No More Learning

Toutes les fois qu'on nous dit
que Dieu est l'auteur de quelque phenomene, cela signifie qu'on ignore
comment un tel phenomene a pu s'operer par le secours des forces ou des
causes que nous connaissons dans la nature. C'est ainsi que le commun
des hommes, dont l'ignorance est la partage, attribue a la Divinite non
seulement les effets inusites qui las frappent, mais encore les
evenemens les plus simples, dont les causes sont les plus faciles a
connaitre pour quiconque a pu les mediter. En un mot, l'homme a toujours
respecte les causes inconnues des effets surprenans, que son ignorance
l'empechait de demeler. Ce fut sur les debris de la nature que les
hommes eleverent le colosse imaginaire de la Divinite.

Si l'ignorance de la nature donna la naissance aux dieux, la
connaissance de la nature est faite pour les detruire. A mesure que
l'homme s'instruit, ses forces at ses ressources augmentent avec ses
lumieres; les sciences, les arts conservateurs, l'industrie, lui
fournissent des secours; l'experience le rassure ou lui procure des
moyens de resister aux efforts de bien des causes
qui cessent de l'alarmer des qu'il les a connues. En un mot, ses
terreurs se dissipent dans la meme proportion que son esprit s'eclaire.
L'homnme instruit cesse d'etre superstitieux.

Ce n'est jamais que sur parole que des peuples entiers adorent le Dieu
de leurs peres at de leurs pretres: l'autorite, la confiance, la
soumission, et l'habitude leur tiennent lieu de conviction et de
preuves; ils se prosternent et prient, parce que leurs peres leur out
appris a se prosterner at prier: mais pourquoi ceux-ci se sont-ils mis a
genoux? C'est que dans les temps eloignes leurs legislateurs et leurs
guides leur en ont fait un devoir. 'Adorez at croyez,' ont-ils dit, 'des
dieux que vous ne pouvez comprendre; rapportez-vous-en a notre sagesse
profonde; nous en savons plus que vous sur la divinite. ' Mais pourquoi
m'en rapporterais-je a vous? C'est que Dieu le veut ainsi, c'est que
Dieu vous punira si vous osez resister. Mais ce Dieu n'est-il donc pas
la chose en question? Cependant las hommes se sont toujours payes de ce
cercle vicieux; la paresse de leur esprit leur fit trouver plus court de
s'en rapporter au jugament des autres. Toutes las notions religieuses
sent fondees uniquement sur l'autorite; toutes les religions du monde
defendent l'examen et ne veulent pas que l'on raisonne; c'est l'autorite
qui veut qu'on croie en Dieu; ce Dieu n'est lui-meme fonde que sur
l'autorite de quelques hommes qui pretendent le connaitre, et venir de
sa part pour l'annoncer a la terre. Un Dieu fait par les hommes a sans
doute bosom des hommes pour se faire connaitre aux hommes.

Ne serait-ce donc que pour des pretres, des inspires, des metaphysiciens
que serait reservee la conviction de l'existence d'un Dieu, que l'on dit
neanmoins si necessaire a tout le genre humain? Mais trouvons-nous de
l'harmonie entre les opinions theologiques des differens inspires, ou
des penseurs repandus sur la terre? Ceux meme qui font profession
d'adorer le meme Dieu, sent-ils d'accord sur son compte? Sont-ils
contents des preuves que leurs collegues apportent de son existence?
Souscrivent-ils unanimement aux idees qu'ils presentent sur sa nature,
sur sa conduite, sur la facon d'entendre ses pretandus oracles? Est-il
une centree sur la terre ou la science de Dieu se soit reellement
parfectionnee? A-t-elle pris quelqne part la consistance et l'uniformite
que nous voyons prendre aux connaissances humaines, aux arts les plus
futiles, aux metiers les plus meprises? Ces mots d'esprit,
d'immaterialite, de creation, de predestination, de grace; cette foule
de distinctions subtiles dont la theologie s'est parteut remplie dans
quelques pays, ces inventions si ingenieuses, imaginees par des penseurs
qui se sont succedes depuis taut de siecles, n'ont fait, helas!
qu'embrouiller les choses, et jamais la science la plus necassaire aux
hommes n'a jusqu'ici pu acquerir la moindre fixite. Depuis des milliers
d'annees ces reveurs oisifs se sont perpetuellement relayes pour mediter
la Divinite, pour deviner ses voies cachees, pour inventer des
hypotheses propres a developper cette enigme importante. Leur peu de
succes n'a point decourage la vanite theologique; toujours on a parle de
Dieu: on s'est egorge pour lui, et cet etre sublime demeure toujours le
plus ignore et le plus discute.

