so rampant, could not be fatisfy'd except it had a proportionable food; and, of all others, flesh has the greatest affinity......and, if all men would refrain eating of Alefb, there would be no caute for them to complain for want of food; for the Allmighty has, in all particulars, been gracious and bountyful unto all creatures, but more efpecially unto mankind, for whom he has fpred d plentyful table; furnishing the whole earth with a great multitude or variety of herbs, fruits, grains, and feeds, fit for food, which do afford a nourishment of a moft excellent fubftance, and far beyond flefh."*

Under an improve'd fystem of education children wil be brought up to a vegetable regimen, as being the moft natural to man......As vegetable diet has a necesfary connection with many virtues, and excludes no one, it must be of importance to accustom young people to it, feeing its influence is fo confiderable and fo hapy on beauty of perfon, and tranquility of foul. This regimen prolongs infancy, and, of confequence, the duration of human life. I have feen an inftance of it in an Engleifh youth of fifteen, who had not the appearance of being for

* Way to health, p. 267.

much as twelve. He was a most interesting figure, posfefs'd of health the most vigorous, and of a dispofition the moft gentle he perform'd the longest journeys on foot, and never loft temper whatever befel him. His father, whofe name was Pigot, told me that he had brought him up entirely under the Pythagorean regimen; the good effects he had learn'd by his own experience.”*

In Engleland, notwithstanding the produce, of the foil has been, of late, confiderablely increase'd, by the inclosure of wastes, and the adoption, in many placeës, of a more fuccessful husbandry, yet we do not obferve a correfponding addition to the number of inhabitants; the reafon of which appears to me to be the more general confumption of animal food amongst us. Many ranks of people, whose ordinary diet was, in the last century, prepare'd allmost entirely

* St. Pierre, Studys of nature, III, 577. This gentleman was Robert Pigot, efquire, formerly of Chetwynd, in Shrophire, who refideëd at Geneva; whither, according to the Biographical anecdotes of the founders of the French republic, London, 1797, p. 154, the amiable and eccentrick marquis de Valadi made an excurfion in 1787, and there chance'd to meet with this Engleish Pythagorean, whose dietetick system he immediately adopted, and, for many years after, never tafteëd animal food.

from milk, roots and vegetables, now require, every day, a confiderable portion of the flesh of animals. Hence a great part of the richest lands of the country are converted to pasturage. Much, allfo, of the bread-corn, which went directly to the nourishment of human bodys, now onely contributes to it, by fatening the flesh of sheep and oxen. The mafs and volume of provifions are hereby diminish'd; and what is gain'd in the melioration of the foil is loft in the quality of the produce.*

Paleys Principles of moral and political philosophy, II, 361.

CHAP. IV.

ANIMAL FOOD THE CAUSE OF CRUELTY AND

FEROCITY.

TRAT

HAT the use of animal food dispofes man to cruel and ferocious actions is a fact to which the experience of agees gives ample testimony. The Scythians, from drinking the blood of their cattle, proceeded to drink that of their enèmys.*. The fierce and cruel dispofition of the wild Arabs is fuppofe'd, chiefly, if not, folely, to proceed from their feeding upon the flesh of camels and, as the gentle dispofition of the na tives is probablely oweing, in a great degree, to temperance, and a total abftinence from animal food; fo the common ufe of this diet, in the bulk of other nations, has, in the opinion of M. Pagés, exalted the natural tone of their pasfions; and he can account, he says, upon no other principle for the firong harsh features of the Mufulmans and Chriftians, compare'd with the small trait and placid afpect of the Gentoos. "Vul

* Herodotus, B. 4; Revelation examine'd, p. 21.

† Ockley, I, 3.

‡ Travels round the world, II, 44.

gar and uninform'd men," it is obferve'd by Smellie, "when pamper'd with a variety of animal food, are much more cholerick, fierce and cruel in their tempers than those who live chiefly on vegetables." This affection is equally perceptible in other animals: "An officer, in the Russian fervice, had a bear, which he fed with bread and oats, but never gave him flesh. However, a young hog hapening, one day, to ftroll too near his cel, he got hold of it, and pul'd it in; and, after he had once drawn blood, and tasteëd flesh, he grew fo fierce that he became unmanageable, attacking every body that came near him, fo that the owner was oblige'd to kil him."* It was not, fays Porphyry, from those who live'd on vegetables, that robers or -murderers, fycophants, or tyrants, have proceeded, but from flesh-eaters. + Prey being allmoft the fole object of quarrel among carni

* Memoirs of P. H. Bruce, p. 144. A fimilar instance has been relateëd, to the compileër, of a mastif: all animals, in short, that feed upon blood, are observe'd to be much more furious than others: wil any man, therefor, fay that much of his own fury is not oweing to the fame food? (Revelation examine'd, p. 21.) "I have known," fays doctor Arbuthnot, more than one inftance of irafcible pasfions being much

fubdue'd by a vegetable diet." (Esfay, p. 186.)

+ Mackenzies History of bealth, p. 190.