Moreover, a most important ethnographical consideration seems to give a serious interest to the diet of a people, if it be true, as we are convinced it is, and as we shall probably one day endeavour to demonstrate, that the manners of individuals, their idiosyncrasies, inclinations, and intellectual habits, are modified, to a certain extent, as taste, climate, and circumstances may determine the nature of their food; an assertion which might be supported by irrefragable proofs, and would show the justness of the aphorism: “Tell me what thou eatest, and I will tell thee who thou art.”
VICTUA
or
THE GODDESS OF GASTRONOMY
I.
AGRICULTURE
Every nation has attributed the origin of agriculture to some beneficent Deity. The Egyptians bestowed this honour on Osiris, the Greeks on Ceres and Triptolemus, the Latins on Saturn, or on their king Janus, whom, in gratitude, they placed among the gods. All nations, however, agree that, whoever introduced among them this happy and beneficial discovery, has been most useful to man by elevating his mind to a state of sociability and civilization.[I_1]
Many learned men have made laborious researches in order to discover, not only the name of the inventor of agriculture, but the country and the century in which he lived; some, however, have failed in their inquiry. And why? Because they have forgotten, in their investigation, the only book which could give them positive information on the birth of society, and the first development of human industry. We read in the Book of Genesis that: “The Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it”[I_2] And, after having related his fatal disobedience, the sacred historian adds: “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”[I_3]
Would it be possible to adduce a more ancient and sublime authority?
If it be asked why we take Moses as our guide, instead of dating the origin of human society from those remote periods which are lost in the night of ages, we invoke one of the most worthy masters of human science—the illustrious Cuvier—who says:—
“No western nation can produce an uninterrupted chronology of more than three thousand years. Not one of them has any record of connected facts which bears the stamp of probability anterior to that time, nor even for two or three centuries after. The Greeks acknowledge that they learned the art of writing from the Phœnicians thirty or thirty-four centuries ago; and for a long time after that period their history is filled with fables, in which they only go back three hundred years to establish the cradle of their existence as a nation. Of the history of western Asia we have only a few contradictory extracts, which embrace, in an unconnected form, about twenty centuries. The first profane historian with whom we are acquainted by works extant is Herodotus, and his antiquity does not reach two thousand three hundred years. The historians consulted by him had written less than a century previous; and we are enabled to judge what kind of historians they were by the extravagances handed down to us as extracts from Aristæus, Proconesus, and some others. Before them they had only poets; and Homer, the master and eternal model of the west, lived only two thousand seven hundred, or two thousand eight hundred, years ago. One single nation has transmitted to us annals, written in prose, before the time of Cyrus: it is the Jewish nation. That part of the Old Testament called the Pentateuch has existed in its present form at least ever since the schism of Jeroboam, as the Samaritans receive it equally with the Jews, that is to say, that it has assuredly existed more than two thousand eight hundred years. There is no reason for not attributing the Book of Genesis to Moses, which would carry us back five hundred years more, or thirty-three centuries; and it is only necessary to read it in order to perceive that it is, in part, a compilation of fragments from antecedent works: wherefore, no one can have the least doubt of its being the oldest book now possessed by the western nations.”[I_4]