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The Ethics of Diet. Howard Williams
Читать онлайн.Название The Ethics of Diet
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isbn 4057664648310
Автор произведения Howard Williams
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
“To such a degree do we make luxuries of bloodshed, that we call flesh ‘a delicacy,’ and forthwith require delicate sauces [ὄψων] for this same flesh-meat, and mix together oil and wine and honey and pickle and vinegar with all the spices of Syria and Arabia—for all the world as though we were embalming a human corpse. After all these heterogeneous matters have been mixed and dissolved and, in a manner, corrupted, it is for the stomach, forsooth, to masticate and assimilate them—if it can. And though this may be, for the time, accomplished, the natural sequence is a variety of diseases, produced by imperfect digestion and repletion.[48]
“Diogenes (the Cynic) had the courage, on one occasion, to swallow a polypus without any cooking preparation, to dispense with the time and trouble expended in the kitchen. In the presence of a numerous concourse of priests and others, unwrapping the morsel from his tattered cloak, and putting it to his lips, ‘For your sakes,’ cried he, ‘I perform this extravagant action and incur this danger.’ A self-sacrifice truly meritorious! Not like Pelopidas, for the freedom of Thebes, or like Harmodius and Aristogeiton, on behalf of the citizens of Athens, did the philosopher submit to this hazardous experiments; for he acted thus that he might unbarbarise, if possible, the life of human kind.
“Flesh-eating is not unnatural to our physical constitution only. The mind and intellect are made gross by gorging and repletion; for flesh-meat and wine may possibly tend to give robustness to the body, but it gives only feebleness to the mind. Not to incur the resentment of the prize-fighters [the athletes], I will avail myself of examples nearer home. The wits of Athens, it is well known, bestow on us Bœotians the epithets ‘gross,’ ‘dull-brained,’ and ‘stupid,’ chiefly on account of our gross feeding. We are even called ‘hogs.’ Menander nicknames us the ‘jaw-people’ [οἱ γνάθους ἔχοντες]. Pindar has it that ‘mind is a very secondary consideration with them.’ ‘A fine understanding of clouded brilliancy’ is the ironical phrase of Herakleitus. …
“Besides and beyond all these reasons, does it not seem admirable to foster habits of philanthropy? Who that is so kindly and gently disposed towards beings of another species would ever be inclined to do injury to his own kind? I remember in conversation hearing, as a saying of Xenokrates, that the Athenians imposed a penalty upon a man for flaying a sheep alive, and he who tortures a living being is little worse (it seems to me) than he who needlessly deprives of life and murders outright. We have, it appears, clearer perceptions of what is contrary to propriety and custom than of what is contrary to nature. …
“Reason proves both by our thoughts and our desires that we are (comparatively) new to the reeking feasts [ἕωλα] of kreophagy. Yet it is hard, as says Cato, to argue with stomachs since they have no ears; and the inebriating potion of Custom[49] has been drunk, like Circe’s, with all its deceptions and witcheries. Now that men are saturated and penetrated, as it were, with love of pleasure, it is not an easy task to attempt to pluck out from their bodies the flesh-baited hook. Well would it be if, as the people of Egypt turning their back to the pure light of day disembowelled their dead and cast away the offal, as the very source and origin of their sins, we, too, in like manner, were to eradicate bloodshed and gluttony from ourselves and purify the remainder of our lives. If the irreproachable diet be impossible to any by reason of inveterate habit, at least let them devour their flesh as driven to it by hunger, not in luxurious wantonness, but with feelings of shame. Slay your victim, but at least do so with feelings of pity and pain, not with callous heedlessness and with torture. And yet that is what is done in a variety of ways.
“In slaughtering swine, for example, they thrust red-hot irons into their living bodies, so that, by sucking up or diffusing the blood, they may render the flesh soft and tender. Some butchers jump upon or kick the udders of pregnant sows, that by mingling the blood and milk and matter of the embryos that have been murdered together in the very pangs of parturition, they may enjoy the pleasure of feeding upon unnaturally and highly inflamed flesh![50] Again, it is a common practice to stitch up the eyes of cranes and swans, and shut them up in dark places to fatten. In this and other similar ways are manufactured their dainty dishes, with all the varieties of sauces and spices [καρυκείαις—Lydian sauces, composed of blood and spices]—from all which it is sufficiently evident that men have indulged their lawless appetites in the pleasures of luxury, not for necessary food, and from no necessity, but only out of the merest wantonness, and gluttony, and display. …”[51]
Among the illustrious earlier contemporaries of Plutarch who practised no less than preached rigid abstinence, Apollonius of Tyana, the Pythagorean, one of the most extraordinary men of any age, deserves particular notice. He came into the world in the same year with the founder of Christianity, B.C. 4. The facts and fictions of his life we owe to Philostratus, who wrote his memoirs at the express desire of the Empress Julia Domna, the wife of Severus.
Apollonius, according to his biographer, came of noble ancestry. He early applied himself to severe study at the ever memorable Tarsus, where he may have known the great persecutor, and afterwards second founder, of Christianity. Disgusted with the luxury of the people, he soon exiled himself to a more congenial atmosphere, and applied himself to the examination of the various schools of philosophy—the Epicurean, the Stoic, the Peripatetic, &c.—finally giving the preference to the Pythagorean. He embraced the strictest ascetic life, and travelled extensively, visiting, in the first instance, Nineveh, Babylon, and, it is said, India, and afterwards Greece, Italy, Spain, and Roman Africa and Ethiopia. At the accession of Domitian, he narrowly escaped from the hands of that tyrant, after having voluntarily given himself up to his tribunal, by an exertion of his reputed supernatural power. He passed the last years of his life at Ephesus, where, according to the well-known story, he is said to have announced the death of Domitian at the very moment of the event at Rome. His alleged miracles were so celebrated, and so curiously resemble the Christian miracles, that they have excited an unusual amount of attention.[52]
Unfortunately, the life by Philostratus, in accordance with the taste of a necessarily uncritical age, is so full of the preternatural and marvellous that the real fact that the pythagorean philosopher had acquired and possessed extraordinary mental as well as moral faculties, which might well be deemed supernatural at that period, is too apt to be discredited. The Life was composed long after the death of the hero, and thus a considerable amount of inventive license was possible to the biographer; but that it rested upon an undoubted substratum of actual occurrences will scarcely be disputed. There is one passage which deserves to be transcribed as of wider application. The people of a town in Pamphylia (in the Lesser Asia), where the great Thaumaturgist chanced to be staying, were starving in the midst of plenty by the selfish policy of the monopolists of grain, and, driven to desperation, were on the point of attacking the responsible authorities. Apollonius, at this crisis, wrote the following address, and gave it to the magistrates to read aloud:—
“Apollonius to the Monopolists of Corn in Aspendos, greeting: The Earth is the common mother of all, for she is just.[53] You are unjust, for you have made her the mother of yourselves only. If you will not cease from acting thus, I will not suffer you to remain upon her.”
Philostratus assures us that “intimidated by these indignant words they filled the market with grain, and the city recovered from its distress.”
VII.
TERTULLIAN. 160–240 (?) A.D.
THE earliest of the Latin Fathers extant is, also, one of the most esteemed by the Church,[54] notwithstanding the well-known heterodoxy of his later life, as the first Apologist of Christianity in