London, 1870. See, too, his eloquent exposure of the scientific or
popular error which, denying conscious reason and intelligence, in
order to explain the mental constitution of the non-human races (as
well that of the higher mammals as of the inferior species), has
invented the vague and mystifying term “instinct.”
[260] _La Femme_, vi. Onzième Edition. Paris, 1879.
[261] This memorable building has been succeeded by the present
well-known one in Cross Lane, where the Rev. James Clark, one of the
most esteemed, as well as one of the oldest, members of the Vegetarian
Society is the able and eloquent officiating minister.
[262] These biographical facts we have transferred to our pages from an
interesting notice by Mr W. E. A. Axon, F.R.S.L.
[263] _Memoir of the Rev. William. Metcalfe, M.D._ By his son, Rev.
Joseph Metcalfe, Philadelphia, 1865.
[264] See _Memoir of the Rev. William Metcalfe_. By his son, the Rev J.
Metcalfe. Philadelphia; J. Capen. 1866.
[265] See Memoir in _Sylvester Graham’s Lectures on the Science
of Human Life_. Condensed by T. Baker, Esq., of the Inner Temple,
Barrister-at-Law. Manchester: Heywood; London: Pitman.
[266] _The New American Cyclopædia._ Appleton, New York, 1861. It
deserves remark in this place that, in no English cyclopædia or
biographical dictionary, as far as our knowledge extends, is any
sort of notice given of this great sanitary reformer. The same
disappointment is experienced in regard to not a few other great names,
whether in hygienic or humanitarian literature. The absence of the
names of such true benefactors of the world in these books of reference
is all the more surprising in view of the presence of an infinite
number of persons--of all kinds--who have contributed little to the
stock of true knowledge or to the welfare of the world.
[267] The Greek story of the savage horses of the Thracian king who
were fed upon human flesh, therefore, may very well be true.
[268] Graham here quotes various authorities--Linné, Cuvier, Lawrence
Bell, and others.
[269] Professor Lawrence instances particularly “the Laplanders,
Samoides, Ostiacs, Tungooses, Burats, and Bamtschatdales, in
Northern Europe and Asia, as well as the Esquimaux in the northern,
and the natives of Tierra del Fuego in the southern, extremity of
America, who, although they live almost entirely on flesh, and
that often raw, are the smallest, weakest, and least brave people
of the globe.”--_Lectures on Physiology._ Of all races the North
American native tribes, who subsist almost entirely by the chase, are
notoriously one of the most ferocious and cruel. That the _omnivorous_
classes in “civilised” Europe--in this country particularly--have
attained their present position, political or intellectual, _in spite
of their kreophagistic habits_ is attributable to a complex set of
conditions and circumstances (an extensive inquiry, upon which it is
impossible to enter here) which have, _in some measure_, mitigated
the evil results of a barbarous diet, will be sufficiently clear to
every unprejudiced inquirer. If flesh-eating be the cause, or one of
the principal causes, of the present dominance of the European, and
especially English-speaking peoples, it may justly be asked--how is
to be explained, _e.g._, the dominance of the Saracenic power (in S.
Europe) during seven centuries--a dominance in arms as well as in arts
and sciences--when the semi-barbarous Christian nations (at least as
regards the ruling classes) were _wholly_ kreophagistic.
[270] For one of the ablest and most exhaustive scientific arguments
on the same side ever published we refer our readers to _The Perfect
Way in Diet_, by Mrs. Algernon Kingsford, M.D. (Kegan Paul, London,
1881). Originally written and delivered as a Thesis for _le Doctorat en
Médicine_ at the Paris University, under the title of _L’Alimentation
Végétale Chez L’Homme_ (1880), it was almost immediately translated
into German by Dr. A. Aderholdt under the same title of _Die
Pfanzennahrung bei dem Menschen_. It is, we believe, about to be
translated into Russian. The humane and moral argument of this eloquent
work is equally admirable and equally persuasive with the scientific
proofs.
[271]
“Sai, che là corre il mondo ove più versi
Di sue dolcesse il lusinghier Parnaso,
E che’l Vero condito in molli versi
I più schivi allettando ha persuaso.
