A vindication of natural diet

SECOND SERIES. No.

\' I N D T C A T I O N

NATURAL DIET

BEIXr; (^rcr in a SI^RLES of notes l^) nUEE^ AE\1]

BY

PERCY P>YSSHP: SHELLEY

[Sl-COm) EDITIOS)

ilontjon

ERESENTED TO THE
MEMBERS OF THE SHELLEY SOClErV

ser.Z

LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Class JlS^4£^ C^*
5^1 <«; . ^ 3p"

VINDICATION

OF

NATURAL DIET

BY

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

A NEW EDITION.

" Our simple life wants little, and true taste
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste
The scene it would adorn, and therefore still
Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill. "

Epipsycliidion.

LONDOX : F. Pitman, 20, Paternoster Row.

MANCHESTER : John Heywood, Ridgefield ; and Offices

OF THE Vegetarian Society, 75, Princess Street.

1SS4.

PREFATORY NOTICE.

Shelley's "Vindication of Natural Diet" was first written
as part of the notes to " Queen Mab," which was privately
issued in 1813. Later in the same year the "Vindication"
was separately published as a pamphlet, and it is from this
later publication that the present reprint is made. The
original pamphlet is now exceedingly scarce, but it is said
to have been reprinted in 1835, as an appendix to an
American medical work, the "Manual on Health," by Dr.
TurnbuU, of New York. Two copies only are known to have
been preserved of this excessively rare pamphlet, though
possibly others may be hidden in unfrequented libraries and
out of the way country houses. One copy is in the British
Museum, and the other is in the possession of Mr. H. Buxton
Forman, who has reprinted it in his great edition of Shelley,
where it forms the openin^^urt of the second volume of the
"Prose Works." _— ^— - ---

The^iam object of Shelley's pamphlet was to show that a
vegetable diet is the most natural, and therefore the best for
mankind. It is not an appeal to humanitarian sentiment,
but an argument based on individual experience, concerning
the intimate connection of health and morality with food.
It has no claim to origuialiiy in the arguments adduced ;
its materials being avowedly drawn from the w^orks of Dr.
Lambe and Mr. Newton, of whom an account may be read
in Mr. Howard Williams' "Catena," but the style is
Shelley's own, and the pamphlet is in many ways one of the
most interesting and characteristic of his prose w^orks.

102460

PREFATORY NOTICE.

Perhaps its most remarkable feature is to be found in the
very pertinent remarks as to the bearing of Vegetarianism
on those questions of economy and social reform, which are
now forcing themselves more and more on the attention of
the English people.*

At the time of writing his " Vindication of Natural Diet,"
Shelley had himself, for some months past, adopted a
Vegetarian diet, chiefly, no doubt, through his intimacy
with the Newton family. There seems no reason to doubt
that he continued to practise Vegetarianism during the rest
of his stay in England, that is from 1813 to the spring of
1818. Leigh Hunt's account of his life at Marlow, in 1817,
is as follows : — "This was the round of his daily life. He
was up early, breakfasted sparingly, wrote this 'Eevolt of
Islam' all the morning ; w^ent out in his boat, or in the
woods, with some Greek author or the Bible in his hands ;
came home to a dinner of vegetables (for he took neither
meat nor wine) ; visited, if necessary, the sick and fatherless,
whom others gave Bibles to and no help ; wrote or studied
again, or read to his wife and friends the whole evening;
took a crust of bread or a glass of whey for his supper, and
went early to bed."

In 1818, he left England for Italy, and during his last
four years, the most dreamy and speculative period of his
life, he seems to have been less strict in his observance of
Vegetarian practice. It is not true however, as has some-
times been asserted, that Shelley lost faith in the principles
of Vegetarianism ; for his change in diet was owing partly to
his well-known carelessness about his food, which became
more marked at this time, and partly to a desire to avoid

* Shelley's pamphlet appeared In 1S13. The Vegetarian Society was not
founded until 1847. Information as to this Society, with list of its publications,
can be had free on application to the Secretary, 75, Princess Street, Manchester.

PREFATORY NOTICE.

giving trouble to the other members of his household, which,
as we see from a line in his letter to Maria Gisborne,
written in 1820, "Though we eat little flesh and drink no
wine" was not entirely a Vegetarian one. Yet, even at this
period of his life, he himself was practically, if not
systematically, a Vegetarian, for all his biographers agree in
informing us that bread was literally his "stafl'of life." We
cannot doubt that if he had lived in the present time he
would have taken a leading part in the movement towards
Food Reform. As it is, he has left us an invaluable legacy
in his "Vindication of Natural Diet," perhaps the most
powerful and eloquent plea ever put forward in favour of the
Vegetarian cause.

