of the rights of the lower races is hardly to be expected from the
selfish and unscrupulous promoter of his own private interests at the
expense at once of common gratitude and common feeling. His remarks on
Vivisection (where he questions whether experiments on human beings
are defensible, and suggests the limitation of scientific torture to
the non-human races)[125] are, in fact, sufficient evidence of his
indifferentism to so unselfish an object as the advocacy of the claims
of our defenceless dependants. When we consider his unusual sagacity
in exposing the absurd quasi-scientific methods of his predecessors,
and of the prevailing (so-called) philosophical system and the many
profound remarks to be found in his writings, it must be added that we
are reluctantly compelled to believe that the opinions elsewhere which
he publishes inconsistent with those principles were inspired by that
notorious servility and courtiership by which he flattered the absurd
and pedantic dogmatism of one of the most contemptible of kings.
One passage there is, however, in his writings which seems to give us
hope that this eminent compromiser was not altogether insensible to
higher and better feeling:--
“Nature has endowed man with a noble and excellent principle of
compassion, which extends [? ought to extend] itself also to the
dumb animals--whence this compassion has some resemblance to
that of a prince towards his subjects. And it is certain that the
noblest souls are the most extensively compassionate, for narrow
and degenerate minds think that compassion belongs not to them; but
a great soul, the noblest part of creation, is ever compassionate.
Thus, under the old laws, there were numerous precepts (not merely
ceremonial) enjoining mercy--for example, the not eating of
flesh with the blood, &c. So, also, the sects of the Essenes and
Pythagoreans totally abstained from flesh, as they do also to this
day, with an inviolate religion, in some parts of the empire of the
Mogul [Hindustan]. Nay, the Turks, though a savage nation, both in
their descent and discipline, give alms to the dumb animals, and
suffer them not to be tortured.”[126]
If Bacon had lived longer (he died in 1626) we may entertain the hope
that the powerful arguments of his illustrious contemporary might have
inspired him with more sound and satisfactory ideas on Dietetics than
the somewhat crude ones which he published in his _De Augmentis_ (iv.,
2). As for Medicine, he had, reasonably enough, not conceived a high
opinion of the methods of its ordinary professors. He says:--
“Medicine has been more professed than laboured, and more laboured
than advanced; rather circular than progressive; for I find great
repetition, and but little new matter in the writers of Physic.”
XV.
RAY. 1627-1705.
John Ray, the founder of Botanical and, only in little less degree, of
Zoological Science, was an _alumnus_ of the University of Cambridge. He
was elected Fellow of Trinity College in 1649, and Lecturer in Greek
in the following year. While at Cambridge he formed a collection of
plants growing in the neighbourhood, a catalogue of which he published
in 1660. Three years later, with his friend Francis Willoughby, he
travelled over a large part of Europe, as during his academical life
he had traversed the greater part of these islands, in pursuit of
botanical and zoological science--an account of which tour he published
in 1673.
He had been one of the first Fellows of the recently founded Royal
Society. In 1682 appeared his _New Method of Plants_, which formed a
new era in botany, or rather, which was the first attempt at making
it a real science. It is the basis of the subsequent classification
of Jussieu, which is still received; and its author was the first to
propose the division of plants into _monocotyledons_ and _dicotyledons_.
His principal work is the _Historia Plantarum_, 1686-1704. “In it
he collected and arranged all the species of plants which had been
described by botanists. He enumerated 18,625 species. Haller, Sprengel,
Adamson, and others speak of this work as being the produce of immense
labour, and as containing much acute criticism.”
What, however, is more interesting to us is the fact that “in zoology
Ray ranks almost as high as in botany, and his works on this subject
are even more important, as they still, in great measure, preserve
their utility. Cuvier says that ‘they may be considered as the
foundation of modern zoology, for naturalists are obliged to consult
them every instant for the purpose of clearing up the difficulties
which they meet with in the works of Linnæus and his copyists.’”
Between 1676-1686 appeared _Ornithologia_ and _Historia Piscium_,
the materials of which had been left him by his friend Willoughby.