Cosi all’ egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi
Di soave licor gli orli del vaso:
Succhi amari ingannato intanto ei beve,
E dall’ inganno sua vita riceve.”
Gerusalemme Liberata, I.
[272] See _Pflanzenkost; oder die Grundlage einer Neuen
Weltanschauung_, Von Gustav Struve, Stuttgart, 1869. For the substance
of the brief sketch of the life of Struve we are indebted to the
courtesy of Herr Emil Weilshaeuser, the recently-elected President of
the Vegetarian Society of Germany (Jan., 1882), himself the author of
some valuable words on Reformed Dietetics.
[273] See _Sakuntalà, or the Fatal Ring_, of the Hindu Shakspere
Kalidâsa, the most interesting production of the Hindu Poetry. It has
been translated into almost every European language.
[274] _Mandaras’ Wanderungen._ Zweite Ausgabe. Mannheim. Friedrich
Götz. 1845. For a copy of this now scarce book we are indebted to the
courtesy of Herr A. von Seefeld, of Hanover.
[275] _Pflanzenkost, die Grundlage einer neuen Weltanschauung._
Stuttgart, 1869. Cf. Liebig’s _Chemische Briefe_ (“Letters on
Chemistry.”)
[276] _Das Seelenleben; oder die Naturgeschichte des Menschen._ Von
Gustav Struve. Berlin: Theobald Grieben. 1869.
[277]
“Weh’ denen, die dem _Ewigblinden_
Des Lichtes Himmelsfackel leihen!”
SCHILLER. _Das Lied von der Glocke._
[278] Quoted in _Die Naturgemässe Diät: die Diät der Zukunft_, von
Theodor Hahn, Cöthen, 1859. For the substance of biographical notice
prefixed to this article we are again indebted to the kindness of Herr
Emil Weilshäuser, of Oppeln.
[279] _Das Menschendasein in seinen Weltewigen Zügen und Zeichen._ Von
Bogumil Goltz. Frankfurt.
[280] Compare the remarks of Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825), in his
treatise on Education, _Levana_, in which he, too, in scarcely less
emphatic language, protests against the general neglect of this
department of morals. Among other references to the subject, the
celebrated novelist thus writes: “Love is the second hemisphere of the
moral heaven. Yet is the sacred being of love little established. Love
is an inborn but differently distributed force and blood-heat of the
heart (_blutwärme des herzens_). There are cold and warm-blooded souls,
as there are animals. As for the child, so for the lower animal, love
is, in fact, an essential impulse; and this central fire often, in the
form of compassion, pierces its earth-crust, but not in every case....
The child (under proper education) learns to regard all animal life as
sacred--in brief, they impart to him the feeling of a Hindu in place
of the heart of a Cartesian philosopher. There is here a question of
something more even than compassion for other animals; but this also
is in question. Why is it that it has so long been observed that the
cruelty of the child to the lower animals presages cruelty to men,
just as the Old-Testament sacrifice of animals preshadowed that of the
sacrifice of a man? It is for _himself only_ the undeveloped man can
experience pains and sufferings, which speak to him with the native
tones of his own experience. Consequently, the inarticulate cry of the
tortured animal comes to him just as some strange, amusing sound of
the air; and yet he sees there life, conscious movement, both which
distinguish them from the inanimate substances. Thus he sins against
his own life, whilst he sunders it from the rest, as though it were a
piece of machinery. Let life be to him [the child] sacred (_heilig_),
even that which may be destitute of reason; and, in fact, does the
child know any other? Or, because the heart beats under bristles,
feathers, or wings, is it, _therefore_, to be of no account?”
[281] See a pamphlet upon this subject by Dr. V.
Gützlaff--_Schopenhauer ueber die Thiere und den Thierschutz: Ein
Beitrag zur ethischen Seite der Vivisectionsfrage_. Berlin, 1879.
[282] _Le Fondement de La Morale_, par Arthur Schopenhauer, traduit de
l’Allemand par A. Burdeau. Paris, Baillière et Cie, 1879.
