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:--