He found in this the presage of his ideal future. To his
enthusiastic faith in the transforming effect of the Vegetarian
principle, we owe some of the finest passages in his poetry.
In the close of the eighth canto of " Queen Mab," we have a
picture of a time when man no more

Slays the lamb that looks him in the face.
It is the same ideal of bloodless innocence as that of Israel's
prophet-poet, who declares that in the Holy Mountain they
shall not hurt nor destroy. Never did sage or singer,
prophet or priest, or poet, see a brighter vision of the future
than that which is imaged in the description of a glorified
earth, from which cruelty, bloodshed, and tyranny, have
been banished.

" My brethren, we are free ! The fruits are glowing
Beneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing
O'er the ripe corn. The birds and beasts are dreaming. '
IsTever again may blood of bird or beast
Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,

PREFATORY NOTICE.

To the pure skies in accusation steaming ;
Avenging poisons shall have ceased
To feed disease and fear and madness ;

The dwellers of the earth and air
Shall throng around our steps in gladness,
Seeking their food or refuge there.
Oar toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull, "
To make this earth, our home, more beautiful ;
And Science, and her sister Poesy,
Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free ! "

Over the plain the throngs were scattered then
In groups around the fires, which from the sea

Even to the gorge of the first mountain-glen
Blazed wide and far. The banquet of the free
Was spread beneath many a dark cypress- tree ;

Beneath whose spires which swayed in the red flame
Reclining as they ate, of liberty.

And hope; and justice, and Laone's name.

Earth's children did a woof of happy converse frame.

Their feast was such as Earth, the general mother,
Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles

In the embrace of Autumn. To each other
As when some parent fondly reconciles
Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles

With her own sustenance ; they relenting weep : —
Such was this festival, which, from their isles

And continents and winds and oceans deep,

All shapes might throng to share that fly or walk or creep.

That this was no mere poetic sentiment is proved by this
pamphlet, which is an earnest yindication of Vegetarianism.

H. S. S.
W. E. A. A.

[original title page.]

VINDICATION

NATUEAL DIET

BEINa ONE m A SERIES OF NOTES TO QUEEN MAB

(A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM).

Iax€TL0VL8r], iravTtjov irepi fjLTjdea etdujcr,
'KatpeLcr irvp KkexpcKT, /cat eyuao" (ppevac r)irepoirev(T(X(y ;
Soir' avTO) pLeya irrj/JLa kul avdpacnu eaaofievoiai.
Tol<t8' eyco avrt Trvpoa dooaoj kukov, cj ksv airavrea
TepTTitJVTaL Kara, dvfxov, eov kolkov afKpayairujvTea.

HSmA. Op. et Dies. 1, 5i.

^^4i£gS^^ LONDON:

Printed for J. Callow, Medical Bookseller, Crown Court,

Prince's Street, Soho,

By Smith & Davy, Queen Street, Seven Dials.

1813.

PRICE ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE

A VINDICATION OF NATURAL DIET.

I HOLD that the depravity of the physical and moral nature
of man originated in his unnatural habits of life. The origin
of man, like that of the universe of which he is a part, is
enveloped in impenetrable mystery. His generations either
had a beginning, or they had not. The weight of evidence
in favour of each of these suppositions seems tolerably equal;
and it is perfectly unimportant to the present argument
which is assumed. The language spoken, however, by the
mythology of nearly all religions seems to prove, that at some
distant period man forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed
the purity and happiness of his being to unnatural appetites.
The date of this event seems to have also been that of some
great change in the climates of the earth, with which it has
an obvious correspondence. The allegory of Adam and Eve
eating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity
the wrath of God, and the loss of everlasting life, admits of
no other explanation than the disease and crime that have
flowed from unnatural diet. Milton was so well aware of
this, that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the
consequence of his disobedience : —

. Immediately a place
Before his eyes appeared : sad, noisome, dark :
A lazar-house it seemed ; wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased : all maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,

10 A Vindication of Natural Diet.

Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs ;
Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic pangs,
Dsemoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.

And how many thousands more might not be added to this
frightful catalogue !

The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, although
universally admitted to be allegorical, has never been satis-
factorily explained. Prometheus stole fire from heaven, and
was chained for this crime to Mount Caucasus, where a
vulture continually devoured his liver, that grew to meet its
hunger. Hesiod says, that, before the time of Prometheus,
mankind were exempt from suffering ; that they enjoyed a
vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came,
approached like sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again,
so general w\as this opinion, that Horace, a poet of the
Augustan age, writes : —

Audax omnia perpeti.

Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas,

Audax lapeti genus

Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit.

Post ignem ajtherea domo

Subductum, macies et nova febrium

Terris incubuit cohors

Semotique prius tarda necessitas

Lethi corripuit gradum.

