nation of shepherds and of warriors in the three important articles
of (1) their diet, (2) their habitations, and (3) their exercises.
1. The corn, or even the rice, which constitutes the ordinary
and wholesome food of a civilised people, can be obtained only
by the patient toil of the husbandman. Some of the happy savages
who dwell between the tropics are plentifully nourished by the
liberality of Nature; but in the climates of the North a nation
of shepherds is reduced to their flocks and herds. The skilful
practitioners of the medical art will determine (if they are able
to determine) how far the temper of the human mind may be affected
by the use of animal or of vegetable food; and whether the common
association of carnivorous and cruel deserves to be considered
in any other light than that of an innocent, perhaps a salutary,
prejudice of humanity. Yet if it be true that the sentiment of
compassion is imperceptibly weakened by the sight and practice of
domestic cruelty, we may observe that _the horrid objects which
are disguised by the arts of European refinement_ are exhibited in
their naked and most disgusting simplicity in the tent of a Tartar
shepherd. The Oxen or the Sheep are slaughtered by the same hand
from which they were accustomed to receive their daily food, and
the bleeding limbs are served, with very little preparation, on the
table of their unfeeling murderers.”[197]
To the poets, who claim to be the interpreters and priests of
Nature, we might, with justness, look for celebration of the
anti-materialist living. Unhappily we too generally look in vain.
The prophet-poets--Hesiod, Kalidâsa, Milton, Thomson, Shelley,
Lamartine--form a band more noble than numerous. Of those who, not
having entered the very sanctuary of the temple of humanitarianism,
have been content to officiate in its outer courts, Burns and Cowper
occupy a prominent place. That the latter, who felt so keenly
“The persecution and the pain
That man inflicts on all inferior kinds
Regardless of their plaints,”
and who has denounced with so eloquent indignation the pitiless wars
“waged with defenceless innocence,” and the protean shapes of human
selfishness, should yet have stopped short of the _final_ cause of
them all, would be inexplicable but for the blinding influence of
habit and authority. Nevertheless, his picture of the savagery of
the Slaughter-House, and of some of its associated cruelties, is too
forcible to be omitted:
“To make him sport,
To justify the phrensy of his wrath,
_Or his base gluttony_, are causes good
And just, in his account, why bird and beast
Should suffer torture, and the stream be dyed
With blood of their inhabitants impaled.
Earth groans beneath the burden of a war
Waged with defenceless Innocence: while he,
_Not satisfied to prey on all around,
Adds tenfold bitterness to death by pangs
Needless, and first torments ere he devours_.
Now happiest they who occupy the scenes
The most remote from his abhorred resort.
* * * * *
Witness at his feet
The Spaniel dying for some venial fault,
Under dissection of the knotted scourge:
_Witness the patient Ox, with stripes and yells
Driven to the slaughter, goaded as he runs
To madness, while the savage at his heels
Laughs at the frantic sufferer’s fury spent
Upon the heedless passenger o’erthrown_.
He, too, is witness--noblest of the train
Who waits on Man--the flight-performing Horse:
With unsuspecting readiness he takes
His murderer on his back, and, pushed all day,
With bleeding sides, and flanks that heave for life,
To the far-distant goal arrives, and dies!
So little mercy shows, who needs so much!
Does Law--so jealous in the cause of Man[?]--
Denounce no doom on the delinquent? None.”[198]
XXXIII.
OSWALD. 1730-1793.
Amongst the less known prophets of the new Reformation the author
of the _Cry of Nature_--one of the most eloquent appeals to justice
and right feeling ever addressed to the conscience of men--deserves
an honourable place. Of the facts of his life we have scanty record.
He was a native of Edinburgh. At an early age he entered the English
army as a private soldier, but his friends soon obtained for him
an officer’s commission. He went to the East Indies, where he
distinguished himself by his remarkable courage and ability. He did not
long remain in the military life; and, having sold out, he travelled
through Hindustan to inform himself of the principles of the Brahmin
and Buddhist religions of the peninsula, whose dress as well as milder
manners he assumed upon his return to England.
