1. You ask of me then for what reason it was that Pythagoras abstained
from eating of flesh. I for my part do much admire in what humor, with
what soul or reason, the first man with his mouth touched slaughter,
and reached to his lips the flesh of a dead animal, and having set
before people courses of ghastly corpses and ghosts, could give
those parts the names of meat and victuals, that but a little before
lowed, cried, moved, and saw; how his sight could endure the blood of
slaughtered, flayed, and mangled bodies; how his smell could bear their
scent; and how the very nastiness happened not to offend the taste,
while it chewed the sores of others, and participated of the saps and
juices of deadly wounds.
Crept the raw hides, and with a bellowing sound
Roared the dead limbs; the burning entrails groaned.[1]
This indeed is but a fiction and fancy; but the fare itself is truly
monstrous and prodigious,—that a man should have a stomach to creatures
while they yet bellow, and that he should be giving directions which of
things yet alive and speaking is fittest to make food of, and ordering
the several manners of the seasoning and dressing them and serving them
up to tables. You ought rather, in my opinion, to have enquired who
first began this practice, than who of late times left it off.
2. And truly, as for those people who first ventured upon eating of
flesh, it is very probable that the whole reason of their so doing was
scarcity and want of other food; for it is not likely that their living
together in lawless and extravagant lusts, or their growing wanton and
capricious through the excessive variety of provisions then among them,
brought them to such unsociable pleasures as these, against Nature.
Yea, had they at this instant but their sense and voice restored to
them, I am persuaded they would express themselves to this purpose.
“Oh! happy you, and highly favored of the Gods, who now live! Into what
an age of the world are you fallen, who share and enjoy among you a
plentiful portion of good things! What abundance of things spring up
for your use! What fruitful vineyards you enjoy! What wealth you gather
from the fields! What delicacies from trees and plants, which you may
gather! You may glut and fill yourselves without being polluted. As
for us, we fell upon the most dismal and affrighting part of time,
in which we were exposed by our first production to manifold and
inextricable wants and necessities. As yet the thickened air concealed
the heaven from our view, and the stars were as yet confused with a
disorderly huddle of fire and moisture and violent fluxions of winds.
As yet the sun was not fixed to an unwandering and certain course,
so as to distinguish morning and evening, nor did he bring back the
seasons in order crowned with wreaths from the fruitful harvest. The
land was also spoiled by the inundations of disorderly rivers; and a
great part of it was deformed with sloughs, and utterly wild by reason
of deep quagmires, unfertile forests, and woods. There was then no
production of tame fruits, nor any instruments of art or invention
of wit. And hunger gave no time, nor did seed-time then stay for the
yearly season. What wonder is it if we made use of the flesh of beasts
contrary to Nature, when mud was eaten and the bark of wood, and when
it was thought a happy thing to find either a sprouting grass or a
root of any plant! But when they had by chance tasted of or eaten an
acorn, they danced for very joy about some oak or esculus, calling it
by the names of life-giver, mother, and nourisher. And this was the
only festival that those times were acquainted with; upon all other
occasions, all things were full of anguish and dismal sadness. But
whence is it that a certain ravenousness and frenzy drives you in these
happy days to pollute yourselves with blood, since you have such an
abundance of things necessary for your subsistence? Why do you belie
the earth as unable to maintain you? Why do you profane the lawgiver
Ceres, and shame the mild and gentle Bacchus, as not furnishing you
with sufficiency? Are you not ashamed to mix tame fruits with blood
and slaughter? You are indeed wont to call serpents, leopards, and
lions savage creatures; but yet yourselves are defiled with blood, and
come nothing behind them in cruelty. What they kill is their ordinary
nourishment, but what you kill is your better fare.”
3. For we eat not lions and wolves by way of revenge; but we let those
go, and catch the harmless and tame sort, and such as have neither
stings nor teeth to bite with, and slay them; which, so may Jove help
us, Nature seems to us to have produced for their beauty and comeliness
only. [2][Just as if one seeing the river Nilus overflowing its banks,
and thereby filling the whole country with genial and fertile moisture,
should not at all admire that secret power in it that produces plants
and plenteousness of most sweet and useful fruits, but beholding
somewhere a crocodile swimming in it, or an asp crawling along, or
mice (savage and filthy creatures), should presently affirm these to
be the occasion of all that is amiss, or of any want or defect that
may happen. Or as if indeed one contemplating this land or ground, how
full it is of tame fruits, and how heavy with ears of corn, should
afterwards espy somewhere in these same cornfields an ear of darnel or
a wild vetch, and thereupon neglect to reap and gather in the corn,
and fall a complaining of these. Such another thing it would be, if
one—hearing the harangue of some advocate at some bar or pleading,
swelling and enlarging and hastening towards the relief of some
impending danger, or else, by Jupiter, in the impeaching and charging
of certain audacious villanies or indictments, flowing and rolling
along, and that not in a simple and poor strain, but with many sorts
of passions all at once, or rather indeed with all sorts, in one and
the same manner, into the many and various and differing minds of
either hearers or judges that he is either to turn and change, or else,
by Jupiter, to soften, appease, and quiet—should overlook all this
business, and never consider or reckon upon the labor or struggle he
had undergone, but pick up certain loose expressions, which the rapid
motion of the discourse had carried along with it, as by the current of
its stream, and so had slipped and escaped the rest of the oration, and
hereupon undervalue the orator.]
