Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/41

Rh What it really proves is this: That habitual sin has blunted our physical conscience till we have not only ceased to heed, but ceased to understand, the protests of our inner monitor. It proves that the victims of vice have so utterly forgotten the language of their instincts that they are no longer able to distinguish a natural appetite from a morbid appetency.

For it might be questioned if the instinctive horror of carrion is stronger than a normal man's aversion to the first taste of alcohol. To the palate of an unseduced youngster brandy is intensely repulsive, lager beer as nauseous as sewer swill; wine is simply spoiled musk, as unattractive as acidulated sugar-water. Is it Nature's fault that these health-protecting instincts can be perverted by a deliberate and ever-repeated disregard of their warning? Or can flesh-gluttons ("corpse-eaters" the editor of the Vegetarian calls them) plead the weakness of Nature, the lures of the flesh and the devil?"

Without spices and kitchen tricks animal food would not tempt the progeny of Adam to any damaging extent. "If I didn't want people to eat my apples I wouldn't lock them up in my orchard," says an irreverent critic of Genesis;