Les hommes auraient ete trop heureux, si, se bornant aux objets visibles
qui les interessent, ils eussent employe a perfectionner leurs sciences
reelles, leurs lois, leur morale, leur education, la moitie des efforts
qu'ils ont mis dans leurs recherches sur la Divinite. Ils auraiant ete
bien plus sages encore, et plus fortunes, s'ils eussent pu consentir a
laisser leurs guides desoeuvres se quereller entre eux, et sonder des
profondeurs capables de les etourdir, sans se meler de leurs disputes
insensees. Mais il est de l'essence de l'ignorance d'attacher de
l'importance a ce qu'elle ne comprend pas. La vanite humaine fait que
l'esprit se roidit contra des difficultes. Plus un objet se derobe a nos
yeux, plus nous faisons d'efforts pour le saisir, parce que des-lors il
aiguillonne notre orgueil, il excite notre curiosite, il nous parait
interessant. En combattant pour son Dieu chacun ne combattit en effet
que pour les interets de sa propra vanite, qui de toutes les passions
produites par la mal-organisation de la societe est la plus prompte a
s'alarmer, et la plus propre a produire de tres grandes folies.

Si ecartant pour un moment les idees facheuses que la theologie nous
donne d'un Dieu capriciaux, dont les decrets partiaux et despotiques
decident du sort des humains, nous ne voulons fixer nos yeux que sur la
bonte pretendue, que tous les hommes, meme en tramblant devant ce Dieu,
s'accordent a lui donner; si nous lui supposons le projet qu'on lui
prete de n'avoir travaille que pour sa propre gloire, d'exiger les
hommages des etres intelligens; de ne chercher dans ses oeuvres que le
bien-etre du genre humain: comment concilier ces vues et ces
dispositions avec l'ignorance vraiment invincible dans laquelle ce Dieu,
si glorieux et si bon, laisse la plupart des hommes sur son compte? Si
Dieu veut etre connu, cheri, remercie, que ne se montre-t-il sous des
traits favorables a tous ces etres intelligens dont il veut etre aime et
adore? Pourquoi ne point se manifester a toute la terre dune facon non
equivoque, bien plus capable de nous convaincre que ces revelations
particulieres qui semblent accuser la Divinite d'une partialite facheuse
pour quelques-unes de ses creatures? La tout-puissant n'auroit-il donc
pas des moyens plus convainquans de se montrer aux hommas que ces
metamorphoses ridicules, cas incarnations pretendues, qui nous sont
attestees par des ecrivains si peu d'accord entre eux dans les recits
qu'ils en font? Au lieu de tant de miracles, inventes pour prouver la
mission divine de tant de legislateurs reveres par les differens peuples
du monde, le souverain des esprits ne pouvait-il pas convaincre tout
d'un coup l'esprit humain des choses qu'il a voulu lui faire connaitre?
Au lieu de suspendre un soleil dans la voute du firmament; au lieu de
repandre sans ordre les etoiles et les constellations qui remplissent
l'espace, n'eut-il pas ete plus conforme aux vues d'un Dieu si jaloux de
sa gloire et si bien-intentionne pour l'homme d'ecrire, d'une facon non
sujette a dispute, son nom, ses attributs, ses volontes permanentes en
caracteres ineffacables, et lisibles egalement pour tous les habitants
de la terre? Personne alors n'aurait pu douter de l'existence d'un Dieu,
de ses volontes claires, de ses intentions visibles. Sous les yeux de ce
Dieu si terrible, personne n'aurait eu l'audace de violer ses
ordonnances; nul mortel n'eut ose se mettre dans le cas d'attirer sa
colere: enfin nul homme n'eut eu le front d'en imposer en son nom, ou
d'interpreter ses volontes suivant ses propres fantaisies.

En effet, quand meme on admettrait l'existence du Dieu theologique et la
realite des attributs si discordans qu'on lui donne, l'on n'en peut rien
conclure, pour autoriser la conduite ou les cultes qu'on prescrit de lui
rendre. La theologie est vraiment "le tonneau des Danaides". A force de
qualites contradictoires et d'assartions hasardees, ella a, pour ainsi
dire, tellement garrotte son Dieu qu'elle l'a mis dans l'impossibilite
d'agir. S'il est infiniment bon, quelle raison aurions-nous de le
craindre? S'il est infiniment sage, de quoi nous inquieter sur notre
sort? S'il sait tout, pourquoi l'avertir de nos besoins, et le fatiguer
de nos prieres? S'il est partout, pourquoi lui elever des temples? S'il
est maitre de tout, pourquoi lui faire des sacrifices et des offrandes?
S'il est juste, comment croire qu'il punisse des creatures qu'il a
rempli de faiblesses? Si la grace fait tout en elles, quelle raison
aurait-il de les recompenser? S'il est tout-puissant, comment
l'offenser, comment lui resister? S'il est raisonnable, comment se
mattrait-il en colere contre des aveugles, a qui il a laisse la liberte
de deraisonner? S'il est immuable, de quel droit pretendrions-nous faire
changer ses decrets? S'il est inconcevable, pourquoi nous en occuper?
S'IL A PARLE, POURQUOI L'UNIVERS N'EST-IL PAS CONVAINCU? Si la
connaissance d'un Dieu est la plus necessaire, pourquoi n'est-elle pas
la plus evidente et a plus claire? --"Systeme de la Nature", London,
1781.

