138 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS. 



kitchen fires, well-stored larders, and especially exemption from 

 rude toil, abolish these extreme caricatures ; and keeping appetite 

 down to a middling level by the rote of meals, and thus taking 

 away the incentives to ravenous haste, they allow the mind to tutor 

 and variegate the tongue, and to substitute the harmonies and mel- 

 odies of deliberate gustation for such unseemly bolting. Under 

 this direction, hunger becomes polite ; a long-drawn, many-colored 

 taste; the tongue, like a skillful instrument, holds its notes: and 

 thirst, redeemed from drowning, rises from the throat to the tongue 

 and lips, and full of discrimination becomes the gladdening love of 

 all delicious flavors. At the same time there is this benefit also, 

 that we can always descend to the lower condition, and find an 

 agreeable variety in the plainest fare. 



But to recur for a moment to the vegetarians (not to do them an 

 injustice), although we accept the testimony of the anatomists and 

 physiologists, and the dictation of facts, as of value for the present, 

 yet it must be admitted that it is not conclusive for the future j for 

 in a being mutable like man, capable of improvement and of de- 

 terioration, with power to alter his mind, and therefore his brains 

 and his body, it is difficult to say to what extent his anatomy may 

 have conformed to his habits, good or evil. No doubt our frames 

 have changed with the times since the world began. Existing cus- 

 toms and organisms are not fixed points to limit the truth, or to 

 govern the future. Anew appetite for flesh, conceived in the mind, 

 and daily gratified, and of consequence daily strengthened, could 

 not fail in the course of generations to mould the consumer to the 

 desired end ; and in short to make animal food natural to the human 

 constitution, by modifying the latter. That it may fairly be called 

 natural now, is evident, for where is the race that abstains from 

 flesh unless either religion, or strict necessity, forbids its use ? The 

 question therefore, like other administrative questions, is one of 

 times, and wants, and wise expediency. If by other sorts of tempe- 

 rance the members of society find their thoughts calmed and deep- 

 ened, their senses refined, their emotions more constant, powerful 

 and peaceful, it is hard to say to what new sublimities temperance 

 may not aspire; what fresh interpretations it may not assume, or 

 how it may not assault the carnivorous man. Every herb and 



