VI
THE ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE
(Nations and Individuals)
“There is a difference,” observes Chalmers, “between such truths as are merely of a speculative nature, and such as are allied with practice and moral feeling. With the former, all repetition may be often superfluous; with the latter, it may just be by earnest repetition that their influence comes to be thoroughly established over the mind of the inquirer.”
These words are particularly true when applied to the subject matter before us. No matter how perfect, theoretically, an argument may be, it will never appeal to the public mind as do a few concrete facts. The arguments I have presented, drawn from comparative anatomy, from physiology, chemistry, and from hygiene, would weigh but little in many minds against the testimony of human experience. They would contend that, no matter how good the theoretical argument might be, the facts, nevertheless, would seem to prove the contrary; and show that the majority of all the more civilised people of the earth, particularly the ruling and governing nations, do, as a matter of fact, eat meat; and hence, practically, meat is a suitable article of diet. I propose to consider these arguments in the following chapter, and see how far they rest upon facts, and how far upon misconception.
Pythagoras, one of the most celebrated philosophers of antiquity, was one of the first to defend the “vegetable diet.” He not only totally refrained from animal food himself, but also strictly prohibited the use of it by his disciples, so that those who abstain from it at the present time are sometimes known as Pythagorians. Pythagoras flourished about five hundred years before the Christian era. He was a man of immense learning, and extraordinary powers of intellect. He was the first demonstrator of the forty-seventh problem of the first book of Euclid, and entertained correct views of the solar system. Ovid speaks of him with great admiration.
Zeno, the Stoic, Diogenes, the Cynic, Plato, Plutarch, Plautus, Proclus, Empedocles, Socrates, Quintus Sextus, Apollonius of Tyana, Porphyry, and numerous others, among the ancients, abstained from animal food and, more recently, Haller, Ritson (celebrated for his numerous works and varied talents), Dr Cheyne, Dr Lambe, Mr Newton (who wrote a splendid book, “The Return to Nature”), Shelley, Dr Hufeland, Sir Richard Phillips, and many others have both advocated and personally tried for many years a strictly and exclusively vegetable diet.
Hesiod, the Greek poet, Herodotus, Hippocrates, Pliny, Galen, and many other writers of antiquity could be quoted as defending a simple, non-flesh diet. Of late years numerous scientific men and physicians have come forward in support of this claim; and their testimony will be found in various parts of this work.
If the past has produced individual giants, mental and physical, who subsisted upon a vegetarian dietary, the present may also claim its champions; and there are doubtless more at the present day than ever before. Many athletes are now adopting a vegetarian diet, largely on account of the Fletcher-Chittenden experiments before referred to; largely because of individual study and investigation. The fact that strength and endurance are greatly increased by a strict vegetarian or fruitarian dietary cannot be gainsaid. I have adduced some of this evidence in the chapter on hygiene, and shall adduce further evidence in the present and following chapters. The frequently quoted case of the seventy-mile walking match, that took place in Germany some years ago, should at least be referred to. Fourteen meat-eaters, and eight vegetarians started on a seventy-mile walking match. All the vegetarians reached the goal, it is said in “splendid condition”—the first covering the distance in fourteen and a quarter hours. An hour after the last vegetarian came in, the first meat-eater appeared, and he was “completely exhausted.” He was also the last meat-eater to finish the race, as all the rest had dropped off after thirty-five miles. A further and almost exactly similar illustration is furnished by the Dresden to Berlin walk of 1902. For this, eighteen vegetarians and fourteen meat-eaters started, and ten of the vegetarians, but only three of the meat-eaters came in. The winner (Karl Mann) was upwards of seven hours in front of the first meat-eater. It is to be noted that Mann was a strict fruitarian, and practically never touched the ordinary vegetarian foods. The last meat-eater only just got in within the time limit, and was beaten by more than four hours by a man of fifty-nine, who had been a vegetarian for thirty-eight years. In this race the championship of Germany was decided, and the winner made two world’s records. The proceedings were watched, and the organs and circulation of competitors were measured and recorded by a committee of physiologists, for the benefit of the German government and army.
Dr Alexander Haig, in his “Diet and Food,” p. 100, says: