professorial post and income, in which the Revolution of the next year,
however, reinstated him. The _coup d’état_ of 1851 finally banished
him from public life--at least as far as teaching was concerned--for
being too conscientious to subscribe the oath of allegiance to the
new Empire. Michelet, like an eminent writer of the present day,
upon principle, elected to be his own publisher; a fact which, in
conjunction with the unpopularity of his opinions, considerably
lessened the sale and circulation of his books; and, by this
independency of action, the historian was a pecuniary loser to a great
extent.
Deprived of the means of subsistence by his conscientiousness, he
left Paris almost penniless, and sought an asylum successively in
the Pyrenees and on the Normandy coast. In 1856 appeared the book
with which the name of Michelet will hereafter be most worthily
associated--the one which may be said to have been written with his
heart’s blood. That the taste of the reading world was not entirely
corrupt, was proved by the rapid sale of this the most popular of
all his productions. A new edition of _L’Oiseau_ came from the press
each year for a long period of time, and it has been translated into
various European languages. How far the attractiveness of the book,
through the illustrative genius of Giacomelli, influenced the buying
public; how far the surpassing merits of the style and matter of the
work--we will not stay to determine; but it is certain that _The Bird_
at once established his popularity as a writer, and relieved his
pecuniary needs. _L’Oiseau_ was followed by several other eloquent
interpretations of Nature. But the first--there can be no question with
persons of taste--remains the masterpiece. It is, indeed, unique in its
kind in literature--by the intense sympathy and love for the subject
which inspired the writer. It is the only book which treats the Bird
as something more than an object of interest to the mere classifier,
to the natural-history collector, or to the “sportsman.” It considers
the winged tribes--those of the non-raptorial kinds--as possessed of
a high intelligence, of a certain moral faculty, of devoted maternal
affection--of a soul, in fine.
Of his remaining writings, _La Bible de l’Humanité_ (1863) is one of
the most notable, characteristic as it is of the author’s method of
treatment of historical and ethnographical subjects.
The calamities of his native land he so greatly loved, through the
corrupt government which had brought upon it the devastations of a
terrible war, ending, by a natural sequence, in the fearful struggle
of the suffering proletariat, deeply affected the aged champion of
the rights of humanity. Almost broken-hearted, he withdrew from his
accustomed haunts and went to Switzerland, and afterwards to Italy. He
died at Hyères, in 1874, in the 77th year of his age. A public funeral,
attended by great numbers of the working classes, awaited him in the
capital.
In the following passage Michelet _virtually_ subscribes to the creed
of Vegetarianism. The saving clause, in which he seems to suppose the
diet of blood to be imposed upon our species by the “cruel fatalities”
of life, it is pretty certain he would have been the first to wish to
cancel, had he enjoyed the opportunity of investigating the scientific
basis of dietetic reform:--
“There is no selfish and exclusive salvation. Man merits his
salvation only _through the salvation of all_. The animals below us
have also their rights before God. ‘Animal life, sombre mystery!
Immense world of thoughts and of dumb sufferings! But signs too
visible, in default of language, express those sufferings. All
Nature protests against the barbarity of man, who misapprehends,
who humiliates, who tortures his inferior brethren.’ This sentence,
which I wrote in 1846, has recurred to me very often. This year
(1863), in October, near a solitary sea, in the last hours of the
night, when the wind, the wave were hushed in silence, I heard the
voices of our humble domestics. From the basement of the house,
and from the obscure depths, these voices of captivity, feeble
and plaintive, reached me and penetrated me with melancholy--an
impression of no vague sensibility, but a serious and positive one.
