(the Pythagorean), it is interesting to remark,” says the author
of the article Pythagoras in Dr. Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and
Roman Biography_, “that, wherever we have notices of distinguished
Pythagoreans, we usually hear of them as men of great uprightness,
conscientiousness, and self-restraint, and as capable of devoted and
enduring friendship.” Amongst them the names of Archytas, and Damon,
and Phintias are particularly eminent. Archytas was one of the very
greatest geniuses of antiquity: he was distinguished alike as a
philosopher, mathematician, statesman, and general. In mechanics he was
the inventor of the wooden flying dove--one of the wonders of the older
world. Empedokles (the Apollonius of the 5th century B.C.), who devoted
his marvellous attainments to the service of humanity, may be claimed
as, at least in part, a follower of Pythagoras.
[13] “Quæ Philosophia fuit, facta Philologia est.” (Ep. cviii.)
Compare Montaigne, _Essais_, i., 24, on Pedantry, where he admirably
distinguishes between _wisdom_ and _learning_.
[14] _The Republic of Plato._ By Davies and Vaughan.
[15] In support of this thesis Plato adduces arguments derived from
analogy. Amongst the non-human species the sexes, he points out, are
nearly equal in strength and intelligence. In human savage life the
difference is far less marked than in artificial conditions of life.
[16] Ὄψον--the name given by the Greeks generally to everything which
they considered rather as a “relish” than a necessary. Bread was held
to be--not only in name but in fact--the veritable “staff of life.”
Olives, figs, cheese, and, at Athens especially, fish were the ordinary
Ὄψον.
[17] Translated by Davies and Vaughan. 1874.
[18] The _four_ sacred Pythagorean virtues--justice, temperance,
wisdom, fortitude. See notice of Plato above.
[19] Upon which excellent maxim Hierokles justly remarks: “The judge
here appointed is the most just of all, and the one which is [ought to
be] most at home with us, viz.: conscience and right reason.”
[20] _Nineteenth Century_, October, 1877. The Greek original of
the _Golden Verses_ is found in the text of Mullach, in _Fragmenta
Philosophorum Græcorum_. Paris, 1860.
[21] The Romans, we may remark, imported the gladiatorial fights from
Spain.
[22] _Hist. Naturalis VIII._ 7. His nephew says of these huge
slaughter-houses that “there is no novelty, no variety, or anything
that could not be seen once for all.” On one occasion, in the year
A.D. 284, we are credibly informed that 1,000 ostriches, 1,000 stags,
1,000 fallow-deer, besides numerous wild sheep and goats, were mingled
together for indiscriminate slaughter by the wild beasts of the forest
or the equally wild beasts of the city. (See _Decline and Fall._)
[23] Some traces of it may be found, _e.g._, in Lucretius (_De Rerum
Nat. II._, where see his touching picture of the bereaved mother-cow,
whose young is ravished from her for the horrid sacrificial altar);
Virgil (_Æneis VII._), in his story of Silvia’s deer--the most touching
passage in the poem; Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ In earlier Greek literature,
Euripides seems most in sympathy with suffering--at least as regards
his own species.
[24] I see and approve the better way; I pursue the worse.--_Metam._
vii., 20.
[25] In a note on this passage Lipsius, the famous Dutch commentator,
remarks: “I am quite in accord with this feeling. The constant use of
flesh meat (_assidua_ κρεοφαγία) by Europeans makes them stupid and
irrational (_brutos_).”
[26] Lipsius suggests, with much reason, that Seneca actually wrote
the opposite respecting his father, “who had no dislike for this
philosophy, but who feared calumny,” &c.
[27] On this melancholy truth compare Montaigne’s _Essais_.
[28] Ep. xxv. Lipsius here quotes Lucan “still more a philosopher than
a poet”:--
“_Discite quam parvo liceat producere vitam,
Et quantum natura petat.
