"The intellectual man, in his perfect consciousness of how much existence, life, and delight, the drunkard continually loses, is anxious to serve and to save him from his lost position. But it is pretty obvious, that the intellectual man's courses are in principle little, or no better than the sot's. It might be possible to make out a case, showing that they are worse. According to his own showing, they rest on very nearly the same main ground, that is to say, his own pleasure. Almost all that the temperate man can say, on behalf of his beef, his tea, and his coffee, the drunkard may assert for his tobacco, his beer, and his gin. It is plainly seen, that the drunkard, so long as he continues in his alcohol-imbibing practices, is utterly disqualified for giving any valuable opinion whatever, upon the human right and liberty thus to involve himself. In like manner, it is evident to the abstinent, that the temperate man while involved in his carnivorous quality and unlimited quantity, has accomplished little by cutting off one extraneous quality, and that he is as entirely disqualified for making a just estimate, in regard to his solid excitements of flesh and blood, and their always numerous inflammatory train.

"As the sot must be caught in a lucid, sober interval, before any sensible man would pronounce it useful to do as little as to speak to him of sobriety, so the flesh-eater must somehow be brought to, at least, a short abstinent interval, before the moralist can hopefully venture to appeal. It is the drunkard's sober nature that has to hear the sober voice: it is the flesh-eater's abstinent sense that has to hear the vital voice. Neither in one case, nor the other, can the gratified nature pronounce judgment on the proposed improvements. In both instances the difficulties are great; but they are greater in relation to the temperate man's progress than to the drunkard's. The latter has public opinion strongly against him; so strongly that he is never able to stifle the conscious voice perpetually proclaiming his error to him within. While the flesh-indul

gent has a public opinion as strongly in his favour: so strongly, that not only is the consciousness kept quietly unappealed to, but the inquiring spirit, which the age exhibits in every merely amusing and time-occupying manner, is lulled carefully to rest upon this, as upon human generation, and every other vital or vitally connected subject. When man's selfish and sensual gratifications thus find a correspondence and cordial co-operation in the social world, it is not to be wondered that he becomes fully confirmed therein. The question of eating animal food is then not so small as the mere intellectual observer may boldly pronounce it to be. To witness the bathers' enter and emerge from the cold bath, and to hear them afterwards describe their glowing sensations, in as glowing language as they could find, would poorly qualify the spectator and hearer for experiencing the like feelings, or truly uttering similar expressions. What must he do then? Every one has the answer; he must enter the bath -he himself must become a bather. How shall the sot be able to speak of, to understand, to know the advantages and delights of sobriety, unless he suffer himself, by a passivity to intoxicating liquors, to be brought by the sober spirit into the sober existence-an existence so different to that he must quit, that he has no comprehension of it? Perceiving no delights whatever out of the lower position in which he stands, he honestly believes that by giving them up he annihilates existence, and that any other life is a mystified blank. So with the flesh-consuming intellectualist. He as firmly and honestly believes that all nature would fail under a milder treatment than his stimulating system, which he, in thoughtless pride, calls Temperance. Perceiving no life, thinking moral energy impossible, beyond the bounds which a beef and pig, a curry and pepper circumvallation has drawn around him, he cannot loosen the present strong hold wherein he is self-fortified, but pronounces any thing beyond, as indeed it really seems to him, a mystified blank.

"Is it then not a question merely of health, of taste, of saving, but one involving a whole existence? Aye, truly. And the abstinent life is, in its nature, not only as much above the mental nature in which the inquiring spirit revels, as the latter is above the animal spirit in which the drunkard wallows,

that it is altogether new and incomparable in its kind. The human mind stands not more elevated, nor more contrasted to the quadruped animal, than stands the vital nature superior and contrasted to the intellectual nature.