The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus publicly professes himself an
atheist:--Quapropter effigiem Dei formamque quaerere imbecillitatis
humanae reor. Quisquis est Deus (si modo est alius) et quacunque in
parte, totus est sensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, totus animae,
totus animi, totus sui. . . Imperfectae vero in homine naturae praecipua
solatia ne deum quidem posse omnia. Namque nec sibi potest mortem
consciscere, si velit, quad homini dedit optimum in tantis vitae poenis:
nec mortales aeternitata donare, aut revocare defunctos; nec facere ut
qui vixit non vixerit, qui honores gessit non gessarit, nullumque habere
in praeteritum ius, praeterquam oblivionis, atque (ut facetis quoque
argumentis societas haec cum deo copuletur) ut bis dena viginti non
sint, et multa similiter efficere non posse. --Per quae declaratur haud
dubie naturae potentiam id quoque esse quad Deum vocamus. --Plin. "Nat.
Hist. " cap. de Deo.

The consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. See Sir W.
Drummond's "Academical Questions", chapter 3. --Sir W. seems to consider
the atheism to which it leads as a sufficient presumption of the
falsehood of the system of gravitation; but surely it is more consistent
with the good faith of philosophy to admit a deduction from facts than
an hypothesis incapable of proof, although it might militate with the
obstinate preconceptions of the mob. Had this author, instead of
inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its
falsehood, his conduct would have been more suited to the modesty of the
sceptic and the toleration of the philosopher.

Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta sunt: imo quia naturae potentia nulla
est nisi ipsa Dei potentia. Certum est nos eatenus Dei potentiam non
intelligere, quatenus causas naturales ignoramus; adeoque stulte ad
eandem Dei potentiam recurritur, quando rei alicuius causam naturalem,
sive est, ipsam Dei potantiam ignoramus. -- Spinosa, "Tract.
Theologico-Pol. " chapter 1, page 14.

7. 67:--

Ahasuerus, rise!

'Ahasuerus the Jew crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel. Near
two thousand years have elapsed since he was first goaded by
never-ending restlessness to rove the globe from pole to pole. When our
Lord was wearied with the burthen of His ponderous cross, and wanted to
rest before the door of Ahasuerus, the unfeeling wretch drove Him away
with brutality. The Saviour of mankind staggered, sinking under the
heavy load, but uttered no complaint. An angel of death appeared before
Ahasuerus, and exclaimed indignantly, "Barbarian! thou hast denied rest
to the Son of man: be it denied thee also, until He comes to judge the
world. "

'A black demon, let loose from hell upon Ahasuerus, goads him now from
country to country; he is denied the consolation which death affords,
and precluded from the rest of the peaceful grave.

'Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel--he shook the
dust from his beard--and taking up one of the skulls heaped there,
hurled it down the eminence: it rebounded from the earth in shivered
atoms. "This was my father! " roared Ahasuerus. Seven more skulls rolled
down from rock to rock; while the infuriate Jew, following them with
ghastly looks, exclaimed--"And these were my wives! " He still continued
to hurl down skull after skull, roaring in dreadful accents--"And these,
and these, and these were my children! They COULD DIE; but I! reprobate
wretch! alas! I cannot die! Dreadful beyond conception is the judgement
that hangs over me. Jerusalem fell--I crushed the sucking babe, and
precipitated myself into the destructive flames. I cursed the
Romans--but, alas! alas! the restless curse held me by the hair,--and I
could not die!

