on.--John Bailies.--Francis Hupazoli.--Prof.
Ferguson.--Howard, the Philanthropist.--Gen.
Elliot.--Encyclopedia Americana.--Thomas Bell, of
London.--Linnaeus, the Naturalist.--Shelley, the Poet.--Rev. Mr.
Rich.--Rev. John Wesley.--Lamartine.
GENERAL REMARKS.
This chapter might have been much more extended than it is. I might have
mentioned, for example, the cases of Daniel and his three brethren, at
the court of the Babylonian monarch, who certainly maintained their
health--if they did not even improve it--by vegetable food, and by a
form of it, too, which has by many been considered rather doubtful. I
might have mentioned the case of Paul,[17] who, though he occasionally
appears to have eaten flesh, said, expressly, that he would abstain from
it while the world stood, where a great moral end was to be gained; and
no one can suppose he would have done so, had he feared any injury would
thereby result to his constitution of body or mind.
The case of William Penn, if I remember rightly what he says in his "No
Cross no Crown," would have been in point. Jefferson, the third
President of the United States, was, according to his own story, almost
a vegetable eater, during the whole of his long life. He says he
abstained principally from animal food; using it, if he used it at all,
only as a condiment for his vegetables. And does any one, who has read
his remarks, doubt that his "convictions" were in favor of the exclusive
use of vegetable food?
However, to prevent the volume from much exceeding the limits originally
assigned it, I will be satisfied--and I hope the public will--with the
following selections of testimonies, ancient and modern; some of more,
some of less importance; but all of them, as it appears to me, worthy of
being collected and incorporated into a volume like this, and faithfully
and carefully examined.
PLAUTUS.
Plautus, a distinguished dramatic Roman writer, who flourished about two
thousand years ago, gives the following remarkable testimony against the
use of animal food, and of course in favor of the salubrity of
vegetables; addressed, indeed, to his own countrymen and times, but
scarcely less applicable to our own:
"You apply the term wild to lions, panthers, and serpents; yet, in your
own savage slaughters, you surpass them in ferocity; for the blood shed
by them is a matter of necessity, and requisite for their subsistence.
"But, that man is not, by nature, d
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