SENECA. 5 B. C.-65 A. D.

37 It is disagreeable, you say, to abstain from the pleasures of the customary diet. Such abstinence is, I grant, difficult at first. But in course of time the desire for that diet will begin to languish; the incentives of our unnatural wants failing, the stomach, at first rebellious, will, after a time, feel an aversion for what formerly it eagerly coveted. The desire died of itself, and it is no severe loss to be without those things that you have ceased to long for. A warning voice needs to be published abroad in opposition to the prevailing opinion of the human race. 'You are out of your senses; you are wandering from the path of right; you are lost in stupid admiration for superfluous luxuries; you value no one thing for its proper worth."

Again :

"In the simpler times there was no need of so large a supernumerary force of medical men, nor of so many surgical instruments, or of so many boxes of drugs. Health was simple for a simple reason. Many dishes have induced many diseases. Note how vast a quantity of lives the stomach absorbs-devastator of land and sea. No wonder that with so discordant a diet disease is ever varying. Count the cooks. You will no longer wonder at the innumerable number of human maladies."

His eloquent language on artificial social distinctions, which custom builds up, ought not to be passed by unnoticed :

"Are they slaves? Nay, they are men. Are they slaves? Nay, they live under the same roof. Are they slaves? Nay, they are humble friends. Are they slaves? Nay, they are fellow servants if you will consider that both master and servant are equally the creatures of chance. I smile then at the prevalent opinion which thinks it a disgrace for one to sit down to a meal with his servant. Why it is thought a disgrace because arrogant custom allows a master a crowd of servants to stand round him while he is feasting? Would

you suppose that he whom you call a slave has the same origin and birth as yourself? has the same free air of heaven as yourself? that he breathes, lives, and dies like yourself? That man is of the stupidest sort who values another either by his dress or by his condition. We shall recover

our sound health if only we shall separate ourselves from the herd, for the crowd of mankind stands opposed to right reasonthe defender of its own evils and miseries."

CHAPTER IV.

PLUTARCH. 40-120 A. D.

"NO EVIL can happen to a good man in life, nor after death." -Plato.

The exact period of the birth and death of this prince of biographers is not definitely known, but his birth fell between 40 and 50 A. D., and his death between 120 and 130 A. D. His birthplace was Chaeronea, in Boeotia, northwest from Athens. He studied philosophy under Arumonius, at Delphi, in 66 A. D. He spent a few years in Rome, where he lectured on philosophy, in the reign of Vespasian. "When I was in Rome and other parts of Italy," says Plutarch, "I had not leisure to study the Latin tongue, on account of the public commissions with which I was charged, and the number of people who came to be instructed by me in philosophy. It was not, therefore, until a late period in life that I began to read the Roman authors." (Life of Demosthenes.)

In his old age Plutarch resided in his native town and filled several municipal offices. He had a wife named Timaxena, and several children. He was a great admirer of Plato, but was strongly opposed to Epicurianism.

Plutarch was not only esteemed in his own age as a facile and prolific writer, but even down to the present generation he is regarded as the most copious treasury of facts, ideas, and traditions which we have derived from the classic ages. No other Greek prose author has found so many modern admirers. His immortal vivacity of style was uniformly expended on the noblest of subjects. His accuracy and minuteness of delineation, rendered in the copious and graphic beauty

of his style, explain the sustained and unflagging interest excited by his voluminous works. His biographies were far from a tedious enumeration of facts, for he set the portraits and deeds of his hero before you in such truthful and vivid colors that you read the sketch as you would a fascinating romance. If Ruben's brush was endowed with life, so was Plutarch's pen charged with the living and immortal fire. We know him best by that admirable work, "Plutarch's Lives," or "Parallel Lives," forty-six in number, of eminent Greeks and Romans arranged in pairs, the life of each Greek compared with some Roman as a pendant, and the two persons measured trait for trait.

Plutarch's miscellaneous writings embrace about eighty essays, including "Essay on Flesh Eating," "On the Sagacity of the Lower Animals," "Rules for the Preservation of Health," "A Discourse on the Training of Children," "On Justice," "On the Soul," "Isis and Osiris," "Political Precepts," "Platonic Questions," and "Consolation," addressed to his wife. He wrote his own biography, but unhappily this never came down

to us.

From the many admirable things he wrote on dietetic subjects, we here append a few extracts :

"Ill digestion is most to be feared after flesh eating, for it very soon clogs us and leaves ill consequences behind it. It would be best to accustom ourselves to eat no flesh at all, for the earth affords plenty enough of things fit not only for nourishment, but for delight and enjoyment. But you,

pursuing the pleasures of eating and drinking beyond the satisfaction of nature are punished with many and lingering diseases, which, arising from the single fountain of superfluous gormandizing, fill your bodies with all manner of wind and vapors not easy purgation to expel. In the first place, all species of the lower animals, according to their kind, feed upon one sort of food which is proper to their natures-some upon grass, some upon roots, and others upon fruits. Neither

PLUTARCH.

40-120 A. D.

4I

do they mix the kinds of their nourishment. But man, such is his voracity, falls upon all to satisfy the pleasures of his appetite, tries all things, tastes all things; and, as if he were yet to see what were the most proper diet and most agreeable to his nature, among all animals is the only all-devourer. He makes use of flesh not out of want and necessity, but out of luxury, and being clogged with necessaries, he seeks after impure and inconvenient diet, purchased by the slaughter of living beings; for this showing himself more cruel than the most savage of wild beasts. . The lower animals abstain from most

of other kinds and are at enmity with only a few, and that only compelled by necessities of hunger; but neither fish nor fowl, nor anything that lives upon the land, escapes your tables though they bear the name of humane and hospitable."

He takes occasion to mildly criticize the inhumanity of Cato, the censor, for his treatment of his servants and dumb animals :—

"For my part I cannot but charge his using his servants like so many horses and oxen, or turning them off or selling them when grown old, to the account of a mean and ungenerous spirit, which thinks that the sole tie between man and man is interest or necessity. But goodness moves in a larger sphere than justice. The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind, but kindness and beneficence should be extended to beings of every species. And these always flow from the breast of a well natured man, as streams flow from a living fountain.

"A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while they are young, but when old and past service. Thus the people of Athens, when they had finished the temple of Hecatompedon, set at liberty the lower animals that had been chiefly employed in that work, suffering them to pasture at large, free from any other service. We certainly

ought not to treat living beings like shoes or household goods which, when worn out with use, we throw away; and were it only to learn benevolence to human kind, we should be compassionate to other beings. For my own part, I would not sell even an old ox that had labored for me; much less would I