How plain a language is spoken by all this. Prometheus
(who represents the human race) effected some great change
in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary
purposes; thus inventing an expedient for screening from

V

A Vindication of Natural Diet, 11

his disgust the horrors of the shambles. From this moment
his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It con-
sumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite
variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature
and violent death. All vice arose from the ruin of health-
ful innocence. Tyranny, superstitution, commerce, and
inequality, were then first known, when reason vainly
attempted to guide the wanderings of exacerbated passion.
I conclude this part of the subject with an extract from Mr.
Newton's Defence of Vegetable Regimen, from whom I have
borrowed this interpretation of the fable of Prometheus.

" Making allowance for such transposition of the events
of the allegory as time might produce after the important
truths were forgotten, which this portion of the ancient mytho-
logy was intended to transmit, the drift of the fable seems
to be this : Man at his creation was endowed with the gift
of perpetual youth ; that is, he was not formed to be a
sickly suffering creature as we now see him, but to enjoy
health, and to sink by slow degrees into the bosom of his
parent earth without disease or pain. Prometheus first
taught the use of animal food (primus bovem occidit Pro-
metheus)^ and of fire, with which to render it more
digestible and pleasing to the taste. Jupiter, and the rest
of the gods, foreseeing the consequences of these inventions,
were amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices of the
newly-formed creature, and left him to experience the
sad effects of them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant of
a flesh diet," (perhaps of all diet vitiated by culinary pre-
paration) " ensued ; water was resorted to, and man forfeited
the inestimable gift of health which he had received from

*" Plin. Nat. Hist.," Lib. vii., Soc. 57.

12 A Vindication of Natural Diet,

heaven ; he became diseased, the partaker of a precarious
existence and no longer descended slowly to his grave."*^

But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And every death its own avenger breeds ;
The fury passions from that blood began,
And turned on man a fiercer savage — Man.

Man and the animals whom he has infected with his
society, or depraved by his dominion, are alone diseased.
The wild hog, the mouflon, the bisoQ, and the wolf are per-
fectly exempt from malady, and invariably die either from
external violence or natural old age. But the domestic hog,
the sheep, the cow, and the dog are subject to an incredible
variety of distempers; and, like the corrupters of their
nature, have physicians who thrive upon their miseries. The
supereminence of man is like Satan's, a supereminence of
pain ; and the majority of his species, doomed to penury,
disease, and crime, have reason to curse the untoward event
that, by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised
him above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps
that have been taken are irrevocable. The whole of human
science is comprised in one question — How can the advan-
tages of intellect and civilisation be reconciled with the
liberty and pure pleasures of natural life^ How can we
take the benefits and reject the evils of the system which is
now interwoven with all the fibres of our being ? I believe
that abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors
would in a great measure capacitate us for the solution of
this important question.

Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles
frugivorous animals in everything, and carnivorous in

* ♦* Return to Nature." Cadell, 1811.

A Vindication of Natural Diet

nothing : he has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey,
nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre. A
mandarin of the first class, with nails two inches Icnf^,
would probably find them alone inefficient to hold even a
hare. After every subterfuge of gluttony, the bull must be
degraded into the ox, and the ram into the wether, by an
unnatural and inhuman operation, that the flaccid fibre may
offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. It is only by
softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation
that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion,
and that the sight of its bloody juices and ra^v horror does
not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. Let the advo-
cate of animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on
its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb
w^ith his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals, slake
his thirst with the steaming blood ; when fresh from the
deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible instincts of
nature that would rise in judgment against it, and say,
Nature formed me for such w^ork as this. Then, and then
only, would he be consistent.

Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no
exception, except man be one, to the rule of herbivorous
animals having cellulated colons.

The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in the
order and number of his teeth. The orang-outang is the
most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, all of which are
strictly frugivorous. There is no other species of animals
in which this analogy exists."^ In many frugivorous
animals, the canine teeth are more pointed and distinct

■ Cuvier, Legons d'Anat. Comp. torn, iii., pages 1C9, 373, 448, 465, and 480.
Eees's Cyclopaedia, article Man.

14 A Vindication of Natural Diet,

than those of man. The resemblance also of the human
stomach to that of the orang-outang is greater than to that
of any other animal.

The intestines are also identical with those of herbivorous
animals, which present a large surface for absorption, and
have ample and cellulated colons. The caecum also, though
short, is larger than that of carnivorous animals ; and even
here the orang-outang retains its accustomed similarity.

