Sylvester Graham--the first of the American prophets of the reformed
regimen. The letter to the celebrated American vegetarian is, as Dr.
Lambe’s latest biographer justly observes, “a most valuable relic,
because it continues the result of Dr. Lambe’s diet up to September,
1837--twenty-three years after the last notice of his health in the
account of his own case, which he published in November, 1814. It is,
besides, an admirable proof of his truthful and philosophic mind, which
was slow to arrive at conclusions, and willing rather to exaggerate
than otherwise the traces of disease which he still felt.” He proves,
also, in this letter, how slow and yet sure are the effects of diet,
and it supplies an answer to those objectors who complain that they
have tried the diet (perhaps for a few weeks only) without any good
result. After complimenting his transatlantic fellow-worker in the
cause of truth upon his zeal and industry, Dr. Lambe proceeds:--

    “My book, entitled _Additional Reports on Regimen_, has now been
    before the world three and twenty years. That it has attracted
    little notice, and still less popular favour--though it may have
    excited in the writer some mortification--has not occasioned
    much surprise. The doctrine it seeks to establish is in direct
    opposition to popular and deep-rooted prejudice. It is thought
    (most erroneously) to attack the best enjoyments and most solid
    comforts of life; and, moreover, it has excited the bitter
    hostility of a numerous and influential body in society--I mean
    that body of medical practitioners who exercise their profession
    for the sake of its profits merely, and who appear to think that
    disease was made for the profession and not the profession for
    disease.

    “To drop, however, all idle complaints of public neglect, let
    us go to the more useful inquiry whether or not the principles
    propounded in these _Reports_ have been confirmed by subsequent and
    more extensive experience. To this inquiry I answer directly and
    fearlessly, that in the interval between the present time and the
    year 1815 (the date of that publication) the practice recommended
    has succeeded in cases very numerous and of extreme variety, and
    I can promise the practitioner who will try it fairly and judge
    with candour that he will experience no disappointment. I say,
    _let him try it fairly_. I do not assert that it will succeed
    in cases where the powers of life are sunk, in confirmed hectic
    fever, in ulcerated cancer, in established chronic disease, or in
    the decrepitude of old age. I may have attempted the relief of
    such cases in an early stage of my experiments, but experience
    speedily demonstrated the hopelessness of such attempts. But let
    subjects be taken not far advanced in life, let them be _tabid_
    children (for example) with tumid abdomen, swelled joints, and
    depraved appetites, or with obstinate cutaneous diseases, erythema,
    _scabus_, rickets, epileptic convulsions (not grown habitual by
    long continuance). But a practitioner in moderate practice will
    find no difficulty in selecting proper subjects, if he is himself
    actuated by a regard to humanity united to principles of honour.

    “Moreover, let not the patient, particularly if arrived at
    mature age, expect to receive a perfect cure. In many cases the
    consequences are rather preventive than curative. This I hold to
    be no objection. It is enough, surely, if a disease which, from
    its nature, might be expected to be continually on the increase,
    is obviously checked in its progress, if the symptoms become more
    and more mild, and if a human being is preserved in comfortable
    existence who would otherwise have been consigned to the grave.”

He devoted his great medical knowledge and experience particularly to
the cure or mitigation of cancer. In the letter, from which we have
already quoted, he informs his correspondent of this interesting fact:--

    “My most ardent wish was to attempt the relief of cases of cancer.
    This object I have steadily pursued (from the year 1803) to the
    present day. The case--the particulars of which I briefly mentioned
    to you in my former communication--has hitherto succeeded so
    perfectly that I should myself suspect an error in the _diagnosis_,
    if it were not for the strongly-marked constitutional symptoms,
    which are such as, in my mind, put it out of doubt. There does not
    now remain what I expected, and what I have called a _nucleus_,
    for the resolution is _complete_. Now, this is contrary to most
    of my former observations, and would furnish, as I have said,
    some ground of suspicion. But still it is not wholly unsupported
    by corroborative facts. I have observed, particularly in one
    case, that the whole extreme edge of a schirrous tumour has
    been restored, whilst the portion has remained unchanged; not,
    indeed, speedily as in the former case, but after having used the
    diet for a very considerable time. Now, if a portion of a true
    schirrous tumour can be resolved, there can be no reason why a
    resolution of the whole--taken very early and under favourable
    circumstances--shall be deemed impossible. The truth is, that at
    present we are not advanced enough to form general conclusions, but
    ought to content ourselves with _accumulating_ facts for the use of
    our successors.”

If the experience of the benefits of a reasonable living in the cases
of his patients was thus satisfactory, he himself afforded, in his own
person, perhaps the best testimony to its revivifying and invigorating
qualities. One of his visitors gives his impressions of the now famous
_doctor_ (a title, in the present instance, of real meaning) as follow:
“Agreeably to your request, I submit to your perusal a short account of
the friendly interview I had with Dr. Lambe in London. I first called
on him in February. I found him to be very gentlemanly in manners and
venerable in appearance. He is rather taller than the middle height.
His hair is perfectly white, for he is now seventy-two years of age.
He told me he had been on the vegetable diet thirty-one years, and
that his health was better now than at forty, when he commenced his
present system of living. He considers himself as likely to live
thirty years longer as to have lived to his present age.... Although
he is seventy-two years of age he walks into town, a distance of three
miles from his residence, every morning, and back at night. Dr. Lambe,
I am told, has spent large sums of money in making experiments and
publishing their results to the world.” In his earlier life he had
been conspicuously thin and attenuated. In later years he seems to
have acquired even a certain amount of robustness, and he is described
as being active and strong at an advanced age. Some instances of
extraordinary energy and endurance have been put on record by his
family; and his feats of pedestrianism, when he was verging on his
eightieth year, are, we imagine, rarely to be paralleled.

His hope of attaining the age of one hundred years, unhappily, was
not to be fulfilled. “Our bodies,” his biographer justly remarks,
“are but machines adapted to perform a definite amount of work, and
Dr. Lambe’s originally weak constitution had been severely tried by
sickness and wrong diet during the first forty years of his life. At
the age of eighty his strength began to fail, but his grandson writes,
‘up to a very short time before his death there were no outward signs
of ill-health, only the marks of old age.’”[221] Existence had its
enjoyment for him up to almost the last days, and his intellectual
powers remained to the end. He calmly expired in his eighty-third year.

Of contemporary and posthumous eulogies of his personal, as well as
scientific, worth, the following may suffice: “A man of learning, a
man of science, a man of genius, a man of distinguished integrity
and honour.” Such is the testimony of his friend Dr. Parr, as quoted
by Samuel Johnson. In the Anniversary Harveian Oration before the
College of Physicians, by Dr. Francis Hawkins, in the year 1848, the
representative of the Faculty thus recalls his memory: “Nor can I pass
over in silence the loss we have sustained in Dr. William Lambe--an
excellent chemist, a learned man, and a skilful physician. His manners
were simple, unreserved, and most modest. His life was pure. Farewell,
therefore, gentle spirit, than whom no one more pure and innocent has
passed away!”




XXXIX.

NEWTON. 1770-1825.


John Frank Newton, the friend and associate of Dr. Lambe, Shelley,
and the little band who met at the house of the former to share his
vegetarian repasts, appears to have been one of the earliest converts
of Dr. Lambe, to whom he dedicated his _Return to Nature_, in gratitude
for the recovery of his health through the adoption of the reformed
regimen.

He published his little work, as he informs us in his preface, to
impart to others the benefits which he himself had experienced; and
especially to make known to the heads of households the fact that his
whole family of himself, wife, and four children under nine years of
age, with their nurse, had been living, at the date of his publication,
for two years upon a non-flesh diet, during which time the apothecary’s
bill, he tells us, had amounted to the sum of sixpence; and that charge
had been incurred by himself.

The ever-memorable meetings of the reformers at the house of Newton,
where Shelley was a constant guest, have been thus recorded by one of
the biographers of the great poet:--“Shelley was intimate with the
Newton family, and was converted by them in 1813, and he began then a
strict vegetable diet. His intimate association with the amiable and
accomplished votaries of a _Return to Nature_ was perhaps the most
pleasing portion of his poetical, philosophical, and lovely life....
For some years I was in the thick of it; for I lived much with a
select and most estimable society of persons (the Newtons), who had
‘returned to Nature,’ and I heard much discussion on the topic of
vegetable diet. Certainly their vegetable dinners were delightful,
elegant, and excellent repasts; flesh, fowl, fish, and ‘game’ never
appeared--nor eggs nor butter _bodily_, but the two latter were
admitted into cookery, but as sparingly as possible, and under protest,
as not approved of and soon to be dispensed with. We had soups in great
variety, that seemed the more delicate from the absence of flesh-meat.

“There were vegetables of every kind, plainly stewed or scientifically
disguised. Puddings, tarts, confections and sweets abounded. Cheese
was excluded. Milk and cream might not be taken unreservedly, but they
were allowed in puddings, and sparingly in tea. Fruits of every kind
were welcomed. We luxuriated in tea and coffee, and sought variety
occasionally in cocoa and chocolate. Bread and butter, and buttered
toast were eschewed; but bread, cakes, and plain seed-cakes were
liberally divided among the faithful.”[222]

The cause of the publication of his book Newton thus states:--

    “Having for many years been an habitual invalid, and having at
    length found that relief from regimen which I had long and vainly
    hoped for from drugs, I am anxious, from sympathy with those
    afflicted, to impart to others the knowledge of the benefit I have
    experienced, and to dispel, as far as in me lies, the prejudices
    under which I conceive mankind to labour on points so nearly
    connected with their health and happiness.

    “The particulars of my case I have already related at the
    concluding pages of Dr. Lambe’s _Reports on Cancer_. To the account
    there given I have little to add, but that, by continuing to
    confine myself to the regimen advised in that work, I continue to
    experience the same benefit; that the winter which has just elapsed
    has been passed much more comfortably than that which preceded it,
    and that, if my habitual disorder is not completely eradicated, it
    is so much subdued as to give but little inconvenience; that I have
    suffered but a single day’s confinement for several months; and,
    upon the whole, that I enjoy an existence which many might envy who
    consider themselves to be in full possession of the blessings of
    health.

    “All that I have to regret in my present undertaking is the
    imperfect way in which it is executed. The adepts in medicine
    have gained their knowledge originally from the experience of the
    sick. I have taken my own sensations for my guide, and am myself
    alone responsible for the conclusions which I have drawn from
    them, the manuscript of this volume having been neither corrected
    nor looked over by any individual. While I make no pretensions to
    medical science, I cannot consent to be reasoned or ridiculed out
    of my feelings; nor to believe that to be an illusion, the truth
    of which has been confirmed to me by long-continued and repeated
    observation.”

The use of distilled water was a cardinal article in the dietary creed
of his friend Dr. Lambe, and upon this point Newton particularly
insists. He appeals with much fervour, as we have just stated, to
parents to have recourse to the natural means of prevention and
cure, in place of vainly trying every available _artificial_ method
by medicine and drugs. He instances, with minute particularity, the
regimen of his children, whom he asserts to have been, up to the moment
of his writing, perfectly free from any sort of malady or disorder, and
to be--

    “So remarkably healthy that several medical men who have seen
    and examined them with a scrutinizing eye, all agreed in the
    observation that they knew nowhere a whole family which equals
    them in robustness. Should the success of this experiment, now of
    three years’ standing, proceed as it has begun, there is little
    doubt, [he ventures to flatter himself] that it must at length
    have some influence with the public, and that every parent who
    finds the illness of his family both afflicting and expensive, will
    say to himself ‘Why should I any longer be imprudent or foolish
    enough to have my children sick?’ All hail to the resolution which
    that sentiment implies! But until it becomes general, I feel it
    necessary to exhort, in the warmest language I can think of, those
    who have the young in their charge to institute an experiment
    which I have made before them with the completest success. To
    those parents especially do I address myself who, aware that
    temperance in enjoyment is the best warrant of its duration, feel
    how dangerous and how empty are all the feverous amusements of
    our assemblies, our dinners, and our theatres, compared with the
    genuine and tranquil pleasures of a happy circle at home.”

He presents an alluring picture of the health-producing results for the
young of the natural regimen. He promises that

    “They will become not only more robust but more beautiful;
    that their carriage will be erect, their step firm; that their
    development at a critical period of youth, the prematurity of which
    has been considered an evil, will be retarded; that, above all,
    the danger of being deprived of them will in every way diminish;
    while by these light repasts their hilarity will be augmented, and
    their intellects cleared in a degree which shall astonishingly
    illustrate the delightful effects of this regimen.... I will
    beg here to attempt an answer in this place to that trite and
    specious objection to Dr. Lambe’s opinions that ‘what is suitable
    to one constitution may be not so to another.’ If there be a
    single person existing, whose health would not be improved by the
    vegetable diet and distilled water, then the whole system falls
    at once to the ground. The question is simply, whether fruits and
    other vegetables be not the natural sustenance of man, who would
    have occasion for no other drink than these afford, and whose
    thirst is at present excited by an unnatural flesh diet, which
    causes his disorders bodily and mentally.... Another objection
    sometimes urged is this: ‘If children, brought up on a vegetable
    regimen, should at a future period of their lives adopt a flesh
    diet, they will certainly suffer more from the change than they
    otherwise would have done.’ The very contrary of this, I conceive,
    would happen. The stomach is so fortified by the general increase
    of health, that a person thus nourished is enabled to bear what
    one whose humours are less impaired would sink under. The children
    of our family can each of them eat a dozen or eighteen walnuts for
    supper without the most trifling indigestion, an experiment which
    those who feed their children in the usual manner would consider
    it adventurous to attempt. So also the Irish porters in London
    bear these alterations of diet successfully, and owe much of their
    actual vigour to the vegetable food of their forefathers, and
    to their own, before they emigrated from Ireland, where, in all
    probability, they did not taste flesh half-a dozen times in the
    year.”

As to another well-known pretext, that the propensity to flesh-eating,
and the relish with which it is evidently enjoyed by the majority
of flesh eaters, is proof of its fitness, Newton justly objects the
various unnatural and disgusting foods of many savage peoples which are
eaten with equal relish, so that “the argument of the agreeable flavour
proves nothing, I apprehend, by proving too much.” He exhorts the
medical faculty generally, and those members of it who are in charge of
hospitals, infirmaries, or workhouses, to try the effect of the pure
regimen on the sufferers and patients--in particular, in the cases of
the victims of cancer. Amongst others of his personal acquaintance who
had derived the greatest benefit from the regimen, he instances Dr.
Adam Ferguson, the historian of the Roman Republic, who lived strictly
on a vegetable diet. He was in the habit of accompanying Mr. Newton,
in the year 1794, in rides through the environs of Rome. He was still
living in 1811, and he died, in fact, at the age of ninety, holding a
professorship in the University of Edinburgh.




XL.

GLEÏZÈS. 1773-1843.


Of all the enlightened and humane spirits to which the philosophic
eighteenth century gave birth, and who were quickened into activity
by the great movement which originated in France in its last quarter,
not one, assuredly, was actuated by a purer and more exalted feeling
than Jean Antoine Gleïzès--the most _enthusiastic_, perhaps, of all
the apostles of humanity and of refinement. He was born at Dourgne,
in the (present) department of the Tarn. His father was advocate to
the old provincial parliament. His mother’s name was Anna Francos.
After attending preliminary schools, he applied himself to the study
of medicine--urged, says his biographer, more by love of his species
than by predilection for the profession. His intense horror of the
vivisectional experiments in the physiological torture-dens soon
compelled him to abandon his intended career: the experience, however,
gained during his brief medical course he was able to utilize more than
once in his after life for the benefit of his neighbours.

The earlier period of the Revolution had been hailed by him, still
very young as he then was, as the hopeful beginning of a new era; when
its direction, unhappily, fell into the hands of fanatical leaders,
who, following too much the examples of the old _régimes_, thought,
by wholesale executions, to clear the way for the establishment of a
universal republic and of lasting peace. The youthful enthusiast, whose
whole soul revolted from the very idea of bloodshed and of suffering,
withdrew despairing into solitude, and devoted himself to scientific
and literary studies, and to calm contemplation of Nature.

In 1794, at the age of 21, Gleïzès married Aglae de Baumelle, daughter
of a writer of some repute. At this time he seems to have entertained
the hope of instructing his countrymen, by engaging in public teaching;
but, disappointed in a scheme for the inauguration of a course of
historical lectures in the central school of his department, he retired
altogether from the active business of the world, and settled down in
a happy and peaceful home, in a small château belonging to his wife,
at the foot of the Pyrenees near Mezières. It was here, amidst the
magnificent solitudes of Nature, that in 1798, in his twenty fifth
year, he determined upon abandoning for ever the diet of blood and
slaughter. Until the moment of his death, forty-five years later, his
diet consisted solely of milk, fruits, and vegetables.

So great was his scrupulousness, that there might be no possibility or
mistake Gleïzès prepared his own food; and he always ate alone (his
wife being unable or unwilling to follow his loftier aims), since he
could not endure either the smell or the sight of the ordinary dishes.
And this intense aversion it was, indeed, that compelled him to forego
in great measure his intercourse with the world, or, at all events, to
shun the ordinary celebrations of social “festivity.”

Full of enthusiastic belief that the transparent truth and sublimity of
his creed could not fail to commend themselves to the better spirits
of the age amongst his countrymen, Gleïzès addressed himself to some
of the more thoughtful of his contemporaries; amongst others to
Lamartine, Lamennais, and Chateâubriand. Lamartine--the author of the
_Fall of an Angel_, in which he gives expression to his akreophagistic
sympathies--responded, if not with the enthusiasm that might justly
have been expected from the author of that poem, at least in a friendly
spirit. The others kept silence. This indifferentism of those who
should have been the first to lend the support of their names naturally
affected him; and made much more sensible the intellectual and moral
isolation of his existence. He was not left quite alone, however.
There were found three or four minds of a loftier reach who had the
courage of their convictions, and followed them out to their logical
conclusion. These were Anquetil (the author of _Recherches sur les
Indes_), Charles Nodier, Girod de Chantrans, and Cabantous, dean of the
Faculty of Letters at Toulouse. His brother, Colonel Gleïzès, a member
of the Academy of Sciences of the same university, also declared for
the reformation. It is superflous to say that these converts were all
men of superior moral calibre to their contemporaries, however high
they might be exalted by popular estimates of worth.

Deeply sensible as he was of the profound selfishness and
indifferentism of the world surrounding him upon the subject which
to him had all the interest and importance of a new religion, he yet
constantly displayed the benevolence of his disposition, and the
beneficence of his morality, in his efforts for the good of all with
whom he came in contact, and particularly in respect to his domestics
and his tenants, amongst whom his memory was long held in reverence.
“His exalted nature,” states his brother, “glowed with enthusiasm for
everything true and good.” His “life-sorrow” seems to have been the
want of sympathy on the part of his wife, to whom, nevertheless, he
proved an indulgent husband.

His first book, _Les Mélancolies d’un Solitaire_, appeared in the
year 1794, in 1800 his _Nuits Elysiennes_, and four years later
his _Agrestes_; all more or less advocating the truth. A long
interval elapsed before he again essayed an appeal to the world.
His _Christianisme Expliqué: ou l’Unité de Croyance pour tous les
Chrétiens_ (Christianity Explained: or, Unity of Belief for all
Christians) was published in 1830. Seven years later it appeared
under the title of “Christianity Explained: or, the True Spirit of
that Religion Misinterpreted up to the Present Day.” In this work,
says his estimable editor and translator Herr Springer, “he sought
to prove, from the standing-point of a protestant christian, that
Christ’s mission had for its end the abolition of the murder of animals
(_Thiermord_), and that the whole significance of his teaching lay
in the words spoken at the institution of the ‘Supper,’ that is to
say, the substitution of bread instead of flesh, and wine instead of
blood.” This undertaking, it is needless to remark, admirable as was
its motive, could hardly, from the nature of the case, be successful.

His last work was his _Thalysie: ou La Nouvelle Existence_, the first
part of which was published at Paris in 1840, the second in 1842.
He survived this his final appeal to the world on behalf of the new
reformation but a few months. He had reached the proverbial limit of
human existence; but that his life was shortened by disappointment
and the bitter weariness of hope deferred, “by that sorrow which
perpetually gnaws at the heart of the unrecognised reformer” (as his
biographer well expresses it), we have too much reason to believe. The
_Thalysie_--his _magnum opus_--excited, it appears, little interest,
or even notice, upon its first appearance. It found one sympathising
critic in M. Cabantous, to whom reference has been already made, who
delivered a course of lectures upon it from his professorial chair. A
few years later a Parisian advocate, M. Blot-Lequène, wrote a treatise
in terms of strong recommendation of its principles; and Eugène
Stourm, editor of _The Phalanx_, also eloquently advocated its claims
upon the public notice. At length it was criticised in the _Révue des
Deux Mondes_ by Alphonse Esquiros, known to English readers by his
contributions to that Review on English life and manners. We are hardly
surprised that the criticism was conceived in the usual supercilious
and prejudiced spirit.

No attempt appears to have been made to re-publish the _New Existence_
until Herr Springer undertook the task for his countrymen. His German
version, with an interesting notice of the life and labours of Gleïzès,
was published at Berlin in 1872. Criticising a flippant article in
_The Food Journal_ in the same year, Herr Springer eloquently rebukes
the easy and arrogant tone--so successful in appealing to popular
prejudices--and observes: “Gleïzès at last published his eminent work,
which, as Weilhaüser says, he has written with the blood of his own
heart. If it be eccentric, as Mr. Jerrold asserts, it has only _the
eccentricity of a gospel of humanity_. Gleïzès was so eccentric as to
write the following lines, which were found amongst his posthumous
papers: ‘God, pure Source of Light, in order to obey thy commands I
wrote this book. Be gracious to protect and to support my efforts;
for the humble creature which raises its voice from its grain of
sand may, perhaps, be speechless to-morrow, and deep silence reign
in the desert.’ Yes; Mr. Jerrold is right: that theory was to its
author a religion. In the _Thalysie_ we are instructed in the highest
questions concerning the health and happiness of mankind. Surpassing
all naturalists and philosophers, he explained to us the great mystery
of Nature--that robbery and murder [in its full meaning] arose only
by corruption, and by alienation from the original laws of creation,
and that man, instead of favouring the corruption, as he has done till
now, would be able to abolish it. In this way, and in contradiction
to the hollow phrases of optimism and the depressing contemplation of
pessimism, Gleïzès restores the peace of our mind, and bestows upon us
the hope for a future reign of Wisdom and Love.”[223]

In the preface to the _Thalysie_ Gleïzès thus expresses his
convictions, his hopes, and the general purpose of his labours:--

    “The system which I now publish to the world is not, as the usual
    acceptation of that word might seem to indicate, a collection of
    principles more or less probable, and of which it depends upon
    each one to admit or reject the consequences. It is a chain of
    principles, rigorously true and just, from which man cannot depart
    without incurring penalties proportionate to his deviation. But, in
    spite of these penalties which he has suffered, and which he still
    suffers, he is not aware of his lost condition [_égarement_]. His
    fate is that of the slave, born in servitude, who plays with his
    chains, sometimes insults the freemen, and carries his madness to
    the point of refusing freedom when it is offered to him, and of
    choosing slavery.

    “It is not that _all_ men have allowed themselves to be carried
    willingly down the fatal descent: a large number have struggled
    against the press, but their diverse and scattered efforts have
    resembled the eddies of the flood, which ends with forcing together
    all the diverging waters and hurrying away with them into the gulf
    of the ocean. Or, if some few have raised and kept themselves above
    the rapid current, no permanent advantage has resulted from it to
    the human race, which has been none the less abandoned to itself.”

We know that the greatest intellects amongst the Greeks[224] had taught
the better way; but they failed, says Gleïzès, inasmuch as their
doctrine was too exclusive and esoteric.

    “The condition of the human race is a plain witness of its error.
    This condition, in fact, is so alarming that it might seem
    desperate, if it were certain that men had acquired _all_ their
    knowledge. But, happily, there is one branch of it--the most
    essential of all, and without which the rest is scarcely of any
    account--which is yet entirely ignored. This knowledge is precisely
    that of which these great men had glimpses, and of which they
    reserved to themselves the sole enjoyment;[225] and it is this
    knowledge, or, rather, this wisdom (and we know that with the
    Greeks these two things were comprised under the same denomination)
    which I publish. I shall give it an extension which it was not
    possible for _them_ to perceive or to give; because Nature refuses
    its life-giving spirit [_esprit de vie_] to solitary and isolated
    seeds, and makes those only to fructify which enter into the common
    heritage of mankind.

    “With such support, the most feeble must have an advantage over
    the strongest without it. I have, besides, another advantage. Men
    feeling to-day, more than ever, the privation of what is wanting
    to them, invoke on all sides new principles, and demand a higher
    civilisation. It is not the first time, doubtless, that such a
    state of things has been manifested. It has been seen to supervene
    after all the moral revolutions that have left man greater than
    they have found him. But that of which we have been the witnesses
    [the revolution in France of 1789--the reforms of 1830] seems to
    have something more remarkable, more complete--one would almost be
    tempted to believe that it must be the last, and terminate that
    long sequence of vain disputes across which the human kind has
    painfully advanced, seeing it rise in the midst of the _débris_
    of all the old-world ideas which have expired or are expiring at
    one’s feet. What a moment for rebuilding! No more favourable one
    could exist; and it is urged on, so to speak, by the breeze of
    these happy circumstances that I offer to the meditation of men the
    following propositions....

    “I shall add but a few words. The principles which I have laid down
    are absolute--they cannot bend [_fléchir_]. But there are _steps_
    on the route which conduct to the heights which they occupy; and
    were there but a single step made in that direction, that single
    step could not be regarded as indifferent and unimportant. Thus
    this work--guide of those whom it shall convince--will be useful
    also to the rest of the world as, at least, a moderator and a
    check; and, I shall avow it, my hopes do not extend beyond this
    latter object. I should feel myself even perfectly satisfied, if
    this book should inspire in my contemporaries enough of esteem
    and favour to prevent them from arresting and impeding it at its
    start, and to allow it to follow its course towards a generation, I
    will not say more worthy, but better prepared than the present to
    receive it.”

Gleïzès divides his great work into twelve Discourses, in two volumes,
supplemented by a third volume which he entitles _Moral Proofs_. It is
an almost exhaustive, as well as eloquent, _résumé_ of the history and
ethics of the subject. The only fault of this, perhaps, most heartfelt
appeal to the reason and conscience of mankind ever published is its
too great discursiveness. The manifest anxiety of the author to meet,
or to anticipate, every possible objection or subterfuge on the part of
the hostile or the indifferent, may well excuse this apparent blemish;
and the slightest acquaintance with his _New Existence_ can hardly
fail to extort, even from the most prejudiced reader, a tribute of
admiration to a spirit so noble and so pure, devoting all its energies
to the furtherance of an exalted and refined morality.

In the earlier portion of his book he reviews the dietetic habits and
practices of the various peoples of the younger world, and notices the
various philosophic and other writers who have left any record of their
opinions upon flesh-eating. He next treats of modern authorities, and,
after quoting a large number of anti-kreophagistic testimonies, in his
fifth Discourse he applies himself to answer the sophisms of the chief
opponents, and particularly of its arch-enemy--his countryman, Buffon,
in his well-known _Histoire Naturelle_--and he may be said effectually
to have disposed of his astonishing fallacies.[226]

    “What most strikes the observer when he throws an attentive glance
    over the earth, is the _relative_ inferiority of man, considered as
    what he is, in regard to what he ought to be: it is the feebleness
    of the work compared with the aptitude of the workman. All his
    inspirations are good, and all his actions bad; and it is to this
    singular fact that must be attributed, without doubt, the universal
    contempt that man exhibits towards his fellows.... We must remount
    to the source, and see if there is not in man’s existence some
    essential act which, reflecting itself on all the rest, would
    communicate to them its fatal influence. Let us consider, above
    everything, the _distinctive_ quality of man--that which raises him
    above all other beings. It is clear that it is Pity,[227] source
    of that intelligence which has placed him at the head of that
    fine moral order, invincible in the midst of the catastrophes of
    Nature. His utter failure to exhibit this feeling of pity towards
    his humble fellow-beings, as well as to his own kind, engages us
    to inquire what is the _permanent_ cause of such failure; and
    we find it, at first, in that unhappy facility with which man
    receives his _impressions_ of the beings by whom he is surrounded.
    These impressions, transmitted with life and cemented by habit,
    have formed a creation apart and separate from himself, which is
    consequently beyond the domain of his conscience, or, if you prefer
    it, of the ordinary jurisprudence of men. Thus men continue to
    accuse themselves of being unjust, violent, cruel, and treacherous
    to one another, but they do not accuse themselves of cutting the
    throats of other animals and of feeding upon their mangled limbs,
    which, nevertheless, is the single cause of that injustice, of that
    violence, of that cruelty, and of that treachery.

    “Although all have not these vices to the same degree, and it is
    exactly this fact which aids the self-deception, I shall clearly
    prove that all have the _germs_ of them; and that, if they are not
    equally developed, we must thank the circumstances only which have
    failed them.

    “It is thus that many Europeans, whom their destiny conducts to the
    cannibal countries, after some months of sojourn with the natives,
    make no difficulty of seating themselves at their banquet, and of
    sharing their horrible repast, which at first had excited their
    horror and disgust. They begin with devouring a dog: from the dog
    to the man the space is soon cleared.

    “Men believe themselves to be just, provided that they fulfil, in
    regard to their fellows, the duties which have been prescribed to
    them. But it is goodness which is the justice of man; and it is
    impossible, I repeat it, to be good towards one’s fellow without
    being so towards other existences. Let us not be the dupes of
    _appearances_. Seneca, who lived only on the herbs of his garden,
    to which he owed those last gleams of philosophy which enlightened,
    so to speak, the fall of the Roman Empire, also thinks that crime
    cannot be circumscribed: _Nullum intrà se manet vitium_. And if,
    as Ovid affirms, the sword struck men only after having been first
    dyed in the blood of the lower animals, what interest have we not
    in respecting such a barrier? Like Æolus, who held in his hands the
    bag in which the winds were confined, we may at our will, according
    as we live upon plants or upon animals, tranquillize the earth or
    excite terrible tempests upon it.

    “I am too well aware that a subterfuge will be found in excusing
    the crime by necessity, and calumniating Providence. According to
    the pretended belief of the greatest number of people, if other
    animals were not put to death, they would deprive men of the empire
    of the earth. But it is easy to reply to this objection by the
    examples of people who, holding in horror the effusion of blood,
    and robbing no being of life--even the vilest or most hateful--are
    by no means disturbed in the exercise of their sovereignty.[228]
    And it would result from the examples of these people, if one had
    not other proofs besides, that man is absolutely master of the
    means of increasing or limiting the multiplication of the species
    which are more or less in dependence upon him. And it is not less
    evident that the earth, in this latter hypothesis, would support
    an infinitely greater number of the human species. Thus will the
    vegetable regimen be _necessarily_ adopted one day over the whole
    earth, when the multiplication of our species shall have reached
    a certain number fixed and pre-established by that imperious and
    irrevocable law which is intimately connected, for the most part,
    with humanity, justice, and virtue--the number at which it is
    slowly arriving, arrested by the very causes which I am striving
    to destroy, and which, for that single reason, ought to arm
    against them all generous beings who appreciate the benefit of
    existence.”[229]

Amongst other pretexts by which men seek to excuse selfishness, is
the assertion that its victims have little or no consciousness of
suffering, and that their death is so unexpected that it cannot excite
their terror. This monstrous fiction is eloquently exposed by Gleïzès,
as it is, indeed, by the commonest everyday experience:--

    “The instinct of life among animals generally gives them a
    presentiment and fear of death--that is to say _violent_ death; for
    as for natural death it inspires in them no alarm, for the simple
    reason that it is in the course of nature. And it is the same with
    man. He is not afflicted with the thought of dying when he knows
    his hour is come; he resigns himself to that fate as to any other
    imposed upon him by necessity. The sensations of other beings
    differ in no respect from those of men; and when the horse, for
    example, is condemned to death by the lion, that is to say, when he
    hears the confused roar of that terrible beast which fills space,
    while the precise spot from which it emanates cannot be determined,
    which takes from the victim all hope of escape by flight, the
    perspiration rolls down all his limbs, he falls to the earth as if
    he had just been struck by a thunderbolt, and would die of terror
    alone if the lion did not run up to terminate the tragedy.”[230]

    “There exists so great an analogy, so strong a resemblance, between
    the life of man and that of other animals who surround him, that a
    simple return to himself--simple reflection--ought to suffice to
    make him respect the latter; and if he were condemned by Nature to
    rend it from them, he might justly curse the order of things which,
    on the one hand, should have implanted in his heart the source of
    feeling so gentle, and, on the other, should have imposed on him a
    necessity so cruel.... And if this man have children, if he bear in
    his heart objects which are so dear to him, how can he unceasingly
    surround himself with images of death--of that death which must
    deprive him one day of those whom he loves, or snatch himself away
    from their love? And if he be just, if he be good, how will he not
    have repugnance for acts which will continually recall to him ideas
    of ingratitude, of cruelty, and of violence? There exists in the
    East a tree which, by a mechanical movement, inclines its branches
    towards the traveller, whom it seems to invite to repose under
    its shade. This simple image of hospitality, which is revered in
    that part of the world, makes them regard it as sacred, and they
    would punish with death him who should dare to apply a hatchet to
    its trunk. Our humble fellow-beings, should _they_ be less sacred
    because they represent, not by mechanical movements, but by actions
    resembling our own, feelings the dearest to our hearts? Ah! let us
    respect them, not alone because they aid us to bear the burdens
    of the world, which would overwhelm us without them but _because
    they have the same right with ourselves to life_.... A reason which
    is without reply, at least for generous souls, is the trust and
    confidence reposed in man by other animals. Nature has not taught
    them to distrust him. He is the only enemy whom she has not pointed
    out to them. Is it not evident proof that he was not intended to be
    so? For can one believe that Nature, who holds so just a balance,
    could have been willing to deceive all other beings in favour of
    man alone? It has been observed that birds of the gentle species
    express certain cries when they perceive the fox, the weasel,
    &c., although they have nothing to fear from them, without doubt,
    by reason of the analogy which they offer. They are the cries of
    hatred rather than of fear, whilst they utter these latter at sight
    of the eagle, of the hawk, &c. Now, it is certain that in all the
    islands on which man has landed, the native animals have not fled
    before them. They have been able to take even birds with the hand.”

Gleïzès rejects the common fallacy that, because men have _acquired_ a
lust for flesh, _therefore_ it is natural or proper for them.

    “It is a specious but very false reason to allege that, since man
    has acquired this taste, he ought to be permitted to indulge it--in
    the first place because Nature has not given him _cooked_ flesh,
    and because several ages must have rolled away before fire was
    used. It is very well known that there are many countries in which
    it was not known at the period of their discovery. Nature, then,
    could have given man only _raw_ or _living_ flesh, and we know that
    it is repugnant to him over the whole extent of the earth. Now it
    is exactly this character which essentially distinguishes animals
    of prey from others. The former, those at least of the larger
    species, have generally an extreme repugnance, not only for cooked
    flesh, but even for that which has lost its freshness. Man, then,
    is not carnivorous but under certain abnormal conditions; and his
    senses, to which he appeals in support of his carnivorousness, are
    perverted to such a degree, that he would devour his fellow-man
    without perceiving it, if they served him up in place of veal, the
    flesh of which is said to have the same taste. Thus Harpagus ate,
    without knowing it, the corpse of his son.”

Gleïzès instances the case of Cows and of Reindeer who, in Norway, have
been denaturalised so far as to feed on fish, and readily to take to
that unnatural food.

    “It would be too long to enumerate here all the causes which may
    have produced so great an aberration. This will be the matter of
    another Discourse. I shall content myself for the moment with
    saying some words upon that which perpetuates it. It is essentially
    that lightness of mind, or, rather, that sort of stupidity, which
    makes all reflection upon anything which is opposed to their habits
    painful to the generality of mankind. They would turn their head
    aside with horror if they saw what a single one of their repasts
    costs Nature. They eat animals as some amongst them launch a
    bomb into the midst of a besieged town, without thinking of the
    evils which it must bring to a crowd of individuals, strangers to
    war--women, children, and old men--evils the near spectacle of
    which they could not support, in spite of the hardness of their
    hearts.... To-day, when everything is calculated with so much
    precision [he remarks with bitterness], there will not be wanting
    persons with sufficient assurance to attempt to prove that there
    is more of advantage for the domesticated animals to be born and
    live on condition of having their throats cut, than if they had
    remained in ‘nothingness,’ or in the natural state. As for the
    word ‘nothingness,’ I confess that I do not understand it, but I
    understand the other very well; and I have never conceived how man
    could have had the barbarity to accumulate all the calamities of
    the earth upon a single individual; that is to say, to slaughter
    it in return for having caused its degeneracy. But if he thinks
    himself to escape from the influence of an action so dastardly and
    so infamous, he would be in a very great error....

    “I shall finish these prolegomena with an important remark. I have
    known a large number of good souls who offered up the most sincere
    wishes for the establishment of this doctrine of humaneness,
    who thought it just and true in all its aspects, who believed
    in all that it announces; but who, in spite of so praiseworthy
    a disposition, dared not be the first to give the example. They
    awaited this movement from minds stronger than their own. Doubtless
    they are the minds which give the impulse to the world; but is it
    necessary to await this movement when one is convinced of one’s
    self? Is it permissible to temporise in a question of life or
    death for innocent beings whose sole crime is _to have been born_,
    and is it in a case like this that strength of mind should fail
    justice? No! Well-doing is, happily, not so difficult. Ah! what
    is your excuse, besides, pusillanimous souls? I blush for you at
    the miserable pretexts which keep you back. It would be necessary,
    say you, to separate one’s self from the world; to renounce one’s
    friends and neighbours. I see no such necessity, and I think,
    on the contrary, that if you truly loved the world and your
    neighbours, you would hasten to give them an example which must
    have so powerful an influence upon their present happiness and upon
    their future destiny.”[231]

We have reason once again to lament the perversity of literary or
publishing enterprise which will produce and reproduce, _ad infinitum_,
books of no real and permanent value to the world, and altogether
neglect its true luminaries. This is, in an especial manner, the case
with Gleïzès. The _Nouvelle Existence_ has never been republished,
we believe, in the author’s own country; while it has never found a
translator, perhaps scarcely a reader, in this country outside the
Vegetarian ranks. Germany, as we have already noticed, alone has the
honour of attempting to preserve from oblivion one of the few who have
deserved immortality.




XLI.

SHELLEY. 1792-1822.


That a principle of profound significance for the welfare of our own
species in particular, and for the peaceful harmony of the world
in general--that a true spiritualism, of which some of the most
admirable of the poets of the pre-Christian ages proved themselves not
unconscious, has been, for the most part, altogether overlooked or
ignored by modern aspirants to poetic fame is matter for our gravest
lament. Thomson, Pope, Shelley, Lamartine--to whom Milton, perhaps, may
be added--these form the small band who almost alone represent, and
have developed the earlier inspiration of a Hesiod, Ovid, or Virgil,
the prophet-poets who, faithful to their proper calling,[232] have
sought to _unbarbarise_ and elevate human life by arousing, in various
degree, feelings of horror and aversion from the prevailing materialism
of living.

Of this illustrious band, and, indeed, of all the great intellectual
and moral luminaries who have shed a humanising influence upon our
planet--who have left behind them “thoughts that breathe and words
that burn”--none can claim more reverence from humanitarians than the
poet of poets--the influence of whose life and writings, considerable
even now, and gradually increasing, doubtless in a not remote future
is destined to be equal to that of the very foremost of the world’s
teachers, and of whom our sketch, necessarily limited though it is,
will be extended beyond the usual allotted space.

Percy Bysshe Shelley descended from an old and wealthy family long
settled in Sussex. At the age of 13 he was sent to Eton, where (such
was the spirit of the public and other schools at that time, and,
indeed, of long afterwards) he was subjected to severe trials of
endurance by the rough and rude manners of the ordinary schoolboy, and
the harsh and unequal violence of the schoolmaster. Of an exceptionally
refined and sensitive temperament, he was none the less determined
in resistance to injustice and oppression, and his refusal to submit
tamely to their petty tyrannies seems to have brought upon him more
than the common amount of harsh treatment. It penetrated into his
inmost soul, and inspired the opening stanzas of “The Revolt of
Islam,” in intensity of feeling seldom equalled. Some alleviation of
these sufferings of childhood he found in his own mental resources.
For his amusement he translated, we are assured, several books of
the _Natural History_ of Pliny. Of Greek writers he even then (in an
English version) read Plato, who afterwards, in his own language,
always remained one of his chief literary companions, and he applied
himself also to the study of French and of German. In natural science,
Chemistry seems to have been his especial pursuit.

In 1810, at the age of seventeen, he entered University College,
Oxford. There he studied and wrote unceasingly. With a strong
predilection for metaphysics, he devoted himself in particular to
the great masters of dialectics, Locke and Hume, and to their chief
representatives in French philosophy. Ardent and enthusiastic in
the pursuit of truth, he sought to enlarge his knowledge and ideas
from every possible quarter, and he engaged in correspondence with
distinguished persons, suggested to him by choice or chance, with
whom he discussed the most interesting philosophical questions. Like
all truly fruitful minds, the youthful inquirer was not satisfied
with the _dicta_ of mere authority, or with the _consensus_, however
general, of past ages, and he hesitated not, in matters of opinion in
which every well-instructed intelligence is capable of judging for
itself, to bring to the test of right reason the most widely-received
dogmas of Antiquity. Actuated by this spirit, rather than by any
matured convictions, and wishing to elicit sincere as well as
exhaustive argument on the deepest of all metaphysical inquiries,
in an unfortunate moment for himself, he caused to be printed an
abstract of anti-theistic speculations, drawn from David Hume and
other authorities, presented in a series of mathematically-expressed
propositions. Copies of this modest thesis of two pages were sent
either by the author, or by some other hand, to the heads of his
College. The clerical dignitaries, listening to the dictates of
outraged authority, rather than influenced by calm reflection, which
would have, perhaps, shewn them the useless injustice of so extreme a
measure, proceeded at once to expel him from the University.[233]

That in spite of this impetuous attack upon the stereotyped
presentations of Theism, Shelley had an eminently religious temperament
has been well insisted upon by a recent biographer:--

    “Brimming over with love for men, he was deficient in sympathy with
    the conditions under which they actually think and feel. Could he
    but dethrone the anarch, Custom, the ‘Millennium,’ he argued, would
    immediately arrive; nor did he stop to think how different was
    the fibre of his own soul from that of the unnumbered multitudes
    around him. In his adoration of what he recognised as _living_,
    he retained no reverence for the ossified experience of past
    ages.... For he had a vital faith, and this faith made the ideals
    he conceived seem possible--faith in the duty and desirability of
    overthrowing idols; faith in the gospel of liberty, fraternity,
    equality; faith in the divine beauty of Nature; faith in the
    perfectibility of man; faith in the omnipresent soul, whereof our
    souls are atoms; faith in love, as the ruling and co-ordinating
    substance of morality. The man who lived by this faith was in no
    vulgar sense of the word ‘atheist.’ When he proclaimed himself to
    be one he pronounced his hatred of a gloomy religion which had been
    the instrument of kings and priests for the enslavement of their
    fellow beings. As he told his friend Trelawney, he used the word
    _Atheism_ ‘to express his abhorrence of superstition: he took it
    up, as a knight took up a gauntlet, in defiance of injustice.’”[234]

So thorough was his contempt for mere received and routine thought,
that even Aristotle, the great idol of the mediæval schoolmen, and
still an object of extraordinary veneration in the elder University,
became for him a kind of synonym for despotic authority--

                                    “Tomes
    Of reasoned Wrong glozed on by Ignorance”--

and was, accordingly, treated with undue neglect. As for politics,
as represented in the parliament and public Press of his day, he was
indignantly impatient of the too usual trifling and unreality of public
life. He seldom read the newspapers; nor could he ever bring himself to
mix with the “rabble of the House.”

Thus, forced into antipathy to the ordinary and orthodox business of
life around him, the poet withdrew himself more and more from it into
his own thoughts, and hopes, and aspirations, which he communicated to
his familiar friends. Some of those, however, into whose society he
chanced to be thrown, were not of a sort of mind most congenial to his
own. Yet they all bear witness to his surpassing moral no less than
mental, constitution. “In no individual, perhaps, was the moral sense
ever more completely developed than in Shelley,” says one of his most
intimate acquaintances; “in no being was the perception of right and
wrong more acute.”

“As his love of intellectual pursuits was vehement, and the vigour
of his genius almost celestial, so were the purity and sanctity of
his life most conspicuous.... I have had the happiness to associate
with some of the best specimens of gentleness; but (may my candour
and preference be pardoned), I can affirm that Shelley was almost the
only example I have yet found that was never wanting, even in the most
minute particular, of the infinite and various observances of pure,
entire, and perfect gentility.” This is the voluntary testimony of a
friend who was not inclined to excess of praise.[235]

The sudden end of his career at Oxford had estranged him from his
father, who was of a temperament the very opposite to that of
the enthusiastic reformer--harsh, intolerant, and bigoted in his
prejudices; and the young Shelley’s marriage, shortly afterwards,
to Harriet Westbrook, a young girl of much beauty, but of little
cultivation of mind, and in a position of life different from his
own, incensed him still further. The marriage, happy enough in the
beginning, proved to be an ill-assorted one, and various causes
contributed to the inevitable _dénouement_. After a union of some
three years, the marriage, by mutual consent, was dissolved. Two years
later--not, it seems, in consequence of the divorce, as sometimes has
been suggested--the young wife put an end to her existence--a terrible
and tragic termination of an ill-considered attachment, which must have
caused him the deepest pangs of grief, and which seems always, and
justly, to have cast a gloomy shadow upon his future life.

Brief as his career was, we can refer only to the most interesting
events in it. Of these, his enthusiastic effort to arouse a bloodless
revolution in Ireland, such as, if effected, might have prevented the
continued miseries of that especially neglected portion of the three
kingdoms, is not the least noteworthy. With his lately-married wife and
her sister he was living at Keswick, when, by a sudden inspiration, he
resolved to cross the Channel, and engage in the work of propagating
his principles of political and social reform. This was in the early
part of 1812. In Dublin, where they established their head-quarters,
he printed an _Address to the Irish People_, which, by his own hands,
as well as by other agency, was distributed far and wide. In this
wonderfully well-considered and reasonable manifesto, the principles
laid down as necessary to success in attempting deliverance from ages
of bad laws and misgovernment, are as sound as the ardour and sincerity
of his hopeless undertaking are unmistakeable. The cosmopolitan scope
of the _Address_ appears in such passages as these:--

    “Do not inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, a Jew,
    or a Heathen, but if he be a virtuous man, if he love liberty and
    truth, if he wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man
    be ever so much ‘a believer,’ and love not these things, he is a
    heartless hypocrite and a knave.... It is not a merit to tolerate,
    but it is a crime to be intolerant.... Be calm, mild, deliberate,
    patient.... Think, and talk, and discuss.... Be free and be happy,
    but _first be wise and good_.... Habits of sobriety, regularity,
    and thought must be entered into and firmly resolved upon.”

Truer in his perception of the radical causes and cure of national
evils than most party politicians, he urged the essential need of
ethical and social change, without which mere political change of
parties, or increase in material wealth of some sections in the
community, must be valueless in any true estimate of a nation’s
prosperity. Shelley also issued, in pamphlet form, _Proposals for an
Association_--a plan for the formation of a vast society of Irish
Catholics, to enforce their “emancipation”--a measure which was
not brought about until twenty years later after long and vehement
opposition.

Two months were devoted to this generous but futile work; the people of
Ireland did not move, and the young reformer returned to England, but
without abandoning his _propaganda_ of the principles of liberty and
justice. While residing in Somersetshire he published a paper entitled
a _Declaration of Rights_, to circulate which recourse was had to
ingenious methods. Four years later, in 1817, he published _A Proposal
for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom_. “He saw that
the House of Commons did not represent the country; and acting upon his
principle that Government is the servant of the Governed, he sought
means for ascertaining the real will of the nation with regard to its
Parliament, and for bringing the collective opinions of the population
to bear upon its rulers. The plan proposed was that a large network of
committees should be formed, and that by their means every individual
man should be canvassed. We find here the same method of advancing
reform by peaceable associations as in Ireland.” At the same time, in
presence of the incalculable amount of ignorance, destitution, and
consequent venality of the great mass of the community--the necessary
outcome of long ages of bad and selfish legislation--Universal
Suffrage for the present appeared to him to be not a safe experiment.
Evidence of controversial power, is his “grave and lofty” Letter to
Lord Ellenborough, who had recently sentenced to imprisonment the
printers of the _Age of Reason_, “an eloquent argument in favour of
toleration and the freedom of the intellect, carrying the matter beyond
the instance of legal tyranny, which occasioned its composition, and
treating it with philosophical if impassioned, seriousness.”[236]
Before his visit to Ireland, he had been engaged (as he tells his
correspondent, William Godwin) in writing _An Inquiry into the Causes
of the Failure of the French Revolution to Benefit Mankind_. We have
to lament that this Essay seems never to have been completed, since it
is hardly doubtful that it would have been of unusual interest. Such
was the force and activity of Shelley’s intellect, as displayed in the
regions of practical philosophy, at the age of twenty, and before he
had given to the world his first productions in poetry.

_Queen Mab_, written in part two years before, was finished and printed
in 1813. Although it may have some of the defects of immaturity of
genius, it has the charm of a genuine poetic inspiration. Intense
hatred of selfish injustice and untruth in all their shapes, equally
intense sympathy with all suffering, sublime faith in the ultimate
triumph of Good, clothed in the language of entrancing eloquence and
sublimity, are the characteristics of this unique poem. The author’s
depreciation of his earliest poetic attempt in after years, in a letter
addressed to the _Examiner_, only a month before his death, strikes us
as scarcely sincere, and as having been a sort of necessary sacrifice
on the altar of Expediency.

In this exquisitely beautiful prophecy of a “Golden Age” to be, the
fairy Queen Mab, the unembodied being who acts as his instructress and
guide through the Universe, displays to his affrighted vision, in one
vast panorama, the horrors of the Past and the Present. She afterwards,
in a glorious apocalypse, relieves his despair by revealing to him the
“new heavens and the new earth,” which eventually will displace the
present evil constitution of things on our planet. On the redeemed and
regenerated Globe:--

        “Ambiguous Man! he that can know
    More misery, and can dream more joy than all:
    Whose keen sensations thrill within his heart,
    To mingle with a loftier instinct there,
    Lending their power to pleasure and to pain,
    Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each:
    Who stands amid the ever-varying world
    The burden or the glory of the Earth--
    He chief perceives the change: his being notes
    The gradual renovation, and defines
    Each movement of its progress on his mind.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Here now the human being stands, adorning
    This loveliest Earth with taintless body and mind.
    Blest from his birth with all bland impulses,
    Which gently in his truthful bosom wake
    All kindly passions and all pure desires.
    Him (still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing,
    Which from the exhaustless store of human weal
    Draws on the virtuous mind), the thoughts that rise
    In time-destroying infiniteness, gift
    With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks
    The unprevailing hoariness of age:
    And Man, once fleeting o’er the transient scene,
    Swift as an unremembered vision, stands
    Immortal upon Earth. _No longer now
    He slays the Lamb who looks him in the face_,
    And horribly devours his mangled flesh,
    Which, still avenging Nature’s broken law,
    Kindled all putrid humours in his frame--
    All evil passions and all vain belief--
    Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind,
    The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.
      No longer now the wingèd habitants,
    That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,
    Flee from the form of Man.

           *       *       *       *       *

    All things are void of terror. Man has lost
    His terrible prerogative, and stands
    An equal amidst equals. Happiness
    And Science dawn, though late, upon the Earth.
    Peace cheers the mind, Health renovates the frame.
    Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,
    Reason and passion cease to combat there;
    Whilst each, unfettered, o’er the Earth extends
    Its all-subduing energies, and wields
    The sceptre of a vast dominion there;
    Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends
    Its force to the omnipotence of Mind,
    Which from its dark mine drags the gem of Truth
    To decorate its paradise of Peace.”

In rapt vision the prophet-poet apostrophises the “New Earth”:

    “O happy Earth! reality of Heaven,
    To which those restless souls, that ceaselessly
    Throng through the human universe, aspire.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Of purest spirits, thou pure dwelling-place,
    Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,
    Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come.
    O happy Earth! reality of Heaven.
      Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams;
    And dim forebodings of thy loveliness,
    Haunting the human heart, have there entwined
    Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss.

           *       *       *       *       *

                                and the souls
    That, by the paths of an aspiring change,
    Have reached thy haven of perpetual Peace,
    There rest from the eternity of toil,
    That framed the fabric of thy perfectness.”

From the Essay, in the form of a note, which he subjoined to the
passage we have quoted, we extract the principal arguments:--

    “Man, and the other animals whom he has afflicted with his malady
    or depraved by his dominion, are _alone diseased_. The Bison,
    the wild Hog, the Wolf, are perfectly exempt from malady, and
    invariably die either from external violence or from mature old
    age. But the domestic Hog, the Sheep, the Cow, the Dog, are subject
    to an incredible variety of distempers, and, like the corruptors
    of their nature, have physicians who thrive upon their miseries.
    The super-eminence of man is, like Satan’s, the super-eminence of
    pain; and the majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease,
    and crime, have reason to curse the untoward event that, by
    enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised him above the
    level of his fellow-animals. But the steps that have been taken
    are irrevocable. The whole of human science is comprised in one
    question: How can the advantages of intellect and civilisation be
    reconciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural life?
    How can we take the benefits and reject the evils of the system
    which is now interwoven with the fibre of our being? I believe
    that abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors would, in
    a great measure, capacitate us for the solution of this important
    question.

    “It is true that mental and bodily derangements are attributable,
    in part, to other deviations from rectitude and nature than those
    which concern diet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting
    the connexion of the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of
    unsatisfied celibacy, unenjoyed prostitution, and the premature
    arrival of puberty, necessarily spring. The putrid atmosphere of
    crowded cities, the exhalations of chemical processes, the muffling
    of our bodies in superfluous apparel, the absurd treatment of
    infants--all these, and innumerable other causes, contribute their
    mite to the mass of human evil.

    “Comparative Anatomy teaches us that man resembles the frugivorous
    animals in everything, the carnivorous in nothing. He has neither
    claws wherewith to seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth
    to tear the living fibre. A mandarin of the first class, with
    nails two inches long, would probably find them alone inefficient
    to hold even a hare. After every subterfuge of gluttony, the bull
    must be degraded into the “ox,” and the ram into the “wether,” by
    an unnatural and inhuman operation, that the flaccid fibre may
    offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. It is only by
    softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it
    is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the
    sight of its bloody juice and raw horror does not excite loathing
    and disgust.

    “Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive
    experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a
    living lamb with his teeth and, plunging his head into its vitals,
    slake his thirst with the streaming blood. When fresh from this
    deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible instinct of
    nature that would rise in judgment against it and say, ‘Nature
    formed me for such work as this.’ Then, and then only would he be
    consistent.

    “Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless
    man be one, to the rule of herbivorous animals having cellulated
    colons.

    “The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in the order
    and in the number of his teeth. The orang-outang is the most
    anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, all of whom are strictly
    frugivorous. There is no other species of animals, which live
    on different food, in which this analogy exists.[237] In many
    frugivorous animals the canine teeth are more pointed and distinct
    than those of man. The resemblance also of the human stomach to
    that of the orang-outang is greater than to that of any other
    animal.

