[260] La Femme, vi. Onzième Edition. Paris, 1879.
[261] This memorable building has been succeeded by the present well-known one in Cross Lane, where the Rev. James Clark, one of the most esteemed, as well as one of the oldest, members of the Vegetarian Society is the able and eloquent officiating minister.
[262] These biographical facts we have transferred to our pages from an interesting notice by Mr W. E. A. Axon, F.R.S.L.
[263] Memoir of the Rev. William. Metcalfe, M.D. By his son, Rev. Joseph Metcalfe, Philadelphia, 1865.
[264] See Memoir of the Rev. William Metcalfe. By his son, the Rev J. Metcalfe. Philadelphia; J. Capen. 1866.
[265] See Memoir in Sylvester Graham’s Lectures on the Science of Human Life. Condensed by T. Baker, Esq., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. Manchester: Heywood; London: Pitman.
[266] The New American Cyclopædia. Appleton, New York, 1861. It deserves remark in this place that, in no English cyclopædia or biographical dictionary, as far as our knowledge extends, is any sort of notice given of this great sanitary reformer. The same disappointment is experienced in regard to not a few other great names, whether in hygienic or humanitarian literature. The absence of the names of such true benefactors of the world in these books of reference is all the more surprising in view of the presence of an infinite number of persons—of all kinds—who have contributed little to the stock of true knowledge or to the welfare of the world.
[267] The Greek story of the savage horses of the Thracian king who were fed upon human flesh, therefore, may very well be true.
[268] Graham here quotes various authorities—Linné, Cuvier, Lawrence Bell, and others.
[269] Professor Lawrence instances particularly “the Laplanders, Samoides, Ostiacs, Tungooses, Burats, and Bamtschatdales, in Northern Europe and Asia, as well as the Esquimaux in the northern, and the natives of Tierra del Fuego in the southern, extremity of America, who, although they live almost entirely on flesh, and that often raw, are the smallest, weakest, and least brave people of the globe.”—Lectures on Physiology. Of all races the North American native tribes, who subsist almost entirely by the chase, are notoriously one of the most ferocious and cruel. That the omnivorous classes in “civilised” Europe—in this country particularly—have attained their present position, political or intellectual, in spite of their kreophagistic habits is attributable to a complex set of conditions and circumstances (an extensive inquiry, upon which it is impossible to enter here) which have, in some measure, mitigated the evil results of a barbarous diet, will be sufficiently clear to every unprejudiced inquirer. If flesh-eating be the cause, or one of the principal causes, of the present dominance of the European, and especially English-speaking peoples, it may justly be asked—how is to be explained, e.g., the dominance of the Saracenic power (in S. Europe) during seven centuries—a dominance in arms as well as in arts and sciences—when the semi-barbarous Christian nations (at least as regards the ruling classes) were wholly kreophagistic.