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 

 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 tin- 

 later Christians seem to have regarded the partial fasting 