To his extraordinary erudition and industry the world was indebted
for _A Methodical Synopsis of Quadrupeds_ as well as a very valuable
history of Insects. Conspicuous amongst his merits are his accuracy
of observation and his philosophical method of classification. With
others, Buffon is largely indebted to the most meritorious of the
pioneers of zoological knowledge.
Ray has delivered his profession of faith in the superiority and
excellence of the non-flesh diet in the following eloquent passage
which has been quoted with approval by his friend John Evelyn:--
“The use of plants is all our life long of that universal
importance and concern that we can neither live nor subsist with
any decency and convenience, or be said, indeed, to live at
all without them. Whatsoever food is necessary to sustain us,
whatsoever contributes to delight and refresh us, is supplied and
brought forth out of that plentiful and abundant store. And ah! [he
exclaims] how much more innocent, sweet, and healthful is a table
covered with those than with all the reeking flesh of butchered and
slaughtered animals. Certainly man by nature was never made to be
a carnivorous animal, nor is he armed at all for prey and rapine,
with jagged and pointed teeth and crooked claws sharpened to rend
and tear, but with gentle hands to gather fruit and vegetables, and
with teeth to chew and eat them.”[127]
XVI.
EVELYN. 1620-1706.
John Evelyn, the representative of the more estimable part of the
higher middle life of his time, who has so eloquently set forth the
praises of the vegetable diet, also claims with Ray the honour of
having first excited, amongst the opulent classes of his countrymen,
a rational taste for botanical knowledge. Especially meritorious and
truly patriotic was his appeal to the owners of land, by growing trees
to provide the country with useful as well as ornamental timber for the
benefit of posterity. He was one of the first to treat gardening and
planting in a scientific manner; and his own cultivation of exotic and
other valuable plants was a most useful example too tardily followed by
ignorant or selfish landlords of those and succeeding times. It would
have been well indeed for the mass of the people of these islands,
had the owners of landed property cared to develope the teaching
of Evelyn by stocking the country with various fruit trees, and so
supplied at once an easy and wholesome food. _O fortunatos nimium, sua
si bona nôrint, Agricolas!... Fundit humo facilem victum justissima
Tellus._[128]
The family of Evelyn was settled at Wooton, in Surrey. During the
struggle between the Parliament and the Court he went abroad, and
travelled for some years in France and in Italy, where he seems to have
employed his leisure in a more refined and useful way than is the wont
of most of his travelling countrymen. He returned home in 1651. At the
foundation of the Royal Society, some ten years later, Evelyn became
one of its earliest Fellows. His first work was published in 1664,
_Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber_.
Its immediate cause was the application of the Naval Commissioners to
the Royal Society for advice in view of the growing scarcity of timber,
especially of oak, in England. A large quantity of the more valuable
wood now existing is the practical outcome of his timely publication.
In 1675, appeared his _Terra: a Discourse of the Earth Relating to the
Culture and the Improvement of it, to Vegetation and the Propagation
of Plants_. The book by which he is most popularly known is his _Diary
and Correspondence_, one of the most interesting productions of the
kind. Besides its value as giving an insight into the manner of life
in the fashionable society of the greater part of the seventeenth
century, it is of importance as an independent chronicle of the public
events of the day. The work which has the most interest and value for
us is his _Acetaria_ (Salads, or Herbs eaten with vinegar), in which
the author professes his faith in the truth and excellence of the
Vegetarian diet. Unfortunately, according to the usual perversity of
literary enterprise, it is one of those few books which, representing
some profounder truth, are nevertheless the most neglected by those who
undertake to supply the mental and moral needs of the reading public.
Evelyn held many high posts under the varying Governments of the day;
and being, by tradition and connexion, attached to the monarchical
party, he attracted (contrary to the general experience) the grateful
recognition of the restored dynasty.
Having adduced other arguments for abstinence from flesh, Evelyn
continues:--
“And now, after all we have advanced in favour of the herbaceous
diet, there still emerges another inquiry, viz., whether the use of
crude herbs and plants is so wholesome as is alleged? What opinion
the prince of physicians had of them we shall see hereafter; as
also what the sacred records of olden times seem to infer, before
there were any flesh-shambles in the world; together with the
reports of such as are often conversant among many nations and
people, who, to this day, living on herbs and roots, arrive to
an incredible age in constant health and vigour, which, whether
attributable to the air and climate, custom, constitution, &c.,
should be inquired into.”