    “The structure of the human frame, then, is that of one fitted to
    a pure vegetable diet in every essential particular. It is true
    that the reluctance to abstain from animal food, in those who have
    been long accustomed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons
    of weak minds as to be scarcely overcome. But this is far from
    bringing any argument in its favour. A Lamb, who was fed for some
    time on flesh by a ship’s crew, refused her natural diet at the end
    of the voyage. There are numerous instances of Horses, Sheep, Oxen,
    and even Wood-Pigeons having been taught to live upon flesh until
    they have loathed their natural aliment. Young children evidently
    prefer pastry, oranges, apples, and other fruit, to the flesh of
    animals, until, by the gradual depravation of the digestive organs,
    the free use of vegetables has, for a time, produced serious
    inconveniences--_for a time_, I say, since there never was an
    instance wherein a change from spirituous liquors and animal food
    to vegetables and pure water has failed ultimately to invigorate
    the body by rendering its juices bland and consentaneous, and to
    restore to the mind that cheerfulness and elasticity which not
    one in fifty possesses on the present system. A love of strong
    liquors also is with difficulty taught infants. Almost every one
    remembers the wry faces which the first glass of port produced.
    Unsophisticated instinct is invariably unerring, but to decide on
    the fitness of animal food from the _perverted_ appetites which its
    continued adoption produces, is to make the criminal a judge of his
    own cause. It is even worse, for it is appealing to the infatuated
    drunkard in a question of the salubrity of brandy.

    “Except in children, there remain no traces of that instinct which
    determines, in all other animals, what aliment is _natural_ or
    otherwise; and so perfectly obliterated are they in the reasoning
    adults of our species, that it has become necessary to urge
    considerations drawn from comparative anatomy to prove that we are
    _naturally_ frugivorous.

    “Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever the cause of
    disease shall be discovered, the root from which all vice and
    misery have so long overshadowed the Globe will be bare to the
    axe. All the exertions of man, from that moment, may be considered
    as tending to the clear profit of his species. No sane mind in
    a sane body resolves upon real crime.... The system of a simple
    diet promises no Utopian advantages. It is no mere reform of
    legislation, whilst the furious passions and evil propensities of
    the human heart, in which it had its origin, are still unassuaged.
    It _strikes at the root of all evil_, and is an experiment which
    may be tried with success, not alone by nations, but by small
    societies, families, and even individuals. In no cases has a return
    to vegetable diet produced the slightest injury; in most it has
    been attended with changes undeniably beneficial. Should ever a
    physician be born with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he
    might trace all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural
    habits as clearly as that philosopher has traced all knowledge to
    sensation....

    “By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure
    those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the
    vegetable system. Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject
    whose merits an experience of six months would set for ever at
    rest. But it is only among the enlightened and benevolent that so
    great a sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected, even
    though its ultimate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is
    found easier by the short-sighted victims of disease to _palliate_
    their torments by medicine than to _prevent_ them by regimen.
    The vulgar of all ranks are invariably sensual and indocile, yet
    I cannot but feel myself persuaded that when the benefits of
    vegetable diet are mathematically proved; when it is as clear that
    those who live naturally are exempt from premature death as that
    one is not nine, the most sottish of mankind will feel a preference
    towards a long and tranquil, contrasted with a short and painful,
    life. On the average, out of sixty persons four die in three years.
    Hopes are entertained that, in April, 1814, a statement will be
    given that sixty persons, all having lived more than three years on
    vegetables and pure water, are then in _perfect health_. More than
    two years have now elapsed--_not one of them has died_. No such
    example will be found in any sixty persons taken at random.

    “Seventeen persons of all ages (the families of Dr. Lambe and Mr.
    Newton) have lived for seven years on this diet without a death,
    _and almost without the slightest illness_.... In proportion to the
    number of proselytes, so will be the weight of evidence, and when a
    thousand persons can be produced living on vegetables and distilled
    water,[238] who have to dread no disease but old age, the world
    will be compelled to regard flesh and fermented liquors as slow but
    certain poisons.”

Shelley next insists on the incalculable benefits of a reformed diet
economically, socially, and politically:--

    “The monopolising eater of flesh would no longer destroy his
    constitution by devouring an acre at a meal; and many loaves of
    bread would cease to contribute to gout, madness, and apoplexy, in
    the shape of a pint of porter or a dram of gin, when appeasing the
    long-protracted famine of the hard-working peasant’s hungry babes.
    The quantity of nutritious vegetable matter consumed in fattening
    the carcase of an ox would afford ten times the sustenance,
    undepraved, indeed, and incapable of generating disease, if
    gathered immediately from the bosom of the earth. The most fertile
    districts of the habitable globe are now actually cultivated by men
    for [other] animals, at a delay and waste of aliment absolutely
    incapable of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, to any
    great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural craving for dead
    flesh, and they pay for the greater licence of the privilege by
    subjection to supernumerary diseases. Again, the spirit of the
    nation, that should take the lead in this great reform, would
    insensibly become _agricultural_.

    “The advantage of a reform in diet is obviously greater than that
    of any other. It strikes at the _root_ of the evil. To remedy the
    abuses of legislation, before we annihilate the propensities by
    which they are produced, is to suppose that by taking away the
    _effect_ the _cause_ will cease to operate....

    “Let not too much, however, be expected from this system. The
    healthiest among us is not exempt from hereditary disease. The most
    symmetrical, athletic, and long-lived is a being inexpressibly
    inferior to what he would have been, had not the unnatural habits
    of his ancestors accumulated for him a certain portion of malady
    and deformity. In the most perfect specimen of civilised man,
    something is still found wanting by the physiological critic. Can a
    return to Nature, then, instantaneously eradicate predispositions
    that have been slowly taking root in the silence of innumerable
    Ages? Undoubtedly not. All that I contend for is, that from the
    moment of relinquishing all _unnatural_ habits no new disease is
    generated; and that the predisposition to hereditary maladies
    gradually perishes for want of its accustomed supply. In cases
    of consumption, cancer, gout, asthma, and scrofula, such is the
    invariable tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water....”

He concludes this philosophic discourse with an earnest appeal to the
various classes of society:--

    “I address myself not to the young enthusiast only, to the ardent
    devotee of truth and virtue--the pure and passionate moralist,
    yet unvitiated by the contagion of the world. He will embrace a
    pure system from its abstract truth, its beauty, its simplicity,
    and its promise of wide-extended benefit. Unless custom has
    turned poison into food, he will hate the brutal pleasures of the
    chase by instinct. It will be a contemplation full of horror and
    disappointment to his mind that beings, capable of the gentlest and
    most admirable sympathies, should take delight in the deathpangs
    and last convulsions of dying animals.

    “The elderly man, whose youth has been poisoned by intemperance,
    or who has lived with apparent moderation, and is afflicted
    with a variety of painful maladies, would find his account in
    a beneficial change, produced without the risk of poisonous
    medicines. The mother, to whom the perpetual restlessness of
    disease, and unaccountable deaths incident to her children, are the
    causes of incurable unhappiness, would, on this diet, experience
    the satisfaction of beholding their perpetual health and natural
    playfulness.[239] The most valuable lives are daily destroyed by
    diseases that it is dangerous to palliate, and impossible to cure,
    by medicine. How much longer will man continue to pimp for the
    gluttony of Death--his most insidious, implacable, and eternal foe?”

Some time after the melancholy death of his first wife, Shelley married
Mary Wolstoncroft, the daughter of William Godwin, author of _Political
Justice_--perhaps the most revolutionary of all pleas for a change in
the constitution of society that has ever proceeded from a prosaic
tradesman, such as, in the ordinary intercourse of life and interchange
of ideas, his biography and correspondence (lately published) prove
him to have been. Her mother was the celebrated and earliest advocate
of the rights of women. Previously, the lovers had travelled through
France and part of Germany, and an account of their six weeks’ tour was
afterwards printed by Mrs. Shelley.

In 1815 appeared his _Alastor; or the Spirit of Solitude_. In 1817
he again left England for Geneva. While in Switzerland he made the
acquaintance of Byron, which was renewed during his stay in Italy.
In the same year he returned to this country and, after a short
sojourn with Leigh Hunt, he settled at Great Marlow, one of the most
picturesque parts of the Thames. There, in spite of his own ill-health,
he showed the active benevolence of his character, not only in the
easier form of alms-giving but also in frequent visits to the sick
and destitute, at the risk of aggravating symptoms of consumption now
alarmingly apparent. There, too, he composed the _Revolt of Islam_,
or, as it was originally more fitly entitled, _Laon and Cythna_. In
this poem, by the mouth of Laone, he again expresses his humanitarian
convictions and sympathies. She calls upon the enfranchised nations:--

      “‘My brethren, we are free! The fruits are glowing
      Beneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing
      O’er the ripe corn; the Birds and Beasts are dreaming--
      Never again may blood of bird or beast
      Stain with his venomous stream a human feast,
      To the pure skies in accusation steaming.
      Avenging poisons shall have ceased
        To feed disease, and fear, and madness.
        The dwellers of the earth and air
        Shall throng around our steps in gladness,
        Seeking their food or refuge there.
      Our toil from Thought all glorious forms shall cul.
      To make this earth, our home, more beautiful,
      And Science, and her sister Poesy,
    Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the Free.

           *       *       *       *       *

      “Their feast was such as Earth, the general Mother,
      Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles
      In the embrace of Autumn--to each other
      As when some parent fondly reconciles
      Her warring children, _she_ their wrath beguiles
      With her own sustenance; _they_, relenting, weep--
      Such was this Festival, which, from their isles,
      And continents, and winds, and oceans deep,
    All shapes might throng to share, that fly, or walk, or creep:

      “Might share in peace and innocence, for _gore_,
      _Or poison none this festal did pollute_.
      But, piled on high, an overflowing store
      Of pomegranates, and citrons--fairest fruit,
      Melons, and dates, and figs, and many a root
      Sweet and sustaining, and bright grapes, ere yet
      Accursed fire their mild juice could transmute
      Into a mortal bane; and brown corn set
    In baskets: with pure streams their thirsting lips they wet.”[240]

While he was yet residing in Marlow, the Princess Charlotte, daughter
of the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.,) died; and, since her
character had been in strong contrast with her father’s and with
royal persons’ in general, her early death seems to have caused, not
only ceremonial mourning, but also genuine regret amongst all in the
community having any knowledge of her exceptional amiability. The poet
seized the opportunity of so public an event, and published _An Address
to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte. By the Hermit of
Marlow_, in which he inscribed the motto--“We pity the plumage, but
forget the dying bird.” In this pamphlet, while paying due tribute of
regret for the death of an amiable girl, and fully appreciating the
sorrow caused by death as well among the destitute and obscure (with
whom, indeed, the too usual absence of the care and sympathy of friends
intensifies the sorrow) as among the rich and powerful, he invited, in
studiously moderate language, attention to the many just reasons for
national mourning in the interests of the poor no less than of princes;
and, in particular, invited the nation to express its indignant grief
for the fate of the Lancashire mechanics who, missing the happier
fate of their brethren slaughtered at Peterloo, were subjected to an
ignominious death by a government which had, by its neglect, encouraged
the growth of a just discontent.

In 1818 Shelley left England never to return. At this time was composed
the principal part of his masterpiece--_Prometheus Unbound_, the most
finished and carefully executed of all his poems. While in Rome (1819)
he published _The Cenci_, which had been suggested to him by the famous
picture of Guido, until lately supposed to be that of Beatrice Cenci,
and by the traditions, current even in the poet’s time, of the cruel
fate of his heroine. Shakspere’s four great dramas excepted, _The
Cenci_ must take rank as the finest tragic drama since the days of
the Greek masters. It is worked up to a degree of pathos unsurpassed
by anything of the kind in literature. “The Fifth Act,” remarks Mrs.
Shelley, his editor and commentator, “is a masterpiece. Every character
has a voice that echoes truth in its tones.” _The Cenci_ was followed
in quick succession by the _Witch of Atlas_, _Adonais_ (an elegy on
the death of Keats), the most exquisite “In Memoriam”--not excepting
Milton’s or Tennyson’s--ever written; and _Hellas_, which was inspired
by his strong sympathy with the Greeks, who were then engaged in the
war of independence.

Of his lesser productions, the _Ode to the Skylark_ is of an
inspiration seldom equalled in its kind. With the “blythe spirit,” whom
he apostrophises, the poet rises in rapt ecstasy “higher still and
higher.” For the rest of his productions (the _Letters from Italy_ and
criticisms or rather eulogies on Greek art have an especial interest)
and for the other events in his brief remaining existence we must
refer our readers to the complete edition of his works.[241] The last
work upon which he was engaged was his _Triumph of Life_, a poem in
the _terza rima_ of the _Divine Comedy_. It breaks off abruptly--it is
peculiarly interesting to note--with the significant words, “Then what
is Life, I cried?”

The manner of his death is well known. While engaged in his usual
recreation of boating he was drowned in the bay of Spezia. His body
was washed on to the shore and, according to regulations then in force
by the Italian governments of the day, in guarding against possible
infection from the plague, it was burned where it lay, in presence of
his friends Byron and Trelawney, and the ashes were entombed in the
Protestant cemetery in Rome--a not unfitting disposal of the remains of
one the most spiritualised of human beings.

The following just estimate of the character of his genius and
writings, by a thoughtful critic, is worth reproduction here:--“No man
was more essentially a poet--‘glancing from earth to heaven.’ He was,
indeed, ‘of imagination all compact.’ ... In all his poems he uniformly
denounces vice and immorality in every form; and his descriptions of
love, which are numerous, are always refined and delicate, with even
less of sensuousness than in many of our most admired writers. It
is true that he decried marriage, but not in favour of libertinism;
and the evils he depicts, or laments, are those arising from the
indissolubility of the bond, or from the opinions of society as to its
necessity--opinions to which he himself submitted by marrying the woman
to whom he was attached.... His reputation as a poet has gradually
widened since his death, and has not yet reached its culminating point.
He was the poet of the future--of an ideal futurity--and hence it was
that his own age could not entirely sympathise with him. He has been
called the ‘poet of poets,’ a proud title, and, in some respects,
deserved.”[242]

Of his creed, the article which he most firmly held, and which,
perhaps, most distinguishes him from ordinary thinkers, was the
_Perfectibility_ of his species, and his firm faith in the ultimate
triumph of Good. “He believed,” says the one authority who had the
best means of knowing his thought and feeling, “that mankind had only
to _will_ that there should be no evil, and there would be none. It is
not my part in these notes to criticise the arguments that have been
urged against this opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained
it, and was, indeed, attached to it with fervent enthusiasm. That man
could be so perfectionised as to be able to expel Evil from his own
nature, and from the greater part of the world, was the cardinal point
of his system. And the subject he liked best to dwell upon was the
image of One warring with an evil principle, oppressed not only by it
but by all, even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a
_necessary_ portion of humanity--a victim full of gratitude and of hope
and of the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance in the ultimate
omnipotence of Good.” Such was the conviction which inspired his
greatest poem _The Prometheus Unbound_.

A principal charm of his poetry is that which repels the common class
of readers: “He loved to _idealise_ reality, and this is a task shared
by few. We are willing to have our passing whims exalted into passions,
for this gratifies our vanity. But few of us understand or sympathise
with the endeavour to ally the love of abstract beauty and adoration
of abstract Good with sympathies with our own kind.”[243] Of so rare a
spirit it is peculiarly interesting to know something of the outward
form:--

    “His features [describes one of his biographers] were not
    symmetrical--the mouth, perhaps, excepted. Yet the effect of the
    whole was extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire,
    an enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never
    met with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression
    less beautiful than the intellectual: for there was a softness, a
    delicacy, a gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise
    many) that air of profound religious veneration that characterises
    the best works, and chiefly the frescoes, of the great Masters of
    Florence and of Rome.

    “His eyes were blue, unfathomably dark and lustrous. His hair was
    brown: but very early in life it became grey, while his unwrinkled
    face retained to the last a look of wonderful youth. It is admitted
    on all sides that no adequate picture was ever painted of him.
    Mulready is reported to have said that he was too beautiful to
    paint. And yet, although so singularly lovely, he owed less of his
    charm to regularity of feature, or to grace of movement, than to an
    indescribable personal fascination.”

As to his voice, impressions varied:--

    “Like all finely-tempered natures, he vibrated in harmony with
    the subjects of his thought. Excitement made his utterance shrill
    and sharp. Deep feeling, or the sense of beauty, lowered its
    tone to richness; but the _timbre_ was always acute, in sympathy
    with his intense temperament. All was of one piece in Shelley’s
    nature. This peculiar voice, varying from moment to moment, and
    affecting different sensibilities in diverse ways, corresponds to
    the high-strung passion of his life, his finedrawn and ethereal
    fancies, and the clear vibrations of his palpitating verse. Such a
    voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and unearthly, befitted one who
    lived in rarest ether on the topmost heights of human thought.”[244]

If the physical characteristics of a great Teacher or of a sublime
Genius excite a natural curiosity, it is the principal _moral_
characteristics which most reasonably and profoundly interest us. To
the supremely amiable disposition of the creator of _The Cenci_ and
_Prometheus Unbound_ brief reference has been made; and we shall fitly
supplement this imperfect sketch of his humanitarian career with the
vivid impressions left on the mind of the friend who best knew him.
Love of truth and hatred of falsehood and injustice were not, in his
case, limited to the pages of a book, and forgotten in the too often
deadening influence of intercourse with the world--they permeated his
whole life and conversation.

    “The qualities that struck any one newly introduced to Shelley
    were, first, a gentle and cordial goodness that animated his
    discourse with warm affection and helpful sympathy; the other, the
    eagerness and ardour with which he was attached to the cause of
    human happiness and improvement, and the fervent eloquence with
    which he discussed such subjects. His conversation was marked
    by its happy abundance, and the beautiful language in which he
    clothed his poetic ideas and philosophical notions. To defecate
    life of its misery and its evil was the ruling passion of his
    soul; he dedicated to it every power of his mind, every pulsation
    of his heart. He looked on political freedom as the direct agent
    to effect the happiness of mankind; and thus any new-sprung hope
    of liberty inspired a joy and even exultation more intense and
    wild than he could have felt for any personal advantage. Those
    who have never experienced the workings of passion on general and
    unselfish subjects cannot understand this; and it must be difficult
    of comprehension to the younger generation rising around, since
    they cannot remember the scorn and hatred with which the partisans
    of reform were regarded some few years ago, nor the persecution to
    which they were exposed.

    “Many advantages attended his birth; he spurned them all when
    balanced with what he considered his duties. He was generous to
    imprudence--devoted to heroism. These characteristics breathe
    throughout his poetry. The struggle for human weal; the resolution
    firm to martyrdom; the impetuous pursuit; the glad triumph in
    good; the determination not to despair.... Perfectly gentle
    and forbearing in manner, he suffered a great deal of internal
    irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was
    almost always on the stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had
    gone through more experience of sensation than many whose existence
    is protracted. ‘If I die to-morrow,’ he said, on the eve of
    unanticipated death, ‘I have lived to be older than my father.’ The
    weight of thought and feeling burdened him heavily. You read his
    sufferings in his attenuated frame, while you perceived the mastery
    he held over them in his animated countenance and brilliant eyes.

    “He died, and the world showed no outward sigh; but his influence
    over mankind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting; and in
    the ameliorations that have taken place in the political state of
    his country we may trace, in part, the operation of his arduous
    struggles.... He died, and his place among those who knew him
    intimately has never been filled up. He walked beside them like a
    spirit of good to comfort and benefit--to enlighten the darkness of
    life with irradiations of genius, to cheer with his sympathy and
    love.”[245]

       *       *       *       *       *

With the name of Shelley is usually connected that of his more popular
contemporary, Byron (1788-1824). The brother poets, it already has been
noted, met in Switzerland; and, afterwards, they had some intercourse
in Italy during Shelley’s last years. Excepting surpassing genius,
and equal impatience of conventional laws and usages they had little
in common. The one was first and above all a reformer, the other a
satirist. To assert, however, the author of _Childe Harold_ to have
been inspired solely by cynical contempt for his species is unjust.
A large part of his poems is pervaded apparently with an intense
conviction of the evils of life as produced by human selfishness and
folly. But what distinguishes the author of _Prometheus Unbound_ from
his great rival (if he may be so called) is the sure and certain
hope of a future of happiness for the world. Thus, that belief in
the all-importance of humane dietetics, as a principal factor in the
production of weal or woe on earth, is far less apparent in Byron is
matter of course.

Yet, that in moments of better feeling, Byron revolted from the gross
materialism of the banquets, of which, as he expresses it, England

    “Was wont to boast--as if a Glutton’s tray
      Were something very glorious to behold.”[246]

and that, had he not been seduced by the dinner-giving propensity
of English society, he would have retained his early preference for
the refined diet, we are glad to believe. In a letter to his mother,
written in his early youth, he announces that he had determined upon
relinquishment of flesh-eating, and his clearer mental perceptions in
consequence of his reformed living;[247] and he seems even to have
advanced to the extreme frugality of living, at times, upon biscuits
and water only.

It would have been well for him had he, like Shelley, abstained from
gross eating and drinking upon _principle_; and had he uniformly
adhered to the resolution formed in his earlier years, we should, in
that case, not have to lament his too notorious sexual intemperance.




XLII.

PHILLIPS. 1767-1840.


It is an obvious truth--in vain demonstrated seventeen centuries
since by the best moral teachers of non-Christian antiquity--that
abolition of the slaughter-house, with all the cruel barbarism
directly or indirectly associated with it, by a necessary and logical
corollary, involves abolition of every form of injustice and cruelty.
Of this truth the subject of the present article is a conspicuous
witness. During his long and active career, in social and political
as well as in literary life, Sir Richard Phillips was a consistent
_philanthropist_; and few, in his position of influence, have
surpassed him in real beneficence. In the face of rancorous obloquy
and opposition from that too numerous proportion of communities which
systematically resist all “innovation” and deviation from the “ancient
paths,” he fearlessly maintained the cause of the oppressed; and, as a
prison reformer, he claims a place second only to that of Howard.

Of his life we have fuller record than we have of some others of the
prophets of dietetic reformation. Yet there is uncertainty as to his
birthplace. One account represents him to have been born in London,
and to have been the son of a brewer. Another statement, which appears
to be more authentic, reports his place of birth to have been in the
neighbourhood of Leicester, and his father to have been a farmer. What
is of more permanent interest is the account preserved of the reason
of his first revolt from the practice of kreophagy. Disliking the
business of farming, it seems, while yet quite young, not without the
acquiescence of his parents, he had adventurously sought his living, on
his own account, in the metropolis. What, if any, plans had been formed
by him is not known; but it is certain that he soon found himself
in imminent danger of starvation, and, after brief trial, he gladly
re-sought his home. Upon his return to the farm, he found awaiting him
the welcome of the “Prodigal Son”--although, happily, he had no just
claim to the title of that well-known character. A “fatted calf” was
killed, and the boy shared in the dish with the rest of the family.
It was not until after the feast that he learned that the slaughtered
calf had been his especial favourite and playmate. So revolting to
his keener sensibility was the consciousness of this fact, that he
registered a vow never again to live upon the products of slaughter.
To this determination he adhered during the remainder of his long
life.[248]

His next venture, and first choice of a profession, while he was still
quite young, led him to engage in teaching. As an advertisement he
placed a flag at the door of a house in which he rented a room, where
he gave elementary instruction to such children as were entrusted to
his tuition by the townspeople of Leicester. The experiment proved not
very successful, and at the end of a twelvemonth he tried his fortune
elsewhere. He next turned to commerce--at first in a humble fashion.
His business prospered, and his next important undertaking was the
establishment of a newspaper--the _Leicester Herald_. This journal
was what is now called a “Liberal” paper. Yet by those who affected
to identify the welfare of England with the continued existence of
rotten boroughs and other corruptions, it was held up to opprobrium as
revolutionary and “incendiary.” Phillips himself had the reputation
of an able political writer; but the chief support of the journal was
the celebrated Dr. Priestley, whose name and contributions gave it a
reputation it otherwise might not have gained. The responsible editor
did not escape the perils that then environed the denouncers of legal
or social iniquity, and Phillips, convicted of a “misdemeanour,” was
sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in the Leicester jail. During
his imprisonment he displayed the beneficence of his disposition in
relieving the miseries of some of his more wretched companions. Upon
his release, he sold his interest in the _Leicester Herald_, and for
some time confined himself altogether to his business.

Leaving Leicester he migrated to London and set up a hosiery
establishment, which, however, he soon converted into the more
congenial bookshop. It was the success of the _Leicester Herald_
that, probably, led him to think of starting a new periodical. Upon
consultation with Priestley and other friends he was encouraged to
proceed, and the _Monthly Magazine_ was the result. It commenced in
July 1795 and proved to be a most decided success. At first conducted
by Priestley, it was afterwards partly under the editorship of Dr.
Aikin, author of the _Country Around Manchester_. The proprietors
shared in the management of the magazine, but to what extent it is
difficult to ascertain. Amongst the contributors was “Peter Pindar,”
so well known as the author, amongst other satirical rhymes, of the
verses upon George III., perplexed by the celebrated “apple dumpling.”
The monthly receipts from the sale amounted to £1,500. A quarrel
with Aikin was followed by the resignation of the editor. Increase
of business soon led to a removal of the publishing-house from St.
Paul’s Churchyard to a much larger establishment in Blackfriars. His
home was at Hampstead where, in a beautiful neighbourhood and in an
elegant villa, the opulent publisher enjoyed the refined pleasures
which his humaneness of living, as well as beneficent industry, had
justly deserved. At this time he began a correspondence with C. J.
Fox, on the subject of the History of James II., upon which the famous
Whig statesman was then engaged. Four letters addressed to him by
Fox have been printed, but they have no special importance. He was
already married, and the story of his courtship has more than the mere
gossiping interest of ordinary biography. Upon his first arrival in
London, he had taken lodgings in the house of a milliner. One of her
assistants was a Miss Griffiths, a beautiful young Welsh girl, who,
learning the unconquerable aversion of their guest from the common
culinary barbarism, had amiably volunteered to prepare his dishes on
strictly anti-kreophagist principles. This incident induced a sympathy
and friendship which speedily resulted in a proposal of marriage. They
were a handsome pair; and a somewhat precipitate matrimonial alliance
was followed by many years of unmixed happiness for both.

In 1807 the “Livery” of London elected him to the office of High
Sheriff of the City and County of Middlesex for the ensuing year. This
responsible post put to the proof the sincerity of his professions as
a reformer. Nor did he fail in the trial. During his term of power he
effected many improvements in the treatment of the real or pretended
criminals who, as occupants of the jails, came under his jurisdiction.
No one who has read Howard’s _State of the Prisons_, published thirty
years before Phillips’ entrance upon his office, or even general
accounts of them, needs to be told that they were the very nurseries
of disease, vice, misery, and crime of all kinds--one of the many
everlasting disgraces of the governments and civilisation of the day.
Nor had they been appreciably improved during the interval of thirty
years.

The new Sheriff daily visited Newgate and the Fleet prisons and, by
personal inquiry, made himself acquainted with the actual state of the
occupants, and in many ways was able to ameliorate their condition. By
his direction several collecting boxes were conspicuously displayed,
and the alms collected were applied to the relief of the families of
destitute debtors. He further insisted that persons, whose indictments
had been ignored by the grand jury, should not be detained in the
foul and pestilential atmosphere, as was then the case, but should be
immediately released.

In his admirable _Letter to the Livery of London_, he begins with an
appeal to the common sentiments of humanity which ought to have some
influence with those in authority. He reminds his readers that:--

    “It is too much the fashion to exclude _feeling_ from the
    business of public life, and a total absence of it is considered
    as a necessary qualification in a public man. Among statesmen
    and politicians he is considered as weak and incompetent who
    suffers natural affection to have any influence on his political
    calculations.”

In a note to this passage he adds:--

    “It appears to me that political errors of all kinds arise, in
    a great degree, from the studied banishment of feeling from the
    consideration of statesmen. Reasoning frequently fails us from
    a false estimate of the premises on which our deductions are
    founded. But _feeling_, which, in most respects, is synonymous
    with conscience, is almost always right. Statesmen are apt to view
    society as a machine, the several parts of which must be made by
    them to perform their respective functions for the success of
    the whole. The comparison is often made, but the analogy is not
    perfect. The parts of the social machine are made up of sensitive
    beings, each of whom (though in the obscurest situation) is
    equal, in all the affections of our nature, to those in the most
    conspicuous places. The harmony and happiness of the whole will
    depend on the _degree_ of feeling exercised by the directors and
    prime movers.”

After this preliminary exhortation, he presents to their contemplation
an appalling revelation of the stupid cruelties of the criminal law
and its administration. He gives a graphic account of the jail of
Newgate--both of the felons’ and the debtors’ division. The dimensions
of the entire building were 105 yards by 40 yards, of which only
one-fourth part was used by the prisoners. Into this space were crowded
sometimes seven or eight hundred, never less than four or five hundred,
human beings of both sexes and of all ages. “Felons” and debtors seem
to have fared pretty much the same, and filth, fever, and starvation
prevailed in all parts of the jail alike. The women prisoners he
describes as pressed together so closely as, upon lying down, to
leave no atom of space between their bodies. As for the results of
this neglect on the part of the State, he finds it impossible to draw
an adequate picture of them, and is at a loss to imagine how the whole
city is not carried off by a plague. By persevering energy he obtained
some reformation, although he failed in his proposal for a new building.

As to the individual occupants of these pest-houses, he found a large
number whose offences were comparatively of an innocent kind, but who
were herded with the most savage criminals. He espoused the cause
of several of these prisoners--especially of the women--who, after
some years of incarceration, were frequently drifted off to Botany
Bay, which, besides its other terrors, was for almost all of them a
perpetual separation from their homes, their husbands, and families.
Twice he vainly addressed a memorial to the Secretary of State (Lord
Hawkesbury) on their behalf. The traditions and routine of office were
too powerful even for his persistent energy.

Romilly had lately introduced his measure for amendment of the
barbarous and bloody penal code of this country. Sir Richard Phillips
addressed to him also a thoughtful letter, in which were pointed out
some of the more glaring abuses in the administration of the laws, with
which his official experience as High Sheriff had made him familiar.
When Mansfield was Lord Chief Justice, and Thurlow Lord Chancellor,
the hangings were so numerous that, as he informs us, on one “hanging
holiday” he saw nineteen persons on the gallows, the eldest of whom
was not twenty-two years of age. The larger number, probably, had
been sentenced to this barbarous death for theft of various kinds.
Three hundred years had passed away since the animadversions of
More (_before_ his accession to office) in the _Utopia_, and some
half-century since Beccaria and Voltaire had protested against this
monstrous iniquity of criminal legislation, without effect, in England,
at least. As far as their contemporaries and their successors for long
afterwards were concerned these philanthropists had written wholly in
vain.

In the letter to Romilly Phillips insists particularly upon the
following reforms: (1) No prisoner to be placed in irons before trial.
(2) None to be denied free access of friends or legal advisers. (3)
None to be deprived of adequate means of subsistence--14 ounces of
bread then being the _maximum_ of allowance of food. (4) Every prisoner
to be discharged as soon as the grand jury shall have thrown out the
bill of indictment. (5) Abolition of payment to jailors by exactions
forced from the most destitute prisoners, and of various other
exorbitant or illegal fines and extortions. (6) Separation of lunatic
from other occupants of the jails. (7) That counsel be provided for
those too poor to pay for themselves.

In 1811 Phillips published his _Treatise on the Powers and Duties of
Juries, and on the Criminal Laws of England_. Three years later _Golden
Rules for Jurymen_, which he afterwards expanded into a book entitled
_Golden Rules of Social Philosophy_ (1826), in which he lays down rules
of conduct for the ordinary business of life--lawyers, clergymen,
schoolmasters, and others being the objects of his admonitions. It is
in this work that the civic dignitary--so “splendidly false” to the
habits of his class--sets forth at length the principles upon which his
unalterable faith in the truth of humanitarian dietetics was founded.
The reasons of this “true confession” are fully and perspicuously
specified, and the first forms the key-note of the rest:--[249]

    “1. _Because_, being mortal himself, and holding his life on the
    same uncertain and precarious tenure as all other sensitive beings,
    he does not find himself justified by any supposed superiority or
    inequality of condition in destroying the enjoyment of existence of
    any other mortal, except in the necessary defence of his own life.

    “2. _Because_ the desire of life is so paramount, and so
    affectingly cherished in all sensitive beings, that he cannot
    reconcile it to his feelings to destroy or become a voluntary party
    in the destruction of any innocent living being, however much in
    his power, or apparently insignificant.

    “3. _Because_ he feels the same abhorrence from devouring flesh in
    general that he hears carnivorous men express against eating human
    flesh, or the flesh of Horses, Dogs, Cats, or other animals which,
    in some countries, it is not customary for carnivorous men to
    devour.

    “4. _Because_ Nature seems to have made a superabundant provision
    for the nourishment of [frugivorous] animals in the saccharine
    matter of Roots and Fruits, in the farinaceous matter of Grain,
    Seed, and Pulse, and in the oleaginous matter of the Stalks,
    Leaves, and Pericarps of numerous vegetables.

    “5. _Because_ he feels an utter and unconquerable repugnance
    against receiving into his stomach the flesh or juices of deceased
    animal organisation.

    “6. _Because_ the destruction of the mechanical organisation of
    vegetables inflicts no sensible suffering, nor violates any moral
    feeling, while vegetables serve to sustain his health, strength,
    and spirits above those of most carnivorous men.

    “7. _Because_ during thirty years of rigid abstinence from the
    flesh and juices of deceased sensitive beings, he finds that he has
    not suffered a day’s serious illness, that his animal strength and
    vigour have been equal or superior to that of other men, and that
    his mind has been fully equal to numerous shocks which he has had
    to encounter from malice, envy, and various acts of turpitude in
    his fellow-men.

    “8. _Because_ observing that carnivorous propensities among animals
    are accompanied by a total want of sympathetic feelings and gentle
    sentiments--as in the Hyæna, the Tiger, the Vulture, the Eagle, the
    Crocodile, and the Shark--he conceives that the practice of these
    carnivorous tyrants affords no worthy example for the imitation or
    justification of rational, reflecting, and _conscientious_ beings.

    “9. _Because_ he observes that carnivorous men, unrestrained by
    reflection or sentiment, even refine on the most cruel practices
    of the most savage animals [of other species], and apply their
    resources of mind and art to prolong the miseries of the victims
    of their appetites--bleeding, skinning, roasting, and boiling
    animals alive, and torturing them without reservation or remorse,
    if they thereby add to the variety or the delicacy of their
    carnivorous gluttony.

    “10. _Because_ the natural sentiments and sympathies of human
    beings, in regard to the killing of other animals, are generally
    so averse from the practice that few men or women could devour the
    animals whom _they might be obliged themselves to kill_; and yet
    they forget, or affect to forget, the living endearments or dying
    sufferings of the being, while they are wantoning over his remains.

    “11. _Because_ the human stomach appears to be naturally so averse
    from receiving the remains of animals, that few could partake
    of them if they were not disguised and flavoured by culinary
    preparation; yet rational beings ought to feel that the prepared
    substances are not the less what they truly are, and _that no
    disguise of food, in itself loathsome_, ought to delude the
    unsophisticated perceptions of a considerate mind.

    “12. _Because_ the forty-seven millions of acres in England and
    Wales _would maintain in abundance as many human inhabitants_,
    if they lived wholly on grain, fruits, and vegetables; but they
    sustain only twelve millions [in 1811] _scantily_, while animal
    food is made the basis of human subsistence.

    “13. _Because_ animals do not present or contain the substance of
    food in mass, like vegetables; every part of their economy being
    subservient to their mere existence, and their entire frames being
    solely composed of blood necessary for life, of bones for strength,
    of muscles for motion, and of nerves for sensation.

    “14. _Because_ the practice of killing and devouring animals can
    be justified by no moral plea, by no physical benefit, nor _by any
    just allegation of necessity in countries where there is abundance
    of vegetable food_, and where the arts of gardening and husbandry
    are favoured by social protection, and by the genial character of
    the soil and climate.

    “15. _Because_ wherever the number and hostility of predatory land
    animals might so tend to prevent the cultivation of vegetable food
    as to render it necessary to destroy and, perhaps, to eat them,
    there could in that case exist no necessity for destroying the
    animated existences of the distinct elements of air and water; and,
    as in most civilised countries, there exist no land animals besides
    those which are properly bred for slaughter or luxury, of course
    the destruction of mammals and birds in such countries must be
    ascribed either to unthinking wantonness or to carnivorous gluttony.

    “16. _Because_ the stomachs of locomotive beings appear to have
    been provided for the purpose of conveying about with the moving
    animal nutritive substances, analogous in effect to the soil in
    which are fixed the roots of plants and, therefore, nothing ought
    to be introduced into the stomach for digestion and for absorption
    by the _lacteals_, or roots of the animal system, but the natural
    bases of simple nutrition--as the saccharine, the oleaginous, and
    the farinaceous matter of the vegetable kingdom.”[250]

Perhaps his most entertaining book is his _Morning Walk from London
to Kew_ (1817). In it he avails himself of the various objects on his
road for instructive moralising--as, for example, when he meets with
a mutilated soldier, on the frightful waste and cruelty of war; or
with a horse struggling up a precipitous hill in agony of suffering
from the torture of the bearing-rein, on the common forms of selfish
cruelty; or again, when he deplores the incalculable waste of food
resources, by the careless indifferentism of owners of land and of the
State in allowing the country to remain encumbered with useless, or
comparatively useless, timber, in place of planting it with valuable
fruit trees of various sorts according to the nature of the soil.

His next publication of importance was his _Million of Facts and
Correct Data and Elementary Constants in the entire Circle of the
Sciences, and on all Subjects of Speculation and Practice_ (1832) 8vo.
It is this work by which, perhaps, Phillips is now most known--an
immense collection and, although many of the “Constants” may be open
to criticism or have already become obsolete, it may still be examined
with interest. The plan of the work is that of a classified collection
of scraps of information on all the arts and sciences. It was so
popular that five large editions were published in seven years. His
preface to the stereotyped edition is dated 1839. He remarks that
“his pretensions for such a task are a prolonged and uninterrupted
intercourse with books and men of letters. He has, for forty-nine
years, been occupied as the literary conductor of various public
journals of reputation; he has superintended the press in the printing
of many hundred books in every branch of human pursuit, and he has been
intimately associated with men celebrated for their attainments in each
of them.” In the facts concerning anatomy and physiology will be found
references to scientific and other authorities upon the subject of
flesh-eating.

Occasionally we meet with biographical facts of special interest.
Thus, he says that, early in 1825, he suggested the first idea of the
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge to Dr. Birkbeck and then,
by his advice, to Lord Brougham. His idea was the establishment of a
fund for selling or giving away books and tracts, after the manner of
the Religious Tract Society. As regards his astronomic paradoxes, his
theory, in opposition to the Newtonian, that the phenomena attributed
to gravitation are, in reality, the “proximate effects of the orbicular
and rotatory motions of the earth” (for which he was severely
criticised by Professor De Morgan), exhibits at least the various
activity, if not the invariable infallibility, of his mental powers.

A work of equal interest with a _Million of Facts_ is his next
compilation--_A Dictionary of the Arts of Life and Civilisation_
(1833). Under the article _Diet_ he well remarks:--

    “Some regard it as a purely _egotistical_ question whether men live
    on flesh or on vegetables. But others mix with it moral feelings
    towards animals. If theory prescribed _human_ flesh, the former
    party would lie in wait to devour their brethren; but the latter,
    regarding the value of life to all that breathe, consider that,
    even in a balance of argument, feelings of sympathy ought to turn
    the scale.... We see all the best animal and social qualities in
    mere vegetable-feeders.... Beasts of prey are necessarily solitary
    and fearful, even of one another. Physiologists, themselves
    carnivorous, differ on the subject, but they never take into
    account _moral_ considerations.

    “Though it is known that the Hindus and other Eastern peoples live
    wholly on rice--that the Irish and Scotch peasantry subsist on
    potatoes and oatmeal--and that the labouring poor of all countries
    live on the food, of which an acre yields one hundred times more
    than of flesh, while they enjoy unabated health and long life--yet
    an endless play of sophistry is maintained about the alleged
    necessity of killing and devouring animals.

    “At twelve years of age the author of this volume was struck with
    such horror in accidentally seeing the barbarities of a London
    slaughter-house, that since that hour he has never eaten anything
    but vegetables. He persevered, in spite of vulgar forebodings,
    with unabated vigorous health; and at sixty-six finds himself more
    able to undergo any fatigue of mind and body than any other person
    of his age. He quotes himself because the case, in so carnivorous
    a country, is uncommon--especially in the grades of society in
    which he has been accustomed to live.... On principle he does not
    abstain from any _vegetable_ luxuries or from fermented liquors;
    but any indulgence in the latter requires (he hastens to add) the
    correction of carbonate of soda. He is always in better health when
    water is his sole beverage; and such is the case with all who have
    imitated his practice.”[251]

Under the article “Farming,” he observes that “a man who eats 1lb.
of flesh eats the exact equivalent of 6lbs. of wheat, and 128lbs. of
potatoes.” That is, that he, in such proportion, wastes the national
resources of a country.

The High Sheriff, on the occasion of some petition to the King, had
been knighted, (to the affected scandal of his political enemies, who,
apparently, wished to reserve all titular or other recognition for
their own party), and the conspicuous beneficence of his career, while
in office, had gained for him an honourable popularity. But fortune,
so long favourable, now for a time showed itself adverse. In 1809
his affairs became embarrassed, and recourse to the bankruptcy court
inevitable. Happily his friends aided him in saving from the general
wreck the copyright of the _Monthly Magazine_. Its management was a
chief occupation of his remaining years; and his own contributions,
under the signature of “Common Sense,” attracted marked attention.
In his publishing career, the most curious incident was the refusal
of the MSS. of _Waverley_. The author’s demands seem to have been in
excess of the value placed upon the novel by the publisher. It had been
advertised in the first instance (he tells us) as the production of Mr.
W. Scott. The name was then withdrawn, and the famous novel came before
the world anonymously.

Besides the writings already noticed, Phillips compiled or edited a
large number of school books. He tells us that all the elementary
books, published under the names of Goldsmith, Blair and others, were
his own productions--between the years 1798 and 1815. Nor was his
mental activity confined to literary work; mechanical and scientific
inventions largely occupied his attention. To prevent the enormous
expenses of railway viaducts, embankments, and removals of streets, he
proposed suspension roads, ten feet above the housetops, with inclined
planes of 20° or 30°, and stationary engines to assist the rise and
fall at each end. Cities, he maintained, might be traversed in this way
on right lines, with intermediate points for ascent and descent. This
bold and ingenious idea seems to be very like an anticipation of the
elevated railways of New York, although even these have not yet reached
the height Phillips thought to be desirable.

He interested himself, also, in steam navigation. When Fulton was in
England he was in frequent communication with his English friend, to
whom he despatched a triumphant letter on the evening of his first
voyage on the Hudson. This letter, having been shown to Earl Stanhope
and some eminent engineers, was treated by them with derision as
describing an impossibility. Sir R. Phillips then advertised for a
company, to repeat on the Thames what had become an accomplished fact
on the American rivers. After expenditure of a large sum of money in
advertising he obtained only two ten-pound conditional subscribers.
He then printed, with commendation, Fulton’s letters in the _Monthly
Magazine_, and his credulity was almost universally reprobated. It is
worth recording that, in the first steam voyage from the Clyde to the
Thames, Phillips, three of his family, and five or six others, were the
only passengers who had the courage to test the experiment. To allay
the public alarms he published a letter in the newspapers, and before
the end of that summer he saw the same packet set out on its voyage
with 350 passengers.[252]

In 1840, the year following the final edition of his most popular book,
he died at Brighton in the seventy-third year of his age. During his
busy life if, by his reforming energy, he had raised up some bitter
enemies and detractors, he had made, on the other hand, some valuable
friendships. Amongst these--not the least noteworthy--is his intimate
friendship with that most humane-minded lawyer, Lord Erskine, one of
those who have best adorned the legal profession in this country.




XLIII.

LAMARTINE. 1790-1869.


Of aristocratic descent, and educated at the college of the “Fathers
of the Faith” (Pères de la Foi), Du Prat--such was the name of his
family--imbibed in his youth principles very different from those of
his great literary contemporary Michelet. Happily, Nature seems to have
endowed his mother with a rare refinement and humaneness of feeling;
and from her example and instruction he derived, apparently, the germs
of those loftier ideas which, in maturer age, characterise a great part
of his writings. While the first Napoléon was still emperor, he entered
the army, from which he soon retired to employ his leisure in the more
congenial amusement of travel.

In 1820 he first came before the world as the author of _Méditations
Poétiques_, of which, within four years, 45,000 copies were sold, and
the new poet was eagerly welcomed by the party of Reaction, who thought
to find in him a future successor to the brilliant author of the _Génie
du Christianisme_, the literary hope of their party, and the champion
of the Church and royalty--the political counterbalance to Béranger,
the poet of the Revolution--for Hugo had not yet raised the standard of
revolt. Yet this remarkable volume with the greatest difficulty found
its way into print. “A young man, [writes one of his biographers] his
health scarcely re-established from a cruel malady, his face pale with
suffering and covered with a veil of sadness, through which could be
read the recent loss of an adored being, went about from publisher
to publisher, carrying a small packet of verses dyed with tears.
Everywhere the poetry and the poet were politely bowed out. At length,
a bookseller, better advised, or seduced by the infinite grace of the
young poet, decided to accept the manuscript so often rejected.” It was
published without a name and without recommendation. The melancholy
beauty of the style, and the melody of the rhythm, could not fail to
attract sympathy from readers of taste and feeling, even from those
opposed to his political prejudices--“A rhythm of a celestial melody,
verse supple, cadenced, and sonorous, which softly vibrates as an
Æolian harp sighing in the evening breeze.”

Its political, rather than its poetical, recommendations, we
may presume, gained for the writer from the Government of Louis
XVIII. a diplomatic post at Florence, which he held until the
dynastic revolution of 1830. For some short time he acted as secretary
to the French Embassy in London, and during his stay in England he
made the acquaintance of a rich Englishwoman, whom he afterwards
married at Florence. A legacy of valuable property from an uncle, upon
the condition of his assuming the name of Lamartine, still further
enriched him.

In 1829 appeared the collection of _Harmonies Poétiques et
Réligieuses_, in which, as in all his poetry up to this time, one of
the most characteristic features is his devotion to Legitimacy and the
Church. The _renversement_ of 1830 considerably modified his political
and ecclesiastical ideas. “I wish,” he declared at this turning-point
in his career, “to enter the ranks of the people; to think, speak,
act, and struggle with them.” One of the first proofs of his advanced
opinions was his pamphlet advocating abolition of “capital” punishment.
He failed to obtain a seat in the Chambre des Députés of Louis
Philippe, whether in consequence of this advocacy or by reason of his
antecedent politics. His enforced leisure he employed in travelling,
and in 1832, with his English wife and their young daughter Juliette
(whose death at Beyrout caused him inconsolable grief), he set sail for
the East in a vessel equipped and armed at his own expense. A narrative
of these travels he published in his _Voyage en Orient_ (1835). In the
following year appeared his _Jocelyn_, a poem of charming tenderness
and eloquence, and, in 1838, _La Chute d’un Ange_ (“The Fall of an
Angel”), in which he, for the first time, gives expression to his
feeling of revolt from the barbarisms of the Slaughter-House. In this
strikingly original poem, one of the most remarkable of its kind in
any language, Lamartine discovers to us that he no longer views human
institutions, the customs of society, and the consecrated usages of
nations through the rose-coloured medium of traditional prejudice. It
is penetrated with a deep consciousness of the injustice and falseness
of a large proportion of those things which are tolerated, and even
approved, under the sanction of religious or social law, and with
ardent indignation against cruelty and selfishness. In the frightful
representation of the practices of the early tyrants of the world saved
from the “universal deluge,” he allows us to see his own feeling. One
of more humane race thus addresses his charming heroine Daïdha:--

                    “Ces hommes, pour apaiser leur faim,
    N’ont pas assez des fruits que Dieu mit sous leur main.
    Par un crime envers Dieu dont frémit la Nature,
    Ils demandent au sang une autre nourriture.
    Dans leur cité fangeuse il coule par ruisseaux!
    Les cadavres y sont étalés en monceaux.
    _Ils traînent par les pieds des fleurs de la prairie,
    L’innocente brebis que leur main a nourrie,
    Et sous l’œil de l’agneau l’égorgeant sans remords,
    Ils savourent ses chairs et vivent de la mort!_

           *       *       *       *       *

    De cruels aliments incessamment repus,
    Toute pitié s’efface en leurs cœurs corrompus.
    Et leur œil, qu’au forfait le forfait habitue,
    Aime le sang qui coule et l’innocent qu’on tue.
    _Ils aiguisent le fer en flèches, en poignard;
    Du métier de tuer ils ont fait le grand art:
    Le meurtre par milliers s’appelle une victoire,
    C’est en lettres de sang que l’on écrit la Gloire._”

From the pages of the “Primitive Book,” which he imagines to have been
originally delivered to men, their hermit-host reads to Daïdha and her
celestial, but incarnate, lover the true divine revelation, which is
thus sublimely prefaced:--

    “Hommes! ne dites pas, en adorant ces pages,
    Un Dieu les écrivit par la main de ses sages.

           *       *       *       *       *

    La langue qu’il écrit chante éternellement--
    Ses lettres sont ces feux, mondes du firmament
    Et, par delà ces cieux, des lettres plus profondes--
    Mondes étincelants voilés par d’autres mondes.
    Le seul livre divin dans lequel il écrit
    Son nom toujours croissant, homme, c’est Ton Esprit!
    C’est ta Raison, miroir de la Raison suprême,
    Où se peint dans ta nuit quelque ombre de lui-même.
    Il vous parle, ô Mortel, mais c’est par ce seul sens.
    Toute bouche de chair altère ses accents.”

In pronouncing the following code of morality, the voice of conscience
and of reason coincides with the divine voice in our hearts:--

    “Tu ne leveras point la main contre ton frère:
    Et tu ne verseras aucun sang sur la terre,
    Ni celui des humains, ni celui des troupeaux
    Ni celui des animaux, ni celui des oiseaux:
    _Un cri sourd dans ton cœur défend de le répandre_,
    Car le sang est la vie, et tu ne peux la rendre.
    Tu ne te nourriras qu’avec les épis blonds
    Ondoyant comme l’onde aux flancs de tes vallons,
    Avec le riz croissant en roseaux sur tes rives--
    Table que chaque été renouvelle aux convives,
    Les racines, les fruits sur la branche mûris,
    L’excédant des rayons par l’abeille pétris,
    Et tous ces dons du sol où la séve de vie
    Vient s’offrir de soi-même à ta faim assouvie.
    _La chair des Animaux crierait comme un remord,
    Et la Mort dans ton sein engendrerait la Mort!_”

Not only is the human animal sternly forbidden to imbrue his hands in
the blood of his innocent earth-mates: it is also enjoined upon him to
respect and cultivate their undeveloped intelligence and reason:--

    “Vous ferez alliance avec les ‘brutes’ même:
    Car Dieu, qui les créa, veut que l’homme les aime.
    D’intelligence et d’âme, à différents degrés,
    Elles ont eu leur part, vous la reconnaîtrez:
    Vous livez dans leurs yeux, douteuse comme un rêve,
    L’aube de la raison qui commence et se lève.
    Vous n’étoufferez pas cette vague clarté,
    Présage de lumière et d’immortalité:
    Vous la respecterez.
    La chaîne à mille anneaux va de l’homme à l’insecte:
    Que ce soit le premier, le dernier, le milieu,
    N’en insultez aucun, car tous tiennent à Dieu!”

From such more rational estimate should follow, necessarily, just
treatment:--

    “Ne les outragez pas par des noms de colère:
    Que la verge et le fouet ne soient pas leur salaire.
    Pour assouvir par eux vos brutaux appétits,
    Ne leur dérobez pas le lait de leurs petits:
    Ne les enchaînez pas serviles et farouches:
    Avec des mors de fer ne brisez pas leurs bouches
    Ne les écrasez pas sous de trop lourds fardeaux:
    Comprenez leur nature, adoucissez leur sort:
    _Le pacte entre eux et vous, hommes, n’est pas la Mort_.
    À sa meilleure fin façonnez chaque engeance,
    Prêtez-leur un rayon de votre intelligence:
    Adoucissez leurs mœurs en leur étant plus doux,
    Soyez médiateurs et juges entre eux tous.

           *       *       *       *       *

    _Le plus beau don de l’homme, c’est la Miséricorde._”

Consistently with, and consequently from, such just human relations
with the lower species are the admonitions to break down the walls
of partition between the various human races, and to the proper
cultivation of the Earth, the common mother of all:--

    “Vous n’établirez pas ces séparations
    En races, en tribus, peuples ou nations.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Vous n’arracherez pas la branche avec le fruit:
    _Gloire à la main qui sème, honte à la main qui nuit_!
    Vous ne laisserez pas le terre aride et nue,
    Car vos pères par Dieu la trouvèrent vêtue.
    Que ceux qui passeront sur votre trace un jour
    Passent en bénissant leurs pères à leur tour.
    Vous l’aimerez d’amour comme on aime sa mère,
    Vous y posséderez votre place éphémère,
    Comme an soleil assis les hommes, tour à tour,
    Possedènt le rayon tant que dure le jour.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Par un inconcevable et maternel mystère,
    L’homme en la fatiguant fertilise la Terre.
    Nulle bouche ne sent sa tendresse tarir:
    Tout ce qu’elle a porté, son flanc peut le nourrir.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Vous vous assisterez dans toutes vos misères,
    Vous serez l’un à l’autre enfants, pères, et mères:
    _Le fardeau de chacun sera celui de tous,
    La Charité sera la justice entre vous_.
    Votre ombre ombragera le passant, votre pain
    Restera sur le seuil pour quiconque aura faim:
    Vous laisserez toujours quelques fruits sur la branche
    Pour que le voyageur vers ses lèvres la penche.
    Et vous n’amasserez jamais que pour un temps,
    _Car la Terre pour vous germe chaque printemps_,
    Et Dieu, qui verse l’onde et fait fleurir ses rives,
    Sait au festin des champs le nombre des convives.[253]

It is hardly necessary to record that _The Fall of an Angel_ was far
from receiving, from the world of fashion, the applause of his earlier
and more conventional productions.

Lamartine was still in the East (we refer to an earlier period),
when news of his election to the Chambre des Deputés by a Legitimist
constituency brought him back to Paris. Among the prominent political
leaders of the day he figured “as a progressive Conservative, strongly
blending reverence for the antique with a kind of philosophical
democracy. He spoke frequently on social and philanthropic questions.”
In 1838 he became deputy for Macon, his native town. During the
Orleanist régime he refused to hold office, professing aversion for the
“vulgar utility” of the government of Guizot and the Bourgeois King,
and in 1845 he openly joined the Liberal opposition. His _Histoire
des Girondins_ (1847) probably contributed to the expulsion of the
Orleanist dynasty in the next year.

