The ethics of diet : a catena of authorities deprecatory of the practice of flesh-eating / by Howard Williams.

  • Williams, Howard, 1837-1931.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ethics of diet : a catena of authorities deprecatory of the practice of flesh-eating / by Howard Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    spite, that is to say, of the most cherished prejudices, traditions, and sophisms of Education. If we seek the historical origin of anti-kreophagist philosophy, it is to the Pythagorean School, in the later development of the Platonic philosophy especially, that the western world is indebted for the first systematic enunciation of the principle, and inculcation of the practice, of anti-materialistic living—-the first historical protest against, the practical materialism of every-day eating and drinking. How Christianity, which, in its first origin, owes so much to, and was so deeply imbued with, on the one hand, Essenian, and, on the other, Platonic principles, to the incalculable loss of all the succeeding ages, has failed to propagate and develope this true and vital spiritualism—in spite, too, of the con- victions of some of its earliest and best exponents, an Origen or Clemens, seems to be explained, in the first instance, by the hostility of the triumph- ant and orthodox Church to the Gnostic element which, in its various shapes, long predominated in the Christian Faith, and which at one time seemed destined to be the ruling sentiment in the Church ; and, secondly, by the natural growth of materialistic principles and practice in proportion ta the growth of ecclesiastical wealth and power; for, although the virtues of asceticism, derived from Essenism and Platonism, obtained a high reputation in the orthodox Church, they were relegated and appropriated to the ecclesiastical order (theoretically at least), or rather to certain departments of it. Such was what may be termed the sectarian cause of this fatal abandonment of the more spiritual elements of the new Faith, operating in conjunction with the corrupting influences of wealth and power. As regards the humanitarian reason of anti-materialistic living, the failure and seeming incapacity of Christianity to recognise this, the most significant of all the underlying principles of reformation in Diet—the cause is not far to seek. It lay, essentially, in the (theoretical) depreciation of, and contempt for, present as compared with future existence. All the fatal consequence of this theoretical teaching (which yet has had no extensive influence, even in the way it might have been supposed to act beneficially), in regard to the status and rights of the non-human species, has been well indicated by a distinguished authority. It should seem, writes Dr. Arnold, as if the primitive Christians, by laying so much stress upon a future life, and placing the lower beings out of the pale of hope [of extended existence], placed them at the same time out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this utter disregard of [other] animals