Ray has delivered his profession of faith in the superiority and excellence of the non-flesh diet in the following eloquent passage which has been quoted with approval by his friend John Evelyn:—
“The use of plants is all our life long of that universal importance and concern that we can neither live nor subsist with any decency and convenience, or be said, indeed, to live at all without them. Whatsoever food is necessary to sustain us, whatsoever contributes to delight and refresh us, is supplied and brought forth out of that plentiful and abundant store. And ah! [he exclaims] how much more innocent, sweet, and healthful is a table covered with those than with all the reeking flesh of butchered and slaughtered animals. Certainly man by nature was never made to be a carnivorous animal, nor is he armed at all for prey and rapine, with jagged and pointed teeth and crooked claws sharpened to rend and tear, but with gentle hands to gather fruit and vegetables, and with teeth to chew and eat them.”[127]
XVI.
EVELYN. 1620–1706.
JOHN EVELYN, the representative of the more estimable part of the higher middle life of his time, who has so eloquently set forth the praises of the vegetable diet, also claims with Ray the honour of having first excited, amongst the opulent classes of his countrymen, a rational taste for botanical knowledge. Especially meritorious and truly patriotic was his appeal to the owners of land, by growing trees to provide the country with useful as well as ornamental timber for the benefit of posterity. He was one of the first to treat gardening and planting in a scientific manner; and his own cultivation of exotic and other valuable plants was a most useful example too tardily followed by ignorant or selfish landlords of those and succeeding times. It would have been well indeed for the mass of the people of these islands, had the owners of landed property cared to develope the teaching of Evelyn by stocking the country with various fruit trees, and so supplied at once an easy and wholesome food. O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona nôrint, Agricolas!... Fundit humo facilem victum justissima Tellus.[128]
The family of Evelyn was settled at Wooton, in Surrey. During the struggle between the Parliament and the Court he went abroad, and travelled for some years in France and in Italy, where he seems to have employed his leisure in a more refined and useful way than is the wont of most of his travelling countrymen. He returned home in 1651. At the foundation of the Royal Society, some ten years later, Evelyn became one of its earliest Fellows. His first work was published in 1664, Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber. Its immediate cause was the application of the Naval Commissioners to the Royal Society for advice in view of the growing scarcity of timber, especially of oak, in England. A large quantity of the more valuable wood now existing is the practical outcome of his timely publication.
In 1675, appeared his Terra: a Discourse of the Earth Relating to the Culture and the Improvement of it, to Vegetation and the Propagation of Plants. The book by which he is most popularly known is his Diary and Correspondence, one of the most interesting productions of the kind. Besides its value as giving an insight into the manner of life in the fashionable society of the greater part of the seventeenth century, it is of importance as an independent chronicle of the public events of the day. The work which has the most interest and value for us is his Acetaria (Salads, or Herbs eaten with vinegar), in which the author professes his faith in the truth and excellence of the Vegetarian diet. Unfortunately, according to the usual perversity of literary enterprise, it is one of those few books which, representing some profounder truth, are nevertheless the most neglected by those who undertake to supply the mental and moral needs of the reading public.
Evelyn held many high posts under the varying Governments of the day; and being, by tradition and connexion, attached to the monarchical party, he attracted (contrary to the general experience) the grateful recognition of the restored dynasty.
Having adduced other arguments for abstinence from flesh, Evelyn continues:—
“And now, after all we have advanced in favour of the herbaceous diet, there still emerges another inquiry, viz., whether the use of crude herbs and plants is so wholesome as is alleged? What opinion the prince of physicians had of them we shall see hereafter; as also what the sacred records of olden times seem to infer, before there were any flesh-shambles in the world; together with the reports of such as are often conversant among many nations and people, who, to this day, living on herbs and roots, arrive to an incredible age in constant health and vigour, which, whether attributable to the air and climate, custom, constitution, &c., should be inquired into.”