During his stay in this country he uniformly abstained from all
flesh meats, and so great, we are told, was his abhorrence of the
Slaughter-House, that, to avoid it or the butcher’s shop, he was
accustomed to make a long _détour_. His children were brought up in
the same way. In 1790, like some others of the more enthusiastic
class of his countrymen, he espoused the cause of the Revolution, and
went to Paris. By introducing some useful military reforms he gained
distinction amongst the Republicans, and he received an important post.
He seems to have fallen, with his sons, fighting in La Vendée for the
National Cause.
The author, in his preface, tells us that--
“Fatigued with answering the inquiries and replying to the
objections of his friends with respect to the singularity of his
mode of life, he conceived that he might consult his ease by
making, once for all, a public apology for his opinions.... The
author is very far from entertaining a presumption that his slender
labours (crude and imperfect as they are now hurried to the press)
will ever operate an effect on the public mind; and yet, when
he considers the natural bias of the human heart to the side of
mercy,[199] and observes, on all hands, the barbarous governments
of Europe giving way to a better system of things, he is inclined
to hope that the day is beginning to approach when the growing
sentiment of peace and goodwill towards men will also embrace, in a
wide circle of benevolence, the lower orders of life.
“At all events, the pleasing persuasion that his work may have
contributed to _mitigate_ the ferocities of prejudice, and to
_diminish_, in some degree, the great mass of misery which
oppresses the lower animal world, will, in the hour of distress,
convey to the author’s soul a consolation which the tooth of
calumny will not be able to empoison.”
A noble and true inspiration nobly and eloquently used! The arguments,
by which he attempts to reach the better feeling of his readers, are
drawn from the deepest source of morality. Having given a beautiful
picture of the tempting and alluring character of Fruits, he exclaims
in his poetic-prose:--
“But far other is the fate of animals. For, alas! when they are
plucked from the tree of Life, suddenly the withered blossoms of
their beauty shrink to the chilly hand of Death. Quenched in his
cold grasp expires the lamp of their loveliness, and struck by
the livid blast of loathed putrefaction, their comely limbs are
involved in ghastly horror. Shall we leave the living herbs to
seek, in the den of death, an obscene aliment? Insensible to the
blooming beauties of Pomona--unallured by the fragrant odours that
exhale from her groves of golden fruits--unmoved by the nectar of
Nature, by the ambrosia of innocence--shall the voracious vultures
of our impure appetites speed along those lovely scenes and alight
in the loathsome sink of putrefaction to devour the remains of
other creatures, to load with cadaverous rottenness a wretched
stomach?”
He repeats Porphyry’s appeal to the consideration of human interests
themselves--
“And is not the human race itself highly interested to prevent the
habit of spilling blood? For, will the man, habituated to violence,
be nice to distinguish the vital tide of a quadruped from that
which flows from a creature with two legs? Are the dying struggles
of a Lamb less affecting than the agonies of any animal whatever?
Or, will the ruffian who beholds unmoved the supplicatory looks
of innocence itself, and, reckless of the Calf’s infantine cries,
pitilessly plunges in her quivering side the murdering knife, will
he turn, I say, with horror from human assassination?
‘What more advance can mortals make in sin,
So near perfection, who with blood begin?
Deaf to the calf who lies beneath the knife,
Looks up, and from the butcher begs her life.
Deaf to the harmless kid who, ere he dies,
All efforts to procure thy pity tries,
And imitates, in vain, thy children’s cries.
Where will he stop?’
“From the practice of slaughtering an innocent animal of another
species to the murder of man himself the steps are neither many nor
remote. This our forefathers perfectly understood, who ordained
that, in a cause of blood, no butcher should be permitted to sit in
jury....
“But from the nature of the very human heart arises the strongest
argument in behalf of the persecuted beings. Within us there
exists a rooted repugnance to the shedding of blood, a repugnance
which yields only to Custom, and which even the most inveterate
custom can seldom entirely overcome. Hence the ungracious task of
shedding the tide of life (for the gluttony of the table) has, in
every country, been committed to the lowest class of men, and their
profession is, in every country, an object of abhorrence.
