CHAP. IX. NATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS SUBSISTING EN TIRELY ON VEGETABLE FOOD. WHE HEN god, according to the book of Genefis, createëd man, in his own image, male and female, he blessed them and fay'd, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue (i. e. cultivate it): and have dominion over the fish of the fea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every liveing thing that moveëth upon the earth. Behold, i have giveën you every herb bearing feed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding feed: to you it fhal be for meat and to every beaft of the earth, and every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life [or, as in the Hebrew, a liveing foul], i have giveën every green herb for meat."* They were *I, 27, &c. The word dominion is every where, in the old testament, ufe'd for fovereignty. to be fovereigns, therefor, over the earth, and its terrestrial, marine and aërial inhabitants; not for the purpose of flaughter and food, (for when does a good monarch devour his fubjects?) but for the fake of authority, protection, and the gracious officeës of benevolence and humanity. Their food was to be every herb bearing feed, and every tree bearing fruit: the beafts and fowls, allfo, and creeping things were to be confine'd to a vegetable diet. Such, at least, if we credit the Jewish accounts, was the dietetick law eftablish'd, at the creation, for both man and beaft. It is, indeed, abfolutely impossible that the allmighty creator fhould have design'd the latter as prey to the former; fince, as there were but two of each fpecies, the whole race must have been speedyly extinguish'd.* It is alledge'd, however, that, after the deluge and new establishment, he gave Noah and his defcendants a licence to eat the flesh of animals, *It is certain," as doctor Cheyne asferts, at the creation, there could be no such thing as an indulgence for animal food, if onely pairs of each animal were createëd at first." Essay on regimen, p. 75.) It is, at the fame time, difficult to conceive, whatever was the primitive food of man, how the lion, the tiger, and other beafts of prey, could fubfift entirely upon green herbs. preferve'd by him, for that purpose, in the ark: a report apparently inconfiftent with the unchangeable nature of the fupreme being. However this may be, we fhal find, from fufficient authority, that many nations, as wel in the most ancient, if not, the earlyeft times, to even down to our own, have adhere'd to the divine primitive ordinance, whether real or imaginary. The moft eminent historians, phyficians, philofophers, and poets of antiquity, agree, that the first generations of men did not eat flesh."* This golden age (first mention'd by Hefiod)† is more beautifully describe'd by Ovid: "The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough, * Dr. Mackenzies Hiftory of health, p. 50; where he cites Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Porphyry, Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and Pliny. It was the opinion of Hippocrates, he fays, that, in the begining, man made ufe of the fame food with the beasts; and to this effect, likewife, quotes Lucretius: "Volgivago vitam tractabant more ferarum” "Like beafts they lay in every wood and cave, Gathering the eafey food that Nature gave." "The fields as yet until'd, their fruits afford, And fil a fumptuous and unenvy'd board." It is the third age of which he says: "On the crude flesh of beafts they feed alone, 1 Content with food, which Nature freely bred, or, as the inimitable Thomson expresses it: "The food of man, While yet he live'd in innocence and told Death, rapine, carnage, furfeit and disease; The Chaldæan magi live'd entirely upon herbs; upon which, and cold water, fome of the Cynicks alltogether fubfifted.§ Zeno, the philofopher, fed heartyly upon figs; though, in his diet, he was very fpareing; and a fhort pit *B. I, v. 101. Dicearchus, according to faint Jerome, relateëd, in his books of Grecian antiquitys, that, during the reign of Saturn, when the earth, as yet, was fertile of itsfelf, no man ate flesh, but all live'd upon the fruits and pulse which were naturally produce'd. (B. 2, To Jovian.) † Spring. The Lotopbi of Homer were "A hospitable race; Not prone to il, nor ftrange to foreign guest, They eat, they drink, and Nature gives the feaft; The trees around them all their fruit produce, Lotis the name, divine, nectareous juice." Diogenes Laertius, in his proem. Idem, Life of Menedemus, B. 6. Pe tance of bread and honey, and a small draught of sweet wine, fatisfy'd his hunger.* The inhabitants of Mount-Atlas, in the age of Herodotus, neither ate the flesh of any animal, nor were ever interrupted in their fleep by dreams. lasgus, in the most ancient times, is say'd to have perfuadeëd the inhabitants of Arcadia, who fed on nothing but grafs, herbs and roots, fome of which were pernicious, to prefer the produce of the beech-tree.‡ There were Indians, mention'd by Herodotus, the ancestors, no doubt, of the present Hindoos, who neither kil'd any animal, nor fow'd feed, nor builded houfes, but contented themselves with what the earth freely afforded. § The ancient brachmans, or priests of these Indians, as we are told by Porphyry, ate nothing but fruit * Idem, Life of Zeno, B. 7. + Melpomene. The laws of Draco and Triptolemus, the moft ancient legislators of the Athenians, enjoin'd them to "Honour their parents and kil neither man nor beaft. (Diogenes Laertius, in his proem.) Paufanias, B. 8, C. 1. According to his accurate Engleifh translator, he perfuaded them "to feed on acorns, though not indiscriminately, but onely thofe which grow on the beecb-tree':" as if one were to say of a man that he ate no apples but fuch as grow on a pear-tree. Acorns are peculiar to the oak; the fruit of the beech is mast. § Thalia. |