ever, there is nothing better for
the brain than a temperate diet of well-selected vegetables, with water
for drink. This Sir Isaac Newton and hundreds of others could abundantly
attest.

It also favors an evenness and tranquillity of temper, which is of
almost infinite value. The most fiery and vindictive have been enabled,
by this means, when all other means had failed, to transform themselves
into rational beings, and to become, in this very respect, patterns to
those around them. If this were its only advantage, in a physiological
point of view, it would be of more value than worlds. It favors, too,
simplicity of character. It makes us, in the language of the Bible, to
remain, or to become, as little children, and it preserves our juvenile
character and habits through life, and gives us a green old age.

Finally and lastly, it gives us an independence of external things and
circumstances, that can never be attained without it. In vain may we
resort to early discipline and correct education--in vain to moral and
religious training--in vain, I had almost said, to the promises and
threatenings of heaven itself, so long as we continue the use of food so
unnatural to man as the flesh of animals, with the condiments and
sauces, and improper drinks which follow in its train. Our hope, under
God, is, in no small degree, on a radical change in man's dietetic
habits--in a return to that simple path of truth and nature, from which,
in most civilized countries, those who have the pecuniary means of doing
it have unwisely departed.

III. THE MEDICAL ARGUMENT.

If perfect health is the best preventive and security against disease,
and if a well-selected and properly administered vegetable diet is best
calculated to promote and preserve that perfect health, then this part
of the subject--what I have ventured to call the medical argument--is at
once disposed of. The superiority of the diet I recommend is established
beyond the possibility of debate. Now that this is the case--namely,
that this diet is best calculated to promote perfect health--I have no
doubt. For the sake of others, however, it may be well to adduce a few
facts, and present a few brief considerations.

It is now pretty generally known, that Howard, the philanthropist, was,
for about forty years a vegetable-eater, subsisting for much of this
time on bread and tea, and that he went through every form of exposure
to disease, contagious and non-contagious, perf