ably die,
either from external violence or natural old age. But the domestic hog,
the sheep, the cow, and the dog are subject to an incredible number of
distempers, and, like the corrupters of their nature, have physicians,
who thrive upon their miseries.

"The supereminence of man is like Satan's supereminence of pain,--and
the majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have
reason to curse the untoward event, that, by enabling him to communicate
his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow animals. But
the steps that have been taken are irrevocable.

"The whole of human science is comprised in one question: How can the
advantages of intellect and civilization be reconciled with the liberty
and pure pleasures of natural life? How can we take the benefits and
reject the evils of the system, which is now interwoven with our being?
I believe that _abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors
would, in a great measure, capacitate us for the solution of this
important question_.

"It is true, that mental and bodily derangement is attributable in part
to other deviations from rectitude and nature than those which concern
diet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting the connection of the
sexes, whence the misery and diseases of celibacy, unenjoying
prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring;
the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the exhalations of chemical
processes: the muffling of our bodies in superfluous apparel; the absurd
treatment of infants; all these, and innumerable other causes,
contribute their mite to the mass of human evil.

"Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugiverous animals
in every thing, and carnivorous in nothing; he has neither claws
wherewith to seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the
living fibre. A mandarin of the first class, with nails two inches long,
would probably find them, alone, inefficient to hold even a hare. It is
only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparations
that it is rendered susceptible of mastication and digestion, and that
the sight of its bloody juices does not excite intolerable loathing,
horror, and disgust. Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a
decisive experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a
living lamb with his teeth, and, plunging his head into its vitals,
slake his thirst with the steaming blood; when fres