In the scenes of the Revolution of February, 1848, he occupied a
prominent position as mediator between the two opposite parties;
and the retention of the tricolour, in place of the Red flag, is
attributed to his intervention. Elected a member of the Provisional
Government, Lamartine served as Foreign Minister of the Republic. In
this capacity he published his well-known _Manifesto à l’Europe_.
But, in spite of the fact that ten departments had elected him as
representative in the Assemblée Constituante, and that he was also made
one of the five members of the Executive Commission, his popularity
was short-lived. With all his, apparently, sincere sympathy with the
cause of the Oppressed, traditionary associations and strong family
attachments (sufficiently manifest in his _Mémoirs_) impeded him in
his political course; and his compromising attitude provoked the
distrust of more advanced political reformers. In competition with
Louis Napoléon and Cavaignac, he was nominated for the presidency; but
he received the support of few votes. From this period he withdrew
into private life and devoted himself entirely to literature. His
_Histoire de la Révolution_ (1849), _Histoire de la Restauration_,
_Histoire de la Russie_, _Histoire de la Turquie_, _Raphael_ (a
narrative of his childhood and youth) _Confidences_ (1849-1851), a
further autobiography--one of the most interesting of all his prose
productions--and various other writings, most of them appearing,
in the first instance, in the periodicals of the day, attested the
activity and versatility of his genius. He also for some time conducted
a journal--_Conseiller du Peuple_. In 1860 he collected his entire
writings into forty-one volumes. Of them his _Histoire des Girondins_
is, probably, the most widely known. But, next to _The Fall of an
Angel_, it is his own Memoirs which will always have most interest
and instruction for those who know how to appreciate true refinement
of soul, and, making due deductions from political or traditionary
prejudice, can discern essential worth of mind. In _Les Confidences_
he allows us to see the natural sensibility and superiority of his
disposition in his deep repugnance to the orthodox table--none the less
real because he seems, unhappily, to have deemed himself forced to
comply with the universal or, rather, fashionable barbarism. Writing of
his early education, he tells us:--

    “Physically it was derived (_découlait_) in a large measure from
    Pythagoras and from the _Emile_. Thus it was based upon the
    greatest simplicity of dress and the most rigorous frugality with
    regard to food. My mother was convinced, as I myself am, that
    killing animals for the sake of nourishment from their flesh and
    blood, is one of the infirmities of our human condition; that it is
    one of those curses imposed upon man either by his fall, or by the
    obduracy of his own perversity. She believed, as I do still, that
    the habit of hardening the heart towards the most gentle animals,
    our companions, our helpmates, our brothers in toil, and even in
    affection, on this earth; that the slaughtering, the appetite
    for blood, the sight of quivering flesh are the very things to
    _have the effect_ (_sont faits pour_) to brutalise and harden
    the instincts of the heart. She believed, as I do still, that
    such nourishment, although, apparently, much more succulent and
    active (_énergique_) contains within itself irritating and putrid
    principles which embitter the food and shorten the days of man.

    “To support these ideas she would instance the numberless refined
    and pious people of India who abstain from everything that has had
    life, and the hardy, robust pastoral race, and even the labouring
    population of our fields, who work the hardest, live the longest
    and most simply, and who do not eat meat ten times in their
    lives. She never allowed me to eat it until I was thrown into the
    rough-and-tumble (_pêle-mêle_) life of the public schools. To
    wean me from the liking for it she used no arguments, but availed
    herself of that instinct in us which reasons better than logic.
    I had a lamb, which a peasant of Milly had given me, and which I
    had trained to follow me everywhere, like the most attached and
    faithful dog. We loved each other with that first love (_première
    passion_) which children and young animals naturally have for
    each other. One day the cook said to my mother in my presence
    “Madame, the lamb is fat, and the butcher has come for it; must
    I give it him?” I screamed and threw myself on the lamb, asking
    what the butcher would do with it, and what was a ‘butcher.’ The
    cook replied that he was a man who gained his living by killing
    lambs, sheep, calves and cows. I could not believe it. I besought
    my mother and readily obtained mercy for my favourite. A few days
    afterwards my mother took me with her to the town and led me, as
    by chance, through the shambles. There I saw men with bared and
    blood-stained arms felling a bullock. Others were killing calves
    and sheep, and cutting off their still palpitating limbs. Streams
    Of blood smoked here and there upon the pavement. I was seized with
    a profound pity, mingled with horror, and asked to be taken away.
    The idea of these horrible and repulsive scenes, the necessary
    preliminaries of the dishes I saw served at table, made me hold
    animal food in disgust, and butchers in horror.

    “Although the necessity of conforming to the customs of society
    has since made me eat what others eat, I shall preserve a rational
    (_raisonnée_) dislike to flesh dishes, and I have always found it
    difficult not to consider the trade of a butcher almost on a par
    with that of the executioner. I lived, then, till I was twelve on
    bread, milk-products, vegetables and fruit. My health was not the
    less robust, nor my growth the less rapid; and perhaps it is to
    that _regimen_ that I owed the beauty of feature, the exquisite
    sensibility, the serene sweetness of character and temper that I
    preserved till that date.”[254]

Some years before the publication of his _Fall of an Angel_, Lamartine,
from the height of the National Tribune, had given significant
expression to the feeling of all the more thoughtful minds, vague
though it was, of the urgent need of some new and better principle to
inspire and govern human actions than any hitherto tried:--

    “I see [he exclaimed] men who, alarmed by the repeated shocks
    of our political commotions, await from providence a social
    revolution, and look around them for some man, a philosopher, to
    arise--_a doctrine_ which shall come to take violent possession
    of the government of minds (_une doctrine qui vienne s’emparer
    violemment du gouvernement des esprits_), and reinvigorate the
    staggered (_ébranlé_) world. They hope, they invoke, they look for
    this power, which shall impose itself by inherent right (_de son
    plein droit_) as the Arbitrator and Supreme Ruler of the Future.”

But a few years earlier, in the same place, a still more positive
protest--not the less noteworthy because futile--was heard upon
the occasion of a discussion as to the introduction into France of
foreign “Cattle,” when one of the Deputies, Alexandre de Laborde,
maintained that flesh-meat is but an _object of luxury_; and was
supported, at least, by one or two other thoughtful deputies who had
the courage of their better convictions. It deserves to be noted that
while the Left seemed not unfavourable to the humaner feeling, the
Centre apathetic, and the Right derisively antagonistic, the minister
of the King (Charles X.) threw all the weight of his position into
the materialistic side of the scales. Thus this feeble and last
public attempt in France to stop the torrent of Materialism proved
abortive.[255]




XLIV.

MICHELET. 1797-1874.


The early life of this most original and eloquent of French historians
passed amidst much hardship and difficulty. His father, who was a
printer, had been employed by the government of the Revolution period
(1790-1794), and at the political reaction, a few years later, he found
himself reduced to poverty. From the experiences of his earlier life
Jules Michelet doubtless derived his contempt for the common rich and
luxuriant manner of living. Until his sixteenth year, flesh-meat formed
no part of his food; and his diet was of the scantiest as well as
simplest kind.

Naturally sensitive and contemplative, and averse from the rough
manners and petty tyranny of his schoolfellows, the young student found
companionship in a few choice books, of which A’Kempis’ _Imitation
of Christ_ seems to have been at that time one of the most read. At
the Sorbonne Michelet carried away some of the most valued prizes,
which were conferred with all the _éclat_ of the public awards of the
_Académie_. At the age of 24, having graduated as doctor in philosophy,
he obtained the chair of History in the Rollin College. His manner,
original and full of enthusiasm, though wanting often in method and
accuracy, possessed an irresistible fascination for his readers; and
all, who had the privilege of listening to him, were charmed by his
earnest eloquence.

His first principal work was his _Synopsis of Modern History_ (1827).
His version of the celebrated _Scienza Nuova_ of Vico, of whom he
regarded himself as the especial disciple, appeared soon after. Upon
the revolution of July, Michelet received the important post of Keeper
of the Archives, by which appointment he was enabled to prosecute his
researches in preparation for his _magnum opus_ in history, _L’Histoire
de la France_, the successive volumes of which appeared at long
intervals. It contains some of the finest passages in French prose, the
episode of _La Pucelle d’Orleans_ being, perhaps, the finest of all.
Having previously held a professorship in the Sorbonne (of which he was
deprived by Guizot, then minister), he was afterwards invited to fill
the chair of History in the Collège de France.

In 1847 his advanced political views deprived him once more of his
professorial post and income, in which the Revolution of the next year,
however, reinstated him. The _coup d’état_ of 1851 finally banished
him from public life--at least as far as teaching was concerned--for
being too conscientious to subscribe the oath of allegiance to the
new Empire. Michelet, like an eminent writer of the present day,
upon principle, elected to be his own publisher; a fact which, in
conjunction with the unpopularity of his opinions, considerably
lessened the sale and circulation of his books; and, by this
independency of action, the historian was a pecuniary loser to a great
extent.

Deprived of the means of subsistence by his conscientiousness, he
left Paris almost penniless, and sought an asylum successively in
the Pyrenees and on the Normandy coast. In 1856 appeared the book
with which the name of Michelet will hereafter be most worthily
associated--the one which may be said to have been written with his
heart’s blood. That the taste of the reading world was not entirely
corrupt, was proved by the rapid sale of this the most popular of
all his productions. A new edition of _L’Oiseau_ came from the press
each year for a long period of time, and it has been translated into
various European languages. How far the attractiveness of the book,
through the illustrative genius of Giacomelli, influenced the buying
public; how far the surpassing merits of the style and matter of the
work--we will not stay to determine; but it is certain that _The Bird_
at once established his popularity as a writer, and relieved his
pecuniary needs. _L’Oiseau_ was followed by several other eloquent
interpretations of Nature. But the first--there can be no question with
persons of taste--remains the masterpiece. It is, indeed, unique in its
kind in literature--by the intense sympathy and love for the subject
which inspired the writer. It is the only book which treats the Bird
as something more than an object of interest to the mere classifier,
to the natural-history collector, or to the “sportsman.” It considers
the winged tribes--those of the non-raptorial kinds--as possessed of
a high intelligence, of a certain moral faculty, of devoted maternal
affection--of a soul, in fine.

Of his remaining writings, _La Bible de l’Humanité_ (1863) is one of
the most notable, characteristic as it is of the author’s method of
treatment of historical and ethnographical subjects.

The calamities of his native land he so greatly loved, through the
corrupt government which had brought upon it the devastations of a
terrible war, ending, by a natural sequence, in the fearful struggle
of the suffering proletariat, deeply affected the aged champion of
the rights of humanity. Almost broken-hearted, he withdrew from his
accustomed haunts and went to Switzerland, and afterwards to Italy. He
died at Hyères, in 1874, in the 77th year of his age. A public funeral,
attended by great numbers of the working classes, awaited him in the
capital.

In the following passage Michelet _virtually_ subscribes to the creed
of Vegetarianism. The saving clause, in which he seems to suppose the
diet of blood to be imposed upon our species by the “cruel fatalities”
of life, it is pretty certain he would have been the first to wish to
cancel, had he enjoyed the opportunity of investigating the scientific
basis of dietetic reform:--

    “There is no selfish and exclusive salvation. Man merits his
    salvation only _through the salvation of all_. The animals below us
    have also their rights before God. ‘Animal life, sombre mystery!
    Immense world of thoughts and of dumb sufferings! But signs too
    visible, in default of language, express those sufferings. All
    Nature protests against the barbarity of man, who misapprehends,
    who humiliates, who tortures his inferior brethren.’ This sentence,
    which I wrote in 1846, has recurred to me very often. This year
    (1863), in October, near a solitary sea, in the last hours of the
    night, when the wind, the wave were hushed in silence, I heard the
    voices of our humble domestics. From the basement of the house,
    and from the obscure depths, these voices of captivity, feeble
    and plaintive, reached me and penetrated me with melancholy--an
    impression of no vague sensibility, but a serious and positive one.

    “The further we advance in knowledge, the more we apprehend the
    true meaning of realities, the more do we understand simple but
    very serious matters which the hurry (_entraînement_) of life
    makes us neglect. Life! Death! The daily murder, which feeding
    upon other animals implies--those hard and bitter problems sternly
    placed themselves before my mind. Miserable contradiction! Let us
    hope that there may be another globe in which the base, the cruel
    fatalities of this may be spared to us.”[256]

Extolling the greater respect of the Hindus for other life, as
exhibited in their sacred scriptures, Michelet vindicates the
pre-eminently beneficent character of the Cow, in Europe so
ungratefully treated by the recipients of her bounty:--

    “Let us name first, with honour, his beneficent nurse--so honoured
    and beloved by him--the sacred Cow, who furnished the happy
    nourishment--favourable intermediate between insufficient herbs and
    flesh, which excites horror. The Cow, whose milk and butter has
    been so long the sacred offering. She alone supported the primitive
    people in the long journey from Bactria to India. By her, in face
    of so many ruins and desolations--by this fruitful nurse, who
    unceasingly renovates the earth for him, he has lived and always
    lives.”[257]

In his _Bird_ he constantly preaches the faith that can remove
mountains--the faith that regards the regeneration and pacification of
earth as the proper destiny of our species:--

    “The devout faith which we cherish at heart, and which we teach
    in these pages, is that man will peaceably subdue the whole
    earth, when he shall gradually perceive that every adopted being,
    accustomed to a domesticated life, or at least to that degree of
    friendship and companionship of which his nature is susceptible,
    will be a hundred times more useful to him than he can be with
    his throat cut (_qu’il ne pourrait l’être égorgé_). Man will not
    be truly man until he shall labour seriously for that which the
    Earth expects from him--the pacification and harmonious union
    (_ralliement_) of all living Nature. Hunt and make war upon the
    lion and the eagle if you will, but not upon the Weak and Innocent.”

This Michelet never wearies of repeating, and he returns again and
again to a truth which is scorned by the modern self-seeking and
money-getting, as it was by the fighting, wholly barbarous, world:--

    “Conquerors have never failed to turn into derision this
    gentleness, this tenderness for animated Nature. The Persians, the
    Romans in Egypt, our Europeans in India, the French in Algeria,
    have often outraged and stricken these innocent brothers of
    man--the objects of his ancient reverence. Cambyses slew the sacred
    Cow; a Roman the Ibis who destroyed unclean reptiles. But what
    means the Cow? The fecundity of the country. And the Ibis? Its
    salubrity. Destroy these animals, and the country is no longer
    habitable. That which has saved India and Egypt through so many
    misfortunes and preserved their fertility, is neither the Nile nor
    the Ganges. It is respect for other life, the mildness and the
    [comparatively] gentle heart of man.

    “Profound in meaning was the speech of the Priest of Saïs to the
    Greek Herodotus--‘You shall be children always.’

    “We shall always be so--we men of the West--subtle and graceful
    reasoners, so long as we shall not have comprehended, with a
    simple and more exhaustive view, the _motive_ of things. To be a
    child, is to seize life only by partial glimpses. To be a man is
    to be fully conscious of _all its harmonious unity_. The child
    disports himself, shatters and destroys; he finds his happiness
    in _undoing_. And science, in its childhood, does the same. It
    cannot study unless it kills. The sole use which it makes of a
    living mind, is, in the first place, to dissect it. None carry into
    scientific pursuits that tender reverence for life which Nature
    rewards by unveiling to us her mysteries.”[258]

Like Shelley, he firmly believed in the indefinite amelioration of our
world by the ultimate triumph of principles of _humaneness_, so that
the “sting of death” and of pain might almost, if not entirely, be
removed:--

    To prevent death is, undoubtedly, impossible; but we may _prolong_
    life. We may eventually render pain rarer, less cruel, and _almost
    suppress_ it. That the hardened old world laughs at our expression
    is so much the better. We saw quite such a spectacle in the days
    when our Europe, barbarised by war, centered all medical art in
    surgery, and made the knife its only means of cure, while young
    America discovered the miracle of that profound dream in which all
    pain is annihilated.

He upbraids the sportsman no less than he does the scientist, and finds
sufficient cause for the too general sterility of the intellect in the
habituation to slaughter, and in disregard for the subject species:--

    “Woe to the ungrateful! By this phrase I mean the sporting crowd,
    who, unmindful of the numerous benefits we owe to other animals,
    exterminate innocent life. A terrible sentence weighs upon the
    tribes of ‘sportsmen’--_they can create nothing_. They originate
    no art, no industry. They have added nothing to the hereditary
    patrimony of the human species....

    “Do not believe the axiom, that huntsmen gradually develope into
    agriculturalists. It is not so--they kill or die. Such is their
    whole destiny. We see it clearly through experience. He who has
    killed will kill--he who has created will create.

    “In the want of emotion, which every man suffers from his birth,
    the child who satisfies it habitually by murder, by a miniature
    ferocious drama of surprise and treason, of the torture of the
    weak, will find no great enjoyment in the gentle and tranquil
    emotions arising from the progressive success of toil and study,
    from the limited industry which does everything itself. To create,
    to destroy--these are the two raptures of infancy. To create is a
    long, slow process; to destroy is quick and easy.

    “It is a shocking and hideous thing to see a child partial to
    ‘sport;’ to see woman enjoying and admiring murder, and encouraging
    her child. That delicate and ‘sensitive’ woman would not give him
    a knife, but she gives him a gun. Kill at a distance if it pleases
    you, for we do not see the suffering. And this Mother will think it
    admirable that her son, kept confined to his room, will drive off
    _ennui_ by plucking the wings from flies, by torturing a bird or a
    little dog.

    “Far-seeing mother! She will know, when too late, the evil of
    having formed a bad heart. Aged and weak, rejected of the world,
    she will experience, in her turn, her son’s brutality.

    “Among too many children we are saddened by their almost incredible
    sterility. A few recover from it in the long circle of life, when
    they have become experienced and enlightened men. But the first
    freshness of the heart? It shall return no more.”[259]

Although, as has already been indicated, Michelet evidently had not
examined the _scientific_ basis of akreophagy, yet all his aspirations
and all his sympathies, it is also equally evident, were for the
bloodless diet. With Locke and Rousseau, and many others before
him, he presses upon mothers the vital import of not perverting
the early preferences of their children for the foods prescribed
by unsophisticated nature and their own truer instincts. In one of
his books, the most often republished, in laying down rules for the
education of young girls, he thus writes:--

    “Purity, above everything, _in regimen and nourishment_. What are
    we to understand by this?

    “I understand by it that the young girl should have the proper
    nourishment of a child--that she should continue the mild,
    tranquilising, unexciting regimen of milk; that, if she eats at
    your table, she will be accustomed not to touch the dishes upon it,
    which for her, at least, are poisons.

    “A revolution has taken place. We have quitted the more sober
    French regimen, and have adopted more and more the coarse and
    bloody diet of our neighbours, appropriate to their climate much
    more than to ours. The worst of it all is that we inflict this
    manner of living upon our children. Strange spectacle! To see a
    mother giving her daughter, whom but yesterday she was suckling
    at her breast, this gross aliment of bloody meats, and the
    dangerous excitant wine! She is astonished to see her violent,
    capricious, passionate; but it is herself whom she ought to accuse
    as the cause. What she fails to perceive, and yet what is very
    grave, is that with the French race, so precocious, the arousing
    of the passions is so directly provoked by this food. Far from
    strengthening, it agitates, it weakens, it unnerves. The mother
    thinks it fine (_plaisant_) to have a child so preternaturally
    mature. All this comes from herself. Unduly excitable, she wishes
    her child to be such another as she, and she is, without knowing
    it, the corruptress of her own daughter.

    “All this [unnatural stimulation] is of no good to her, and is
    little better for you, Madame. You have not the heart, you say, to
    eat anything in which she has no share. Ah, well! abstain yourself,
    or, at all events, moderate your indulgence in this food, good,
    possibly, for the hard-worked man, but fatal in its consequences
    to the woman of ease and leisure--regimen which _vulgarises_
    her, perturbs her, renders her irritable, or oppresses her with
    indigestion.

    “For the woman and the child it is a grace--an amiable grace (_grâce
    d’amour_)--to be, above all things, _frugivorous_--to avoid the
    coarseness and foulness (_fétidité_) of flesh-meats, and to live
    rather upon innocent foods, which bring death to no one (_qui
    ne coûtent la mort à personne_)--sweet nourishment which charms
    the sense of smell as much as it does the taste. The real reason
    why the beloved ones in nothing inspire in us repugnance but, in
    comparison with men, seem ethereal, is, in a special manner, their
    [presumed] preference for herbs and for fruits--for that purity of
    regimen which contributes not a little to that of the soul, and
    assimilates them to the innocency of the flowers of the field.”[260]




XLV.

COWHERD. 1763-1816.


In any history of Vegetarianism it is impossible to omit record of the
lives and labours of the institutors of a religious community who, in
establishing humane dietetics as an essential condition of membership,
may well claim the honourable title of religious reformers, and to whom
belongs the singular merit of being the first and only founders of a
Christian church who have inculcated a true religion of life as the
_basis_ of their teaching.

William Cowherd, the first founder of this new conception of the
Christian religion, which assumed the name of the “Bible Christian
Church,” was born at Carnforth, near Lonsdale, in 1763. His first
appearance in public was as teacher of philology in a theological
college at Beverley. Afterwards, coming to Manchester, he acted as
curate to the Rev. J. Clowes, who, while remaining a member of the
Established Church, had adopted the theological system of Swedenborg.
Cowherd attached himself to the same mystic creed, and he is said
to be one of the few students of him who have ever read through all
the Latin writings of the Swedish theologian. He soon resigned his
curacy, and for a short time he preached in the Swedenborgian temple
in Peter Street. There he seems not to have found the freedom of
opinion and breadth in teaching he had expected, and he determined to
propagate his own convictions, independently of other authority. In
the year 1800 he built, at his own expense, Christ Church, in King
Street, Salford--the first meeting-place of the reformed church.[261]
His extraordinary eloquence and ability, as well as earnestness
of purpose, quickly attracted a large audience, and may well have
brought to recollection the style and matter of the great orator
of Constantinople of the fourth century. One characteristic of his
Church--perhaps unique at that time--was the non-appropriation of
sittings. Another unfashionable opinion held by him was the Pauline
one of the obligation upon Christian preachers to maintain themselves
by some “secular” labour, and he therefore kept a boarding school,
which attained extensive proportions. In this college some zealous
and able men, who afterwards were ordained by him to carry on a truly
beneficent ministry, assisted in the work of teaching, of whom the
names of Metcalfe, Clark, and Schofield are particularly noteworthy.
Following out the principles of their Master, two of them took degrees
in medicine, and gained their living by that profession. The Principal
himself built an institute, connected with his church in Hulme, where,
more recently, the late Mr. James Gaskill presided, who, at his death,
left an endowment for its perpetuation as an educational establishment.

It was in the year 1809 that Cowherd formally promulgated, as cardinal
doctrines of his system, the principle of abstinence from flesh-eating,
which, in the first instance, he seems to have derived from “the
medical arguments of Dr. Cheyne and the humanitarian sentiments of
St. Pierre.” He died not many years after this formal declaration of
faith and practice, not without the satisfaction of knowing that able
and earnest disciples would carry on the great work of renovating the
religious sentiment for the humanisation of the world.

Of those followers not the least eminent was Joseph Brotherton, the
first M.P. for Salford, than which borough none has been more truly
honoured by the choice of its legislative representative. A printing
press had been set up at the Institution, and, after the death of
the Master, his _Facts Authentic in Science and Religion towards a
New Foundation of the Bible_, under which title he had collected the
most various matter illustrative of passages in the Bible, and in
defence of his own interpretation of them, was there printed. It is,
as his biographer has well described it, “a lasting memorial of his
wide reading and research--travellers, lawyers, poets, physicians,
all are pressed into his service--the whole work forming a large
quarto common-place book filled with reading as delightful as it is
discursive. Some of his minor writings have also been printed. He was,
besides his theological erudition, a practical chemist and astronomer,
and he caused the dome of the church in King Street to be fitted up for
the joint purposes of an observatory and a laboratory. His microscope
is still preserved in the Peel Park Museum. His valuable library,
which at one time was accessible to the public on easy terms, is now
deposited in the new Bible Christian Church in Cross Lane. The books
collected exhibit the strong mind which brought them together for its
own uses. This library is the workshop in which he wrought out a new
mode of life and a new theory of doctrine--with these instruments he
moulded minds like that of Brotherton, and so his influence has worked
in many unseen channels.” He died in 1816, and is buried in front of
his chapel, in King Street, Salford.[262]




XLVI.

METCALFE. 1788-1862.


Amongst the immediate disciples of the founder of the new community,
the most active apostle of the principles of Vegetarianism, William
Metcalfe, to whom reference has been already made, claims particular
notice. Born at Orton in Westmoreland, after instruction in a classical
school kept by a philologist of some repute, he began life as an
accountant at Keighley, in Yorkshire. His leisure hours were devoted to
mental culture, both in reading and in poetic composition. Converted by
Cowherd in 1809, in the twenty-first year of his age, he abandoned the
flesh diet, and remained to the end a firm believer in the truths of
“The Perfect Way.” In the year following he married the daughter of the
Rev. J. Wright who was at the head of the “New Church” at Keighley, and
whom he assisted as curate. His wife, of highly-cultured mind, equally
with himself was a persistent follower of the reformed mode of living.
Sharing the experiences of many other dietary reformers, the young
converts encountered much opposition from their family and friends, who
attempted at one moment ridicule, at another dissuasion, by appealing
to medical authority. Unmoved from their purpose, they continued
unshaken in their convictions.

    “They assured me,” he writes at a later period, “that I was rapidly
    sinking into a consumption, and tried various other methods to
    induce me to return to the customary dietetic habits of society;
    but their efforts proved ineffectual. Some predicted my death in
    three or four months; and others, on hearing me attempt to defend
    my course, hesitated not to tell me I was certainly suffering from
    mental derangement, and, if I continued to live without flesh-food
    much longer, would unquestionably have to be shut up in some insane
    asylum. All was unavailing. Instead of sinking into consumption,
    I gained several pounds in weight during the first few weeks of
    my experiment. Instead of three or four months bringing me to the
    silent grave, they brought me to the matrimonial altar.

    “She [his wife] fully coincided with me in my views on vegetable
    diet, and, indeed, on all other important points was always ready
    to defend them to the best of her ability--studied to show our
    acquaintances, whenever they paid us a visit, that we could live,
    in every rational enjoyment, without the use of flesh for food.
    As she was an excellent cook, we were never at a loss as to what
    we should eat. We commenced housekeeping in January, 1810, and,
    from that date to the present time, we have never had a pound
    of flesh-meat in our dwelling, have never patronised either
    slaughter-houses or spirit shops.

    “When, again, in the course of time we were about to be blessed
    with an addition to our family, a renewed effort was made. We
    were assured it was impossible for my wife to get through her
    confinement without some _more strengthening food_. Friends
    and physicians were alike decided upon that point. We were,
    notwithstanding, unmoved and faithful to our principles. Next we
    were told by our kind advisers that the little stranger could not
    be sufficiently nourished unless the mother could eat a little
    ‘meat’ once a day; or, if not that, drink a pint or half a pint of
    ale daily. To both proposals my wife turned a deaf ear; and both
    she and the child did exceedingly well.[263] It may be proper to
    add here [remarks the biographer], that the ‘little stranger’ above
    referred to is the author of this _Memoir_,--that he is in the
    fifty-sixth year of his age, that he has never so much as _tasted_
    animal food, nor used intoxicating drinks of any kind, and that he
    is hale and hearty.”

These experiences, it is scarcely necessary to remark, in the lives of
followers of reformed dietetics, have been not seldom repeated.

In the Academy of Sciences, instituted by Dr. Cowherd, Metcalfe was
invited to assume the direction of the “classical” department (1811).
In the same year he took “Orders,” and, at the solicitation of the
secessionists from the Swedenborgian Communion (which, with some
inconsistency, seems to have looked with indifference, or even dislike,
upon the principles of akreophagy), he officiated at Adingham, in
Yorkshire. By the voluntary aid of one of his admirers a church was
built, to which was added a commodious school-room. He then resigned
his position under Dr. Cowherd, and opened a grammar school in
Adingham, where he was well supported by his friends.

The United States of America, however, was the field to which he
had long been looking as the most promising for the mission work to
which he had devoted himself; and in this hope he had been sustained
by his Master. In the spring of 1817 a company of forty-one persons,
members of the Bible Christian community, embarked at Liverpool
for Philadelphia, They comprised two clerics--W. Metcalfe and Jas.
Clark--twenty other adults, and nineteen children. Of this band only a
part were able to resist the numerous temptations to conformity with
the prevalent social practices; and the vast distances which separated
the leaders from their followers were almost an insuperable bar to
sympathy and union. Settling in Philadelphia--for them at least a name
of real significance--Metcalfe supported his family by teaching, while
performing the duties of his position as head of the faithful few who
formed his church. His day-school, which was attended by the sons
of some of the leading people of the city, proved to be pecuniarily
successful until the appearance of yellow fever in Philadelphia, which
broke up his establishment and involved him in great difficulties;
for upon his school he depended entirely for his living. He had many
influential friends, who tempted him, at this crisis of his fortunes,
with magnificent promises of support, if only he would desert the cause
he had at heart--the propagandism of a religion based upon principles
of true temperance and active goodness. Both moral and physical
superiority pointed him out as one who could not fail to bring honour
to any undertaking, and, had he sacrificed conviction to interest, he
might have greatly advanced his material prospects. All such seductions
he firmly resisted.

Meanwhile, through the pulpit, the schoolroom, and, more widely,
through the newspapers, he scattered the seeds of the gospel
of Humanity. But the spirit of intolerance and persecution, of
self-seeking religionism, and of rancorous prejudice, was by no means
extinct even in the great republic, and the (so-called) “religious”
press united to denounce his humane teaching as well as his more
liberal theology. Nor did some of his more unscrupulous opponents
hesitate, in the last resort, to raise the war-cry of “infidel” and
“sceptic.” These assailants he treated with contemptuous silence; but
the principle of moral dietetics he defended in the newspapers with
ability and vigour. In 1821 he published an essay on _Abstinence from
the Flesh of Animals_, which was freely and extensively circulated. For
several years his missionary labours appear to have been unproductive.
In the year 1830 he made two notable converts--Dr. Sylvester Graham,
who was at that time engaged as a “temperance” lecturer, and was
deep in the study of human physiology; and Dr. W. Alcott. Five years
later, the _Moral Reformer_ was started as a monthly periodical,
which afterwards appeared under the title of the _Library of Health_.
In 1838-9 the _Graham Journal_ was also published in Boston, and
scientific societies were organised in many of the New England towns.
The Bible was largely appealed to in the controversy, and a sermon of
Metcalfe’s had an extensive circulation through the United States. With
all this controversy upon his hands, he was far from neglecting his
private duties, and, in fact, his health was over-taxed in the close
and constant work in the schoolrooms, overcrowded and ill-ventilated
as they were. In the day and night school he was constantly employed,
during one half of the year, from eight in the morning until ten at
night; and Sunday brought him no remission of labour.

In the propagandism of his principles through the press he was not
idle. The _Independent Democrat_, and, in 1838, the _Morning Star_,
was printed and published at his own office--by which latter journal,
in spite of the promise of support from political friends, he was a
pecuniary loser to a large amount. _The Temperance Advocate_, also
issued from his office, had no better success. Several years earlier,
about 1820, it is interesting to note, he had published a tract on _The
Duty of Abstinence from all Intoxicating Drinks_; and the founder of
the Bible Christian Church in America can claim the merit of having
been the first systematically to inculcate this social reform.

In the year 1847 the Vegetarian Society of Great Britain had been
founded, of which Mr. James Simpson had been elected the first
president. Metcalfe immediately proposed the formation of a like
society in the United States. He corresponded with Drs. Graham,
Alcott, and others; and finally an American Vegetarian Convention
assembled in New York, May 15, 1850. Several promoters of the cause,
previously unknown to each other (except through correspondence),
here met. Metcalfe was elected president of the Convention; addresses
were delivered, and the constitution of the society determined upon.
The Society was organised by the election of Dr. William Alcott as
president, Rev. W. Metcalfe as corresponding secretary, and Dr.
Trall as recording secretary. An organ of the society was started in
November, 1850, under the title of _The American Vegetarian and Health
Journal_, and under the editorship of Metcalfe. Its regular monthly
publication, however, did not begin until 1851. In that year he was
selected as delegate to the English Vegetarian Society, as well as
delegate from the Pennsylvania Peace Society to the “World’s Peace
Convention,” which was fondly supposed to be about to be inaugurated
by the _Universal Exhibition_ of that year. The proceedings at the
annual meeting of the Vegetarian Society of Great Britain, and the
eloquent address, amongst others, of the American representative, are
fully recorded in the _Vegetarian Messenger_ for 1852. On this occasion
Joseph Brotherton, M.P. presided.

Two years later he suffered the irreparable loss of the sympathising
sharer in his hopes for the regeneration of the world. Mrs. Metcalfe
died in the seventy-fourth year of her age, having been, during
forty-four years, a strict abstinent. Her loss was mourned by the
entire Vegetarian community. By far the larger part of the matter, as
well as the expenses of publication, of the _American Vegetarian_,
was supplied by the editor, and, being inadequately supported by the
rest of the community, the managers were forced to abandon its further
publication. The last volume appeared in 1854. It has been succeeded
in later times, under happier circumstances, by the _Health Reformer_
which is still in existence.

In 1855 Metcalfe received an invitation to undertake the duties
attached to the mother church at Salford. Leaving his brother-in-law
in charge of the church in Philadelphia, he embarked for England once
more, and the most memorable event, during his stay in this country,
was the deeply and sincerely lamented death of Joseph Brotherton, who
for twenty years had represented Salford in the Legislature, and whose
true benevolence had endeared him to the whole community. Metcalfe
was chosen to preach the funeral eulogy, which was listened to by a
large number of Members of Parliament and municipal officers, and by
an immense concourse of private citizens. Returning to America soon
afterwards, at the urgent request of his friends in Philadelphia,
he was, in 1859, elected to fill the place of President vacated by
Dr. Alcott, whose virtues and labours in the cause he commemorated
in a just eulogy. His own death took place in the year 1862, in the
seventy-fifth year of his age, caused by hemorrhage of the lungs,
doubtless the effect of excessive work. His end, like his whole
interior if not exterior life, was, in the best meaning of a too
conventional expression, full of peace and of hope. His best panegyric
is to be found in his life-work; and, as the first who systematically
taught the truths of reformed dietetics in the “New World,” he has
deserved the unceasing gratitude of all sincere reformers in the
United States, and, indeed, throughout the globe. By all who knew him
personally he was as much loved as he was esteemed, and the newspapers
of the day bore witness to the general lamentation for his loss.[264]




XLVII.

GRAHAM. 1794-1851.


As an exponent of the physiological basis of the Vegetarian theory of
diet, in the most elaborate minuteness, the author of _Lectures on
the Science of Human Life_ has always had great repute amongst food
reformers both in the United States and in this country. Collaterally
connected with the ducal house of Montrose, his father, a graduate of
Oxford, emigrated to Boston, U.S., in the year 1718. He must have
attained an advanced age when his seventeenth child, Sylvester,
was born at Suffield, in Connecticut. Yet he seems to have been of
a naturally dyspeptic and somewhat feeble constitution, which was
inherited by his son, whose life, in fact, was preserved only by the
method recommended by Locke--free exposure in the open air. During
several years he lived with an uncle, on whose farm he was made to work
with the labourers. In his twelfth year he was sent to a school in New
York, and at fourteen he was set for a short time to learn the trade of
paper-making. “He is described as handsome, clever, and imaginative.
‘I had heard,’ he says, ‘of noble deeds, and longed to follow in the
field of fame.’ Ill health soon obliged his return to the country, and
at sixteen symptoms of consumption appeared. Various occupations were
tried until the time, when about twenty years of age, he commenced as
a teacher of youth, proving highly successful with his pupils. Again
ill-health obliged the abandonment of this pursuit.”[265]

At the age of thirty-two he married, and soon after became a preacher
in the Presbyterian Church. Deeply interested in the question of
“Temperance,” he was invited to lecture for that cause by the
Pennsylvania Society (1830). He now began the study of physiology and
comparative anatomy, in which his interest was unremitting. These
important sciences were used to good effect in his future dietetic
crusade. At this time he came in contact with Metcalfe, by whom he
was confirmed in, if not in the first instance converted to, the
principles of radical dietary reform. “He was soon led to believe that
no permanent cure for intemperance could be found, except in such
change of personal and social customs as would relieve the human being
from all desire for stimulants. This idea he soon applied to medicine,
so that the prevention and cure of disease, as well as the remedy for
intemperance, were seen to consist mainly in the adoption of correct
habits of living, and the judicious adaptation of hygienic agencies.
These ideas were elaborated in an _Essay on the Cholera_ (1832), and
a course of lectures which were delivered in various parts of the
country, and subsequently published under the title of _Lectures on
the Science of Human Life_ (2 vols., Boston, 1839). This has been
the leading text-book of all the dietetic and nearly all the health
reformers since.”[266]

_The Science of Human Life_ is one of the most comprehensive as well as
minute text books on scientific dietetics ever put forth. If it errs
at all, it errs on the side of redundancy--a feature which it owes to
the fact that it was published to the world as it was orally given. It
therefore well bears condensation, and this has been judiciously done
by Mr. Baker, whose useful edition is probably in the hands of most of
our readers. Graham was also the author of a treatise on _Bread and
Bread-Making_, and “Graham bread” is now universally known as one of
the most wholesome kinds of the “staff of life.” Besides these more
practical writings, for some time before his death he occupied his
leisure in the production of a _Philosophy of Sacred History_, the
characteristic idea of which seems to have been to harmonise the dogmas
of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures with his published views on
physiology and dietetics. He lived to complete one volume only (12mo.),
which appeared after his death.

Tracing the history of Medicine from the earlier times, and its more or
less of empiricism in all its stages, Graham discovers the cause of a
vast proportion of all the egregious failure of its professors in the
blind prejudice which induces them to apply to the _temporary cure_,
rather than to the _prevention_, of disease. As it was in its first
barbarous beginning, so it has continued, with little really essential
change, to the present moment:--

    “Everything is done with a view to _cure_ the disease, without
    any regard to its cause, and the disease is considered as
    the infliction of some supernatural being. Therefore, in the
    progress of the healing art thus far, not a step is taken towards
    investigating the laws of health and the philosophy of disease.

    “Nor, after Medicine had received a more systematic form, did
    it apply to those researches which were most essential to its
    success, but, like religion, it became blended with superstitions
    and absurdities. Hence, the history of Medicine, with very limited
    exceptions, is a tissue of ignorance and error, and only serves
    to demonstrate the absence of that knowledge upon which alone an
    enlightened system of Medicine can be founded, and to show to
    what extent a noble art can be perverted from its capabilities of
    good to almost unmixed evil by the ignorance, superstition, and
    cupidity of men. In modern times, anatomy and surgery have been
    carried nearly to perfection, and great advance has been made
    in physiology. The science of human life has been studied with
    interest and success, but this has been confined to the few, while
    even in our day, and in the medical profession itself, the general
    tendency is adverse to the diffusion of scientific knowledge.

           *       *       *       *       *

    “The result is, that men prodigally waste the resources as if the
    energies of life were inexhaustible; and when they have brought on
    disease which destroys their comforts, they fly to the physician,
    _not to learn by what violation of the laws of life_ they have
    drawn the evil upon themselves, and by what means they can avoid
    the same; but, considering themselves visited with afflictions
    which they have in no manner been concerned in causing, they
    require the physician’s remedies, by which their sufferings may be
    alleviated. In doing this, the more the practice of the physician
    conforms to the _appetites_ of the patient, the greater is his
    popularity and the more generously is he rewarded.

    “Everything, therefore, in society tends to confine the practising
    physician to the department of therapeutics, and make him a
    mere curer of disease; and the consequence is, that the medical
    fraternity have little inducement to apply themselves to the
    study of the _science of life_, while almost everything, by which
    men can be corrupted, is presented to induce them to become the
    mere panderers of human ignorance and folly; and, if they do not
    sink into the merest empiricism, it is owing to their own moral
    sensibility rather than to the encouragement they receive to pursue
    an elevated scientific professional career.

    “Thus the natural and acquired habits of man concur to divert
    his attention from the study of human life, and hence he is left
    to _feel_ his way to, or gather from what he calls experience,
    all the conclusions which he embraces. It has been observed
    that men, in their (so-called) inductive reasonings deceive
    themselves continually, and think that they are reasoning from
    facts and experience, when they are only reasoning _from a mixture
    of truth and falsehood_. The only end answered by facts so
    incorrectly apprehended is that of making error more incorrigible.
    Nothing, indeed, is so hostile to the interests of Truth as
    facts incorrectly observed. On no subjects are men so liable to
    misapprehend facts, and _mistake the relation between cause and
    effect_, as on that of human life, health, and disease.”

By the opponents of dietetic reform it has been pretended that climate,
or individual constitution, must determine the food proper for nations
or individuals:--

    “We have been told that some enjoy health in warm, and others
    in cold climates some on one kind of diet, and under one set of
    circumstances, and some under another; that, therefore, what is
    best for one is not for another; that what agrees _well_ with one
    disagrees with another; that what is one man’s meat is another
    man’s poison; that different constitutions require different
    treatment; and that, consequently, no rules can be laid down
    adapted to all circumstances which can be made a basis of regimen
    to all.

    “Without taking pains to examine circumstances, people consider the
    bare fact that some intemperate individuals reach old age evidence
    that such habits are not unfavourable to life. With the same loose
    reasoning, people arrive at conclusions equally erroneous in regard
    to nations. If a tribe, subsisting on vegetable food, is weak,
    sluggish, and destitute of courage and enterprise, it is concluded
    that vegetable food is the cause. Yet examination might have shown
    that causes fully adequate to these effects existed, which not only
    exonerated the diet, _but made it appear that the vegetable diet
    had a redeeming effect, and was the means by which the nation was
    saved from a worse condition_.

    “The fact that individuals have attained a great age in certain
    habits of living is no evidence that those habits are favourable to
    longevity. The only use which we can make of cases of extraordinary
    old age, is to show how the human constitution is capable of
    sustaining the vital economy, _and resisting the causes which
    induce death_.

    “If we ask _how_ we must live to secure the best health and longest
    life, the answer must be drawn from physiological knowledge; but
    if we ask _how long_ the best mode of living will preserve life,
    the reply is, Physiology cannot teach you that. Probably each
    aged individual has a mixture of good and bad habits, and has
    lived in a mixture of favourable and unfavourable circumstances.
    Notwithstanding apparent diversity, there is a pretty equal amount
    of what is salutary in the habits and circumstances of each. Some
    have been ‘correct’ in one thing, some in another. All that is
    proved by instances of longevity in connexion with bad habits is,
    that such individuals are able to resist causes that have, in the
    same time, sent thousands of their fellow-beings to an untimely
    grave; and, under a proper regimen, they would have sustained life,
    perhaps, a hundred and fifty years.

    “Some have more constitutional [or inherited] powers to resist the
    causes of disease than others, and, therefore, what will destroy
    the life of one may be borne by another a long time without any
    manifestations of immediate injury. There are, also, constitutional
    peculiarities, but these are far more rare than is generally
    supposed. Indeed, such may, in almost every case, be overcome by
    a correct regimen. So far as the general laws of life and the
    application of general principles of regimen are considered,
    the human constitution is _one_: there are no constitutional
    differences which will not yield to a correct regimen, and thus
    improve the individual. Consequently, what is best for one is best
    for all.... Some are born without any tendency to disease while
    others have the predisposition to particular diseases of some kind.
    But _differences result from causes which man has the power to
    control_, and it is certain that all can be removed by conformity
    to the laws of life for generations, and that the human species can
    be brought to as great uniformity, as to health and life, as the
    lower animals.”

With Hufeland, Flourens, and other scientific authorities, he maintains
that:--

    “Physiological science affords no evidence that the human
    constitution is not capable of gradually returning to the
    primitive longevity of the species. The highest interests of our
    nature require that _youthfulness_ should be prolonged. And it
    is as capable of being preserved as life itself, both depending
    on the same conditions. If there ever was a state of the human
    constitution which enabled it to sustain life [much beyond the
    present period], that state involved a harmony of relative
    conditions. The vital processes were less rapid and more complete
    than at present, development was slower, organisation more perfect,
    childhood protracted, and the change from youth to manhood took
    place at a greater remove from birth. Hence, if we now aim at long
    life, we can secure our object only by conformity to those laws by
    which youthfulness is prolonged.”

As for the _omnivorousness_ of the human animal:--

    The ourang-outang, on being domesticated, readily learns to eat
    animal food. But if this proves that animal to be _omnivorous_,
    then the Horse, Cow, Sheep, and others are all omnivorous, for
    everyone of them is easily trained to eat animal food. Horses
    have frequently been trained to eat animal food,[267] and Sheep
    have been so accustomed to it as to refuse grass. All carnivorous
    animals can be trained to a vegetable diet, and brought to subsist
    upon it, with less inconvenience and deterioration than herbivorous
    or frugivorous animals can be brought to live on animal food.
    Comparative anatomy, therefore, proves that Man is naturally a
    frugivorous animal, formed to subsist upon fruits, seeds, and
    farinaceous vegetables.[268]

The _stimulating_, or alcoholic, property of flesh produces the
delusion that it is, therefore, the most _nourishing_:--

    “Yet by so much as the stimulation exceeds that which is necessary
    for the performance of the functions of the organs, the more does
    the expenditure of vital powers exceed the renovating economy; and
    the exhaustion which succeeds is commensurate with the excess.
    Hence, though food which contains the greatest proportion of
    stimulating power causes a _feeling_ of the greatest strength, it
    also produces the greatest exhaustion, which is commensurately
    importunate for relief; and, as the same food affords such by
    supplying the requisite stimulation, their _feelings_ lead the
    consumers to believe that it is most strengthening.... Those
    substances, the stimulating power of which is barely sufficient to
    excite the digestive organs in the appropriation of nourishment,
    are most conducive to vital welfare, causing all the processes to
    be most perfectly performed, without any unnecessary expenditure,
    thus contributing to health and longevity.

    “Flesh-meats average about _thirty-five per cent_ of nutritious
    matter, while rice, wheat, and several kinds of pulse (such as
    lentils, peas, and beans), afford from _eighty to ninety-five per
    cent_; potatoes afford twenty-five per cent of nutritious matter.
    So that one pound of rice contains more nutritious matter than two
    pounds and a half of flesh meat; three pounds of whole meal bread
    contain more than six pounds of flesh, and three pounds of potatoes
    more than two pounds of flesh.”

That the human species, _taken in its entirety_, is no more carnivorous
_de facto_ than it could be _de jure_, is apparent on the plain
evidence of facts. In all countries of our Globe, with the exception of
the most barbarous tribes, it is, in reality, only the ruling and rich
classes who are kreophagist. The Poor have, almost everywhere, but the
barest sufficiency even of vegetable foods:--

    “The peasantry of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Turkey, Greece,
    Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain, England, Scotland, Ireland, a
    considerable portion of Prussia, and other parts of Europe subsist
    mainly on non-flesh foods. The peasantry of modern Greece [like
    those of the days of Perikles] subsist on coarse brown bread and
    fruits. The peasantry in many parts of Russia live on very coarse
    bread, with garlic and other vegetables, and, like the same class
    in Greece, Italy, &c., they are obliged to be extremely frugal even
    in this kind of food. Yet they are [for the most part] healthy,
    vigorous, and active. Many of the inhabitants of Germany live
    mainly on rye and barley, in the form of coarse bread. The potato
    is the principal food of the Irish peasantry, and few portions
    of the human family are more healthy, athletic, and active, when
    uncorrupted by intoxicating substances [and, it may be added, when
    under favourable political and social conditions]. But alcohol,
    opium, &c. [equally with bad laws] have extended their blighting
    influence over the greater portion of the world, and nowhere do
    these scourges so cruelly afflict the self-devoted race as in the
    cottages of the poor, and when, by these evils and neglect of
    sanitation, &c., diseases are generated, sometimes epidemics, we
    are told that these things arise from their poor, meagre, low,
    _vegetable_ diet. Wherever the various sorts of intoxicating
    substances are absent, and a decent degree of cleanliness is
    observed, the vegetable diet is not thus calumniated.

    “That portion of the peasantry of England and Scotland who subsist
    on their barley and oatmeal bread, porridge, potatoes, and other
    vegetables, with temperate, cleanly habits [and surroundings],
    are able to endure more fatigue and exposure than any other class
    of people in the same countries. _Three-fourths of the whole
    human family_, in all periods of time [excepting, perhaps, in the
    primitive wholly predatory ages] have subsisted on non-flesh foods,
    and when their supplies have been abundant, and their habits in
    other respects correct, they have been well nourished.”

That the sanguinary diet and savagery go hand in hand, and that in
proportion to the degree of carnivorousness is the barbarous or
militant character of the people, all History, past and present, too
clearly testifies. Nor are the carnivorous tribes conspicuous by their
cruel habits only:--

    “Taking all flesh-eating nations together, though some, whose
    other habits are favourable, are, comparatively, well-formed, as
    a general average they are small, ill-formed races; and taking
    all vegetable-eating nations, though many, from excessive use
    of narcotics, and from other unfavourable circumstances, are
    comparatively small and ill-formed, as a general average they are
    much better formed races than the flesh-eaters.[269] It is only
    among those tribes whose habits are temperate, and who subsist on
    the non-flesh diet, that the more perfect specimens of symmetry are
    found.

    “Not one human being in many thousands dies a _natural_ death.
    If a man be shot or poisoned we say he dies a violent death, but
    if he is ill, attended by physicians, and dies, we say he dies a
    ‘natural’ death. This is an abuse of language--the death in the
    latter case being as truly violent as if he had been shot. Whether
    a man takes arsenic and kills himself, or by small doses or other
    means, however common, gradually destroys life, he equally dies a
    violent death. He only dies a natural death who so obeys the laws
    of his nature as by neither irritation nor intensity to waste his
    energies, but slowly passes through the changes of his system to
    old age, and falls asleep in the exhaustion of vitality.”[269]

With Flourens he adduces a number of instances both of individuals and
of communities who have attained to protracted ages by reason of a pure
diet. He afterwards proceeds to prove from comparative physiology and
anatomy, and, in particular, from the conformation of the human teeth
and stomach (which, by an astounding perversion of fact, are sometimes
alleged to be formed carnivorously, in spite of often-repeated
scientific authority, as well as of common observation), the natural
frugivorous character of the human species, and he quotes Linné,
Cuvier, Lawrence, Bell, and many others in support of this truth.[270]




XLVIII.

STRUVE. 1805-1870.


Germany, at the present day able to boast so many earnest apostles of
humanitarianism, until the nineteenth century was some way advanced,
had contributed little, definitely, to the literature of _Humane
Dietetics_. A Haller or a Hufeland, indeed, had, with more or less
boldness, raised the banner of partial revolt from orthodox medicine
and orthodox living, but their heterodoxy was rather hygienic than
humane. In the history of humanitarianism in Germany the honour of the
first place, in order of time, belongs to the author of _Pflanzenkost,
die Grundlage einer Neuen Weltanschauung_, and of _Mandaras’
Wanderungen_, whose life, political as well as literary, was one
continuous combat on behalf of justice, freedom, and true progress.

Gustav von Struve was born at München (Munich), October 11, 1805, from
whence his father, who was residing there as Russian Minister, shortly
afterwards removed to Stuttgart. The foundation of his education was
laid in the gymnasium of that capital, where he remained until his
twelfth year. From 1817 to 1822 he was a scholar in the Lyceum in
Karlsruhe. Having finished his preparatory studies in those schools,
he proceeded to the University of Göttingen, which, after a course of
nearly two years, he exchanged for Heidelberg. Four years of arduous
study enabled him to pass his first examination, and, as the result of
his brilliant attainments and success, he received the appointment of
_Attaché_ to the Bundestag Embassy at Oldenberg.

With such an opening, a splendid career in the service of courts and
kings seemed to be reserved for him. His family connexions, his great
abilities, and his unusual acquirements at so early an age guaranteed
to him quick promotion, with reward and worldly honour. But to figure
in the service of the oppressors of the people--to waste in luxurious
trifling the resources of a peasantry, supplied by them only at the
cost of a life-time of painful destitution, to support the selfish
greed and vain ostentation of the Jew--such was not the career which
could stimulate the ambition of Struve. The conviction that this was
not his proper destiny grew stronger in him, and he soon abandoned his
diplomatic position and Oldenberg at the same time. Without wealth
or friends, at variance with his relatives, who could not appreciate
his higher aims, he settled himself in Göttingen (1831), and in the
following year in Jena. His attempts to obtain fixed employment
as professor or teacher, or as editor of a newspaper, long proved
unsuccessful, for independent and honest thought, never anywhere
greatly in esteem, at that time in Germany was in especial disfavour
with all who, directly or indirectly, were under court influences. Yet
the three years which he lived in Göttingen and Jena supplied him with
varied and useful experiences.

In 1833 he went to Karlsruhe. After years of long patience and effort,
he at length effected his object (to gain a position which should
make it possible for him to carry out his schemes of usefulness for
his fellow-beings), and, at the end of 1836, he obtained the office
of Obergerichts-Advocat in Mannheim. This position gave leisure
and opportunity for the prosecution of his various scientific and
philosophic pursuits, and to engage in literary undertakings. He
founded periodicals and delivered lectures, the constant aim of which
was the improvement of the world around him. At this period he wrote
his philosophic romance, _Mandaras’ Wanderungen_ (“The Wanderings of
Mandaras”), through which he conveys distasteful truths in accordance
with the principles of Tasso.[271]

Struve’s active political life began in 1845. In that year were
published _Briefwechsel zwischen einen ehemaligen and einen jetzigen
Diplomaten_,(“Correspondence between an Old and a Modern Diplomatist”),
which was soon followed by his _Oeffentliches Recht des Deutschen
Bundes_ (“Public Rights of the German Federation”) and his _Kritische
Geschichte des Allgemeinen Staats-Rechts_ (“Critical History of the
Common Law of Nations”). In the same year he undertook the editorship
of the _Mannheimer Journal_, in which he boldly fought the battles
of political and social reform. He was several times condemned to
imprisonment, as well as to payment of fines; but, undeterred by such
persecution, the champion of the oppressed succeeded in worsting most
of his powerful enemies.

In the beginning of 1847 he founded a weekly periodical, the _Deutscher
Zuschauer_ (“The German Spectator”), in which, without actually
adopting the invidious names, he maintained in their fullest extent
the principles of Freedom and Fraternity; and it was chiefly by the
efforts of Struve that the great popular demonstration at Oldenberg of
September 12, 1847, took place, which formulated what was afterwards
known as the “Demands of the People.” The public meeting, assembled
at the same town March 9, 1848, which was attended by 25,000 persons,
and which, without committing itself to the adoption of the term
“republican,” yet proclaimed the inherent Rights of the People, was
also mainly the work of the indefatigable Struve. He took part, too, in
the opening of the Parliament at Frankfurt. His principal production
at this time was _Grundzüge der Staats-Wischenschaft_ (“Outlines of
Political Science”). This book, inspired by the movement for freedom
which was then agitating, but, as it proved, for the most part
ineffectually, a large part of Europe, is not without significance
in the education of the community for higher political conceptions.
Struve and F. Hecker took a leading part in the democratic movements
in Baden. These attempts failing, after a short residence in Paris,
he settled near Basel (Basle). There he published his _Grundrechte
des Deutschen Volkes_ (“Fundamental Rights of the German People”),
and, in association with Heinzen, a _Plan für Revolutionierung und
Republikanisierung Deutschlands_. The earnest and noble convictions
apparent in all the writings of the author, and the unmistakable purity
of his aims, forced from the more candid of the opponents of his
political creed recognition and high respect. Nevertheless, he narrowly
escaped legal assassination and the _fusillades_ of the Kriegsgericht
or Military Tribunal.

Later the unsuccessful lover of his country sought refuge in England,
and from thence proceeded to the United States (1850). Upon the
breaking out of the desperate struggle between the North and South, he
threw in his lot with the former, and took part in several battles. In
America he wrote his historical work _Weltgeschichte_ (12 vols.) and,
amongst others, _Abeilard und Heloise_. In 1861 he returned to Europe,
and, at different periods, wrote two of his most important books,
_Pflanzenkost, die Grundlage einer Neuen Weltanschauung_ (“Vegetable
Diet, the Foundation of a New World-View”), and _Das Seelenleben,
oder die Naturgeschichte des Menschen_ (“The Spiritual Life, or the
Natural History of Man”), in both of which he earnestly insists, not
only upon the vast and incalculable suffering inflicted, in the most
barbarous manner, upon the victims of the _Table_, but, further, upon
the demoralising influence of living by pain and slaughter:--

    “The thoughts and feelings which the food we partake of provokes
    are not remarked in common life, but they, nevertheless, have their
    significance. A man who daily sees Cows and Calves slaughtered,
    or who kills them himself, Hogs ‘stuck,’ Hens plucked, or Geese
    roasted alive, &c., cannot possibly retain any true feeling for
    the sufferings of his own species. He becomes hardened to them by
    witnessing the struggles of other animals as they are being driven
    by the butcher, the groans of the dying Ox, or the screams of the
    bleeding Hog, with indifference.... Nay, he may come even to find
    a devilish pleasure in seeing beings tortured and killed, or in
    actually slaughtering them himself....

