For not the bread of man their life sustains,intimating meat to be the cause of death as well as the means of sustaining and supporting life. From hence proceed divers fatal distempers caused much more by fulness than by fasting; and to digest what we have eaten proves frequently a harder matter than to provide and procure what we eat. And when we solicitously enquire beforehand what we should do or how we should employ ourselves if we had not such care and business to take up our time, this is as if Danaus's daughters should trouble their heads to know what they should do if they had no sieves to fill with water. We drudge and toil for necessaries, for want of better and nobler business. As slaves then who have gained their freedom do now and then those drudgeries and discharge those servile employments and offices for their own benefit which they undertook heretofore for their masters' advantage, so the mind of man, which at present is enslaved to the body and the service thereof, when once it becomes free from this slavery, will take care of itself, and spend its time in contemplation of truth without distraction or disturbance. Such were our discourses upon this head, O Nicarchus.
Nor wine's inflaming juice supplies their veins;
1
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Yea, doubtless, replies Solon, or we may be reputed
more injudicious than the Egyptians. For when any person
[p. 30]
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; forasmuch as
whatsoever is transmuted and turned into another loseth
the nature which it had before, and is corrupted that it
may become nourishment to the others. 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 baker's chimney and bins and
kneading-tubs. Verily one may observe the souls of some
men confined to their bodies, as to a house of correction,
barely to do the drudgery and to serve the necessities
thereof. It was our own case but even now. While we
minded our meat and our bellies, we had neither eyes to
see nor ears to hear; but now the table is taken away, we
[p. 31]
are free to discourse among ourselves and to enjoy one
another; and now our bellies are full, we have nothing
else to do or care for. And if this condition and state
wherein we at present are would last our whole life, we
having no wants to fear nor riches to covet (for a desire of
superfluities attends a desire of necessaries), would not
our lives be much more comfortable and life itself much
more desirable?
Yea, but Cleodemus stiffly maintains the necessity of
eating and drinking, else we shall want tables and cups,
and shall not be able to sacrifice to Ceres and Proserpina. By a parity of reason there is a necessity there
should be contentions and wars, that men may have bulwarks and citadels and fortifications by land, fleets and
navies abroad at sea, and that having slain hundreds,
we may offer sacrifices (called Hecatomphonia) after the
Messenian manner. By this reason we shall find men
grudging their own health, for (they will say) there will be
no need of down or feather beds unless they are sick; and
so those healing Gods, and particularly Esculapius, will be
vast sufferers, for they will infallibly lose so many fat and
rich sacrifices yearly. Nay, the art of chirurgery will perish,
and all those ingenious instruments that have been invented
for the cure of man will lie by useless and insignificant.
And what great difference is there between this and that?
For meat is a medicine against hunger, and such as keep a
regular diet are said to cure themselves,—I mean such as
use meat not for wantonness but of necessity. For it is
plain, the prejudices we receive by feeding far surmount
the pleasures. And the pleasure of eating fills a very
little place in our bodies and very little time. But why
should I trouble you or myself with a catalogue of the many
vexations which attend that man who is necessitated to
provide for a family, and the many difficulties which distract him in his undertaking? For my part, I verily
[p. 32]
believe Homer had an eye to this very thing, when, to prove
the immortality of the Gods, he made use of this very argument, that they were such because they used no victuals;
1 Il. V. 341.
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