But if all this, if consequences so important, and so strange, depend upon abstinence from animal food, there are whole nations who ought to exhibit vital results. This replication may, however, be met by observation on the facts. In the first place it is well known that a forced love is no love at all; a forced honesty, secured by the felon's enclosure in gaol, is not honesty at all. The abstinence of a poor peasantry, forced on them by penury, is no abstinence whatever, as we see when the opportunity to break out is offered. So a mental force may fail, in its proposed end, as among the Hindoos. Yet, although, under these varied circumstances, as little favourable to true abstinence as forcibly suppressed drunkenness is to genuine sobriety, all the good results are not wanting. The moral picture which India exhibits in yielding to European domination, may be the manifested humility, which their European rulers have some authority, though little audited, for saying is the true triumph. It is a process not yet fully marked out; and when it shall be, doubtless the unimpassioned flesh-abstaining nature will, by the unimpassioned at all events, be seen to occupy its lawful position.

"As to the poverty-forced abstinence of our rural population, as they cannot be exhibited as mental results in any eminent way, we may turn to the department of animal results. If health should be needed, with cheerful honesty combined, do we seek it in the beef and beer stimulated town population? No, we look to these to serve our clever, cunning, being-destructive commercial purposes. Among the rural population, with their scanty daily supplies, and their scantier weekly flesh-repast, we unanimously turn when any moral purpose is to be attained. Do we want any extraordinary human physical strength to be applied to any specific object at a cheap rate, we seek not the means among the well-fed, as they call themselves, the turtled, the spiced, the wined. Far from such. Not even in those who have come down to simple bread are found the suitable individuals. It is among the hardy potatoe-fed Scotch or Irish we discover the surest means for such strengthful exhibitions. A frame so treated is, as far as mere unskilled strength is concerned, equal to any two town-fed and stimulated mechanics. It is in fact, from such sources that the town populations, which otherwise would in a few generations be extinct, are recruited. In respect to longevity it is so clear a case, to every one who takes the trouble to enter into it, in ever so superficial a manner, that the reader will grant to us all that can be required. Nor is it alone in number of days that much is added to the earthly life and consequently to temporal improvement preparatory to eternal, but by the lighter and shorter sleep required the days are magnified in length as well as number. The happy sensations are thus increased and multiplied, the fleshly nature thus replenished and subdued.

"With the riddance of animal food, when resolved on from the true principle, an immense load of satellitious degradations are also thrown overboard. The well-known observation, that the utterance of one falsehood involves the invention of twenty more delusions to support it, is not more true than that animal-food increment necessarily entails the imbibition of a multitude of accompanying equally inflammatory stimulants. It is not enough for the flesh-eater that he endeavours to hide the consciousness of wrong done to the animal, by calling the slaughtered ox by the name beef; a sheep, mutton; a calf, veal; a pig, pork; and blood, by the politer term gravy. Not this clever nomenclature, nor all the cook's industrious, fibre-destroying arts, can sufficiently palliate the direful intention. No, there must even at the last stage, in addition to the heated blood, be added further inflammatory and stimulating substances to carry out the reckless course, and to excite the jaded appetiteto call forth a corresponding quantity of liquid combustibles-to hasten on the double, the animal and mental, ruin. We need not here repeat the familiar

disgusting facts whereby the pork or goose eater makes known the necessity for an allowance of alcohol: but we may be permitted to observe to the commercial man, that a slice of his best fed beef seems always to require to be endorsed by a glass of wine before it is duly honoured. Where that is not to be had, beer or other vulgar liquor must come in. These are the courses that tie men, and, shame to say, women also, to the dinner-table by the hour together. Nothing must interfere to set aside this process: like a religious ceremony it must be obeyed, and unlike religious dictates it obtains universal devotion. Every appointment must succumb to the cook's; every thought and action must be arranged with reference to the dinner hour. The young man in any station of society, high or low, who should in sincerity reply to his mother's upbraidings for late attendance; "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" might think himself fortunate if he should escape with a less punishment than that of being forced to show his guilty acknowledg ments by eating a double quantity.

"There is thus the cheering fact that whatever erroneous involutions are found with flesh eating, a favourable and correspondingly powerful and rapid progress ensues on the quittance of this degrading habit. All the large cargo of condiments &c., may then be thrown overboard as worse than useless when the vessel is sailed on the new tack. With simpler purer food, comes simpler clothing, simpler and purer slumbers, simpler furniture, simpler amusements, purer books, purer thoughts, purer conduct. Upon all these, which are its necessary conditions, is to be shed the lustrous, the genetic, the vital nature. Of this, it is, however, so deep a mysticism to the scientific intellectualist to speak, that for harmony sake we had better recur to those considerations which, as standing on his own ground, he cannot controvert, however lustily he may dispute. Ultimately, it will be seen that the value of the question, as of all questions, rests on this central point.

