No More Learning

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. 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 everything of real worth and excellence in the human
character. The odious and disgusting aristocracy 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? Certainly,
if this advantage (the object of all political 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 internally 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 would include a waste too great to be afforded.
The labour requisite to support a family is far lighter' than is usually
supposed. (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 proprietor 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, or 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. ) 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 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 longlived is a being inexpressibly inferior to what he
would have been, had not the unnatural habits of his ancestors
accumulated 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 predispositions 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 unnatural
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 breaking
through a pernicious habit resolutely and at once. Dr. Trotter asserts
that no drunkard was ever reformed by gradually relinquishing his dram.
(See Trotter on the Nervous Temperament. ) Animal flesh, in its effects
on the human stomach, is analogous to a dram. It is similar in 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 subtraction 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 such exertion is performed, with a remarkable
exemption from that painful and difficult panting now felt by almost
every one after hastily climbing an ordinary mountain. He will 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 to be dreaded than death itself. He will escape
the epidemic madness, which 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 destroying those organs from which
he expects his gratification. The pleasures of taste to be derived from
a dinner of potatoes, beans, peas, turnips, lettuces, with a dessert of
apples, gooseberries, strawberries, currants, raspberries, and in
winter, oranges, apples and pears, is far greater than is supposed.
These who wait until they can eat this plain fare with the sauce of
appetite will scarcely join with the hypocritical 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 sympathizing with 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
will 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 admirable sympathies should take
delight in the death-pangs and last convulsions of dying animals. The
elderly man, whose youth has been poisoned by intemperance, or who has
lived with apparent moderation, and is afflicted with a wide 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 restlessness of disease and unaccountable deaths incident to
her children are the causes of incurable unhappiness, would on this diet
experience the satisfaction of beholding their perpetual healths and
natural playfulness. (See Mr. Newton's book. His children are the most
beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to conceive; the girls
are perfect models for a sculptor; their dispositions are also the most
gentle and conciliating; the judicious treatment, 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, 7,500 die of
various diseases; and how many more of those that survive are not
rendered miserable 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. --Sir G. Mackenzie's
"History of Iceland". See also "Emile", chapter 1, pages 53, 54, 56. )
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?

Alla drakontas agrious kaleite kai pardaleis kai leontas, autoi de
miaiphoneite eis omoteta katalipontes ekeinois ouden ekeinois men gar o
phonos trophe, umin de opson estin. . . "Oti gar ouk estin anthropo kata
phusin to sarkophagein, proton men apo ton somaton deloutai tes
kataskeues. Oudeni gar eoike to anthropou soma ton epi sarkophagia
gegonoton, ou grupotes cheilous, ouk ozutes onuchos, ou traxutes odontos
prosestin, ou koilias eutonia kai pneumatos thermotes, trepsai kai
katergasasthai dunate to baru kai kreodes all autothen e phusis te
leioteti ton odonton kai te smikroteti tou stomatos kai te malakoteti
tes glosses kai te pros pepsin ambluteti tou pneumatos, exomnutai ten
sarkophagian. Ei de legeis pephukenai seauton epi toiauten edoden, o
boulei phagein proton autos apokteinon, all autos dia seauton, me
chesamenos kopidi mede tumpano tini mede pelekei alla, os lukoi kai
arktoi kai leontes autoi osa esthiousi phoneuousin, anele degmati boun e
stomati sun, e apna e lagoon diarrexon kai phage prospeson eti zontos,
os ekeina. . . Emeis d' outos en to miaiphono truphomen, ost ochon to kreas
prosagoreuomen, eit ochon pros auto to kreas deometha, anamignuntes
elaion oinon meli garon oxos edusmasi Suriakois Arabikois, oster ontos
nekron entaphiazontes. Kai gar outos auton dialuthenton kai
melachthenton kai tropon tina prosapenton ergon esti ten pechin
kratesai, kai diakratepheises de deinas barutetas empoiei kai nosodeis
apechias. . . Outo to proton agprion ti zoon ebrothe kai kakourgon, eit
ornis tis e ichthus eilkusto kai geusamenon outo kai promeletesan en
ekeinois to thonikon epi boun ergaten elthe kai to kosmion probaton kai
ton oikouron alektruona kai kata mikron outo ten aplestian stomosantes
epi sphagas anthropon kai polemous kai phonous proelthon. --Plout. peri
tes Sarkophagias.

***


NOTE ON QUEEN MAB, BY MRS. SHELLEY.