people courses of ghastly corpses and ghosts, could
give those parts the names of meat and victuals, that but a little
before lowed, cried, moved, and saw; how his sight could endure the
blood of slaughtered, flayed, and mangled bodies; how his smell could
bear their scent; and how the very nastiness happened not to offend the
taste, while it chewed the sores of others, and participated of the saps
and juices of deadly wounds.

Crept the raw hides, and with a bellowing sound
Roared the dead limbs; the burning entrails groaned.
("Odyssey," xii. 395.)

This indeed is but a fiction and fancy; but the fare itself is truly
monstrous and prodigious,--that a man should have a stomach to creatures
while they yet bellow, and that he should be giving directions which of
things yet alive and speaking is fittest to make food of, and ordering
the several kinds of the seasoning and dressing them and serving them up
to tables. You ought rather, in my opinion, to have inquired who first
began this practice, than who of late times left it off.

And truly, as for those people who first ventured upon eating of flesh,
it is very probable that the whole reason of their so doing was scarcity
and want of other food; for it is not likely that their living together
in lawless and extravagant lusts, or their growing wanton and capricious
through the excessive variety of provisions then among them, brought
them to such unsociable pleasures as these, against Nature. Yea, had
they at this instant but their sense and voice restored to them, I am
persuaded they would express themselves to this purpose:

"Oh! happy you, and highly favored of the gods, who now live! Into what
an age of the world are you fallen, who share and enjoy among you a
plentiful portion of good things! What abundance of things spring up for
your use! What fruitful vineyards you enjoy! What wealth you gather from
the fields! What delicacies from trees and plants, which you may gather!
You may glut and fill yourselves without being polluted. As for us, we
fell upon the most dismal and affrighting part of time, in which we
were exposed by our production to manifold and inextricable wants and
necessities. As yet the thickened air concealed the heaven from our
view, and the stars were as yet confused with a disorderly huddle of
fire and moisture and violent fluxions of winds. As yet the sun was not
fixed to a regular and certain course, so as to separate morning an