"Indisputable as is the fact, that all the food necessary either in quantity or quality, to enable the vis medicatria to keep the body in perfect health, is limited to the simplest material which the internal fire can lay hold of, as fuel to keep its supply up, and that to such persons as limit themselves in this manner, sickness is a mere tradition, unknown by actual experience; we say evident as this law is to every mind, the self-filling, self-gratifying process is still allowed to over-run our better judgment, and to clog and suppress the better

nature.

"Were further evidence wanted, not only of this fact, but of the possibility of bringing all sorts of persons within its operation, we could, from our own experience produce it. Within the last five months, there has been established near London, a real school, or child-home, where there have been simultaneously tried, the three extraordinary courses of abolishing all factitious rewards and punishments, as well mental as corporeal, the non-severation of the two sexes in study, and total abstinence from animal food and all its concomitants. We will say nothing of the mental results, because at present it will be thought premature. But of the successful results in that sphere, so much apprehended by the tender parent, that is to say, animal health and vigour, an assembly of nearly thirty persons visibly, audibly, and feelingly testifies. Persons of both sexes, of all ages, habits, &c. collected from various places, have by good will and pure desires, been enabled at once to do that with delight, which is so erroneously deemed a privation.

"We are reminded of this case by the frequently repeated excuse, which finds ready currency in the world, that we are not organized suitably for this abstinent life; that it may suit very well some constitutions, and each one must ascertain for himself, and from himself, what is fitting for his own constitution, and act accordingly. Founded on this irrational reasoning, we have many clever, well-intentioned dissertations, medical and scientific, on the Human constitution and its corresponding institutions. While one minute it is admitted, that human nature is frail and susceptible of large and intense im

provement, the next minute it is advocated by the same mouth, that every means should be adopted in harmony with the human constitution, as it now is thus necessarily decreeing its non-improvement. For what is this constitution of which we hear so much, and which is to be so much regarded? Without designing to answer such questions, man proceeds to act, and out of the constitution which man has, though admitted to be defective, he endeavours to make beneficial institutions. One institution that he has erected, is the muchloved practice of flesh-eating. And such institutions as this, (results emanating from a corrupted constitutional result) are to be relied on as favourable causes of an improved generation. Vain logic. That which improves, must be superior to the improved, and not its offspring. The new and purified constitution, must come from the new and pure constitutor, not from a cleansing, real or attempted, of the old institutions. These latter, as institutions, must all be dropped, and passed away, and such of them only renewed as are found conformable to the new constitution.

"Abstinence, then, taken as the most general idea or expression of man's duty in relation to the material world, becomes at once a most important condition outwardly concerning the animal creation; over which, in a state totally disqualifying all just judgment, he presumes to declare himself lord; as well as externally, in regard to his own animal health, and internally bearing upon the still more important subject of mental justice. If it be impossible for the sot to pronounce fairly on the value of a temperate life, it is equally injudicious to call upon the flesh-excited, to see clearly into the merits of abstinence. Mental increment, like physical support, has a twofold source; one the endosmic, the other the edosmic. These are not more obvious in the vegetable, than they are in the mental world; and generally speaking, the animal life is emblematic of the mental life. Whence it is, that our national tendency is no less to the practical and external in philosophy, than it is in food. Á people who have adopted the notion, that truth is to be built up by accretions from without, must necessarily conclude, that animal life is accumulated in a similar manner. Furthermore, a race educated in the idea, that the frame is and can alone be maintained in vigour by external and powerful applications, will as readily fall in with the principle, that mental life is to be laid on by external collegiate means; and never can be a secretion from within. Thus the twofold error, on either branch, plays into the other, and our animal system both by its baneful quantity and quality, and its erroneous principles, stands forcefully in the way of the genetic power's intuition and admission. Hence the public mind, which supports so strongly the idea, that universal truth is transmissible from one human mind to another, utterly rejects the faith, that the universal truth-spirit can commune directly with man. Scarcely conscious of the obvious fact, that animal life is deriveable solely from within, and its conditions merely from without, it is not to be expected that our mental philosophers can comprehend the fact, of an inwardly derived and sustained mental, or spiritual life. The two go together. As soon as the fallacy of one is perceived, the erroneousness of the other is admitted. As they have stood together, so together will they fall. Such a junction of mind and body, may be thought fanciful and romantic; totally unfounded on truth, or fair analogy. We recommend the reader to make trial. The negative effort of doing nothing, of merely ceasing to do, cannot be very great; the dangers, as he may see, are wholly on the other side; the cost is not likely to be inconvenient; in short, no result can rationally be expected at all militant against the desirable in body or mind. There are drinkers of strong liquors, so constant and determined, that the water drinking habit, which is now adopted by so many persons, appears when applied to themselves, a practice under which their whole existence would at once rapidly and entirely sink. Apprehensions as to giving up animal food, are equally groundless; and when once tried, the wonder will be, that we never thought of it before, and could so long, with our religious notions, and personal purity, continue in so disgusting and

