Plutarch

[PA]

Read something very interesting last night. You may have encountered
this info. I’ll get straight to it.

PLUTARCH (40 to 120 A.D. approx.) Prince of Biographers and
Historians. His essay on flesh eating contains arguments for
vegetarianism not superseded. A few excerpts follow :

"You ask me upon what grounds Pythagoras abstained from feeding on the
flesh of animals. I, for my part, marvel of what sort of feeling,
mind, or reason, that man was possessed who was the first to pollute
his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of a
murdered being; who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead
bodies, and claimed as his daily food what were but now beings endowed
with movement, with perception, and with voice. How could his eyes
endure the spectacle of the flayed and dismembered limbs? How could
his sense of smell endure the horrid effluvium? How, I ask, was his
taste not sickened by contact with festering wounds, with the
pollution of corrupted blood and juices? ... The first man who set the
example of this savagery is the person to arraign; not, assuredly,
that great mind [Pythagoras] which, in a later age, determined to have
nothing to do with such horrors.
"For the wretches who first applied to flesh-eating may justly be
alleged in excuse their utter resourcelessness and destitution,
inasmuch as it was not to indulge in lawless desires, or amidst the
superfluities of necessaries, for the pleasure of wanton indulgence in
unnatural luxuries that they (the primaeval people) betook themselves
to carnivorous habits...
"Does it not shame you to mingle murder and blood with their
beneficent fruits? Othercarnivora you call savage and ferocious -
lions and tigers and serpents - while yourselves come behind them in
no species of barbarity. And yet for them murder is the only means of
sustenance; whereas to you it is a superfluous luxury and crime!
"For, in point of fact, we do not kill and eat lions and wolves, as we
might do in self-defence - on the contrary, we leave them unmolested;
and yet the innocent and the domesticated and helpless and unprovided
with weapons of offence - these we hunt and kill, whom Nature seems to
have brought into existence for their beauty and gracefulness.
"Nothing puts us out of countenance, not the charming beauty of their
form, not the plaintive sweetness of their voice or cry, not their
mental intelligence, not the purity of their diet, not superiority of
understanding. For the sake of a part of their flesh only, we deprive
them of the glorious light of the sun - of the life, for which they
were born. The plaintive cries they utter we affect to take to be
meaningless; whereas, in fact, they are entreaties and supplications
and prayers addressed to us by each which say, 'It is not the
satisfaction of your real necessities we deprecate, but the wanton
indulgence of your appetities. Kill to eat, if you must or will, but
do not slay me that you may feedluxuriously.'
"Alas for our savage inhumanity! It is a terrible thing to see the
table of rich men decked out by those layers-out of corpses: the
butchers and cooks; a still more terrible sight is the same table
after the feast - for the wasted relics are even more than the
consumption. These victims, then, have given us their lives uselessly.
As other times, from mere niggardliness, the host will grudge to
distribute his dishes, and yet he grudged not to deprive innocent
beings of their existence!
"Well I have taken away the excuse of those who allege that they have
the authority and sanction of Nature. For that man is not, by nature,
carnivorous is proved, in the first place, by the external frame of
his body - seeing that to none of the animals designed for living on
flesh has the human body any resemblance. He has no curved beak, no
sharp talons and claws, no pointed teeth, no intense power of stomach
or heat of blood which might help him to masticate and digest the
gross and tough flesh-substance. On the contrary, by the smoothness of
his teeth, the small capacity of his mouth, the softness of his
tongue, and the sluggishness of his digestive aparatus, Nature sternly
forbids him to feed on flesh.
"If, in spite of all this, you still affirm that you were, to begin
with, kill yourself what you wish to eat - but do it yourself with
your own natural weapons, without the use of butcher's knife, or axe,
or club. No; as the wolves and lions and bears themselves slay all
they feed on, so, in like manner, do you kill the cow or ox with a
grip of your jaw, or the pig with your teeth, or a hare or a lamb by
falling upon and rending them there and then. Having gone through all
these preliminaries, then sit down to your repast. If, however, you
wait until the living and intelligent existence be deprived of life,
and if it would disgust you to have to rend out the heart and shed the
life-blood of your victim, why, I ask, in the very face of Nature, and
in despite of her, do you feed on beings endowed with sentient life?
"But more than this - not even, after your victims have been killed,
will you eat them just as they are from the slaughter-house. You boil,
roast, and altogether metamorphose them by fire and condiments. You
entirely alter and disguise the murdered animal by use of ten thousand
sweet herbs and spices, that your natural taste may be deceived and be
prepared to take the unnatural food. A proper and witty rebuke was
that of the Spartan who bought a fish and gave it to his cook to
dress. When the latter asked for butter, and olive oil, and vinegar,
he replied, 'Why, if I had all these things I should not have bought
