Page:Substance of the Work Entitled Fruits and Farinacea The Proper Food of Man.djvu/14

 Dicæarchus (as related by St. Jerome in his books on Grecian antiquities), no man ate flesh, but all lived upon fruits and pulse. Virgil alludes to this era as universally believed in. Our own poets, Pope and Thomson, join their voices on the same side. In Pope's "Essay on Man," epistle iii., 147, we read:—

Similar to this is the language of Thomson, in reference to the same period. Speaking of herbs, he says:—

This primeval state of innocence and bliss did not long continue. Man forsook the way of peace, and is no longer a fit inhabitant of Paradise. After his transgression, he could no longer enjoy abmidance of delicious fruit, except as the result of industry, and even then he would frequently have to derive his subsistence from roots, corn, and other farinaceous or succulent vegetables.

A similar belief concerning the primitive food of man prevailed among the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and the Chaldeans, as we have reason to believe from Sanchoniathon, from Manetho, and