degrading a system. Once well escaped from the charnel house, and placed by the incoming light in a position to see the horrors he has quitted, there can be no more tendency to return, than there is a wish in the animal feeder to add the human frame, as is reported of some wild epicures, to his list of festival dainties.

"An entire blindness to the question is not justly chargeable to the public. They have not failed to perceive that the course of justice is liable to be impeded by a too great regard to table delights; that in the competition of judicial administration and the stomach, the former may sometimes go to the wall, and that

"Wretches hang that Jurymen may dine."

"If cases so gross as this be not of common occurrence in the social world, it is undeniable that a process as destructive, goes on in every individual who does not keep his own mental court clear and unsullied by the lower considerations in which the flesh-eater is necessarily involved.

"The intellect-clouding and justice-hindering results of animal food are deplorable enough, but its passion-irritating, affection-blinding consequences grow into monster size snd monster quality. Genuine love cannot possibly pervade that being whose pleasure depends on his fellow creatures' destruction. The charity which hopeth all things, and endureth all things, is surely absent from that appetite which, in a world full of readily obtained suitable increment, resorts to another being's pain and cryful groaning death for daily sustenance or pleasure.

These statements will appear to many far too recondite for any morally practical purpose. It is in the nature of the subject that they should do so. Our primary affirmation is that a completely new existence depends upon it. Not upon the intellectual perception or assent to arguments, but upon the leaving one course and coming into the other, as a preliminary to the new being. Till some approximation is made to this centre, our observations must also excite opposition; to an extent perhaps that we would avoid if we could. As, however, they originate in a different ground to that whence exhortation and precept usually issue, there is hope that the result also may be different. So long as the preacher or writer confines his appeal to the production of verbal or mental assent, signified by an external form only, he will have hearers or readers in abundance. The public will freely attend churches, and liberally buy books, because such sclf-sacrifices still leave them in full possession of these lowering and animal delights wherein they wallow. But let the exhorter go a little farther, let him require something to be actually done in order to touch this self-satisfying system, and he will soon be abandoned by his pretended supporters. Let the Sunday Preacher demand of those who have so complacently sat under his pulpit for ten or twenty years, that seeing it is necessary at last to make room for something better, the weekly feast, which with religious regularity follows his moral appeal, shall be slightly abbreviated of its grossLet him require that the weekly joint, the fatted flesh shall be delayed but twenty-four hours,-let him wish to put off the animalization merely until the Monday; to hope for a purer human vessel by postponing the steaming slaughter and its exciting accompaniments till a more convenient and suitable season: let a popular preacher do but this little thing, let him merely require this small item only as the sine quâ non of Church communion, aud his popularity will rapidly diminish to coldness, or be converted to opposition.”

ness.

Such is the style of the Enthusiast by whom we have been addressed on the subject of diet. On the other side, we have an angry letter in favour of animal food. The writer likes nothing Pythagorean, but an entire abstinence from flesh least of all. "To preserve man in proper plight" he argues," in our climates, he not only requires the use of this solid nourishment, but even to vary it; as he cannot preserve himself in a state of activity, but by procuring new sensations; to put his senses on their full stretch by a variety of meats,