Of ghastly Spasm, or racking torture, Qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all Feverous kinds,
Convulsions, Epilepsies, fierce Catarrhs,
Intestine Stone and Ulcer, Colic pangs,
Demoniac Phrensy, moping Melancholy,
And moon-struck Madness, pining Atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting Pestilence,
Dropsies and Asthmas, and joint-racking Rheums.”[133]
Very different, in other respects, from those of the author of the History of the Reformation in England the sentiments of his celebrated contemporary Bossuet, whose eloquence gained for him the distinguishing title of the “Eagle of Méaux,” as to the degrading character of the prevalent human nourishment in the Western world, are sufficiently remarkable to deserve some notice. The Oraisons Funêbres and, particularly, his Discours sur L’Histoire Universelle have entitled him to a high rank in French literature. But a single passage in the last work, we shall readily admit, does more credit to his heart than his most eloquent efforts in oratory or literature do to his intellect. That, in common with other theologians, Catholic and Protestant, he has thought it necessary to assume the intervention of the Deity to sanction the sustenance of human life by the destruction of other innocent life, does not affect the weight of intrinsic evidence derivable from the natural feeling as to the debasing influence of the Slaughter-House. It is thus that he, impliedly at least, condemns the barbarous practice:—
“Before the time of the Deluge the nourishment which without violence men derived from the fruits which fell from the trees of themselves, and from the herbs which also ripened with equal ease, was, without doubt, some relic of the first innocence and of the gentleness (douceur) for which we were formed. Now to get food we have to shed blood in spite of the horror which it naturally inspires in us; and all the refinements of which we avail ourselves, in covering our tables, hardly suffice to disguise for us the bloody corpses which we have to devour to support life. But this is but the least part of our misery. Life, already shortened, is still further abridged by the savage violences which are introduced into the life of the human species. Man, whom in the first ages we have seen spare the life of other animals, is accustomed henceforward to spare the life not even of his fellow-men. It is in vain that God forbade, immediately after the Deluge, the shedding of human blood; in vain, in order to save some vestiges of the first mildness of our nature, while permitting the feeding on flesh did he prohibit consumption of the blood. Human murders multiplied beyond all calculation.”