. . Satis est populis fluviusque Ceresque._”
“Learn by how little life may he sustained, and how much nature
requires. The gifts of Ceres and water are sufficient nourishment for
all peoples.”--(_Pharsalia._)
Also Euripides:--
“Ἐπεὶ τί δεῖ βροτοῖσι . . . .
. . . πλὴν δύοιν μόνον,
Δημητρὸς ἀκτῆς, πώματος θ’ ὑδρηχόου,
Ἃπερ πάρεστι καὶ πέφυχ’ ἡμᾶς τρέφειν·
Ὧν οὐκ ἀπαρκεῖ πλησμονή· τρυφῇ γέ τοι
Ἄλλων ἐδεστῶν μηχανὰς θηρεύομεν.”
Which may be translated:--
“_Since what need mortals, save twain things alone,
Crush’d grain (heaven’s gift), and streaming water-draught?
Food nigh at hand, and nature’s aliment--
Of which no glut contents us. Pampered taste
Hunts out device of other eatables._”
(Fragment of lost drama of Euripides, preserved in _Athenæus_ iv.
and in _Gellius_ vii.)
See, too, the elder Pliny, who professes his conviction that
“the plainest food is also the most beneficial” (_cibus simplex
utilissimus_), and asserts that it is from his eating that man derives
most of his diseases, and from thence that all the drugs and all the
arts of physicians abound. (_Hist. Nat._ xxvi., 28.)
[29] Cf. Pope’s accusation of the gluttony of his species:--
“Of half that live, the butcher and the tomb.”
--_Essay on Man._
[30] Compare Juvenal _passim_, Martial, Athenæus, Plutarch, and Clement
of Alexandria.
[31] _Ep._ cx. Cf. St. Chrysostom (_Hom._ i. on _Coloss._ i.) who seems
to have borrowed his equally forcible admonition on the same subject
from Seneca.
[32] _Epistola_ vii. and _De Brevitate Vitæ_ xiv. As to the effect
of the gross diet of the later _athletes_, Ariston (as quoted by
Lipsius) compared them to columns in the _gymnasium_, at once “sleek
and stony”--λιπαροὺς καὶ λιθίνους. Diogenes of Sinope, being asked why
the athletes seemed always so void of sense and intelligence, replied,
“Because they are made up of ox and swine flesh.” Galen, the great
Greek medical writer of the second century of our æra, makes the same
remark upon the proverbial stupidity of this class, and adds: “And
this is the universal experience of mankind--that a gross stomach does
not make a refined mind.” The Greek proverb, “παχεῖα γαστὴρ λεπτὸν οὐ
τίκτει νόον,” exactly expresses the same experience.
[33] _De Clementiâ_ i. and ii. The author has been accused of
flattering a notorious tyrant. The charge is, however, unjust, since
Nero, at the period of the dedication of the treatise to him, had not
yet discovered his latent viciousness and cruelty. Like Voltaire, in
recent times, Seneca bestowed perhaps unmerited praise, in the hope of
flattering the powerful into the practice of justice and virtue.
[34] Cf. the sad experiences of the great Jewish prophet. “The prophets
prophesy falsely,” &c.
[35] In the original, “dumb animals” (_mutis animalibus_)--a term
which, it deserves special note, Seneca usually employs, rather
than the traditional expressions “beasts” and “brutes.” The term
“dumb animals” is not strictly accurate, seeing that almost all
_terrestrials_ have the use of voice though it may not be intelligible
to human ears. Yet it is, at all events, preferable to the old
traditional terms still in general use.
[36] Compare the advice of the younger Pliny--“Read much rather
than many books.” (_Letters_ vii., 9 in the excellent revision of
Mr. Bosanquet, Bell and Daldy, 1877) and Gibbon’s just remarks
(_Miscellaneous Works_).
[37] See this finely and wittily illustrated in _Micromégas_ (one
of the most exquisite satires ever written), where the philosopher
of the star Sirius proposes the same questions to the contending
metaphysicians and _savans_ of our planet.