[283] Quoted in _Die Naturgemässe Diät, die Diät der Zukunft_, von
Theodor Hahn, 1859. We may note here that Moleschott, the eminent Dutch
physiologist, and a younger contemporary of Liebig, alike with the
distinguished German Chemist and with the French zoologist, Buffon, is
chargeable with a strange inconsistency in choosing his place among
the apologists of kreophagy, in spite of his conviction that “the
legumes are superior to flesh-meat in abundance of solid constituents
which they contain; and, while the amount of albuminous substances may
surpass that in flesh-meat by one-half, the constituents of fat and the
salts are also present in a greater abundance.” (See _Die Naturgemässe
Diät_, von Theodor Hahn, 1859). But, in fact, it is only too obvious
_why_ at present the large majority of Scientists, while often fully
admitting the virtues, or even the superiority of the purer diet,
yet after all enrol themselves on the orthodox side. Either they are
altogether indifferent to humane teaching, or they want the courage of
their convictions to proclaim the Truth.
[284] Among English philosophic writers, the arguments and warnings
(published in the _Dietetic Reformer_ during the past fifteen years) of
the present head of the Society for the promotion of Dietary Reform in
this country, Professor Newman, in regard to National Economy and to
the enormous evils, present and prospective, arising from the prevalent
insensibility to this aspect of National Reform are at once the most
forcible and the most earnest. It would be well if our public men, and
all who are in place and power, would give the most earnest heed to
them. But this, unhappily, under the _present_ prevailing political and
social conditions, experience teaches to be almost a vain expectation.
[285] Μήλοισι Grævius, the famous German Scholar of the 17th century,
maintains to mean here _Fruits_, not “Flocks,” according to the vulgar
interpretation, and the translation of Grævius, it will be allowed, is
at least more consistent with the context than is the latter. It must
be added that the whole verse bracketed is of doubtful genuineness.
[286] This remarkable passage, it is highly interesting to note, is the
earliest indication of the idea of “guardian angels,” which afterwards
was developed in the Platonic philosophy; and which, considerably
modified by Jewish belief, derived from the Persian theology, finally
took form in the Christian creed. Compare the beautiful idea of
guardian angels, or spirits in the Prologue of the _Shipwreck_ of
Plautus.
[287] See _Poetæ Minores Græci ... Aliisque Accessionibus Aucta._
Edited by Thomas Gaisford. Vol. III. Lipsiæ, 1823.
[288]
“Quum sis ipse nocens, moritur cur victima pro te?
Stultitia est, _morte alterius_ sperare Salutem.”
[289] _The Light of Asia: or, The Great Renunciation_
(_Mahâbhinishkramana_). Being the Life and Teaching of Gautama, Prince
of India, and Founder of Buddhism (as told in verse by an Indian
Buddhist). By Edwin Arnold. London: Trübner.--In the Hindu Epic, the
_Mahâbhârata_, the same great principle is apparent, though less
conspicuously:--
“The constant virtue of the Good is tenderness and love
To all that live in earth, air, sea--great, small--below, above:
Compassionate of heart, they keep a gentle will to each:
_Who pities not, hath not the Faith_. Full many a one so lives.”
III.--Story of Savîtri
[290] Compare the beautiful verses of Lucretius--who, almost alone
amongst the poets, has indignantly denounced the vile and horrible
practice of sacrifice--picturing the inconsolable grief the Mother Cow
bereft of her young, who has been ravished from her for the sacrificial
altar:--
“Sæpe ante Deûm vitulus delubra decora
Thuricremas propter mactatus concidit aras
Sanguinis expirans calidum de pectore flumen,
At mater viridis saltus orbata peragrans
Noacit humi pedibus vestigia pressa bisulcis,
Omnia convisens oculis loca, si queat usquam
Conspicere amissum fœtum, completque querellis
Frondiferum nemus absistens, et crebra revisit
Ad stabulum desiderio perfixa Juvenci;
Nec teneræ salices atque herbæ rore vigentes,
Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis
Oblectare animum, subitamque avertere curam,
Nee vitulorum aliæ species per pabula læta
Derivare queunt animum curâque levare.”
(_De Rerum Naturâ II._)
See also the memorable verses in which the rationalist poet stigmatises
the vicarious sacrifice of Iphigeneia.--_Tantum Religio potuit suadere
Malorum_ (L).
[291] See, also, _Fasti_, already quoted above.
“Pace Ceres læta est......
