[103] Amorevole Esortazione a Seguire La Vita Ordinata e Sobria.
[104] Cornaro’s heterodoxy in dietetics was not allowed, as may well be supposed, to pass unchallenged by his contemporaries. One of his countrymen, a person of some note, Sperone Speroni, published a reply under the title of “Contra la Sobrietà;” but soon afterwards recanting his errors (rimettendosi spontaneamente nel buon sentiero) he wrote a Discourse in favour of Temperance. About the same time there appeared in Paris an “Anti-Cornaro,” written “against all the rules of good taste,” and which the editors of the Biographie Universelle characterise as full of remarks “tout à fait oiseuses.”
[105] More points out very forcibly that to hang for theft is tantamount to offering a premium for murder. Two hundred and fifty years later Beccaria and other humanitarians vainly advanced similar objections to the criminal code of christian Europe. It is hardly necessary to remark that this Draconian bloodthirstiness of English criminal law remained to belie the name of “civilisation” so recently as fifty years ago.
[106] Erasmus (who, to lash satirically and more effectively the various follies and crimes of men places the genius of Folly itself in the pulpit) seems to have shared the feeling of his friend in regard to the character of “sport.” “When they (the ‘sportsmen’) have run down their victims, what strange pleasure they have in cutting them up! Cows and sheep may be slaughtered by common butchers, but those animals that are killed in hunting must be mangled by none under a gentleman, who will fall down on his knees, and drawing out a slashing dagger (for a common knife is not good enough) after several ceremonies shall dissect all the joints as artistically as the best skilled anatomist, while all who stand round shall look very intently and seem to be mightily surprised with the novelty, though they have seen the same thing a hundred times before; and he that can but dip his finger and taste of the blood shall think his own bettered by it. And yet the constant feeding on such diet does but assimilate them to the nature (?) of those animals they eat,” &c.—Encomium Moriæ, or Praise of Folly. If we recall to mind that three centuries and a half have passed away since More and Erasmus raised their voices against the sanguinary pursuits of hunting, and that it is still necessary to reiterate the denunciation, we shall justly deplore the slow progress of the human mind in all that constitutes true morality and refinement of feeling.
[107] Utopia II.
[108] For a full and eloquent exposition of the social evils which threaten the country from the natural but mischievous greed of landowners and farmers, our readers are referred, in particular, to Professor Newman’s admirable Lectures upon this aspect of the Vegetarian creed, delivered before the Society at various times. (Heywood: Manchester.)
[109] Utopia. Translated into English by Ralph Robinson, Fellow of Corpus Christi College. London: 1556; reprinted by Edward Arber, 1869. We have used this English edition as more nearly representing the style of Sir Thomas More than a modern version. It is a curious fact that no edition of the Utopia was published in England during the author’s lifetime—or, indeed, before that of Robinson, in 1551. It was first printed at Louvain; and, after revision by the author, it was reprinted at Basle, under the auspices of Erasmus, still in the original Latin.
[110] “With plaintive cries, all covered with blood, and in the attitude of a suppliant.” See the story of the death of Silvia’s deer (Æneis, viii.)—the most touching episode in the whole epic of Virgil. The affection of the Tuscan girl for her favourite, her anxious care of her, and the deep indignation excited amongst her people by the murder of the deer by the son of Æneas and his intruding followers—the cause of the war that ensued—are depicted with rare grace and feeling.
[111] “It was in the slaughter, in the primæval times, of wild beasts (I suppose) the knife first was stained with the warm life-blood.”—See Ovid Metam. xv.
[112] Christian theology, to which doubtless Montaigne here refers, the force of truth compels us to note, has always uttered a very “uncertain sound” in regard to the rights and even to the frightful sufferings of the non-human species. Excepting, indeed, two or three isolated passages in the Jewish and Christian sacred Scriptures which, according to the theologians, bear a somewhat equivocal meaning, it is not easy to discover what particular theological or ecclesiastical maxims Montaigne could adduce.