[38] This essay ranks among the most valuable productions that have
come down to us from antiquity. Its sagacious anticipation of the
modern argument from comparative physiology and anatomy, as well as
the earnestness and true feeling of its eloquent appeal to the higher
instincts of human nature, gives it a special interest and importance.
We have therefore placed it separately at the end of this article.
[39] Περὶ τοῦ Τὰ Ἄλογα Λογῶ Χρῆσθαι--“An Essay to prove that the Lower
Animals reason.”
[40] This essay is remarkable as being, perhaps, the first speculation
as to the existence of other _worlds_ than ours.
[41] As regards this complete silence of Plutarch, it may be attributed
to his eminently _conservative_ temperament, which shrank from an
exclusive system that so completely broke with the sacred traditions
of “the venerable Past.” Besides, Christianity had not assumed the
imposing proportions of the age of Lucian, whose indifference is
therefore more surprising than that of Plutarch.
[42] See, for example, the _Isis and Osiris_, 49. And yet, with
Francis Bacon, and Bayle, and Addison, he prefers Atheism to fanatical
Superstition.
[43] Of the many eminent persons who have been indebted to, or who have
professed the greatest admiration for, the writings of Plutarch are
Eusebius, who places him at the head of all Greek philosophers, Origen,
Theodoret, Aulus Gellius, Photius, Suidas, Lipsius. Theodore of Gaza,
when asked what writer he would first save from a general conflagration
of libraries, answered, “Plutarch; for he considered his philosophical
writings the most beneficial to society, and the best substitute for
all other books.” Amongst moderns, Montaigne, Montesquieu, Voltaire,
and especially Rousseau, recognise him as one of the first of moralists.
[44] See Milton (_Paradise Lost_, xi.), and Shelley (_Queen Mab_).
[45] Cf. Pope:--“Of half that live, the butcher and the tomb.”--_Moral
Essays._
[46] _Parallel Lives: Cato the Censor._ Translated by John and William
Langhorne, 1826.
[47] See _Odyssey_, xii., 395, of the oxen of the sun impiously
slaughtered by the companions of Ulysses.
[48] “Hinc subitæ mortes, atque intestata Senectus.”--“Hence sudden
deaths, and age without a will.” Juvenal, _Sat._ I.
[49]
“The anarch Custom’s reign.”
Shelley: _Revolt of Islam_.
[50] Such it seems, were some of the popular methods of torture in
the Slaughter Houses in the first century of our æra. Whether the
“calf-bleeding,” and the preliminary operations which produce the
_pâté de foie gras_, &c., or the older methods, bear away the palm for
ingenuity in culinary torture, may be a question.
[51] See Περὶ Σαρκοφαγίας Λόγος--in the Latin title, _De Esu
Carnium_--“On Flesh-Eating,” Parts 1 and 2. We shall here add the
authority of Pliny, who professes his conviction that “the plainest
food is the most beneficial.” (_Hist. Nat._ xi., 117); and asserts
that it is from his eating that man derives most of his diseases.
(xxv., 28.) Compare the feeling of Ovid, whom we have already
quoted--_Metamorphoses_ xv. We may here refer our readers also to the
celebration, by the same poet, of the innocent and peaceful gifts of
_Ceres_, and of the superiority of her pure table and altar--_Fasti_
iv., 395-416.
_Pace, Ceres, læta est._ At vos optate, Coloni,
_Perpetuam pacem_, perpetuumque ducem.
Farra Deæ, micæque licet salientis honorem
Detis: et in veteres turea grana focos.
Et, si thura aberant, unctas accendite tædas.
Parva bonæ Cereri, _sint modo casta_, placent.
_A Bove succincti cultros removete ministri:
Bos aret....
