Page:Substance of the Work Entitled Fruits and Farinacea The Proper Food of Man.djvu/34

 his way, and God was forced to exterminate the whole race by a universal deluge, and was also obliged to shorten their lives from nine hundred or a thousand years to seventy."

"To see the convulsions, agonies, and tortures of a poor fellow-creature," continues Dr. Cheyne, "whom they cannot restore or recompense, dying to gratify luxury, must require a rocky heart, and a great degree of cruelty and ferocity." "I cannot find," adds he, "any great difference, on the foot of natural reason and equity only, between feeding on human flesh and feeding on brute animal flesh, except custom and example. I believe some rational creatures would suffer less in being fairly butchered than a strong ox or red deer; and, in natural morality and justice, the degrees of pain here make the essential difference."

Doctor Hawkesworth observes: "Among other dreadful and disgusting images which custom has rendered familiar are those which arise from eating animal food. He who has ever turned with abhorrence from the skeleton of a beast which has been picked whole by birds or vermin, must confess that habit alone could have enabled him to endure the sight of the mangled bones and flesh of a dead carcass which every day cover his table; and he who reflects on the number of lives that have been sacrificed to sustain his own, should inquire by what the account has been balanced, and whether his life is become proportionably of more value by the exercise of virtue and piety, by the superior happiness which he has communicated to reasonable beings, and by the glory which his intellect has ascribed to God."

"The Gentoos rear numerous herds of cattle; but such is their veneration for these animals—on account of their useful and patient services to man—that to kill or even maim one of them is deemed a capital offence." " Among the Wallachians, though there is no positive institution to the contrary, yet the women never destroy the life of any creature. Whether this custom was founded by some of their ancient legislators, or whether it originated from incidental circumstances, is uncertain; but, however that may be, nothing can be more suitable to the gentleness and timidity which form the most beautiful and engaging part of the female character."

"Can there be a more gratifying spectacle," observes Dr. Roget, "than to see an animal in the full vigour of health, and the free exercise of its powers, disporting in its native element, revelling in the bliss of existence, and testifying, by its incessant gambols, the exuberance of its joy?" Yet cruel man—to gratify