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:--