On the eating of flesh I (5-7)

We declare, then, that it is absurd for them to say that the practice of flesh-eating is based on Nature. For that man is not naturally carnivorous is, in the first place, obvious from the structure of his body.[*] A man’s frame is in no way similar to those creatures who were made for flesh-eating: he has no hooked beak or sharp nails or jagged teeth, no strong stomach or warmth of vital fluids able to digest and assimilate a heavy diet of flesh.[*] It is from this very fact, the evenness of our teeth, the smallness of our mouths, the softness of our tongues, our possession of vital fluids too inert to digest meat that Nature disavows our eating of flesh. If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources,

unaided by cleaver or cudgel of any kind or axe. Rather, just as wolves and bears and lions themselves slay what they eat, so you are to fell an ox with your fangs or a boar with your jaws, or tear a lamb or hare in bits. Fall upon it and eat it still living, as animals do.[*] But if you wait for what you eat to be dead, if you have qualms about enjoying the flesh while life is still present, why do you continue, contrary to nature, to eat what possesses life? Even when it is lifeless and dead, however, no one eats the flesh just as it is; men boil it and roast it, altering it by fire and drugs, recasting and diverting and smothering with countless condiments the taste of gore so that the palate may be deceived and accept what is foreign to it.

It was, indeed, a witty remark of the Spartan[*] who bought a little fish in an inn and gave it to the innkeeper to prepare. When the latter asked for cheese and vinegar and oil,[*] the Spartan said, If I had those, I should not have bought a fish. But we are so refined in our blood-letting that we term flesh a supplementary food[*]; and then we need supplements for the flesh itself, mixing oil, wine, honey, fish paste, vinegar, with Syrian and Arabian spices,[*] as though we were really embalming a corpse for

burial. The fact is that meat is so softened and dissolved and, in a way, predigested that it is hard for digestion to cope with it; and if digestion loses the battle, the meats affect us with dreadful pains and malignant forms of indigestion.

Diogenes[*] ventured to eat a raw octopus in order to put an end to the inconvenience of preparing cooked food. In the midst of a large throng he veiled his head and, as he brought the flesh to his mouth, said, It is for you that I am risking my life. Good heavens, a wondrous fine risk! Just like Pelopidas[*] for the liberty of the Thebans or Harmodius and Aristogiton[*] for that of the Athenians, this philosopher risked his life struggling with a raw octopus - in order to brutalize our lives!

Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit. For wine and indulgence in meat make the body strong and vigorous, but the soul weak. [*] And in order that I may not offend athletes, I shall take my own people as examples. It is a fact that the Athenians used to call us Boeotians[*] beef-witted and insensitive and foolish, precisely because we stuffed ourselves.[*] These

men are swine [*]; ⋯ and Menander[*] says, Who have jaws; and Pindar[*] And then to learn ⋯; A dry soul is wisest according to Heraclitus.[*] Empty jars make a noise when struck, but full ones do not resound to blows.[*] Thin bronze objects will pass the sounds from one to another in a circle until you dampen and deaden the noise with your hand as the beat goes round.[*] The eye[*] when it is flooded by an excess of moisture grows dim and weakened for its proper task. When we examine the sun through dank atmosphere and a fog of gross vapours, we do not see it clear and bright, but submerged and misty, with elusive rays. In just the same way, then, when the body is turbulent and surfeited and burdened with improper food, the lustre and light of the soul inevitably come through it blurred and confused, aberrant and inconstant, since the soul lacks the brilliance and intensity to penetrate to the minute and obscure issues of active life.

But apart from these considerations, do you not find here a wonderful means of training in social responsibility? Who could wrong a human being when he found himself so gently and humanely disposed

toward other non-human creatures? Two days ago in a discussion I quoted the remark of Xenocrates,[*] that the Athenians punished the man who had flayed a ram while it was still alive; yet, as I think, he who tortures a living creature is no worse than he who slaughters it outright. But it seems that we are more observant of acts contrary to convention than of those that are contrary to nature. In that place, then, I made my remarks in a popular vein. I still hesitate, however, to attempt a discussion of the principle underlying my opinion, great as it is, and mysterious and incredible, as Plato[*] says, with merely clever men of mortal opinions, just as a steersman hesitates to shift his course[*] in the midst of a storm, or a playwright to raise his god from the machine in the midst of a play. Yet perhaps it is not unsuitable to set the pitch and announce the theme by quoting some verses of Empedocles.[*]⋯ By these lines he means, though he does not say so directly, that human souls are imprisoned in mortal bodies as a punishment for murder, the eating of animal flesh, and cannibalism. This doctrine, however, seems to be even older, for the stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of Dionysus[*] and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood - all this is a myth which in its inner meaning has to do with rebirth. For to that faculty in us which is unreasonable and disordered and violent, and does not come from the gods, but from evil spirits, the ancients gave the name Titans,[*] that is to say, those that are punished and subjected to correction⋯[*]