“The further we advance in knowledge, the more we apprehend the
true meaning of realities, the more do we understand simple but
very serious matters which the hurry (_entraînement_) of life
makes us neglect. Life! Death! The daily murder, which feeding
upon other animals implies--those hard and bitter problems sternly
placed themselves before my mind. Miserable contradiction! Let us
hope that there may be another globe in which the base, the cruel
fatalities of this may be spared to us.”[256]
Extolling the greater respect of the Hindus for other life, as
exhibited in their sacred scriptures, Michelet vindicates the
pre-eminently beneficent character of the Cow, in Europe so
ungratefully treated by the recipients of her bounty:--
“Let us name first, with honour, his beneficent nurse--so honoured
and beloved by him--the sacred Cow, who furnished the happy
nourishment--favourable intermediate between insufficient herbs and
flesh, which excites horror. The Cow, whose milk and butter has
been so long the sacred offering. She alone supported the primitive
people in the long journey from Bactria to India. By her, in face
of so many ruins and desolations--by this fruitful nurse, who
unceasingly renovates the earth for him, he has lived and always
lives.”[257]
In his _Bird_ he constantly preaches the faith that can remove
mountains--the faith that regards the regeneration and pacification of
earth as the proper destiny of our species:--
“The devout faith which we cherish at heart, and which we teach
in these pages, is that man will peaceably subdue the whole
earth, when he shall gradually perceive that every adopted being,
accustomed to a domesticated life, or at least to that degree of
friendship and companionship of which his nature is susceptible,
will be a hundred times more useful to him than he can be with
his throat cut (_qu’il ne pourrait l’être égorgé_). Man will not
be truly man until he shall labour seriously for that which the
Earth expects from him--the pacification and harmonious union
(_ralliement_) of all living Nature. Hunt and make war upon the
lion and the eagle if you will, but not upon the Weak and Innocent.”
This Michelet never wearies of repeating, and he returns again and
again to a truth which is scorned by the modern self-seeking and
money-getting, as it was by the fighting, wholly barbarous, world:--
“Conquerors have never failed to turn into derision this
gentleness, this tenderness for animated Nature. The Persians, the
Romans in Egypt, our Europeans in India, the French in Algeria,
have often outraged and stricken these innocent brothers of
man--the objects of his ancient reverence. Cambyses slew the sacred
Cow; a Roman the Ibis who destroyed unclean reptiles. But what
means the Cow? The fecundity of the country. And the Ibis? Its
salubrity. Destroy these animals, and the country is no longer
habitable. That which has saved India and Egypt through so many
misfortunes and preserved their fertility, is neither the Nile nor
the Ganges. It is respect for other life, the mildness and the
[comparatively] gentle heart of man.
“Profound in meaning was the speech of the Priest of Saïs to the
Greek Herodotus--‘You shall be children always.’
“We shall always be so--we men of the West--subtle and graceful
reasoners, so long as we shall not have comprehended, with a
simple and more exhaustive view, the _motive_ of things. To be a
child, is to seize life only by partial glimpses. To be a man is
to be fully conscious of _all its harmonious unity_. The child
disports himself, shatters and destroys; he finds his happiness
in _undoing_. And science, in its childhood, does the same. It
cannot study unless it kills. The sole use which it makes of a
living mind, is, in the first place, to dissect it. None carry into
scientific pursuits that tender reverence for life which Nature
rewards by unveiling to us her mysteries.”[258]
Like Shelley, he firmly believed in the indefinite amelioration of our
world by the ultimate triumph of principles of _humaneness_, so that
the “sting of death” and of pain might almost, if not entirely, be
removed:--
To prevent death is, undoubtedly, impossible; but we may _prolong_
life. We may eventually render pain rarer, less cruel, and _almost
suppress_ it. That the hardened old world laughs at our expression
is so much the better. We saw quite such a spectacle in the days
when our Europe, barbarised by war, centered all medical art in
surgery, and made the knife its only means of cure, while young
America discovered the miracle of that profound dream in which all
pain is annihilated.
He upbraids the sportsman no less than he does the scientist, and finds
sufficient cause for the too general sterility of the intellect in the
habituation to slaughter, and in disregard for the subject species:--
“Woe to the ungrateful! By this phrase I mean the sporting crowd,
who, unmindful of the numerous benefits we owe to other animals,
exterminate innocent life. A terrible sentence weighs upon the
tribes of ‘sportsmen’--_they can create nothing_. They originate
no art, no industry. They have added nothing to the hereditary
patrimony of the human species....
