Note (22) — CANTO THIRD.

“Abstinence,” says Shelley, “from animal food, subtilizes and clears the intellectual faculties.” For all the sensualities of the table he had an ineffable contempt, and, like Newton, used sometimes to ask if he had dined. (Vide Life of Shelley.)

“So many dishes, so many disorders.”

Seneca.

Milton.

“By salt, Cayenne pepper, and other high seasonings, they stimulate the appetite, turn round the wheels of life too rapidly, and wear out the body, or machine, before its time; whereas, those who abstain from such wine, spirituous liquors, and hot spicy aliments, acquire an exquisite degree of delicacy in the sense of tasting; their spirits are more equal, their feelings more pleasurable, and, generally, they are much longer lived.” (Dr. Abernethy.)

“Temperance and exercise are the parents of health.”

Mason.

The common ingredients of health and long life are:—

Anon.

“It appears that the structure and uses of the teeth are more perfectly equalized in the human subject, than in any other animal. It is true that, in some tribes of animals, whose habits require the greatest possible extension of the office of a particular class of the teeth, a corresponding development of that class is found to take place, to a much greater degree than in man.

“Thus, in the carnivora, the cuspidati are greatly elongated and strengthened, in order to enable them to seize their food and to tear it in pieces; in the rodentia, or gnawing animals, as in the beaver, for instance, the incisors are remarkably long, and exhibit that extraordinary development which their peculiar habits demand, and in the graminivorous animals, the ruminantia especially, the molares are found to occupy the most conspicuous situation. But, in each of these instances, the other kinds of teeth are found to be proportionably of less importance, and in some cases, are actually wanting. In man, on the contrary, every class appears to be equally developed, to a moderate, though a sufficient degree, and to exhibit a perfection of structure which may be considered as being the true type, from which all other forms are mere deviations. It becomes, therefore, a question of some interest, and perhaps of no less difficulty, to what food the structure which has just been demonstrated is particularly adapted. The opinion which I venture to give has not been hastily formed, nor without what appeared to me sufficient grounds; I advance it, however, with diffidence, and do not profess to consider it much more than hypothetical.

“The endowment of reason, that greatest, best gift of the Creator, appears, if we consider the perfection of human organization, to be particularly, and, in its highest degree, even exclusively, adapted to the conformation and requirements of man. This high and divine endowment should never be lost sight of in our reasonings on the human structure, and the physiology and habits of our species, as it is only with the allowances and modifications which the possession of a quality so infinitely higher than the instinct of other animals necessarily supposes, that the actual habits of man can be viewed as compatible with his organization. Although these habits, now essentially arising from, and combined with a state of civilization, which, in a greater or less degree, must be allowed to exist in every known tribe of our species, cannot be considered, in any one instance, as actual and exclusively natural; yet we may be led, by a careful examination of the structure of the different organs, and by an analogical comparison of them, as they exist in man, with the same organs in those animals which most nearly resemble him in structure, but which are still found in a perfectly natural state, to a plausible supposition, at least, of what were originally his natural habits; and which would have still continued so, but for those changes which have arisen from the possession of this very endowment.

“With this view of the subject, it is not, I think, going too far to say, that every fact connected with the human organization goes to prove, that man was originally formed a frugivorous animal, and therefore probably tropical, or nearly so, with regard to his geographical situation. This opinion is principally derived from the formation of his teeth and digestive organs, as well as from the character of his skin, and the general structure of his limbs. It is not my intention now to go farther into the discussion of this subject than to observe, that if analogy be allowed to have any weight in the argument, it is wholly on that side of the question which I have just taken.—Those animals whose teeth and digestive apparatus most nearly resemble our own, namely, the apes and monkeys, are undoubtedly frugivorous; but as, from their organization, they are necessarily tropical animals, and without the gift of reason, by which they might have overcome the difference of temperature by artificial means, they remain still restricted to their original food, and confined to the very limited climate to which their structure peculiarly adapted them. The reasoning powers of man, on the contrary, have enabled him to set climate at defiance, and have rendered him, in all cases, more or less an artificial being. No longer restrained within that range of temperature to which the delicacy of his frame, no less than the nature of his original nutriment would have confined him, he becomes the denizen of every climate, and the lord of terrestrial creation.” (Bell on the Teeth, pp. 33—36.)