The moraines left by secular glacial periods of folly stretch out over
many a plain of our civilisation. So in the _Odyssey_, especially in the
second twelve books, whenever any one eats meat it is called
“sacrificing” it, as though we were descended from a race that did not
eat meat. Then it was said that meat might be eaten if one did not eat
the life. What was the life? Clearly the blood, for when you stick a
pig it lives till the blood is gone. You must sacrifice the blood,
therefore, to the gods, but so long as you abstain from things strangled
and from blood, and so long as you call it sacrificing, you may eat as
much meat as you please.
What a mountain of lies—what a huge geological formation of falsehood,
with displacement of all kinds, and strata twisted every conceivable way,
must have accreted before the _Odyssey_ was possible!