94 ANT I EN T METAPHYSICS. Book 11. 



it is the natural diet of an animal of prey, which I hold Man by 

 nature not to be ; and I am perfuaded it was only neceffity at firft 

 that made him eat flefli, fuch as obliged UlyfTes's crew to eat fifh * : 

 For Man is not armed by nature as a beaft of prey is ; and there- 

 fore all the Savages, that live on fle(h, have invented inftruments of 

 one kind or another for killing their prey ; which fhews that eating 

 of flefh muft have been pofterior to the invention of at leaft fome 

 arts. Befides, Man is by nature a gentle, humane animal, fo as not 

 to be difpofed willingly to prey upon his fellow animals. In fup- 

 port of this theory, I think, it is a remarkable fadt, which Bougain- 

 ville, the French Admiral, relates. That, when he landed in the Falk- 

 land Iflands, which were then uninhabited, the beads and birds 

 came about them, without the leaft dread ; the beafts running a- 

 mong their feet, and the birds perching upon their heads and fhoul- 

 ders. And a like ftory is told in Churchill's CollecStion of Travels, of 

 the birds in fome iflands in the South Sea, called by the Spaniards 

 Be Los GaUipos, being fo little freightened by men, that they 

 fufFered themfelves to be killed by cudgels f- This they would 

 not have done, if Man had been by nature an animal of prey ; 

 for their inftind would have directed them to fhun him, as the wild 

 animals in this country learn by experience to do. 



I hold, therefore, that the moft natural food of Man, and what 

 he lived upon in his primitive ftate, is Vegetables not prepared by 

 fire, of which he had not then the ufe. Accordingly, the Oran 

 Outan eats nothing elfe. The Indians, the moft antient nation now 

 in the world, kill no animals for food ; and the wild boy Peter^ 

 who was once in the perfe^: natural ftate, even after he was 



caught 



• Ibidem. 



t Vol. iv. p. 458. 



