SHELLEY. 1792-1822. 77 Haunting the human heart, have there entwined There rest from the eternity of toil That framed the fabric of thy perfectness." In a note subjoined to the above passage, Shelley writes: "Man and the other animals, whom he has afflicted with his malady or depraved by his dominion, are alone diseased. The bison, the wild hog, the wolf, are perfectly exempt from malady, and invariably die either from external violence or from mature old age. But the domestic hog, the sheep, the cow, the dog, are subject to an incredible variety of distempers, and, like the corruptors of their nature, have physicians who thrive upon their miseries. The super-eminence of man is, like Satan's, the super-eminence of pain; and the majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have a reason to curse the untoward event, by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps that have been taken are irrevocable. The whole of human science is comprised in one question, How can the advantages of intellect and civilization be reconciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural life? How can we take the benefits and reject the evils of the system which is now interwoven with the fibre of our being? I believe that the abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors would, in a great measure, capacitate us for the solution of this important question. "It is true that mental and bodily derangements are attributable, in part, to other deviations from rectitude and nature than those which concern diet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting the connection of the sexes, whence the misery and disease of unsatisfied nature, unenjoyed prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring. The putrid atmosphere of crowded cities, the exhalations of chemical processes, the muffling of our bodies in superfluous apparel, the cramping corset, the absurd treatment of infants-all these and innumerable other causes contribute their mite to the mass of human evil. "After every subterfuge of gluttony the bull must be degraded into the 'ox,' the ram into the 'wether,' by an unnatural and inhuman operation, that the flaccid fibre may offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juice and raw horror does not excite loathing and disgust. "Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on its fitness, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth and plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the streaming blood. When fresh from his deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible instinct of nature that would rise in judgment against it and say, 'Nature formed me for such work as this.' Then, and then only, would he be consistent. "A lamb who was fed some time on flesh by a ship's crew, refused her natural diet at the end of the voyage. There are numerous instances of horses, sheep, oxen, and even woodpigeons having been taught to live on flesh until they have loathed their natural aliment. "Except in children there remains no traces of that instinct which determines in all other animals what aliment is natural or otherwise; and so perfectly obliterated are they in the reasoning adults of our species that it has become necessary to urge considerations drawn from comparative anatomy to prove that we are naturally frugivorous. "By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system. It is found easier by the short-sighted victims of disease to palliate their torments by medicine than to prevent them by regimen.' Shelley also deals with the economic side of the problem :— "The monopolizing eater of flesh would no longer destroy his constitution by devouring an acre at a meal; and many loaves of bread would cease to contribute to gout, madness, and apoplexy, in the shape of a pint of porter or a dram of gin, who appeasing the long protracted famine of the hard-working peasant's hungry babes. The quantity of nutritious vegetable matter consumed in the fattening of the carcass of an ox would afford ten times the sustenance, undepraved, indeed, and incapable of generating disease, if gathered immediately from the SHELLEY. 1792-1822. 79 bosom of the earth. It is only the wealthy that can, to any great degree, even now (in Europe) indulge the unnatural craving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater license of the privilege by subjection to supernumerary diseases. How much longer will man continue to pimp for the gluttony of deathhis most insiduous, implacable, and eternal foe?" In his "Alastor," by the mouth of Laone, he again expresses his humanitarian convictions and sympathies "My brethren, we are free! The fruits are glowing O'er the ripe corn; the birds and beasts are dreaming— Stain with his venomous stream a human feast, To the pure skies in accusation streaming. Avenging poisons shall have ceased To feed disease, and fear, and madness. Shall throng around our steps in gladness, Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull, Shall clothe the fields and cities of the free. Their feast was such as earth, the general mother, In the embrace of autumn-to each other As when some parent fondly reconciles Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles With her own sustenance; they, relenting, weep Such was this festival, which, from their isles, And continents and winds and oceans deep, All shapes might throng to share, that fly, or walk, or creep; Or poison none this festal did pollute. But piled on high, an overflowing store Of pomegranates and citrons-fairest fruit, Set in baskets, with pure streams their thirsting lips they wet." CHAPTER X. "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life and few there be that find it."-Jesus. "John, whose meat was locusts-the fruitage of the Syrian locust tree and wild honey, lost his head for uncovering Herod's iniquities and preaching repentance."-The Pilgrim. Beginning with Herodotus, all along down the historic ages, philosophers, poets, seers, and sages have testified that obedience to law that a trustful spirit, and a plain, simple diet were the only method to insure long life. Thinking, reasoning man is not naturally carnivorous. The teeth, the stomach, the structure of the alimentary canal and the entire organism all show beyond a reasonable doubt that man, the crowning glory of God, is not to be classed either in his conscious and moral make-up or his foods, as previously stated, with lions, tigers, wolves, jackals, and ravening, bloodlapping hyenas. Animal flesh-eating is a beast inheritance from the lower orders of creation. It is an artificial habit exhibiting a depraved taste acquired through long weary ages, and is peculiarly gratifying to the lower brutal instincts, to the genius of prize fighting, and all aggressive wars. Of the one billion and more peopling this earth, probably no more than two or three tenths of them ever taste of meats as food. Animals are very often diseased when killed. They are dumb and cannot tell of their pains. Butchers for reasons are not allowed to sit as jurors. On June the 5th of the present year, Governor Tanner visited the stock yards of Chicago, witnessing the slaughtering of twenty-seven cows under a test conducted by the State board of health and the State board of live stock commissioners. MAN NOT NATURALLY CARNIVOROUS. 81 Twenty-five were found to be in an advanced stage of consumption and the other two had well-developed cases. This herd came from a dairy farm in Sangamon County that supplies the governor's household with milk, and sometimes with meats, and he expressed himself very forcibly on the subject. "That test domonstrates," said he, "the danger that constantly confronts the public and proves that the live stock commissioners should be invested with power to examine every herd in the State, whether private or not. Dr. Lovejoy tells me" continued the governor, "that this herd is among the worst that has been met with yet. Why, they were simply rotten with disease!" No pen can describe nor artist transfer to canvas the horrors resulting to health from eating diseased cattle and swine. But says the honest, sun-tanned farmer, I must have meats, beef, mutton, ham, to keep up my strength. Think a moment! Do you feed your horse and your ox ham or flesh of any kind to keep up their strength? Does the Arab of the desert feed his burden-bearing camel animal flesh to build up strength and intensify endurance? Does the Alaskan give his domesticated reindeer meats? Every intelligent person knows better. The elephant, so massive, so mighty in muscular strength, rejects all flesh foods. Chinamen, stout and robust in their native land, work sixteen and eighteen hours a day, subsisting upon rice and lentils only. There is more carbonaceous and nitrogenous nutrition in barley, beans, peas, corn meal, rye meal, coarse-ground wheat, rice, bananas, walnuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, peanuts, and Jamaica nuts than there is in any kind of meats. These meats stimulate and the uninformed mistake stimulation for nutrition. How long would a horse live on whips-stimulating whips, deprived of hay and oats? There is in fact fully twice as much nutritious sustenance in beans and peas and nuts as there is in beefsteak. And yet, floundering under the nightmare weight of the agone cannibal centuries, the masses |