h from the deed of
horror, let him revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that
would rise in judgment against it, and say, Nature formed me for such
work as this. Then, and then only, would he be consistent.

"Young children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, apples, and other
fruit, to the flesh of animals, until, by the gradual depravation of the
digestive organs, the free use of vegetables has, for a time, produced
serious inconveniences. _For a time_, I say, since there never was an
instance wherein a change from spirituous liquors and animal food to
vegetables and pure water has failed ultimately to invigorate the body,
by rendering its juices bland and consentaneous, and to restore to the
mind that cheerfulness and elasticity which not one in fifty possesses
on the present system. A love of strong liquor is also with difficulty
taught to infants. Almost every one remembers the wry faces which the
first glass of port produced. Unsophisticated instinct is invariably
unerring; but to decide on the fitness of animal food from the perverted
appetites which its constrained adoption produces, is to make the
criminal a judge in his own cause; it is even worse--it is appealing to
the infatuated drunkard in a question of the salubrity of brandy.

"Except in children, however, there remain no traces of that instinct
which determines, in all other animals, what aliment is natural or
otherwise; and so perfectly obliterated are they in the reasoning adults
of our species, that it has become necessary to urge considerations
drawn from comparative anatomy to prove that we are naturally
frugiverous.

"Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever the cause of disease
shall be discovered, the root, from which all vice and misery have so
long overshadowed the globe, will be bare to the axe. All the exertions
of man, from that moment, may be considered as tending to the clear
profit of his species. No sane mind, in a sane body, resolves upon a
crime. It is a man of violent passions, blood-shot eyes, and swollen
veins, that alone can grasp the knife of murder. The system of a simple
diet is not a reform of legislation, while the furious passions and evil
propensities of the human heart, in which it had its origin, are
unassuaged. It strikes at the root of all evil, and is an experiment
which may be tried with success, not alone by nations, but by small
societies, families, and even individuals. In no case has a return to a