'"Rome the giantess fell--I placed myself before the falling statue--she
fell and did not crush me. Nations sprang up and disappeared before
me;--but I remained and did not die. From cloud-encircled cliffs did I
precipitate myself into the ocean; but the foaming billows cast me upon
the shore, and the burning arrow of existence pierced my cold heart
again. I leaped into Etna's flaming abyss, and roared with the giants
for ten long months, polluting with my groans the Mount's sulphureous
mouth--ah! ten long months. The volcano fermented, and in a fiery stream
of lava cast me up. I lay torn by the torture-snakes of hell amid the
glowing cinders, and yet continued to exist. --A forest was on fire: I
darted on wings of fury and despair into the crackling wood. Fire
dropped upon me from the trees, but the flames only singed my limbs;
alas! it could not consume them. --I now mixed with the butchers of
mankind, and plunged in the tempest of the raging battle. I roared
defiance to the infuriate Gaul, defiance to the victorious German; but
arrows and spears rebounded in shivers from my body. The Saracen's
flaming sword broke upon my skull: balls in vain hissed upon me: the
lightnings of battle glared harmless around my loins: in vain did the
elephant trample on me, in vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed! The
mine, big with destructive power, burst upon me, and hurled me high in
the air--I fell on heaps of smoking limbs, but was only singed. The
giant's steel club rebounded from my body; the executioner's hand could
not strangle me, the tiger's tooth could not pierce me, nor would the
hungry lion in the circus devour me. I cohabited with poisonous snakes,
and pinched the red crest of the dragon. --The serpent stung, but could
not destroy me. The dragon tormented, but dared not to devour me. --I now
provoked the fury of tyrants: I said to Nero, 'Thou art a bloodhound! ' I
said to Christiern, 'Thou art a bloodhound! , I said to Muley Ismail,
'Thou art a bloodhound! '--The tyrants invented cruel torments, but did
not kill me. Ha! not to be able to die--not to be able to die--not to be
permitted to rest after the toils of life--to be doomed to be imprisoned
for ever in the clay-formed dungeon--to be for ever clogged with this
worthless body, its lead of diseases and infirmities--to be condemned to
[be]hold for millenniums that yawning monster Sameness, and Time, that
hungry hyaena, ever bearing children, and ever devouring again her
offspring! --Ha! not to be permitted to die! Awful Avenger in Heaven,
hast Thou in Thine armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful? then let
it thunder upon me, command a hurricane to sweep me down to the foot of
Carmel, that I there may lie extended; may pant, and writhe, and die. ! "'

This fragment is the translation of part of some German work, whose
title I have vainly endeavoured to discover. I picked it up, dirty and
torn, some years ago, in Lincoln's-Inn Fields.

7. 135, 136:--

I will beget a Son, and He shall bear
The sins of all the world.

A book is put into our hands when children, called the Bible, the
purport of whose history is briefly this: That God made the earth in six
days, and there planted a delightful garden, in which He placed the
first pair of human beings. In the midst of the garden He planted a
tree, whose fruit, although within their reach, they were forbidden to
touch. That the Devil, in the shape of a snake, persuaded them to eat of
this fruit; in consequence of which God condemned both them and their
posterity yet unborn to satisfy His justice by their eternal misery.
That, four thousand years after these events (the human race in the
meanwhile having gone unredeemed to perdition), God engendered with the
betrothed wife of a carpenter in Judea (whose virginity was nevertheless
uninjured), and begat a son, whose name was Jesus Christ; and who was
crucified and died, in order that no more men might be devoted to
hell-fire, He bearing the burthen of His Father's displeasure by proxy.
The book states, in addition, that the soul of whoever disbelieves this
sacrifice will be burned with everlasting fire.

During many ages of misery and darkness this story gained implicit
belief; but at length men arose who suspected that it was a fable and
imposture, and that Jesus Christ, so far from being a God, was only a
man like themselves. But a numerous set of men, who derived and still
derive immense emoluments from this opinion, in the shape of a popular
belief, told the vulgar that if they did not believe in the Bible they
would be damned to all eternity; and burned, imprisoned, and poisoned
all the unbiassed and unconnected inquirers who occasionally arose. They
still oppress them, so far as the people, now become more enlightened,
will allow.

The belief in all that the Bible contains is called Christianity. A
Roman governor of Judea, at the instance of a priest-led mob, crucified
a man called Jesus eighteen centuries ago. He was a man of pure life,
who desired to rescue his countrymen from the tyranny of their barbarous
and degrading superstitions. The common fate of all who desire to
benefit mankind awaited him. The rabble, at the instigation of the
priests, demanded his death, although his very judge made public
acknowledgement of his innocence. Jesus was sacrificed to the honour of
that God with whom he was afterwards confounded. It is of importance,
therefore, to distinguish between the pretended character of this being
as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, and his real character
as a man, who, for a vain attempt to reform the world, paid the forfeit
of his life to that overbearing tyranny which has since so long
desolated the universe in his name. Whilst the one is a hypocritical
Daemon, who announces Himself as the God of compassion and peace, even
whilst He stretches forth His blood-red hand with the sword of discord
to waste the earth, having confessedly devised this scheme of desolation
from eternity; the other stands in the foremost list of those true
heroes who have died in the glorious martyrdom of liberty, and have
braved torture, contempt, and poverty in the cause of suffering
humanity. (Since writing this note I have some reason to suspect that
Jesus was an ambitious man, who aspired to the throne of Judea.

