with other nations; but
compare Hindoo with Hindoo, which is the only fair way. Compare the
porters of the Mediterranean, both of Asia and Europe, who feed on bread
and figs, and carry weights to the extent of eight hundred or one
thousand pounds, with the porters who eat flesh, fish, and oil. Compare
African with African, American Indian with American Indian; nay, even
New Englander with New Englander; for we have a few here who are trained
to vegetable eating. In short, go where you will, and institute a fair
comparison, and the results will be, without a single exception, in
favor of a diet exclusively vegetable. It is necessary, however, in
making the comparison, to place _good_ vegetable food in opposition to
good animal food; for no one will pretend that a diet of crude,
miserable, or imperfect, or sickly vegetables will be as wholesome as
one consisting of rich farinaceous articles and fruits; nor even as many
kinds of plain meat.

The only instance which, on a proper comparison, will probably be
adduced to prove the incorrectness of these views, will be that of a few
tribes of American Indians, who, though they have extremely robust
bodies, are eaters of much flesh. But they live also in the open air,
and have many other good habits, and are healthy in spite of the
inferiority of their diet. But perfect, physically, as they seem to be,
and probably are, examine the vegetable-eaters among them, of the same
tribe, and they will be found still more so.

In the next place, the fluids are all in a better and more healthy
state. In proof of this, I might mention in the first place that
superior agility, ease of motion, speed, and power of endurance which so
distinguish vegetable-eaters, wherever a fair comparison is instituted.
They possess a suppleness like that of youth, even long after what is
called the juvenile period of life is passed over. They are often seen
running and jumping, unless restrained by the arbitrary customs of
society, in very advanced age. Their wounds heal with astonishing
rapidity in as many days as weeks, or even months, in the latter case.
All this could not happen, were there not a good state of the fluids of
the system conjoined, to a happy state of the solids.

The vegetable-eater, if temperate in the use of his vegetables, and if
all his other habits are good, will endure, better than the flesh-eater,
the extremes of heat and cold. This power of endurance has ever been
allowed to be