MAN NATURALLY OMNIVOROUS. 185 



animal food renders man strong and courageous, is fully 

 disproved by the inhabitants of northern Europe and Asia, 

 the Laplanders, Samoiedes, Ostlacs, Tungooses, Burats, 

 and Kamtschadales, as well as by the Eskimaux in the 

 northern, and the natives of Tierra del Fuego in the southern 

 extremity of America, which are the smallest, weakest, and 

 least brave people of the globe, although they live almost 

 entirely on flesh, and that often raw. 



Vegetable diet is as little connected with weakness and 

 cowardice, as that of animal matters is with ])hysical force 

 and courage. That men can be perfectly nourished, and 

 their bodily and mental capabilities be fully developed in 

 any climate, by a diet purely vegetable, admits of abundant 

 proof from experience. In the periods of their greatest 

 simplicity, manliness, and bravery, the Greeks and Romans 

 a])pear to have lived almost entirely on plain vegetable 

 preparations ; indifferent bread, fruits, and other produce 

 of the earth, are the chief nourishment of the modern 

 Italians, and of the mass of the population in most coun- 

 tries of Europe : of those more immediately known to 

 ourselves, the Irish and Scotch may be mentioned ; who 

 are certainly not rendered weaker than their English fellow- 

 subjects by their freer use of vegetable aliment. The 

 Negroes, whose great bodily powers are well knov^n, feed 

 chiefly on vegetable substances ; and the same is the case 

 witli the South Sea Islanders, whose agility and strength 

 were so great, that the stoutest and most expert English 

 sailors had no chance with them in wrestling and boxing. 

 The representations of the Pythagoreans respecting the 

 noxious and debilitating effects of animal food, are, on the 

 other hand, the mere offspring of imagination. We have 

 not the shadow of a proof, unless we admit Ovid's Meta- 

 morphoses and other poetical compositions, that this state of 

 innocence, of exalted temperance, of entire abstinence from 

 flesh, of perfect tranquillity, of profound peace, ever ex- 

 isted, or that it is more than a fable, designed to convey 

 moral instruction. If the experience of every individual 

 were not suificient to convince him that the use of animal 



