[278] Quoted in Die Naturgemässe Diät: die Diät der Zukunft, von Theodor Hahn, Cöthen, 1859. For the substance of biographical notice prefixed to this article we are again indebted to the kindness of Herr Emil Weilshäuser, of Oppeln.
[279] Das Menschendasein in seinen Weltewigen Zügen und Zeichen. Von Bogumil Goltz. Frankfurt.
[280] Compare the remarks of Jean Paul Richter (1763–1825), in his treatise on Education, Levana, in which he, too, in scarcely less emphatic language, protests against the general neglect of this department of morals. Among other references to the subject, the celebrated novelist thus writes: “Love is the second hemisphere of the moral heaven. Yet is the sacred being of love little established. Love is an inborn but differently distributed force and blood-heat of the heart (blutwärme des herzens). There are cold and warm-blooded souls, as there are animals. As for the child, so for the lower animal, love is, in fact, an essential impulse; and this central fire often, in the form of compassion, pierces its earth-crust, but not in every case.... The child (under proper education) learns to regard all animal life as sacred—in brief, they impart to him the feeling of a Hindu in place of the heart of a Cartesian philosopher. There is here a question of something more even than compassion for other animals; but this also is in question. Why is it that it has so long been observed that the cruelty of the child to the lower animals presages cruelty to men, just as the Old-Testament sacrifice of animals preshadowed that of the sacrifice of a man? It is for himself only the undeveloped man can experience pains and sufferings, which speak to him with the native tones of his own experience. Consequently, the inarticulate cry of the tortured animal comes to him just as some strange, amusing sound of the air; and yet he sees there life, conscious movement, both which distinguish them from the inanimate substances. Thus he sins against his own life, whilst he sunders it from the rest, as though it were a piece of machinery. Let life be to him [the child] sacred (heilig), even that which may be destitute of reason; and, in fact, does the child know any other? Or, because the heart beats under bristles, feathers, or wings, is it, therefore, to be of no account?”
[281] See a pamphlet upon this subject by Dr. V. Gützlaff—Schopenhauer ueber die Thiere und den Thierschutz: Ein Beitrag zur ethischen Seite der Vivisectionsfrage. Berlin, 1879.
[282] Le Fondement de La Morale, par Arthur Schopenhauer, traduit de l’Allemand par A. Burdeau. Paris, Baillière et Cie, 1879.
[283] Quoted in Die Naturgemässe Diät, die Diät der Zukunft, von Theodor Hahn, 1859. We may note here that Moleschott, the eminent Dutch physiologist, and a younger contemporary of Liebig, alike with the distinguished German Chemist and with the French zoologist, Buffon, is chargeable with a strange inconsistency in choosing his place among the apologists of kreophagy, in spite of his conviction that “the legumes are superior to flesh-meat in abundance of solid constituents which they contain; and, while the amount of albuminous substances may surpass that in flesh-meat by one-half, the constituents of fat and the salts are also present in a greater abundance.” (See Die Naturgemässe Diät, von Theodor Hahn, 1859). But, in fact, it is only too obvious why at present the large majority of Scientists, while often fully admitting the virtues, or even the superiority of the purer diet, yet after all enrol themselves on the orthodox side. Either they are altogether indifferent to humane teaching, or they want the courage of their convictions to proclaim the Truth.
[284] Among English philosophic writers, the arguments and warnings (published in the Dietetic Reformer during the past fifteen years) of the present head of the Society for the promotion of Dietary Reform in this country, Professor Newman, in regard to National Economy and to the enormous evils, present and prospective, arising from the prevalent insensibility to this aspect of National Reform are at once the most forcible and the most earnest. It would be well if our public men, and all who are in place and power, would give the most earnest heed to them. But this, unhappily, under the present prevailing political and social conditions, experience teaches to be almost a vain expectation.
[285] Μήλοισι Grævius, the famous German Scholar of the 17th century, maintains to mean here Fruits, not “Flocks,” according to the vulgar interpretation, and the translation of Grævius, it will be allowed, is at least more consistent with the context than is the latter. It must be added that the whole verse bracketed is of doubtful genuineness.
[286] This remarkable passage, it is highly interesting to note, is the earliest indication of the idea of “guardian angels,” which afterwards was developed in the Platonic philosophy; and which, considerably modified by Jewish belief, derived from the Persian theology, finally took form in the Christian creed. Compare the beautiful idea of guardian angels, or spirits in the Prologue of the Shipwreck of Plautus.
[287] See Poetæ Minores Græci ... Aliisque Accessionibus Aucta. Edited by Thomas Gaisford. Vol. III. Lipsiæ, 1823.