“They feed on the carcass without remorse, because the dying
struggles of the butchered victim are secluded from their
sight--because his cries pierce not their ears--because his
agonising shrieks sink not into their souls. But were they forced,
with their own hands, to assassinate the beings whom they devour,
who is there among us who would not throw down the knife with
detestation, and, rather than embrue his hands in the murder of
the lamb, consent for ever to forego the accustomed repast? What
then shall we say? Vainly planted in our breast is this abhorrence
of cruelty--this sympathetic affection for innocence? Or do
the feelings of the heart point to the command of Nature more
unerringly than all the elaborate subtlety of a set of men who, at
the shrine of science, have sacrificed the dearest sentiments of
humanity?”
This eloquent vindicator of the rights of the oppressed of the
non-human races here addresses a scathing rebuke to the torturers
of the vivisection-halls, as well as to those who abuse Science by
attempting to enlist it in the defence of slaughter.
“You, the sons of modern science, who court not Wisdom in her
walks of silent meditation in the grove--who behold her not in
the living loveliness of her works, but expect to meet her in the
midst of obscenity and corruption--you, who dig for knowledge in
the depths of the dunghill, and who expect to discover Wisdom
enthroned amid the fragments of mortality and the abhorrence of
the senses--you, that with cruel violence interrogate trembling
Nature, who plunge into her maternal bosom the butcher-knife, and,
in quest of your nefarious science, delight to scrutinise the
fibres of agonising beings, you dare also to violate the human
form, and holding up the entrails of men, you exclaim, ‘Behold the
bowels of a carnivorous animal!’ Barbarians! to these very bowels
I appeal against your cruel dogmas--to these bowels which Nature
hath sanctified to the sentiments of pity and of gratitude, to the
yearnings of kindred, to the melting tenderness of love.
‘Mollissima corda
Humano generi dare se Natura fatetur,
Quæ _lachrymas_ dedit: hæc nostri pars optima sensus.’[200]
“Had Nature intended man to be an animal of prey, would she have
implanted in his breast an instinct so adverse to her purpose?...
Would she not rather, in order to enable him to brave the piercing
cries of anguish, have wrapped his ruthless heart in ribs of brass,
and with iron entrails have armed him to grind, without shadow of
remorse, the palpitating limbs of agonising life? But has Nature
winged the feet of men with fleetness to overtake the flying prey?
And where are his fangs to tear asunder the beings destined for
his food? Does the lust of carnage glare in his eye-balls? Does he
scent from afar the footsteps of his victim? Does his soul pant for
the feast of blood? Is the bosom of men the rugged abode of bloody
thoughts, and from the den of Death rush forth, at sight of other
animals, his rapacious desires to slay, to mangle, and to devour?
“But come, men of scientific subtlety, approach and examine with
attention this dead body. It was late a playful Fawn, who skipping
and bounding on the bosom of parent Earth, awoke in the soul of
the feeling observer a thousand tender emotions. But the butcher’s
knife has laid low the delight of a fond mother, and the darling
of Nature is now stretched in gore upon the ground. Approach, I
say, men of scientific subtlety, and tell me, does this ghastly
spectacle whet your appetite? But why turn you with abhorrence?
Do you then yield to the combined evidence of your senses, to
the testimony of conscience and common sense; or with a show of
rhetoric, pitiful as it is perverse, will you still persist in your
endeavour to persuade us that to murder an innocent being is not
cruel nor unjust, and that to feed upon a corpse is neither filthy
nor unfitting?”
Amid the dark scenes of barbarism and cold-blooded indifferentism
to suffering innocence, there are yet the glimmers of a better
nature, which need but the life-giving impulse of a true religion and
philosophy:--
“And yet those channels of sympathy for inferior animals, long--a
very long--custom has not been able altogether to stifle. Even now,
notwithstanding the narrow, joyless, and hard-hearted tendency of
the prevailing superstitions; even now we discover, in every corner
of the globe, some good-natured _prejudice_ in behalf of [certain
of] the persecuted animals; we perceive, in every country, certain
privileged animals, whom even the ruthless jaws of gluttony dare
not to invade. For, to pass over unnoticed the vast empires of
India and of China, where the lower orders of life are considered
as relative parts of society, and are protected by the laws and
religion of the natives,[201] the Tartars abstain from several
kinds of animals; the Turks are charitable to the very dog, whom
they abominate; and even the English peasant pays towards the
_red-breast_ an inviolable respect to the rights of hospitality.
