d this long harangue, I began to this effect.
You omit one thing, my friend, how they that decry food decry sleep too,
and they that declaim against sleep declaim against dreams in the same
breath, and so destroy the primitive and ancient way of divination. Add
to this, that our whole life will be of one form and fashion, and our
soul enclosed in a body to no purpose; many and those the principal
parts thereof are naturally so formed and fashioned as to be organs of
nutriment; so the tongue, the teeth, the stomach, and the liver, whereof
none are idle, none framed for other use, so that whosoever hath no need
of nutriment has no need of his body; that is, in other words, no man
hath any need of himself, for every man hath a body of his own. This I
have thought fit to offer in vindication of our bellies; if Solon or any
other has anything to object to what I have said, I am willing to hear
him.

Yea, doubtless, replies Solon, or we may be reputed more injudicious
than the Egyptians. For when any person dies among them, they open
him and show him so dissected to the sun; his guts they throw into the
river, to the remaining parts they allow a decent burial, for they think
the body now pure and clean; and to speak truly they are the foulest
parts of the body, and like that lower hell crammed with dead carcasses
and at the same time flowing with offensive rivers, such as flame
with fire and are disturbed with tempests. No live creature feeds upon
another living creature, but we first take away their lives, and in
that action we do them great wrong. Now the very plants have life in
them,--that is clear and manifest, for we perceive they grow and spread.
But to abstain from eating flesh (as they say Orpheus of old did) is
more a pretence than a real avoiding of an injury proceeding from the
just use of meat. One way there is, and but one way, whereby a man may
avoid offence, namely by being contented with his own, not coveting what
belongs to his neighbor. But if a man's circumstances be such and so
hard that he cannot subsist without wronging another man, the fault
is God's, not his. The case being such with some persons, I would
fain learn if it be not advisable to destroy, at the same time with
injustice, these instruments of injustice, the belly, stomach, and
liver, which have no sense of justice or appetite to honesty, and
therefore may be fitly compared to your cook's implements, his knives
and his caldrons, or to a bake