“Do not believe the axiom, that huntsmen gradually develope into
agriculturalists. It is not so--they kill or die. Such is their
whole destiny. We see it clearly through experience. He who has
killed will kill--he who has created will create.
“In the want of emotion, which every man suffers from his birth,
the child who satisfies it habitually by murder, by a miniature
ferocious drama of surprise and treason, of the torture of the
weak, will find no great enjoyment in the gentle and tranquil
emotions arising from the progressive success of toil and study,
from the limited industry which does everything itself. To create,
to destroy--these are the two raptures of infancy. To create is a
long, slow process; to destroy is quick and easy.
“It is a shocking and hideous thing to see a child partial to
‘sport;’ to see woman enjoying and admiring murder, and encouraging
her child. That delicate and ‘sensitive’ woman would not give him
a knife, but she gives him a gun. Kill at a distance if it pleases
you, for we do not see the suffering. And this Mother will think it
admirable that her son, kept confined to his room, will drive off
_ennui_ by plucking the wings from flies, by torturing a bird or a
little dog.
“Far-seeing mother! She will know, when too late, the evil of
having formed a bad heart. Aged and weak, rejected of the world,
she will experience, in her turn, her son’s brutality.
“Among too many children we are saddened by their almost incredible
sterility. A few recover from it in the long circle of life, when
they have become experienced and enlightened men. But the first
freshness of the heart? It shall return no more.”[259]
Although, as has already been indicated, Michelet evidently had not
examined the _scientific_ basis of akreophagy, yet all his aspirations
and all his sympathies, it is also equally evident, were for the
bloodless diet. With Locke and Rousseau, and many others before
him, he presses upon mothers the vital import of not perverting
the early preferences of their children for the foods prescribed
by unsophisticated nature and their own truer instincts. In one of
his books, the most often republished, in laying down rules for the
education of young girls, he thus writes:--
“Purity, above everything, _in regimen and nourishment_. What are
we to understand by this?
“I understand by it that the young girl should have the proper
nourishment of a child--that she should continue the mild,
tranquilising, unexciting regimen of milk; that, if she eats at
your table, she will be accustomed not to touch the dishes upon it,
which for her, at least, are poisons.
“A revolution has taken place. We have quitted the more sober
French regimen, and have adopted more and more the coarse and
bloody diet of our neighbours, appropriate to their climate much
more than to ours. The worst of it all is that we inflict this
manner of living upon our children. Strange spectacle! To see a
mother giving her daughter, whom but yesterday she was suckling
at her breast, this gross aliment of bloody meats, and the
dangerous excitant wine! She is astonished to see her violent,
capricious, passionate; but it is herself whom she ought to accuse
as the cause. What she fails to perceive, and yet what is very
grave, is that with the French race, so precocious, the arousing
of the passions is so directly provoked by this food. Far from
strengthening, it agitates, it weakens, it unnerves. The mother
thinks it fine (_plaisant_) to have a child so preternaturally
mature. All this comes from herself. Unduly excitable, she wishes
her child to be such another as she, and she is, without knowing
it, the corruptress of her own daughter.
“All this [unnatural stimulation] is of no good to her, and is
little better for you, Madame. You have not the heart, you say, to
eat anything in which she has no share. Ah, well! abstain yourself,
or, at all events, moderate your indulgence in this food, good,
possibly, for the hard-worked man, but fatal in its consequences
to the woman of ease and leisure--regimen which _vulgarises_
her, perturbs her, renders her irritable, or oppresses her with
indigestion.
“For the woman and the child it is a grace--an amiable grace (_grâce
d’amour_)--to be, above all things, _frugivorous_--to avoid the
coarseness and foulness (_fétidité_) of flesh-meats, and to live
rather upon innocent foods, which bring death to no one (_qui
ne coûtent la mort à personne_)--sweet nourishment which charms
the sense of smell as much as it does the taste. The real reason
why the beloved ones in nothing inspire in us repugnance but, in
comparison with men, seem ethereal, is, in a special manner, their
[presumed] preference for herbs and for fruits--for that purity of
regimen which contributes not a little to that of the soul, and
assimilates them to the innocency of the flowers of the field.”[260]
XLV.