“Long after the perverse practice of devouring the flesh of animals
had grown into inveterate habit among peoples, there existed still
in almost every country, and of every religion, and of every sect
of philosophy, a wiser, a purer, and more holy class of men who
preserved by their institutions, by their precepts, and by their
example, the memory of primitive innocence [?] and simplicity. The
Pythagoreans abhorred the slaughter of any animal life; Epicurus
and the worthiest part of his disciples bounded their delights with
the produce of their garden; and of the first Christians several
sects abominated the feast of blood, and were satisfied with the
food which Nature, unviolated, brings forth for our support....
“Man, in a state of nature, is not, apparently, much superior to
other animals. His organisation is, without doubt, extremely happy;
but then the dexterity of his figure is counterpoised by great
advantages in other beings. Inferior to the Bull in force, and in
fleetness to the Dog, the _os sublime_, or erect front, a feature
he bears in common with the Monkey, could scarcely have inspired
him with those haughty and magnificent ideas which the pride of
human refinement thence endeavours to deduce. Exposed, like his
fellow-creatures, to the injuries of the air, urged to action by
the same physical necessities, susceptible of the same impressions,
actuated by the same passions, and equally subject to the pains of
disease and to the pangs of dissolution, the simple savage never
dreams that his nature was so much more noble, or that he drew his
origin from a purer source or more remote than the other animals in
whom he saw a resemblance so complete.
“Nor were the simple sounds by which he expressed the singleness
of his heart at all fitted to flatter him into that fond sense
of superiority over the beings whom the unreasoning insolence of
cultivated ages absurdly styles _mute_. I say absurdly styles
_mute_; for with what propriety can that name be applied, for
example, to the little sirens of the groves, to whom Nature has
granted the strains of ravishment--the soul of song? Those charming
warblers who pour forth, with a moving melody which human ingenuity
vies with in vain, their loves, their anxiety, their woes. In
the ardour and delicacy of his amorous expressions, can the most
impassioned, the most respectful, human lover surpass the ‘glossy
kind,’ as described by the most beautiful of all our poets?
“And, indeed, has not Nature given to almost every being the same
spontaneous signs of the various affections? Admire we not in other
animals whatever is most eloquent in man--the tremor of desire, the
tear of distress, the piercing cry of anguish, the pity-pleading
look--expressions which speak to the soul with a feeling which
words are feeble to convey?”
The whole of the little book of which the above extracts are properly
representative, breathes the spirit of a true religion. We shall only
add that it exhibits almost as much learning and valuable research as
it exhibits justness of thought and sensibility--enriched, as it is, by
copious illustrative notes.[202]
XXXIV.
HUFELAND. 1762-1836.
Not entitled to rank among the greater prophets who have had the
penetration to recognise the _essential_ barbarism, no less than the
unnaturalness, of Kreophagy (disguised, as it is, by the arts of
civilisation), this most popular of all German physicians, with the
Cornaros and Abernethys, may yet claim considerable merit as having, in
some degree, sought to stem the tide of unnatural living, which, under
less gross forms indeed than those of the darker ages of dietetics,
and partially concealed in the refinements of Art, is more difficult
to be resisted by reason of its very disguise. If the renaissance of
Pythagorean dietetics had already dawned for the deeper thinkers,
the age of science and of reason, as regards the mass of accredited
teachers, was yet a long way off; and to all pioneers, even though they
failed to clear the way entirely, some measure of our gratitude is due.
Christian Wilhelm Hufeland is one of the most prolific of medical
writers. Having studied medicine at Jena and at Gottingen he took the
degree of doctor in 1783. At Jena he occupied a professorial chair
(1793), and came to Berlin five years later, where he was entrusted
with the superintendence of the Medical College. Both as practical
physician and as professor, Hufeland attained a European reputation.