Cardan--the pseudo-savant of the sixteenth century--had written, it
seems, in favour of flesh-meat. Evelyn informs us that:--
“This, [the alleged superiority of flesh] his learned antagonist,
utterly denies. Whole nations--flesh devourers, such as the
farthest northern--become heavy, dull, inactive, and much more
stupid than the southern; and such as feed more on plants are more
acute, subtle, and of deeper penetration. Witness the Chaldeans,
Assyrians, Egyptians, &c. And he further argues from the short
lives of most carnivorous animals, compared with grass feeders, and
the ruminating kind, as the Hart, Camel, and the longævus Elephant,
and other feeders on roots and vegetables.
“As soon as old Parr came to change his simple homely diet to
that of the Court and Arundel House, he quickly sank and drooped
away; for, as we have shewn, the stomach easily concocts plain and
familiar food, but finds it a hard and difficult task to vanquish
and overcome meats of different substances. Whence we so often see
temperate and abstemious persons of a collegiate diet [of a distant
age, we must suppose] very healthy; husbandmen and laborious
people more robust and longer-lived than others of an uncertain,
extravagant habit.”
He appeals to the biblical reverence of his readers, and tells them:--
“Certain it is, Almighty God ordaining herbs and fruit for the food
of man, speaks not a word concerning flesh for two thousand years;
and when after, by the Mosaic constitution, there were distinctions
and prohibitions about the legal uncleanness of animals, plants
of what kind soever were left free and indifferent for everyone
to choose what best he liked. And what if it was held indecent
and unbecoming the excellency of man’s nature, before sin entered
and grew enormously wicked, that any creature should be put to
death and pain for him who had such infinite store of the most
delicious and nourishing fruit to delight, and the tree of life to
sustain him? Doubtless there was no need of it. Infants sought the
mother’s nipples as soon as born, and when grown and able to feed
themselves, ran naturally to fruit, and still will choose to eat it
rather than flesh, and certainly might so persist to do, did not
Custom prevail even against the very dictates of Nature.[129]
“And now to recapitulate what other prerogatives the hortulan
provision has been celebrated for besides its antiquity, and the
health and longevity of the antediluvians--viz., that temperance,
frugality, leisure, ease, and innumerable other virtues and
advantages which accompany it, are no less attributable to it. Let
us hear our excellent botanist, Mr. Ray.”
He then quotes the profession of faith of the father of English
botany and zoology; and goes on eloquently to expatiate on the varied
pleasures of a non-flesh and fruit diet:--
“To this might we add that transporting consideration, becoming
both our veneration and admiration, of the infinitely wise and
glorious Author of Nature, who has given to plants such astonishing
properties; such fiery heat in some to warm and cherish; such
coolness in others to temper and refresh; such pinguid juice to
nourish and feed the body; such quickening acids to compel the
appetite, and grateful vehicles to court the obedience of the
palate; such vigour to renew and support our natural strength; such
ravishing flavours and perfumes to recreate and delight us; in
short, such spirituous and active force to animate and revive every
part and faculty to all kinds of human and, I had almost said,
heavenly capacity.
“What shall we add more? Our gardens present us with them all: and,
while the Shambles are covered with gore and stench, our Salads
escape the insults of the summer-fly, purify and warm the blood
against winter rage. Nor wants there variety in more abundance than
any of the former ages could show.”
