“The Tartars, who live wholly on animal food, possess a degree of ferocity of mind and fierceness of character which form the leading feature of all carnivorous animals. On the other hand, an entire diet of vegetable matter, as appears in the Brahmin and Gentoo, gives to the disposition a softness, gentleness, and mildness of feeling directly the reverse of the former character. It also has a particular influence on the powers of the mind, producing liveliness of imagination and acuteness of judgment in an eminent degree.”
Sir John Sinclair elsewhere quotes the following sufficiently condemnatory remarks from the Encyclopédie Methodique, vol. vii., part 1:—
“The man who sheds the blood of an Ox or a Sheep will be habituated more easily than another to witness the effusion of that of his fellow-creatures. Inhumanity takes possession of his soul, and the trades, whose occupation is to sacrifice animals for the purpose of supplying the [pretended] necessities of men, impart to those who exercise them a ferocity which their relative connections with Society but imperfectly serve to mitigate.”—Code of Health and Longevity, vol. i., 423, 429, and vol. iii., 283.[316]
XVII.
BYRON. 1788–1824.
“As we had none of us been apprised of his peculiarities with respect to food, the embarrassment of our host [Samuel Rogers] was not little, on discovering that there was nothing upon the table which his noble guest could eat or drink. Neither [flesh] meat, fish, nor wine would Lord Byron touch; and of biscuits and soda water, which he asked for, there had been, unluckily, no provision. He professed, however, to be equally well pleased with potatoes and vinegar; and of these meagre materials contrived to make rather a hearty meal....
“We frequently, during the first months of our acquaintance dined together alone.... Though at times he would drink freely enough of claret, he still adhered to his system of abstinence in food. He appeared, indeed, to have conceived a notion that animal food has some peculiar influence on the character;[317] and I remember one day, as I sat opposite to him, employed, I suppose, rather earnestly over a ‘beef-steak,’ after watching me for a few seconds, he said in a grave tone of inquiry,—‘Moore, don’t you find eating beef-steak makes you ferocious?’”—Life, Letters, and Journals of Lord Byron, by Thomas Moore. New Edition. Murray, 1860.
In these Memorials of Byron, reference to his aversion from all “butcher’s meat” is frequent; and for the greater part of his life, he seems to have observed, in fact, an extreme abstinence as regards eating; although he had by no means the same repugnance for fish as for flesh-eating. That this abstinence from flesh-meats was founded upon physical or mental, rather than upon moral, reasons, has already been pointed out. Nor, unhappily, was he as abstinent in drinking as in eating; to which fact, in great measure, must be attributed the failure of his purer eating to effect all the good which, otherwise, it would have produced.
THE observations of the author of a book entitled Philozoa, published in 1839, and noticed with approval by Schopenhauer, are sufficiently worthy of note, and may fitly conclude this work:—