[226] The eloquence and style of Buffon, it need scarcely be remarked, are more indisputable than his scientific accuracy. Amongst his many errors, none, however, is more surprising than his assertion of the carnivorous anatomical organisation of man, which has been corrected over and over again by physiologists and savants more profound than Buffon.
[227] “Lachrymas—nostri pars optima sensus.”
[228] In newly-discovered countries, no decided predominance of one species over another has been found; and the reason is, that qualities are pretty nearly equally divided, and that the strongest animal is not at the same time the most agile or the most intelligent.—Note by Gleïzès.
[229] Upon this, not the least interesting and important of the side views of Vegetarianism, we refer our readers, amongst numerous authorities, to the opinions of Paley, Adam Smith, Prof. Newman, Liebig, and W. R. Greg (in Social Problems).
[230] That the victims of the Slaughter-House have, in fact, a full presentiment of the fate in store for them, must be sufficiently evident to every one who has witnessed a number of oxen or sheep driven towards the scene of slaughter—the frantic struggles to escape and rush past the horrible locality, the exertions necessary on the part of the drovers or slaughtermen to force them to enter as well as the frequent breaking away of the maddened victim—maddened alike by the blows and clamours of its executioners and the presentiment of its destiny—who frantically rushes through the public streets and scatters the terrified human passengers—all this abundantly proves the transparent falsity of the assertion of the unconsciousness or indifference of the victims of the shambles. See a terribly graphic description of a scene of this kind in Household Words, No. 14, quoted in Dietetic Reformer (1852), in Thalysie, and in the Dietetic Reformer, passim. Also in Animal World, &c., &c.
[231] Thalysie: ou La Nouvelle Existence: Par J. A. Gleïzès. Paris, 1840, in 3 vols., 8vo. See also preface to the German version of R. Springer, Berlin, 1872. Our English readers will be glad to learn that a translation by the English Vegetarian Society is now being contemplated.
[232] Poeta, in its original Greek meaning, marks out a creator of new, and, therefore, (it is presumable) true ideas.
[233] Compare the fate of Gibbon, who, at the same age, found himself an outcast from the University for a very opposite offence—for having embraced the dogmas of Catholicism. (See Memoirs of my Life and Writings, by Edw. Gibbon.) The future historian of The Decline and Fall, it may be added, speedily returned to Protestantism, though not to that of his preceptors.
[234] Shelley. By J. A. Symonds. Macmillan, 1887.
[235] Hogg’s Life of Shelley. Moxon (1858).