are limited to the members who now constitute that organisation.
This impression, however, is most en-oneous ; since, as remarked
by a w'riter in a lengthened notice on Vegetarianism in the
Medico-Chirurgical Review, this fundamental question of diet
“is not now raised for the first time, but has been brought
again and again under consideration during every period of the
world’s history,” though, “by the zeal and assiduity of its
present advocates, it has been made to assume an importance,
among certain sections of orm community, which it never before
presented.”* We take the opportunity here to remark, that the
practice of the system, as well, is not by any means limited to
the membci’S of the present Vegetarian organisation, large num-
bers of adherents having arisen within the last few years, who
have no immediate connection with the Vegetarian Societj' ; and
we shall have occasion subsequently to call attention to the fact,
that large masses of the inhabitants of the earth, amounting to
from two-thirds to three-fourths of the people of the world,
have, iu all periods of time, carried out this practice of diet.
The principle of the system, indeed, has ever been identified
with the primeval institutions of creation, and is viewed with
surprise only in countries where the mixed diet practice is most
prevalent ; this being no donbt due to want of information, or
to w'ant of recollection of what constituted the principal diet of
man in the earliest history of the world, sacred and profane
authority concurring in the testimony that man derived his food
from the products of the vegetable kingdom, and that the con-
sumption of the flesh of animals as food, only obtained after he
had fallen from the purity of his early history, and become
identified with the violence that subsequently “filled the earth.”
In the Greek and Latin authoi-s, we have frequent allusions
to the period of history to which we refer, when man lived in a
state of innocence and happiness. Thus Ovid, after the cruelties
inflicted upon animals, in order to appropriate their flesh as
food, have been described, observes : —
“ Not so the golden ago, who fed on fruit,
Nor durst with bloody meals their mouths i>oUute.” t
* No. xii. p. 400.
t " Metamorphoses," book xv. 1, 1ST. Dryden's Translatioa.
INTKODUCTION.
3
And subsequently, one of our own poets, in reference to the
same period, speaking of herbs, says : —
“ But who their virtues can declare t who pierce,
With vision pure, into their secret stores
Of health, and life, and joy ? the food of man,
While yet he lived in innocence, and told
A length of golden years ; unfleshed in blood,
A stranger to the savage arts of life,
Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease ;
The lord, and not the tyrant, of the world." *
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are limited to the members who now constitute that organisation.
This impression, however, is most en-oneous ; since, as remarked
by a w'riter in a lengthened notice on Vegetarianism in the
Medico-Chirurgical Review, this fundamental question of diet
“is not now raised for the first time, but has been brought
again and again under consideration during every period of the
world’s history,” though, “by the zeal and assiduity of its
present advocates, it has been made to assume an importance,
among certain sections of orm community, which it never before
presented.”* We take the opportunity here to remark, that the
practice of the system, as well, is not by any means limited to
the membci’S of the present Vegetarian organisation, large num-
bers of adherents having arisen within the last few years, who
have no immediate connection with the Vegetarian Societj' ; and
we shall have occasion subsequently to call attention to the fact,
that large masses of the inhabitants of the earth, amounting to
from two-thirds to three-fourths of the people of the world,
have, iu all periods of time, carried out this practice of diet.
The principle of the system, indeed, has ever been identified
with the primeval institutions of creation, and is viewed with
surprise only in countries where the mixed diet practice is most
prevalent ; this being no donbt due to want of information, or
to w'ant of recollection of what constituted the principal diet of
man in the earliest history of the world, sacred and profane
authority concurring in the testimony that man derived his food
from the products of the vegetable kingdom, and that the con-
sumption of the flesh of animals as food, only obtained after he
had fallen from the purity of his early history, and become
identified with the violence that subsequently “filled the earth.”
In the Greek and Latin authoi-s, we have frequent allusions
to the period of history to which we refer, when man lived in a
state of innocence and happiness. Thus Ovid, after the cruelties
inflicted upon animals, in order to appropriate their flesh as
food, have been described, observes : —
“ Not so the golden ago, who fed on fruit,
Nor durst with bloody meals their mouths i>oUute.” t
* No. xii. p. 400.
t " Metamorphoses," book xv. 1, 1ST. Dryden's Translatioa.
INTKODUCTION.
3
And subsequently, one of our own poets, in reference to the
same period, speaking of herbs, says : —
“ But who their virtues can declare t who pierce,
With vision pure, into their secret stores
Of health, and life, and joy ? the food of man,
While yet he lived in innocence, and told
A length of golden years ; unfleshed in blood,
A stranger to the savage arts of life,
Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease ;
The lord, and not the tyrant, of the world." *