    “But even those who take no part in killing, nay, do not even see
    it, are conscious that the flesh-dishes upon their tables come from
    the Shambles, and that _their feasting and the suffering of others
    are in intimate connexion_. Doubtless, the majority of flesh-eaters
    do not reflect upon the manner in which this food comes to them,
    but this thoughtlessness, far from being a virtue, is the parent of
    many vices.... How very different are the thoughts and sentiments
    produced by the non-flesh diet!”[272]

The last period of his life was passed in Wien (Vienna), and in that
city his beneficently-active career closed in August, 1870. His last
broken words to his wife, some hours before his end, were, “I must
leave the world ... this war ... this conflict!” With the life of
Gustav Struve was extinguished that of one of the noblest soldiers of
the Cross of Humanity. His memory will always be held in high honour
wherever justice, philanthropy, and humane feeling are in esteem.

In _Mandaras’ Wanderungen_, of a different inspiration from that of
ordinary fiction, and which is full of refinement of thought and
feeling, are vividly represented the repugnance of a cultivated Hindu
when brought, for the first time, into contact with the barbarisms of
European civilisation. To few of our English readers, it is presumable,
is this charming story known; and an outline of its principal incidents
will not be supererogatory here.

The hero, a young Hindu, whose home is in one of the secluded
valleys of the Himalaya, urged by the solicitude of the father of
his betrothed, who wishes to prove him by contact with so different
a world, sets out on a course of travel in Europe. The story opens
with the arrival of his ship at Leftheim (Livorno) on the Italian
coast. Mandaras has no sooner landed than he is accosted by two
clerics (_ordensgeistliche_), who wish to acquire the honour and
glory of making a convert. But, unhappily for their success, like his
predecessor Amabed, he had already on his voyage discovered that the
religion of the people, among whom he was destined to reside, did not
exclude certain horrible barbarisms hitherto unknown to him in his own
unchristian land:--

    “While still on board ship I had been startled when I saw the rest
    of the passengers feeding on the flesh of animals. ‘By what right,’
    I asked them, ‘do you kill other animals to feed upon their flesh?’
    They could not answer, but they continued to eat their salted
    flesh as much as ever. For my part, I would have rather died than
    have eaten a piece of it. But now it is far worse. I can pass
    through no street in which there are not poor slaughtered animals,
    hung up either entire or cut into pieces. Every moment I hear the
    cries of agony and of alarm of the victims whom they are driving
    to the slaughter-house,--see their struggles against the murderous
    knife of the butcher. Ever and again I ask of one or other of the
    men who surround me, _by what right_ they kill them and devour
    their flesh; but if I receive an answer, it is returned in phrases
    which mean nothing or in repulsive laughter.”

In fact the Hindu traveller had been but a brief space of time in
Christian lands when he finds himself, almost unconsciously, in the
position of a _catechist_ rather than of a _catechumen_. One day,
for example, he finds himself in the midst of a vast crowd, of all
classes, hurrying to some spectacle. Inquiring the cause of so vast an
assemblage, he learns that some persons are to be put to death with
all the frightful circumstances of public executions. After travelling
through a great part of Germany, he fixes his residence, for the
purpose of study, in the University of Lindenberg. In the society of
that place he meets with a young girl, Leonora, the daughter of a
Secretary of Legation, who engages his admiration by her exceptional
culture and refinement of mind. On the occasion of an excursion of
a party of her father’s visitors, of some days, to an island on the
neighbouring coast, the first discussion on humane dietetics takes
place, when, being asked the reason of his _eccentricity_, he appeals
to the ladies of the party, believing that he shall have at least
_their_ sympathy with the principles he lays down:--

    “From you, ladies, doubtless I shall meet with approval. Tell
    me, could you, _with your own hands_, kill to-day a gentle Lamb,
    a soft Dove, with whom perhaps you yesterday were playing? You
    answer--No? You dare not say you could. If you were to say yes,
    you would, indeed, betray a hard heart. But why could you not? Why
    did it cause you anguish, when you saw a defenceless animal driven
    to slaughter? Because you felt, _in your inmost soul_, that it is
    wrong, that it is unjust to kill a defenceless and innocent being!
    With quite other feelings would you look on the death of a Tiger
    that attacks men, than on that of a Lamb who has done harm to no
    one. To the one action attaches, naturally, justice; to the other,
    injustice. Follow the inner promptings of your heart,--no longer
    sanction the slaughter of innocent beings by feeding on their
    bodies (_beförden Sie nicht deren Tödtung dadurch dass Sie ihr
    Fleisch essen_).”

This exhortation, to his surprise, was received by all “the softer sex”
with coldness, and even with signs of impatience, excepting Leonora,
who acknowledged the force of his appeal and promised to the best
of her power to follow his example. Pleased and encouraged by her
approval, he proceeds:--

    “Assuredly it will not repent you to have formed this resolution.
    The man who, with firmly-grounded habits, denies himself something
    which lies in his power, to spare pain and death to living and
    sentient beings, must become milder and more loving. The man who
    steels himself against the feeling of compassion for the lower
    animals, will be more or less hard towards his own species; while
    he who shrinks from giving pain to other beings, will so much the
    more shrink from inflicting it upon his fellow men.”

Leonora, however, was a rare exception in his experience; and the more
he saw of Christian customs, the less did he feel disposed to change
his religion, which, by the way, was of an unexceptionable kind. Some
time before his leaving Lindenberg, the secretary’s wife gave a dinner
in his honour, which, in compliment to her guest, was without any
flesh-dish. As a matter of course, the conversation soon turned upon
Dietetics; and one of the guests, a cleric, challenged the Hindu to
defend his principles. Mandaras had scarcely laid down the cardinal
article of his creed as a fundamental principle in Ethics--that it is
unjust to inflict suffering upon a living and sensitive being, which
(as he insists) cannot be called in question _without shaking the very
foundations of Morality_ (_welcher nicht die Sittenlehre in ihren
Fundamenten erschüttern will_)--when opponents arise on all sides of
him. A doctor of medicine led the opposition, confidently affirming
that the human frame itself proved men to be intended for flesh-eating.
Mandaras replied that:--

    “It seemed to him, on the contrary, that it is the bodily frame of
    man that especially declares _against_ flesh-eating. The Tiger,
    the Lion, in short, all flesh-eating animals seized their prey,
    running, swimming, or flying, and tore it in pieces with their
    teeth or talons, devouring it there and then upon the spot. Man
    cannot catch other animals in this way, or tear them in pieces, and
    devour them as they are.... Besides he has higher, and not merely
    animal, impulses. The latter lead him to gluttony, intemperance,
    and many other vices. Providence has given him reason to prove what
    is right and what wrong, and power of will to avoid what he has
    discovered to be wrong. The doctor, however, in place of admitting
    this argument, grew all the warmer. ‘In all Nature,’ said he, ‘one
    sees how the lower existence is serviceable to the higher. As man
    does, so do other animals seize upon the weaker, and the weakest
    upon plants, &c.’”

To this the Hindu philosopher in vain replies, _that_ the sphere of
man, is _wider_, and ought therefore to be _higher_ than that of other
animals, for the larger the circle in which a being can freely move,
the greater is the possible degree of his perfection; _that_, if we
are to place ourselves on the plane of the carnivora in one point,
why not in all, and recognise also treachery, fierceness, and murder
in general, as proper to man _that_ the different character of the
Tiger, the Hyæna, the Wolf on the one side, and of the Elephant, the
Camel, the Horse on the other, instruct us as to the mighty influence
of food upon the disposition, and certainly not to the advantage of
the flesh-eaters; _that_ man is to strive not after the lower but the
higher character, &c., &c. To this the hostess replies: “This may
be all very beautiful and good, but how is the housekeeper to be so
skilful as to provide for all her guests, if she is to withhold from
them flesh dishes?” “Exactly as our housekeepers do in the Himalayan
valley--exactly as our hostess does to-day,” rejoins Mandaras. He
alleges many other arguments, and in particular the high degree
of reasoning faculty, and even of moral feeling, exhibited by the
miserable slaves of human tyranny. Various are the objections raised,
which, it is needless to say, are successfully overthrown by the
champion of Innocence, and the company disperse after a prolonged
discussion.

The second division of the story takes us to the Valley of Suty, the
Himalayan home of Mandaras, and introduces us to his amiable family.
A young German, travelling in that region, chances to meet with the
father of Urwasi (Mandaras’s betrothed), whom he finds bowed down
with grief for the double loss of his daughter, who had pined away in
the protracted absence of her lover and succumbed to the sickness of
hope deferred, and of his destined son-in-law, who, upon his return
to claim his mistress, had fallen (as it appeared) into a death-swoon
at the shock of the terrible news awaiting him. The old man conducts
the stranger to the scene of mourning, where Damajanti, the sister
of Mandaras, with her friend Sunanda, is engaged in weaving garlands
of flowers to deck the bier of her beloved brother. An interesting
conversation follows between the European stranger and the Hindu
ladies, who are worthy representatives of their countrywoman,
Sakuntalà.[273] Accidentally they discover that he is a flesh-eater.

    _Sunanda_: Is it possible that you really belong to those men who
    think it lawful to kill other beings to feed upon their bleeding
    limbs?

    _Theobald_: In my country it is the ordinary custom. Do you not, in
    your country, use such food?

    _Damajanti_: Can you ask? Have not other animals feeling? Do they
    not enjoy their existence?

    _Theobald_: Certainly; but they are so much below us, that there
    can be no _reciprocity_ of duties between us.

    _Damajanti_: The higher we stand in relation to other animals,
    the more are we bound to disregard none of the eternal laws of
    Morality, and, in particular, that of Love. Hateful is it, at all
    events, to inflict pain upon an innocent being capable of feeling
    pain. Or do you consider it permissible to strike a dog, to witness
    the trembling of his limbs, and to hear his cries?

    _Theobald_: By no means. I hold, also, that it is wrong to torture
    them, because we ought to feel no pleasure in the sufferings of
    other animals.

    _Damajanti_: We ought to feel no _pleasure_! That is very cold
    reasoning. Detestation--disgust, rather, is the sensation we ought
    to have. Where this sentiment is real, there can be no desire
    to profit by the sufferings of others. Yet, where the feelings
    of disgust for what is bad are weaker than inclination to the
    self-indulgence which it promises, there is no possibility of their
    triumphing. For _gain_ the butcher slaughters the victim; for
    _horrible luxury_ other men participate in this murder, while they
    devour the pieces of flesh, in which, a few moments before, the
    blood was still flowing, the nerves yet quivering, the life still
    breathing!

    _Theobald_: I admit it: but all this is new to me. From childhood
    upwards I have been accustomed to see animals driven to the
    slaughter-house. It gave me no pleasure rather it was a positively
    displeasing spectacle; but I did not think about it--whether we
    have the right to slaughter for food, because I had never heard
    doubt expressed on the matter.

    _Sunanda_: Ah! Now I can well believe that the men in your country
    _must_ be hard and cold. Every softer feeling _must_ be hardened,
    every tenderer one be dulled in the daily scenes of murder which
    they have before their eyes, by the blood which they shed daily,
    which they taste daily. Happy am I that I live far from your world.
    A thousand times would I rather endure death than live in so
    horrible a land.

    _Damajanti_: To me, too, residence in such a land would be torture.
    Yet, were I a man, had I the power of eloquence, I would go from
    village to village, from town to town, and vehemently denounce
    such horrors. I should think that I had achieved more than the
    founders of all religions, if I should succeed in inspiring men
    with sympathy for their fellow-beings. What is religious belief,
    if it tolerates this murder, or rather sanctions it? What is all
    Belief without Love? And what is a Love _that excludes from its
    embrace the infinitely larger part of living beings_? Sweet and
    fair indeed is it to live in a valley which harbours only mild and
    loving people; but it is greater, and worthier of the high destiny
    of human life, to battle amongst the Bad for Goodness, to contend
    for the Light amongst the prisoners of Darkness. What is Life
    without Doing? We women, indeed, cannot, and dare not ourselves
    venture forth into the wild surge of rough and coarse men; but it
    is our business at least to incite to all that is True, Beautiful,
    and Good; to have regard for no man who is not ardent for what is
    noble, to accept none of them who does not come before us adorned
    with the ornament of worthy actions (der nicht mit dem Schmucke
    würdigen Thaten vor uns tritt).

This eloquent discourse takes place while the three friends are
watching, during the night, at the bier of the supposed dead. At
the moment when the last funeral rites are to be performed, equally
with the spectators we are surprised and pleased at the unexpected
resuscitation of Mandaras, who, it appeared, had been in a trance,
from which at the critical moment he awoke. With what transports he
is welcomed back from the confines of the shadow-land, may easily be
divined. For some time they live together in uninterrupted happiness;
the young German, who had adopted their simple mode of living,
remaining with them. In the intervals of pleasing labours in the
field and the garden, they pass their hours of recreation in refined
intellectual discourse and speculation, the younger ones deriving
instruction from the experienced wisdom of the venerable sage. The
conversation often turns upon the relations between the human and
non-human races; and, in the course of one of his philosophical
prelections, the old man, with profound insight, declares that “so
long as other animals continue to be excluded from the circle of Moral
Existence, in which Rights and Duties are recognised, so long is there
no step forward in Morality to be expected. So long as men continue
to support their lives upon bodies essentially like to their own,
without misgiving and without remorse, so long will they be fast bound
by blood-stained fetters (_mit blutgetränkten Fesseln_) to the lower
planes of existence.”

At length the sorrowful day of separation arrives. It is decided that
Mandaras should return to Germany, a wider sphere of useful action than
the Himalayan valleys presented; and an additional reason is found
in the discovery that his mother herself had been German. With much
painful reluctance in parting from beloved friends, he recognises the
force of their arguments, and once more leaves his peaceful home for
the turmoil of European cities. After suffering shipwreck, in which
he rescues a mother and child--at the expense of what he had held
as his most precious possession, a casket of relics of his beloved
Urwasi--Mandaras lands once again at Livorno. He finds his old friends
as eager as ever for proselytising “the heathen,” and quite unconscious
of the need of conversion for themselves. At the death of the aged
father of Damajanti, she, with her friend Sunanda and Theobald, who
still remains with them, and (as may have been divined) is the devoted
lover of the charming Sunanda, determines to leave her ancestral abode
and join her brother in his adopted German home. When they arrive at
the appointed place of meeting they are overwhelmed with grief to find
that he, for whose sake so long a pilgrimage had been undertaken, had
been taken from them for ever. Having lost his passport he had been
arrested on suspicion and imprisoned. In confinement he had shrunk from
the European flesh-dishes, and, unsupplied with proper nourishment or a
sufficiency of it, had died (in the true sense of the word) a _martyr_,
to the last, to his moral principles. With great difficulty his final
words in writing are discovered, and these, in the form of letters to
his sister, declare his unshaken faith and hopes for the future of the
World. There are, also, found short poems, which are published at the
end of his Memoirs, and are fully worthy of the refined mind of the
author of _Mandaras_. Thus ends a romance which, for beauty of idea and
sentiment, may be classed with the _Aventures de Télémaque_ of Fénélon
and, still more fitly, with the _Paul et Virginie_ of St. Pierre.[274]

The space we have been tempted to give to _Mandaras’s Wanderings_
precludes more than one or two further extracts from Struve’s admirable
writings. His _Pflanzenkost_, perhaps the best known, as it is his
most complete, exposition of his views on Humane Dietetics, appeared
in the year 1869. In it he examines Vegetarianism in all its varied
aspects--in regard to Sociology, Education, Justice, Theology, Art and
Science, Natural Economy, Health, War and Peace, the practical and
real Materialism of the Age, Health, Refinement of Life, &c. From the
section which considers the Vegetable Diet in its relations to National
Economy we quote the following just reflections:--

    “Every step from a lower condition to a higher is bound up with
    certain difficulties. This is especially the case when it is a
    question of shaking off habits strengthened by numbers and length
    of time. Had the human race, however, not the power to do so,
    then the step from Paganism to Christianity, from predatory life
    to tillage, in particular from savage barbarousness to a certain
    stage in civilisation, would have been impossible. All these steps
    brought many struggles in their train, which to many thousands
    produced some hardships (_Schaden_); to untold millions, however,
    incalculable benefits. So, also, the steps onward from Flesh-Diet
    cannot be established without some disturbances. The great majority
    of men hold fast to old prejudices. They struggle, not seldom with
    senseless rage, against enlightenment and reason, and a century
    often passes away before a new idea has forced the way for the
    spread of new blessings.

    “Therefore, we need not wonder if we, also, who protest and stand
    out against the evils of Flesh-Eating, and proclaim the advantages
    of the Vegetable Diet, find violent opponents. The gain which would
    accrue to the whole race of man by the acceptance of that diet is,
    however, so great and so evidently destined, that our final victory
    is certain....

    “Doubtless the Political Economy of our days will be shaken to its
    foundations by the step from the flesh to the non-flesh diet; but
    this was also the case when the nomads began to practise tillage,
    and the hunters found no more _game_. The relics of certain
    barbarisms must be shaken off. All barbarians, or semi-barbarians,
    will struggle desperately against this with their selfish
    coarseness (_eigenthümlichen Rohheit_). But the result will be that
    the soil which, under the influence of the Flesh-Régime supported
    one man only, will, with the unfettered advantages of the Vegetable
    Diet support five human beings. Liebig, even, recognised so much
    as this--that the Flesh-Diet is twelve times more costly than the
    Non-Flesh.”[275]

Struve’s _Seelenleben_,[276] published in the same year with the
_Pflanzenkost_, and his last important work, forms a sort of _résumé_
of his opinions already given to the world, and is, therefore, a more
comprehensive exposition of his opinions on Sociology and Ethics than
is found in his earlier writings. It is full of the truest philosophy
on the Natural History of Man, inspired by the truest refinement of
soul. In the section entitled _Moral_ he well exposes the futility
of hap-hazard speeches, meaning nothing, which, vaguely and in an
indefinite manner addressed to the child, are allowed to do duty for
_practical_ moral teaching:--

    “They tell children, perhaps, that they must not be cruel either
    to ‘Animals’ or to human beings weaker than themselves. But when
    the child goes into the kitchen, he sees Pigeons, Hens, and Geese
    slaughtered and plucked; when he goes into the streets, he sees
    animals hung up with bodies besmeared with blood, feet cut off, and
    heads twisted back. If the child proceeds still further, he comes
    upon the slaughter-house, in which harmless and useful beings of
    all kinds are being slaughtered or strangled. We shall not here
    dwell upon all the barbarisms bound up in the butchery of animals;
    but in the same degree in which men abuse their superior powers, in
    regard to other species, do they usually cause their tyranny to be
    felt by weaker human beings in their power.

    “What avails all the fine talk about morality, in contrast with
    _acts of barbarism and immorality presented to them on all sides_?

    “It is no proof of an exalted morality when a man acts justly
    towards a person stronger than himself, who can injure him.
    _He alone acts justly who fulfils his obligatory duties
    (Verpflichtungen) in regard to the weaker._ ... He, who has
    no _human_ persons under him, at least can strike his horse,
    barbarously drive his calf, and cudgel his dog. The relations
    of men to the inferior species are so full of significance, and
    exercise so mighty an influence upon the development of human
    character, that Morality wants a wider province that shall embrace
    those beings within it.”

In the chapter devoted especially to Food and Drinks (_Speise und
Trank_) Struve warns those whom it most concerns that:--

    “The monstrous evils and abuses, which gradually and stealthily
    have invaded our daily foods and drinks, have now reached to such a
    pitch that they can no longer be winked at. He who desires to work
    for the improvement of the human species, for the elevation of the
    human soul, and for the invigoration of the human body, dares not
    leave uncontested the general dominant unnaturalness of living.

    “With a people struggling for Freedom the Kitchen must be no
    murderous den (_Mördergrube_); the Larder no den of corruption;
    the Meal no occasion for stupefaction. In despotic states the
    oppressors of the People may intoxicate themselves with spirituous
    drink, and bring disease and feebleness upon themselves with
    unlawful and unwholesome meats. The sooner such men perish (_zu
    grunde gehen_) the better. But in free states (or in such as are
    striving for Freedom), Simplicity, Temperance, Soberness must be
    the first principles of citizen-life. No people can be free whose
    individual members are still slaves to their own passions.[277]
    Man must first free himself from these before he can, _with any
    success_, make war upon those of his fellow-men.”

Weighty words coming from a student of Science and of Human Life.
Still weightier coming from one who had devoted so large a part of his
existence to assist, and had taken so active a part in, the struggles
of the people for Justice and Freedom.




XLIX.

DAUMER. 1800-1875.


One of the earliest pioneers of the New Reformation in Germany, chiefly
from what may be termed the religious-philosophical standpoint, and one
whose useful learning was equalled only by his true conception of the
significance of the religious sentiment, was born at Nürnberg, in the
last year of the eighteenth century.

Of a naturally feeble constitution, unable to mix in the ordinary
amusements of school-life, he found ample leisure for literature and
for music, to which especially he was devoted. Much of his time, also,
was given to theological, and, in particular, biblical reading, so that
his mother unhesitatingly fixed upon the clerical profession as his
future career. He attended the Gymnasium of his native town, at that
time under the direction of Hegel, who exercised a permanent influence
upon his mental development. In the eighteenth year of his age he
proceeded to the University of Erlangen for the study of theology.
Doubts, however, began to disturb his contentment with orthodoxy;
and, more and more dissatisfied with its systems, the young student
relinquished the course of life for which he had believed himself
destined; and, after attending the lectures of Schelling, he went
to Leipsic to apply himself wholly to philology. Having completed
the usual course of study, he was appointed teacher, and afterwards
Professor of Latin in the Nürnberg Gymnasium (1827). Unpleasant
relations with the Rector of the schools (whose orthodoxy seems to have
been less questionable than his amiability), and also, in part, his
feeble health, obliged him to resign this post, and from that time he
gave himself up exclusively to literary occupations, which were, for
the most part, in the domain of philosophic theology.

During his professoriate Daumer had written his _Urgeschichte des
Menschengeistes_ (“Primitive History of the Human Mind”), which was
succeeded, at an interval of some years, by his _Andeutungen eines
Systems Speculativer Philosophie_ (“Intimations of a System of
Speculative Philosophy”), in which he attempted to found and formulate
a philosophic Theism. The unreality of the professions and trifling of
those who had most reputation in the “religious” world, estranged him
more and more from the prevalent interpretations of Christianity.

His _Philosophie, Religion, und Alterthum_ appeared in 1833. Two
years later his _Züge zu einer neuen Philosophie der Religion
and Religionsgeschichte_ (“Indications for a New Philosophy of
Religion and History of Religion”). In 1842 was published _Der
Feuer-und-Moloch-Dienst der Hebräer_ (“The Fire and Moloch-Worship of
the Hebrews”), and (1847) _Die Geheimnisse des Christlichen Alterthums_
(“The Mysteries of Christian Antiquity”), in which he pointed out
that human sacrifice, and even cannibalism, were connected with the
old Baal-worship of the Jews, and maintained the newer religion to
be, in one important respect, not so much a purification of Judaism,
as an apparently retrograde movement to the still older religionism.
Besides these and other philosophic writings, Daumer published a free
translation of the Persian poet Hafiz. _Hafiz_ was followed by _Mahomed
und seine Werke: eine Sammlung Orientalischer Geschichte_ (“Mahommed
and his Actions: a Résumé of Oriental History”) 1848; and in 1855 by
_Polydora: ein Weltpoetisches Liederbuch_ (“Polydora: A Book of Lays
from the World’s Poetry”).

In his _Anthropologismus und Kriticismus_ (“Anthropology and
Criticism”), 1844, are many assaults upon the orthodox dietetic
practices; and in _Enthüllungen über Kaspar Hauser_ (“Revelations
in regard to Kaspar Hauser”) he displays the noxious influences of
flesh-eating upon a “wild boy of the woods,” who had been deserted or
lost by his parents in his childhood, and who had lived an entirely
natural life in the forests, eating only wild fruits. When he had
been reclaimed from the _savage_ state, his guardians, it seems,
thought that the most effectual method of “civilising” their charge
was to force him to discard fruits for flesh. The result, as shown by
Professor Daumer, who watched the case with the greatest interest,
was not reassuring for the orthodox believers. The inveteracy of the
practice of kreophagy, which blinds men to its essential barbarism, as
well as its anti-ethical, anti-humanising influences, is eloquently
insisted upon:--

    “Among the reforms necessary for the triumph of true refinement and
    true morality, which ought to be our earnest aim, is the Dietetic
    one, which, if not the weightiest of all (_allerwichtigste_), yet,
    undoubtedly, is one of the weightiest. Still is the ‘civilised’
    world stained and defiled by the remains of a horrible barbarity;
    while the old-world revolting practice of slaughter of animals and
    feeding on their corpses still is in so universal vogue, that men
    have not the faculty even of recognising it as such, as otherwise
    they would recognise it; and aversion from this horror provokes
    censure of such eccentricity, and amazement at any manifestion of
    tendency to reform, as at something absurd and ridiculous--nay,
    arouses even bitterness and hate. To extirpate this barbarism is a
    task, the accomplishment of which lies in the closest relationship
    with the most important principles of humaneness, morality,
    æsthetics, and physiology. A foundation for real culture--a
    thorough civilising and refining of humanity--is clearly impossible
    so long as an organised system of murder and of corpse-eating
    (_organisirten Mord-und-Leichenfratz System_) prevails by
    recognised custom.

    “That through a manner of living, of a character so fostering of
    corrupting and putrefying principles, is generated and nourished a
    whole host of diseases which, otherwise, would not exist, is so
    easy to see, that only an extremely obstinate love of flesh-meat
    can blind one to the fact. Before I renounced flesh-eating, which,
    unhappily, I had not the courage to do before I had lived a half
    century, I suffered from time to time from a frightful neuralgia,
    which tortured me many long days and nights. Since I abstained from
    that diet I have rid myself of this evil entirely. Observations of
    other individuals, in respect of the same and other maladies, have
    led me to the same conclusion. Worms, for instance, from which it
    formerly suffered, have entirely disappeared in a child, when it no
    longer was fed upon flesh.

    “That through the _cadaverous_ diet, also, very great disadvantages
    are derived to the spiritual and moral nature of men, appears to me
    to be proved by my experience in the case of my former foster-son,
    the celebrated Kaspar Hauser. This young man, maintained during his
    close confinement upon bread and water, for a long time after his
    introduction to the world ate nothing else, and wished for nothing
    else, as food. While he was accustomed, without ill-effect, to take
    bread-sops, oatmeal, and plain chocolate, from flesh, which had
    for him an intolerable odour, he had conceived a violent aversion.
    Living in this way he always looked sufficiently well-nourished,
    he developed a remarkable intelligence, and exhibited an
    extraordinarily refined and tender feeling. He was induced at last,
    but only by the most extraordinary caution and gradually, to take
    the usual flesh-dishes, by being given at first only a few drops
    of flesh-soup in his bread-sops, and, when he had grown in some
    measure accustomed to it, by infusing stronger ingredients, and so
    on.

    “There was now manifested the most disastrous change in his mind
    and disposition: learning became for him strangely difficult--the
    nobility of his nature disappeared into the background, and he
    turned out to be nothing more than a very ordinary individual.
    They ascribed this, of course, to every other cause than to
    his habituation to the flesh-diet. I myself was at that time
    very remote from the opinion of which I now am. From my present
    standpoint, however, I certainly cannot doubt that dietetic
    barbarism is for man of the most essential harm, not alone in a
    physical, but also in an intellectual and moral, point of view,
    however much it may, at present, be taken under the patronage of
    physiologists and physicians--upon no other ground, apparently,
    than because they themselves, to a melancholy degree, are devotedly
    attached to this inhuman diet. For, alas! man is wont to make use
    of his reason to justify by specious show of reasoning what he
    likes and delights in upon quite other grounds.”[278]

Of the rest of the little band of the propagators of the truer
Philosophy in Germany no longer living--who resolutely bore aloft
the standard of the Humanitarian Creed, at a time when it was yet
more scouted and scorned by the infidels than even at the present
day--deserving as they are of everlasting gratitude and remembrance
at the hands of their more fortunate successors, the limits of this
book compel us to be content with recording here the witness of one
or two more only; while for acquaintance with the numerous able and
eloquent expositions of their living representatives--of such earnest
humanitarian and social reformers as Ed. Baltzer, Emil Weilshäuser,
Theodor Hahn, Dr. Aderholdt, A. von Seefeld, R. Springer, and
others-- we must refer our readers, who wish to form an adequate idea
of contemporary German _anti-kreophagistic_ literature (as also in
regard to the equally extensive contemporary English literature of the
subject), to the original works themselves.

From _Der Weg zum Paradiese_ (“The Way to Paradise”) the following
extract sufficiently represents the inspiration of the writer, Dr. W.
Zimmermann:--

    “Men are almost entirely everything that they are by the force of
    custom; and this force, for the most part, resists every other
    power, and remains victorious over all. Reason itself, morality,
    and conscience are submissive to it. In the matter of Dietary
    Reform it displays itself as the enemy _par excellence_ (_die
    Hauptmacht_). People will fall back upon alleged _impossibilities_,
    although it is a question only of will and resolution. They will
    reject many of the dietetic propositions hitherto advanced as
    dangerous ‘abstractions,’ although they are founded in history,
    reason, and human destiny; although a brief enquiry ought to
    suffice to convince one of the first importance of the Reform. For
    although one must suppose that all would prefer a long, healthy,
    and happy existence to a feeble, painful life upon the old regimen,
    yet will the majority of human beings think it easier to attempt to
    assuage their torments and pains by uncertain, and, by no means,
    unhazardous medicine, rather than to remove them by obedience to
    Nature’s laws. As it is with most of the highest truths, so is
    it especially with Dietary Reform. People will reject it as an
    _abstraction_, and pronounce it an _impossibility_. In the future,
    however, by the greater number of the higher minds--for such a
    sacrifice of the lower and unnatural appetite we dare not expect
    from the ordinary run of men--will it be regarded in practice as
    a great blessing. For even now there are many exceptions in the
    social organism for whom Nature’s laws are superior to unreasoning
    impulse; for whom morality is superior to materialistic and mere
    sensual living; for whom duty is superior to superfluity. Besides,
    we are advancing towards a humaner century; and, as the present
    is a humaner time than the century before, so later will there
    be a milder _régime_ than now. Just as, in our days, exposure
    of children, combats of gladiators, torture of prisoners, and
    other atrocities are held to be scandalous and shameful, while
    in earlier times they were thought quite justifiable and right,
    so in the future will the murder of animals, to feed upon their
    corpses, be pronounced to be immoral and indefensible. Already
    (1846) are associations being formed for the protection of these
    beings; already now are there many who, like the nobler spirits
    of antiquity, apply to their diet the watchword of morality (_das
    Losungswort der Moral_) _to do good and to abstain from wrong is
    always, and above everything, possible_, and no longer give their
    sanction, by feeding on animals, to the torture and killing of
    innocent sentient beings.

    “According to the _number_ of proselytes will the importance of
    the evidence be adjudged. When thousands, practising natural diet,
    are observed in the midst of diseased flesh-eaters to be in the
    enjoyment of a prolonged, happy, old age, without disease and the
    sufferings of a vicious method of life, then will the way be laid
    down for _the many_ to abandon the living upon the corpses of other
    animals.”

Of a like inspiration is the indignant protest of another of the
apostles of Humanitarianism in Germany:--

    “What humiliation, what disgrace for us all, _that it should be
    necessary_ for one man to exhort other men not to be inhuman and
    irrational towards their fellow-creatures!

    Do they recognise, then, no mind, no soul in them--have they not
    feeling, pleasure in existence, do they not suffer pain? Do their
    voices of joy and sorrow indeed fail to speak to the human heart
    and conscience--so that they can murder the jubilant lark, in the
    first joy of his spring-time, who ought to warm their hearts with
    sympathy, from delight in bloodshed or for their ‘sport,’ or with
    a horrible insensibility and recklessness only to practise their
    aim in shooting! Is there no _soul_ manifest in the eyes of the
    living or dying animal--no expression of suffering in the eye of
    a deer or stag hunted to death--nothing which accuses them of
    murder before the avenging Eternal Justice?... Are the souls of
    all other animals but man mortal, or are they essential in their
    organisation? Does the world-idea (_Welt-Idee_) pertain to them
    also--the soul of nature--a particle of the Divine Spirit? I know
    not; but I feel, and every reasonable man feels like me, it is in
    miserable, intolerable contradiction with our human nature, with
    our conscience, with our reason, with all our talk of humanity,
    destiny, nobility; it is in frightful (_himmelschreinder_)
    contradiction with our poetry and philosophy, with our nature and
    with our (pretended) love of nature, with our religion, with our
    teachings about _benevolent design_--that we bring into existence
    merely to kill, to maintain our own life by the destruction of
    other life.... It is a frightful wrong that other species are
    tortured, worried, flayed, and devoured by us, in spite of the fact
    that we are not obliged to this by necessity; while in sinning
    against the defenceless and helpless, just claimants as they are
    upon our reasonable conscience and upon our compassion, we succeed
    only in brutalising ourselves. This, besides, is quite certain,
    that man has no real pity and compassion for his own species, so
    long as he is pitiless towards other races of beings.”[279]




L.

SCHOPENHAUER. 1788-1860.


The chief interpreter of Buddhistic ideas in Europe, and whose bias
in this direction is exercising so remarkable an influence upon
contemporaneous thought, in Germany in particular, was born at
Dantzig, the son of a wealthy merchant of that city. His mother,
herself distinguished in literature, was often the centre of the most
eminent persons of the day at Weimar. At a very early age devoted to
the philosophies of Plato and of Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer studied
at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin. His course of studies,
both scientific and literary, was, even for a German, unusually severe
and searching; and his acquirements were encyclopædic in their range.
Unlike most German students, it is worth noting, he was addicted
neither to beer-drinking nor to duelling.

His most important writings are: _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_
(“The World as Will and Representation”), 2 vols; _Die Grundprobleme
der Ethik_ (“The Ground-Problems of Ethics”); _Parerga und
Paralipomena_ (“Incidental and Neglected Subjects”), 2 vols; _Das
Fundament der Moral_ (“The Foundation of Morality”), 1840.

The peculiar characteristics of his philosophy are uncompromising
opposition to the hollow doctrines of easy-going Optimism--an
antagonism which, indeed, assumes the form of an exaggerated
Pessimism--and (what especially distinguishes him from most
systematisers and formularisers of morals) his making _Compassion_ the
principal, and, indeed, the exclusive source of moral action; and it
is his vindication of the _rights_ of the subject species, in marked
contrast with the silence, or even positive depreciation and contempt
for them, on the part of ordinary moralists, which will always entitle
him to take exceptionally high rank among reformers of Ethical systems,
in spite of his exaggerations and short-comings in other respects.
Dr. David Strauss (_Der Alte und der Neue Glaube_) thus writes of his
claims on these grounds:--

    “Criminal history shows us how many torturers of men, and
    murderers, have first been torturers of the lower animals. _The
    manner in which a nation, in the aggregate, treats the other
    species, is one chief measure of its real civilisation._ The
    Latin races, as we know, come forth badly from this examination;
    we Germans not half well enough. Buddhism has done more, in this
    direction, than Christianity; and Schopenhauer more than all
    ancient and modern philosophers together. The warm sympathy with
    sentient nature, which pervades all the writings of Schopenhauer,
    is one of the most pleasing aspects of his thoroughly intellectual,
    though often unhealthy and unprofitable, philosophy.”

This, it is necessary to add, plainly is written in ignorance of the
numerous writings of earlier and contemporaneous humanitarian dietists,
to whom, of course, is due a higher, because more consistent and more
logical, position than even Schopenhauer can claim, who, from ignorance
of the physical and moral arguments of anti-kreophagy (it reasonably
may be presumed), at the same time that he established the rights of
the subject species on the firmest basis, and included them as an
essential part of any moral code, yet, with a strange, but too common,
inconsistency, did not perceive that to hand over the Cow, the Ox, or
the Sheep, &c., to the butcher, is in most flagrant violation of his
own ethical standard. While, then, the author of the _Foundation of
Morality_ cannot claim the highest place, absolutely; outside the ranks
of anti-kreophagistic writers, a high rank may properly be conceded
to him as one of the most eminent moralists who, short of entire
emancipation, have done most to vindicate the position of the innocent
non-human races.[280] Especially has he denounced the horrible outrage
upon the commonest principles of justice by the pseudo-scientific
torturers of the physiological laboratory.[281] It is thus that he lays
the foundations of morality:--

    “A Pity, without limits, which unites us with all living
    beings--_in that_ we have the most solid, the surest guarantee
    of morality. _With that_ there is no need of casuistry. Whoso
    possesses it will be quite incapable of causing harm or loss to
    any one, of doing violence to any one, of doing ill in any way.
    But rather he will have for all long-suffering, he will aid the
    helpless with all his powers, and each one of his actions will
    be marked with the stamp of justice and of love. Try to affirm:
    ‘this man is virtuous, only he knows no pity,’ or rather: ‘he is
    an unjust and wicked man: nevertheless, he is compassionate.’ The
    contradiction is patent to everyone. Each one to his taste: but for
    myself, I know no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus,
    of old used in closing their public spectacles (just as the English
    of to-day end with a prayer for their king). They said: ‘May All
    that have life be delivered from suffering!’”

Enforcing his teaching that the principles and mainspring of all moral
action must be justice and love, Schopenhauer maintains that the real
influence of these first of virtues is tested, especially, by the
conduct of men to other animals:--

    “Another proof that the moral motive, here proposed, is, in fact,
    the true one, is, that in accordance with it the lower animals
    themselves are protected. The unpardonable forgetfulness in which
    they have been iniquitously left hitherto by all the [popular]
    moralists of Europe is well known. It is pretended that the
    [so-called] beasts have no rights. They persuade themselves that
    our conduct in regard to them has nothing to do with morals, or (to
    speak in the language of their morality) that we have no duties
    towards ‘animals:’ a doctrine revolting, gross, and barbarous,
    peculiar to the west, and which has its root in Judaism. In
    Philosophy, however, it is made to rest upon a hypothesis, admitted
    in the face of evidence itself, of an absolute difference between
    man and ‘beast.’ It is Descartes who has proclaimed it in the
    clearest and most decisive manner: and, in fact, it was a necessary
    consequence of his errors. The Cartesian-Leibnitzian-Wolfian
    philosophy, with the assistance of entirely abstract notions, had
    built up the ‘rational psychology,’ and constructed an immortal
    _anima rationalis_: but, visibly, the world of ‘beasts,’ with its
    very natural claims, stood up against this exclusive monopoly--this
    _brevet_ of immortality decreed to man alone--and, silently,
    Nature did what she always does in such cases--she protested. Our
    philosophers, feeling their scientific conscience quite disturbed,
    were forced to attempt to consolidate their ‘rational psychology’
    by the aid of empiricism. They, therefore, set themselves to work
    to hollow out between man and ‘beast’ an enormous abyss, of an
    immeasurable width; by this they would wish to prove to us, in
    contempt of evidence, an impassable difference. It was at all these
    efforts that Boileau already laughed:--

    ‘Les animaux ont-ils des Universités?
    Voit-on fleurir chez eux les Quatre Facultés?’

    In accordance with this theory, ‘beasts’ would have finished with
    no longer knowing how to distinguish themselves from the external
    world, with having no more consciousness of their own existence
    than of mine. Against these intolerable assertions one remedy only
    was needed. Cast a single glance at an animal, even the smallest,
    the lowest in intelligence. See the unbounded _egoism_ of which
    it is possessed. It is enough to convince you that ‘beasts’ have
    thorough consciousness of their _ego_, and oppose it to the
    world--to the _non-ego_. If a Cartesian found himself in the
    claws of a Tiger, he would learn, and in the most evident way
    possible, whether the Tiger can distinguish between the _ego_ and
    the _non-ego_. To these sophisms of the philosophers respond the
    sophisms of the people. Such are certain _idiotisms_, notably those
    of the German, who, for eating, drinking, conception, birth, death,
    corpse (when ‘beasts’ are in question), has special terms; so much
    would he fear to employ the same words as for men. He thus succeeds
    in dissimulating, under this diversity of terms, the perfect
    identity of things.

    “The ancient languages knew nothing of this sort of synonymy,
    and they simply called things which are the same by one and the
    same name. These artificial ideas, then, must needs have been
    an invention of the priesthood [_prétraille_] of Europe, a lot
    of sacrilegious people who knew not by what means to debase, to
    vilipend the eternal essence which lives in the substance of every
    animated being. In this way they have succeeded in establishing
    in Europe those wicked habits of hardness and cruelty towards
    ‘beasts,’ which a native of High Asia could not behold without a
    just horror. In English we do not find this infamous invention;
    that is owing, doubtless, to the fact that the Saxons, at the
    moment of the conquest of England, were not yet Christians.
    Nevertheless, the pendent of it is found in this particularity of
    the English language: all the names of animals there are of the
    _neuter gender_: and, as a consequence, when the name is to be
    represented by the pronoun, they use the neuter _it_, absolutely as
    for inanimate objects. Nothing is more shocking than this idiom,
    especially when the _primates_ are spoken of--the Dog, for example,
    the Ape, and others. One cannot fail to recognise here a dishonest
    device (_fourberie_) of the priests to debase [other] animals
    to the rank of things. The ancient Egyptians, for whom Religion
    was the unique business of life, deposed in the same tombs human
    mummies and those of the Ibis, &c.; but in Europe it would be an
    abomination, a crime, to inter the faithful Dog near the place
    where his master lies; and yet it is upon this tomb sometimes that,
    more faithful and more devoted than man ever was, he has awaited
    death.

    “If you wish to know how far the identity between ‘beast’ and
    man extends, nothing will conduct to such knowledge better than
    a little Zoology and Anatomy. Yet what are we to say when an
    anatomical bigot is seen at this day (1839) to be labouring to
    establish an absolute, radical, distinction between man and other
    animals; proceeding so far in enmity against true Zoologists--those
    who, without conspiracy with the priesthoods, without platitude,
    without _tartuferie_, permit themselves to be conducted by Nature
    and Truth--as to attack them, to calumniate them!

    “Yet this superiority [of man over other mammals of the higher
    species] depends but upon a more ample development of the
    brain--upon a difference in one part of the body only; this
    difference, besides, being but one of _quantity_. Yes, man and
    other animals are, both as regards the moral and the physical,
    identical _in kind_, without speaking of other points of
    comparison. Thus one might well recall to them--these Judaising
    westerns, these menagerie-keepers, these adorers of ‘reason’--that
    if _their_ mother has given suck to them, Dogs also have _theirs_
    to suckle _them_. Kant fell into this error, which is that of
    his time and of his country: I have already brought the reproach
    against him. The morality of Christianity has no regard for
    ‘beasts;’ it is therein a vice, and it is better to avow it than
    to eternise it. We ought to be all the more astonished at it,
    because this morality is in striking accord with the moral codes of
    Brahmanism and of Buddhism.

    “Between pity towards ‘beasts’ and goodness of soul there is a
    very close connexion. One might say without hesitation, when
    an individual is wicked in regard to them, that he cannot be a
    _good_ man. One might, also, demonstrate that this pity and the
    social virtues have the same source.... That [better section of
    the] English nation, with its greater delicacy of feeling, we
    see it taking the initiative, and distinguishing itself by its
    unusual compassion towards other species, giving from time to time
    new proofs of it--this compassion, triumphing over that ‘cold
    superstition’ which, in other respects, degrades the nation, has
    had the strength to force it to fill up the chasm which Religion
    had left in morality. This Chasm is, in fact, the reason why
    in Europe and in N. America, we have need of societies for the
    protection of the lower animals. In Asia the Religions suffice to
    assure to ‘beasts’ aid and protection (?), and there no one thinks
    of Societies of that kind. Nevertheless in Europe, also, from day
    to day [rather by intervals of _decades_] is being awakened the
    feeling of the Rights of the lower animals, in proportion as,
    little by little, disappear, vanish, the strange ideas of man’s
    domination over [other] animals, as if they had been placed in the
    world but for our service and enjoyment, for it is thanks to those
    ideas that they have been treated as _Things_.

    “Such are, certainly, the causes of that gross conduct, of that
    absolute want of regard, of which Europeans are guilty towards the
    lower animals; and I have shown the source of those ideas, which is
    in the _Old Testament_, in section 177 of the second volume of my
    _Parerga_.”[282]

       *       *       *       *       *

Of the many eminent scientists who, in recent times, indirectly have
affirmed the _wantonness_ of slaughtering for human food, the most
famous of European Chemists, Justus von Liebig, may seem to demand
especial notice. THE founder of the science of Organic Chemistry
and the method of Organic Analysis (1803-1873), educated at the
Universities of Bonn and Erlangen, received his diploma of Doctor
in Philosophy (physical and mathematical sciences) at the age of
nineteen. Two years later, chiefly by the influence of Humboldt, he
was named Professor Extraordinary of Chemistry at Giessen, whither a
crowd of disciples flocked from all parts of Germany and from England.
In 1832 he accepted a Chair at Munich. All the Scientific Societies of
Europe were eager in offering him honorary distinctions.

It is his application of his Special Science to the advancement of
Agriculture, and his more philosophic, though (it must be added)
occasionally contradictory views upon the comparative values of Foods,
which give him his best title to remembrance with posterity. We can
enumerate only a few of his numerous works: _Ueber Theorie und Praxis
der Landwirthschaft_ (“Upon the Theory and Practice of Agricultural
Economy),” Brunswick, 1824, translated into English; _Anleitung zur
Analyse Organische Körper_ (“Introduction to the Organic Analysis
of Bodies”), 1837; _Die Organische Chemie in ihren Anwendung auf
Physiologie und Pathologie_ (“Organic Chemistry in its Relationship
to Physiology and Pathology”), 1839; “Researches upon Alimentary
Chemistry,” 1849; _Chemische Briefe_ (“Letters upon Chemistry
considered in Relation with Industry, Agriculture, and Physiology”),
1852.

Whatever opinions this eminent German Chemist may have published
elsewhere inconsistent with the statements below, such inconsistency,
no more than in the case of Buffon, can weaken the force of his more
reasonable utterance. Upon the essential ultimate identity of the
nutritive properties of animal and vegetable substance he thus clearly
pronounces:--

    “Vegetable fibrine and animal fibrine, vegetable albumen and
    animal albumen, differ at the most (_höchstens_) in form. If these
    principles in nourishment fail, the nourishment of the animal will
    be cut off; if they obtain them, then the grass-feeding animal gets
    the same principles in his food as those upon which the flesh-eater
    entirely depends. Vegetables produce in their organism the blood
    of all beings. So that when the flesh-eaters consume the blood and
    flesh of the vegetable-eaters, they take to themselves exactly and
    simply the vegetable principles.

    “Vegetable Foods, in particular Corn of all kinds, and through
    these Bread, contain as much iron as the flesh of Oxen or as other
    kinds of flesh.

    “Certain it is, that of three men, of whom the one has fed upon
    ox-flesh and bread, the other upon bread and cheese, the third
    upon potatoes, each considers it a peculiar hardship from quite
    different points of view; yet in fact the only difference between
    them is the action of the peculiar elements of each food upon the
    brain and nervous system. A Bear, who was kept in a zoological
    garden, displayed, so long as he had bread exclusively for
    nourishment, quite a mild disposition. Two days of feeding with
    flesh made him vicious, aggressive, and even dangerous to his
    attendant. It is well known that the _vis irritabilis_ of the Hog
    becomes so excessive through flesh-eating that he will then attack
    a man.

    “The flesh-eating man needs for his support an enormous extent of
    land, wider and more extensive even than the Lion and the Tiger.
    A nation of Hunters in a circumscribed territory is incapable
    of multiplying itself for that reason. The carbon necessary for
    maintaining life must be taken from animals, of whom in the limited
    area there can be only a limited number. These animals collect
    from the plants the elements of their blood and their organs, and
    supply them to the Indians living by the chase, who devour them
    unaccompanied by the substance (_stoffen_) which during the life
    of the animal maintained the life processes. While the Indian, by
    feeding upon a single animal, might contrive to _sustain_ his life
    and health a certain number of days, he must, in order to gain
    for that time the requisite heat, devour _five_ animals. His food
    contains a superfluity of nitrogenous substance. What is wanting to
    it during the greater portion of the year is the necessary quantity
    of carbon, and hence the inveterate inclination of flesh consumers
    for brandy.

    “The practical illustration of agricultural superiority cannot be
    more clearly and profoundly given than in the speech of the North
    American Chief, which the Frenchman Crevecous has reported to us.
    The Chief, recommending to his tribe the practice of Agriculture,
    thus addressed it: ‘Do you not observe that, while we live upon
    Flesh, the white men live [_in part_] upon Grain? That Flesh takes
    more than thirty months to grow to maturity, and besides is often
    scarce? That each of these miraculous grains of corn, which they
    bury in the earth, gives back to them more than a hundredfold? That
    Flesh has four legs upon which to run away, and we have only two
    to overtake them? That the Corn remains and grows where the white
    men sow it; that the winter, which for us is a time of toilsome
    hunting, is for them the time of rest? Therefore have they so many
    children, and live so much longer than we. I say, then, to each
    one who hears me: Before the trees over our wigwams have died from
    old age, and the maples have ceased to supply us with sugar, the
    race of the corn-planter will have exterminated the race of the
    flesh-eater, because the hunters determine not to sow.’”[283]

Liebig’s views as to the mischievous effects of the propensity of
farmers, and of so-called agriculturists, to convert arable into
pasture land are sufficiently well known.[284]




APPENDIX.




I.

HESIOD.


The original of the English version, given in the beginning of this
work, is as follows:--

    Νήπιοι, οὐδὲ ἴσασιν, ὀσῳπλέον ἣμισυ Παντός,
    Οὐδ’ ὃσον ἐν Μαλάχῃ τε καὶ Ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγ’ ὄνειαρ.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Χρύσεον μὲν πρώτιστα γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων
    Ἀθάνατοι ποίησαν Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες.
    Ὣστε θεοί δ’ ἐζωον ἀκηδέα θυμὸν ἔχοντες,
    Νόσφιν ἄτερ τε πόνων καὶ ὀϊζύος· οὐδέ τι δειλὸν
    Γῆρας ἐπῆν, αἰεὶ δε πόδας καὶ χεῖρας ὁμοῖοι
    Τέρποντ’ ἐν θαλίῃσι κακῶν ἔκτοσθεν ἀπάντων·
    Θνῆσκον δ’ ὡς ὑπνῳ δεδμημένοι· ἐσθλὰ δὲ πάντα
    Τοῖσιν ἔην· καρπὸν δ’ ἔφερε ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα
    Αὐτομάτη, πολλόν τε καὶ ἄφθονον· οἱ δ’ ἐθελημοὶ
    Ἣσυχοι εργ’ ἐνέμοντο σὺν ἐσθλοῖσιν πολέεσσιν,
    [Ἀφνειοὶ μήλοισι, φίλοι μακάρεσσι θεοῖσι][285]
    Αὐτὰρ ἐπειδὴ τοῦτο γένος κατὰ γαῖα κάλυψεν,
    Τοὶ μὲν δαίμονες εἰσι Διὸς μεγάλου διὰ βουλὰς
    Ἐσθλοί, ἐπιχθόνιοι, φύλακες θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων,[286]
    Οἳ ῥα φυλάσσουσιν τε δίκας καὶ σχέτλια ἔργα,
    Ἡρα ἑσσάμενοι πάντῃ φοιτῶντες ἐπ’ αῖαν,
    Πλαυτοδόται· καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιλήϊον ἔσχον.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Ζεὺς δὲ Πατὴρ τρίτον ἄλλο γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων
    Χάλκειον ποίησε

           *       *       *       *       *

                                            Οὐδέ τι σῖτον
    Ἣσθιον, ἀλλ’ ἀδάμαντος ἔχον κρατερόφρονα θυμόν,
    Ἄπλητοι· μεγάλη δὲ βίν καὶ χεῖρες ἄαπτοι
    Ἐξ ὤμων ἐπέφυκον ἐπὶ στιβαροῖσι μέλεσσιν.
              Ἔργα καὶ Ἣμεραι (_Works and Days_), _passim_.




II.

    _Extracts from “The Golden Verses”_ (Χρυσᾶ Ἔπη). _An Exposition of
    Pythagorean Doctrine, of the Third Century, B.C., in Hexameters._
    (See pages 21, 22.)


                      κρατεῖν δ’ εἰθίζεο τῶνδε--
    Γαστρὸς μὲν πρώτιστα, καὶ ὑπνοῦ, λαγνείης τε,
    Καὶ θυμοῦ· πρήξεις δ’ αἰσχρόν ποτε μήτε μετ’αλλοῦ
    Μήτ’ ἰδίῃ· πάντων δε μαλίστ’ αἰσχύνεο σαυτόν.
    Εἶτα Δικαιοσύνην ἀσκεῖν ἐργῳ τε λόγῳ τε.
    Μηδ’ ἀλογίστως σαυτὸν ἐχειν περὶ μηδὲν ἔθιζε·
    Αλλα γνῶθε μὲν ὡς θανέειν πέπρωται ἃπασι.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Μηδεὶς μήτε λόγῳ σε παρείπῃ, μήτε τι ἔργῳ,
    Πρήξαι μήτ’ εἰπείν ὃ τι τοι μὴ βέλτερον ἔστι·
    Εἰθίζου δε διαίταν ἔχειν καθάρειον, ἄθρυπτον.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Μηδ’ ὓπνον μαλακοῖσιν ἐπ’ ὄμμασι προσδέξασθαι
    Πρὶν τῶν ἡμερινῶν ἔργων τρὶς ἓκαστον ἐπελθεῖν--
    Πῆ παρέβην· Τί δ’ ἔρεξα· Τί μοι δέον ουκ ἐτελέσθη·--
    Ἀρξάμενος δ’ ἀπὸ πρώτου ἐπέξιθι καὶ μετεπείτα
    Δειλὰ μὲν ἐκπρήξας, ἐπεπλήσσεο· Χρηστὰ δε τέρπνου.
      Ταῦτα πόνει, ταῦτ’ ἐκμελέτα· τούτων χρὴ ἐρᾷν.
    Ταῦτα σε τῆς θείης Ἀρετῆς εἰς ἴχνια θήσει·
    Ναὶ μὰ Τὸν ἁμετέρᾳ ψυχᾷ Παραδόντα Τετρακτύν,
    Παγὰν ἀενάον Ψύσεως

           *       *       *       *       *

                        Τούτων δε κρατήσας
    Γνώσῃ ἀθανάτων τε Θεῶν, θνητῶν τ’ ἀνθρώπων
    Σύστασιν, ῇτε ἓκαστα διέρχεται, ῇτε κπατεῖται.
    Γνώσῃ δ’ ᾖ θέμις ἐστὶ, Φύσω περὶ παντὸς ὁμοίην
    Ὦστε σε μήτε ἄελπτ’ ἐλπιζειν, μήτε τι λήθειν.
      Γνώσῃ δ’ ἀνθρώπους αὐθαίρετα πήματ’ ἔχοντας
    Τλήμονες, οἳ τ’ ἀγαθῶν πέλας ὄντων οὐκ ἐσοπῶσιν
    Οὔτε κλύουσι· λύσιν δὲ Κακῶν παῦποι συνίσασι.
    Ζεῦ Πάτερ, ἦ πολλῶν κε κακῶν λύσειας ἃπαντας,
    Εἰ πᾶσιν δείξαις οἳω τῷ δαίμονι χρῶνται.
    Ἄλλα σὺ θάρσει, ἐπεὶ θεῖον γένος ἐστὶ βροτοῖσιν,
    Οἷς ἱερα προφέπουσα Φύσις δείκνυσιν ἒκαστα
    Ὧν εἰ σοί μέτεστι, κρατήσεις ὧν σε κελεύω
    Ἐξακέσας, ψυχὴν δὲ πόνην ἀπὸ τῶνδε σαώσεις.
      Ἀλλ’ εἴργου βρωτῶν ὧν εἴπομεν, ἔν τε καθάρμοις,
    Ἐν τε λύσει ψυχῆς κρίνην, καὶ φράζευ ἓκαστα,
    Ἡνίοχον γνώμην στήσας καθύπερθεν ἀρίστην·
    Ἠν δ’ ἀπολείψας σῶμα ἐς αἰθερ’ ἐλεύθερον ἔλθης,
    Ἔσσεαι ἀθάνατος, θεὸς, ἀμβρότος, οὐκ ἔτι θνητός.[287]




III.


