PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 309 



tarian. In a slaughter-house the sight of gory carcasses and puddles of 

 blood will excite hira with a horror naturalis. The same sight would 

 excite the appetite of the omnivorous pig as well as of the carnivorous 

 puppy. Artificial preparation, spices, etc., may disguise the natural 

 taste of meat, as of coffee or wine, but they will not alter its effect 

 upon the animal system. The flesh-food fallacy, like other errors of 

 the civilized nations, has found plausible defenders, but their principal 

 argument is clearly based on a misunderstood fact. The delusion 

 originated in England, where the physique of the beef -fed and rubi- 

 cund Saxon squire contrasts strongly with that of the potato-fed Celtic 

 laborer. What this really proves is merely that a mixed diet is superior 

 to a diet of starch and water, for the North-Irish dairyman, who adds 

 milk and butter to his starch, outweighs and outlives the rubicund 

 squire. The matter is this : In a cold climate we can not thrive with- 

 out a modicum of fat, but that fat need not come from slaughtered 

 animals. In a colder country than England the East-Russian peasant, 

 remarkable for his robust health and longevity, subsists on cabbage- 

 soup, rye bread, and vegetable oils. In a colder country than England 

 the Gothenbui'g shepherds live chiefly on milk, barley -bread, and escu- 

 lent roots. The strongest men of the three manliest races of the pres- 

 ent world are non-carnivorous: the Turanian mountaineers of Daghestan 

 and Lesghia, the Mandingo tribes of Senegambia, and the Schleswig- 

 Holstein Bauern, who furnish the heaviest cuirassiers for the Prussian 

 army and the ablest seamen for the Hamburg navy. Nor is it true 

 that flesh is an indispensable, or even the best, brain-food. Pythagoras, 

 Plato, Seneca, Paracelsus, Spinoza, Peter Bayle, and Shelley were vege- 

 tarians ; so were Franklin and Lord Byron in their best years. New- 

 ton, while engaged in writing his " Principia " and " Quadrature of 

 Curves," abstained entirely from animal food, which he had found by 

 experience to be unpropitious to severe mental application. The ablest 

 modern physiologists incline to the same opinion. " I use animal food 

 because I have not the opportunity to choose my diet," says Professor 

 Welch, of Yale, " but whenever I have abstained from it, I have found 

 my health mentally, morally, and physically better." 



Though a vegetarian on principle, I have eaten various kinds of 

 flesh as a physiological experiment, and have often observed the in- 

 fluence of animal food upon children and invalids, and I have found 

 that a pound of boiled beef or eight ounces of lean pork, after a month's 

 abstinence from all flesh-food, will infallibly produce some or all of the 

 following unmistakable effects : a gastric uneasiness, akin to the in- 

 cipient operation of certain emetics ; distressing dreams, restlessness, 

 and a peculiar mood which I might describe as a promiscuous pessi- 

 mism, a feeling of general irritation and resentment. I have also noticed 

 that flesh-food tends to check intellectual activity, not so much by 

 making us averse to all mental occupations as by muddling what 

 phrenologists call the perceptives. By its continued use children 