COWHERD. 1763-1816.
In any history of Vegetarianism it is impossible to omit record of the
lives and labours of the institutors of a religious community who, in
establishing humane dietetics as an essential condition of membership,
may well claim the honourable title of religious reformers, and to whom
belongs the singular merit of being the first and only founders of a
Christian church who have inculcated a true religion of life as the
_basis_ of their teaching.
William Cowherd, the first founder of this new conception of the
Christian religion, which assumed the name of the “Bible Christian
Church,” was born at Carnforth, near Lonsdale, in 1763. His first
appearance in public was as teacher of philology in a theological
college at Beverley. Afterwards, coming to Manchester, he acted as
curate to the Rev. J. Clowes, who, while remaining a member of the
Established Church, had adopted the theological system of Swedenborg.
Cowherd attached himself to the same mystic creed, and he is said
to be one of the few students of him who have ever read through all
the Latin writings of the Swedish theologian. He soon resigned his
curacy, and for a short time he preached in the Swedenborgian temple
in Peter Street. There he seems not to have found the freedom of
opinion and breadth in teaching he had expected, and he determined to
propagate his own convictions, independently of other authority. In
the year 1800 he built, at his own expense, Christ Church, in King
Street, Salford--the first meeting-place of the reformed church.[261]
His extraordinary eloquence and ability, as well as earnestness
of purpose, quickly attracted a large audience, and may well have
brought to recollection the style and matter of the great orator
of Constantinople of the fourth century. One characteristic of his
Church--perhaps unique at that time--was the non-appropriation of
sittings. Another unfashionable opinion held by him was the Pauline
one of the obligation upon Christian preachers to maintain themselves
by some “secular” labour, and he therefore kept a boarding school,
which attained extensive proportions. In this college some zealous
and able men, who afterwards were ordained by him to carry on a truly
beneficent ministry, assisted in the work of teaching, of whom the
names of Metcalfe, Clark, and Schofield are particularly noteworthy.
Following out the principles of their Master, two of them took degrees
in medicine, and gained their living by that profession. The Principal
himself built an institute, connected with his church in Hulme, where,
more recently, the late Mr. James Gaskill presided, who, at his death,
left an endowment for its perpetuation as an educational establishment.
It was in the year 1809 that Cowherd formally promulgated, as cardinal
doctrines of his system, the principle of abstinence from flesh-eating,
which, in the first instance, he seems to have derived from “the
medical arguments of Dr. Cheyne and the humanitarian sentiments of
St. Pierre.” He died not many years after this formal declaration of
faith and practice, not without the satisfaction of knowing that able
and earnest disciples would carry on the great work of renovating the
religious sentiment for the humanisation of the world.
Of those followers not the least eminent was Joseph Brotherton, the
first M.P. for Salford, than which borough none has been more truly
honoured by the choice of its legislative representative. A printing
press had been set up at the Institution, and, after the death of
the Master, his _Facts Authentic in Science and Religion towards a
New Foundation of the Bible_, under which title he had collected the
most various matter illustrative of passages in the Bible, and in
defence of his own interpretation of them, was there printed. It is,
as his biographer has well described it, “a lasting memorial of his
wide reading and research--travellers, lawyers, poets, physicians,
all are pressed into his service--the whole work forming a large
quarto common-place book filled with reading as delightful as it is
discursive. Some of his minor writings have also been printed. He was,
besides his theological erudition, a practical chemist and astronomer,
and he caused the dome of the church in King Street to be fitted up for
the joint purposes of an observatory and a laboratory. His microscope
is still preserved in the Peel Park Museum. His valuable library,
which at one time was accessible to the public on easy terms, is now
deposited in the new Bible Christian Church in Cross Lane. The books
collected exhibit the strong mind which brought them together for its
own uses. This library is the workshop in which he wrought out a new
mode of life and a new theory of doctrine--with these instruments he
moulded minds like that of Brotherton, and so his influence has worked
in many unseen channels.” He died in 1816, and is buried in front of
his chapel, in King Street, Salford.[262]
XLVI.