In _Texts from the Buddhist Canon_, Love or Compassion for all living
beings is thus inculcated by Buddha, in a sermon addressed to a number
of women (belonging to a class of hunters) whose husbands were then
engaged on one of their predatory excursions:--

    “He who is humane does not kill; he is ever able to preserve [his
    own?] life. This principle is imperishable. Whosoever observes it,
    no calamity shall betide that man. Politeness, indifference to
    worldly things, hurting no one, without place for annoyance--this
    is the character of the Brahma Heaven. Ever exercising love towards
    the infirm; pure, according to the teaching of Buddha; knowing when
    sufficient has been had; knowing when to stop.

    “There are eleven advantages which attend the man who practises
    compassion, and is tender to all that lives: his body is always
    in health (happy); he is blessed with peaceful sleep, and when
    engaged in study he is also composed; he has no evil dreams, he is
    protected by Heaven (Devas) and loved by men; he is unmolested by
    poisonous things, and escapes the violence of war; he is unharmed
    by fire or water; he is successful wherever he lives, and, when
    dead, goes to the Heaven of Brahma.”

When he had uttered these words, both men and women were admitted into
the company of his disciples, and obtained rest.

There was, in times gone by, a certain mighty King, called Ho-meh
(_love-darkness_), who ruled in a certain district where no tidings of
Buddha or his merciful doctrine had yet been heard; but the religious
practices were the usual ones of sacrifice and prayer to the gods for
protection. Now it happened that the King’s mother, being sick, the
physicians having vainly tried their medicine, all the wise men were
called to consult as to the best means of restoring her health.... On
the King asking them [the Brahman priests] what should be done, they
replied ... sacrifices of a hundred beasts of different kinds should
be offered on the four hills (or to the four quarters), with a young
child, as a crowning oblation to Heaven. [Here follows a description
of the King ordering a hundred head of Elephants, Horses, Oxen, and
Sheep to be driven along the road from the Eastern Gate towards the
place of sacrifice, and how their piteous cries rang through heaven
and earth.--_Editor’s Note._] On this Buddha, moved with compassion,
came to the spot, and preached a sermon on “Love to all that Live,” and
added these words:--

    “If a man live a hundred years, and engage the whole of his time
    and attention in religious offerings to the gods, sacrificing
    Elephants and Horses, and other life, all this is not equal to _one
    act of pure love in saving life_.”

See _Texts from the Buddhist Canon, commonly known as Dhammapada--with
accompanying Narratives--Translated from the Chinese_, by Samuel Beal,
Professor of Chinese, University College, London--Trübner, 1878: and
the similar scene in _The Light of Asia_, where Buddha interposes at
the moment of a religious sacrifice:--

                          “But Buddha softly said,
    ‘Let him not strike, great King!’ and therewith loosed
    The victim’s bonds, none staying him, so great
    His presence was. Then, craving leave, he spake
    Of life which all can take but none can give,
    Life, which all creatures love and strive to keep,
    Wonderful, dear and pleasant unto each,
    Even to the meanest; yea, a boon to all
    Where Pity is, for Pity makes the world
    Soft to the Weak, and noble for the Strong.
    Unto the dumb lips of his flock he lent
    Sad pleading words, shewing how man, who prays
    For mercy to the Gods, is merciless,
    Being as God to those: albeit all Life
    Is linked and kin, and what we slay have given
    Meek tribute of the milk and wool, and set
    Fast trust upon the hands that murder them.

           *       *       *       *       *

    “Nor, spake he, shall one wash his spirit clean
    _By blood_; nor gladden gods, being good, with blood;[288]
    Nor bribe them, being evil: nay, nor lay
    Upon the brow of innocent bound beasts
    One hair’s weight of that answer all must give
    For all things done amiss or wrongfully,
    Alone--each for himself--reckoning with that
    The fixed arithmic of the Universe,
    Which meteth good for good and ill for ill,
    Measure for measure, unto deeds, words, thoughts.

           *       *       *       *       *

    “While still our Lord went on, teaching how fair
    This earth were, if all living things be linked
    In friendliness, and common use of foods,
    Bloodless and pure; the golden grain, bright fruits,
    Sweet herbs which grow for all, the waters wan,
    Sufficient drinks and meats--which when these heard,
    The might of gentleness so conquered them,
    The priests themselves scattered their altar-flames
    And flung away the steel of sacrifice:
    And through the land next day passed a decree
    Proclaimed by criers, and in this wise graved
    On rock and column: ‘Thus the King’s will is:--
    There hath been slaughter for the Sacrifice,
    And slaying for the Meat, but henceforth none
    Shall spill the blood of life, nor taste of flesh,
    Seeing that Knowledge grows, and Life is one,
    And mercy cometh to the merciful.’”[289]

See also the annexed extracts from the Buddhist Sacred Scriptures,
written probably about the third century B.C.:--


    _“The Short Paragraphs on Conduct.”--The Kûla Sîlam._

    1. “Now wherein, Vâsettha, is his [the true disciple’s] Conduct
    good? Herein, O Vâsettha, that putting away the Murder of that
    which lives, he abstains from Destroying Life. The cudgel and
    the sword he lays aside; and, full of Modesty and Pity, he is
    compassionate and kind to all beings that have life.

    “This is the kind of Goodness that he has.

    [After strict prohibitions of Robbery and Unchastity, Gautama
    Buddha proceeds.]

    4. “Putting away Lying, he abstains from speaking Falsehood.
    He speaks Truth. From the Truth he never swerves. Faithful and
    trustworthy, he injures not his fellow-men by deceit.

    “This is the kind of Goodness that he has.

    5. “Putting away Slander, he abstains from Calumny. What he learns
    here he repeats not elsewhere, to raise a quarrel against the
    people here. What he learns elsewhere, &c. Thus he lives as a
    binder together of those who are divided, an encourager of those
    who are friends, impassioned for Peace, a speaker of words that
    make for Peace.

    “This, too, &c.

    6. “Putting away Bitterness of Speech, he abstains from harsh
    language. Whatever word is humane, pleasant to the ear, lovely,
    reaching to the heart, urbane--such are the words he speaks.

    7. “Putting away Foolish Talk, he abstains from Vain Conversation,
    &c.

    8. “He abstains from Injuring any Herb [uselessly] or any Animal.
    He takes but one meal a day, abstaining from food at night-time, or
    at the wrong time, &c.

    10. “He abstains from Bribery, Cheating, Fraud, and Crooked Ways.

    “This, too, &c.

    11. “He refrains from Maiming, Killing, Imprisoning,
    Highway-Robbery, Plundering Villages, or obtaining money by threats
    of Violence.

           *       *       *       *       *

    1. “And he lets his mind pervade one quarter of the World with
    thoughts of Love, and so the second, and so the third, and so
    the fourth. And thus the whole Wide World above, below, around,
    and everywhere, does he continue to pervade with heart of
    Love--far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure.

    2. “Just, Vâsettha, as a mighty Trumpeter makes himself heard, and
    that without difficulty, in all the four directions, even so, of
    all Things that have Shape or Life, there is not one that he passes
    by or leaves aside; but he regards them all with mind set free, and
    deep-felt love.

    “Verily this, Vâsettha, is the way to a state of union with Brahmâ.

    3. “And he lets his mind pervade all parts of the World with
    thoughts of Pity, Sympathy, and Equanimity.

           *       *       *       *       *

    9. “When he had thus spoken, the young Brâhmans, Vâsettha and
    Bhâradvâga, addressed the Blessed One, and said:--

    ‘Most excellent, Lord, are the words of thy mouth, most excellent!
    Just as if a man were to set up that which is thrown down, or
    were to reveal that which is hidden away, or were to point out
    the right road to him who has gone astray, or were to bring a
    Lamp into the Darkness, so that those who have eyes can see
    eternal forms--just even so, Lord, has the Truth been made known
    to us, in many a figure, by the Blessed One. And we, even we,
    betake ourselves, Lord, to the Blessed One, as our Refuge, to the
    Truth and to the Brotherhood. May the Blessed One accept us as
    disciples, as true believers from this time forth, so long as life
    endures!’”--_Buddhist Suttas_, Translated from Pâli, by T. W. Rhys
    Davids. _Sacred Books of the East._ Ed. by Max Müller, Clarendon
    Press, Oxford. 1881.

As for the older (sacerdotal) religionism of the Peninsula--that of
Brahma--the force of Truth obliges us here to remark that, while the
great mass of the Hindus continue to shrink with disgust and abhorrence
from the Slaughter-house and from the sanguinary diet of their
conquerors and rulers, Mohammedan and Christian, the richer classes,
and even many of the Brahmins and priests have long conformed, in great
measure at least, to Western dietetic practices; and (the flesh of the
Cow or Ox excepted), no more than other religionists do they scruple to
violate the laws of their Sacred Books--the _Vedas_--which, however,
are not so _humane_ as the teaching of the great Founder of Buddhism,
as preserved in the Buddhist Sacred Scriptures, the _Tripataka_, being
more essentially ritual and ceremonial than its popular off-shoot.
Yet there are traces in the sacred writings of Hinduism of a strong
consciousness of the irreligionism of feeding upon slaughtered animals,
as in the Laws of Manu, their Sacred Legislator, where it is laid down
that:--

    “The man who forsakes not the Laws, and eats not flesh-meat like
    a blood-thirsty demon, shall attain good-will in this world, and
    shall not be afflicted with Maladies.”--(Quoted in the Works of Sir
    Wm. Jones, _vol. iii., 206_.)

    “The man who perceives in his own soul the Supreme Good present
    in all beings acquires equanimity towards them all, and shall be
    absorbed, at last, in the highest Essence--even in that of the
    Almighty himself.”--_Conclusion of the Laws of Manu._

It is superfluous to insist upon the fact that inhabitants of the
hotter and, in particular, of the tropical regions of the globe
have, as a matter of course, even less valid pretexts for resorting
to _butchering_ than have the natives of colder climates; and that
proportionally, therefore, is the reprobation to which they are
obnoxious. (See, among other recent testimony, that of Shib Chunder
Bose in his interesting book--_The Hindus as they Are_. London: Ed.
Stanford, 1881). The writer has usefully exposed the yearly-increasing
evils to India from the example of English dietetic habits.




IV.

OVID.


The original (the peculiar beauties of which cannot easily be
represented in a modern idiom) of the English version already given in
this work, with the concluding verses omitted in that translation, is
here subjoined:--

                        Primusque animalia mensis
    Arcuit imponi: primus quoque talibus ora
    Docta quidem solvit, sed non et credita, verbis:--
        “Parcite, mortales, dapibus temerare nefandis
    Corpora. _Sunt Fruges; sunt deducentia ramos
    Pondere Poma suo, tumidæque in vitibus Uvæ.
    Sunt Herbæ Dulces; sunt, quæ mitescere flammâ,
    Mollirique queant. Nec vobis lacteus Humor
    Eripitur, nec Mella thymi redolentia florem.
    Prodiga divitias alimentaque mitia Tellus
    Suggerit: atque epulas sine Cæde et Sanguine præbet._
    Carne Feræ sedant jejunia; _nec tamen Omnes_.
    Quippe Equus, et Pecudes, Armentaque gramine vivunt.
    At quibus ingenium est immansuetumque ferumque--
    Armeniæ Tigres, iracundique Leones,
    Cumque Lupis Ursi--dapibus cum sanguine gaudent.
      Heu quantum Scelus est--in viscera viscera condi,
    Congestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus,
    Alteriusque animantem animantis vivere leto!
    Scilicet in tantis opibus, quas optima Matrum
    Terra parit, _nil to nisi tristia mandere sævo
    Vulnera dente juvat, ritusque referre Cyclopum?
    Nec, nisi perdideris alium, placare voracis
    Et male morati poteris jejunia ventris?_
    At vetus illa Ætas, cui fecimus Aurea nomen,
    Fœtibus arboreis et, quas humus educat, Herbis
    Fortunata fuit: nee polluit ora Cruore.
      Tunc et Aves tutas movere per aëra pennas,
    Et Lepus impavidus mediis erravit in agris:
    Nec sua credulitas piscem suspenderat hamo.
    Cuncta sine insidiis, nullamque timentia Fraudem,
    Plenaque Pacis erant. Postquam non utilis auctor
    Victibus invidit (quisquis fuit ille virorum),
    Corporeasque dapes avidam demersit in alvum.
    Fecit iter sceleri; primâque e cæde Ferarum
    Incaluisse putem maculatum sanguine ferrum.
    Idque satis fuerat; nostrumque petentia letum
    Corpora missa neci, salvâ pietate, fatemur:
    Sed quàm danda neci, tàm non epulanda, fuerunt.

           *       *       *       *       *

      Quid meruistis, Oves, placidum pecus, inque tuendos
    Natum homines, pleno quæ fertis in ubere nectar?
    Mollia quæ nobis vestras velamina Lanas
    Præbetis, Vitâque magis quàm morte juvatis.
    Quid meruêre Boves--animal sine fraude dolisque
    Innocuum, simplex, natum tolerare labores?
    _Immemor est demùm, nee Frugum, munere dignus,
    Qui potuit, curvi dempto modo pondere aratri,
    Ruricolam mactare suum: qui trita labore
    Illa, quibus toties durum renovaverat Arvum,
    Tot dederat messes, percussit colla securi._”
      “Nec satis est quòd tale nefas committitur: _ipsos
    Inscripsêre Deos sceleri_, numenque Supernum
    Cæde Laboriferi credunt gaudere Juvenci!
    Victima labe carens, et præstantissima formâ,
    (Nam placuisse nocet), vittis præsignis et auro,
    Sistitur ante aras, auditque ignara precantem:
    Imponique suæ videt, inter cornua, fronti
    Quas coluit fruges, percussaque sanguine cultros
    Inficit in liquidâ prævisos forsitan undâ.
    Protinus ereptas viventi pectore fibras
    Inspiciunt: mentesque Deûm scrutantur in illis![290]
      “Unde fames Homini vetitorum tanta ciborum?
    Audetis vesci, _genus O Mortale_! Quod, oro,
    Ne facite: et monitis animos advertite nostris.
    Cumque Boûm dabitis cæsorum membra palato
    _Mandere vos vestros scite et sentite Colonos_.

           *       *       *       *       *

      “Neve Thyestêis cumulemur viscera mensis.
    _Quàm male consuescit, quàm se parat ille cruori.
    Impius humano, Vituli qui guttura cultro
    Rumpit, et immotas præbet mugitibus aures!
    Aut qui vagitus similes puerilibus Hœdum
    Edentem jugulare potest; aut Alite vesci
    Cui dedit ipse cibos--Quantum est, quod desit in istis
    Ad plenum facinus! Quò transitus inde paratur!_
      “Bos aret, aut mortem senioribus imputet annis:
    Horriferum contra Borean Ovis arma ministret;
    Ubera dent saturæ manibus præstanda Capellæ.
    Retia cum pedicis, laqueosque, artesque dolosas
    Tollite: nec Volucrem viscatâ fallite virgâ,
    Nec formidatis Cervos eludite pinnis,
    Nec celate cibis uncos fallacibus hamos.
    Perdite, si qua nocent: verùm hæc quòque perdite tantùm:
    Ora vacent epulis, alimentaque congrua carpant.”

    _Metamorphoseon_, _Lib._ xv. 72-142, 462-478.

Nor is this the only passage in his writings in which the Pagan poet
proves himself to have been not without that humaneness and feeling so
rare alike in non-Christian and in Christian poetry. In the charming
story of the visit of the disguised and incarnate Celestials to the
cottage of the pious peasants, Philemon and Baucis, Ovid takes the
opportunity to present an alluring picture of the innocent fruits which
were placed before the divine guests--a picture which, probably, was
present to Milton in recording the similar hospitality of Eve.

Among the fragrant dishes--“savoury fruits, of taste to please true
appetite”--appear Figs, Nuts, Dates, Plums, Grapes, Apples, Olives,
Radishes, Onions, and Endive, with Honey, Eggs, and Milk:--

      “Ponitur hìc bicolor sinceræ bacca Minervæ,
    Conditaque in liquidâ Corna autumnalia fæce:
    Intubaque et Radix, et Lactis massa Coacti:
    Ovaque, non acri leviter versata Favillâ.

           *       *       *       *       *

      Hìc Nux, hìc mista est rugosis Carica Palmis,
    Prunaque, et in patulis redolentia Mala canistris,
    Et de purpureis collectæ vitibus Uvæ.
    Candidus in medio Favus est: super omnia vultus
    Accessêre boni.” ...

We are not surprised, however, that, notwithstanding all this variety
of sufficient foods, ignorant peasants, imitating the vicious examples
of their rich neighbours, thought it due to “hospitality” to sacrifice
life; and they were on the point of slaughtering the only _non-human_
being belonging to them--a Goose, the “guardian of the cottage”--when
the heavenly visitants intervene, and forbid the unnecessary
barbarism:--

      “Unicus anser erat, minimæ custodia villæ,
    Quem Dîs hospitibus domini mactare parabant.
    Ille celer pennâ tardos ætate fatigat,
    Eluditque diu. Tandemque est visus ad ipsos
    Confugisse Deos. Superi vetuêre necari:
    ‘Dîque sumus,’” &c.

When the rest of the inhabitants of Phrygia, were, for their
wickedness, destroyed by indignant Heaven, the two old peasants, we
may add, found safety from the general _Deluge_. (_Metam._ viii.
664-688).[291]

It may be noted in this place that the great “Epicurean” poet, Horace
(Ovid’s contemporary), _bon-vivant_ though he was, and apparently
uninspired by humanitarian feeling, yet now and again expresses his
conviction of the superiority of the Fruit to the Flesh banquet, and of
the greater compatibility of the former with the poetic genius. E.g.
_Carmina_ I., 31. _Ad Apollinem_:--

    _Me pascunt Olivæ
    Me Cichorea levesque Malvæ._

    (“Olives, Endives, and easily-digested Mallows are my fare.”)

_Satire II._ 2. “Frugality.:”--

    “Quæ virtus et quanta, boni, sit vivere Parvo,

           *       *       *       *       *

    Discite non inter lances mensasque nitentes,
    Cum stupet insanis acies fulgoribus, et cum
    Acclinis falsis animus meliora recusat,
    Verum hic impransi mecum disquirite--
                _Male Vervum examinat omnis
    Corruptus judex_.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Cum labor extuderit fastidia, siccus, inanis
    Sperne cibum vilem: nisi Hymettia mella Falerno
    Ne biberis diluta....
                            _Cum sale Panis
    Latrantem stomachum bene leniet._...
                _Non in caro nidore voluptas
    Summa sed in te ipso. Tu pulmentaria qucere
    Sudando_: pinguem vitiis albumque neque ostrea,
    Nec scarus aut poterit peregrina juvare lagois.

           *       *       *       *       *

                      _Num vesceris istâ
    Quam laudas, plumâ? Cocto num adest honor idem?_

           *       *       *       *       *

                                    At vos
    Præsentes Austri, coquite horum obsonia.

           *       *       *       *       *

                                        Ergo
    Si quis nunc mergos suaves edixerit assos,
    Parebit pravi docilis Romana juventus.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Accipe nunc, victus tenuis quæ quantaque secum
    Afferat. Imprimis valeas bene....”

His arraignment of the rich glutton, who obliges and allows the poor
man to starve in the midst of plenty, is worthy of the morality of
Seneca:--

                                        “Ergo,
    Quod superat, non est melius quo insumere possis?
    _Cur eget indignus quisquam te divite?_”




V.

MUSONIUS (1ST CENTURY, A.D.),


a stoic writer of great repute with his contemporaries, son of a
Roman Eques, was born at Volsinii (Bolsena), in Etruria, at the end
of the reign of Augustus. He was banished by Nero, who especially
hated the professors of the _Porch_; but by Vespasian he was held in
extraordinary honour when the rest of the philosophers were expelled
from Rome. The time of his death is uncertain. He was the author of
various philosophical works which are characterised by Suïdas as
“distinguished writings of a highly philosophic nature,” who also
attributes to him (but on uncertain evidence) letters to Apollonius
of Tyana. We are indebted for knowledge of his opinions to a work (of
unknown authorship) entitled _Memoirs of Musonius the Philosopher_. It
is from this work that Stobæus (_Anthologion_), Aulus Gellius, Arrian,
and others seem to have borrowed, in quoting the _dicta_ of the great
Stoic teacher. All the extant fragments of his writings are carefully
collected by Peerlkamp (Haarlem, 1822). (See also Herr Ed. Baltzer’s
valuable monograph, _Musonius: Charakterbild aus Der Römischen
Kaiserzeit_. Nordhausen, 1871):--

    “On diet he used to speak often and very earnestly, as of a matter
    important in itself and in its effects. For he thought that
    continence in meats and drinks is the beginning and groundwork of
    temperance. Once, forsaking his usual line of argument, he spoke as
    follows:--

    “‘As we should prefer cheap fare to costly, and that which is easy
    to that which is hard to procure, so also, that which is akin
    to man to that which is not so. Akin to us is that from plants,
    grains, and such other vegetable products as nourish him well;
    also what is derived from (other) animals--not slaughtered, but
    otherwise serviceable. Of these foods the most suitable are such
    as we may use at once without fire, for such are readiest to hand.
    Such are fruits in season, and some herbs, milk, cheese, and
    honeycombs. Moreover such as need fire, and belong to the classes
    of grains or herbs, are also not unsuitable, but are all, without
    exception, akin to man.’

    “Eating of flesh-meat he declared to be _brutal_, and adapted to
    savage animals. It is heavier, he said, and hindering thought and
    intelligence; the vapour arising from it is turbid and darkens the
    soul, so that they who partake of it abundantly are seen to be
    slower of apprehension. As man is [at his best] most nearly related
    to the Gods of all beings on earth, so, also, his _food_ should be
    most like to that of the Gods. They, he said, are content with the
    steams that rise from earth and waters, and we shall take the food
    most like to theirs, if we take that which is _lightest and purest_.

    “So our soul also will be pure and clear, and, being so, will be
    best and wisest, as Heracleitus judges when he says the clear
    soul is wisest and best. As it is, said Musonius, we are fed far
    worse than the irrational beings; for they, though they are driven
    fiercely by appetite as by a scourge, and pounce upon their food,
    still are devoid of cunning and contrivance in regard to their
    fare--being satisfied with what comes in their way, seeking only
    to be filled and nothing further. But we invent manifold arts and
    devices the more to sweeten the pleasure of food and to deceive the
    gullet. Nay, to such a pitch of daintiness and greediness have we
    come, that some have composed treatises, as of music and medicine,
    so also of cookery, which greatly increase the pleasure in the
    gullet, but ruin the health. At any rate, you may see that those
    who are fastidious in the choice of foods are far more sickly in
    body--some even, like craving women, loathing customary foods, and
    having their stomachs ruined. Hence, as good-for-nothing steel
    continually needs sharpening, so their stomachs at table need the
    continual whet of some strong tasting food.... Hence, too, it is
    our duty to eat for life, not for pleasure (only), at least if we
    are to follow the excellent saying of Socrates, that, while most
    men lived to eat, he ate to live. For, surely, no one, who aspires
    to the character of a virtuous man, will deign to resemble the
    many, and live for eating’s sake as they do, hunting from every
    quarter the pleasure which comes from food.

    “Moreover, that God, who made mankind, provided them with meats
    and drinks for preservation, not for pleasure, will appear from
    this. When food is most especially performing its proper function
    in digestion and assimilation, then it gives no pleasure to the man
    at all--yet we are then fed by it and strengthened. _Then_ we have
    no sensation of pleasure, and yet this time is longer than that in
    which we are eating. But if it were for pleasure that God contrived
    our food, we ought to derive pleasure from it throughout this
    longer time, and not merely at the passing moment of consumption.
    _Yet, nevertheless, for that brief moment of enjoyment we make
    provision of ten thousand dainties_; we sail the sea to its
    furthest bounds; _cooks are more sought after than husbandmen_.
    Some lavish on dinners the price of estates, and that though their
    bodies derive no benefit from the costliness of the viands.

    “Quite the contrary; _it is those who use the cheapest food who are
    the strongest_. For example, you may, for the most part, see slaves
    more sturdy than masters, country-folk than towns-folk, poor than
    rich--more able to labour, sinking less at their work, seldomer
    ailing, more easily enduring frost, heat, sleeplessness, and the
    like. Even if cheap food and dear strengthens the body alike,
    still we ought to choose the cheap; for this is more sober and
    more suited to a virtuous man; inasmuch as what is easy to procure
    is, for good men, more proper for food than what is hard--what is
    free from trouble than what gives trouble--what is ready than what
    is not ready. To sum up in a word the whole use of diet, I say
    that we ought to make its aim health and strength, for these are
    the only ends for which we should eat, and they require no large
    outlay.”[292]




VI.

LESSIO. 1554-1623,


Born at Brechten, a town in Brabant, of influential family, this noted
Hygeist, at a very early age, exhibited so exceptional a disposition as
to be known among his school-fellows as the “prophet.” His ardour for
learning was so intense as to cause him to forget the hours of meals,
and to reduce his time for sleep to the shortest period possible.
Having obtained a scholarship at the Arras College in Louvain, Lessio
pursued the course of studies there with the greatest success, and by
his fellow-students was proclaimed “prince of philologers.” At the age
of seventeen he entered the Society of Jesus. Two years later he was
elected to the Chair of Philosophy at Douai. In 1585 he accepted the
Professorship of Theology at Louvain.

So extraordinary were the respect and veneration which he had attracted
in his Order and from all who had access to him, that not only did his
death cause the greatest regret, but (as we are assured) his friends
contended among themselves for possession of every possible relic and
memento “of one who had composed so admirable works.” He was interred
before the high altar of the church of his college in Louvain. Held
in high honour during life, after his death so rare an ornament of
his Church was signally eulogised by the Pope, Urbano VIII.; and he
was even believed to have worked miracles. His praises are especially
recorded in a book entitled _De Vitâ et Moribus R. P. Leonardi
Lessii_--reprinted at Paris, 1644.

Principal Writings: _De Justitiâ et de Jure Actionum, Humanarum, &c._
(reprinted seven times). Many of the propositions, it seems, eventually
came under the censure of the Theological Faculty, the Bishops, and the
Pontiffs.

_Quæ Fides et Religio sit Capessenda, Consultatio._ Anvers, 1610.
In the estimation of S. François de Sales, a work “not so much that of
Lessio as of an Angel of the Judgment (Ange du Grand Conseil).”

_Hygiasticon_ (Anvers, 1613-14, 8vo); it is superfluous to remark, his
really valuable work. It was translated from the Latin into French by
Sebastian Hardy, with the title of _Le Vrai Régime de Vivre pour la
Conservation du Corps et de l’Ame_. Paris, 1646. Another editor, _La
Bonnodière_, added notes, republishing it under the title of _De la
Sobriété et de Ses Avantages_. Paris, 1701.

“Lessio,” writes the author of the article in the _Biographie
Universelle_, “having been condemned by the physicians to have no
more than two years longer to live, himself studied the principles of
_Hygiene_, was struck by the example of Cornaro, resolved to imitate
him, and found himself so well from such imitation that he translated
his book (_Della Vita Sobria_), joining to it the results of his own
experience, to which he owed the prolongation of his life by forty
years.” For the rest, he was a man of extensive erudition; and Justus
Lipsius celebrates, in some fine verse, the variety of his talents.
(See _Biog. Universelle Ancienne et Moderne_. À Paris, chez Michaud,
1819.)

The _Hygiasticon_ is prefaced by testimonials from three eminent
physicians, setting forth their concurrence in the principles of the
author. The English translation (1634) has prefixed to it addresses, in
verse, to him; one of which is by Crashaw, the friend of Cowley, and
a _Dialogue between Glutton and Echo_, also in verse. Affixed to this
edition are an English version of Cornaro, by George Herbert, and a
translation of an anonymous treatise by another Italian writer--_That a
Spare Diet is better than a Splendid and Sumptuous One: A Paradox_.

In his chap. v. “Of the Advantages which a Sober Diet brings to the
Body, and first, That it freeth almost from all Diseases”--Lessio
promises the adherents of it, that in the first place:--

    “It cloth free a man and preserve him from almost all manner
    of diseases. For it rids him of catarrhs, coughs, wheezings,
    dizziness, and pain in the head and stomach. It drives away
    apoplexies, lethargies, falling-sickness, and other ill-affections
    of the brain. It cures the gout in the feet and in the hands; the
    sciatica and diseases in the joints. It also prevents crudity
    (indigestion), the parent of all diseases. In a word, it so tempers
    the humours, and maintains them in an equal proportion, that they
    hurt not any way, either in quantity or quality. And this both
    reason and experience do confirm. For we see that those who keep
    themselves to a sober course of diet are very seldom, or rather
    never, molested with diseases; and if at any time they happen to
    be oppressed with sickness, _they do bear it much better, and
    sooner recover than those others whose bodies are full fraught with
    ill-humours_.

    “I know very many who, though they be weak by natural constitution,
    and well grown in years, and continually busied in employments of
    the mind, nevertheless by the help of this temperance, live in
    health, and have passed the greater part of their lives, which have
    been many years long, without any notable sickness....

    “The self-same comes to pass in wounds, bruises, puttings out of
    joint, and breaking of bones; in regard that there is either no
    flux at all of ill-humours, or, at least, very little of that part
    affected.... Furthermore an abstinent diet doth arm and fortify
    against the plague; for the venom thereof is much better resisted
    if the body be clear and free--wherefore Sokrates brought to pass
    that he himself was never sick of the plague, which ofttimes
    greatly wasted the city of Athens, where he lived, as Laertius
    writeth. The third commodity of the diet is that, although it doth
    not cure such diseases as are incurable in their own nature, yet
    it doth _so much mitigate and allay them as that they are easily
    borne_, and do not much hinder the functions of the mind. This is
    seen by daily experience.”

Lessio proceeds to descant upon the other benefits of the reformed
regimen--such as that it prolongs life (other things being equal) to
extreme old age, produces cheerfulness, activity, memory, and the
like.[293]

       *       *       *       *       *

Moffet, another hygienic writer of the sixteenth century, demands
indignantly:--

    “Till God (_i.e._, Superstition or Fraud) would have it so [the
    slaying of other animals for food], who dared to touch with his
    lips the remnant of a dead carcase? or to set the prey of a wolf,
    or the meat of a falcon, upon his table? Who, I say, durst feed
    upon those members which, lately, did see, go, bleat, low, feel,
    and move?[294]

    “Nay, tell me, can civil and human eyes yet abide the slaughter of
    an innocent ‘beast,’ the cutting of his throat, the smashing him on
    the head, the flaying of his skin, the quartering and dismembering
    of his limbs, the sprinkling of his blood, the ripping up of his
    veins, the enduring of ill-savours, the heaving of heavy sighs,
    sobs, and groans, the passionate struggling and panting for life,
    which only hard-hearted butchers can endure to see?

    “Is not the earth sufficient to give us meat, but that we must also
    rend up the bowels of ‘beasts,’ birds, and fishes? Yes, truly,
    there is enough in the earth to give us meat; yea, verily, and
    choice of meats, needing either none or no great preparation, which
    we may take without fear, and cut down without trembling; which,
    also, we may mingle a hundred ways to delight our taste, and feed
    on safely to fill our bellies.”--_Health’s Improvement_, by Dr. W.
    Moffet (ed. 1746), as quoted by Ritson. The author died in 1604.

       *       *       *       *       *

The author of the _Anatomy of Abuses_, a writer of the same period,
denouncing the unnatural and luxurious living of his time, compares the
two diets with equal force and truth:--

    “I cannot persuade myself otherwise, but that our _niceness_
    and _cautiousness_ in diet hath altered our nature, distempered
    our bodies, and made us subject to hundreds of diseases and
    _discrasies_ (indigestions) more than ever our forefathers were
    subject unto, and consequently of shorter life than they.... Who
    are sicklier than they who fare deliciously every day? Who is
    corrupter? Who belcheth more? Who looketh worse? Who is weaker and
    feebler than they? Who hath more filthy phlegm and putrefaction
    (replete with gross humours) than they? And, to be brief, who dieth
    sooner than they?

    “Do we not see the poor man who eateth brown bread (whereof some
    is made of rye, barley, _peason_, beans, oats, and such other
    gross grains), and drinketh small drink, yea, sometimes water, and
    feedeth upon milk, butter and cheese--I say do we not see such a
    one healthfuller, stronger, fairer complexioned, and longer-living
    than the other that fares daintily every day; and how should it be
    otherwise?”--_Stubbes’s Anatomy of Abuses_, 1583. Quoted by Ritson
    (_Abstinence from Flesh: A Moral Duty._).




VII.

COWLEY. 1620-1667.


Among the poets of the age second only to Milton and to Dryden. _The
Garden_, from which we extract the following just sentiments, is
prefixed by way of dedication to the _Kalendarium Hortense_ of John
Evelyn, his personal and political friend. _The Gardener’s Almanac_, it
is worthy of note, is one of the earliest prototypes of the numerous
more modern treatises of the kind. It had reached a tenth edition in
1706.

    “When Epicurus to the world had taught
      That pleasure is the chiefest good,
      (And was, perhaps, i’th’ right, if rightly understood),
    His life he to his doctrine brought,
    And in a garden’s shade that Sovereign pleasure sought:
      Whoever a true _Epicure_ would be.
      May there find cheap and virtuous luxury.
    Vitellius his table which did hold
    As many creatures as the ark of old--
      That fiscal table to which every day
      All countries did a constant tribute pay--
    Could nothing more delectable afford
      Than Nature’s Liberality--
      Helped with a little Art and Industry--
    Allows the meanest gardener’s board.
      _The wanton Taste no Flesh nor Fowl can choose,
      For which the Grape or Melon it would lose,
      Though all th’ inhabitants of Earth and Air
      Be listed in the Glutton’s bill of fare._

           *       *       *       *       *

      Scarce any Plant is growing here.
      Which against Death some weapon does not bear.
      Let Cities boast that they provide
      For life the ornaments of Pride;
      But ’tis the Country and the Field
      That furnish it with Staff and Shield.

    _The Garden._ Chertsey, 1666.




VIII.

TRYON. 1634-1703.


One of the best known of the seventeenth century humane Hygeists, was
born at Bibury, a village in Gloucestershire. His father was a tiler
and plasterer, who by stress of poverty was forced to remove his son,
when no more than six years of age, from the village school, and to set
him at the work of spinning and carding, (the woollen manufacture being
then extensively carried on in Gloucestershire). At eight years of age
he became so expert, he tells us, as to be able to spin four pounds a
day, earning two shillings a week. At the age of twelve he was made
to work at his father’s employment. At this period he first learned
to read. He next took to keeping sheep. With the sum of three pounds,
realised by the sale of his four sheep, he went to London to seek his
fortune, when seventeen years old, and bound himself apprentice to a
“castor-maker,” in Fleet Street. His master was an Anabaptist--“an
honest and sober man;” and, after two years’ apprenticeship, Tryon
adopted the same religious creed. All his spare time was now devoted
entirely to study; and, with the usual ardour of scholars who depend
upon their own talents and exertions, he scarcely gave any time to food
or sleep. The holiday period, too, spent by his fellow-apprentices in
eating and drinking, and gross amusements, was utilised in the same
way. Science, and Physiology in particular, attracted his attention.

At the age of twenty-three he first adopted the reformed diet, “my
drink being only water, and food only bread and some fruit, and that
but once a day for some time; but afterwards I had more liberty given
me by my guide, Wisdom, to eat butter and cheese; my clothing being
mean and thin; for, in all things, self-denial was now become my real
business.” This strict life he maintained for more than a year, when he
relapsed, at intervals, during the next two years. At the end of this
period he had become confirmed in his reform, and he remained to the
end strictly akreophagist, and, indeed, strictly frugal, “contenting
myself with herbs, fruits, grains, eggs, butter and cheese for food,
and pure water for drink.” About two years after his marriage he made
voyages to Barbadoes and to Holland in the way of trade--“making
beavers.” He finally settled himself in England, and at the age of
forty-eight he published his first book on _Dietetics_.

His brief autobiography, from which the above facts are drawn, ends at
this period. His editor adds, as to his appearance and character: “his
aspect easily discovered something extraordinary; his air was cheerful,
lively, and brisk; but grave with something of authority, though he was
of the easiest access. Notwithstanding he was of no strong make, yet,
through his great temperance, regularity, and by the strength of his
spirits and vigour of his mind, he was capable of any fatigue, even to
his last illness, equally with any of the best constitutions of men
half his years. Through all his lifetime he had been a man of unwearied
application, and so indefatigable that it may be as truly said of him
as it can be of any man that he was never idle; but of such despatch
that, though fortune had allotted him as great multiplicity of business
as, perhaps, to any one of his contemporaries, yet, without any
neglect thereof, he found leisure to make such a search into Nature,
that perhaps few of this age equalled him therein: and not only into
Nature, but also into almost all arts and sciences, of some whereof he
was an improver, and of all innocent and useful ones an encourager and
promoter.”[295]

In spite of that penetration of mind and justness of thought which
influenced him to abandon the cruelty and coarseness of the orthodox
diet, the author of _The Way to Health_ could not free himself from
certain of the credulous fancies of his age; and, it must be admitted,
his writings are by no means exempt from such prejudices. It is as a
moral reformer that he has deserved our respect, and of his numerous
books the following are noteworthy:--

    _A Treatise on Cleanliness in Meats and Drinks._ London, 1682.

    _The Way to Health, Long Life, &c._ 1683, 1694, 1697. 3 vols., 8vo.

    _Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West
    Indies._ London, 1684.

    _The Way to Make All People Rich: or, Wisdom’s Call to Temperance
    and Frugality._ 1685.

    _Wisdom’s Doctrine: or, Aphorisms and Rules for Preserving the
    Health of the Body and the Peace of the Mind._ 1696.

    _England’s Grandeur and the Way to Get Wealth: or, Promotion of
    Trade Made Easy and Lands Advanced._ 1699. 4_to._

Nothing can be more just or forcible than these expostulations:--

    “Most men will, in words, confess that there is no blessing this
    world affords comparable to health. Yet rarely do any of them
    value it as they ought to do till they feel the want of it. To
    him that hath obtained this goodly gift the meanest food--even
    bread and water--is most pleasant, and all sorts of exercise and
    labour delightful. But the contrary makes all things nauseous and
    distasteful. What are full-spread Tables, Riches, or Honours, to
    him that is tormented with distempers? In such a condition men do
    desire nothing so much as _Health_. But no sooner is that obtained,
    but their thoughts are changed, forgetting those solemn promises
    and resolutions they made to God and their own souls, going on in
    the old road of _Gluttony_, taking little or no care to continue
    that which they so much desired when they were deprived of it.

    “Happy it were if men did but use the tenth part of that care and
    diligence to preserve their minds and bodies in Health, as they
    do to procure those dainties and superfluities which do generate
    Diseases, and are the cause of committing many other evils, there
    being but few men that do know how to use riches as they ought.
    For there are not many of our wealthy men that ever consider that
    as little and mean food and drink will suffice to maintain a
    _lord_ in perfect health as it will a _peasant_, and render him
    more capable of enjoying the benefits of the Mind and pleasures
    of the Body, far beyond all ‘dainties and superfluities.’ But,
    alas! the momentary pleasures of the _Throat-Custom_, vanity,
    &c., do ensnare and entice most people to exceed the bounds of
    necessity or convenience; and many fail through a false opinion or
    misunderstanding of Nature--childishly imagining that the richer
    the food is, and the more they can cram into their bellies, the
    more they shall be strengthened thereby. But experience shews to
    the contrary; for are not such people as accustom themselves to the
    richest foods, and most _cordial_ drinks, generally the most infirm
    and diseased?

    “Now the sorts of foods and drinks that breed the best blood and
    finest spirits, are Herbs, Fruits, and various kinds of Grains;
    also Bread, and sundry sorts of excellent food made by different
    preparations of Milk, and all dry food out of which the sun hath
    exhaled the gross humidity, by which all sorts of Pulses and Grains
    become of a firmer substance. So, likewise, Oil is an excellent
    thing, in nature more sublime and pure than Butter.” ...

As to the unsuspected cause of the various diseases so abundant:--

    “Many of the richest sort of people in this nation might know by
    woful experience, especially in London, who do yearly spend many
    hundreds, I think I may say thousands, of pounds on their _ungodly
    paunches_. Many of whom may save themselves that charge and trouble
    they are usually at in learning of _Monsieur Nimble-heels_, the
    Dancing-Master, how to go upright; for their bellies are swollen up
    to their chins, which forces them ‘to behold the sky,’[296] but not
    for contemplation sake you may be sure, but out of pure necessity,
    and without any more impressions of reverence towards the Almighty
    Creator than their fellow-brutes; for their brains are sunk into
    their bellies; _injection and ejection_ is the business of their
    life, and all their precious hours are spent between the platter
    and the glass and the close-stool. Are not these fine fellows to
    call themselves _Christians_ and _Right-Worshipfuls_.”[297]

In his xiv chapter, “Of Flesh and its Operation on the Body and Mind,”
Tryon employs all his eloquence in proving that the practice of
slaughtering for food is not only cruel and barbarous in itself, but
originates, or, at all events, intensifies the worst passions of men.

Eulogising the milder manners of the followers of Pythagoras, and of
the Hindus generally, he tells his countrymen that:--

    “The very same, and far greater, advantages would come to
    pass amongst Christians, if they would cease from contention,
    oppression, and (what tends and disposes them thereunto) the
    killing of other animals, and eating their flesh and blood; and,
    in a short time, human murders and devilish feuds and cruelties
    amongst each other would abate, and, perhaps, scarce have a
    being amongst them. For _separation_ has greater power than most
    imagine, whether it be from evil or from good; for whatever any
    man separates himself from, that property in him presently is
    weakened. Likewise, _separation_ from cruelty does wonderfully
    dispel the dark clouds of ignorance, and makes the understanding
    able to distinguish between the good and evil principles--first in
    himself, and then in all other things proportionably. But so long
    as men live under the power of all kinds of uncleanness, violence,
    and oppression, they cannot see any evil therein. For this cause,
    those who do not separate themselves from these evils, but are
    contented to follow the multitude in the left-hand-way, and resolve
    to continue the religion of their fore-fathers--though thereby they
    do but continue mere _Custom_, the greatest of tyrants--’tis, I
    say, impossible for such people ever to understand or know anything
    _truly_, either of divine or of human things....

    “It is a grand mistake of people in this age to say or suppose:
    That Flesh affords not only a stronger nourishment, but also more
    and better than Herbs, Grains, &c.; for the truth is, it does yield
    more stimulation, _but not of so firm, a substance, nor so good
    as that which proceeds from the other food_; for flesh has more
    matter for corruption, and nothing so soon turns to putrefaction.
    Now, ’tis certain, such sorts of food as are subject to putrify
    _before_ they are eaten, are also liable to the same afterwards.
    Besides, Flesh is of soft, moist, gross, phlegmy quality, and
    generates a nourishment of a like nature; thirdly, Flesh heats the
    body, and causeth a drought; fourthly, Flesh does breed great store
    of noxious humours; fifthly, it must be considered that ‘beasts’
    and other living creatures are subject to diseases[298] and many
    other inconveniences, and uncleannesses, surfeits, over-driving,
    abuses of cruel butchers, &c., which renders their flesh still more
    unwholesome. But on the contrary, all sorts of dry foods, as Bread,
    Cheese, Herbs, and many preparations of Milk, Pulses, Grains, and
    Fruits; as their original is more clean, so, being of a sound firm
    nature, they afford a more excellent nourishment, and more easy
    of concoction; so that if a man should exceed in quantity, the
    Health will not, thereby, be brought into such danger as by the
    superfluous eating of flesh....

    “What an ill and ungrateful sight is it to behold dead carcasses,
    and pieces of bloody, raw, flesh! It would undoubtedly appear
    dreadful, and no man but would abhor to think of putting it in
    his mouth, had not Use and Custom from generation to generation
    familiarised it to us, which is so prevalent, that we read in some
    countries the mode is to eat the bodies of their dead parents
    and friends, thinking they can no way afford them a more noble
    sepulchre than their own bowells. And because it is _usual_, they
    do it with as little regret or nauseousness as others have when
    they devour the leg of a Rabbit or the wing of a Lark. Suppose a
    person were bred up in a place where it were not a _custom_ to kill
    and eat flesh, and should come into our Leadenhall Market, or view
    our Slaughter Houses, and see the communication we have with dead
    bodies, and how blythe and merry we are at their funerals, and
    what honourable sepulchres we bury the dead carcasses of beasts
    in--nay, their very guts and entrails--would he not be filled with
    astonishment and horror? Would he not count us cruel monsters, and
    say we were _brutified_, and performed the part of beasts of prey,
    to live thus on the spoils of our fellow-creatures?

    “Thus, Custom has awakened the inhuman, fierce nature, which makes
    killing, handling, and feeding upon flesh and blood, without
    distinction, so easy and familiar unto mankind. And the same is
    to be understood of men killing and oppressing those of their own
    kind; for do we not see that a soldier, who is trained up in the
    wars of bloody-minded princes, shall kill a hundred men without any
    trouble or regret of spirit, and such as have given him no more
    offence than a sheep has given the butcher that cuts her throat.
    If men have but Power and Custom on their side, they think all is
    well.”

Whatever may be thought of the zealous attempt of the pious author to
meet the assertions of the (practical) materialists, who draw their
arguments from the Jewish Sacred Scriptures, or elsewhere, his replies
to the common subterfuges or prejudices of the orthodox dietists are
able and conclusive. His _humane_ arguments, indeed, are worthy of the
most advanced thinkers of the present day; and those who are versed
in the anti-kreophagist literature of the last thirty years--in the
controversy in the press, and on the platform--will, perhaps, be
surprised to find that the ordinary prejudices or subterfuges of this
year “of Grace” are identical with those current in the year 1683. We
wish that we could transcribe some of these replies. We cannot forbear,
however, to quote his representation of the changed condition of things
under the imagined humanitarian _régime_:--

    “Here all contention ceaseth, no hideous cries nor mournful groans
    are heard, neither of man nor of ‘beast.’ No channels running with
    the blood of slaughtered animals, no stinking shambles, nor bloody
    butchers. No roaring of cannons, nor firing of towns. No loathsome
    stinking prisons, nor iron grates to keep men from enjoying their
    wife, children, and the pleasant air; nor no crying for want of
    food and clothes. No rioting, nor wanton inventions to destroy as
    much in one day as a thousand can get by their hard labour and
    travel. No dreadful execrations and coarse language. No galloping
    horses up hills, without any consideration or fellow-feeling
    of the victim’s pains and burdens. No deflowering of virgins,
    _and then exposing them and their own young to all the miseries
    imaginable_. No letting lands and farms so dear that the farmer
    must be forced to oppress himself, servants, and cattle almost
    to death, and all too little to pay his rent. No oppressions of
    inferiors by superiors; neither is there any want, because there
    is no superfluity nor gluttony. No noise nor cries of wounded men.
    No need of chirurgeons to cut bullets out of their flesh; nor no
    cutting off hands, broken legs, and arms. No roaring nor crying out
    with the torturing pains of the gout, nor other painful diseases
    (as leprous and consumptive distempers), except through age, and
    the relics of some strain they got whilst they lived intemperately.
    Neither are their children afflicted with such a great number of
    diseases; but are as free from distempers as lambs, calves, or the
    young ones of any of the ‘beasts’ who are preserved sound and
    healthful, because they have not outraged God’s law in Nature, the
    breaking of which is the foundation of most, or all, cruel diseases
    that afflict mankind; there being nothing that makes the difference
    between Man and ‘Beasts’ in health, but only superfluity and
    intemperance, both in quality and in quantity.”

His chapter, in which he deals with the relations between the sexes and
the married state, shews him to have been as much in advance of his
time, in a sound knowledge and apprehension of Physiology, and of the
laws of Health, in that important part of hygienic science, as he was
in the special branch of Diet.[299]

Affixed to this work is a very remarkable Essay, in the shape of _A
Dialogue between an East-Indian Brachman and a French Gentleman,
concerning the Present Affairs of Europe_. In this admirable piece, the
author ably exposes the folly no less than the horrors of war--and,
in particular, _religious_ war--all which he ultimately traces to
the first source--the iniquities and barbarism of the Shambles. The
Dialogue is worthy of the most trenchant of the humanitarian writers
of the next century. It was by meeting with _The Way to Health_ that
Benjamin Franklin, in his youth, was induced to abandon the flesh-diet,
to which revolutionary measure he ascribes his success, as well as
health in after life.




IX.

HECQUET. 1661-1737.


This meritorious medical reformer, at first intended for the Church,
happily (in the event) adopted the profession which he has so truly
adorned, by his virtues, as well as by his enlightened labours. After
a long and severe course of Anatomy and Physiology, in 1684 he was
admitted as “Doctor” at Reims, and as Fellow (_Agrégé_) in the College
of Physicians in his native town. He then returned to Paris to perfect
himself in physiological science. Disgusted with the _tricasseries_
which were excited against him by the members of his profession,
he withdrew (in 1688) to Port-Royal-des-Champs, where he succeeded
Hamon, who had just died, as physician. Here he practised the reforms
he taught, while he devoted himself to the most laborious works of
charity, giving all his time and attention to the poor for several
leagues round, and travelling the distances, great as they were, on
foot.

His health enfeebled by excessive labour in this way, he was induced
to retire from his post at Port-Royal, and he went back to the capital
where, having gone through the necessary formalities, he was regularly
enrolled as Doctor of the Paris University, receiving the official hat
after an examination of “rare success” (1697).

Soon afterwards the Faculty named him _Docteur-Régent_, and appointed
him to the post of Professor of _Materia Medica_. “Hecquet had soon
numerous and illustrious patients, and his services were eagerly
sought for, particularly in religious communities and in hospitals. He
attached himself to that of Charity.” In 1712 he was named Dean of the
Faculty. In the midst of so much work, he found time to publish several
medical books.

“He exercised his art with a noble disinterestedness. The poor were
his favourite patients. He presented himself at the houses of the rich
only when absolutely obliged, or when courtesy required it. He had
much studied his art, and contributed with all his power, to advance
it, as well by his writings as by his guidance and encouragement of
young physicians.... He was in correspondence with the most famous
savants and physicians of his age. His style in Latin is correct, and
does not want eloquence; in French he is more negligent, and a little
unpolished. He was animated (_vif_) in debate, and strongly attached to
his opinions; but he sought Truth in good faith.”

Amongst his numerous works are:--

_De l’Indécence aux Hommes d’Accoucher les Femmes, et de l’Obligation,
de Celles-ci de nourrir leurs enfants._ (On the Indecency of Male
Physicians Attending Women in Child-Birth) 1708. _Traité des Dispenses
du Carême_, 1709--his most celebrated book. _De la Digestion et des
Maladies de l’Estomac_, 1712. _Novus Medicinæ Conspectus cum Appendice
De Peste_, 1722. “He there combats the various systems upon the origin
of diseases, which he attributes to the disorders which supervene, in
accordance with the laws which direct the movement of the blood:” the
Plague, upon which he writes, was desolating the south of France at
that time. Also, at this period, various _brochures_ upon the Small-Pox.

_La Médecine, la Chirurgie, et la Pharmacie des Pauvres_ (1740-2),
his most popular book--_La Brigandage de la Médecine_ (1755),
which he supplemented with _Brigandage de la Chirurgie, et de la
Pharmacie_--will sufficiently mark his attitude towards the orthodox
Schools of Medicine of his day. _Le Naturalisme des Convulsions dans
les Maladies_ (1755), with several other books upon the same subject.
The history of the _Convulsionnaires_ occupies a curious episode in
the religious history of the period, as it has occupied, and, in some
measure still, in fact, occupies the attention of physiologists and
psychologists of our own age. Hecquet, with the physiologists of the
present time, attributes the phenomena to physical and natural causes.
_La Médecine Naturelle_: “in this work the author alleges that it is
not in the blood only that is to be sought the causes of maladies, but
also in the nervous fluid.”[300]

The books in which he treats of reform in Dietetics are the _Traité des
Dispenses and La Médecine des Pauvres_.

However _dietetically_ heterodox and heretical, the author of _The
Treatise on Dispensations_ was of unsuspected ecclesiastical as well
as theological orthodoxy; yet he takes occasion, at the outset of
his book, to reproach his Church with its indifferentism towards so
essentially important a matter as Dietetics--scientific or moral:--

    “It will, perhaps, be found that much theology enters into this
    undertaking. We acknowledge it. One might even expect that some
    zealous ecclesiastic or other would have done himself the credit of
    sustaining so beautiful a cause (que quelque ecclesiastique zelé
    se seroit fait gloire de soutenir une si belle cause). It might be
    hoped, especially in an age like ours, when physical science is
    in honour and for the benefit of everyone, and in which Medicine
    has become the property of every condition.... It ought then to
    have been the duty of so many Abbés, Monks and Religious Orders,
    who invest themselves with the titles of physicians--who receive
    their pay, who fill their employments--to advocate this part of
    ecclesiastical discipline [abstinence]. But, instead of doing so,
    though they undertake the care of the body, they, in fact, apply
    themselves solely to the _healing_ of maladies.... One can see
    enough of it, nevertheless, to be convinced that the public has
    gained less from their _secrets_ than they themselves, while their
    patients die more than ever under their hands....”

In Chap. VI., _Que les Fruits, les Grains, les Legumes sont les Alimens
les plus Naturels à l’Homme_, after appealing to _Gen._ i. and “the
Garden of Eden,” Hecquet proceeds to insist that our foods should be
analogous and consistent with the juices which maintain our life; and
these are Fruits, Grains, Seeds, and Roots. But prejudice, of long
standing, opposes itself to this truth. The false ideas attached to
certain traditional terms have warped the minds of the majority of the
world, and they have succeeded in persuading themselves that it is upon
stimulating foods that depend the strength and health of men. From
thence has come the love of wine, of spirituous liquors, and of gross
meats. The ambiguity (équivoque) comes from confounding the idea of
Remedy with that of Food.

    “Here the greater part of the world take alarm. ‘How,’ say they,
    ‘can we be supported on Grains, which furnish but dry meal, fitter
    to cloy than to nourish; on Fruits, which are but condensed water;
    with vegetables, which are fit but for manure (fumier)?’ But this
    meal, well prepared, forms Bread, the strongest of all aliments,
    this condensed water is the same that has caused the Trees to
    attain so great bulk, this _fumier_ becomes such only because
    they prepare vegetables badly, and eat of them to excess. Besides,
    how can men affect to fear failure in strength, in eating what
    nourishes even the most robust animals, who would become even
    formidable to us, if only they knew their own strength.”

In Chap. VII., _Que l’Usage de la Viande n’est pas le plus naturel à
l’Homme, ni absolument Nécessaire_, he remarks:--

“It is incredible how much Prejudice has been allowed to operate
in favour of [flesh] meat, while so many facts are opposed to the
pretended necessity of its use.”

Having entered into the physiological argument, now so well-worn, among
other reasons he adduces the fact that “the soundest part of the world,
or the most enlightened, have believed in the obligation to abstain
from flesh,” and “the very nature of flesh, which is digested with
difficulty, and which furnishes the worst juices.”