The vulgar, ever in extremes, became persuaded that the crucifixion of
Jesus was a supernatural event. Testimonies of miracles, so frequent in
unenlightened ages, were not wanting to prove that he was something
divine. This belief, rolling through the lapse of ages, met with the
reveries of Plato and the reasonings of Aristotle, and acquired force
and extent, until the divinity of Jesus became a dogma, which to dispute
was death, which to doubt was infamy.

CHRISTIANITY is now the established religion: he who attempts to impugn
it must be contented to behold murderers and traitors take precedence of
him in public opinion; though, if his genius be equal to his courage,
and assisted by a peculiar coalition of circumstances, future ages may
exalt him to a divinity, and persecute others in his name, as he was
persecuted in the name of his predecessor in the homage of the world.

The same means that have supported every other popular belief have
supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, assassination, and falsehood;
deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is.
The blood shed by the votaries of the God of mercy and peace, since the
establishment of His religion, would probably suffice to drown all other
sectaries now on the habitable globe. We derive from our ancestors a
faith thus fostered and supported: we quarrel, persecute, and hate for
its maintenance. Even under a government which, whilst it infringes the
very right of thought and speech, boasts of permitting the liberty of
the press, a man is pilloried and imprisoned because he is a deist, and
no one raises his voice in the indignation of outraged humanity. But it
is ever a proof that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by those who
use coercion, not reasoning, to procure its admission; and a
dispassionate observer would feel himself more powerfully interested in
favour of a man who, depending on the truth of his opinions, simply
stated his reasons for entertaining them, than in that of his aggressor
who, daringly avowing his unwillingness or incapacity to answer them by
argument, proceeded to repress the energies and break the spirit of
their promulgator by that torture and imprisonment whose infliction he
could command.

Analogy seems to favour the opinion that as, like other systems,
Christianity has arisen and augmented, so like them it will decay and
perish; that as violence, darkness, and deceit, not reasoning and
persuasion, have procured its admission among mankind, so, when
enthusiasm has subsided, and time, that infallible controverter of false
opinions, has involved its pretended evidences in the darkness of
antiquity, it will become obsolete; that Milton's poem alone will give
permanency to the remembrance of its absurdities; and that men will
laugh as heartily at grace, faith, redemption, and original sin, as they
now do at the metamorphoses of Jupiter, the miracles of Romish saints,
the efficacy of witchcraft, and the appearance of departed spirits.

Had the Christian religion commenced and continued by the mere force of
reasoning and persuasion, the preceding analogy would be inadmissible.
We should never speculate on the future obsoleteness of a system
perfectly conformable to nature and reason: it would endure so long as
they endured; it would be a truth as indisputable as the light of the
sun, the criminality of murder, and other facts, whose evidence,
depending on our organization and relative situations, must remain
acknowledged as satisfactory so long as man is man. It is an
incontrovertible fact, the consideration of which ought to repress the
hasty conclusions of credulity, or moderate its obstinacy in maintaining
them, that, had the Jews not been a fanatical race of men, had even the
resolution of Pontius Pilate been equal to his candour, the Christian
religion never could have prevailed, it could not even have existed: on
so feeble a thread hangs the most cherished opinion of a sixth of the
human race! When will the vulgar learn humility? When will the pride of
ignorance blush at having believed before it could comprehend?

Either the Christian religion is true, or it is false: if true, it comes
from God, and its authenticity can admit of doubt and dispute no further
than its omnipotent author is willing to allow. Either the power or the
goodness of God is called in question, if He leaves those doctrines most
essential to the well-being of man in doubt and dispute; the only ones
which, since their promulgation, have been the subject of unceasing
cavil, the cause of irreconcilable hatred. IF GOD HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE
UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?

There is this passage in the Christian Scriptures: 'Those who obey not
God, and believe not the Gospel of his Son, shall be punished with
everlasting destruction. ' This is the pivot upon which all religions
turn:--they all assume that it is in our power to believe or not to
believe; whereas the mind can only believe that which it thinks true. A
human being can only be supposed accountable for those actions which are
influenced by his will. But belief is utterly distinct from and
unconnected with volition: it is the apprehension of the agreement or
disagreement of the ideas that compose any preposition. Belief is a
passion, or involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions,
its intensity is precisely proportionate to the degrees of excitement.
Volition is essential to merit or demerit. But the Christian religion
attaches the highest possible degrees of merit and demerit to that which
is worthy of neither, and which is totally unconnected with the peculiar
faculty of the mind, whose presence is essential to their being.

Christianity was intended to reform the world: had an all-wise Being
planned it, nothing is more improbable than that it should have failed:
omniscience would infallibly have foreseen the inutility of a scheme
which experience demonstrates, to this age, to have been utterly
unsuccessful.