METCALFE. 1788-1862.
Amongst the immediate disciples of the founder of the new community,
the most active apostle of the principles of Vegetarianism, William
Metcalfe, to whom reference has been already made, claims particular
notice. Born at Orton in Westmoreland, after instruction in a classical
school kept by a philologist of some repute, he began life as an
accountant at Keighley, in Yorkshire. His leisure hours were devoted to
mental culture, both in reading and in poetic composition. Converted by
Cowherd in 1809, in the twenty-first year of his age, he abandoned the
flesh diet, and remained to the end a firm believer in the truths of
“The Perfect Way.” In the year following he married the daughter of the
Rev. J. Wright who was at the head of the “New Church” at Keighley, and
whom he assisted as curate. His wife, of highly-cultured mind, equally
with himself was a persistent follower of the reformed mode of living.
Sharing the experiences of many other dietary reformers, the young
converts encountered much opposition from their family and friends, who
attempted at one moment ridicule, at another dissuasion, by appealing
to medical authority. Unmoved from their purpose, they continued
unshaken in their convictions.
“They assured me,” he writes at a later period, “that I was rapidly
sinking into a consumption, and tried various other methods to
induce me to return to the customary dietetic habits of society;
but their efforts proved ineffectual. Some predicted my death in
three or four months; and others, on hearing me attempt to defend
my course, hesitated not to tell me I was certainly suffering from
mental derangement, and, if I continued to live without flesh-food
much longer, would unquestionably have to be shut up in some insane
asylum. All was unavailing. Instead of sinking into consumption,
I gained several pounds in weight during the first few weeks of
my experiment. Instead of three or four months bringing me to the
silent grave, they brought me to the matrimonial altar.
“She [his wife] fully coincided with me in my views on vegetable
diet, and, indeed, on all other important points was always ready
to defend them to the best of her ability--studied to show our
acquaintances, whenever they paid us a visit, that we could live,
in every rational enjoyment, without the use of flesh for food.
As she was an excellent cook, we were never at a loss as to what
we should eat. We commenced housekeeping in January, 1810, and,
from that date to the present time, we have never had a pound
of flesh-meat in our dwelling, have never patronised either
slaughter-houses or spirit shops.
“When, again, in the course of time we were about to be blessed
with an addition to our family, a renewed effort was made. We
were assured it was impossible for my wife to get through her
confinement without some _more strengthening food_. Friends
and physicians were alike decided upon that point. We were,
notwithstanding, unmoved and faithful to our principles. Next we
were told by our kind advisers that the little stranger could not
be sufficiently nourished unless the mother could eat a little
‘meat’ once a day; or, if not that, drink a pint or half a pint of
ale daily. To both proposals my wife turned a deaf ear; and both
she and the child did exceedingly well.[263] It may be proper to
add here [remarks the biographer], that the ‘little stranger’ above
referred to is the author of this _Memoir_,--that he is in the
fifty-sixth year of his age, that he has never so much as _tasted_
animal food, nor used intoxicating drinks of any kind, and that he
is hale and hearty.”
These experiences, it is scarcely necessary to remark, in the lives of
followers of reformed dietetics, have been not seldom repeated.
In the Academy of Sciences, instituted by Dr. Cowherd, Metcalfe was
invited to assume the direction of the “classical” department (1811).
In the same year he took “Orders,” and, at the solicitation of the
secessionists from the Swedenborgian Communion (which, with some
inconsistency, seems to have looked with indifference, or even dislike,
upon the principles of akreophagy), he officiated at Adingham, in
Yorkshire. By the voluntary aid of one of his admirers a church was
built, to which was added a commodious school-room. He then resigned
his position under Dr. Cowherd, and opened a grammar school in
Adingham, where he was well supported by his friends.