The structure of the human frame then is that of one
fitted to a pure vegetable diet, in every essential particular.
It is true that the reluctance to abstain from animal food,
in those who have been long accustomed to its stimulus, is
so great in some persons of weak minds, as to be scarcely
overcome ; but this is far from bringing any argu-
ment in its favour. A lamb which was fed for some time
on flesh by a ship's crevf, refused its natural diet at the end
of the voyage. There are numerous instances of horses,
sheep, oxen, and even wood-pigeons, having been taught to
live upon flesh, until they have loathed their natural aliment.
Young children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, apples, and
other fruit, to the flesh of animals, until, by the gradual
depravation of the digestive organs, the free use of vege-
tables has, for a time, produced serious inconveniences ; for
a time, I say, since there never was an instance wherein a
change from spirituous liquors and animal food to vegetables
and pure water, has failed ultimately to invigorate the body,
by rendering its juices bland and consentaneous, and to
restore to the mind that cheerfulness and elasticity, which
not one in fifty possesses on the present system. A love of
strong liquors is also with difficulty taught to infants.
Almost every one remembers the wry faces the first glass of

A Vindication of Natural Diet. 15

port produced. Unsophisticated instinct is invariably un-
erring ; but to decide on the fitness of animal food, from the
perverted appetites which its constrained adoption produce,
is to make the criminal a judge in his own cause ; it is even
worse, it is appealing to the infatuated drunkard in a
question of the salubrity of brandy.

What is the cause of morbid action in the animal
system ? Not the air we breathe, for our fellow denizens of
nature breathe the same uninjured ; not the water we drink,
if remote from the pollutions of man and his inventions, for
the animals drink it too ; not the earth we tread upon ; not
the unobscured sight of glorious nature, in the wood, the
field, or the expanse of sky and ocean ; nothing that we are
or do in common with the undiseased inhabitants of the
forest. Something then w^herein we differ from them ; our
habit of altering our food by fire, so that our appetite is no
longer a just criterion for the fitness of its gratification.
Except in children there remains no traces of that instinct
which determines, in all other animals, what aliment is
natural or otherwise ; and so perfectly obliterated are they
in the reasoning adults of our species, that it has become
necessary to urge considerations, drawn from comparative
anatomy, to prove that we are naturally frugivorous.

Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever the
cause of disease shall be discovered, the root, from which
all vice and misery have so long overshadowed the globe,
will lie bare to the axe. All the exertions of man, from
that moment, may be considered as tending to the clear
profit of his species. No sane mind in a sane body resolves
upon a real crime. It is a man of violent passions, blood-
shot eyes, and swollen veins, that alone can grasp the knife

16 A Vindication of Natural Diet.

of murder. The system of a simple diet promises no
Utopian advantages. It is no mere reform of legislation,
whilst the furious passions and evil propensities of the
human heart, in which it had its origin, are still unassuaged.
It strikes at the root of all evil, and is an experiment
which may be tried with success, not alone by nations, but
by small societies, families, and even individuals.

In no cases has a return to vegetable diet produced the
slightest injury : in most it has been attended with changes
undeniably beneficial. Should ever a physician be born
with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he might
trace all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural
habits, as clearly as that philosopher has traced all know-
ledge to sensation. What prolific sources of disease are
not those mineral and vegetable poisons that have been
introduced for its extirpation'? How many thousands have
become murderers and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants,
dissolute and abandoned adventurers, from the use of
fermented liquors; who had they slaked their thirst only
at the mountain stream, would have lived but to diffuse
the happiness of their own unperverted feelings. How many
groundless opinions and absurd institutions have not
received a general sanction from the sottishness and intem-
perance of individuals'? Who will assert that, had the
populace of Paris drank at the pure source of the Seine,
and satisfied their hunger at the ever-furnished table of
vegetable nature that they would have lent their brutal
suffrage to the proscription-list of Robespierre 1 Could a set
of men, whose passions were not perverted by unnatural
stimuli, look with coolness on an auto dafe? Is it to be
believed that a being of gentle feelings, rising from his
meal of roots, would take delight in sports of blood ?

A Vindication of Natural Diet, 17

Was Nero a man of temperate life 1 Could you read calm
health in his cheek, flushed with ungovernable propensities
of hatred for the human race 1 Did Muley Ismael's pulse
beat evenly, was his skin transparent, did his eyes beam
with healthfulness, and its invariable concomitants, cheer-
fulness and benignity'? Though history has decided none
of these questions, a child could not hesitate to answer in
the negative. Surely the bile-suffused cheek of Buona-
parte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow eye, the ceaseless
inquietude of his nervous system, speak no less plainly
the character of his unresting ambition than his murders
and his victories. It is impossible had Bonaparte descen-
ded from a race of vegetable feeders, that he could have
either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne
of the Bourbons. The desire of tyranny could scarcely
be excited in the individual; the power to tyrannise
would certainly not be delegated by a society neither
frenzied by inebriation, nor rendered impotent or irrational
by disease. Pregnant, indeed, with inexhaustible calamity
is the renunciation of instinct, as it concerns our physical
nature ; arithmetic cannot enumerate, nor reason perhaps
suspect, the multitudinous sources of disease in civilised
life. Even common water, that apparently innoxious
pabulum, when corrupted by the filth of populous cities, is a
deadly and insidious destroyer."^ Who can wonder that
all the inducements held out by God himself in the
Bible to virtue should have been vainer than a nurse's
tale ; and that those dogmas, apparently favourable to
the intolerant and angry passions, should have alone

*See Dr. Lambe'a " Report on Cancer."