Christianity inculcates the necessity of supplicating the Deity. Prayer
may be considered under two points of view;--as an endeavour to change
the intentions of God, or as a formal testimony of our obedience. But
the former case supposes that the caprices of a limited intelligence can
occasionally instruct the Creator of the world how to regulate the
universe; and the latter, a certain degree of servility analogous to the
loyalty demanded by earthly tyrants. Obedience indeed is only the
pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something
better than reason.

Christianity, like all other religions, rests upon miracles, prophecies,
and martyrdoms. No religion ever existed which had not its prophets, its
attested miracles, and, above all, crowds of devotees who would bear
patiently the most horrible tortures to prove its authenticity. It
should appear that in no case can a discriminating mind subscribe to the
genuineness of a miracle. A miracle is an infraction of nature's law, by
a supernatural cause; by a cause acting beyond that eternal circle
within which all things are included. God breaks through the law of
nature, that He may convince mankind of the truth of that revelation
which, in spite of His precautions, has been, since its introduction,
the subject of unceasing schism and cavil.

Miracles resolve themselves into the following question (See Hume's
Essay, volume 2 page 121. ):--Whether it is more probable the laws of
nature, hitherto so immutably harmonious, should have undergone
violation, or that a man should have told a lie? Whether it is more
probable that we are ignorant of the natural cause of an event, or that
we know the supernatural one? That, in old times, when the powers of
nature were less known than at present, a certain set of men were
themselves deceived, or had some hidden motive for deceiving others; or
that God begat a Son, who, in His legislation, measuring merit by
belief, evidenced Himself to be totally ignorant of the powers of the
human mind--of what is voluntary, and what is the contrary?

We have many instances of men telling lies;--none of an infraction of
nature's laws, those laws of whose government alone we have any
knowledge or experience. The records of all nations afford innumerable
instances of men deceiving others either from vanity or interest, or
themselves being deceived by the limitedness of their views and their
ignorance of natural causes: but where is the accredited case of God
having come upon earth, to give the lie to His own creations? There
would be something truly wonderful in the appearance of a ghost; but the
assertion of a child that he saw one as he passed through the churchyard
is universally admitted to be less miraculous.

But even supposing that a man should raise a dead body to life before
our eyes, and on this fact rest his claim to being considered the son of
God;--the Humane Society restores drowned persons, and because it makes
no mystery of the method it employs, its members are not mistaken for
the sons of God. All that we have a right to infer from our ignorance of
the cause of any event is that we do not know it: had the Mexicans
attended to this simple rule when they heard the cannon of the
Spaniards, they would not have considered them as gods: the experiments
of modern chemistry would have defied the wisest philosophers of ancient
Greece and Rome to have accounted for them on natural principles.
An
author of strong common sense has observed that 'a miracle is no miracle
at second-hand'; he might have added that a miracle is no miracle in any
case; for until we are acquainted with all natural causes, we have no
reason to imagine others.

There remains to be considered another proof of Christianity--Prophecy.
A book is written before a certain event, in which this event is
foretold; how could the prophet have foreknown it without inspiration?
how could he have been inspired without God? The greatest stress is laid
on the prophecies of Moses and Hosea on the dispersion of the Jews, and
that of Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. The prophecy of
Moses is a collection of every possible cursing and blessing; and it is
so far from being marvellous that the one of dispersion should have been
fulfilled, that it would have been more surprising if, out of all these,
none should have taken effect. In Deuteronomy, chapter 28, verse 64,
where Moses explicitly foretells the dispersion, he states that they
shall there serve gods of wood and stone: 'And the Lord shall scatter
thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even to the other;
AND THERE THOU SHALT SERVE OTHER GODS, WHICH NEITHER THOU NOR THY
FATHERS HAVE KNOWN, EVEN GODS OF WOOD AND STONE. ' The Jews are at this
day remarkably tenacious of their religion. Moses also declares that
they shall be subjected to these curses for disobedience to his ritual:
'And it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of
the Lord thy God, to observe to do all the commandments and statutes
which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon
thee, and overtake thee. ' Is this the real reason? The third, fourth,
and fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of immodest confession. The
indelicate type might apply in a hundred senses to a hundred things. The
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not exceed
in clearness the oracles of Delphos. The historical proof that Moses,
Isaiah, and Hosea did write when they are said to have written is far
from being clear and circumstantial.