Nature being uniform in her method of procedure, is anything else
necessary to determine whether Man is intended to live upon flesh-meats
than to compare the organs which have to prepare them for his
nourishment, with those of animals whom Nature manifestly has destined
for carnage? And herein it may be clearly recognised, since men have
neither fangs nor talons to tear flesh, that it is very far from being
the food most natural to them.

He quotes numerous examples of eminent persons, as well as of nations
in all times, and adds, as an argument not easy to be answered, that:--
“It is proved it would not be difficult to nourish animals who live
on flesh with non-flesh substances, while it is almost impossible to
nourish with flesh those who live ordinarily upon vegetable substances.”

Hecquet devotes several chapters to a description of various Fruits and
Herbs, and also of various kinds of Fish, which he holds to be much
less objectionable and more innocent food than flesh. Comparing the two
diets, we must acknowledge:--

    “It causes our nature to revolt, and excites horror to eat raw
    flesh, and as it is presented to us naturally; and it becomes
    supportable for us to the taste and to the sight only after long
    preparation of cooking, which deprives it of what is inhuman and
    disgusting in its original state; and, often, it is only after
    _many_ various preparations and strange seasonings that it can
    become agreeable or sanitarily good. It is not so with other meats:
    the majority, as they come from the hand of Nature, without cookery
    and without art, are found proper to nourish, and are pleasant to
    the taste--plain proof that they are intended by Nature to maintain
    our health. Fruits are of such property that, when well-chosen and
    quite ripe, they excite the appetite by _their own virtue_, and
    might become, without preparation, sufficing.... If Vegetables or
    Fish have need of fire to accommodate them to our nature, the fire
    appears to be used less to _correct_ these sorts of foods than to
    penetrate them, to make them soft and tender, and to develope what
    in them is most proper and suitable for health.... In fine, it is
    clear that vegetables and fish have need of less, and less strange
    and récherché, condiments--all sensible marks that these aliments
    are the most natural and suited to man.”[301]

Hecquet’s _Traité des Dispenses_ received the formal approval and
commendation of several “doctors regent” of the Faculty of Medicine
of the Paris University, which testimonies are prefixed to the second
edition of 1710. With his English contemporary, Dr. Cheyne, and other
medical reformers, however, he experienced much insult and ridicule
from anonymous professional critics.




X.

POPE. 1688-1744.

                        _Primâque e cæde ferarum
    Incaluisse putem maculatum sanguine ferrum._

    (Ovid _Metam._ XV. 106).


    “I cannot think it extravagant to imagine that mankind are no
    less, in proportion, accountable for the ill use of their dominion
    over the lower ranks of Beings, than for the exercise of tyranny
    over their own species. The more entirely the inferior creation
    is submitted to our power, the more answerable we should seem for
    the mismanagement of it; and the rather, as the very condition of
    Nature renders these beings incapable of receiving any recompense
    in another life, for their ill-treatment in this.

    “It is observable of those noxious animals, who have qualities
    most powerful to injure us, that they naturally avoid mankind, and
    never hurt us unless provoked, or necessitated by hunger. Man, on
    the other hand, _seeks_ out and pursues even the most inoffensive
    animals on purpose to persecute and destroy them. Montaigne thinks
    it some reflection on human nature itself, that few people take
    delight in seeing ‘beasts’ caress or play together, but almost
    every one is pleased to see them lacerate and worry one another.

    “I am sorry this temper is become almost a distinguishing character
    of our own nation, from the observation which is made by foreigners
    of our beloved _Pastimes_--Bear-baiting, Cock-fighting, and the
    like. We should find it hard to vindicate the destroying of
    anything that has Life, merely out of wantonness. Yet in this
    principle our children are bred, and one of the first pleasures we
    allow them is the licence of inflicting Pain upon poor animals.
    Almost as soon as we are sensible what Life is ourselves, we make
    it our Sport to take it from other beings. I cannot but believe a
    very good use might be made of the fancy which children have for
    Birds and Insects. Mr. Locke takes notice of a mother who permitted
    them to her children; but rewarded or punished them as they treated
    well or ill. This was no other than entering them betimes into a
    daily exercise of Humanity, and improving their very diversion to a
    Virtue.

    “I fancy, too, some advantage might be taken of the common notion,
    that ’tis ominous or unlucky to destroy some sorts of Birds, as
    Swallows or Martins. This opinion might possibly arise from the
    confidence these Birds seem to put in us, by building under our
    roofs, so that it is a kind of violation of the laws of Hospitality
    to murder them. As for Robin-red-breasts, in particular, ’tis
    not improbable they owe their security to the old ballad of the
    _Children in the Wood_. However it be, I don’t know, I say, why
    this prejudice, well-improved and carried as far as it would go,
    might not be made to conduce to the preservation of many innocent
    beings, who are now exposed to all the wantonness of an ignorant
    barbarity....

    “When we grow up to be men we have another succession of sanguinary
    Sports--in particular, _Hunting_. I dare not attack a diversion
    which has such Authority and Custom to support it; but must have
    leave to be of opinion, that the agitation of that exercise, with
    the example and number of the chasers, not a little contribute to
    resist those checks which Compassion would naturally suggest in
    behalf of the Animal pursued. Nor shall I say, with M. Fleury,
    that this sport is a remain of the Gothic Barbarity; but I must
    animadvert upon a certain custom yet in use with us, barbarous
    enough to be derived from the Goths or even the Scythians--I mean
    that savage compliment our Huntsmen pass upon ladies of quality who
    are present at the death of a Stag, when they put the knife into
    their hands to cut the throat of a helpless, trembling, and weeping
    creature.

          “_Questuque cruentus,
    Atque imploranti similis._”[302]

    “But if our ‘Sports’ are destructive, our _Gluttony_ is more so,
    and in a more inhuman manner. Lobsters roasted alive, Pigs whipt
    to death, Fowls sewed up,[303] are testimonies of our outrageous
    Luxury. Those who (as Seneca expresses it) divide their lives
    betwixt an anxious Conscience and a Nauseated Stomach, have a
    just reward of their gluttony in the diseases it brings with it.
    For human savages, like other wild beasts, find snares and poison
    in the provisions of life, and are allured by their appetite to
    their destruction. I know nothing more shocking or horrid than the
    prospect of one of their kitchens covered with blood, and filled
    with the cries of Beings expiring in tortures. It gives one an
    image of a giant’s den in a romance, bestrewed with the scattered
    heads and mangled limbs of those who were slain by his cruelty.

    “The excellent Plutarch (who has more strokes of good nature in
    his writings than I remember in any author) cites a saying of Cato
    to this effect:--_That ’tis no easy task to preach to the Belly
    which has no ears._ Yet if (says he) we are ashamed to be so out
    of fashion as not to offend, let us at least offend with _some_
    discretion and measure. If we kill an animal for our provision, let
    us do it with the meltings of compassion, and without tormenting
    it. Let us consider that it is, in its own nature, cruelty to put a
    living being to death--we, at least destroy a soul that has sense
    and perception.[304]

    “History tells us of a wise and polite nation that rejected a
    person of the first quality, who stood for a justiciary office,
    only because he had been observed, in his youth, to take pleasure
    in teasing and murdering of Birds. And of another that expelled a
    man out of the Senate for dashing a bird against the ground who
    had taken refuge in his bosom. Every one knows how remarkable the
    Turks are for their Humanity in this kind. I remember an Arabian
    author, who has written a Treatise to show how far a man, supposed
    to have subsisted in a desert island, without any instruction, or
    so much as the sight of any other man, may, by the pure light of
    Nature, attain the knowledge of Philosophy and Virtue. One of the
    first things he makes him observe is the benevolence of Nature, in
    the protection and preservation of her creatures.[305] In imitation
    of which, the first act of virtue he thinks his self-taught
    philosopher would, of course, fall into, is to relieve and assist
    all the animals about them in their wants and distresses....

    “Perhaps that voice or cry, so nearly resembling the human, with
    which Nature has endowed so many different animals, might purposely
    be given them to move our Pity, and prevent those cruelties we are
    to apt to inflict upon our Fellow Creatures.”

Pope quotes, in part, the admirable verses of Ovid, Metam. XV., with
Dryden’s translation--and an apposite _fable_ of the Persian Pilpai,
which illustrates the base ingratitude of men who torture and slaughter
their fellow labourers.--“I know it” (this common ingratitude) said
the Cow, “by woful experience; for I have served a man this long time
with milk, butter, and cheese, and brought him, besides, a Calf every
year--but now I am old, he turns me into this pasture with design to
sell me to a butcher, who, shortly, will make an end of me.”--_The
Guardian_, LXI, May 21, 1713.

With Pilpai or Bidpai’s fable, compare that of La Fontaine on the same
subject--_L’Homme et la Couleuvre_.




XI.

CHESTERFIELD. 1694-1773.


To the expression of the opinion or feeling of Lord Chesterfield on
butchering, given, in its place, in the body of this work (page 140),
is here subjoined the remainder of his paper in _The World_. The value
of such testimony may be deemed proportionate to the extreme rarity
of any protests of this sort from those who, by their influential
position, are the most _bound_ to make them:--

    “Although this reflection [the fact of the preying of the
    stronger upon the weaker throughout Nature] had force enough to
    _dispythagorise_ me _before my companions_ [in his college at
    the University of Oxford] _had time to make observations upon my
    behaviour, which could by no means have turned to my advantage in
    the world_, I for a great while retained so tender a regard for
    all my fellow-creatures, that I have several times brought myself
    into imminent peril by putting butcher-boys in mind, that their
    Sheep were going to die, and that they walked full as fast as
    could reasonably be expected, without the cruel blows they were so
    liberal in bestowing upon them. As I commonly came off the worst
    in these disputes, and as I could not but observe that I often
    aggravated, never diminished, the ill-treatment of these innocent
    sufferers, I soon found it necessary to consult my own ease, as
    well as security, by turning down another street, whenever I met
    with an adventure of this kind, rather than be compelled to be a
    spectator of what would shock me, or be provoked to run myself into
    danger, without the least advantage to those whom I would assist.

    “I have kept strictly, ever since, to this method of fleeing from
    the sight of cruelty, wherever I could find ground-room for it;
    and I make no manner of doubt, that I have more than once escaped
    the horns of a Mad Ox, as all of that species are called, that do
    not choose to be tortured as well as killed. But, on the other
    hand, these escapes of mine have very frequently run me into great
    inconveniences. I have sometimes been led into such a series of
    blind alleys, that it has been matter of great difficulty to me to
    find my way out of them. I have been betrayed by my hurry into the
    middle of a market--_the proper residence of Inhumanity_. I have
    paid many a six-and-eightpence for non-appearance at the hour my
    lawyer had appointed for business; and, what would hurt some people
    worse than all the rest, I have frequently arrived too late for the
    dinners I have been invited to at the houses of my friends.

    “All these difficulties and distresses, I began to flatter myself,
    were going to be removed, and that I should be left at liberty
    to pursue my walks through the straightest and broadest streets,
    when Mr. Hogarth first published his Prints upon the subject of
    Cruelty.[306] But whatever success so much ingenuity, founded upon
    so much humanity, might deserve, all the hopes I had built of
    seeing a Reformation, proved vain and fruitless. I am sorry to say
    it, but there still remain in the _streets_ of this metropolis,
    more scenes of Barbarity than, perhaps, are to be met with in all
    Europe besides. Asia (at least in the larger population of it--the
    Hindus) is well known for compassion to ‘brutes’; and nobody who
    has read Busbequius, will wonder at me for most heartily wishing
    that our common people were no crueller than Turks.

    “I should have apprehensions of being laughed at, were I to
    complain of want of compassion in our Laws [!]; the very word
    seeming contradictory to any idea of it. But I will venture to own
    that to me it appears strange, that the men against whom I should
    be enabled to bring an action for laying a little dirt at my door,
    may, with _impunity_, drive by it half-a-dozen Calves, _with their
    tails lopped close to their bodies and their hinder parts covered
    with blood_....

    “To conclude this subject--as I cannot but join in opinion with Mr.
    Hogarth, that the frequency of murders among us is greatly owing
    to those scenes of Cruelty, which the lower ranks of people are so
    much accustomed to; _instead of multiplying such scenes_, I should
    rather hope that some proper method might be fixed upon either
    _for preventing them_, or removing them out of sight; so that our
    infants might not grow up into the world in a familiarity with
    blood.

    “If we may believe the Naturalists, that a Lion is a gentle animal
    until his tongue has been dipped in blood, _what precaution ought
    we to use to prevent MAN from being inured to it, who has such
    superiority of power to do mischief_.”--_The World_, No. LXI., Aug.
    19, 1756.




XII.

JENYNS. 1704-1787.


A supporter of the Walpole Administration, he represented the county
of Cambridge, and during twenty-five years held the office of
Commissioner of the Board of Trade. He wrote papers in _The World_ and
other periodicals, and published two volumes of Poems. His principal
book is the _Free Enquiry into the Origin of Evil_, in which he
seeks to reconcile the obvious evils in the constitution of things
with his optimistic creed. Johnson, who, with all his orthodoxy, was
pessimistic, severely criticised this apology for Theism. In striking
contrast with the indifferentism of the vast majority of his class,
his just and humane feeling is sufficiently remarkable. The line of
reasoning, in his comprehensive arraignment of the various atrocities
perpetrated, sanctioned, or condoned by English Society or English Law
in the last century, and which, for the most part, still continue (it
is scarcely necessary to add), _logically_ leads to the abolition of
the Slaughter-House--the fountain and origin of the evil:--

    “How will Man, that sanguinary Tyrant, be able to excuse himself
    from the charge of those innumerable cruelties inflicted on his
    unoffending subjects, committed to his care, and placed under
    his authority, by their common father? To what horrid deviations
    from these benevolent intentions are we daily witnesses! No small
    part of Mankind derive their chief amusement from the deaths and
    sufferings of inferior Animals. A much greater part still, consider
    them only as engines of wood or iron, useful in their several
    occupations. The Carman drives his Horse as the Carpenter his nail
    by repeated blows; and so long as these produce the desired effect,
    and they both go, they neither reflect nor care whether either of
    them have any sense of feeling.

    “The Butcher knocks down the stately Ox with no more compassion
    than the Blacksmith hammers a horse-shoe, and plunges his knife
    into the throat of the innocent Lamb with as little reluctance as
    the Tailor sticks his needle into the collar of a coat.[307] If
    there are some few who, formed in a softer mould, view with pity
    the sufferings of these defenceless beings, _there is scarce one
    who entertains the least idea that Justice or Gratitude can be due
    to their Merits or their Services_.

    “The social and friendly Dog, if by barking, in defence of his
    master’s person and property, he happens unknowingly to disturb
    his rest--the generous Horse, who has carried his ungrateful
    master for many years, with ease and safety, worn out with age
    and infirmities contracted in his service, is by him condemned to
    end his miserable days in a dust-cart, where the more he exerts
    his little remains of spirit, the more he is whipped to save his
    stupid driver the trouble of whipping some other less obedient
    to the lash. Sometimes, having been taught the practice of many
    unnatural and useless feats in a Riding-House, he is, at last,
    turned out and consigned to the dominion of a hackney-coachman, by
    whom he is every day corrected for performing those tricks which he
    has learned under so long and severe a discipline. [Add the final
    horrors of the _Knackers’ Yard_, to which sort of hell the worn-out
    Horse is usually consigned.]

    “The Sluggish Bear, in contradiction to his nature, is taught to
    dance, for the diversion of an ignorant mob, by placing red-hot
    irons under his feet. The majestic Bull is tortured by every mode
    that malice can invent, for no offence but that he is unwilling
    to assail his diabolical tormentors.[308] These and innumerable
    other acts of Cruelty, Injustice, and Ingratitude are every day
    committed--not only with impunity, but _without censure, and even
    without observation_....

    “The law of self-defence, undoubtedly, justifies us in destroying
    those animals that would destroy us, that injure our properties,
    or annoy our persons; but not even these, whenever their situation
    incapacitates them from hurting us....

    “If there are any [there are vast numbers even now], whose tastes
    are so vitiated, and whose hearts are so hardened, as to delight in
    such inhuman sacrifices [the tortures of the Slaughter-House and of
    the Kitchen], and to partake of them without remorse, they should
    be looked upon as demons in human shape, and expect a retaliation
    of those tortures _which they have inflicted on the Innocent for
    the gratification of their own depraved and unnatural appetites_.

    “So violent are the passions of anger and revenge in the human
    breast, that it is not wonderful that men should persecute their
    real or imaginary enemies with cruelty and malevolence. But that
    there should exist in Nature a being who can receive pleasure from
    giving pain would be totally incredible, if we were not convinced
    by melancholy experience that there are not only many--but that
    this unaccountable disposition is in some manner inherent in the
    nature of men.[309] For as he cannot be taught by example, nor led
    to it by temptation, nor prompted to it by interest, it must be
    derived from his native constitution.[310]

    “We see children laughing at the miseries which they inflict on
    every unfortunate animal who comes within their power. All Savages
    are ingenious in contriving and executing the most exquisite
    tortures, and [not alone] the common people of all countries
    are delighted with nothing so much as with Bull-Baitings,
    Prize-Fightings, ‘Executions,’ and all spectacles of cruelty and
    horror.... They arm Cocks with artificial weapons which Nature had
    kindly denied to their malevolence, and with shouts of applause and
    triumph see them plunge them into each other’s hearts. They view
    with delight the trembling Deer and defenceless Hare flying for
    hours in the utmost agonies of terror and despair, and, at last,
    sinking under fatigue, devoured by their merciless pursuers. They
    see with joy the beautiful Pheasant and harmless Partridge drop
    from their flight, weltering in their blood, or, perhaps, perishing
    with wounds and hunger under the cover of some friendly thicket,
    to which they have in vain retreated for safety.... And to add to
    all this, they spare neither labour nor expense to preserve and
    propagate these innocent animals for no other end than to multiply
    the objects of their persecution.

    “What name should we bestow upon a Supreme Being whose whole
    endeavours were employed, and whose whole pleasure consisted, in
    terrifying, ensnaring, tormenting, and destroying mankind; whose
    superior faculties were exerted in fomenting animosities amongst
    them, in contriving engines of destruction, inciting them to use
    them in maiming and murdering each other; whose power over them
    was employed in assisting the rapacious, deceiving the simple, and
    oppressing the innocent? Who, without provocation or advantage,
    should continue, from day to day, void of all pity and remorse,
    thus to torment mankind for diversion; and, at the same time,
    endeavouring, with the utmost care, to preserve their lives and
    propagate their species, in order to increase the number of victims
    devoted to his malevolence? I say, what name detestable enough
    could we find for such a being. Yet if we impartially consider the
    case, and our intermediate situation, with respect to inferior
    animals, just such a being is a ‘Sportsman,’ [and let us add,
    by way of corollary, _à fortiori_ one who consciously sanctions
    the daily and hourly cruelties of the Slaughter-House and the
    Butcher.”]--_Disquisition II._ “On Cruelty to Animals,” by Soame
    Jenyns.




XIII.

PRESSAVIN. 1750.


An eminent Surgeon of Lyon, in the Medical and Surgical College of
which city he held a professorship, and where he collected an extensive
Anatomical Museum. At the Revolution of 1789 he embraced its principles
with ardour, and filled the posts of Municipal Officer and of Procureur
de la Commune. On the day of the Lyon executions, under the direction
of the revolutionary tribunals, Sept. 9, 1792, Pressavin intervened,
and attempted to save several of the condemned. In the Convention
Nationale, to which he had been elected deputy, he voted for the
execution of the King; in other respects he was opposed to the extreme
measures of the violent revolutionists, and in Sept., 1793, he was
expelled from the Society of the Jacobins. In 1798 he was named Member
of the Council of Five Hundred, for two years, by the department of the
Rhone. The date of his death seems to be uncertain.

His chief writings are:--

_Traité des Maladies des Nerfs_, 1769. _Traité des Maladies
Vénériennes, où l’on indique un Nouveau Remède_, 8vo., 1773. Last, and
most important, _L’Art de Prolonger la Vie et de Conserver la Santé_,
8vo. Paris, 1786. It was translated into Spanish, Madrid, 8vo., 1799.

Pressavin thus expresses his convictions as to the fatal effects of
Kreophagy:--

    “We cannot doubt that, if Man had always limited himself to the use
    of the nourishment destined for his organs, he would not be seen,
    to-day, to have become the victim of this multitude of maladies
    which, by a premature death, mows down (moissonne) the greatest
    number of individuals, before Age or Nature has put bounds to the
    career of his life. Other Animals, on the contrary, almost all
    arrive at that term without having experienced any infirmity. I
    speak of those who live free in the fields; for those whom we
    have subjected to our needs (real or pretended), and whom we call
    _domestic_, share in the penalty of our abuses, experience nearly
    the same alteration in their temperament, and become subject to an
    infinity of maladies from which Wild Animals are exempt.

    “Men, then, coming from the hands of Nature, lived a long
    time without thinking of immolating living beings to gratify
    (s’assouvir) their appetite. They are, without doubt, those happy
    times which our ancient poets have represented to us under the
    agreeable allegory of the _Golden Age_. In fact Man, _by natural
    organisation_ mild, nourishing himself only on vegetable-foods,
    must have been originally of pacific disposition, quite fitted
    (bien propre) to maintain among his fellows that happy Peace which
    makes the delights of Society. Ferocity, I repeat it, is peculiar
    to carnivorous animals; the blood which they imbibe maintains that
    character in them....

    “But if this faculty (reflection), which is called Reason, has
    furnished Man with so great resources for extending his enjoyments
    and increasing his well-being, how many evils have not the
    multiplied abuses, which he has made of them, drawn upon him? That
    which regards his Food is not the one of them which has _least_
    contributed to his degradation, as well physical as moral....

    “Among other evidences of this, country-people, who subsist upon
    the non-flesh diet, are exempt from the multitude of maladies which
    engender corruption of the juices of the blood, such as _humoral_,
    putrid, and malign fevers, from Apoplexy, from _Cachexy_, from
    Gout, and from an infinity of miserable disorders--their offspring;
    they arrive at a very advanced Age, free from the infirmities which
    early affect our old _Sybarites_. On the contrary, the inhabitants
    of towns, who make flesh their principal food, pass their lives
    miserably, a prey to all these maladies which one may regard, for
    that reason, endemic among them.

    “Another very evident proof that Flesh is not a food natural to man
    is that, whoever has abstained, during a certain time, when he goes
    back to it--it is rare that this new regimen does not soon become
    in him the germ of a disease, the graver in proportion to the
    abstinence from that food. We have opportunities of observing this
    after the Fasts of the Catholics--in the majority of those who have
    faithfully practised abstinence from flesh.”

He admits that there may be some constitutions, whose organs of
digestion have been so corrupted by the long use of flesh, that a
_sudden_ change may be unadvisable; but a gradual reform cannot but be
always beneficial:--

    “I do not doubt that Apoplexy, that fatal Malady so common among
    the rich people of the towns, might be escaped by those who are
    threatened with it, by entire abstinence from flesh. A Sanguine
    or humoral _plethora_ is always the predisposing cause of this
    disease. A sudden rarefaction of the blood or of the humours in the
    vessels is the proximate cause of it; this rarefaction takes place
    only by the predisposition of the juices of the body to corruption.”

Pressavin devotes a considerable proportion of his Treatise to the
arguments from Comparative Physiology.--While firmly persuaded both
of the unnaturalness, and of the fatal mischiefs, of the diet of
blood,[311] he expresses his despair of an early triumph of Reason and
Humanity by means of a general dietetic reformation.[312]




XIV.

SCHILLER. 1759-1805.


After Goethe the greatest of German Poets, began life as a surgeon
in the army. In his twenty-second year he produced his first drama,
_Die Räuber_ (“The Robbers”). Some passages in it betrayed the “cloven
hoof” of revolutionary, or at least democratic, bias, and he brought
upon himself the displeasure of the sovereign Duke of Würtemberg, in
consequence of which he was forced to leave Stuttgart. His principal
dramas are _Wallenstein_, _Wilhelm Tell_, _Die Jungfrau von Orleans_,
_Maria Stuart_, and _Don Carlos_, of which _Wallenstein_ is, usually,
placed first in merit. Even greater than the dramatic power of Schiller
is the genius of his ballad poetry, and in lyrical inspiration he is
the equal of Goethe. _Das Lied von der Glocke_ (“The Lay of the Bell”),
one of his most widely-known ballads, is also one of the most beautiful
in its kind.

In prose literature, his _Briefe Philosophische_ (“Philosophical
Letters”), and his correspondence with his great poetical rival, are
the most interesting of his writings.

In _Das Eleusische Fest_ (“The Eleusinian Feast”) and _Der Alpenjäger_
(“The Hunter of the Alps”) are to be found the humanitarian sentiments
as follow:--

    Schwelgend bei dem Siegesmahle
    Findet sie die rohe Schaar,
    Und die blutgefüllte Schaale
    Bringt man ihr zum Opfer dar
    Aber schauernd, mit Entsetzen,
    Wendet sie sich weg and spricht:
    ’_Blut’ge Tigermahle_ netzen
    Eines Gottes Lippen nicht.
    Reine Opfer will er haben
    Früchte, die der Herbst bescheert--
    Mit des Feldes frommen gaben
    Wird der Heilige verehrt.

    Und sie nimmt die Wucht des Speeres
    Aus des Jäger’s rauher hand;
    Mit dem Schaft des Mordgewehres
    Furchet sie den leichten Sand,
    Nimmt von ihres Kranzes Spitze
    Einen Kern mit Kraft gefüllt,
    Senkt ihn in die zarte Ritze,
    Und der Trieb des Keimes schwillt.[313]

           *       *       *       *       *

    Mit des Jammers Stummen Blicken
    Fleht sie zu dem harten Mann,
    Fleht umsonst, denn, loszudrücken,
    Legt er schon den Bogen an;
    Plötzlich aus der Felsenspalte
    Tritt der Geist, der Bergesalte

    Und mit seinen Götterhänden
    Schützt er das gequälte Thier:
    “_Musst du Tod und Jammer Senden_”
    Ruft er “bis herauf zu mir?
    _Raum fur alle hat die Erde_
    Was verfolgst du meine Heerde?”[314]




XV.

BENTHAM. 1749-1832.


This great legal reformer was educated at Westminster, and at the
age of thirteen proceeded to Queen’s College, Oxford. At the age of
sixteen he took his first degree in Arts. The mental uneasiness with
which he signed the obligatory test of the “Thirty-nine Articles” he
vividly recorded in after years. At the Bar, which he soon afterwards
entered, his prospects were unusually promising; but unable to
reconcile his standard of ethics with the recognised morality of the
Profession, he soon withdrew from it. His first publication,--_A
Fragment on Government_, 1776--which appeared without his name, was
assigned to some of the most distinguished men of the day. His next,
and principal work, was his _Introduction to the Principles of Morals
and Legislation_ (1780), not published until 1789. At this period
he travelled extensively in the East of Europe. _Panopticon: or the
Inspection-House_ (on prison discipline), appeared in 1791. The _Book
of Fallacies_ (reviewed by Sidney Smith, in the _Edinburgh_), in
which the “wisdom of our ancestors” delusion was, mercilessly exposed
(1824), is the best known, and is the most lively of all his writings.
_Rationale of Judicial Procedure_, and the _Constitutional Code_,
are those which have had most influence in effecting legislative and
judicial reform.

Bentham stands in the front rank of legal reformers; and as a fearless
and consistent opponent of the iniquities of the English Criminal
Law, in particular, he has deserved the gratitude and respect of all
thoughtful minds. Yet, during some sixty years, he was constantly held
up to obloquy and ridicule by the enemies of Reform, in the Press and
on the Platform; and his name was a sort of synonym for _utopianism_,
and revolutionary doctrine. In his own country his writings were long
in little esteem; but elsewhere, and in France especially, by the
interpretation of Dumont, his opinions had a wider dissemination.
In _Morals_, the foundation of his teaching is the principle of the
greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number; that other things are good
or evil in proportion as they advance or oppose the general Happiness,
which ought to be the end of all morals and legislation.

Not the least of his merits as a moralist is his assertion of the
rights of other animals than man to the protection of Law, and his
protest against the culpable selfishness of the lawmakers in wholly
abandoning them to the capricious cruelty of their human tyrants. The
most eminent of the disciples of Bentham, John Stuart Mill (who found
himself forced to defend the teaching of his master, in this respect,
against the sneers of Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, and others),
repeats this protest, and declares that--

    “The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children apply not
    less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims
    of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals. It is by
    the grossest misunderstanding of the principles of Liberty, that
    the infliction of exemplary punishment on ruffianism practised
    towards these defenceless beings has been treated as a meddling by
    Government with things beyond its province--an interference with
    domestic life. The domestic life of domestic tyrants is one of the
    things which it _is the most imperative on the Law to interfere
    with_. And it is to be regretted that metaphysical scruples,
    respecting the nature and source of the authority of governments,
    should induce many warm supporters of laws against cruelty to
    the lower animals to seek for justification of such laws in the
    incidental consequences of the indulgence of ferocious habits
    to the interest of human beings, _rather than in the intrinsic
    merits of the thing itself_. What it would be the duty of a human
    being, possessed of the requisite physical strength, to prevent by
    force, if attempted in his presence, it cannot be less incumbent
    on society generally to repress. The existing laws of England are
    chiefly defective in the trifling--often almost nominal--maximum
    to which the penalty, even in the worst cases, is limited.”
    (_Principles of Political Economy_, ed. 1873.)

The observations both of Bentham and of Mill upon this subject,
slighted though they are, are pregnant with consequences. It is thus
that the former authority expresses his opinion:--

    “What other agents are those who, at the same time that they
    are under the influence of man’s direction, are susceptible of
    Happiness? They are of two sorts: (1) Other Human beings, who
    are styled _Persons_. (2) Other Animals who, on account of their
    interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient
    Jurists, stand degraded into the class of _Things_. Under the
    Gentoo and Mahometan religions, the interests of the rest of the
    animal kingdom seem to have met with _some_ attention. Why have
    they not, universally, with as much as those of human beings,
    allowance made for the differences in point of sensibility?
    _Because the Laws that are have been the work of mutual fear_--a
    sentiment which the less rational animals have not had the same
    means, as men have, of turning to account. Why _ought_ they not [to
    have the same allowance made]? No reason can be given....

    “The day has been (and it is not yet past) in which the greater
    part of the Species, under the denomination of _Slaves_, have been
    treated by the Laws exactly upon the same footing--as in England,
    for example, the inferior races of beings are still. The day _may_
    come, when other Animals may obtain those rights _which never could
    have been withholden from them but by the hand of Tyranny_. The
    French have already (1790) recognised that the blackness of the
    skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned, without
    redress, to the caprice of a tormentor.

    “It may come one day to be recognised that the number of the legs,
    the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the _os sacrum_,
    are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being
    to the same fate. What else is it should fix the insuperable
    line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of
    discourse? But a full-grown Horse or Dog is, beyond comparison, a
    more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant
    of a day, or a week, or even of a month old. But suppose the case
    were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, can they
    reason? Nor is it, can they talk? But, _can they suffer_?”[315]




XVI.

SINCLAIR. 1754-1835.


This celebrated Agricultural Reformer and active promoter of various
beneficent enterprises was a most voluminous writer. During sixty years
he was almost constantly employed in producing more or less useful
books. He was born at Thurso Castle, in Caithness, and received his
education at the Edinburgh High School, and at the Universities of
Glasgow and Oxford. In 1775 he was admitted a member of the Faculty of
Advocates, and afterwards was called to the English Bar. Five years
later he was elected to represent his county in the Legislature; and
for more than half a century Sir John Sinclair occupied a prominent
position in the world of politics, as well as of science and
literature. His reputation as an Agriculturist extended far and wide
throughout Europe and America; and statesmen and political economists,
if they did not aid them as they ought to have done, professed for his
labours the highest esteem.

His principal writings are: (1) _A History of the Revenue of Great
Britain_, 3 vols.; (2) _A Statistical Account of Scotland_, a most
laborious work; (3) _Considerations on Militias and Standing Armies_;
(4) _Essays on Agriculture_; (5) Not the least important, _The Code of
Health and Longevity_, in which the sagacious and indefatigable author
has collected a large number of interesting particulars in regard to
the diet of various peoples. Comparing the two diets, he asserts:--

    “The Tartars, who live wholly on animal food, possess a degree of
    ferocity of mind and fierceness of character which form the leading
    feature of all carnivorous animals. On the other hand, an entire
    diet of vegetable matter, as appears in the Brahmin and Gentoo,
    gives to the disposition a softness, gentleness, and mildness of
    feeling directly the reverse of the former character. It also has
    a particular influence on _the powers of the mind_, producing
    liveliness of imagination and acuteness of judgment in an eminent
    degree.”

Sir John Sinclair elsewhere quotes the following sufficiently
condemnatory remarks from the _Encyclopédie Methodique_, vol. vii.,
part 1:--

    “The man who sheds the blood of an Ox or a Sheep will be habituated
    more easily than another to witness the effusion of that of his
    fellow-creatures. Inhumanity takes possession of his soul, and the
    trades, whose occupation is to sacrifice animals for the purpose
    of supplying the [pretended] necessities of men, impart to those
    who exercise them a ferocity which their relative connections with
    Society but imperfectly serve to mitigate.”--_Code of Health and
    Longevity_, vol. i., 423, 429, and vol. iii., 283.[316]




XVII.

BYRON. 1788-1824.


    “As we had none of us been apprised of his peculiarities with
    respect to food, the embarrassment of our host [Samuel Rogers] was
    not little, on discovering that there was nothing upon the table
    which his noble guest could eat or drink. Neither [flesh] meat,
    fish, nor wine would Lord Byron touch; and of biscuits and soda
    water, which he asked for, there had been, unluckily, no provision.
    He professed, however, to be equally well pleased with potatoes and
    vinegar; and of these meagre materials contrived to make rather a
    hearty meal....

    “We frequently, during the first months of our acquaintance dined
    together alone.... Though at times he would drink freely enough
    of claret, he still adhered to his system of abstinence in food.
    _He appeared, indeed, to have conceived a notion that animal food
    has some peculiar influence on the character_;[317] and I remember
    one day, as I sat opposite to him, employed, I suppose, rather
    earnestly over a ‘beef-steak,’ after watching me for a few seconds,
    he said in a grave tone of inquiry,--‘Moore, don’t you find eating
    _beef-steak_ makes you ferocious?’”--_Life, Letters, and Journals
    of Lord Byron_, by Thomas Moore. New Edition. Murray, 1860.

In these Memorials of Byron, reference to his aversion from all
“butcher’s meat” is frequent; and for the greater part of his life,
he seems to have observed, in fact, an extreme abstinence as regards
eating; although he had by no means the same repugnance for fish as
for flesh-eating. That this abstinence from flesh-meats was founded
upon physical or mental, rather than upon moral, reasons, has already
been pointed out. Nor, unhappily, was he as abstinent in drinking as in
eating; to which fact, in great measure, must be attributed the failure
of his purer eating to effect all the good which, otherwise, it would
have produced.

       *       *       *       *       *

The observations of the author of a book entitled _Philozoa_, published
in 1839, and noticed with approval by Schopenhauer, are sufficiently
worthy of note, and may fitly conclude this work:--

    “Many very intelligent men have, at different times of their lives,
    abstained wholly from flesh; and this, too, with very considerable
    advantage to their health. Mr. Lawrence, whose eminence as a
    surgeon is well known, lived for many years on a vegetable diet.
    Byron, the poet, did the same, as did P. B. Shelley, and many other
    distinguished _literati_ whom I could name. Dr. Lambe and Mr. F.
    Newton have published very able works in defence of a diet of
    herbs, and have condemned the use of flesh as tending to undermine
    the constitution by a sort of slow poisoning. Sir R. Phillips
    has published _Sixteen Reasons for Abstaining from the Flesh of
    Animals_, and a large society exists in England of persons who eat
    nothing which has had life.

    “The most attentive researches, which I have been able to make
    into the health of all these persons, induce me to believe that
    vegetable food is the natural diet of man. I tried it once with
    very considerable advantage. My strength became greater, my
    intellect clearer, my power of continued exertion protracted, and
    my spirits much higher than they were when I lived on a mixed diet.
    I am inclined to think that the ‘inconvenience’ which some persons
    profess to experience from vegetable food is only _temporary_.
    A few repeated trials would soon render it not only safe but
    agreeable, and a disgust for the taste of flesh, _under any
    disguise_, would be the result of the experiment. The Carmelites,
    and other religious orders, who subsist only on the productions
    of the vegetable world, live to a greater age than those who feed
    on flesh; and, in general, frugivorous persons are milder in
    their disposition than other people. The same quantity of ground
    has been proved to be capable of sustaining a _larger[318] and
    stronger population_ on a vegetable than on a flesh-meat diet; and
    experience has shown _that the juices of the body are more pure,
    and the viscera much more free from disease, in those who live in
    this simple way_.

    “All these facts, taken collectively, point to a period in
    the history of civilisation when men will cease to slay their
    fellow-mortals for food, and will tend to realise the fictions
    of Antiquity, and of the Sybilline oracles respecting a ‘Golden
    Age.’”[319]




INDEX.


    Abernethy John, M.D., _Surgical Observations on Tumours_,
      quoted,                                                        196

    Aderholdt A., M.D., referred to,                             271-284

    Æsop, _Fable of the Wolf_, referred to,                          117

    Alcott Wm., M.D., referred to,                               262-264

    Anquetil Du Perron, _Récherches sur les Indes_,
      referred to,                                               177-210

    Apollonius of Tyana (_Life_ by Philostratus),
      quoted and referred to,                                 50-51, 303

    Arbuthnot John, M.D., _Essay Concerning Aliments_,
      referred to,                                                   132

    Arnold Edwin, _The Light of Asia_, quoted,                       296

    Attalus, noticed by Seneca,     30

    Axon W. E. A.,(Biog. Sketches of George Nicholson,
      Sir R. Phillips, and William Cowherd), referred to,  191, 244, 260


    Baker Thomas, Abstract of Graham’s _Science of Human Life_,
      referred to,                                              265, 266

    Baltzer Eduard, _Porphyry_ and _Musonius_,              68, 284, 304

    Bartolini Biagio, M.D. (Notice of Cornaro), referred to,          89

    Bentham Jeremy, quoted,                                     327, 328

    Blot-Lequène, Critique of _Thalysie_, quoted by R. Springer,     211

    Bonnodière La, _De la Sobriété et de ses Avantages_,
      referred to,                                                   306

    Bossuet Jacques Bénigne, _Discours sur l’Histoire Universelle_,
      quoted,                                                        112

    Brewster Sir David, _More Worlds than One_, quoted,              255

    Brotherton Joseph, M.P., President of the English
      Vegetarian Society, referred to,                     202, 259, 264

    Buddha Gautama, referred to and noticed,                  6, 295-296

    Buddhist Sacred Scriptures, Texts from the Buddhist Canon,
      commonly known as _Dhammapada_, also the _Kûla Sîlam_,
      translated from the Pâli,                                  295-299

    Buffon George Louis Le Clerc de, _Histoire Naturelle_,
      quoted and referred to,                                   166, 214

    Burigni de (Translator of Porphyry, and author of a Treatise
      against Flesh-Eating, noticed by Voltaire),                     67

    Busbecq Augier de, on the Turks, referred to by Lord
      Chesterfield,                                                  321

    Byron George Gordon, Lord, _Life, Letters, and Journals_,
      by Moore, and _Poems_,                                    234, 331


    Cabantous J., Doyen de in Faculté de Lettres, Toulouse,
      noticed by R. Springer,                                        210

    Chantrans Girod de, noticed by R. Springer,                      210

    Charron Pierre, _De la Sagesse_, referred to,                     99

    Chesterfield Philip Dormer, Lord, _The World_, CXC.,
      quoted,                                               139, 320-321

    Cheyne George, M.D., _Essay on the Gout_; _Of Health
      and a Long Life_; _English Malady: or, a Treatise of
      Nervous Diseases of all Kinds_; _Essay on Regimen_;
      _Natural Method of Curing the Diseases of the Body,
      and the Disorders of the Mind Depending on the Body_,
      referred to and quoted,                                97, 120-128

    Christian Sacred Scriptures,                          52, 54, 55, 79

    Chrysostom Ioannes, _Homilies_, _Golden Book_, quoted,         76-81

    Cicero Marcus Tullius, _Epistles_ vii. 1, quoted,                 24

    Clarke James, referred to,                                       259

    Clemens Titus Flavius (of Alexandria), _Pædagogus_ or
    _Instructor_, _Stromata_ or _Miscellanies_, quoted,            56-63

    _Clementine Homilies_, quoted and referred to,                    56

    Cocchi Antonio, M.D., _Del Vitto Pithagorico Per Uso
      Della Medicina_, quoted,                                   157-159

    Collyns C. H., _The Times_, referred to,                         202

    Cornaro Luigi di, _Trattato della Vita Sobria,
      Amorevole Esortazione, &c._; _Lettera a Barbaro_,
      quoted and referred to,                                 83-90, 306

    Cowherd William, noticed,                                    258-260

    Cowley Abraham, _The Garden_, quoted,                        308-309

    Cowper William, _The Task_, quoted,                              178

    Cuvier George, &c., Baron de, _Leçons d’Anatomie
      Comparative, III._,                        169, 373, 443, 465, 480
          _Régne Animal_, noticed by Shelley,                        226


    Daumer Georg, _Anthropologismus und Kriticismus_;
      _Enthüllungen über Kaspar Hauser_,
      referred to and quoted,                                    281-283

    _Dietetic Reformer_, referred to,                           212, 251


    Eden Sir F. M., _State of the Poor_, referred to,           177, 189

    Epikurus, _De Sobrietate Contra Gulam_,
      quoted by Gassendi,                                       101, 104

    Erasmus Desiderius, _Encomium Moriæ_, quoted,                     92

    Erskine Thomas, Lord, referred to,                               202

    Essenians and Essenism, noticed,                              56, 72

    Euripides, quoted by Athenæus,                                    32

    Evelyn John, _Acetaria: On Sallets_, quoted,                 107-110


    Ferdusi, quoted by Sir William Jones,                            141

    Ferguson Adam, referred to,                                      208

    Flaubert G., _Légende de St. Julien_, quoted in
      _Fortnightly Review_,                                          187

    Flourens, I. M. P., _Longévité de la Race Humaine_,
      referred to,                                         175, 268, 270

    Fontaine La, Jean de, _Fables_ x. 2, quoted,                     117

    Forster T., M.D., _Philozoa_, &c., quoted,                       332

    Franklin Benjamin, _Autobiography_, referred to,                 176


    Galen, Greek Physician, referred to,                              35

    Gaskill James, referred to,                                      259

    Gay John, _Fables_--_Pythagoras and the Countryman_;
      _The Court of Death_; _The Shepherd’s Dog and the Boy_;
      _The Wild Boar and the Ram_; _The Philosopher and the
      Pheasants_, quoted,                                        115-119

    Gassendi Pierre, _Letter_ to Van Helmont, _Ethics_, quoted,  100-104

    Gibbon Edward, _History of the Decline and Fall of the
      Roman Empire_, xxvi, quoted and referred to,              177, 220

    Gleïzès Jean Antoine, _Thalysie: ou la Nouvelle
      Existence_; _Les Nuits Elysiennes_, &c., quoted,      208-218, 252

    Gleïzès Colonel, referred to,                                    210

    Grævius Johann Georg, referred to,                               293

    Graham Sylvester, M.D., _The Science of Human Life_,
      referred to and quoted,                         262, 263, 264, 271

    _Golden Verses The_, referred to and quoted,                 21, 294

    Göthe Johann Wolfgang von, _Italienische Reise_;
      _Werther’s Leiden_, &c., referred to,                          327

    Goltz Bogumil, _Das Menschendasein in Seinen Weltewigen
      Zügen und Zeichen_,                                            285

    Gompertz Lewis, referred to by Forster,                          332

    Greg W. R., _Social Problems_, referred to and quoted,      215, 332

    Gützlaff V., M.D., _Schopenhauer über die Thiere und
      den Thierschutz_; _Ein Beitrag zur ethischen Seite
      der Vivisectionsfrage_, referred to,                           288


    Hahn Theodor, _Die Naturgemässe Diät: die Diät der Zukunft_,
      quoted,                                                   284, 292

    Haller Albrecht von, M.D., quoted,                          156, 157

    Hardy Sebastian, _Le Vrai Régîme de Vivre_, &c., referred to,    306

    Hare Edward, _Life of William Lambe, M.D._, quoted,              205

    Hartley David, M.D., _Observations on Man_, quoted,         138, 139

    Hartlib Samuel, _A Design for Plenty, by a Universal
      Planting of Fruit-Trees_, referred to,                         108

    Hawkesworth John, _Edition of Swift’s Works_; _Adventurer_,
      quoted and referred to,                                        168

    Hecquet Philippe, M.D., _De L’Indécence aux Hommes
      d’Accoucher les Femmes, &c._; _Traité des Dispenses
      du Carême_; _La Médicine, La Chirurgie, et la Pharmacie
      des Pauvres_; _La Brigandage de la Médicine_, &c.,
      referred to and quoted,                           68, 133, 314-318

    Helps Sir Arthur, _Animals and Their Masters_, referred to,      329

    Hesiodos, Ἔργα καὶ Ἣμεραι (_Works and Days_), quoted,      1, 3, 293

    Hierokles, Χρυσᾶ Επη (_Golden Verses_), referred to
      and quoted,                                                21, 294

    Hindu Sacred Books, _Laws of Manu_, referred to
      and quoted,                                               182, 298

    Hippokrates, Περὶ Ὑγιαίνης Διαίτης (_On the Healthful
      Regimen_), referred to,                                         12

    Hogarth William, _Four Stages of Cruelty_, referred to,     179, 321

    Hogg Jefferson, _Life of Shelley_, quoted,                       206

    Horatius Flaccus, _Odes_, _Ars Poet._, _Sat. II. 2._,
      quoted,                                                74, 299-303

    Howard John, _Life of_, referred to,                             189

    Hufeland Christian Wilhelm, M.D., _Makrobiotik, oder
      die Kunst das Menschliche Leben zu Verlängern_, &c.,
      quoted and referred to,                                   184, 268

    Hypatia, referred to,                                         67, 82


    Iamblichus, _Life of Pythagoras_, referred to,                  5, 8


    Jenyns Soame, quoted,                                        322-324

    Jewish Sacred Scriptures, quoted and referred to,         54, 61, 79

    Jones Sir William, _Asiatic Researches_, iv. 12, quoted,         141

    Josephus Flavius, _Antiquities of the Jews_, quoted,              73

    Julianus, Emperor, _Misopogon (Beard Hater)_, noticed,         74-76

    Juvenalis Decimus Junius, _Sat._ I., xv., &c.,
      quoted,                                             9, 48, 85, 182


    Kalidâsa, _Sakúntala_, referred to,                         182, 277

    Kingsford Anna, M.D., _The Perfect Way in Diet_, referred to,    271


    Laborde Alexandre de, referred to,                               252

    Lamartine Alphonse de, _Mémoires_; _La Chute d’un Ange_,
      quoted,                                                    247-252

    Lambe William, M.D., _Additional Reports on Regimen_,
      referred to and quoted,                197, 198-205, 206, 207, 331

    Lawrence William, Professor, F.R.C.S., _Lectures
      on Physiology_, quoted,                                        270

    Lémery Louis, M.D., _Traité des Alimens_, referred to,

    Lesage Alain Réné, _Gil Blas_ ii. 2, quoted,                     134

    Lessio Leonard, _Hygiasticon_, quoted,                       305-307

    Liebig Justus von, _Chemische Briefe_, referred to
      and quoted,                                           215, 290-292

    Linné Karl von, _Amœnitates Accademicæ_, quoted,             164-165

    Lipsius Justus von, edition of Seneca, quoted,                 31-32

    Locke John, _Thoughts on Education_, referred to,           109, 251

    Lucretius Titus Carus, _De Rerum Naturâ II._, referred
      to and quoted,                                             25, 300

    Lyford H. G., M.D., referred to,                                 205


    _Mahâbhârata_, Story of the Princess Savîtri, quoted,            297

    Mandeville Bernard de, M.D., _Fable of the Bees_, quoted,    113-115

    Martin John, referred to,                                   179, 187

    Mayor J. E. B., Professor, _Musonius_ and _Juvenal_,
      quoted and referred to,                                        305

    Metcalfe William, M.D., _Essay on Abstinence from the
      Flesh of Animals_; _Moral Reformer_; _American
      Vegetarian and Health Journal_, &c., noticed,              260-264

    Michelet Jules, _La Bible de l’Humanité_; _La Femme_;
      _L’Oiseau_, quoted,                                        252-258

    Mill John Stuart, _Principles of Political Economy_;
      _Dissertations_, referred to and quoted,                       328

    Milton John, _Paradise Lost_, v., xi.; _Latin Poem_
      addressed to Diodati, quoted,                              110-112

    Moffet Thomas, M.D., _Health’s Improvement_, quoted,             307

    Montaigne Michel de, _Essais_, quoted,                         94-99

    More Sir Thomas, _Utopia_, quoted,                             90-94

    Musonius Rufus, in _Anthologion_ of Stobæus, quoted
      by Professor Mayor,                                        303-305


    Neo-Platonism, referred to,                               56, 67, 82

    Newman F. W., Professor, President of the English
      Vegetarian Society, _Lectures on Vegetarianism_,
      referred to,                                     93, 172, 215, 292

    Newton Sir Isaac, referred to by Voltaire (_Elémens
      de la Philosophie de Newton_), and by Haller,             101, 145

    Newton J. F., _The Return to Nature_, quoted and
      referred to,                                          205-208, 331

    Nichols T. L., M.D. (Hygienic Literature), referred to,          314

    Nicholson George, _On the Conduct of Man to Inferior
      Animals_; _The Primeval Diet of Man_, quoted,              190-196

    Nicholson E. B., _The Rights of an Animal_, referred to,         329

    Nodier Charles, referred to,                                     210


    Oswald John, _The Cry of Nature_, quoted,                    179-183

    Ovidius Naso, _Metamorphoses_, xv.; _Fasti_, iv.,
      quoted,                                         23-27, 49, 299-303


    Paley William, _Principles of Moral and Political
      Philosophy_, quoted,                                       169-172

    Phillips Sir Richard, _Golden Rules of Social Philosophy_;
      _Medical Journal_ (July 27, 1811); _Dictionary of the
      Arts of Life and Civilisation_, quoted and
      referred to,                                          235-244, 331

    Philolaus, _Pythagorean System_, referred to,                      5

    Philostratus, _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_, quoted,           50-51

    Pilpai, _Fable of the Cow_, quoted by Pope,                      320

    Pitcairn Archibald, M.D., referred to,                           200

    Plato, _Republic_ ii; _Laws_, quoted,                          12-22

    Plinius the Elder, _Hist. Naturalis_, quoted,                     24

    Plotinus, noticed by Donaldson,                                65-66

    Plutarch, _Essay on Flesh-Eating_; _Symposiacs_;
      _Parallel Lives_, quoted,                                    41-49

    Pope Alexander, _Pastorals_; _Essay on Man_; _The
      Guardian_, quoted,                            71, 128-132, 318-320

    Porphyry, Περὶ Τῆς Ἀπόχης (_On Abstinence_); _Life
      of Pythagoras_, quoted,                                      63-74

    Pressavin Jean Baptiste, Membre du Collége Royale
      de Chirurgie, Lyon, Demonstrateur en Matière
      Médicale-Chirurgicale à Lyon, _L’Art de Prolonger
      la Vie et de Conserver la Santé_, quoted,                  324-326

    Proklus, referred to,                                             82

    Pythagoras (in Hierokles, Diogenes, Iamblichus,
      Porphyry, and Cocchi) noticed and quoted,       4-11, 21, 158, 294


    Ramazzini Bernardo, M.D., referred to,                            89

    Ray John, _Historia Plantarum_, quoted,                     106, 107

    Richardson B. W., M.D., _Salutisland_; _Hygieia_, referred to,   326

    Richter Jean Paul, _Levana_, quoted,                        287, 288

    Ritson Joseph, _Abstinence from Animal Food: a Moral Duty_,
      quoted,                                               185-190, 323

    Rorarius, _Quòd Animalia Bruta Sæpe Utantur Ratione
      Melius Homine_, referred to,                                    99

    Rousseau Jean Jacques, _De l’Inégalité Parmi les Hommes_;
      _Emile_; _Julie: ou la Nouvelle Héloise_; _Confessions_,
      referred to and quoted,                               159-164, 195


    Sadi, Persian Poet, referred to,                                 141

    Sakya Muni, referred to,                                         182

    Schiller Johann Friedrich, _Das Eleusische Fest_;
      _Alpenjäger_, quoted,                                      326-327

    Schopenhauer Arthur, _Fundament der Moral_ (_Le Fondement
      de la Morale_); _Parerga und Paralipomena_, quoted and
      referred to,                                               286-290

    Seefeld A. von, referred to,                                     284

    Seneca Marcus Annæus, _Epistolæ ad Lucilium_; _De
      Clententiâ_; _De Vitâ Beatâ_; _De Irâ_; _Questiones
      Naturales_, quoted,                                          27-40

    Sextius Quintus, referred to,                                     31

    Shelley Percy Bysshe, _Queen Mab_ and _Note_; _The Revolt
      of Islam_, quoted,                                         218-234

    Shakespeare William, _As You Like It_, ii. 1; _Cymbeline_,
      i. 6, referred to and quoted,                                  105

    Simpson James, President of English Vegetarian Society,
      referred to,                                                   263

    Sinclair Sir John, _The Code of Health and Longevity_,
      quoted,                                                        330

    Sloane Sir Hans, _Nat. Hist. of Jamaica_, referred to,           177

    Smith Adam, _The Wealth of Nations_, quoted,                     177

    Smith John, _Fruits and Farinacea: the Proper Food of Man_,
      edited by Professor Newman, quoted,                             71

    Smith Sydney, quoted,                                            168

    Sotion, referred to by Seneca,                                    31

    Sparrman André, referred to,                                     177

    Sperone Speroni, referred to,                                     89

    Springer Robert, German translator of _Thalysie, ou
      la Nouvelle Existence_, quoted,                                211

    Strauss David Friedrich Dr., _Der Alte und der Neue Glaube_,
      quoted,                                                        287

    Struve Gustav, _Mandaras’ Wanderungen_; _Das Seelenleben_;
      _Die Pflanzenkost_, quoted;,                               271-281

    St. Pierre Bernardin, _Paul et Virginie_; _Etudes de
      la Nature_, quoted,                                        173-176

    Stubbs Philip, _Anatomy of Abuses_, quoted by Ritson,            307

    Swedenborg Emanuel, referred to,                                 176

    Swift Jonathan, Dean, _Gulliver’s Travels_,                      133


    Tertullianus Quintus Septimius, _De Jejuniis Adversus
      Psychicos_, quoted,                                          51-55

    Thomson James, _The Seasons_, quoted,                        134-137

    Trelawney F., _Life of Shelley_, referred to,                    220

    Tryon Thomas, _The Way to Health and Long Life_;
      _A Treatise on Cleanliness in Meats and Drinks_;
      _The Way to make all People Rich_; _England’s Grandeur_;
      _Dialogue between an East-India Brachman and a French
      Gentleman_, &c.,                                           309-314


    Villeneuve C. de, M.D., referred to,                             202

    Virgilius Maro, _Georgica_; _Æneis_, quoted,              50, 51, 96

    Volney Constantine Comte de, _Voyages en Syrie et en
      Egypte_, referred to and quoted,                          109, 330

    Voltaire François Marie Arouet de, _Essai sur les Mœurs
      et L’Esprit des Nations_; _Dictionnaire Philosophique_
      (Art. _Viande_); _Princesse de Babylone_; _Lettres
      d’Amabed à Shastasid_; _Dialogue du Chapon et de la
      Poularde_, quoted and referred to,            39, 68, 101, 141-156


    Weilshäuser Emil, quoted by R. Springer,                         211

    Wesley John, _Journals_, referred to,                            176

    Williamson John (noticed by Ritson, and by writer in
      _Gentleman’s Magazine_, Aug. 1787),                            189

    _Woman and the Age_, an Essay, referred to,                      256


    Young Thomas, _On Cruelty_, referred to by Forster (_Philozoa_), 333


    Zimmerman W., M.D. _Der Weg zum Paradiese_ (_The Way
      to Paradise_), quoted,                                         285


JOHN HEYWOOD, Excelsior Steam Printing and Bookbinding Works,
Hulme Hall Road, Manchester.