the fish!'
To such a degree do we make luxuries of bloodshed that we call flesh a
'delicacy', and forthwith require delicate sauces for this same flesh-
meat, and mix together oil and wine and pickle and vinegar with all
the spices of Syria and Arabia - for all the world as though we were
embalming a human corpse. After all these heterogenous matters have
been mixed and dissolved and, in a manner, corrupted, it is for the
stomach, forsooth, to masticate and assimilate them - if it can. And
though this may be, for the time, accomplished, the natural sequence
is a variety of diseases produced by imperfect digestion and
repletion. Flesh-eating is not unnatural to our physical constitution
only. The mind and intellect are made gross by gorging and repletion ;
for flesh meat and wine may possibly tend to robustness of the body,
but it gives only feebleness to the mind .... "It is hard to argue
with stomachs, since they have no ears ; and the inebriating potion of
custom has been drunk like Circe's, with all its deceptions and
witcheries. Now that men are saturated and penetrated, as it were,
with love of pleasure, it is not an easy task to attempt to pluck out
from their bodies the flesh-baited hook. Well would it be if, as the
people of Egypt turning their back to the pure light of day
disemboweled their dead and cast away the offal as the very source and
origin of their sins. we, too, in like manner, were to eradicate
bloodshed and gluttony from ourselves and purify the remainder of our
lives. If the irreproachable diet be impossible to any by reason of
inveterate habit, at least let them devour their flesh as driven to it
by hunger, not in luxurious wantonness, but with feelings of shame.
Slay your victim, but at least do so with feelings of pity and pain,
not with callous heedlessness and with torture, And yet that is what
is done in a variety of ways.
"In slaughtering swine, for example, they thrust red hot irons into
their living bodies, so that by sucking up or diffusing the blood,
they may render the flesh soft and tender. Some butchers jump upon or
kick the udders of pregnant sows, that by mingling the blood and milk
and matter of the embryos that have been murdered together in the very
pangs of parturition, they may enjoy the pleasure of feeding upon
unnaturally and highly inflamed flesh! Again, it is a common practice
to stitch up the eyes of cranes and swans and shut them up in dark
places to fatten. In this and other similar ways are manufactured
their dainty dishes, with all the varieties of sauces and spices, from
all of which it is evident that men have indulged their lawless
appetites in the pleasures of luxury, not for necessary food and from
no necessity, but only out of the merest wantonness, and gluttony, and
display."
And if any doubt that these are only ancient cruelties, let them read
the sections to follow and weep for our modern times. Many of
Plutarch's arguments on behalf of vegetarianism have a very modern
flavour, as for example :
"Ill-digestion is most to be feared after flesh-eating, for it very
soon clogs us and leaves ill consequences behind it. It would be best
to accustom ourselves to eat no flesh at all, for the earth affords
plenty enough of things fit not only for nourishment, but for delight
and enjoyment ... But you, pursuing the pleasures of eating and
drinking beyond the satisfaction of nature are punished with many and
lingering diseases, which arising from the single fountain of
superfluous gormandizing, fill your bodies with all manner of wind and
vapours, not easy by purgation to expel. In the first place, all
species of the lower animals, according to their kind, feed upon one
sort of food which is proper to their natures - some upon grass. some
upon roots, and others upon fruits. Neither do they rob the weaker of
their nourishment. But man, such is his voracity, falls upon all to
satisfy the pleasures of his appetite, tries all things, tastes all
things; and, as if he were yet to see what were the most proper diet
and most agreeable to his nature, among all animals is the only all-
devourous (omnivorous). He makes use of flesh not out of want and
necessity, but out of luxury and being clogged with necessaries, he
seeks after an impure and inconvenient diet, purchased by the
slaughter of living beings; for this, showing himself more cruel than
the most savage of wild beasts. The lower animals abstain from most of
other kinds and are at enmity with only a few, and that only compelled
by necessities of hunger : but neither fish nor fowl nor anything that
lives upon the land, escapes your tables, though they bear the name of
humane and hospitable."
Animals photographed by telescopic cameras in the wilds of Africa,
amply bear out the contentions of Plutarch. Zebras, the prey of the
lion, graze undisturbed by the very Presence of the King of Beasts.
Other zebras hardly raise their heads, when a lioness pounces on her
prey and drags it to her lair. They know she will only slay again when
she is hungry, and they accept her hunger as inevitable. Only man
causes all animals to flee from his presence.
Finally Plutarch criticizes the discarding of a faithful animal
servant when old, saying : " For own part, I would not sell even an
old ox that has laboured for me."
"The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind, but kindness
and beneficence should be extended to the creatures of every species,
and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that
issue from the living fountain."


http://www.ivu.org/history/greece_rome/plutarch.html