Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/105

Rh traditions of all ages, from the ogre Polyphemus, who, as Homer tells us, devoured the companions of Ulysses, to the modern savages of New Zealand, who did not hesitate to make a hearty meal off any prisoners, captives, or missionaries whom fortune might put in their power. Some writers have questioned the deliberate practice of cannibalism, but well-attested facts concerning many savage tribes leave us no room for doubt that human ﬂesh is often used by choice as an article of diet, and not only under the pressure of necessity or from the lack of other food. It is quite possible that there is a basis of truth in the grimly humorous stories told by the old Greek historian Herodotus of the cannibals of his age, among some of whom it was the custom when a man died for his relations to assemble and eat him, mixing his flesh with that of some animal to make it more palatable. Others again used to eat their aged parents, while a third tribe, the Padmans, carried on the practice of cannibalism in a more systematic and scientific manner. “If one of their