Note (19) — CANTO THIRD.

“The throat has destroyed more than the sword.”

Martial.

“The nations that subsist on vegetable diet are of all men the handsomest, the most robust, the least exposed to diseases and violent passions; and they attain the greatest longevity. The Bramins of India, who frequently survive a century, eat nothing but vegetables. From the Pythagorean school, Epaminondas issued forth, so renowned for his virtues; Archytas, so celebrated for his skill in mechanics; and Milo of Crotona, for his strength. As vegetable diet has a necessary connexion with many virtues, and excludes none, it must be of importance to accustom young people to it, seeing its influence so powerfully contributes to beauty of person and tranquillity of soul. The children of the Persians, in the time of Cyrus, and by his orders, were fed with bread, water, and cresses; and Lycurgus introduced a considerable part of the physicial and moral regimen of these children into the education of those of Lacedæmon. Such diet prolongs infancy, and, of course, the duration of human life.” (Bernardin de St. Pierre’s Studies of Nature, Vol. IV. p. 357.)

“As, in every period of history, it has been known, that fruit and vegetables alone are sufficient for the support of life, and that the bulk of mankind live upon them at this hour; the adherence to the use of animal food is no more than a persistance in the gross customs of savage life—and evinces an insensibility to the progress of reason, and to the operation of intellectual improvements.” (Dr. Lambe on Regimen, p. 243.)

“The circumstance of weighing down the stomach with a load of food, particularly where relaxation of the general fibre is favored by inactive habits, must tend by degrees to increase its capaciousness; and in proportion as this increases, the energies of the brain and of all the organs of sense become diminished; the sight, the hearing, and the smell, are less exquisitely acute; the palate is not satisfied with simple viands; and even the sense of touch is rendered less nice.

“It was well observed by the late Dr. Saunders, that we are made gluttons from the cradle by the officiousness of our nurses; a child’s health is disordered by being over fed; it cries and complains from the effects, and with a view to silence it, more and more food is given, so that the evil is increased instead of remedied, and the capacity of the stomach gradually extended far beyond the salutary bounds of nature.” (Hare on the Stomach, p. 134.)