Evelyn produces an imposing array of the “Old Fathers”:--
“In short, so very many, especially of the Christian profession,
advocate it [the bloodless food] that some even of the ancient
fathers themselves have thought that the permission of eating flesh
to Noah and his sons was granted them no otherwise than repudiation
of wives was to the Jews--namely--for the hardness of their hearts
and to satisfy a murmuring generation.”[130]
He is “persuaded that more blood has been shed between Christians”
through addiction to the sanguinary food than by any other cause:--
“Not that I impute it _only_ to our eating blood; but I
sometimes wonder how it happened that so strict, so solemn, and
famous a sanction--not upon a ceremonial account, but (as some
affirm) a moral and perpetual one, for which also there seem
to be fairer proofs than for most other controversies agitated
amongst Christians--should be so generally forgotten, and give
place to so many other impertinent disputes and cavils about
superstitious fopperies which frequently end in blood and cutting
of throats.”[131]
It is opportune here to refer to the sentiments of Evelyn’s
contemporary and political and ecclesiastical opposite--the great
Puritan poet and patriot--one of the very greatest names in all
literature. Milton’s feeling, so far as he had occasion to express
it, is quite in unison with the principles of dietetic reform, and in
sympathy with aspirations after the more spiritual life.
In one of his earliest writings, on the eve of the production of one
of the finest poems of its kind in the English language--the _Ode to
Christ’s Nativity_, composed at the age of twenty-one--he thus writes
in Latin verse to his friend Charles Deodati, recommending the purer
diet at all events to those who aspired to the nobler creations of
poetry:--
“Simply let those, like him of Samos, live:
Let herbs to them a _bloodless_ banquet give.
In beechen goblets let their beverage shine,
Cool from the crystal spring their sober wine!
Their youth should pass in innocence secure
From stain licentious, and in manners pure.
* * * * *
For these are sacred bards and, from above,
Drink large infusions from the mind of Jove.”[132]
To readers of his master-piece the _Paradise Lost_, it is perhaps a
work of supererogation to point out the charming passages in which he
sympathetically describes the food of the Age of Innocence:--
“Savoury fruits, of taste to please
True appetites.”
In Raphael’s discourse with his terrestrial entertainers, the ethereal
messenger utters a prophecy (as we may take it) of the future general
adoption by our race of “fruit, man’s nourishment,” and we may
interpret his intimation:--
“time may come when men
With angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare.
And from those corporal nutriments perhaps
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend
Ethereal as we; or may, at choice,
_Here_, or in heavenly paradises, dwell,”
as a picture of the true earthly paradise to be--“the Paradise of
Peace.”
With these exquisite pictures of the life of bloodless feasts and
ambrosial food we may compare the fearful picture of the Court of
Death, displayed in prospective vision before the terror-stricken
gaze of the traditional progenitor of our species, where, amongst the
occupants, the largest number are the victims of “intemperance in meats
and drinks, which on the earth shall bring diseases dire.” In this
universal lazar-house might be seen--
“all maladies
Of ghastly Spasm, or racking torture, Qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all Feverous kinds,
Convulsions, Epilepsies, fierce Catarrhs,
Intestine Stone and Ulcer, Colic pangs,
Demoniac Phrensy, moping Melancholy,
And moon-struck Madness, pining Atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting Pestilence,
Dropsies and Asthmas, and joint-racking Rheums.”[133]
Very different, in other respects, from those of the author of
the _History of the Reformation in England_ the sentiments of his
celebrated contemporary Bossuet, whose eloquence gained for him the
distinguishing title of the “Eagle of Méaux,” as to the degrading
character of the prevalent human nourishment in the Western world,
are sufficiently remarkable to deserve some notice. The _Oraisons
Funêbres_ and, particularly, his _Discours sur L’Histoire Universelle_
have entitled him to a high rank in French literature. But a single
passage in the last work, we shall readily admit, does more credit to
his heart than his most eloquent efforts in oratory or literature do
to his intellect. That, in common with other theologians, Catholic and
Protestant, he has thought it necessary to assume the intervention of
the Deity to sanction the sustenance of human life by the destruction
of other innocent life, does not affect the weight of intrinsic
evidence derivable from the natural feeling as to the debasing
influence of the Slaughter-House. It is thus that he, impliedly at
least, condemns the barbarous practice:--
“Before the time of the Deluge the nourishment which without
violence men derived from the fruits which fell from the trees
of themselves, and from the herbs which also ripened with equal
ease, was, without doubt, some relic of the first innocence and
of the gentleness (_douceur_) for which we were formed. Now to
get food we have to shed blood in spite of the horror which it
naturally inspires in us; and all the refinements of which we avail
ourselves, in covering our tables, hardly suffice to disguise
for us the bloody corpses which we have to devour to support
life. But this is but the least part of our misery. Life, already
shortened, is still further abridged by the savage violences which
are introduced into the life of the human species. Man, whom in
the first ages we have seen spare the life of other animals,
is accustomed henceforward to spare the life not even of his
fellow-men. It is in vain that God forbade, immediately after the
Deluge, the shedding of human blood; in vain, in order to save some
vestiges of the first mildness of our nature, while permitting the
feeding on flesh did he prohibit consumption of the blood. Human
murders multiplied beyond all calculation.”