FOOTNOTES:

[1] Quoted by Sir Arthur Helps in his _Animals and their Masters_.
(Strahan, 1873.) The further just remark of Arnold upon this subject
may here be quoted:--“Kind, loving, submissive, conscientious,
much-enduring we know them to be; but _because_ we deprive them of
all stake in the future--_because_ they have no selfish, calculated
aims--these are not virtues. Yet, if we say a ‘vicious’ Horse, why not
say a ‘virtuous’ Horse?”

[2] That the indescribable atrocities inflicted in the final scene of
the slaughter-house, are far from being the only sufferings to which
the victims of the Table are liable, is a fact upon which, at this
day, it ought to be superfluous to insist. The frightful sufferings
during “the middle passage,” in rough weather, and especially in severe
storms, have over and over again been recounted even by spectators
the least likely to be easily affected by the spectacles of lower
animal suffering. Thousands of Oxen and Sheep, year by year, are
thrown _living_ into the sea during the passage from the United States
alone. In the year 1879, according to the official report, 14,000 thus
perished, while 1,240 were landed dead, and 450 were slaughtered on
the quay upon landing to prevent death from wounds.--See, among other
recent works on humane Dietetics, the _Perfect Way in Diet_ of Dr.
Anna Kingsford for some most instructive details upon this subject.
The reader is also referred to the Lecture recently addressed to the
Students of Girton College, Cambridge, by the same able and eloquent
writer, for other aspects of the humanitarian argument.

[3] Cf. Horace (whom, however, we do not quote as an authority)--

    “Let olives, endives, mallows light
    Be all my fare;”

and Virgil thus indicates the charm of a rural existence for him who
realises it:--

    “Whatever fruit the branches and the mead
    Spontaneous bring, he gathers for his need.”

[4] The same apparent contradiction--the co-existence of “flocks and
herds” with the prevalence of the non-flesh diet--appears in the Jewish
theology, in _Genesis_. It is obvious, however, that in both cases
the “flocks and herds” might be existing for other purposes than for
slaughter.

[5] _Daimones._ The _dæmon_ in Greek theology was simply a lesser
divinity--an _angel_.

[6] Compare Spenser’s charming verses (“Faery Queen,” Book ii., canto
8): “And is there care in heaven,” &c.

[7] His moral principles are reduced to these:--“1. Mercy established
on an immovable basis. 2. Aversion to all cruelty. 3. A boundless
compassion for all creatures.” Quoted from Klaproth by Huc, _Chinese
Empire_, xv. Buddhism was to Brahminism, sacerdotally, what early
Christianity was to Mosaism.

[8] All the varieties of the bear tribe, it is perhaps scarcely
necessary to observe, are by organisation, and therefore by preference,
frugivorous. It is from necessity only, for the most part, that they
seek for flesh.

[9] Compare Montaigne (_Essais_, Book II., chap. 12), who, to the shame
of the popular opinion of the present day, ably maintains the same
thesis.

[10] The allegory of the trials and final purification of the soul was
a favourite one with the Greeks, in the charming story of the loves and
sorrows of Psyche and Eros. Apuleius inserted it in his fiction of _The
Golden Ass_, and it constantly occurs in Greek and modern art.

[11] Beans, like lean flesh, are very nitrogenous, and it is possible
that Pythagoras may have deemed them too invigorating a diet for the
more aspiring ascetics. This may seem at least a more solid reason than
the absurd conjectures to which we have referred.

[12] “As regards the fruits of this system of training or belief
(the Pythagorean), it is interesting to remark,” says the author
of the article Pythagoras in Dr. Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and
Roman Biography_, “that, wherever we have notices of distinguished
Pythagoreans, we usually hear of them as men of great uprightness,
conscientiousness, and self-restraint, and as capable of devoted and
enduring friendship.” Amongst them the names of Archytas, and Damon,
and Phintias are particularly eminent. Archytas was one of the very
greatest geniuses of antiquity: he was distinguished alike as a
philosopher, mathematician, statesman, and general. In mechanics he was
the inventor of the wooden flying dove--one of the wonders of the older
world. Empedokles (the Apollonius of the 5th century B.C.), who devoted
his marvellous attainments to the service of humanity, may be claimed
as, at least in part, a follower of Pythagoras.

[13] “Quæ Philosophia fuit, facta Philologia est.” (Ep. cviii.)
Compare Montaigne, _Essais_, i., 24, on Pedantry, where he admirably
distinguishes between _wisdom_ and _learning_.

[14] _The Republic of Plato._ By Davies and Vaughan.

[15] In support of this thesis Plato adduces arguments derived from
analogy. Amongst the non-human species the sexes, he points out, are
nearly equal in strength and intelligence. In human savage life the
difference is far less marked than in artificial conditions of life.

[16] Ὄψον--the name given by the Greeks generally to everything which
they considered rather as a “relish” than a necessary. Bread was held
to be--not only in name but in fact--the veritable “staff of life.”
Olives, figs, cheese, and, at Athens especially, fish were the ordinary
Ὄψον.

[17] Translated by Davies and Vaughan. 1874.

[18] The _four_ sacred Pythagorean virtues--justice, temperance,
wisdom, fortitude. See notice of Plato above.

[19] Upon which excellent maxim Hierokles justly remarks: “The judge
here appointed is the most just of all, and the one which is [ought to
be] most at home with us, viz.: conscience and right reason.”

[20] _Nineteenth Century_, October, 1877. The Greek original of
the _Golden Verses_ is found in the text of Mullach, in _Fragmenta
Philosophorum Græcorum_. Paris, 1860.

[21] The Romans, we may remark, imported the gladiatorial fights from
Spain.

[22] _Hist. Naturalis VIII._ 7. His nephew says of these huge
slaughter-houses that “there is no novelty, no variety, or anything
that could not be seen once for all.” On one occasion, in the year
A.D. 284, we are credibly informed that 1,000 ostriches, 1,000 stags,
1,000 fallow-deer, besides numerous wild sheep and goats, were mingled
together for indiscriminate slaughter by the wild beasts of the forest
or the equally wild beasts of the city. (See _Decline and Fall._)

[23] Some traces of it may be found, _e.g._, in Lucretius (_De Rerum
Nat. II._, where see his touching picture of the bereaved mother-cow,
whose young is ravished from her for the horrid sacrificial altar);
Virgil (_Æneis VII._), in his story of Silvia’s deer--the most touching
passage in the poem; Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ In earlier Greek literature,
Euripides seems most in sympathy with suffering--at least as regards
his own species.

[24] I see and approve the better way; I pursue the worse.--_Metam._
vii., 20.

[25] In a note on this passage Lipsius, the famous Dutch commentator,
remarks: “I am quite in accord with this feeling. The constant use of
flesh meat (_assidua_ κρεοφαγία) by Europeans makes them stupid and
irrational (_brutos_).”

[26] Lipsius suggests, with much reason, that Seneca actually wrote
the opposite respecting his father, “who had no dislike for this
philosophy, but who feared calumny,” &c.

[27] On this melancholy truth compare Montaigne’s _Essais_.

[28] Ep. xxv. Lipsius here quotes Lucan “still more a philosopher than
a poet”:--

    “_Discite quam parvo liceat producere vitam,
    Et quantum natura petat.
    . . Satis est populis fluviusque Ceresque._”

“Learn by how little life may he sustained, and how much nature
requires. The gifts of Ceres and water are sufficient nourishment for
all peoples.”--(_Pharsalia._)

Also Euripides:--

    “Ἐπεὶ τί δεῖ βροτοῖσι . . . .
                        . . . πλὴν δύοιν μόνον,
    Δημητρὸς ἀκτῆς, πώματος θ’ ὑδρηχόου,
    Ἃπερ πάρεστι καὶ πέφυχ’ ἡμᾶς τρέφειν·
    Ὧν οὐκ ἀπαρκεῖ πλησμονή· τρυφῇ γέ τοι
    Ἄλλων ἐδεστῶν μηχανὰς θηρεύομεν.”

Which may be translated:--

    “_Since what need mortals, save twain things alone,
    Crush’d grain (heaven’s gift), and streaming water-draught?
    Food nigh at hand, and nature’s aliment--
    Of which no glut contents us. Pampered taste
    Hunts out device of other eatables._”

    (Fragment of lost drama of Euripides, preserved in _Athenæus_ iv.
    and in _Gellius_ vii.)

See, too, the elder Pliny, who professes his conviction that
“the plainest food is also the most beneficial” (_cibus simplex
utilissimus_), and asserts that it is from his eating that man derives
most of his diseases, and from thence that all the drugs and all the
arts of physicians abound. (_Hist. Nat._ xxvi., 28.)

[29] Cf. Pope’s accusation of the gluttony of his species:--

    “Of half that live, the butcher and the tomb.”

    --_Essay on Man._

[30] Compare Juvenal _passim_, Martial, Athenæus, Plutarch, and Clement
of Alexandria.

[31] _Ep._ cx. Cf. St. Chrysostom (_Hom._ i. on _Coloss._ i.) who seems
to have borrowed his equally forcible admonition on the same subject
from Seneca.

[32] _Epistola_ vii. and _De Brevitate Vitæ_ xiv. As to the effect
of the gross diet of the later _athletes_, Ariston (as quoted by
Lipsius) compared them to columns in the _gymnasium_, at once “sleek
and stony”--λιπαροὺς καὶ λιθίνους. Diogenes of Sinope, being asked why
the athletes seemed always so void of sense and intelligence, replied,
“Because they are made up of ox and swine flesh.” Galen, the great
Greek medical writer of the second century of our æra, makes the same
remark upon the proverbial stupidity of this class, and adds: “And
this is the universal experience of mankind--that a gross stomach does
not make a refined mind.” The Greek proverb, “παχεῖα γαστὴρ λεπτὸν οὐ
τίκτει νόον,” exactly expresses the same experience.

[33] _De Clementiâ_ i. and ii. The author has been accused of
flattering a notorious tyrant. The charge is, however, unjust, since
Nero, at the period of the dedication of the treatise to him, had not
yet discovered his latent viciousness and cruelty. Like Voltaire, in
recent times, Seneca bestowed perhaps unmerited praise, in the hope of
flattering the powerful into the practice of justice and virtue.

[34] Cf. the sad experiences of the great Jewish prophet. “The prophets
prophesy falsely,” &c.

[35] In the original, “dumb animals” (_mutis animalibus_)--a term
which, it deserves special note, Seneca usually employs, rather
than the traditional expressions “beasts” and “brutes.” The term
“dumb animals” is not strictly accurate, seeing that almost all
_terrestrials_ have the use of voice though it may not be intelligible
to human ears. Yet it is, at all events, preferable to the old
traditional terms still in general use.

[36] Compare the advice of the younger Pliny--“Read much rather
than many books.” (_Letters_ vii., 9 in the excellent revision of
Mr. Bosanquet, Bell and Daldy, 1877) and Gibbon’s just remarks
(_Miscellaneous Works_).

[37] See this finely and wittily illustrated in _Micromégas_ (one
of the most exquisite satires ever written), where the philosopher
of the star Sirius proposes the same questions to the contending
metaphysicians and _savans_ of our planet.

[38] This essay ranks among the most valuable productions that have
come down to us from antiquity. Its sagacious anticipation of the
modern argument from comparative physiology and anatomy, as well as
the earnestness and true feeling of its eloquent appeal to the higher
instincts of human nature, gives it a special interest and importance.
We have therefore placed it separately at the end of this article.

[39] Περὶ τοῦ Τὰ Ἄλογα Λογῶ Χρῆσθαι--“An Essay to prove that the Lower
Animals reason.”

[40] This essay is remarkable as being, perhaps, the first speculation
as to the existence of other _worlds_ than ours.

[41] As regards this complete silence of Plutarch, it may be attributed
to his eminently _conservative_ temperament, which shrank from an
exclusive system that so completely broke with the sacred traditions
of “the venerable Past.” Besides, Christianity had not assumed the
imposing proportions of the age of Lucian, whose indifference is
therefore more surprising than that of Plutarch.

[42] See, for example, the _Isis and Osiris_, 49. And yet, with
Francis Bacon, and Bayle, and Addison, he prefers Atheism to fanatical
Superstition.

[43] Of the many eminent persons who have been indebted to, or who have
professed the greatest admiration for, the writings of Plutarch are
Eusebius, who places him at the head of all Greek philosophers, Origen,
Theodoret, Aulus Gellius, Photius, Suidas, Lipsius. Theodore of Gaza,
when asked what writer he would first save from a general conflagration
of libraries, answered, “Plutarch; for he considered his philosophical
writings the most beneficial to society, and the best substitute for
all other books.” Amongst moderns, Montaigne, Montesquieu, Voltaire,
and especially Rousseau, recognise him as one of the first of moralists.

[44] See Milton (_Paradise Lost_, xi.), and Shelley (_Queen Mab_).

[45] Cf. Pope:--“Of half that live, the butcher and the tomb.”--_Moral
Essays._

[46] _Parallel Lives: Cato the Censor._ Translated by John and William
Langhorne, 1826.

[47] See _Odyssey_, xii., 395, of the oxen of the sun impiously
slaughtered by the companions of Ulysses.

[48] “Hinc subitæ mortes, atque intestata Senectus.”--“Hence sudden
deaths, and age without a will.” Juvenal, _Sat._ I.

[49]

    “The anarch Custom’s reign.”

    Shelley: _Revolt of Islam_.

[50] Such it seems, were some of the popular methods of torture in
the Slaughter Houses in the first century of our æra. Whether the
“calf-bleeding,” and the preliminary operations which produce the
_pâté de foie gras_, &c., or the older methods, bear away the palm for
ingenuity in culinary torture, may be a question.

[51] See Περὶ Σαρκοφαγίας Λόγος--in the Latin title, _De Esu
Carnium_--“On Flesh-Eating,” Parts 1 and 2. We shall here add the
authority of Pliny, who professes his conviction that “the plainest
food is the most beneficial.” (_Hist. Nat._ xi., 117); and asserts
that it is from his eating that man derives most of his diseases.
(xxv., 28.) Compare the feeling of Ovid, whom we have already
quoted--_Metamorphoses_ xv. We may here refer our readers also to the
celebration, by the same poet, of the innocent and peaceful gifts of
_Ceres_, and of the superiority of her pure table and altar--_Fasti_
iv., 395-416.

    _Pace, Ceres, læta est._ At vos optate, Coloni,
      _Perpetuam pacem_, perpetuumque ducem.
    Farra Deæ, micæque licet salientis honorem
      Detis: et in veteres turea grana focos.
    Et, si thura aberant, unctas accendite tædas.
      Parva bonæ Cereri, _sint modo casta_, placent.
    _A Bove succincti cultros removete ministri:
      Bos aret....
    Apta jugo cervix non est ferienda securi:
      Vivat, et in durâ sæpe laboret humo._

And the fine picture of Virgil of the agricultural life in the ideal
“Golden Age,” in which slaughter for food and war was unknown:--

                                      _Ante
    Impia quam cæsis gens est epulata juvencis._

                                      “Before
    An impious world the labouring oxen slew.”--_Georgics II._

[52] “The proclamation of the birth of Apollonius to his mother
by Proteus, and the incarnation of Proteus himself--the chorus of
swans which sang for joy on the occasion--the casting out of devils,
raising the dead, and healing the sick--the sudden disappearances and
reappearances of Apollonius--his adventures in the Cave of Trophonius,
and the sacred Voice which called him at his death, to which may be
added his claim as a teacher to reform the world--cannot fail to
suggest the parallel passages in the Gospel history.... Still, it must
be allowed that the resemblances are very general, and on the whole
it seems probable that the life of Apollonius was not written with a
_controversial_ aim, as the resemblances, though real, only indicate
that a few things were borrowed, and exhibit no trace of a systematic
parallel.”--_Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography._ Edited by Wm.
Smith, LL.D. So great was the estimation in which he was held, that
the emperor Alexander Severus (one of the very few good Roman princes)
placed his statue or bust in the imperial _Larium_ or private Chapel,
together with those of Orpheus and of Christ.

[53] Cf. Virgil, _Georgics_ II.: “Fundit humo _facilem_ victum
_justissima_ Tellus.”

[54] So greatly was he esteemed by the later and leading Fathers of the
Church that Cyprian, the celebrated Bishop of Carthage, and “the doctor
and guide of all the Western Churches,” was accustomed to say, whenever
he applied himself to the study of his writings, “_Da mihi magistrum_”
(“Give me my master”).--Jerome, _De Viris Illustribus_ I., 284.

[55] _On Fasting or Abstinence Against the Carnal-Minded._ The style of
Tertullian, we may remark, is, for the most part, obscure and abrupt.

[56] It is worth noting that neither the original (βρωμάτων) of
the “Authorised Version,” nor the _meats_ of the “A. V.” itself,
says anything about _flesh-eating_ in this favourite resort of its
apologists. Both expressions merely signify foods of _any kind_;
so that the passage in question of this Pastoral Letter--which is
apparently post-Pauline--can be made to condemn _absolute_ fasting
only: nor does the context warrant any other interpretation. As to
St. Paul, the great opponent of the earlier Christian belief and
practice, it must be conceded that he seems not to have shared the
abhorrence of the immediately accredited disciples of Jesus for the
sanguinary diet, especially of St. Matthew, of St. James, and of St.
Peter, who, as we are expressly assured by Clement of Alexandria,
St. Augustine, and others, lived entirely on _non-flesh_ meats. The
apparent indifferentism of St. Paul upon the question of abstinence is
best and most briefly explained by his avowed principle of action--from
the missionary point of view useful, doubtless, but from the point of
view of abstract ethics not always satisfactory--the being “all things
to all men.”

[57] Compare Seneca, _Epistles_, cx., and Chrysostom, _Homilies_.

[58] _Aquis sobrius, et cibis ebrius._ This important truth we venture
to commend to the earnest attention of those philanthropists, or
hygeists, who are adherents of what may be termed the _semi_-temperance
Clause--who abstain from alcoholic drinks but not from flesh.

[59] A more accurate version of the original than that of the _A.
V._ (1 _Cor._ viii., 8-13). We may here quote the conclusion of the
argument of the Greek-Jew Apostle--“Wherefore, if [the kind of] meat
is a cause of offence to my brother, I will eat no flesh while the
world stands, that I may not be a cause of offence to my brother”--and
press it, more particularly, upon the attention of English residents,
and especially of Christian _missionaries_, amongst the sensitive and
refined Hindus who form so overwhelming a proportion of the population
of the British Empire. According to the evidence of the missionaries of
the various Christian churches themselves, their habits of flesh-eating
have not infrequently been found to prejudice all but the lowest caste
of Hindus against the reception of other ideas of Christian and Western
“civilisation.”

[60] _Usque ad choleram ortygometras cruditando._ In the present case
it seems that the wanderers in the Arabian deserts were not so much
clamorous for flesh as for _some_ kind of sustenance, or rather for
something more than the _manna_ with which they were supplied; since
the late Egyptian slaves are reported to have said, “We remember the
fish that we did eat in Egypt freely--the cucumbers, the melons, and
the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; but now our soul is dried
away: _there is nothing at all_ besides this manna before our eyes.”

We may here take occasion to observe that the fact of the existence of
_sacrifice_ throughout their history necessarily involves the practice
of flesh-eating--indeed, the two practices are, historically, clearly
connected. What, however, we may fairly deduce from their simple and
frugal living in the Egyptian slavery, lasting, as it did, through
several centuries, during which period they must have been weaned
from the gross living of their previous barbarous _pastoral_ life, is
this--that but for the sacrificial rites (and, perhaps, the necessities
of the desert) the Jews would have, like other Eastern peoples,
probably adopted this _frugal_ living--of cucumbers, melons, onions,
&c.--in their new homes. Such, at least, seems to be a legitimate
inference from the highly-significant fact that, throughout their
sacred scriptures, not flesh-meats but corn, and oil, and honey, and
pomegranates, and figs, and other vegetable products (in which their
land originally abounded), are their highest dietary _ideal_--_e.g._,
“O that my people would have hearkened to me; for if Israel had walked
in my ways.... He should have fed them with the finest wheat flour: and
with honey out of the stony rock should I have satisfied thee.” (Ps.
lxxxi., 17; cf. also Ps. civ., 14, 15.) It is equally significant of
the latent and secret consciousness of the _unspiritual_ nature of the
products of the Slaughter-House, even in the Western world, that in the
_liturgies_ or “public services” of the Christian churches, wherever
food is prayed for or whenever thanks are returned for it, there is (as
it seems) a natural shrinking from mention of that which is obtained
only by cruelty and bloodshed, and it is “the kindly fruits of the
earth” which represent the legitimate dietary wants of the petitioners.

[61] “For they that are after the Flesh do mind the things of the
Flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For
to be _carnally minded is death_; but to be _spiritually minded is life
and peace_.... So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God....
Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live after the
flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye, through
the spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” (_Rom._
viii., 5, &c.) A more spiritual apprehension of ‘divine verities,’ if
we may so say, than the apparently more equivocal utterance of the same
great reformer elsewhere. Here it is well to observe, once for all that
the whole significance of the utterances of St. Paul upon flesh-eating
depends upon the bitter controversies between the older Jew and the
newer Greek or Roman sections of the rising Church. It is, in fact,
a question of the lawfulness of eating the flesh of the victims of
the Pagan and Jewish sacrificial altars--not of the question of
flesh-eating in the _abstract_ at all. In fine, it is a question not of
_ethics_, but of theological ritual. It is greatly to be lamented that
the confused and obscure translation of the _A. V._ has for so many
centuries hopelessly mystified the whole subject--as far, at least, as
the mass of the community is concerned.

[62] See _De Jejuniis Adversus Psychicos_. (Quinti. Sept. Flor.
Tertulliani Opera. Edited by Gersdorf, Tauchnitz.)

[63] In the _Clementine Homilies_, which had a great authority
and reputation in the earlier times of Christianity, St. Peter is
represented, in describing his way of living to Clement of Rome, as
professing the _strictest_ Vegetarianism. “I live,” he declares, “upon
bread and olives only, with the addition, rarely, of kitchen herbs”
(ἄρτῳ μόνῳ καὶ ἐλαίαις χρῶμαι καὶ σπανίως λαχάνοις xii. 6.) Clement of
Alexandria (_Pædagogus_ ii. 1) assures us that “Matthew the apostle
lived upon seeds, and hard-shelled fruits, and other vegetables,
without touching flesh;” while Hegesippus, the historian of the Church
(as quoted by Eusebius, _Ecclesiastical Hist._ ii. 2, 3) asserts of
St. James that “he never ate any animal food”--οὔδε εμψυχον ἔφαγε: an
assertion repeated by St. Augustine (_Ad. Faust_, xxii. 3) who states
that James, the brother of the Lord, “lived upon seeds and vegetables,
never tasting flesh or wine” (_Jacobus, frater Domini, seminibus
et oleribus usus est, non carne nec vino_). The connexion of the
beginnings of Christianity with the sublime and simple tenets of the
Essenes, whose communistic and abstinent principles were strikingly
coincident with those of the earliest Christians, is at once one of
the most interesting and one of the most obscure phenomena in its
nascent history. The Essenes, “the sober thinkers,” as their assumed
name implies, seem to have been to the more noisy and ostentatious
Jewish sects, what the Pythagoreans were to the other Greek schools
of philosophy--_practical moralists_ rather than mere talkers and
theorisers. They first appear in Jewish history in the first century
B.C. Their communities were settled in the recesses of the Jordan
valley, yet their members were sometimes found in the towns and
villages. Like the Pythagoreans, they extorted respect even from the
worldly and self-seeking religionists and politicians of the capital.
See Josephus (_Antiquities_ xiii. and xviii.), and Philo, who speak in
the highest terms of admiration of the simplicity of their life and
the purity of their morality. Dean Stanley (_Lectures on the Jewish
Church_, vol. iii.) regards St. John the Baptist as Essenian in his
substitution of “reformation of life” for “the sanguinary, costly gifts
of the sacrificial slaughter-house.”

[64] It is a curious and remarkable inconsistency, we may here observe,
that the modern ardent admirers of the Fathers and Saints of the
Church, while professing unbounded respect for their _doctrines_,
for the most part ignore the one of their _practices_ at once the
most ancient, the most highly reputed, and the most universal. _Quod
semper, quod ubique_, &c., the favourite maxim of St. Augustine and the
orthodox church, is, in this case, “more honoured in the breach than
in the observance.” Partial and periodical Abstinence, it is scarcely
necessary to add, however consecrated by later ecclesiasticism, is
sufficiently remote from the daily _frugal_ living of a St. James, a
St. Anthony, or a St. Chrysostom.

[65] The full title of the treatise is--_The Miscellaneous Collection
of T. F. Clemens of Gnostic (or Speculative) Memoirs upon the true
Philosophy_.

[66] This celebrated term distinguished the superiority of _knowledge_
(_gnosis_) of “the most polite, the most learned, and the most wealthy
of the Christian name.” During the first three or four centuries the
Gnostics formed an extremely numerous as well as influential section of
the Church. They sub-divided themselves into more than fifty particular
sects, of whom the followers of Marcion and the Manicheans are the most
celebrated. Holding opinions regarding the Jewish sacred scriptures
and their authority the opposite to those of the Ebionites or Jewish
Christians, they agreed, at least a large proportion of them, with the
latter on the question of kreophagy.

[67] _History of the Literature of Ancient Greece_, by K. O. Müller,
continued by J. W. Donaldson, D.D., vol. iii., 58.

[68] The argument here suggested, although rarely, if ever, adduced,
may well be deemed worthy of the most serious consideration. It is,
to our mind, one of the most forcible of all the many reasons for
abstinence. That the life even of a really useful member of the human
community should be supported by the slaughter of hundreds of innocent
and intelligent beings is surely enough to “give us pause.” What,
then, shall be said of the appalling fact, that every day thousands of
worthless, and too often worse than useless, human lives go down to
the grave (to be thenceforth altogether forgotten) after having been
the cause of the slaughter and suffering of countless beings, surely
far superior to themselves in all real worth? To object the privilege
of an “immortal soul” is, in this case, merely a miserable subterfuge.
Sidney Smith calculated that _forty-four_ wagon-loads of flesh had been
consumed by himself during a life of seventy years! (See his letter to
Lord Murray.)

[69] It was the fond belief of the _mediating_ Christian writers that
the best parts of Greek philosophy were derived, in whole or in part,
from the Jewish Sacred Scriptures. For this belief, which has prevailed
so widely, which, perhaps, still lingers amongst us, and which has
engaged the useless speculation of so many minds, an Alexandrian Jew
of the age of the later Ptolemies is responsible. It is now well known
that he deliberately forged passages in the (so-called) Orphic poems
and “Sybilline” predictions, in order to gain the respect of the Greek
rulers of his country for the Jewish Scriptures. This patriotic but
unscrupulous Jew is known by his Greek name of Aristobulus. He was
preceptor or counsellor of Ptolemy VI.

[70] 2 _Sam._ vi., 19. Clement, in common with all the first Christian
writers, quotes from the _Septuagint_ version, which differs
considerably from the Hebrew. The English translators of the latter,
presuming that “flesh” must have formed part of the royal bounty,
gratuitously insert that word in the context.

[71] _Pædagogus_ ii. 1, “On Eating.”

[72] These works, which would have been highly interesting, have, with
so many other valuable productions of Greek genius, long since perished.

[73] _Miscellanies_ vii. “On Sacrifices.”

[74] See Plutarch’s denunciation of the very same practice of the
butchers of his day, _Essay on Flesh Eating_. Unfortunately for
the credit of Jewish humanity, it must be added that the method of
butchering (enjoined, it is alleged, by their religious laws) entails
a greater amount of suffering and torture to the victim than even the
Christian. This fact has been abundantly proved by the evidence of many
competent witnesses. The cruelty of the Jewish method of slaughter was
especially exposed at one of the recent International Congresses of
representatives of European Societies for Prevention of Cruelty.

[75] _Miscellanies_ ii., 18. We have used for the most part the
translation of the writings of Clement, published in the Ante-Nicene
Library, by Messrs. Clarke, Edinburgh, 1869. The Greek text is corrupt.

[76] Περὶ Ἀποχῆς Τῶν Εμψύχων

[77] “The first book discussed alleged contradictions and other marks
of human fallibility in the Scriptures; the third treated of Scriptural
interpretation, and, strangely enough, repudiated the allegories of
Origen; the fourth examined the ancient history of the Jews; and, the
twelfth and thirteenth maintained the point now generally admitted by
scholars--that _Daniel_ is not a prophecy, but a retrospective history
of the age of Antiochus Epiphanes.”--_Donaldson_ (_Hist. of Gr. Lit._)

[78] In justice to the old Greek Theology which, as it really was,
has enough to answer for, it must be remarked that its Demonology, or
belief in the powers of subordinate divinities--in the first instance
merely the internunciaries, or mediators, or _angels_ between Heaven
and Earth--was a very different thing from the _Diabolism_ of Christian
theology, a fact which, perhaps, can be adequately recognised by
those only who happen to be acquainted with the history of that most
widely-spread and most fearful of all superstitions. Necessarily, from
the vague and, for the most part, merely secular character of the
earlier theologies, the _infernal_ horrors, with the frightful creed,
tortures, burnings, &c., which characterised the faith of Christendom,
were wholly unknown to the religion of Apollo and of Jupiter.

[79] Neo or New-Platonism may be briefly defined as a _spiritual_
development of the Socratic or Platonic teaching. In the hands of some
of its less judicious and rational advocates it tended to degenerate
into puerile, though harmless, superstition. With the superior
intellects of a Plotinus, Porphyry, Longinus, Hypatia, or Proclus, on
the other hand, it was, in the main at least, a sublime attempt at the
purification and spiritualisation of the established orthodox creed.
It occupied a position midway between the old and the new religion,
which was so soon to celebrate its triumph over its effete rival.
That Christianity, on its spiritual side (whatever the ingratitude of
its later authorities), owes far more than is generally acknowledged
to both the old and newer Platonism, is sufficiently apparent to the
attentive student of theological history.

[80] Author of a _Treatise on the Abandonment of the Flesh Diet_, 1709.
He died in the year 1737.

[81] Voltaire might have added the examples of the Greek _Coenobites_.
There is at least one celebrated and long-established religious
community, in the Sinaitic peninsula, which has always rigidly excluded
all flesh from their diet. Like the community of La Trappe, these
religious Vegetarians are notoriously the most free from disease and
most long-lived of their countrymen.

[82] Article _Viande_ (_Dict. Phil._) In other passages in his writings
the philosopher of Ferney, we may here remark, expresses his sympathy
with the humane diet. See especially his _Essai sur les Mœurs et
l’Esprit des Nations_ (introduction), and his Romance of _La Princesse
de Babylone_.

[83] Οἰκειώσις strictly means adoption, admission to intimacy and
family life, or “domestication.”

[84] The founder of the new Academy at Athens, and the vigorous
opponent of the Stoics.

[85] That unreasoning arrogance of human selfishness, which pretends
that all other living beings have come into existence for the sole
pleasure and benefit of man, has often been exposed by the wiser, and
therefore more humble, thinkers of our race. Pope has well rebuked this
sort of monstrous arrogance:--

    “Has God, thou fool, worked solely for thy good,
    Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?

           *       *       *       *       *

    Know, Nature’s children all divide her care,
    The fur that warms a monarch, warmed a bear.
    While man exclaims: ‘See, all things for my use!’
    ‘See, man for mine,’ replies a pampered goose.
    And just as short of reason he must fall,
    Who thinks _all made for one, not one for all_.”

    _Essay on Man, III._

And, as a commentary upon these truly philosophic verses, we may
quote the words of a recent able writer, answering the objection,
“Why were sheep and oxen created, if not for the use of man? replies
to the same effect as Porphyry 1600 years ago:” It is only pride and
imbecility in man to imagine all things made for his sole use. There
exist millions of suns and their revolving orbs which the eye of man
has never perceived. Myriads of animals enjoy their pastime unheeded
and unseen by him--many are injurious and destructive to him. All exist
for purposes but partially known. Yet we must believe, in general, that
all were created for their own enjoyment, for mutual advantage, and for
the preservation of universal harmony in Nature. If, merely because we
can eat sheep pleasantly, we are to believe that they exist only to
supply us with food, we may as well say that man was created solely
for various parasitical animals to feed on, “_because_ they do feed on
him.”--(_Fruits and Farinacea: the Proper Food of Man._ By J. Smith.
Edited by Professor Newman. Heywood, Manchester; Pitman, London.) See,
also, amongst other philosophic writers, the remarks of Joseph Ritson
in his “Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food a Moral Duty”--(Phillips,
London, 1802). As to Oxen and Sheep, it must be further remarked that
they have been made what they are by the intervention of man alone. The
original and wild stocks (especially that of sheep) are very different
from the metamorphosed and almost helpless domesticated varieties.
Naturam violant, pacem appellant.

[86] The Artificer or _Creator, par excellence_. In the Platonic
language, the usual distinguishing name of the subordinate creator of
our imperfect world.

[87] Cf. Ovid’s _Metam._, xv.; Plutarch’s _Essay on Flesh-Eating_;
Thomson’s _Seasons_.

[88] Περὶ Ἐποχῆς κ. τ. λ. In the number of the traditionary reformers
and civilisers of the earlier nations, the name of Orpheus has always
held a foremost place. In early Christian times Orpheus and the
literature with which his name is connected occupy a very prominent
and important position, and some celebrated forged prophecies passed
current as the utterances of that half-legendary hero. Horace adopts
the popular belief as to his radical dietetic reform in the following
verses:--

    Silvestres homines sacer, interpresque Deorum,
    _Cædibus et fœdo victu_ deterruit Orpheus.

    --_Ars Poetica._

Virgil assigns him a place in the first rank of the Just in the Elysian
paradise.--_Æn._ vi.

[89] In his witty satire, the _Misopogon_ or _Beard-Hater_--“a sort
of inoffensive retaliation, which it would be in the power of few
princes to employ”--directed against the luxurious people of Antioch,
who had ridiculed his frugal meals and simple mode of living, “he
himself mentions his vegetable diet, and upbraids the gross and sensual
appetite” of that orthodox but corrupt Christian city. When they
complained of the high prices of flesh-meats, “Julian publicly declared
that a _frugal city ought to be satisfied with a regular supply of
wine, oil, and bread_.”--_Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, xxiv.

[90] Gibbon, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, xxii. The
philosophical fable of Julian--_The Cæsars_--has been pronounced by
the same historian to be “one of the most agreeable and instructive
productions of ancient wit.” Its purpose is to estimate the merits or
demerits of the various Emperors from Augustus to Constantine. As for
the _Enemy of the Beard_, it may be ranked, for sarcastic wit, almost
with the _Jupiter in Tragedy_ of Lucian.

[91] Article, “Chrysostom,” in the _Penny Cyclopædia_.

[92] Baur’s _Life and Work of St. Paul_. Part ii., chap. 3.

[93] We here take occasion to observe that, while final appeals to
our sacred Scriptures to determine any sociological question--whether
of slavery, polygamy, war, or of dietetics--cannot be too strongly
deprecated, a candid and impartial inquirer, nevertheless, will gladly
recognise traces of a consciousness of the unspiritual nature of the
sacrificial altar and shambles. He will gladly recognise that if--as
might be expected in so various a collection of sacred writings
produced by different minds in different ages--frequent sanction of the
materialist mode of living may be urged on the one side; on the other
hand, the inspiration of the more exalted minds is in accord with the
practice of the true spiritual life. Cf. _Gen._ i., 29, 30; _Isaiah_
i., 11-17, and xi., 9 _Ps._ l., 9-14; _Ps._ lxxxi., 14-17; _Ps._
civ., 14, 15; _Prov._ xxiii., 2, 3, 20, 21; _Prov._ xxvii., 25-27:
_Prov._ xxx., 8, 22; _Prov._ xxxi., 4; _Eccl._ vi., 7; _Matt._ vi. 31;
1 _Cor._ viii., 13, and ix., 25; _Rom._ viii., 5-8, 12, 13; _Phil._
iii., 19, and iv., 8; _James_ ii., 13, 4, and iv., 1-3; 1 _Pet._ ii.,
11. Perhaps, next to the alleged authority of _Gen._ ix. (noticed
and refuted by Tertullian, as already quoted), the trance-vision of
St. Peter is most often urged by the _bibliolaters_ (or those who
revere the _letter_ rather than the _true inspiration_ of the Sacred
Books) as a triumphant proof of biblical sanction of materialism. Yet,
unless, indeed, _literalism_ is to over-ride the most ordinary rules
of common sense, as well as of criticism, all that can be extracted
from the “Vision” (in which were presented to the sleeper “all manner
of four-footed beasts of the earth, and _wild beasts_ and _creeping
things_,” which it will hardly be contented he was expected to eat)
is the fact of a mental illumination, by which the Jewish Apostle
recognises the folly of his countrymen in arrogating to themselves the
exclusive privileges of the “Chosen People.” Besides, as has already
been pointed out, the earliest traditions concur in representing St.
Peter as always a strict abstinent, insomuch that he is stated to have
celebrated the “Eucharist” with nothing but bread and salt.--_Clement
Hom._, xiv., 1.

[94] _Homily_, lxix. on _Mat._ xxii., 1-14.

[95] The _male_ sex, according to our ideas, might have been more
properly apostrophised; and St. Chrysostom may seem, in this passage
and elsewhere, to be somewhat partial in his invective. Candour,
indeed, forces us to remark that the “Golden-mouthed,” in common
with many others of the Fathers, and with the Greek and Eastern
world in general, depreciated the qualities, both moral and mental,
of the feminine sex. That the weaker are what the stronger choose
to make them, is an obvious truth generally ignored in all ages and
countries--by modern satirists and other writers, as well as by a
Simonides or Solomon. The _partial_ severity of the Archbishop of
Constantinople, it is proper to add, may be justified, in some measure,
by the contemporary history of the Court of Byzantium, where the
beautiful and licentious empress Eudoxia ruled supreme.

[96] St. Chrysostom seems to have derived this forcible appeal from
Seneca. Compare the remarks of the latter, Ep. cx.: “At, mehercule,
ista solicite scrutata varieque condita, cum subierint ventrem, una
atque cadem fæditas occupabit. Vis ciborum voluptatem contemnere?
_Exitum specta._”

[97] The _Homilies_ of St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of
Constantinople, Translated by Members of the English Church. Parker,
Oxford. See _Hom._ vii. on _Phil._ ii. for a forcible representation of
the inferiority, in many points, of our own to other species.

[98] For example, we may refer to the fact of trials of “criminal”
dogs, and other non-human beings, with all the formalities of ordinary
courts of justice, and in the gravest manner recorded by credible
witnesses. The convicted “felons” were actually hanged with all the
circumstances of human executions. Instances of such trials are
recorded even so late as the sixteenth century.

[99] His biographer, Marinus, writes in terms of the highest admiration
of his virtues as well as of his genius, and of the perfection to which
he had attained by his unmaterialistic diet and manner of living. He
seems to have had a remarkably cosmopolitan mind, since he regarded
with equal respect the best parts of all the then existing religious
systems; and he is said even to have paid solemn honours to all the
most illustrious, or rather most meritorious, of his philosophic
predecessors. That his intellect, sublime and exalted as it was, had
contracted the taint of superstition must excite our regret, though
scarcely our wonder, in the absence of the light of modern science;
nor can there be any difficulty in perceiving how the miracles and
celestial apparitions--which form a sort of halo around the great
teachers--originated, viz., in the natural enthusiasm of his zealous
but uncritical disciples. One of his principal works is _On the
Theology of Plato_, in six books. Another of his productions was a
Commentary on the _Works and Days of Hesiod_. Both are extant. He
died at an advanced age in 485, having hastened his end by excessive
asceticism.

[100] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, xl. This testimony of
the great historian to the merits of the last of the New-Platonists is
all the more weighty as coming from an authority notoriously the most
unimpassioned and unenthusiastic, perhaps, of all writers. Compare
his remarkable expression of personal feeling--guardedly stated as it
is--upon the question of kreophagy in his chapter on the history and
manners of the Tartar nations (chap. xxvi).

[101] _Trattato della Vita Sobria_, 1548.

[102] _Sævior armis Luxuria._ We may be tempted to ask ourselves
whether we are reading denunciations of the gluttony and profusion of
the sixteenth century or contemporary reports of public dinners in our
own country, _e.g._, of the Lord Mayor’s annual dinner. The vast amount
of slaughter of all kinds of victims to supply the various dishes of
_one_ of these exhibitions of national gluttony can be adequately
described only by the use of the Homeric word _hecatomb_--slaughter of
hundreds.

[103] _Amorevole Esortazione a Seguire La Vita Ordinata e Sobria._

[104] Cornaro’s heterodoxy in dietetics was not allowed, as may well
be supposed, to pass unchallenged by his contemporaries. One of his
countrymen, a person of some note, Sperone Speroni, published a reply
under the title of “Contra la Sobrietà;” but soon afterwards recanting
his errors (_rimettendosi spontaneamente nel buon sentiero_) he
wrote a Discourse in favour of Temperance. About the same time there
appeared in Paris an “Anti-Cornaro,” written “against all the rules
of good taste,” and which the editors of the _Biographie Universelle_
characterise as full of remarks “_tout à fait oiseuses_.”

[105] More points out very forcibly that to hang for theft is
tantamount to offering a premium for _murder_. Two hundred and fifty
years later Beccaria and other humanitarians vainly advanced similar
objections to the criminal code of christian Europe. It is hardly
necessary to remark that this Draconian bloodthirstiness of English
criminal law remained to belie the name of “civilisation” so recently
as fifty years ago.

[106] Erasmus (who, to lash satirically and more effectively the
various follies and crimes of men places the genius of Folly itself in
the pulpit) seems to have shared the feeling of his friend in regard to
the character of “sport.” “When they (the ‘sportsmen’) have run down
their victims, what strange pleasure they have in cutting them up! Cows
and sheep may be slaughtered by common butchers, but those animals that
are killed in hunting must be mangled by none under a gentleman, who
will fall down on his knees, and drawing out a slashing dagger (for a
common knife is not good enough) after several ceremonies shall dissect
all the joints as artistically as the best skilled anatomist, while
all who stand round shall look very intently and seem to be mightily
surprised with the novelty, though they have seen the same thing a
hundred times before; and he that can but dip his finger and taste of
the blood shall think his own bettered by it. And yet the constant
feeding on such diet does but assimilate them to the nature (?) of
those animals they eat,” &c.--_Encomium Moriæ_, or _Praise of Folly_.
If we recall to mind that three centuries and a half have passed away
since More and Erasmus raised their voices against the sanguinary
pursuits of hunting, and that it is still necessary to reiterate the
denunciation, we shall justly deplore the slow progress of the human
mind in all that constitutes true morality and refinement of feeling.

[107] _Utopia_ II.

[108] For a full and eloquent exposition of the social evils which
threaten the country from the natural but mischievous greed of
landowners and farmers, our readers are referred, in particular,
to Professor Newman’s admirable Lectures upon this aspect of the
Vegetarian creed, delivered before the Society at various times.
(Heywood: Manchester.)

[109] _Utopia._ Translated into English by Ralph Robinson, Fellow of
Corpus Christi College. London: 1556; reprinted by Edward Arber, 1869.
We have used this English edition as more nearly representing the style
of Sir Thomas More than a modern version. It is a curious fact that no
edition of the _Utopia_ was published in England during the author’s
lifetime--or, indeed, before that of Robinson, in 1551. It was first
printed at Louvain; and, after revision by the author, it was reprinted
at Basle, under the auspices of Erasmus, still in the original Latin.

[110] “With plaintive cries, all covered with blood, and in the
attitude of a suppliant.” See the story of the death of Silvia’s deer
(_Æneis_, viii.)--the most touching episode in the whole epic of
Virgil. The affection of the Tuscan girl for her favourite, her anxious
care of her, and the deep indignation excited amongst her people by the
murder of the deer by the son of Æneas and his intruding followers--the
cause of the war that ensued--are depicted with rare grace and feeling.

[111] “It was in the slaughter, in the primæval times, of wild beasts
(I suppose) the knife first was stained with the warm life-blood.”--See
_Ovid Metam._ xv.

[112] _Christian_ theology, to which doubtless Montaigne here refers,
the force of truth compels us to note, has always uttered a very
“uncertain sound” in regard to the rights and even to the frightful
sufferings of the non-human species. Excepting, indeed, two or three
isolated passages in the Jewish and Christian sacred Scriptures which,
according to the theologians, bear a somewhat _equivocal_ meaning, it
is not easy to discover what _particular_ theological or ecclesiastical
maxims Montaigne could adduce.

[113] We use the term in deference to universal custom, although
Francis Bacon protested 250 years ago that “Antiquity, as we call
it, is the young state of the world; for those times are ancient
when the world is ancient, and not those we vulgarly account ancient
by computing backwards--so that the present time is the real
Antiquity.”--_Advancement of Learning, I._ See also _Novum Organum_.

[114] Compare Shakspere’s eloquent indignation:--

                          “Man, proud Man,
    Dressed in a little brief authority,
    Most ignorant of what he’s most assured--
    His glassy essence--like an angry ape,
    Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,” &c.

    _Measure for Measure._

[115] With these just and common-sense arguments of Montaigne compare
the very remarkable treatise (remarkable both by the profession and
by the age of the author) of Hieronymus or Jerome Rorarius, published
under the title--“That the [so-called] irrational animals often make
use of reason better than men.” (_Quod Animalia Bruta Sæpe Utantur
Ratione Melius Homine._) It was given to the world by the celebrated
physician, Gabriel Naudé, in 1648, one hundred years after it was
written, and, as pointed out by Lange, it is therefore earlier than
the Essais of Montaigne. “It is distinguished,” according to Lange,
“by its severe and serious tone, and by the assiduous emphasising of
just such traits of the lower animals as are most generally denied to
them, as being products of the higher faculties of the soul. With their
virtues the vices of men are set in sharp contrast. We can therefore
understand that the MS., although written by a priest, who was a friend
both of Pope and Emperor, had to wait so long for publication.” (_Hist.
of Materialism._ Vol. i., 225. Eng. Trans.) It is noteworthy that the
title, as well as the arguments, of the book of Rorarius reveals its
original inspiration--the Essay of Plutarch. Equally heterodox upon
this subject is the _De La Sagesse_ of Montaigne’s friend, Pierre
Charron.

[116] _Essais_ de Michel de Montaigne, II., 12.

[117] See Article in _English Cyclopædia_.

[118] See _Elémens de la Philosophie de Newton_. The whole passage
breathes the true spirit of humanity and philosophy, and deserves
to be quoted in full in this place: “Il y a surtout dans l’homme
une disposition à la compassion aussi généralement répandue que nos
autres instincts. Newton avait cultivé ce sentiment d’humanité, et
il l’etendait jusqu’aux animaux. Il était fortement convaincu avec
Locke, que Dieu a donné aux animaux une mésure d’idées, et les mêmes
sentiments qu’à nous. Il ne pouvait penser que Dieu, qui ne fait rien
en vain, eût donné aux animaux des organes de sentiment, _afin qu’elles
n’eussent point de sentiment_. Il trouvait une contradiction bien
affreuse à croire que les animaux sentent, et à les faire souffrir.
Sa morale s’accordait en ce point avec sa philosophie. _Il ne cédait
qu’avec répugnance à l’usage barbare de nous nourrir du sang et de
la chair des êtres semblables à nous_, que nous caressons tous les
jours. Il ne permit jamais dans sa maison qu’on les fit mourir par
des morts lentes et recherchées, pour en rendre la nourriture plus
délicieuse. Cette compassion qu’il avait pour les animaux se tournait
en vraie charité pour les hommes. En effet, _sans l’humanité--vertu
qui comprend toutes les vertus--on ne mériterait guère le nom de
philosophe_.”--_Elémens_ v. An expression of feeling in sufficiently
striking contrast to the ordinary ideas. Compare _Essay on the Human
Understanding_, ii., 2.

[119] _History of Materialism._--We may here observe that Descartes
seems to have adopted his extraordinary theory as to the non-human
races as a sort of _dernier resort_. In a letter to one of his friends
(Louis Racine) he declares himself driven to his theory by the rigour
of the dilemma, that (seeing the innocence of the victims of man’s
selfishness) it is necessary either that they should he insensible to
suffering, or that God, who has made them, should be unjust. Upon which
Gleïzès makes the following reflection: “This reasoning is conclusive.
One must either be a Cartesian, or allow that man is very vile. Nothing
is more rigorous than this consequence.”--(_Thalysie Ou La Nouvelle
Existence_). La Fontaine has well illustrated the absurdity of the
animated machine theory in _Fables_ x. 1.

[120] See “_Elémens de la Philosophie de Newton_.”

[121] _Suspecta mihi semper fuerit_ (he writes) _ipsa hominis_ φιλαυτία.

[122] See Gassendi’s Letter, _Viro Clarissimo et Philosopho ac Medico
Expertissimo Joanni Baptistæ Helmontio Amico Suo Singulari_. Dated,
Amsterdam, 1629.

[123] _Physics._ Book II. _De Virtutibus._

[124] See _Philosophiæ Epicuri Syntagma. De Sobrietate contra Gulam._
(“View of the Philosophy of Epikurus: On Sobriety as opposed to
Gluttony.”) Part III. Florentiæ, 1727. Folio. Vol. III.

[125] _Advancement of Learning_, iv., 2. Bacon’s suggestion seems
to imply that human beings were still vivisected, for the “good” of
science, in his time. Celsus, the well-known Latin physician of the
second century, had protested against this cold-blooded barbarity of
deliberately cutting up a living human body. The wretched victims
of the vivisecting knife were, it seems, slaves, criminals, and
captives, who were handed over by the authorities to the physiological
“laboratory.” Harvey, Bacon’s contemporary, is notorious (and, it ought
to be added, infamous) for the number and the unrelenting severity of
his experiments upon the non-human slaves, which, though constantly
alleged by modern vivisectors to have been the means by which he
discovered the “circulation of the blood,” have been clearly proved to
have served merely as demonstrations in physiology to his pupils. But
we no longer wonder at Harvey’s indifference to the horrible suffering
of which he was the cause, when we read the similar atrocities of
vivisection and “pathology” of our own time. From the cold-blooded
cruelties of Harvey, who was accustomed to amuse Charles I. and his
family with his demonstrations, it is a pleasant relief to turn to
the better feeling of Shakspere on that subject. See his _Cymbeline_
(i., 6), where the Queen, who is experimenting in poisons, tells her
physician,

    “I will try the force of these thy compounds on such creatures as
    We count not worth the hanging--but none human.”

and is reminded that she would “from this practice but make hard
her heart.” Such a rebuke is in keeping with the true feeling which
inspired the poet to picture the undeserved pangs of the hunted Deer in
_As You Like It_, ii., 1.

[126] _Advancement of Learning._ viii., 2.

[127] See _Acetaria_ (page 170). By John Evelyn.

[128] The tract of Samuel Hartlib, entitled, _A Design for Plenty,
by a Universal Planting of Fruit Trees_, which appeared during the
Commonwealth Government, no doubt suggested to Evelyn his kindred
publication. Hartlib (of a distinguished German family) settled in this
country somewhere about the year 1630. By his writings, in advocacy
of better agriculture and horticulture, he has deserved a grateful
commemoration from after-times. Cromwell gave him a pension of £300,
which was taken away by Charles II., and he died in poverty and
neglect. It was to him Milton dedicated his _Tractate on Education_.

[129] Locke (one of the very highest names in Philosophy) had already
exhorted English mothers to make their children abstain “wholly from
flesh,” at least until the completion of the fourth or fifth year. He
strongly recommends a very sparing amount of flesh for after years; and
thinks that many maladies may be traceable to the foolish indulgence of
mothers in respect to diet.--See _Thoughts on Education_, 1690.

[130] He quotes, amongst others, Tertullian _De Jejuniis_ (On Fasting),
cap. iv.; Jerome (_Adv. Jovin_); Clemens of Alexandria (_Strom._ vii.);
Eusebius, _Preparatio Evangelica_ (Preparation for the Gospel), who
cites several abstinents from amongst the philosophers of the old
theologies.

[131] _Acetaria_ (“A Discourse of Salads”). Dedicated to Lord Somers,
of Evesham, Lord High Chancellor of England, and President of the Royal
Society, London, 1699.

[132] Translated by Cowper from the Latin poems of Milton. In a note
to the original poem Thomas Warton justly remarks that “Milton’s
panegyrics on temperance both in eating and in drinking, resulting from
his own practice, are frequent.”

[133] _Paradise Lost_, v. and xi. Cf. _Queen Mab_.

[134] _Le sang humain abruti ne pouvait plus s’élever aux choses
intellectuelles._ See _Discours sur L’Histoire Universelle_, a
historical sketch which, though necessarily infected by the theological
prejudices of the bishop, is, for the rest, considering the period in
which it was written, a meritorious production as one of the earliest
attempts at a sort of “philosophy of history.”

[135] _Penny Cyclopædia_, Article Mandeville.

[136] Upon which Ritson aptly remarks: “The sheep is not so much
‘designed’ for the _man_ as the _man_ is for the _tiger_, this animal
being naturally carnivorous, which man is not. But nature, and justice,
and humanity are not always one and the same thing.” To this remark we
may add with equal force, that almost all the living beings upon whom
our species preys have been so artificially changed from their natural
condition for the gratification of its selfish appetite as to be with
difficulty identified with the original stocks. So much for this theory
of creative _design_.

[137] _Fable of the Bees_, i. 187, &c.

[138] _Fable_ xxxvi., _Pythagoras and the Countryman_. This fable of
Gay may have been suggested by that of Æsop--preserved by Plutarch--who
represents a wolf watching a number of shepherds eating a sheep,
and saying to himself--“If _I_ were doing what _you_ are now about,
what an uproar you would make!” See also the instructive fable of La
Fontaine--_L’Homme et la Couleuvre_, one of the finest in the whole
twelve Books (_Livre_ x., 2), in which the Cow and Ox accuse the
base ingratitude of Man for the cruel neglect, and, finally, for the
barbarous slaughter of his fellow-labourers. The Cow, appealed to by
the Adder, replies:--

                            “Pourquoi dissimuler?
    Je nourris celui-ci depuis longues années:
    Il n’a sans mes bienfaits passé nulles journées.
    Tout n’est que pour lui seul: mon lait et mes enfants
    Le font à la maison revenir les mains pleines.
    Même j’ai rétabli sa santé, que les ans
        Avaient altérée; et mes peines
    Ont pour but son plaisir ainsi que son besoin.
    Enfin me voilà vieille. _Il me laisse
    Sans herbe._ S’il voulait encore me laisser paître!
    Mais je suis attachée.....
    Force coups, peu de gré. Puis, quand il était vieux,
    On croyait l’honorer chaque fois que les hommes
    _Achetaient de son sang l’indulgence des dieux_.”

[139] _The Wild Boar and the Ram._ For admirable rebukes of human
arrogance, see _The Elephant and the Bookseller_ and _The Man and the
Flea_.

[140] He was at one time so corpulent that he could not get in and out
of his carriage in visiting his patients at Bath.

[141] One of the many excellences of the non-flesh dietary is this
essential quality of fruits and vegetables, that they contain in
themselves sufficient liquid to allow one to dispense with a large
proportion of all extraneous drinks, and certainly with all alcoholic
kinds. Hence it is at once the easiest and the surest preventive of all
excessive drinking. Much convincing testimony has been collected to
this effect by the English and German Vegetarian Societies.

[142] It is neither necessary nor possible for everyone to practise
so extreme abstemiousness; but it is instructive to compare it for a
moment with the ordinary and prevalent indulgence in eating.