Apta jugo cervix non est ferienda securi:
Vivat, et in durâ sæpe laboret humo._
And the fine picture of Virgil of the agricultural life in the ideal
“Golden Age,” in which slaughter for food and war was unknown:--
_Ante
Impia quam cæsis gens est epulata juvencis._
“Before
An impious world the labouring oxen slew.”--_Georgics II._
[52] “The proclamation of the birth of Apollonius to his mother
by Proteus, and the incarnation of Proteus himself--the chorus of
swans which sang for joy on the occasion--the casting out of devils,
raising the dead, and healing the sick--the sudden disappearances and
reappearances of Apollonius--his adventures in the Cave of Trophonius,
and the sacred Voice which called him at his death, to which may be
added his claim as a teacher to reform the world--cannot fail to
suggest the parallel passages in the Gospel history.... Still, it must
be allowed that the resemblances are very general, and on the whole
it seems probable that the life of Apollonius was not written with a
_controversial_ aim, as the resemblances, though real, only indicate
that a few things were borrowed, and exhibit no trace of a systematic
parallel.”--_Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography._ Edited by Wm.
Smith, LL.D. So great was the estimation in which he was held, that
the emperor Alexander Severus (one of the very few good Roman princes)
placed his statue or bust in the imperial _Larium_ or private Chapel,
together with those of Orpheus and of Christ.
[53] Cf. Virgil, _Georgics_ II.: “Fundit humo _facilem_ victum
_justissima_ Tellus.”
[54] So greatly was he esteemed by the later and leading Fathers of the
Church that Cyprian, the celebrated Bishop of Carthage, and “the doctor
and guide of all the Western Churches,” was accustomed to say, whenever
he applied himself to the study of his writings, “_Da mihi magistrum_”
(“Give me my master”).--Jerome, _De Viris Illustribus_ I., 284.
[55] _On Fasting or Abstinence Against the Carnal-Minded._ The style of
Tertullian, we may remark, is, for the most part, obscure and abrupt.
[56] It is worth noting that neither the original (βρωμάτων) of
the “Authorised Version,” nor the _meats_ of the “A. V.” itself,
says anything about _flesh-eating_ in this favourite resort of its
apologists. Both expressions merely signify foods of _any kind_;
so that the passage in question of this Pastoral Letter--which is
apparently post-Pauline--can be made to condemn _absolute_ fasting
only: nor does the context warrant any other interpretation. As to
St. Paul, the great opponent of the earlier Christian belief and
practice, it must be conceded that he seems not to have shared the
abhorrence of the immediately accredited disciples of Jesus for the
sanguinary diet, especially of St. Matthew, of St. James, and of St.
Peter, who, as we are expressly assured by Clement of Alexandria,
St. Augustine, and others, lived entirely on _non-flesh_ meats. The
apparent indifferentism of St. Paul upon the question of abstinence is
best and most briefly explained by his avowed principle of action--from
the missionary point of view useful, doubtless, but from the point of
view of abstract ethics not always satisfactory--the being “all things
to all men.”
[57] Compare Seneca, _Epistles_, cx., and Chrysostom, _Homilies_.
[58] _Aquis sobrius, et cibis ebrius._ This important truth we venture
to commend to the earnest attention of those philanthropists, or
hygeists, who are adherents of what may be termed the _semi_-temperance
Clause--who abstain from alcoholic drinks but not from flesh.
[59] A more accurate version of the original than that of the _A.
V._ (1 _Cor._ viii., 8-13). We may here quote the conclusion of the
argument of the Greek-Jew Apostle--“Wherefore, if [the kind of] meat
is a cause of offence to my brother, I will eat no flesh while the
world stands, that I may not be a cause of offence to my brother”--and
press it, more particularly, upon the attention of English residents,
and especially of Christian _missionaries_, amongst the sensitive and
refined Hindus who form so overwhelming a proportion of the population
of the British Empire. According to the evidence of the missionaries of
the various Christian churches themselves, their habits of flesh-eating
have not infrequently been found to prejudice all but the lowest caste
of Hindus against the reception of other ideas of Christian and Western
“civilisation.”