Bossuet, a few pages later, arrives at the necessary and natural
consequence of the murder of other animals, when he records that “the
brutalised human race could no longer rise to the true contemplation of
intellectual things.”[134]
XVII.
BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. 1670-1733.
The most paradoxical of moralists, born at Dort, in Holland. He was
brought up to the profession of medicine, and took the degree of M.D.
He afterwards settled and practised in London.
It was in 1714 that he published his short poem called _The Grumbling
Hive: or, Knaves Turned Honest_, to which he afterwards added long
explanatory notes, and then republished the whole under the new and
celebrated title of _The Fable of the Bees_. This work “which, however
erroneous may be its views of morals and of society, is written in a
proper style, and bears all the marks of an honest and sincere inquiry
on an important subject, exposed its author to much obloquy, and met
with answers and attacks.... It would appear that some of the hostility
against this work, and against Mandeville generally, is to be traced to
another publication, recommending the public licensing of ‘stews,’ the
matter and manner of which are certainly exceptionable, though, at the
same time, it must be stated that Mandeville earnestly and with seeming
sincerity commends his plan as a means of diminishing immorality, and
that he endeavoured, so far as lay in his power, by affixing a high
price and in other ways, to prevent the work from having a general
circulation.” In fact, Mandeville is one of those injudicious but
well-meaning reformers who, by their propensity to perverse paradox,
have injured at once their reputation and their usefulness for after
times.
A second part of _The Fable_ appeared at a later period. Amongst other
numerous writings were two entitled, _Free Thoughts on Religion, the
Church, and National Happiness_, and _An Enquiry into the Origin of
Honour_, and the _Usefulness of Christianity in War_. He appears to
have been enabled to pursue his literary career in great measure by the
liberality of his Dutch friends, and he was a constant guest of the
first Earl of Macclesfield. “_The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices
Public Benefits_ may be received in two ways,” says the writer in the
_Penny Cyclopædia_, whom we have already quoted, “as a satire on men,
and as a theory of society and national prosperity. So far as it is a
satire, it is sufficiently just and pleasant, but received in its more
ambitious character of a theory of society, it is altogether worthless.
It is Mandeville’s object to show that national greatness depends on
the prevalence of fraud and luxury; and for this purpose he supposes
‘a vast hive of bees’ possessing in all respects institutions similar
to those of men; he details the various frauds, similar to those among
men, practised by bees one upon another in various professions....
His hive of bees having thus become wealthy and great, he afterwards
supposes a mutual jealousy of frauds to arise, and Fraud to be, by
common consent, dismissed; and he again assumes that wealth and luxury
immediately disappear, and that the greatness of the society is gone.”
For our part, in place of “greatness,” we should have rather written
_misery_, as far as concerns the mass of communities.
Strange, as it may appear, that views of this kind should be seriously
put forth, “it is yet more so that they should come from one whose
object always was, however strange the way in which he set about it, to
promote good morals, for there is nothing in Mandeville’s writings to
warrant the belief that he sought to encourage vice.”[135]
Mandeville, like Swift, in the piece entitled _An Argument against
Abolishing Christianity_; or like De Foe, in his _Shortest Way with the
Dissenters_, which were taken _au sérieux_ almost universally at the
time of their appearance, may have used the style of grave irony, so
far as the larger portion of his Fable is concerned, for the purpose of
making a stronger impression on the public conscience. If such were his
purpose, the irony is so profound that it has missed its aim. Yet that
his purpose was true and earnest is sufficiently evident in his opinion
of the practice of slaughtering for food:--