“The scorched skins wriggled upon the ground,
     The shrinking flesh bellowed upon the spit. 
     Man cannot eat them without a shudder;
     He seems to hear their cries within his breast.

“Thus must he have felt the first time he did despite to nature and made this horrible meal; the first time he hungered for the living creature, and desired to feed upon the beast which was still grazing; when he bade them slay, dismember, and cut up the sheep which licked his hands.  It is those who began these cruel feasts, not those who abandon them, who should cause surprise, and there were excuses for those primitive men, excuses which we have not, and the absence of such excuses multiplies our barbarity a hundredfold.

“‘Mortals, beloved of the gods,’ says this primitive man, ’compare our times with yours; see how happy you are, and how wretched were we.  The earth, newly formed, the air heavy with moisture, were not yet subjected to the rule of the seasons.  Three-fourths of the surface of the globe was flooded by the ever-shifting channels of rivers uncertain of their course, and covered with pools, lakes, and bottomless morasses.  The remaining quarter was covered with woods and barren forests.  The earth yielded no good fruit, we had no instruments of tillage, we did not even know the use of them, and the time of harvest never came for those who had sown nothing.  Thus hunger was always in our midst.  In winter, mosses and the bark of trees were our common food.  A few green roots of dogs-bit or heather were a feast, and when men found beech-mast, nuts, or acorns, they danced for joy round the beech or oak, to the sound of some rude song, while they called the earth their mother and their nurse.  This was their only festival, their only sport; all the rest of man’s life was spent in sorrow, pain, and hunger.

“’At length, when the bare and naked earth no longer offered us any food, we were compelled in self-defence to outrage nature, and to feed upon our companions in distress, rather than perish with them.  But you, oh, cruel men! who forces you to shed blood?  Behold the wealth of good things about you, the fruits yielded by the earth, the wealth of field and vineyard; the animals give their milk for your drink and their fleece for your clothing.  What more do you ask?  What madness compels you to commit such murders, when you have already more than you can eat or drink?  Why do you slander our mother earth, and accuse her of denying you food?  Why do you sin against Ceres, the inventor of the sacred laws, and against the gracious Bacchus, the comforter of man, as if their lavish gifts were not enough to preserve mankind?  Have you the heart to mingle their sweet fruits with the bones upon your table, to eat with the milk the blood of the beasts which gave it?  The lions and panthers, wild beasts as you call them, are driven to follow their natural instinct, and they kill other beasts that they may live.  But, a hundredfold fiercer than they, you fight against your instincts without cause, and abandon yourselves to the most cruel pleasures.  The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern.  You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service.