18 A Vindication of Natural Diet,

been deemed essential ; whilst Christians are in the daily
practice of all those habits which have infected with disease
and crime, not only the reprobate sons, but these favoured
children of the common Father's love. Omnipotence itself
could not save them from the consequences of this original
and universal sin.

There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of
vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated,
wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility
is gradually converted into strength, disease into healthful-
ness : madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings
of the fettered maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities
of ill-temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm
and considerable evenness of temper, that alone might
offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation of
society. On a natural system of diet, old age would be
our last and our only malady : the term of our existence
would be protracted ; we should enjoy Jife, and no longer
preclude others from the enjoyment of it ; all sensational
delights would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect ; the
very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure,
such as we now feel it in some few and favoured moments
of our youth. By all that is sacred in our hopes for the
human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth,
to give a fair trial to the vegetable system. Reasoning is
surely superfluous on a subject whose merits an experience
of six months would set for ever at rest. But it is only among
the enlightened and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of
appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its
ultimate excellence should not admit of dispute.

A Vindication of Natural Diet. 19

It is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease,
to palliate their torments by medicine, than to prevent
them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are invariably
sensual and indocile ; yet I cannot but feel myself per-
suaded, that when the benefits of vegetable diet are
mathematically proved ; when it is as clear, that those
who live naturally are exempt from premature death,
as that nine is not one, the most sottish of mankind will
feel a preference towards a long and tranquil, con-
trasted with a short and painful life. On the average,
out of sixty persons, four die in three years. In April,
1814, a statement will be given that sixty persons, all
having lived more than three years on vegetables and
pure water, are then in perfect health. More than two
years have now elapsed ; not one of them has died ; no
such example will be found in any sixty persons taken at
random. Seventeen persons of all ages (the families of Dr.
Lambe and Mr. Newton) have lived for seven years on this
diet without a death, and almost without the slightest
illness. Surely, when we consider that some of these were
infants, and one a martyr to asthma, now nearly subdued,
we may challenge any seventeen persons taken at random
in this city to exhibit a parallel case. Those who may have
been excited to question the rectitude of established habits of
diet, by these loose remarks, should consult Mr. Newton's
luminous and eloquent essay. "^ It is from that book, and
from the conversation of its excellent and enlightened author,
that I have derived the materials which I here present to
the public.

* ReturnJoNature, or Defence of Vegetable Regimen. Cadell, 1811

20 A Vindication of Natural Diet,

When these proofs come fairly before the world, and are
clearly seen by all who understand arithmetic, it is scarcely
possible that abstinence from aliments demonstrably perni-
cious should not become universal.

In proportion to the number of proselytes, so will be the
weight of evidence ; and when a thousand persons can be
produced, living on vegetables and distilled water, who have
to dread no disease but old age, the world will be compelled
to regard animal flesh and fermented liquors as slow but
certain poison. The change which would be produced by
simpler habits on political economy is sufficiently remarkable.
The monopolising eater of animal flesh would no longer
destroy his constitution by devouring an acre at a meal, and
many loaves of bread would cease to contribute to gout,
madness, and apoplexy, in the shape of a pint of porter or a
dram of gin, when appeasing the long-protracted famine of
the hard-working peasant's hungry babes. The quantity of
nutritious vegetable matter consumed in fattening the
carcase of an ox, would aflbrd ten times the sustenance,
undepraving indeed, and incapable of generating disease, if
gathered immediately from the bosom of the earth.

The most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now
actually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and waste
of aliment absolutely incapable of calculation. It is only the
wealthy that can, to any great degree, even now, indulge the
unnatural craving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater
licence of the privilege, by subjection to supernumerary
diseases. Again, the spirit of the nation that should take
the lead in this great reform would insensibly become
agricultural : commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and
corruption, would gradually decline ; more natural habits

A Vindication of Natural Diet. 21

would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complica-
tion of political relations would be so far simplified that
every individual might feel and understand why he loved
his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare. How
would England, for example, depend on the caprices of
foreign rulers, if she contained within herself all the neces-
saries, and despised whatever they possessed of the luxuries
of life ? How could they starve her into compliance with
their views? Of what consequence would it be that they
refused to take her woollen manufactures, when large and
fertile tracts of the island ceased to be allotted to the waste
of pasturage ? On a natural system of diet, we should re-
quire no spices from India ; no wines from Portugal, Spain,
France, or Madeira ; none of those multitudinous articles of
luxury, for which every corner of the globe is rifled, and
which are the causes of so much individual rivalship, such
calamitous and sanguinary national disputes.