[143] _A Life of George Cheyne, M.D._, Parker and Churchill, 1846. See
also _Biog. Britannica_.

[144] Dr. Samuel Johnson gave up wine by the advice of Cheyne, and
drank tea with Mrs. Thrale and Boswell till he died, æt. 75.

[145] Bayle, the author of the great _Dictionnaire Historique et
Critique_ (1690), to whom belongs the lasting honour of having
inaugurated the critical method in history and philosophy, which
has since led to such extensive and important results, seems also
to have been the first explicitly to state the difficulties of that
greatest _crux_ of Theology--the problem of the existence, or rather
dominance, of Evil. His rival Le Clerc, in his _Bibliothéque_, took up
the orthodox cudgels. Lord Shaftesbury, the celebrated theologian and
moralist, wrote his dialogue--_The Moralists_ (1709)--in direct answer
to Bayle, followed the next year by the _Theodike or Vindication of
the Deity_ of Leibnitz. Two of the most able and distinguished of the
Anti-Optimists are Voltaire and Schopenhauer, the former of whom never
wearies of using his unrivalled powers of irony and sarcasm on the
_Tout est Bien_ theory. As for the latter philosopher, he has carried
his Anti-Optimism to the extremes of Pessimism.

[146] Pope here is scarcely logical upon his own premiss. It seems
impossible, upon any grounds of reason or analogy, to deny to the
lower animals a posthumous existence while vindicating it for
ourselves, inasmuch as the _essential_ conditions of existence are
identical for many other beings. To the serious thinker the question
of a post-terrestrial state of existence must stand or fall for both
upon the same grounds. Yet what can well be more weak, or more of
a subterfuge, than the pretence of many well-meaning persons, who
seek to excuse their indifferentism to the cruel sufferings of their
humble fellow-beings by the expression of a belief or a hope that
there is a future retributive state for them? It must be added that
this idle speculation--whether the non-human races are capable of
post-terrestrial life or no--might, to any serious apprehension,
seem to be wholly beside the mark. But what can be more monstrously
ridiculous (γέλοιον, in Lucian’s language) than the inconsistency
of those who would maintain the affirmative, and yet persist in
_devouring_ their clients? _Risum teneatis, amici!_

[147] _Spence’s Anecdotes_ and _The Guardian_, May 21, 1713. His
indignation was equally aroused by the tortures of the vivisectors of
the day. And he demands how do men know that they have “a right to kill
beings whom they [at least, the vast majority] are so little above, for
their own curiosity, or even for some use to them.”

[148] See _Travels_, &c. Part IV.

[149] _Dict. Phil._, in article _Viande_, where it is lamented that
his book, as far as appeared, had made no more converts than had the
Treatise of Porphyry fifteen centuries before.

[150] See the amusing scene of the gourmand Canon Sedillo and Dr.
Sangrado, who had been called in to the gouty and fever-stricken
patient: “‘Pray, what is your ordinary diet?’ [asks the physician.] ‘My
usual food,’ replied the Canon, ‘is broth and juicy meat.’ ‘Broth and
juicy meat!’ cried the doctor, alarmed. ‘I do not wonder to find you
sick; such dainty dishes are poisoned pleasures and snares that luxury
spreads for mankind, so as to ruin them the more effectually.... What
an irregularity is here! what a frightful regimen! You ought to have
been dead long ago. How old are you, pray?’ ‘I am in my sixty-ninth
year,’ replied the Canon. ‘Exactly,’ said the physician; ‘an early old
age is always the fruits of intemperance. If you had drunk nothing
else than pure water all your life, and had been satisfied with
simple nourishment--such as boiled apples, for example--you would
not now be tormented with the gout, and all your limbs would perform
their functions with ease. I do not despair, however, of setting you
to rights, provided that you be wholly resigned to my directions.’”
(_Adventures of Gil Blas_, ii., 2.) We may comment upon the satire
of the novelist (for so it was intended), that irony or sarcasm is a
legitimate and powerful weapon when directed against falsehood; that
there was, and is, only too much in the practice and principles of the
profession open to ridicule; but that the attempted ridicule of the
better living does not redound to the penetration or good sense of the
satirist.

[151] Compare the similar thoughts of the Latin poet, _Metam._ xv.

[152] _Autumn._ Read the verses which immediately follow, describing,
with profound pathos, the sufferings and anguish of the hunted Deer and
Hare.

[153] _Summer._

[154] _Observations on Man, II., 3._

[155] Quam vehementes haberent tirunculi impetus primos ad optima
quæque _si quis exhortaretur, si quis impelleret_! The general failure
Seneca traces partly to the fault of the schoolmasters, who prefer to
instil into the minds of their pupils a knowledge of _words_ rather
than of _things_--of _dialectics_ rather than of _dietetics_ (nos
docent disputare non vivere), and partly to the fault of parents who
expect a head in place of a heart training. (See _Letters to Lucilius_,
cviii.) _Quis doctores docebit?_

[156] An instance of the common confusion of thought and logic. The too
obvious fact that a large proportion of animals are carnivorous neither
proves nor justifies the carnivorousness of the _human_ species.
The real question is, is the human race originally _frugivorous_ or
_carnivorous_? Is it allied to the Tiger or to the Ape?

[157] “Who is this female personification ‘Nature’? What are ‘her
principles,’ and where does she reside?” asks Ritson quoting this
passage.

[158] _The World._ No. 190, as quoted by Ritson.

[159] Persian poets of the tenth and thirteenth centuries of our era.

[160] _Asiatic Researches._ iv. 12

[161] _Elémens de la Philosophie de Newton_, v. Haller, the founder
of modern physiology, assures us that “Newton, while he was engaged
upon his _Optics_, lived almost entirely on bread, and wine, and
water” (_Newtonus, dum_ Optica _scribebat, solo pœnè vino pane et aquâ
vixit_).--_Elements of Physiology_, vi., 198.

[162] A fact which brings out into strong relief the entirely
superfluous luxuries of living of the English residents.

[163] _Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations_, introduction
section xvi., and chap. iii. and iv.

[164] See _Gen._ ix. and _Ecclesiastes_ iii., 18, 19.--Note by Voltaire.

[165] See _Lettres d’Amabed à Shastasid_. See also article _Viande_ in
the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_.

[166] _La Princesse de Babylone._ Cf. _Dialogue du Chapon et de la
Poularde_.

[167] See article _Bêtes_ in the _Dict. Phil._

[168] _Elements of Physiology._

[169] Cf. Virgil’s “Magna parens frugum.”

[170] See the _Nouvelle Biographie Universelle_. Didot, Paris.

[171] _Græcorum Chirurgici Libri._ Firenze, 1754.

[172] _Dissertazione sopra l’uso esterno appresso gli Antichi
dell’acqua fredda sul corpo umano._ Firenze, 1747.

[173] _Del Vitto Pithagorico Per Uso Della Medicina: Discorso D’Antonio
Cocchi._ Firenze, 1743. A translation appeared in Paris in 1762 under
the title of _Le Régime de Pythagore_.

[174] _Del Vitto Pithagorico._ Amongst the heralds and forerunners
of Cocchi deserve to be mentioned with honour Ramazzini (1633-1714),
who earned amongst his countrymen the title of Hippokrates the Third;
Lessio (in his _Hygiastricon_, or Treatise on Health), in the earlier
part of the 17th century; and Lemcry, the French Physician and Member
of the Académie, author of _A Treatise on all Sorts of Food_, which was
translated into English by D. Hay, M.D., in 1745.

[175] Rousseau adds in a note: “I know that the English boast loudly of
their humanity and of the good disposition of their nation, which they
term ‘good nature,’ but it is in vain for them to proclaim this far and
wide. Nobody repeats it after them.” Gibbon, in the well-known passage
in his xxvith chapter, in which he speculates upon the influence of
flesh-eating in regard to the savage habits of the Tartar tribes,
quoting this remark of Rousseau, in his ironical way, says: “Whatever
we may think of the general observation, _we_ shall not easily allow
the truth of his example.”--_Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_,
xxvi.

[176] He corrects this mistake in a note: “One of my English
translators has pointed out this error, and both [of my translators]
have rectified it. Butchers and surgeons are received as witnesses, but
the former are not admitted as jurymen or peers in _criminal_ trials,
while surgeons are so.” Even this amended statement needs revision.

[177] How the French apostle of humanitarianism and refinement of
manners, if he were living, would regard the recently reported practice
of French and other physicians of sending their patients to the
slaughter-houses to drink the blood of the newly-slaughtered oxen may
be more easily imagined than expressed.

[178] Rather _carnes consumere nati_--“born simply to devour.”--See
_Hor._, Ep. I., 2.

[179] _Emile: ou de l’Education_, II.

[180] _Julie_ IV., _Lettre_ 10. See also her protests against shooting
and fishing.

[181] _Confessions._ One of his friends, Dussault, surprised him, it
seems, on one occasion eating a “cutlet.” Rousseau, conscious of the
betrayal of his principles, “blushed up to the whites of his eyes.”
(See Gleïzè’s _Thalysic_.) In truth, as we have already observed, his
principles on the subject of _dietetics_, as on some other matters,
were better than his practice. His sensibility was always greater than
his strength of mind.

[182] _Amœnitates Academicæ_, x., 8.

[183] This little word “seems” here, as in very many other
controversies, has a vast importance and needs a double emphasis.

[184] Buffon here entirely ignores the true cause of the “inanition” of
the poor classes of the community. It is not the want of _flesh_-meats,
but the want of all solid and nutritious _meat_ of any kind, which
is to be found amply in the abundant stores supplied by Nature at
first hand in the various parts of the vegetable world. Were the poor
able to procure, and were they instructed how best to use, the most
nourishing of the various _farinacea_, fruits, and kitchen herbs,
supplied by the home and foreign markets, we should hear nothing or
little of the scandalous scenes of starvation which are at present of
daily occurrence in our midst. The example of the Irish living upon
a few potatoes and buttermilk, or of the Scotch peasantry, instanced
by Adam Smith, proves how all-sufficient would be a diet judiciously
selected from the riches of the vegetable world. For, _à fortiori_, if
the Irish, living thus meagrely, not only support life, but exhibit
a _physique_ which, in the last century, called forth the admiration
of the author of _The Wealth of Nations_, might not our English poor
thrive upon a richer and more substantial vegetable diet which could
easily be supplied but for the astounding indifference of the ruling
classes?

[185] _Hist. Naturelle, Le Bœuf._

[186] Edition of Swift’s Works. Canon Sydney Smith, equally celebrated
as a _bon-vivant_ and as a wit, at the termination of his life writes
thus to his friend Lord Murray: “You are, I hear, attending more to
diet than heretofore. If you wish for anything like happiness in the
_fifth_ act of life _eat and drink about one-half what you could
eat and drink_. Did I ever tell you my calculation about eating and
drinking? Having ascertained the weight of what I could live upon, so
as to preserve health and strength, and what I did live upon, I found
that, between ten and seventy years of age, I had eaten and drunk
_forty-four horse wagon-loads of meat and drink more than would have
preserved me in life and health_! The value of this mass of nourishment
I considered to be worth seven thousand pounds sterling. It occurred
to me _that I must, by my voracity, have starved to death fully a
hundred persons_. This is a frightful calculation, but irresistibly
true.” Commentary upon this candid statement is superfluous. _Ab uno
disce omnes._ If amongst the richer classes the ordinary liver may
consume a somewhat smaller quantity of life during his longer or
shorter existence, at all events the _sum total_ must be a sufficiently
startling one for all who may have the courage and candour to reflect
upon this truly appalling subject. Another thought irresistibly
suggests itself. What _proportion_ of human lives thus supported is of
any real value in the world?

[187] In reply to this sort of apology it is obvious to ask--“Have
the _frugivorous_ races, who form no inconsiderable proportion of the
_mammals_, no claim to be considered?”

[188] To this very popular fallacy it is necessary only to object that
Nature may very well be supposed able to maintain the proper balance
for the most part. For the rest, man’s proper duty is to harmonise and
regulate the various conditions of life, as far as in him lies, not
indeed by satisfying his selfish propensities, but by assuming the
part of a benevolent and beneficent superior. To this we may add with
some force, that man appeared on the scene within a comparatively very
recent geological period, so that the Earth fared, it seems, very well
without him for countless ages.

[189] And, in point of fact, two-thirds at least of the whole human
population of our globe.

[190] This popular excuse is perhaps the feeblest and most disingenuous
of all the defences usually made for flesh-eating. Can the mere gift
of life compensate for all the horrible and frightful sufferings
inflicted, in various ways, upon their victims by the multiform
selfishness and barbarity of man? To what unknown, as well as known,
tortures are not every day the victims of the slaughter-house
subjected? From their birth to their death, the vast majority--it is
too patent a fact--pass an existence in which freedom from suffering of
one kind or other--whether from insufficient food or confined dwellings
on the one hand, or from the positive sufferings endured _in transitu_
to the slaughter-house by ship or rail, or by the brutal savagery of
cattle-drivers, &c.--is the exception rather than the rule.

[191] _Moral and Political Philosophy_, i., 2. It is deeply to be
deplored that Dr. Paley is in a very small minority amongst christian
theologians, of candour, honesty, and feeling sufficient to induce
them to dispute at all so orthodox a thesis as the right to slaughter
for food. That he is compelled, by the force of truth and honesty, to
abandon the popular pretexts and subterfuges, and to seek refuge in the
_supposed_ authority of the book of _Genesis_, is significant enough.
Of course, to all reasonable minds, such a course is tantamount to
giving up the defence of kreophagy altogether; and, if it were not for
theological necessity, it would be sufficiently surprising that Paley’s
intelligence or candour did not discover that if flesh-eating is to be
defended on biblical grounds, so, by parity of reasoning, are also to
be defended--slavery, polygamy, wars of the most cruel kind, &c.

[192] _The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy_, xii., 11.
See, amongst others, the philosophical reflections of Mr. Greg in his
_Enigmas of Life_, Appendix. But the subject has been most fully and
satisfactorily dealt with by Professor Newman in his various Addresses.

[193] Compare the similar observation of Flourens, Secretary of the
French Academy of Sciences, in his _Treatise on the Longevity of Man_
(Paris, 1812). He quotes Cornaro, Lessio, Haller, and other authorities
on the reformed regimen.

[194] He well exposes the fatal mischief of _emulation_ (in place of
love of truth and of love of knowledge, for its own sake) in schools
which tends to intensify, if not produce, the _selfism_ dominant in all
ranks of the community. Not the least meritorious of his exhortations
to Governments is his desire that they would employ themselves in such
useful works as the general planting of trees, producing nourishing
foods, in place of devastating the earth by wars, &c.

[195] The reason, as given by himself, for his abandonment in after
years of his self-imposed reform, is worthy neither of his philosophic
acumen nor of his ordinary judgment. It seems that on one occasion,
while his companions were engaged in sea-fishing, he observed that the
captured fish, when opened, revealed in its interior the remains of
another fish recently devoured. The young printer seemed to see in this
fact the ordinance of Nature, by which living beings live by slaughter,
and the justification of human carnivorousness. (See _Autobiography_.)
This was, however, to use the famous Sirian’s phrase, “to reason
badly;” for the sufficient answer to this alleged justification of
man’s flesh-eating propensity is simply that the fish in question was,
by natural organisation, _formed_ to prey upon its fellows of the sea,
whereas man is _not formed_ by Nature for feeding upon his fellows of
the land; and, further, that the larger proportion of _terrestrials_ do
not live by slaughter.

[196] _Wealth of Nations_ iii., 341. See, too, Sir Hans Sloane
(_Natural History of Jamaica_, i., 21, 22), who enumerates almost
every species of vegetable food that has been, or may be, used for
food, in various parts of the globe; the philosophic French traveller,
Volney (_Voyages_), who, in comparing flesh with non-flesh feeders, is
irresistibly forced to admit that the “habit of shedding blood, or even
of seeing it shed, corrupts all sentiment of humanity;” the Swedish
traveller Sparrman, the disciple of Linné, who corrects the astonishing
physiological errors of Buffon as to the human digestive apparatus;
Anquetil (_Récherches sur les Indes_), the French translator of the
_Zend-Avesta_ who, from his sojourn with the vegetarian Hindus and
Persians, derived those more refined ideas which caused him to discard
the coarser Western living; and Sir F. M. Eden (_State of the Poor_).

[197] _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, xxvi.
Notwithstanding Gibbon’s expression of horror, we shall venture to
remark that the “unfeeling murderers” of the Tartar steppes, in
slaughtering each for himself, are more just than the _civilised_
peoples of Europe, with whom a pariah-class is set apart to do the
cruel and degrading work of the community.

[198] _The Task._ When Cowper wrote this (in 1782) the Law was entirely
silent upon the rights of the lower animals to protection. It was not
until nearly half a century later that the British Legislature passed
the first Act (and it was a very partial one) which at all considered
the rights of any non-human race. Yet Hogarth’s _Four Stages of
Cruelty_--to say nothing of literature--had been several years before
the world. It was passed by the persistent energy and courage of one
man--an Irish member--who braved the greatest amount of scorn and
ridicule, both within and without the Legislature, before he succeeded
in one of the most meritorious enterprises ever undertaken. Martin’s
Act has been often amended or supplemented, and always with no little
opposition and difficulty.

[199] The term “Mercy,” it is important to observe, is one of those
words of ambiguous meaning, which are liable, in popular parlance, to
be misused. It seems to have a double origin--from _misericordia_,
“Pity” (its better parentage), and _merces_, “Gain,” and, by deduction,
“Pardon” granted for some consideration. It is in this latter sense
that the term seems generally to be used in respect of the non-human
races. But it is obvious to object that “pardon,” applicable to
_criminals_, can have no meaning as applied to the innocent. _Pity_
or _Compassion_, still more _Justice_--these are the terms properly
employed.

[200] The observation of a _non-Christian_ moralist (_Juvenal_, xv.) It
is the motto chosen by Oswald for his title page.

[201] In the Hindu sacred scriptures, and especially in the teaching
of the great founder of the most extensive religion on the globe, this
regard for non-human life, however originating, is more obvious than
in any other sacred books. But it is most charmingly displayed in that
most interesting of all Eastern poetry and drama--_Sakuntala; or The
Fatal Ring_, of the Hindu Kalidâsa, the most frequently translated of
all the productions of Hindu literature. We may refer our readers also
to _The Light of Asia_, an interesting versification of the principal
teaching of Sakya-Muni or Gautama.

[202] _The Cry of Nature: an Appeal to Mercy and to Justice on behalf
of the Persecuted Animals._ By John Oswald. London, 1791.

[203] _Long Life, or the Art of Prolonging Human Existence._

[204] See the _Nouvelle Biographie Universelle_ for complete
enumeration of his writings.

[205] _Makrobiotik._

[206] Afterwards Sir Richard Phillips, whose admirable exposition of
his reasons for abandoning flesh-eating, published in the _Medical
Journal_, July 1811, is quoted in its due place.

[207] _Abstinence from Animal Food a Moral Duty_, IX. Ritson, in a
note, quotes the expression of surprise of a French writer, that
whereas abstinence “from blood and from things strangled” is especially
and solemnly enjoined by the immediate successors of Christ, in a
well-known prohibition, yet this sacred obligation is daily “made of
none effect” by those calling themselves _Christians_.

[208] “I have known,” says Dr. Arbuthnot, “more than one instance of
irascible passions having been much subdued by a vegetable diet.”--Note
by Ritson.

[209] Written in 1802. Since that time the “pastime” of worrying
bulls and bears, has in this country become illegal and extinct.
Cock-fighting, though illegal, seems to be still popular with the
“sporting” classes of the community.

[210] _General Advertiser_, March 4th, 1784. Since Ritson quoted this
from the newspaper of his day, 80 years ago, the same scenes of equal
and possibly of still greater barbarity have been recorded in our
newspapers, season after season, of the royal and other hunts, with
disgusting monotony of detail. Voltaire’s remarks upon this head are
worthy of quotation: “It has been asserted that Charles IX. was the
author of a book upon hunting. It is very likely that if this prince
had cultivated less the art of torturing and killing other animals,
and had not acquired in the forests the habit of seeing blood run,
there would have been more difficulty in getting from him the order of
St. Bartholomew. The chase is one of the most sure means for blunting
in men the sentiment of pity for their own species; an effect so much
the more fatal, as those who are addicted to it, placed in a more
elevated rank, have more need of this bridle.”--_Œuvres_ LXXII., 213.
In Flaubert’s remarkable story of _La Légende de St. Julien_ the hero
“developes by degrees a propensity to bloodshed. He kills the mice in
the chapel, the pigeons in the garden, and soon his advancing years
gave him opportunity of indulging this taste in hunting. He spends
whole days in the chase, caring less for the ‘sport’ than for the
slaughter.” One day he shoots a Fawn, and while the despairing mother,
“looking up to heaven, cried with a loud voice, agonising and human,”
St. Julien remorselessly kills her also. Then the male parent, a
noble-looking Stag, is shot last of all; but, advancing, nevertheless,
he comes up to the terrified murderer, and “stopped suddenly, and with
flaming eyes and solemn tone, as of a just judge, he spoke three times,
while a bell tolled in the distance, ‘Accursed one! ruthless of heart!
thou shalt slay thy father and mother also,’ and tottering and closing
his eyes he expired.” The blood-stained man on one occasion is followed
closely by all the victims of his wanton cruelty, who press around him
with avenging looks and cries. He fulfils the prophecy of the Stag, and
murders his parents.--See _Fortnightly Review_, April, 1878.

[211] It is scarcely necessary to remind our readers that a quarter of
a century later (1827), when Martin had the courage to introduce the
first bill for the prevention of cruelty to certain of the domesticated
animals (a very partial measure after all), the humane attempt was
greeted by an almost universal shout of ridicule and derision, both in
and out of the Legislature.

[212] See Appendix.

[213] Quoted from an article in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, (August,
1787), signed _Etonensīs_, who, amongst other particulars, states of
the hero of his sketch that he was “one of the most original geniuses
who have ever existed.... He was well skilled in natural philosophy,
and might be said to have been a moral philosopher, not in _theory_
only, but in strict and uniform _practice_. He was remarkably humane
and charitable; and, though poor, was a bold and avowed enemy to every
species of oppression.... Certain it is, that he accounted the murder
(as he called it) of the meanest animal, except in self defence, a
very criminal breach of the laws of nature; insisting that the creator
of all things had constituted man not the _tyrant_, but the lawful
and limited _sovereign_, of the inferior animals, who, he contended,
answered the ends of their being better than their little despotic
lord.... He did not think it

                                ‘Enough
    In this late age, advent’rous to have touched
    Light on the precepts of the Samian Sage,’

for he acted in strict conformity with them.... His vegetable and milk
diet afforded him, in particular, very sufficient nourishment; for
when I last saw him, he was still a tall, robust, and rather corpulent
man, though upwards of fourscore.” He was reported it seems, to be a
believer in the _Metempsychosis_. “It was probably so said,” remarks
Ritson, “by ignorant people who cannot distinguish justice or humanity
from an absurd and impossible system. The compiler of the present book,
like Pythagoras and John Williamson, abstains from flesh-food, but he
does not believe in the _Metempsychosis_, and much doubts whether it
was the _real_ belief of either of those philosophers.”--_Abstinence
from Animal Food a Moral Duty_, by Joseph Ritson. R. Phillips, London,
1802.

[214] In a sketch of the life of George Nicholson, contributed to a
Manchester journal, by Mr. W. E. A. Axon.

[215] Perhaps the fallacy of this line of apology, on the part of the
ordinary dietists, cannot be better illustrated than by the example
of the man-eating tribes of New Zealand, Central Africa, and other
parts of the world, who confessedly are (or were) _hominivorous_, and
who have been by travellers quoted as some of the finest races of men
on the globe. The “wholesome nutriment” of their human food was as
forcible an argument for their stomach as the “agreeable flavour” was
attractive for their palates. Such glaring fallacy might be illustrated
further by the example of the man-eating tiger who, we may justly
imagine, would use similar apologies for his practice.

[216] _On the Conduct, &c._, and _The Primeval Diet of Man_, &c., by
George Nicholson, Manchester and London, 1797, 1801. The author assumes
as his motto for the title-page the words of Rousseau--_Hommes, soyez
humains! C’est votre premier devoir. Quelle sagesse y a-t-il pour vous
hors de l’humanité?_ “Humans, be _humane_! It is your first duty. What
wisdom is there for you without humanity?”

[217] _Surgical Observations on Tumours._ John Abernethy, M.D., F.R.C.S.

[218] Excessive poverty of blood, it is obvious to remark, is caused,
not by abstaining from flesh but by abstaining from a _sufficient_
amount of _nutritious_ non-flesh foods.

[219] _Additional Reports_, 1814. Amongst valuable diagnoses of this
kind the reader may be referred in particular to the highly interesting
one of the Rev. C. H. Collyns, M.A., Oxon, which originally appeared
in the _Times_ newspaper, and which twice has been republished by the
Vegetarian Society. The success of the pure regimen in first mitigating
and, finally, in altogether subduing long-inherited gouty affections,
was complete and certain. The recently published evidence of the
President of the newly-formed French Society, Dr. A. H. de Villeneuve,
is equally satisfactory. (See _Bulletin de la Société Végétarienne_ of
Paris, as quoted in _Nature_, Jan., 1881.)

[220] See, too, the testimony of Newton, _Return to Nature_, and of
Shelley in his _Essay on the Vegetable Diet_, in which he describes
these children as “the most beautiful and healthy beings it is possible
to conceive. The girls are the most perfect models for a sculptor.
Their dispositions, also, are the most gentle and conciliating.”

[221] _The Life of William Lambe, M.D., Fellow of the Royal College of
Physicians._ By E. Hare, C.S.I., Inspector-General of Hospitals, to
which valuable biography we are indebted for the present sketch. In
Mr. Hare’s memoir will be found, among other testimonies to the truths
of Vegetarianism, a highly-interesting letter, written to him by his
friend Dr. H. G. Lyford, an eminent physician of Winchester.

[222] _Life of Shelley_, by Jefferson Hogg, quoted by Mr. Hare in Life
of Dr. Lambe. Hogg adds that he conformed for good fellowship, and
found the purer food an agreeable change.

[223] See the _Dietetic Reformer and Vegetarian Messenger_, August,
1873.

[224] _Pythagoran, Anytique reum, doctumque Platona_: “Pythagoras and
the Man accused by Anytus [Socrates] and the learned Plato.”--_Satires_
of Horace.

[225] This is, perhaps, scarcely just to Pythagoras and his school. It
is, without doubt, deeply to be lamented that they did not more widely
promulgate a doctrine of such vital importance to the world; but the
reasons of their reserve and partial reticence have been indicated
already in our notice of the founder of _Akreophagy_. In a word--like
the Founder of Christianity in a later age--they had many things to say
which the world could not then learn. Moreover, as Gleïzès remarks, the
teachers themselves could not have, from the nature of the case, the
full knowledge of later times.

[226] The eloquence and style of Buffon, it need scarcely be remarked,
are more indisputable than his scientific accuracy. Amongst his many
errors, none, however, is more surprising than his assertion of the
carnivorous anatomical organisation of man, which has been corrected
over and over again by physiologists and _savants_ more profound than
Buffon.

[227] “_Lachrymas--nostri pars optima sensus._”

[228] In newly-discovered countries, no decided predominance of one
species over another has been found; and the reason is, that qualities
are pretty nearly equally divided, and that the strongest animal is not
at the same time the most agile or the most intelligent.--_Note_ by
Gleïzès.

[229] Upon this, not the least interesting and important of the
side views of Vegetarianism, we refer our readers, amongst numerous
authorities, to the opinions of Paley, Adam Smith, Prof. Newman,
Liebig, and W. R. Greg (in _Social Problems_).

[230] That the victims of the Slaughter-House have, in fact, a full
presentiment of the fate in store for them, must be sufficiently
evident to every one who has witnessed a number of oxen or sheep
driven towards the scene of slaughter--the frantic struggles to escape
and rush past the horrible locality, the exertions necessary on the
part of the drovers or slaughtermen to force them to enter as well as
the frequent breaking away of the maddened victim--maddened alike by
the blows and clamours of its executioners and the presentiment of
its destiny--who frantically rushes through the public streets and
scatters the terrified human passengers--all this abundantly proves
the transparent falsity of the assertion of the unconsciousness or
indifference of the victims of the shambles. See a terribly graphic
description of a scene of this kind in _Household Words_, No. 14,
quoted in _Dietetic Reformer_ (1852), in _Thalysie_, and in the
_Dietetic Reformer_, _passim_. Also in _Animal World_, &c., &c.

[231] _Thalysie: ou La Nouvelle Existence_: Par J. A. Gleïzès. Paris,
1840, in 3 vols., 8vo. See also preface to the German version of R.
Springer, Berlin, 1872. Our English readers will be glad to learn
that a translation by the English Vegetarian Society is now being
contemplated.

[232] _Poeta_, in its original Greek meaning, marks out a _creator_ of
new, and, therefore, (it is presumable) true ideas.

[233] Compare the fate of Gibbon, who, at the same age, found himself
an outcast from the University for a very opposite offence--for having
embraced the dogmas of Catholicism. (See _Memoirs of my Life and
Writings_, by Edw. Gibbon.) The future historian of _The Decline and
Fall_, it may be added, speedily returned to Protestantism, though not
to that of his preceptors.

[234] _Shelley._ By J. A. Symonds. Macmillan, 1887.

[235] Hogg’s _Life of Shelley_. Moxon (1858).

[236] _Shelley._ By J. A. Symonds.

[237] Cuvier’s _Leçons d’Anatomie Comp._, Tom. III., pages 169, 373,
443, 465, 480. Rees’ _Cyclop._, Art Man.

[238] Inasmuch as at this moment there are in this country more than
two thousand persons of all classes, very many for thirty or forty
years strict abstinents from flesh-meat, enrolled members of the
Vegetarian Society (not to speak of a probably large number of isolated
individual abstinents scattered throughout these islands, who, for
whatever reason, have not attached themselves to the Society), and
that there have long been Anti-flesh eating Societies in America and
in Germany, the _à fortiori_ argument in the present instance will be
allowed to be of _double_ weight.

[239] “See Mr. Newton’s Book [_Return, to Nature._ Cadell, 1811.] His
children are the most beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible
to conceive. The girls are perfect models for a sculptor; their
dispositions also are the most gentle and conciliating. The judicious
treatment they receive may be a correlative cause of this. In the first
five years of their life, of 18,000 children that are born, 7,500
die of various diseases--and how many more that survive are rendered
miserable by maladies not immediately mortal! The quality and quantity
of a mother’s milk are materially injured by the use of dead flesh.
On an island, near Iceland, where no vegetables are to be got, the
children invariably die of _tetanus_ before they are three weeks old,
and the population is supplied from the mainland.--Sir G. Mackenzie’s
_History of Iceland_--note by Shelley.”

[240] _Revolt of Islam_, v. 51, 55, 56.

[241] Lately given to the world by Mr. Forman who has carefully
collated and printed from Shelley’s MSS.

[242] _English Cyclopædia._

[243] _Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley._ Edited by Mrs. Shelley. Moxon.

[244] _Shelley._ By J. A. Symonds.

[245] See preface to _The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley_.
Edited by Mrs. Shelley. New edition. London, 1869. The increasing
reputation of Shelley is proved, at the present time, by the increasing
number of editions of his writings, and by the increasing number of
thoughtful criticisms and biographies of the poet, by some of the most
cultured minds of the day. Since the time, indeed, when a popular
writer but sometimes rash critic, with condemnable want of discernment
and still more condemnable prejudice, so egregiously misrepresented to
his readers the character as well of the poet as of his poems--which
latter, nevertheless, he was constrained to admit to be the most
“melodious” of all English poetry excepting Shakespere, and (their
“utopian” inspiration apart) the most “perfect”--(_Thoughts on Shelley
and Byron_, by Rev. C. Kingsley, “Fraser,” 1853,) the pre-eminence
of the poet, both morally and æsthetically, has been sufficiently
established.

[246] In another place he indulges his ironical wit at the expense of
the beef-eaters, in representing a certain Cretan personage in Greek
story to have

                “Promoted breeding cattle,
    To make the Cretans bloodier in battle;
    For we all know that English people are
      _Fed upon beef_.....
    We know, too, _they are very fond of war_--
      A pleasure--like all pleasures--rather dear.”

[247] See _Life and Letters_. Murray.

[248] _Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Sir R. Phillips._
London, 1808.

[249] They had been published by him several years earlier in the
_Medical Journal_ for July 27 1811.

[250] _Golden Rules of Social Philosophy: being a System of Ethics._
1826.

[251] _A Dictionary of the Arts of Life and Civilisation._ 1833.
London: Sherwood & Co. It will be seen that the origin of his revolt
from orthodox dietetics, given by himself, differs from that narrated
in the Life from which we have quoted above. It is possible that both
incidents may have equally affected him at the moment, but that the
spectacle of the London slaughter-house remained most vividly impressed
upon his mind.

[252] _Million of Facts_, p. 176. For the substance of the greater part
of this biography, our acknowledgments are due to the researches of Mr.
W. E. A. Axon, F.R.S.L., F.S.S.

[253] _La Chute d’un Ange. Huitième Vision._

[254] _Les Confidences_, par Alphonse de Lamartine, Paris, 1849-51,
quoted in _Dietetic Reformer_, August, 1881. It is in this book,
too, that he commemorates some of the many atrocities perpetrated by
schoolboys with impunity, or even with the connivance of their masters,
for their amusement, upon the helpless victims of their unchecked
cruelty of disposition.

[255] The question of kreophagy and anti-kreophagy had already been
mooted, it appears, in the _Institut_, at the period of the great
Revolution of 1789, as a legitimate consequence of the apparent general
awakening of the human conscience, when slavery also was first publicly
denounced. What was the result of the first raising of this question in
the French Chamber of Savans does not appear, but, as Gleïzès remarks,
we may easily divine it. One interesting fact was published by the
discussion in the Deputies’ Chamber--viz., that in the year 1817, in
Paris, the consumption of flesh was less than that of the year 1780 by
40,000,000lb., in proportion to the population (see Gleïzès, _Thalysie,
Quatrième Discours_), a fact which can only mean that the rich, who
support the butchers, had been _forced_ by reduced means to live less
_carnivorously_.

[256] In the same strain an eminent _savan_, Sir D. Brewster, has given
expression to his feeling of aversion from the slaughter-house--a
righteous feeling which (strange perversion of judgment) is so
constantly repressed in spite of all the most forcible promptings of
conscience and reason! These are his words: “But whatever races there
be in other spheres, we feel sure that there must be one amongst whom
there are no man-eaters--no heroes with red hands--no sovereigns with
bloody hearts--and no statesmen who, leaving the people untaught,
educate them for the scaffold. In the Decalogue of that community will
stand pre-eminent, in letters of burnished gold, the highest of all
social obligations--‘_Thou shalt not kill_, neither for territory,
for fame, for lucre, _nor for food_, _nor for raiment_, _nor for
pleasure_.’ The lovely forms of life, and sensation, and instinct, so
delicately fashioned by the Master-hand, shall no longer be destroyed
and trodden under foot, but shall be the objects of increasing love and
admiration, the study of the philosopher, the theme of the poet, and
the companions and auxiliaries of Man.”--_More Worlds than One._

[257] _Bible de l’Humanité--Redemption de la Nature, VI._

[258] Cf. a recently published Essay, in the form of a letter to the
present Premier, Mr. Gladstone, entitled _The Woman and the Age_. The
author, one of the most refined thinkers of our times, has at once
admirably exposed the utter sham as well as cruelty of a vivisecting
science, and demonstrated the necessary and natural results to the
human race from its shameless outrage upon, and cynical contempt for,
the first principles of morality.

[259] _The Bird_, by Jules Michelet. English Translation. Nelson,
London, 1870. See, too, his eloquent exposure of the scientific or
popular error which, denying conscious reason and intelligence, in
order to explain the mental constitution of the non-human races (as
well that of the higher mammals as of the inferior species), has
invented the vague and mystifying term “instinct.”

[260] _La Femme_, vi. Onzième Edition. Paris, 1879.

[261] This memorable building has been succeeded by the present
well-known one in Cross Lane, where the Rev. James Clark, one of the
most esteemed, as well as one of the oldest, members of the Vegetarian
Society is the able and eloquent officiating minister.

[262] These biographical facts we have transferred to our pages from an
interesting notice by Mr W. E. A. Axon, F.R.S.L.

[263] _Memoir of the Rev. William. Metcalfe, M.D._ By his son, Rev.
Joseph Metcalfe, Philadelphia, 1865.

[264] See _Memoir of the Rev. William Metcalfe_. By his son, the Rev J.
Metcalfe. Philadelphia; J. Capen. 1866.

[265] See Memoir in _Sylvester Graham’s Lectures on the Science
of Human Life_. Condensed by T. Baker, Esq., of the Inner Temple,
Barrister-at-Law. Manchester: Heywood; London: Pitman.

[266] _The New American Cyclopædia._ Appleton, New York, 1861. It
deserves remark in this place that, in no English cyclopædia or
biographical dictionary, as far as our knowledge extends, is any
sort of notice given of this great sanitary reformer. The same
disappointment is experienced in regard to not a few other great names,
whether in hygienic or humanitarian literature. The absence of the
names of such true benefactors of the world in these books of reference
is all the more surprising in view of the presence of an infinite
number of persons--of all kinds--who have contributed little to the
stock of true knowledge or to the welfare of the world.

[267] The Greek story of the savage horses of the Thracian king who
were fed upon human flesh, therefore, may very well be true.

[268] Graham here quotes various authorities--Linné, Cuvier, Lawrence
Bell, and others.

[269] Professor Lawrence instances particularly “the Laplanders,
Samoides, Ostiacs, Tungooses, Burats, and Bamtschatdales, in
Northern Europe and Asia, as well as the Esquimaux in the northern,
and the natives of Tierra del Fuego in the southern, extremity of
America, who, although they live almost entirely on flesh, and
that often raw, are the smallest, weakest, and least brave people
of the globe.”--_Lectures on Physiology._ Of all races the North
American native tribes, who subsist almost entirely by the chase, are
notoriously one of the most ferocious and cruel. That the _omnivorous_
classes in “civilised” Europe--in this country particularly--have
attained their present position, political or intellectual, _in spite
of their kreophagistic habits_ is attributable to a complex set of
conditions and circumstances (an extensive inquiry, upon which it is
impossible to enter here) which have, _in some measure_, mitigated
the evil results of a barbarous diet, will be sufficiently clear to
every unprejudiced inquirer. If flesh-eating be the cause, or one of
the principal causes, of the present dominance of the European, and
especially English-speaking peoples, it may justly be asked--how is
to be explained, _e.g._, the dominance of the Saracenic power (in S.
Europe) during seven centuries--a dominance in arms as well as in arts
and sciences--when the semi-barbarous Christian nations (at least as
regards the ruling classes) were _wholly_ kreophagistic.

[270] For one of the ablest and most exhaustive scientific arguments
on the same side ever published we refer our readers to _The Perfect
Way in Diet_, by Mrs. Algernon Kingsford, M.D. (Kegan Paul, London,
1881). Originally written and delivered as a Thesis for _le Doctorat en
Médicine_ at the Paris University, under the title of _L’Alimentation
Végétale Chez L’Homme_ (1880), it was almost immediately translated
into German by Dr. A. Aderholdt under the same title of _Die
Pfanzennahrung bei dem Menschen_. It is, we believe, about to be
translated into Russian. The humane and moral argument of this eloquent
work is equally admirable and equally persuasive with the scientific
proofs.

[271]

    “Sai, che là corre il mondo ove più versi
    Di sue dolcesse il lusinghier Parnaso,
    E che’l Vero condito in molli versi
    I più schivi allettando ha persuaso.
    Cosi all’ egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi
    Di soave licor gli orli del vaso:
    Succhi amari ingannato intanto ei beve,
    E dall’ inganno sua vita riceve.”

    Gerusalemme Liberata, I.

[272] See _Pflanzenkost; oder die Grundlage einer Neuen
Weltanschauung_, Von Gustav Struve, Stuttgart, 1869. For the substance
of the brief sketch of the life of Struve we are indebted to the
courtesy of Herr Emil Weilshaeuser, the recently-elected President of
the Vegetarian Society of Germany (Jan., 1882), himself the author of
some valuable words on Reformed Dietetics.

[273] See _Sakuntalà, or the Fatal Ring_, of the Hindu Shakspere
Kalidâsa, the most interesting production of the Hindu Poetry. It has
been translated into almost every European language.

[274] _Mandaras’ Wanderungen._ Zweite Ausgabe. Mannheim. Friedrich
Götz. 1845. For a copy of this now scarce book we are indebted to the
courtesy of Herr A. von Seefeld, of Hanover.

[275] _Pflanzenkost, die Grundlage einer neuen Weltanschauung._
Stuttgart, 1869. Cf. Liebig’s _Chemische Briefe_ (“Letters on
Chemistry.”)

[276] _Das Seelenleben; oder die Naturgeschichte des Menschen._ Von
Gustav Struve. Berlin: Theobald Grieben. 1869.

[277]

    “Weh’ denen, die dem _Ewigblinden_
    Des Lichtes Himmelsfackel leihen!”

    SCHILLER. _Das Lied von der Glocke._

[278] Quoted in _Die Naturgemässe Diät: die Diät der Zukunft_, von
Theodor Hahn, Cöthen, 1859. For the substance of biographical notice
prefixed to this article we are again indebted to the kindness of Herr
Emil Weilshäuser, of Oppeln.

[279] _Das Menschendasein in seinen Weltewigen Zügen und Zeichen._ Von
Bogumil Goltz. Frankfurt.

[280] Compare the remarks of Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825), in his
treatise on Education, _Levana_, in which he, too, in scarcely less
emphatic language, protests against the general neglect of this
department of morals. Among other references to the subject, the
celebrated novelist thus writes: “Love is the second hemisphere of the
moral heaven. Yet is the sacred being of love little established. Love
is an inborn but differently distributed force and blood-heat of the
heart (_blutwärme des herzens_). There are cold and warm-blooded souls,
as there are animals. As for the child, so for the lower animal, love
is, in fact, an essential impulse; and this central fire often, in the
form of compassion, pierces its earth-crust, but not in every case....
The child (under proper education) learns to regard all animal life as
sacred--in brief, they impart to him the feeling of a Hindu in place
of the heart of a Cartesian philosopher. There is here a question of
something more even than compassion for other animals; but this also
is in question. Why is it that it has so long been observed that the
cruelty of the child to the lower animals presages cruelty to men,
just as the Old-Testament sacrifice of animals preshadowed that of the
sacrifice of a man? It is for _himself only_ the undeveloped man can
experience pains and sufferings, which speak to him with the native
tones of his own experience. Consequently, the inarticulate cry of the
tortured animal comes to him just as some strange, amusing sound of
the air; and yet he sees there life, conscious movement, both which
distinguish them from the inanimate substances. Thus he sins against
his own life, whilst he sunders it from the rest, as though it were a
piece of machinery. Let life be to him [the child] sacred (_heilig_),
even that which may be destitute of reason; and, in fact, does the
child know any other? Or, because the heart beats under bristles,
feathers, or wings, is it, _therefore_, to be of no account?”

[281] See a pamphlet upon this subject by Dr. V.
Gützlaff--_Schopenhauer ueber die Thiere und den Thierschutz: Ein
Beitrag zur ethischen Seite der Vivisectionsfrage_. Berlin, 1879.

[282] _Le Fondement de La Morale_, par Arthur Schopenhauer, traduit de
l’Allemand par A. Burdeau. Paris, Baillière et Cie, 1879.

[283] Quoted in _Die Naturgemässe Diät, die Diät der Zukunft_, von
Theodor Hahn, 1859. We may note here that Moleschott, the eminent Dutch
physiologist, and a younger contemporary of Liebig, alike with the
distinguished German Chemist and with the French zoologist, Buffon, is
chargeable with a strange inconsistency in choosing his place among
the apologists of kreophagy, in spite of his conviction that “the
legumes are superior to flesh-meat in abundance of solid constituents
which they contain; and, while the amount of albuminous substances may
surpass that in flesh-meat by one-half, the constituents of fat and the
salts are also present in a greater abundance.” (See _Die Naturgemässe
Diät_, von Theodor Hahn, 1859). But, in fact, it is only too obvious
_why_ at present the large majority of Scientists, while often fully
admitting the virtues, or even the superiority of the purer diet,
yet after all enrol themselves on the orthodox side. Either they are
altogether indifferent to humane teaching, or they want the courage of
their convictions to proclaim the Truth.

[284] Among English philosophic writers, the arguments and warnings
(published in the _Dietetic Reformer_ during the past fifteen years) of
the present head of the Society for the promotion of Dietary Reform in
this country, Professor Newman, in regard to National Economy and to
the enormous evils, present and prospective, arising from the prevalent
insensibility to this aspect of National Reform are at once the most
forcible and the most earnest. It would be well if our public men, and
all who are in place and power, would give the most earnest heed to
them. But this, unhappily, under the _present_ prevailing political and
social conditions, experience teaches to be almost a vain expectation.

[285] Μήλοισι Grævius, the famous German Scholar of the 17th century,
maintains to mean here _Fruits_, not “Flocks,” according to the vulgar
interpretation, and the translation of Grævius, it will be allowed, is
at least more consistent with the context than is the latter. It must
be added that the whole verse bracketed is of doubtful genuineness.

[286] This remarkable passage, it is highly interesting to note, is the
earliest indication of the idea of “guardian angels,” which afterwards
was developed in the Platonic philosophy; and which, considerably
modified by Jewish belief, derived from the Persian theology, finally
took form in the Christian creed. Compare the beautiful idea of
guardian angels, or spirits in the Prologue of the _Shipwreck_ of
Plautus.

[287] See _Poetæ Minores Græci ... Aliisque Accessionibus Aucta._
Edited by Thomas Gaisford. Vol. III. Lipsiæ, 1823.

[288]

    “Quum sis ipse nocens, moritur cur victima pro te?
    Stultitia est, _morte alterius_ sperare Salutem.”

[289] _The Light of Asia: or, The Great Renunciation_
(_Mahâbhinishkramana_). Being the Life and Teaching of Gautama, Prince
of India, and Founder of Buddhism (as told in verse by an Indian
Buddhist). By Edwin Arnold. London: Trübner.--In the Hindu Epic, the
_Mahâbhârata_, the same great principle is apparent, though less
conspicuously:--

    “The constant virtue of the Good is tenderness and love
    To all that live in earth, air, sea--great, small--below, above:
    Compassionate of heart, they keep a gentle will to each:
    _Who pities not, hath not the Faith_. Full many a one so lives.”

    III.--Story of Savîtri

[290] Compare the beautiful verses of Lucretius--who, almost alone
amongst the poets, has indignantly denounced the vile and horrible
practice of sacrifice--picturing the inconsolable grief the Mother Cow
bereft of her young, who has been ravished from her for the sacrificial
altar:--

      “Sæpe ante Deûm vitulus delubra decora
    Thuricremas propter mactatus concidit aras
    Sanguinis expirans calidum de pectore flumen,
      At mater viridis saltus orbata peragrans
    Noacit humi pedibus vestigia pressa bisulcis,
    Omnia convisens oculis loca, si queat usquam
    Conspicere amissum fœtum, completque querellis
    Frondiferum nemus absistens, et crebra revisit
    Ad stabulum desiderio perfixa Juvenci;
    Nec teneræ salices atque herbæ rore vigentes,
    Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis
    Oblectare animum, subitamque avertere curam,
    Nee vitulorum aliæ species per pabula læta
    Derivare queunt animum curâque levare.”

    (_De Rerum Naturâ II._)

See also the memorable verses in which the rationalist poet stigmatises
the vicarious sacrifice of Iphigeneia.--_Tantum Religio potuit suadere
Malorum_ (L).

[291] See, also, _Fasti_, already quoted above.

    “Pace Ceres læta est......
    A Bove succincti cultros removete Ministri, &c.” IV. 407-416.

[292] _Florilegium_ of Stobæus--(17-43 and 18-38), quoted by Professor
Mayor in _Dietetic Reformer_, July, 1881. In the erudite and exhaustive
edition of Juvenal, by Professor Mayor (Macmillan, Cambridge), will be
found a large number of quotations from Greek and Latin writers, and a
great deal of interesting matter upon frugal living.

[293] “_Hygiasticon: On the Right Course of Preserving Life and Health
unto Extreme Old Age; together with Soundness and Integrity of the
Senses, Judgment, and Memory._ Written in Latin by Leonard Lessius, and
now done into English. The second edition. Printed by the printers to
the Universitie of Cambridge, 1634.” Lessio, like his master Cornaro,
Haller, and many other advocates of a reformed diet, was influenced not
at all by humanitarian, but by health reasons only.

[294] Cf. Plutarch--_Essay on Flesh-Eating_.

[295] _Some Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Thomas Tryon, late of London,
Merchant. Written by Himself._ London, 1705.

[296] Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque tueri.--Ovid, _Met._ I.

[297] Compare Seneca and Chrysostom, above.

[298] If Tryon could point to diseases among the victims of the
shambles in the 17th century, what use might he not make of the
epidemics or endemics of the present day?

[299] _The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness: or a Discourse
of Temperance, and the Particular Nature of all things Requisite for
the Life of Man.... The Like never before Published. Communicated to
the World, for the General Good, by Philotheos Physiologus_ [Tryon’s
_nom de plume_.] _London, 1683_. It is (in its best parts) the worthy
precursor of _The Herald of Health_, and of the valuable hygienic
philosophy of its able editor--Dr. T. L. Nichols.

[300] See _Biog. Universelle_, Art. _Philippe Hecquet_

[301] _Traité des Dispenses, &c._ Par Philippe Hecquet, M.D., Paris.
Ed. 1709.

[302]

                    “That lies beneath the knife,
    Looks up, and from her butcher begs her life.”

    Æn. VII. (Pope’s translation.) Quoted first by Montaigne. _Essais._

[303] And, Pope might have added, a more diabolical torture
still--calves bled to death by a slow and lingering process--hung
up (as they often are) head downwards. Although not universal as
it was some ten years ago, this, among other Christian practices,
yet flourishes in many parts of the country, unchecked by legal
intervention.

[304] See Article, Plutarch, above.

[305] So far, at least, as the _natural and necessary wants_ of each
species are concerned.--That “Nature” is regardless of suffering, is
but too apparent in all parts of our globe. It is the opprobrium and
shame of the human species that, placed at the head of the various
races of beings, it has hitherto been the _Tyrant_, and not the
_Pacificator_.

[306] _The Four Stages of Cruelty_, in which, beginning with the
torture of other animals, the legitimate sequence is fulfilled in the
murder of the torturer’s mistress or wife.

[307] Which is the accomplice _really guilty_? The ignorant, untaught,
wretch who has to gain his living some way or other, or those who
have been entrusted with, or who have assumed, the control of the
public conscience--the statesman, the clergy, and the schoolmaster?
Undoubtedly it is upon these that almost all the guilt lies, and always
will lie.

[308] Bull-baiting, in this country, has been for some years illegal;
but that moralists, and other writers of the present day, while
boasting the abolition of that popular _pastime_, are silent, upon the
equally barbarous, if more fashionable _sports_ of Deer-hunting, &c.,
is one of those inconsistencies in logic which are as unaccountable as
they are common.

[309] “That is,” remarks Ritson, “in a state of Society influenced by
Superstition, Pride, and a variety of prejudices equally unnatural and
absurd.”

[310] “The converse of all this is true. He is certainly taught by
example, and by temptation, and prompted by (what he thinks is)
interest.”--Note by Ritson in _Abstinence from Flesh a Moral Duty_.

[311] Among living enlightened medical authorities of the present
day, Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S., perhaps the most eminent hygeist
and sanitary reformer in the country now living, has delivered his
testimony in no doubtful terms to the superiority of the purer
diet. In his recent publication _Salutisland_ he has banished the
slaughter-house, with all its abominations, from that model State. See
also his _Hygieia_.

[312] _L’Art de Prolonger la Vie et de Conserver la Santé: ou, Traité
d’Hygiène._ Par M. Pressavin, Gradué de l’Université de Paris; Membre
du Collège Royal de Chirurgie de Lyon, et Ancien Demonstrateur en
Matière Medicale-Chirurgicale. A Lyon, 1786.

[313] _Die Eleusische Fest._

[314] _Der Alpenjäger._ See also Göthe--_Italienische Reise_, XXIII.
42; _Aus Meinem Leben_, XXIV. 23; _Werther’s Leiden_; Brief 12.

[315] _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_
(page 311). By Jeremy Bentham, M.A., Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, &c.;
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1876. It must be added that the assumption
(on the same page on which this cogent reasoning is found), that
man has the right to _kill_ his fellow-beings, for the purpose of
feeding upon their flesh, is one more illustration of the strange
inconsistencies into which even so generally just and independent a
thinker as the author of the _Book of Fallacies_ may be forced by
the “logic of circumstances.” Among recent notable Essays upon the
Rights of the Lower Animals (the _right to live_ excepted) may here be
mentioned--_Animals and their Masters_, by Sir Arthur Helps (1873), and
_The Rights of an Animal_, by Mr. E. B. Nicholson, librarian of the
Bodleian, Oxford (1877).

[316] Compare the _Voyages_ of Volney, one of the most philosophical
of the thinkers of the eighteenth century, who himself for some time
seems to have lived on the non-flesh diet. Attributing the ferocious
character of the American savage, “hunter and butcher, who, in every
animal sees but an object of prey, and who is become an animal of the
species of wolves and of tigers,” to such custom, this celebrated
traveller adds the reflection that “the habit of shedding blood, or
simply of seeing it shed, corrupts all sentiments of humanity.” (See
_Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte_.) See, too, Thevenot (the younger), an
earlier French traveller, who describes a Banian hospital, in which
he saw a number of sick Camels, Horses, and Oxen, and many invalids
of the feathered race. Many of the lower Animals, he informs us, were
maintained there for life, those who recovered being sold to Hindus
exclusively.

[317] This feeling occasionally appears in his poems, as, for instance,
when describing a “banquet” and its flesh-eating guests, he wonders how
“Such bodies could have souls, or souls such bodies.”

[318] Note on this point the words of the late W. R. Greg, to the
effect that “the amount of human life sustained on a given area may
be almost indefinitely increased by the substitution of vegetable for
animal food;” and his further statement--“A given acreage of wheat
will feed at least ten times as many men as the same acreage employed
in growing ‘mutton.’ It is usually calculated that the consumption of
wheat by an adult is about one quarter per annum, and we know that good
land produces four quarters. But let us assume that a man living on
grain would require two quarters a year; still one acre would support
two men. But, a man living on [flesh] meat would need 3lbs. a day, and
it is considered a liberal calculation if an acre spent in grazing
sheep and cattle will yield in ‘beef’ and ‘mutton’ more than 50lb. on
an average--the best farmer in Norfolk having averaged 90lb., but a
great majority of farms in Great Britain only reach 20lb. On these data
it would require 22 acres of pasture land to sustain one adult person
living on [flesh] meat. It is obvious that in view of the adoption of a
vegetable diet lies the indication of a vast increase in the population
sustainable on a given area.”--_Social and Political Problems_
(_Trübner_).

[319] “Of the Cruelty connected with he Culinary Arts” in _Philozoa;
or, Moral Reflections on the Actual Condition of the Animal Kingdom,
and on the Means of Improving the Same_; with numerous Anecdotes and
Illustrative Notes, addressed to Lewis Gompertz, Esq., President of
the Animals’ Friend Society: By T. Forster, M.B., F.R.A.S., F.L.S.,
&c. Brussels, 1839. The writer well insists that, however remote may
be a _universal_ Reformation, every individual person, pretending
to any culture or refinement of mind, is morally bound to abstain
from sanctioning, by his dietetic habits, the revolting atrocities
“connected with the culinary arts, of which Mr. Young, in his Book on
Cruelty, has given a long catalogue.”