The French Academy of Sciences elected him one of its members. His
numerous writings have been often reprinted in Germany. Among the most
useful are: (1) _Popular Dissertations upon Health_ (Leipsig, 1794);
(2) _Makrobiotik: oder die Kunst das Menschliche Leben zu Verlängern_
(Jena, 1796), a celebrated work which has been translated into all
the languages of Europe[203]; (3) _Good Advice to Mothers upon the
most Important Points of the Physical Education of Children in the
First Years_ (Berlin, 1799); (4) _History of Health, and Physical
Characteristics of our Epoch_ (Berlin, 1812)[204]. Of Hufeland’s
witness to the general superiority of the _Naturgemässe Lebensweise_
the following sentences are sufficiently representative:
“The more man follows Nature and obeys her laws the longer will he
live. The further he removes from them (_je weiter er von ihnen
abweicht_) the shorter will be his duration of existence....
Only inartificial, simple nourishment promotes health and long
life, while mixed and rich foods but shorten our existence.... We
frequently find a very advanced old age amongst men who from youth
upwards have lived, for the most part, upon the vegetable diet,
and, perhaps, have never tasted flesh.”[205]
XXXV.
RITSON. 1761-1830.
Known to the world generally as an eminent antiquarian and, in
particular, as one of the earliest and most acute investigators of
the sources of English romantic poetry, for future times his best and
enduring fame will rest upon his at present almost forgotten Moral
Essay upon Abstinence--one of the most able and philosophical of the
ethical expositions of anti-kreophagy ever published.
His birthplace was Stockton in the county of Durham. By profession a
conveyancer, he enjoyed leisure for literary pursuits by his income
from an official appointment. During the twenty years from 1782 to 1802
his time and talents were incessantly employed in the publication of
his various works, antiquarian and critical. His first notable critique
was his _Observations_ on Warton’s _History of English Poetry_, in the
shape of a letter to the author (1782), in which his critical zeal
seems to have been in excess of his literary amenity. Of other literary
productions may be enumerated his _Remarks on the Commentators of
Shakspere_; _A Select Collection of English Songs, with a Historical
Essay on the Origin and Progress of National Songs_ (1783); _Ancient
Songs from the Time of King Henry III. to the Revolution_ (1790),
reprinted in 1829--perhaps the most valuable of his archæological
labours; _The English Anthology_ (1793); _Ancient English Metrical
Romances_, and _Bibliographia Poetica_, a catalogue of English poets
from the 12th to the 16th century, inclusive, with short notices of
their works. These are only some of the productions of his industry and
genius.
We give the origin of his adhesion to the Humanitarian Creed as
recorded by himself in one of the chapters of his Essay, in which,
also, he introduces the name of an ardent and well-known humanitarian
reformer:--
“Mr. Richard Phillips,[206] the publisher of this compilation, a
vigorous, healthy, and well-looking man, has desisted from animal
food for upwards of twenty years; and the compiler himself, induced
to serious reflection by the perusal of Mandeville’s _Fable of the
Bees_, in the year 1772, being the 19th year of his age, has ever
since, to the revisal of these sheets [1802], firmly adhered to a
milk and vegetable diet; having, at least, never tasted, during the
whole course of those thirty years, any flesh, fowl, or fish, or
anything, to his knowledge, prepared in or with those substances
or any extract from them, unless, on one occasion, when tempted
by wet, cold, and hunger in the south of Scotland, he ventured
to eat a few potatoes dressed under roasted flesh, nothing less
repugnant to his feelings being obtainable; or, except by ignorance
or imposition, unless, it may be, in eating eggs, which, however,
deprives no animal of life, although it may prevent some from
coming into the world to be murdered and devoured by others.”[207]
Ritson begins his Essay with a brief review of the opinions of some of
the old Greek and Italian philosophers upon the origin and constitution
of the world, and with a sketch of the position of man in Nature
relatively to other animals. Amongst others he cites Rousseau’s Essay
_Upon Inequality Amongst Men_. He then demonstrates the unnaturalness
of flesh-eating by considerations derived from Physiology and Anatomy,
and from the writings of various authorities; the fallacy of the
prejudice that flesh-meats are necessary or conducive to strength of
body, a fallacy manifest as well from the examples of whole nations
living entirely, or almost entirely, upon non-flesh food, as from
those of numerous individuals whose cases are detailed at length. He
quotes Arbuthnot, Sir Hans Sloane, Cheyne, Adam Smith, Volney, Paley,
and others. Next he insists upon the ferocity or coarseness of mind
directly or indirectly engendered by the diet of blood:--