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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    Like gods, they lived with calm, untroubled mind, Free from the toil and anguish of our kind, Nor did decrepid age mis-shape their frame. Pleased with earth's unbought feasts: all ills removed, Wealthy in flocks,* and of the Blest beloved, Death, as a slumber, pressed their eyelids down : All Nature's common blessings were their own. The life-bestowing tilth its fruitage bore, A full, spontaneous, and ungrudging store. They with abundant goods, 'midst quiet lands, All willing, shared the gatherings of their hands. When Earth's dark breast had closed this race around, Great Zeus, as demons,*) raised them from the ground ; Earth-hovering spirits, they their charge began— The ministers of good, and guards of men. Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide, And compass Earth, and pass on every side ; And mark, with earnest vigilance of eyes, Where just deeds live, or crooked ways arise, And shower the wealth of seasons from above. % The second race—the Silver Age —inferior to the first and wholly innocent people, were, nevertheless, guiltless of bloodshed in the pre- paration of their food ; nor did they offer sacrifices—in the poet's judg- ment, it appears, a damnable error. For the third—the Brazen Age—it was reserved to inaugurate the feast of blood :— Strong with the ashen spear, and fierce and bold, Their thoughts were bent on violence alone, The deed of battle, and the dying groan. . Bloody their feasts, with wheaten food unblessed.] According to Hesiod, who is followed by the later poets, the immortals inhabiting the Olympian mansions feast ever on the pure and bloodless food of Ambrosia, and their drink is Nectar, which may be taken to be a sort of refined dew. He represents the divine Muses of Helicon, who inspire his song, as reproaching the shepherds, his neighbours, that tend the flocks, with the possession of mere fleshly appetites. Ovid, amongst the Latins, is the most charming painter of the innocence of the Golden Age. Amongst our own poets, Pope, Thomson, and Shelley—the last as a prophet of the future and actual rather than the poet of a past and fictitious age of innocence—have contributed to embellish the fable of the Past and the hope of the Future. * The same apparent contradiction—the co-existence of flocks and herds with the prevalence of the non-flesh diet—appears in the Jewish theology, in Geriesis. It is obvious, however, that in both cases the flocks and herds might be existing for other purposes than for slaughter. t Daimones. The dcemon in Greek theology was simply a lesser divinity—an angel. t Compare Spenser's charming verses ( Faery Queen, Book ii., canto 8): And is there eare in heaven, &c.