A Bove succincti cultros removete Ministri, &c.” IV. 407-416.
[292] _Florilegium_ of Stobæus--(17-43 and 18-38), quoted by Professor
Mayor in _Dietetic Reformer_, July, 1881. In the erudite and exhaustive
edition of Juvenal, by Professor Mayor (Macmillan, Cambridge), will be
found a large number of quotations from Greek and Latin writers, and a
great deal of interesting matter upon frugal living.
[293] “_Hygiasticon: On the Right Course of Preserving Life and Health
unto Extreme Old Age; together with Soundness and Integrity of the
Senses, Judgment, and Memory._ Written in Latin by Leonard Lessius, and
now done into English. The second edition. Printed by the printers to
the Universitie of Cambridge, 1634.” Lessio, like his master Cornaro,
Haller, and many other advocates of a reformed diet, was influenced not
at all by humanitarian, but by health reasons only.
[294] Cf. Plutarch--_Essay on Flesh-Eating_.
[295] _Some Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Thomas Tryon, late of London,
Merchant. Written by Himself._ London, 1705.
[296] Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque tueri.--Ovid, _Met._ I.
[297] Compare Seneca and Chrysostom, above.
[298] If Tryon could point to diseases among the victims of the
shambles in the 17th century, what use might he not make of the
epidemics or endemics of the present day?
[299] _The Way to Health, Long Life, and Happiness: or a Discourse
of Temperance, and the Particular Nature of all things Requisite for
the Life of Man.... The Like never before Published. Communicated to
the World, for the General Good, by Philotheos Physiologus_ [Tryon’s
_nom de plume_.] _London, 1683_. It is (in its best parts) the worthy
precursor of _The Herald of Health_, and of the valuable hygienic
philosophy of its able editor--Dr. T. L. Nichols.
[300] See _Biog. Universelle_, Art. _Philippe Hecquet_
[301] _Traité des Dispenses, &c._ Par Philippe Hecquet, M.D., Paris.
Ed. 1709.
[302]
“That lies beneath the knife,
Looks up, and from her butcher begs her life.”
Æn. VII. (Pope’s translation.) Quoted first by Montaigne. _Essais._
[303] And, Pope might have added, a more diabolical torture
still--calves bled to death by a slow and lingering process--hung
up (as they often are) head downwards. Although not universal as
it was some ten years ago, this, among other Christian practices,
yet flourishes in many parts of the country, unchecked by legal
intervention.
[304] See Article, Plutarch, above.
[305] So far, at least, as the _natural and necessary wants_ of each
species are concerned.--That “Nature” is regardless of suffering, is
but too apparent in all parts of our globe. It is the opprobrium and
shame of the human species that, placed at the head of the various
races of beings, it has hitherto been the _Tyrant_, and not the
_Pacificator_.
[306] _The Four Stages of Cruelty_, in which, beginning with the
torture of other animals, the legitimate sequence is fulfilled in the
murder of the torturer’s mistress or wife.
[307] Which is the accomplice _really guilty_? The ignorant, untaught,
wretch who has to gain his living some way or other, or those who
have been entrusted with, or who have assumed, the control of the
public conscience--the statesman, the clergy, and the schoolmaster?
Undoubtedly it is upon these that almost all the guilt lies, and always
will lie.
[308] Bull-baiting, in this country, has been for some years illegal;
but that moralists, and other writers of the present day, while
boasting the abolition of that popular _pastime_, are silent, upon the
equally barbarous, if more fashionable _sports_ of Deer-hunting, &c.,
is one of those inconsistencies in logic which are as unaccountable as
they are common.
[309] “That is,” remarks Ritson, “in a state of Society influenced by
Superstition, Pride, and a variety of prejudices equally unnatural and
absurd.”
[310] “The converse of all this is true. He is certainly taught by
example, and by temptation, and prompted by (what he thinks is)
interest.”--Note by Ritson in _Abstinence from Flesh a Moral Duty_.
[311] Among living enlightened medical authorities of the present
day, Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S., perhaps the most eminent hygeist
and sanitary reformer in the country now living, has delivered his
testimony in no doubtful terms to the superiority of the purer
diet. In his recent publication _Salutisland_ he has banished the
slaughter-house, with all its abominations, from that model State. See
also his _Hygieia_.