But prophecy requires proof in its character as a miracle; we have no
right to suppose that a man foreknew future events from God, until it is
demonstrated that he neither could know them by his own exertions, nor
that the writings which contain the prediction could possibly have been
fabricated after the event pretended to be foretold. It is more probable
that writings, pretending to divine inspiration, should have been
fabricated after the fulfilment of their pretended prediction than that
they should have really been divinely inspired, when we consider that
the latter supposition makes God at once the creator of the human mind
and ignorant of its primary powers, particularly as we have numberless
instances of false religions, and forged prophecies of things long past,
and no accredited case of God having conversed with men directly or
indirectly. It is also possible that the description of an event might
have foregone its occurrence; but this is far from being a legitimate
proof of a divine revelation, as many men, not pretending to the
character of a prophet, have nevertheless, in this sense, prophesied.

Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, even by a bishop,
yet he uttered this remarkable prediction: 'The despotic government of
France is screwed up to the highest pitch; a revolution is fast
approaching; that revolution, I am convinced, will be radical and
sanguinary. ' This appeared in the letters of the prophet long before the
accomplishment of this wonderful prediction. Now, have these particulars
come to pass, or have they not? If they have, how could the Earl have
foreknown them without inspiration? If we admit the truth of the
Christian religion on testimony such as this, we must admit, on the same
strength of evidence, that God has affixed the highest rewards to
belief, and the eternal tortures of the never-dying worm to disbelief,
both of which have been demonstrated to be involuntary.

The last proof of the Christian religion depends on the influence of the
Holy Ghost. Theologians divide the influence of the Holy Ghost into its
ordinary and extraordinary modes of operation. The latter is supposed to
be that which inspired the Prophets and Apostles; and the former to be
the grace of God, which summarily makes known the truth of His
revelation to those whose mind is fitted for its reception by a
submissive perusal of His word. Persons convinced in this manner can do
anything but account for their conviction, describe the time at which it
happened, or the manner in which it came upon them. It is supposed to
enter the mind by other channels than those of the senses, and therefore
professes to be superior to reason founded on their experience.

Admitting, however, the usefulness or possibility of a divine
revelation, unless we demolish the foundations of all human knowledge,
it is requisite that our reason should previously demonstrate its
genuineness; for, before we extinguish the steady ray of reason and
common sense, it is fit that we should discover whether we cannot do
without their assistance, whether or no there be any other which may
suffice to guide us through the labyrinth of life (See Locke's "Essay on
the Human Understanding", book 4 chapter 19, on Enthusiasm. ): for, if a
man is to be inspired upon all occasions, if he is to be sure of a thing
because he is sure, if the ordinary operations of the Spirit are not to
be considered very extraordinary modes of demonstration, if enthusiasm
is to usurp the place of proof, and madness that of sanity, all
reasoning is superfluous. The Mahometan dies fighting for his prophet,
the Indian immolates himself at the chariot-wheels of Brahma, the
Hottentot worships an insect, the Negro a bunch of feathers, the Mexican
sacrifices human victims! Their degree of conviction must certainly be
very strong: it cannot arise from reasoning, it must from feelings, the
reward of their prayers. If each of these should affirm, in opposition
to the strongest possible arguments, that inspiration carried internal
evidence, I fear their inspired brethren, the orthodox missionaries,
would be so uncharitable as to pronounce them obstinate.

Miracles cannot be received as testimonies of a disputed fact, because
all human testimony has ever been insufficient to establish the
possibility of miracles. That which is incapable of proof itself is no
proof of anything else. Prophecy has also been rejected by the test of
reason. Those, then, who have been actually inspired are the only true
believers in the Christian religion.

Mox numine viso
Virgineei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater
Arcano stupuit compleri viscera partu,
Auctorem paritura suum. Mortalia corda
Artificem texere poli, latuitque sub uno
Pectore, qui totum late complectitur orbem. --Claudian, "Carmen Paschale".

Does not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity carry its own infamy
and refutation with itself?

8. 203-207:--

Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing
Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal
Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise
In time-destroying infiniteness, gift
With self-enshrined eternity, etc.

Time is our consciousness of the succession of ideas in our mind. Vivid
sensation, of either pain or pleasure, makes the time seem long, as the
common phrase is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our
ideas. If a mind be conscious of an hundred ideas during one minute, by
the clock, and of two hundred during another, the latter of these spaces
would actually occupy so much greater extent in the mind as two exceed
one in quantity. If, therefore, the human mind, by any future
improvement of its sensibility, should become conscious of an infinite
number of ideas in a minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not
hence infer that the actual space between the birth and death of a man
will ever be prolonged; but that his sensibility is perfectible, and
that the number of ideas which his mind is capable of receiving is
indefinite. One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours;
another sleeps soundly in his bed: the difference of time perceived by
these two persons is immense; one hardly will believe that half an hour
has elapsed, the other could credit that centuries had flown during his
agony. Thus, the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in
his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than
that of a miserable priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of
dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has
rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize
amid the lethargy of every-day business;--the other can slumber over the
brightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest
hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life
than the tortoise.

