[5] Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i. 436.
At higher stages of culture intemperance is often subject to censure—because it is detrimental to health or prosperity, or because it calls forth an instinctive feeling of disgust, or because indulgence in sensual pleasures is considered degrading, or, generally, because it is inconsistent with an ascetic ideal of life. It is said in the Proverbs that “the glutton shall come to poverty.”[6] According to the Laws of Manu, “excessive eating is prejudicial to health, to fame, and to bliss in heaven; it prevents the acquisition of spiritual merit, and is odious among men; one ought, for these reasons, to avoid it carefully.”[7] Aristotle maintains that the pleasure with which intemperance is concerned is justly held in disgrace, “since it belongs to us in that we are animals, not in that we are men.”[8] Cicero observes that, as mere corporeal pleasure is unworthy the excellency of man’s nature, the nourishment of our bodies “should be with a view not to our pleasure, but to our health and our strength.”[9] The same opinion is at least nominally shared by many among ourselves; whereas others, though denying that the gratification of appetite is to be sought for its own sake, admit as legitimate ends for it not only the maintenance of health and strength but also “cheerfulness and the cultivation of the social affections.”[10] But most of us are undoubtedly less exacting, if not in theory at least in practice, and really find nothing blamable in pleasures of the table which neither impair health, nor involve a perceptible loss of some greater gratification, nor interfere with duties towards neighbours.[11]
[6] Proverbs, xxiii. 21.
[7] Laws of Manu, ii. 57.
[8] Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, iii. 10. 10.
[9] Cicero, De officiis, i. 30.
[10] Whewell, Elements of Morality, p. 124 sq.
[11] See Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, p. 328 sq.
Sometimes temperance has been inculcated on grounds which in other cases lead to the duty of fasting, that is, abstinence from all food and drink, or at least (in a looser sense of the word) from certain kinds of food, for a determined period. The custom of fasting is wide-spread, and deserves special attention in a study of moral ideas.
Fasting is practised or enjoined for a variety of purposes. It is frequently adopted as a means of having supernatural converse, or acquiring supernatural powers.[12] He who fasts sees in dreams or visions things that no ordinary eye can see. The Hudson Bay Eskimo “discovered that a period of fasting and abstinence from contact with other people endowed a person with supernatural powers and enabled him to learn the secrets of Tung ak [the great spirit]. This is accomplished by repairing to some lonely spot, where, for a greater or less period, the hermit abstains from food or water until the imagination is so worked upon that he believes himself imbued with the power to heal the sick and control all the destinies of life. Tung ak is supposed to stand near and reveal those things while the person is undergoing the test.”[13] The Naudowessies totally abstain from every kind of either victuals or drink before a hunting expedition, because they think that “it enables them freely to dream, in which dreams they are informed where they shall find the greatest plenty of game.”[14] The Tsimshian of British Columbia, if a special object is to be attained, believe they can compel the deity to grant it by a rigid fasting.[15] The Amazulu have a saying that “the continually stuffed body cannot see secret things,” and, in accordance with this belief, put no faith in a fat diviner.[16] A Tungus shaman, who is summoned to treat a sick person, will for several days abstain from food and maintain silence till he becomes inspired.[17] Among the Santals the person or persons who have to offer sacrifices at their feasts prepare themselves for this duty by fasting and prayer and by placing themselves for some time in a position of apparent mental absorption.[18] The savage, as Sir E. B. Tylor remarks, has many a time, for days and weeks together, to try involuntarily the effects of fasting, accompanied with other privations and with prolonged solitary contemplation in the desert or the forest. Under these circumstances he soon comes to see and talk with phantoms, which are to him visible personal spirits, and, having thus learnt the secret of spiritual intercourse, he thenceforth reproduces the cause in order to renew the effects.[19] The Hindus believe that a fasting person will ascend to the heaven of that god in whose name he observes the fast.[20] The Hebrews associated fasting with divine revelations.[21] St. Chrysostom says that fasting “makes the soul brighter, and gives it wings to mount up and soar on high.”[22]