Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/54

 44 F A S F A S months of January, March, April, and December, and a portion of February. The tablets give an account of festivals, as als j of the triumphs of Augustus and Tiberius. But some kinds of fasti included under the second gene ral head were, from the very beginning, written for pub lication. The Annales Pontificum different from the kalendaria properly so called were &quot; annually exhibited in public on a white table, on which the memorable events of the year, with special mention of the prodigies, were set down in the briefest possible manner. Any one was allowed to copy them &quot; (Teuffel s History}. Like the pon- tifices, the augurs also had their books, libri augurales. In fact, all the state offices had their fasti corresponding in character to the consular fasti named above. For details of fasti and their discovery, sec the great work of Foggini, published at Rome in 1779. Watt s Bibliothcca Britannica contains a long list of references to authorities on the subject. See also Cruttwell s History of Roman Literature, 1877. An admirable summary on fasti, with numerous bibliographical references, is given in Teuffel s Gcschichte dcs Rtimischen Litcratur, 1870, trans lated by Wagner under the title of A History of Roman Litera ture, 1873. FASTING (v7]a-Tvciv, jejunare] is most accurately denned as a withholding of meat, drink, and all natural food from the body for a determined period. So it is defined by the Church of England, in the 16th homily, on the authority of the Council of Chalceclon 1 and of the primitive church generally. In a looser sense the word is employed to denote abstinence from certain kinds of food merely ; and this meaning, which in ordinary usage is probably the more prevalent, seems also to be at least tolerated by the Church of England when it speaks of &quot; fast or abstinence days,&quot; a.s if fasting and abstinence were synonymous. 2 More vaguely still, the word is occasionally used as an equivalent for moral self-restraint generally. This secondary and metaphorical sense (v^o-revetv KdKor^Tos) occurs in one of the fragments of Empedocles. For the physiological aspects of the subject the reader may consult the article DIETETICS (vol. vii. p. 211, 212). Fasting is of special interest when considered as a disci pline voluntarily submitted to for moral and religious ends. As such it is very widely diffused^ Its modes and motives vary considerably according to climate, race, civilization, and other circumstances ; but it would be difficult to name any religious system of any description in which it is wholly unrecognized. 3 The origin of the practice is very obscure. 4 Mr Herbert Spencer has collected, from the accounts we have of various savage tribes in widely separ- 1 &quot; The Fathers assembled there. . . decreed in that council that every person, as well in his private as public fast, should continue all the day without meat an I drink, till after the evening prayer. And whosoever did eat or drink before the evening prayer was ended should be accounted and reputed not to consider the purity of his fast. This canon teacheth so evidently how fasting was used in the primitive church as by words it cannot be more plainly expressed. Of Good Works : and first, of Fasting. 2 As indeed they are, etymologically ; but, prior to the Reformation, a conventional distinction between abstlnentia and jcjunium naturale had long been recognized. &quot; Exceptio eduliorum quorundarn portionale jejunium est&quot; (Tertullian). 3 Confucianism ought perhaps to be named as one. Zoroastriamsni is frequently given as another, but hardly correctly. In the Liber JSad-der indeed (Porta xxv.) we read, &quot; Cavendum est tibi a jejunio ; nam a mane ad vesperam nihil comedere non est bonum in religione nostra ;&quot; but according to the Fere de Cliinon (Lyons, 1671) the Parsee religion enjoins, upon the priesthood at least, no fewer than five yearly fasts. See Hyde, Veterum Persarum Rcligio, p. 449, 548 (ed. 1700). origin in paradise. The germ at least of this idea is to be found in Tertullian, who says: &quot; Acceperat Adam a Deo legem non gustandi de arbore agnitionis boui et mali, moriturus si gustasset ; verum et ipse tune in psychicum reversus. . . facilius ventri quani Deo cessit, pabulo potius qu.un pnecepto annuit, salutem gula vendidit, mandu- cavit deniqne et periit, salvus alioquin si uni arbuscuku jcjunare unaluissct&quot; (De Jejuniin, c. 3). ated parts of the globe, a considerable body of evidence tending to suggest that it may have arisen out of the custom of providing refreshments for the dead, either by actually feeding the corpse, or by leaving eatables and drinkables for its use. The offerings to the dead are often made in so lavish a manner as necessarily to involve the survivors in temporary starvation, and it is no uncommon thing for a man to ruin himself by a funeral feast. It is suggested that the fasting which was at first the natural and inevitable result of such sacrifice on behalf of the dead may eventually have come to be regarded as an indispens able concomitant of all sacrifice, and so have survived as a well-established usage long after the original cause had ceased to operate. 5 It is not pretended that this explana tion is sufficient to account satisfactorily for all the known cases of primitive fasting; indeed its extreme precarious- ness at once becomes evident when it is remembered that, now at least, it is usual for religious fasts to precede rather than to follow sacrificial and funeral feasts, if observed at all in connection with these. Mr Spencer himself (p. 284) admits that &quot; probably the practice arises in more ways than one,&quot; and proceeds to supplement the theory already given by another that adopted by Mr E. B. Tylor to the effect that it originated in the desire of the primitive man to bring on at will certain abnormal nervous conditions favourable to the seeing of those visions and the dreaming of those dreams which are supposed to give the soul direct access to the objective realities of the spiritual world. Probably, if we leave out of sight the very numerous and obvious cases in which fasting, originally the natural reflex result of grief, fear, or other strong emotion, has come to be the usual conventional symbol of these, we shall find that the practice is generally resorted to, either as a means of somehow exalting the higher faculties at the expense of the lower, or as an act of homage to some object of wor ship. The axiom of the Amazulu that &quot; the continually stuffed body cannot see secret things &quot; meets even now with pretty general acceptance ; and if the notion that it is precisely the food which the worshipper foregoes that makes the deity more vigorous to do battle for his human friend be confined only to a few scattered tribes of savages, the general proposition that &quot;fasting is a work of reverence toward God&quot; may be said to be an article of the Catholic faith. 7 Although fasting as a religious rite is to be met with almost everywhere,, there are comparatively few religions, and those only of the more developed kind, which appoint definite public fasts, and make them binding at fixed seasons upon all the faithful. Brahmanism, for example, does not appear to enforce any stated fast upon the laity. 8 Among the ancient Egyptians fasting seems to have been associated with many religious festivals, notably with that of Isis (Herod, ii. 40), but it does not appear that, so far as the common people were concerned, the observance of these festivals (which were purely local) was compulsory. The vrja-TCLa on the third day of the Thesmophoria at Athens was observed only by the women attending the festival (who were permitted to eat cakes made of sesame and honey). It is doubtful whether the fast mentioned by 6 Principles of Sociology, i. p. 170, 284, 285. Compare the passage in the appendix from Ilanusch, Slavischer My thus, p. 408. 6 Spencer, Prin. of Sociology, i. 256, &c.; E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture,. 277, 402 ; ii. 372, &c. 7 Hooker, E. P.,. 72. In the Westminster Assembly s Larger Catechism lasting is mentioned among the duties required by the second commandment. s The Brahmans themselves on the eleventh day after the full moon and the eleventh day after the new &quot; abstain for sixty hours from every kind of sustenance ;&quot; and some have a special fast every Monday in November. See Picnrt, The Rdlyion and Manners of the Bra- iniiis.
 * During the Middle Ages the prevalent notion was that it had its