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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
anchors are missing in the original text. They have been restored in
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
the index, nor any of his works could be located in the text; the
reference has been retained, though.
Passages in italics have been surrounded by _underscores_; small
capitals have been converted to UPPERCASE LETTERS.
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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.