In the history of modern times, the avarice of commercial
monopoly, no less than the ambition of weak and wicked
chiefs, seems to have fomented the universal discord, to have
added stubbornness to the mistakes of cabinets, and
indocility to the infatuation of the people. Let it ever be
remembered, that it is the direct influence of commerce to
make the interval between the richest and the poorest man
wider and more unconquerable. Let it be remembered that
it is a foe to every thing of real worth and excellence
in the human character. The odious and disgusting aristoc-
racy of wealth, is built upon the ruins of all that is good in
chivalry or republicanism ; and luxury is the forerunner of
a barbarism scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to
realize a state of society, where all the energies of man
shall be directed to the production of his solid happiness ?

A Vindication of I^atural Diet.

Certainly, if this advantage (the object of all poHtical
speculation) be in any degree attainable, it is attainable
only by a community which holds out no factitious incentives
to the avarice and ambition of the few, and which is in-
ternally organized for the liberty, security, and comfort of
the many. None must be entrusted with power (and money
is the completest species of power) who do not stand pledged
to use it exclusively for the general benefit. But the use
of animal flesh and fermented liquors, directly militates
with this equality of the rights of man. The peasant
cannot gratify these fashionable cravings without leaving
his family to starve. Without disease and war, those
sweeping curtailers of population, pasturage w^ould include
a waste too great to be afforded. The labour requisite to
support a family is far lighter"^ than is usually supposed.
The peasantry work, not only for themselves, but for the
aristocracy, the army, and the manufacturers.

The advantage of a reform in diet is obviously greater
than that of any other. It strikes at the root of the evil.
To remedy the abuses of legislation, before we annihilate
the propensities by which they are produced, is to suppose,
that by taking away the effect, the cause will cease to
operate. But the efficacy of this system depends entirely
on the proselytism of individuals, and grounds its merits,
as a benefit to the community, upon the total change of

* It has come under the author's experience that some of the workmen on
an embankment in North Wales who, in consequence of the inability of the pro-
prietor to pay them, seldom received their wages, have supported large families
by cultivating small spots of sterile ground by moonlight. In the notes to Pratt's
Poem, " Bread for the Poor, " is an account of an industrious labourer, who by
working in a small garden, before and after his day's task, attained to an enviable
state of independence.

A Vindication of Natural Diet. 23

the dietetic habits in its members. It proceeds securely
from a number of particular cases to one that is universal,
and has this advantage over the contrary mode, that one
error does not invalidate all that has gone before.

Let not too much, however, be expected from this system.
The healthiest among us is not exempt from hereditary
disease. The most symmetrical, athletic, and long-lived,
is a being inexpressibly inferior to what he would have
been, had not the unnatural habits of his ancestors accumu-
lated for him a certain portion of malady and deformity.
In the most perfect specimen of civilized man something
is still found wanting by the physiological critic. Can a
return to nature, then, instantaneously eradicate predis-
positions that have been slowly taking root in the silence
of innumerable ages ? Indubitably not. All that I contend
for is, that from the moment of the relinquishing all un-
natural habits, no new disease is generated ; and that the
predisposition to hereditary maladies gradually perishes
for want of its accustomed supply. In cases of consumption,
cancer, gout, asthma, and scrofula, such is the invariable
tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water.

Those who may be induced by these remarks to give the
vegetable system a fair trial, should, in the first place, date
the commencement of their practice from the moment of
their conviction. All depends upon the breaking through a
pernicious habit resolutely and at once. Dr. Trotter*
asserts that no drunkard was ever reformed by gradually
relinquishing his dram. Animal flesh, in its effects on the
human stomach, is analogous to a dram. It is similar in

* Sec Trotter on "The Nervous Temperament."

24 A Vindication of Natural Diet.

the kind, though differing in the degree, of its operation.
The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to expect a
temporary diminution of muscular strength. The subtrac-
tion of a powerful stimulus will suffice to account for this
event. But it is only temporary, and is succeeded by an
equable capability for exertion far surpassing his former
various and fluctuating strength. Above all, he will acquire
an easiness of breathing, by which the same exertion is per-
formed with a remarkable exemption from that painful and
difficult panting now felt by almost every one after hastily
climbing an ordinary mountain. He w411 be equally capable
of bodily exertion or mental application after as before
his simple meal. He will feel none of the narcotic effects
of ordinary diet. Irritability, the direct consequence of
exhausting stimuli, would yield to the power of natural
and tranquil impulses. He will no longer pine under the
lethargy of ennui, that unconquerable weariness of life,
more dreaded than death itself He will escape the epidemic
madness that broods over its own injurious notions of
the Deity, and " realizes the hell that priests and beldams
feign." Every man forms, as it were, his god from his
own character ; to the divinity of one of simple habits, no
offering would be more acceptable than the happiness of his
creatures. He would be incapable of hating or persecuting
others for the love of God. He will find, moreover, a system
of simple diet to be a system of perfect epicurism. He will
no longer be incessantly occupied in blunting and destroy-
ing those organs from w^hich he expects his gratification.
. The pleasures of taste to be derived from a dinner of pota-
toes, beans, peas, turnips, lettuces, wdth a dessert of apples,
gooseberries, strawberries, currants, raspberries, and in