[60] _Usque ad choleram ortygometras cruditando._ In the present case
it seems that the wanderers in the Arabian deserts were not so much
clamorous for flesh as for _some_ kind of sustenance, or rather for
something more than the _manna_ with which they were supplied; since
the late Egyptian slaves are reported to have said, “We remember the
fish that we did eat in Egypt freely--the cucumbers, the melons, and
the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; but now our soul is dried
away: _there is nothing at all_ besides this manna before our eyes.”
We may here take occasion to observe that the fact of the existence of
_sacrifice_ throughout their history necessarily involves the practice
of flesh-eating--indeed, the two practices are, historically, clearly
connected. What, however, we may fairly deduce from their simple and
frugal living in the Egyptian slavery, lasting, as it did, through
several centuries, during which period they must have been weaned
from the gross living of their previous barbarous _pastoral_ life, is
this--that but for the sacrificial rites (and, perhaps, the necessities
of the desert) the Jews would have, like other Eastern peoples,
probably adopted this _frugal_ living--of cucumbers, melons, onions,
&c.--in their new homes. Such, at least, seems to be a legitimate
inference from the highly-significant fact that, throughout their
sacred scriptures, not flesh-meats but corn, and oil, and honey, and
pomegranates, and figs, and other vegetable products (in which their
land originally abounded), are their highest dietary _ideal_--_e.g._,
“O that my people would have hearkened to me; for if Israel had walked
in my ways.... He should have fed them with the finest wheat flour: and
with honey out of the stony rock should I have satisfied thee.” (Ps.
lxxxi., 17; cf. also Ps. civ., 14, 15.) It is equally significant of
the latent and secret consciousness of the _unspiritual_ nature of the
products of the Slaughter-House, even in the Western world, that in the
_liturgies_ or “public services” of the Christian churches, wherever
food is prayed for or whenever thanks are returned for it, there is (as
it seems) a natural shrinking from mention of that which is obtained
only by cruelty and bloodshed, and it is “the kindly fruits of the
earth” which represent the legitimate dietary wants of the petitioners.
[61] “For they that are after the Flesh do mind the things of the
Flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For
to be _carnally minded is death_; but to be _spiritually minded is life
and peace_.... So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God....
Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live after the
flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye, through
the spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” (_Rom._
viii., 5, &c.) A more spiritual apprehension of ‘divine verities,’ if
we may so say, than the apparently more equivocal utterance of the same
great reformer elsewhere. Here it is well to observe, once for all that
the whole significance of the utterances of St. Paul upon flesh-eating
depends upon the bitter controversies between the older Jew and the
newer Greek or Roman sections of the rising Church. It is, in fact,
a question of the lawfulness of eating the flesh of the victims of
the Pagan and Jewish sacrificial altars--not of the question of
flesh-eating in the _abstract_ at all. In fine, it is a question not of
_ethics_, but of theological ritual. It is greatly to be lamented that
the confused and obscure translation of the _A. V._ has for so many
centuries hopelessly mystified the whole subject--as far, at least, as
the mass of the community is concerned.
[62] See _De Jejuniis Adversus Psychicos_. (Quinti. Sept. Flor.
Tertulliani Opera. Edited by Gersdorf, Tauchnitz.)