[312] _L’Art de Prolonger la Vie et de Conserver la Santé: ou, Traité
d’Hygiène._ Par M. Pressavin, Gradué de l’Université de Paris; Membre
du Collège Royal de Chirurgie de Lyon, et Ancien Demonstrateur en
Matière Medicale-Chirurgicale. A Lyon, 1786.
[313] _Die Eleusische Fest._
[314] _Der Alpenjäger._ See also Göthe--_Italienische Reise_, XXIII.
42; _Aus Meinem Leben_, XXIV. 23; _Werther’s Leiden_; Brief 12.
[315] _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_
(page 311). By Jeremy Bentham, M.A., Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, &c.;
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1876. It must be added that the assumption
(on the same page on which this cogent reasoning is found), that
man has the right to _kill_ his fellow-beings, for the purpose of
feeding upon their flesh, is one more illustration of the strange
inconsistencies into which even so generally just and independent a
thinker as the author of the _Book of Fallacies_ may be forced by
the “logic of circumstances.” Among recent notable Essays upon the
Rights of the Lower Animals (the _right to live_ excepted) may here be
mentioned--_Animals and their Masters_, by Sir Arthur Helps (1873), and
_The Rights of an Animal_, by Mr. E. B. Nicholson, librarian of the
Bodleian, Oxford (1877).
[316] Compare the _Voyages_ of Volney, one of the most philosophical
of the thinkers of the eighteenth century, who himself for some time
seems to have lived on the non-flesh diet. Attributing the ferocious
character of the American savage, “hunter and butcher, who, in every
animal sees but an object of prey, and who is become an animal of the
species of wolves and of tigers,” to such custom, this celebrated
traveller adds the reflection that “the habit of shedding blood, or
simply of seeing it shed, corrupts all sentiments of humanity.” (See
_Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte_.) See, too, Thevenot (the younger), an
earlier French traveller, who describes a Banian hospital, in which
he saw a number of sick Camels, Horses, and Oxen, and many invalids
of the feathered race. Many of the lower Animals, he informs us, were
maintained there for life, those who recovered being sold to Hindus
exclusively.
[317] This feeling occasionally appears in his poems, as, for instance,
when describing a “banquet” and its flesh-eating guests, he wonders how
“Such bodies could have souls, or souls such bodies.”
[318] Note on this point the words of the late W. R. Greg, to the
effect that “the amount of human life sustained on a given area may
be almost indefinitely increased by the substitution of vegetable for
animal food;” and his further statement--“A given acreage of wheat
will feed at least ten times as many men as the same acreage employed
in growing ‘mutton.’ It is usually calculated that the consumption of
wheat by an adult is about one quarter per annum, and we know that good
land produces four quarters. But let us assume that a man living on
grain would require two quarters a year; still one acre would support
two men. But, a man living on [flesh] meat would need 3lbs. a day, and
it is considered a liberal calculation if an acre spent in grazing
sheep and cattle will yield in ‘beef’ and ‘mutton’ more than 50lb. on
an average--the best farmer in Norfolk having averaged 90lb., but a
great majority of farms in Great Britain only reach 20lb. On these data
it would require 22 acres of pasture land to sustain one adult person
living on [flesh] meat. It is obvious that in view of the adoption of a
vegetable diet lies the indication of a vast increase in the population
sustainable on a given area.”--_Social and Political Problems_
(_Trübner_).
[319] “Of the Cruelty connected with he Culinary Arts” in _Philozoa;
or, Moral Reflections on the Actual Condition of the Animal Kingdom,
and on the Means of Improving the Same_; with numerous Anecdotes and
Illustrative Notes, addressed to Lewis Gompertz, Esq., President of
the Animals’ Friend Society: By T. Forster, M.B., F.R.A.S., F.L.S.,
&c. Brussels, 1839. The writer well insists that, however remote may
be a _universal_ Reformation, every individual person, pretending
to any culture or refinement of mind, is morally bound to abstain
from sanctioning, by his dietetic habits, the revolting atrocities
“connected with the culinary arts, of which Mr. Young, in his Book on
Cruelty, has given a long catalogue.”