Dark flood of time!
Roll as it listeth thee--I measure not
By months or moments thy ambiguous course.
Another may stand by me on the brink
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken
That pauses at my feet. The sense of love,
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought
Prolong my being: if I wake no more,
My life more actual living will contain
Than some gray veteran's of the world's cold school,
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll,
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed. --

See Godwin's "Pol. Jus. " volume 1, page 411; and Condorcet, "Esquisse
d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de l'Esprit Humain", epoque 9.

8. 211, 212:--

No longer now
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face.

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,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac 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 satisfactorily 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 was this opinion
that Horace, a poet of the Augustan age, writes:--

Audax omnia perpeti,
Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas;
Audax Iapeti genus
Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit:
Post ignem aetheria 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 his disgust the horrors of the shambles.
From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It
consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite variety,
inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All
vice rose from the ruin of healthful innocence. Tyranny, superstition,
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 mythology 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 Prometheus (Plin. "Nat. Hist". lib. 7 sect. 57. )) 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 preparation), 'ensued; water was resorted to,
and man forfeited the inestimable gift of health which he had received
from heaven: he became diseased, the partaker of a precarious existence,
and no longer descended slowly to his grave. ("Return to Nature".
Cadell, 1811. )

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
bison, and the wolf; are perfectly 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 corruptors 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 advantages of intellect and civilization 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.

It is true that mental and bodily derangement is attributable in part to
other deviations from rectitude and nature than those which concern
diet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting the connection of the
sexes, whence the misery and diseases of unsatisfied celibacy,
unenjoying prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty,
necessarily spring; the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the
exhalations of chemical processes; the muffling of our bodies in
superfluous apparel; the absurd treatment of infants:--all these and
innumerable other causes contribute their mite to the mass of human
evil.

Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugivorous animals in
everything, and carnivorous in 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 long, 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 raw horror does not excite intolerable
loathing and disgust. Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a
decisive experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a
living lamb with 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 judgement against it, and say, 'Nature formed me for such work as
this. ' Then, and then only, would he be consistent.

Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless 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, which live on different food, in which this analogy exists.
(Cuvier, "Lecons d'Anat. Comp". tom. 3, pages 169, 373, 448, 465, 480.
Rees's "Cyclopaedia", article Man. ) In many frugivorous animals, the
canine teeth are more pointed and distinct 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 larger 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 argument in
its favour. A lamb, which was fed for some time on flesh by a ship's
crew, 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 vegetables 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
which the first glass of port produced. Unsophisticated instinct is
invariably unerring; but to decide on the fitness of animal food from
the perverted appetites which its constrained adoption produces; 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 (The necessity of resorting to some means of purifying water,
and the disease which arises from its adulteration in civilized
countries, is sufficiently apparent. See Dr. Lambe's "Reports on
Cancer". I do not assert that the use of water is in itself unnatural,
but that the unperverted palate would swallow no liquid capable of
occasioning disease. )), 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,
wherein 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 remain 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, bloodshot eyes, and swollen
veins, that alone can grasp the knife 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 knowledge 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
with pure water, 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 intemperance of individuals! Who will assert that, had the populace
of Paris satisfied their hunger at the ever-furnished table of vegetable
nature, they would have lent their brutal suffrage to the
proscription-list of Robespierre? Could a set of men, whose passions
were not perverted by unnatural stimuli, look with coolness on an auto
da fe? Is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings, rising from
his meal of roots, would take delight in sports of blood? Was Nero a man
of temperate life? could you read calm health in his cheek, flushed with
ungovernable propensities of hatred for the human race? Did Muley
Ismael's pulse beat evenly, was his skin transparent, did his eyes beam
with healthfulness, and its invariable concomitants, cheerfulness 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 Buonaparte, 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 Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders,
that he could have had 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 tyrannize would certainly not be
delegated by a society neither frenzied by inebriation nor rendered
impotent and 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 civilized life. Even common water,
that apparently innoxious pabulum, when corrupted by the filth of
populous cities, is a deadly and insidious destroyer. (Lambe's "Reports
on Cancer". ) 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, by which He has there excited and justified
the most ferocious propensities, should have alone 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 those 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 healthfulness; 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
considerate 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 life, 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. 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 persuaded
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, contrasted with a short and
painful, life. On the average, out of sixty persons four die in three
years. Hopes are entertained that, 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 those 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. ("Return to Nature, or Defence of
Vegetable Regimen". Cadell, 1811. )

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 pernicious 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 poisons. The change which would be produced
by simpler habits on political economy is sufficiently remarkable. The
monopolizing 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 hardworking peasant's hungry babes. The quantity of
nutritious vegetable matter, consumed in fattening the carcase of an ox,
would afford 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 would produce gentler
manners, and the excessive complication 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 necessaries, 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 require 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.