[63] In the _Clementine Homilies_, which had a great authority
and reputation in the earlier times of Christianity, St. Peter is
represented, in describing his way of living to Clement of Rome, as
professing the _strictest_ Vegetarianism. “I live,” he declares, “upon
bread and olives only, with the addition, rarely, of kitchen herbs”
(ἄρτῳ μόνῳ καὶ ἐλαίαις χρῶμαι καὶ σπανίως λαχάνοις xii. 6.) Clement of
Alexandria (_Pædagogus_ ii. 1) assures us that “Matthew the apostle
lived upon seeds, and hard-shelled fruits, and other vegetables,
without touching flesh;” while Hegesippus, the historian of the Church
(as quoted by Eusebius, _Ecclesiastical Hist._ ii. 2, 3) asserts of
St. James that “he never ate any animal food”--οὔδε εμψυχον ἔφαγε: an
assertion repeated by St. Augustine (_Ad. Faust_, xxii. 3) who states
that James, the brother of the Lord, “lived upon seeds and vegetables,
never tasting flesh or wine” (_Jacobus, frater Domini, seminibus
et oleribus usus est, non carne nec vino_). The connexion of the
beginnings of Christianity with the sublime and simple tenets of the
Essenes, whose communistic and abstinent principles were strikingly
coincident with those of the earliest Christians, is at once one of
the most interesting and one of the most obscure phenomena in its
nascent history. The Essenes, “the sober thinkers,” as their assumed
name implies, seem to have been to the more noisy and ostentatious
Jewish sects, what the Pythagoreans were to the other Greek schools
of philosophy--_practical moralists_ rather than mere talkers and
theorisers. They first appear in Jewish history in the first century
B.C. Their communities were settled in the recesses of the Jordan
valley, yet their members were sometimes found in the towns and
villages. Like the Pythagoreans, they extorted respect even from the
worldly and self-seeking religionists and politicians of the capital.
See Josephus (_Antiquities_ xiii. and xviii.), and Philo, who speak in
the highest terms of admiration of the simplicity of their life and
the purity of their morality. Dean Stanley (_Lectures on the Jewish
Church_, vol. iii.) regards St. John the Baptist as Essenian in his
substitution of “reformation of life” for “the sanguinary, costly gifts
of the sacrificial slaughter-house.”
[64] It is a curious and remarkable inconsistency, we may here observe,
that the modern ardent admirers of the Fathers and Saints of the
Church, while professing unbounded respect for their _doctrines_,
for the most part ignore the one of their _practices_ at once the
most ancient, the most highly reputed, and the most universal. _Quod
semper, quod ubique_, &c., the favourite maxim of St. Augustine and the
orthodox church, is, in this case, “more honoured in the breach than
in the observance.” Partial and periodical Abstinence, it is scarcely
necessary to add, however consecrated by later ecclesiasticism, is
sufficiently remote from the daily _frugal_ living of a St. James, a
St. Anthony, or a St. Chrysostom.
[65] The full title of the treatise is--_The Miscellaneous Collection
of T. F. Clemens of Gnostic (or Speculative) Memoirs upon the true
Philosophy_.
[66] This celebrated term distinguished the superiority of _knowledge_
(_gnosis_) of “the most polite, the most learned, and the most wealthy
of the Christian name.” During the first three or four centuries the
Gnostics formed an extremely numerous as well as influential section of
the Church. They sub-divided themselves into more than fifty particular
sects, of whom the followers of Marcion and the Manicheans are the most
celebrated. Holding opinions regarding the Jewish sacred scriptures
and their authority the opposite to those of the Ebionites or Jewish
Christians, they agreed, at least a large proportion of them, with the
latter on the question of kreophagy.
[67] _History of the Literature of Ancient Greece_, by K. O. Müller,
continued by J. W. Donaldson, D.D., vol. iii., 58.
[68] The argument here suggested, although rarely, if ever, adduced,
may well be deemed worthy of the most serious consideration. It is,
to our mind, one of the most forcible of all the many reasons for
abstinence. That the life even of a really useful member of the human
community should be supported by the slaughter of hundreds of innocent
and intelligent beings is surely enough to “give us pause.” What,
then, shall be said of the appalling fact, that every day thousands of
worthless, and too often worse than useless, human lives go down to
the grave (to be thenceforth altogether forgotten) after having been
the cause of the slaughter and suffering of countless beings, surely
far superior to themselves in all real worth? To object the privilege
of an “immortal soul” is, in this case, merely a miserable subterfuge.
Sidney Smith calculated that _forty-four_ wagon-loads of flesh had been
consumed by himself during a life of seventy years! (See his letter to
Lord Murray.)