A Vindication of Natiiral Diet. 25

winter, oranges, apples, and pears, is far greater than is
supposed. Those who wait until they can eat this plain fare
with the sauce of appetite w411 scarcely join with the hypo-
critical sensualist at a lord mayor's feast, who declaims
against the pleasures of the table. Solomon kept a thousand
concubines, and owned in despair that all was vanity. The
man whose happiness is constituted by the society of one
amiable woman would find some difficulty in sympathising
wdth the disappointment of this venerable debauchee.

I address myself not only to the young enthusiast, the
ardent devotee of truth and virtue, the pure and passionate
moralist, yet unvitiated by the contagion of the world. He
will embrace a pure system, from its abstract truth, its
beauty, its simplicity and its promise of wide-extended
benefit ; unless custom has turned poison into food, he wdll
hate the brutal pleasures of the chase by instinct ; it will
be a contemplation full of horror and disappointment to his
mind, that beings capable of the gentlest and most admir-
able sympathies, should take delight in the death-pangs
and last convulsions of dying animals. The elderly man
w^hose youth has been poisoned by intemperance, or who
has lived with apparent moderation, and is afilicted with a
variety of painful maladies, would find his account in a
beneficial change, produced without the risk of poisonous
medicines. *^The mother, to whom the perpetual restless-

* See Mr^ewton's book. His children are the most beautiful and healthy-
creatures iFT^pOBStbte to conceive ; the girls are perfect models for a sculptor ;
their dispositions are also the most gentle and conciliating ; the judicious treat-
ment which they experience in other points, may be a correlative cause of this.
In the first five years of their life, of 18,000 children that are born, 7,600 die of
various diseases ; and how many more of those that survive are rendered miser-
able by maladies not immediately mortal ? The quality and quantity of a woman's
milk are materially injured by the use of dead flesh. In an island, near Iceland,
where no vegetables are to be got, the children invariably die of tetanus, before
they are three weeks old, and the population is supplied from the mainland. —
S)ir G. Mackenzie's History of Iceland. See also J'mi^e, chap, i., p. 53, 55, 56.

26 A Vindication of Natural Diet.

ness of disease, and unaccountable deaths incident to lier
children, are the causes of incurable unhappiness, would
on this diet experience the satisfaction of beholding their
perpetual health and natural playfulness.

The most valuable lives are daily destroyed by diseases,
that it is dangerous to palliate and impossible to cure by
medicine. How much longer will man continue to pimp
for the gluttony of death, his most insidious, implacable,
and eternal foe ? The proselyte to a simple and natural
diet, who desires health, must from the moment of his
conversion attend to these rules —

Never take any substance into the stomach that
once had life.

Drink no liquid but water restored to its original
purity by distillation.

A Vindication of Natural Diet. 27

APPENDIX.

Persons on vegetable diet have been remarkable for longevity. The
first Christians practised abstinence from animal flesh, on a principle
of self mortification. Other instances are, Old Parr 152 ; Mary-
Patten 136 ; A Shepherd in Hungary 126 ; Patrick O'Neale 113 ;
Joseph Elkins 103; Elizabeth de Val 101; Aurungzebe 100; St.
Anthony 105 ; James, the Hermit 104 ; Arsenius 120 ; St. Epiphanius
115 ; Simeon 112 ; and Kombald 120.

Mr. Newton's mode of reasoning on longevity is ingenious and con-
clusive. " Old Parr, healthy as the wild animals, attained to the age of
152 years. All men might be as healthy as the wild animals. There-
fore all men might attain to the age of 152 years." The conclusion is
sufficiently modest. Old Parr cannot be supposed to have escaped the
inheritance of disease, amassed by the unnatural habits of his ancestors.
The term of human life may be expected to be infinitely greater, taking
into the consideration all the circumstances that must have contributed
to abridge even that of Parr.

It may be here remarked, that the author and his wife have lived on
vegetables for eight months. The improvements of health and temper
here stated, is the result of his own experience.

THE ETHICS OF DIET

A GATEXA OF AUTHOEITIES MPPtECATORY OF THE *
PRACTICE OF FLESH-EATIXG.

348 pp., Svo.

