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have begun to confide to you with what exceeding ardour I approached the study of philosophy in my youth, I shall not be ashamed to confess the affection with which Sotion [his preceptor] inspired me for the teaching of Pythagoras. He was wont to instruct me on what grounds he himself, and, after him, Sextius, had determined to abstain from the flesh of animals. Each had a different reason, but the reason in both instances was a grand one (magnifica). Sotion held that man can find a sufficiency of nourishment without blood shedding, and that cruelty became habitual when once the practice of butchering was applied to the gratification of the appetite. He was wont to add that ‘It is our bounden duty to limit the materials of luxury. That, moreover, variety of foods is injurious to health, and not natural to our bodies. If these maxims [of the Pythagorean school] are true, then to abstain from the flesh of animals is to encourage and foster innocence; if ill-founded, at least they teach us frugality and simplicity of living. And what loss have you in losing your cruelty? (Quod istic crudelitatis tuæ damnum est?) I merely deprive you of the food of lions and vultures.’

      “Moved by these and similar arguments, I resolved to abstain from flesh meat, and at the end of a year the habit of abstinence was not only easy but delightful. I firmly believed that the faculties of my mind were more active,[25] and at this day I will not take pains to assure you whether they were so or not. You ask, then, ‘Why did you go back and relinquish this mode of life?’ I reply that the lot of my early days was cast in the reign of the emperor Tiberius. Certain foreign religions became the object of the imperial suspicion, and amongst the proofs of adherence to the foreign cultus or superstition was that of abstinence from the flesh of animals. At the entreaties of my father, therefore, who had no real fear of the practice being made a ground of accusation, but who had a hatred of philosophy,[26] I was induced to return to my former dietetic habits, nor had he much difficulty in persuading me to recur to more sumptuous repasts. …

      “This I tell,” he proceeds, “to prove to you how powerful are the early impetuses of youth to what is truest and best under the exhortations and incentives of virtuous teachers. We err partly through the fault of our guides, who teach us how to dispute, not how to live; partly by our own fault in expecting our teachers to cultivate not so much the disposition of the mind as the faculties of the intellect. Hence it is that in place of a love of wisdom there is only a love of words (Itaque quæ philosophia fuit, facta philologia est).”—Epistola cviii.[27]

      Seneca here cautiously reveals the jealous suspicion with which the first Cæsars viewed all foreign, and especially quasi-religious, innovations, and his own public compliance, to some extent, with the orthodox dietetic practices. Yet that in private life he continued to practise, as well as to preach, a radical dietary reformation is sufficiently evident to all who are conversant with his various writings. The refinement and gentleness of his ethics are everywhere apparent, and exhibit him as a man of extraordinary sensibility and feeling.

      As for dietetics, he makes it a matter of the first importance, on which he is never weary of insisting. “We must so live, not as if we ought to live for, but as though we could not do without, the body.” He quotes Epikurus: “If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to conventionalism, you will never be rich. Nature demands little; fashion (opinio) superfluity.” In one of his letters he eloquently describes the riotous feasting of the period which corresponds to our festival of Christmas—another illustration of the proverb, “History repeats itself”:—

      “December is the month,” he begins his letter, “when the city [Rome] most especially gives itself up to riotous living (desudat). Free licence is allowed to the public luxury. Every place resounds with the gigantic preparations for eating and gorging, just as if,” he adds, “the whole year were not a sort of Saturnalia.”

      He contrasts with all this waste and gluttony the simplicity and frugality of Epikurus, who, in a letter to his friend Polyænus, declares that his own food does not cost him sixpence a day; while his friend Metrodorus, who had not advanced so far in frugality, expended the whole of that small sum:—

      “Do you ask if that can supply due nourishment? Yes; and pleasure too. Not, indeed, that fleeting and superficial pleasure which needs to be perpetually recruited, but a solid and substantial one. Bread and pearl-barley (polenta) certainly is not luxurious feeding, but it is no little advantage to be able to receive pleasure from a simple diet of which no change of fortune can deprive one. … Nature demands bread and water only: no one is poor in regard to those necessaries.”[28]

      Again, Seneca writes:—

      “How long shall we weary heaven with petitions for superfluous luxuries, as though we had not at hand wherewithal to feed ourselves? How long shall we fill our plains with huge cities? How long shall the people slave for us unnecessarily? How long shall countless numbers of ships from every sea bring us provisions for the consumption of a single month? An Ox is satisfied with the pasture of an acre or two: one wood suffices for several Elephants. Man alone supports himself by the pillage of the whole earth and sea. What! Has Nature indeed given us so insatiable a stomach, while she has given us so insignificant bodies? No: it is not the hunger of our stomachs, but insatiable covetousness (ambitio) which costs so much. The slaves of the belly (as says Sallust) are to be counted in the number of the lower animals, not of men. Nay, not of them, but rather of the dead. … You might inscribe on their doors, ‘These have anticipated death.’ ”—(Ep. lx.)

      The extreme difficulty of abstinence is oftentimes alleged:—

      “It is disagreeable, you say, to abstain from the pleasures of the customary diet. Such abstinence is, I grant, difficult at first. But in course of time the desire for that diet will begin to languish; the incentives to our unnatural wants failing, the stomach, at first rebellious, will after a time feel an aversion for what formerly it eagerly coveted. The desire dies of itself, and it is no severe loss to be without those things that you have ceased to long for. Add to this that there is no disease, no pain, which is not certainly intermitted or relieved, or cured altogether. Moreover it is possible for you to be on your guard against a threatened return of the disease, and to oppose remedies if it comes upon you.”—(Ep. lxxviii.)

      On the occasion of a shipwreck, when his fellow-passengers found themselves forced to live upon the scantiest fare, he takes the opportunity to point out how extravagantly superfluous must be the ordinary living of the richer part of the community:—

      “How easily we can dispense with these superfluities, which, when necessity takes them from us, we do not feel the want of. … Whenever I happen to be in the company of richly-living people I cannot prevent a blush of shame, because I see evident proof that the principles which I approve and commend have as yet no sure and firm faith placed in them. … A warning voice needs to be published abroad in opposition to the prevailing opinion of the human race: ‘You are out of your senses (insanitis); you are wandering from the path of right; you are lost in stupid admiration for superfluous luxuries; you value no one thing for its proper worth.’ ”—(Ep. lxxxvii.)

      Again:—

      “I now turn to you, whose insatiable and unfathomable gluttony (profunda et insatiabilis gula) searches every land and every sea. Some animals it persecutes with snares and traps, with hunting-nets [the customary method of the battue of that period], with hooks, sparing no sort of toil to obtain them. Excepting from mere caprice or daintiness, there is no peace allowed to any species of beings. Yet how much of all these feasts which you obtain by the agency of innumerable hands do you even so much as touch with your lips, satiated as they are with luxuries? How much of that animal, which has been caught with so much expense or peril, does the dyspeptic and bilious owner taste? Unhappy even in this! that you perceive not that you hunger more than your belly. Study,” he concludes his exhortation to his friend, “not to know more, but to know better.”

      Again:—

      “If the human race would but listen to the voice of reason, it would recognise that [fashionable] cooks are as superfluous as soldiers. … Wisdom engages in all useful things, is favourable to peace, and summons the whole human species to concord.”—(Ep.

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