CHAPTER XXXV 

 FISH AND FAST DAYS 



MOST people are familiar with the fact that fasting 

 in the Christian Church has from early times been 

 of two degrees — one in which no flesh of beast or bird 

 or fish, not even eggs, not even milk, may be consumed, 

 and a less severe degree in which the eating of fish is 

 allowed. It is not at first sight clear why the eating of 

 fish — and even of birds such as the Barnacle goose and 

 the Sooty duck, supposed to be produced from fish — 

 has been permitted by the Christian Church, since the 

 flesh of fish is highly nourishing and an excellent sub- 

 stitute for the meat of beasts and birds, and a man fed 

 upon it is far from suffering the effects of true " fasting." 

 Many races and out-of-the-way people live entirely upon 

 vegetables and a little fish, and do very well on that diet. 



• 

 It has been proved by some learned inquirers that 

 there was a special significance about the permission by 

 I the early Christians of a fish diet during so-called 

 " fasting." Real and complete fasting, abstention from 

 all food, for a day or even a week, was and still is 

 practised by some Eastern peoples as a religious exercise. 

 It is a matter of fact that an ecstatic condition of mind 

 is favoured by complete fasting, and conditions favourable 

 to illusions of various kinds are so produced. But the 

 later Christians seem to have regarded the partial fasting 



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