ns, is not accustoming one's self to
mildness and a human temper of mind an admirable thing? For who would
wrong or injure a man that is so sweetly and humanly disposed with
respect to the ills of strangers that are not of his kind? I remember
that three days ago, as I was discoursing, I made mention of a saying
of Xenocrates, and how the Athenians gave judgment upon a certain person
who had flayed a living ram. For my part I cannot think him a worse
criminal that torments a poor creature while living, than a man that
shall take away its life and murder it. But (as it seems) we are more
sensible of what is done against custom than against Nature. There,
however, I discussed these matters in a more popular style. But as
for that grand and mysterious principle which (as Plato speaks) is
incredible to base minds and to such as affect only mortal things, I
as little care to move it in this discourse as a pilot doth a ship in
a storm, or a comedian his machine while the scenes are moving; but
perhaps it would not be amiss, by way of introduction and preface,
to repeat certain verses of Empedocles.... For in these, by way of
allegory, he hints at men's souls, as that they are tied to mortal
bodies, to be punished for murders, eating of flesh and of one another,
although this doctrine seems much, ancienter than his time. For the
fables that are storied and related about the discerption of Bacchus,
and the attempts of the Titans upon him, and of their tasting of
his slain body, and of their several punishments and fulminations
afterwards, are but a representation of the regeneration. For what in
us is unreasonable, disorderly, and boisterous, being not divine but
demoniac, the ancients termed Titans, that is, TORMENTED and PUNISHED
(from [Greek omitted])....

TRACT II. Reason persuades us now to return with fresh cogitations
and dispositions to what we left cold yesterday of our discourse about
flesh-eating. It is indeed a hard and a difficult task to undertake (as
Cato once said) to dispute with men's bellies, that have no ears; since
most have already drunk that draught of custom, which is like that of
Ciree,

Of groans and frauds and sorcery replete.
("Odyssey," x. 234.)

And it is no easy task to pull out the hook of flesh-eating from the
jaws of such as have gorged themselves with luxury and are (as it
were) nailed down with it. It would indeed be a good action, if as
the Egyptians draw out the stomach of