4. But we are nothing put out of countenance, either by the beauteous
gayety of the colors, or by the charmingness of the musical voices,
or by the rare sagacity of the intellects, or by the cleanliness and
neatness of diet, or by the rare discretion and prudence of these
poor unfortunate animals; but for the sake of some little mouthful of
flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion
of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. And then we
fancy that the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing
else but certain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several
deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them, as it were
saying thus to us: “I deprecate not thy necessity (if such there be),
but thy wantonness. Kill me for thy feeding, but do not take me off
for thy better feeding.” O horrible cruelty! It is truly an affecting
sight to see the very table of rich people laid before them, who keep
them cooks and caterers to furnish them with dead corpses for their
daily fare; but it is yet more affecting to see it taken away, for the
mammocks left are more than that which was eaten. These therefore were
slain to no purpose. Others there are, who are so sparing of what is
set before them that they will not suffer it to be cut or sliced; thus
abstaining from them when dead, while they would not spare them when
alive.
5. Well then, we understand that that sort of men are used to say, that
in eating of flesh they follow the conduct and direction of Nature. But
that it is not natural to mankind to feed on flesh, we first of all
demonstrate from the very shape and figure of the body. For a human
body no ways resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath
no hawk’s bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength
of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or
alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But even from hence, that is, from
the smoothness of the tongue, and the slowness of the stomach to
digest, Nature seems to disclaim all pretence to fleshy victuals. But
if you will contend that yourself was born to an inclination to such
food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you
would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife,
mallet, or axe,—as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at
once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a
lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do.
But if thou hadst rather stay until what thou eatest is become dead,
and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost
thou against Nature eat an animate thing? Nay, there is nobody that
is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing as it is; but they
boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were,
changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet
sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such
uncouth fare. It was indeed a witty expression of a Lacedaemonian, who,
having purchased a small fish in a certain inn, delivered it to his
landlord to be dressed; and as he demanded cheese, and vinegar, and oil
to make sauce, he replied, if I had had those, I would not have bought
the fish. But we are grown so wanton in our bloody luxury, that we have
bestowed upon flesh the name of meat (ὄψον), and then require another
seasoning (ὄψον), to this same flesh, mixing oil, wine, honey, pickle,
and vinegar, with Syrian and Arabian spices, as though we really meant
to embalm it after its disease. Indeed when things are dissolved and
made thus tender and soft, and are as it were turned into a sort
of a carrionly corruption, it must needs be a great difficulty for
concoction to master them, and when it hath mastered them, they must
needs cause grievous oppressions and qualmy indigestions.
6. Diogenes ventured once to eat a raw pourcontrel, that he might
disuse himself from meat dressed by fire; and as several priests and
other people stood round him, he wrapped his head in his cassock, and
so putting the fish to his mouth, he thus said unto them: It is for
your sake, sirs, that I undergo this danger, and run this risk. A noble
and gallant risk, by Jupiter! For far otherwise than as Pelopidas
ventured his life for the liberty of the Thebans, and Harmodius and
Aristogiton for that of the Athenians, did this philosopher encounter
with a raw pourcontrel, to the end he might make human life more
brutish. Moreover, these same flesh-eatings not only are preternatural
to men’s bodies, but also by clogging and cloying them, they render
their very minds and intellects gross. For it is well known to most,
that wine and much flesh-eating make the body indeed strong and lusty,
but the mind weak and feeble. And that I may not offend the wrestlers,
I will make use of examples out of my own country. The Athenians are
wont to call us Boeotians gross, senseless, and stupid fellows, for
no other reason but our over-much eating; and Pindar calls us also
hogs, for the same reason. Menander the comedian calls us “fellows
with long jaws.” It is observed also that, according to the saying of
Heraclitus, “the wisest soul is like a dry light.”[3] Earthen jars, if
you strike them, will sound; but if they be full, they perceive not
the strokes that are given them. Copper vessels also that are thin
communicate the sound round about them, unless some one stop and dull
the ambient stroke with his fingers. Moreover, the eye, when seized
with an over-great plenitude of humors, grows dim and feeble for its
ordinary work. When we behold the sun through a humid air and a great
quantity of gross and indigested vapors, we see it not clear and
bright, but obscure and cloudy, and with glimmering beams. Just so in a
muddy and clogged body, that is swagged down with heavy and unnatural
nourishments; it must needs happen that the gayety and splendor of the
mind be confused and dulled, and that it ramble and roll after little
and scarce discernible objects, since it wants clearness and vigor for
higher things.
7. But to pass by these considerations, is not accustoming one’s self
to mildness and a human temper of mind an admirable thing? For who
could wrong or injure a man that is so sweetly and humanly disposed
with respect to the ills of strangers that are not of his kind? I
remember that three days ago, as I was discoursing, I made mention
of a saying of Xenocrates, and how the Athenians gave judgment upon a
certain person who had flayed a living ram. For my part I cannot think
him a worse criminal that torments a poor creature while living, than
a man that shall take away its life and murder it. But (as it seems)
we are more sensible of what is done against custom than against
Nature. There, however, I discoursed on these matters in a more popular
style. But as for that grand and mysterious principle which (as Plato
speaks) is incredible to base minds and to such as affect only mortal
things, I as little care to move it in this discourse as a pilot doth
a ship in a storm, or a comedian his machine while the scenes are
moving; but perhaps it would not be amiss, by way of introduction and
preface, to proclaim certain verses of Empedocles.... For in these,
by way of allegory, he hints at men’s souls, as that they are tied to
mortal bodies, to be punished for murders, eating of flesh and of one
another, although this doctrine seems much ancienter than his time.
For the fables that are storied and related about the discerption of
Bacchus, and the attempts of the Titans upon him, and of their tasting
of his slain body, and of their several punishments and fulminations
afterwards, are but a representation of the regeneration. For what
in us is unreasonable, disorderly, and boisterous, being not divine
but demoniac, the ancients termed Titans, that is _tormented_ and
_punished_ (from τίνω)....