B"5r HO'W-i^.RHD •W'lXilLI.A.nVCS, 3VC.-^_

**I consider it a very valuable work." — Colonel J. M. Earle.
*'The Catena is good and useful."— Frances E. Hogg an, M.D.
** ' The Ethics of Diet' much pleases me." — T. K. Cheyne, M.A.

Price Five Shillings; Post free from the Office of the Vegetarian Society,
75, Princess Street, Manchester.

ESSAYS ON DIET,

BEING

Collected Lectures and Papers on Vegetarian Diet.

By FRAlfCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN.

London : Kegan Pi\uL, Trench, and Co. ; and the Vegetarian
Society, 75, Princess Street, Manchester.

PRICE ONE FLORIN.

PERFECT WAY IN DIET:

A TREATISE ADVOCATINa A RETURN TO THE NATURAL AND
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PRICE ONE FLORIN.

Price 6d. 64pp., 8vo. Post free, 7d.

''ALMONDS AND RAISINS" FOR 1884.

Edited by R. BAILEY WALKER, F.S.S.

Mushrooms and Toadstools. By H. S. S.
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By "Dora."
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The Abbot's Reply. By W. E. A. Axon.
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THE SHELLEY SOCIETY

PUBLICATIONS FOR 1886

THE SHELLEY SOCIETY

PUBLICATIONS FOR 1886.

The Society's Publications for 1886 will be at
least twelve of the following fourteen : —

1. Shelley's Adonais : an Elegy on the Death of John Keats.
Pisa, 4to, 1821. A Facsimile Reprint on hand-made Paper, edited,
with a Bibliographical Introduction, by Thomas J. "Wise. {Second
Edition, Revised.) 10s. [Issued.

2. Shelley's Review of Hogg's novel, ** Memoirs of Prince Alexy
HaimatofF." Now first reprinted from The Critical Beview, Deo.
1814, on hand-made Paper, with an Extract from Prof. Dowden's
article, "Some Early Writings of Shelley" {Contemp. Rev., Sept.
1884). Edited, with an Introductory Note, by Thos. J. Wise.
{Second Edition, Revised.) 25. M. [Issued.

3. Shelley's Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude ; and other Poems.
London, fcap. 8vo., 1816. A Facsimile Reprint on hand-made
Paper, with a new Preface by Bertram Dobell. {Second Edition,
Revised. ) Qs. [Issued.

.4. A Shelley Bibliography, or "The Shelley Library." Part I.
First Editions and their Reproductions. By H. Buxton Forman.

[Issued.

5. Shelley's Vindication of Natural Diet. London, 12mo, 1813.
A Reprint, 1882, with a Prefatory Note by H. S. Salt and W. E. A.
Axon. Presented by Mr. Axon. {Second Edition.) [Issued.

6. A Memoir of Shelley, with a fresh Preface, by William
Michael Rossetti ; a Portrait of Shelley ; and an engraving of his
Tomb. [Issued.

7. Shelley's Cenci, (for the Society's performance in May), with
a prologue by Dr. John Todhunter, and an Introduction and Notes
by Harry Buxton Forman and Alfred Forman ; and a Portrait of
Beatrice Cenci. 2.;?. Qd. [Issued.

8. Shelley's Hellas, a Lyrical Drama. London, 8vo, 1822.
A Facsimile Reprint on hand-made Paper ; edited, with an Intro-
duction, by Tlios. J. Wise. Presented hy Mr. F. S. Ellis.

YN'early ready.

9. Shelley's Epipsychidion,
Reprint on hand-made Paper.

London, 8vo, X;S21. A Facsimile
Presented ])y y R. A. Potts.

10. Shelley's Address to the Irish W
A Facsimile Reprin^ v^diand-made y /
duction, by.Tiios. JTWW^. Presen"''^ /

11. Shelley's Necessity of AtM-
1811). A Facsimile Reprint oi)/
Introduction, by Thos. J. Wj/
a Portrait of Shelley.

12. Biographical Art'
from his Budget, 182^'#^
1832-3 ; by a ' N^
Thornton Hunt^ ^

by PeacocK^V
Edited V

\^At press.

iblin, 8vo, 1812.
I, with an Intro -
Iter B. Slater.
[At press.

12mo (n.d. but

edited, with an

,e editor. With

lPre2)aring'

.10^460

)se by Stockdale,

mthly Magazine,

. ^une, 1841 ; by

>ruary, 1863 ; and

N\^ith two Portraits. ^> t \

[PrepaHiig. ^> iSt^

edited by S. E. Pre^VV''
aready issued.

-y, by the Rev. Stopford Brooke :
^ et, M.A. : Miss M. Blind: and

The Committee hope that the Shelley PrimeVy by
Mr. H. S. Salt, will be ready early in 1887. They
will also be glad to receive promises of Gift-books
for that year.

'^