It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination;but this,I think,is to be fed when we feed the body;they should both sit down at the same table.Yet perhaps this may be done.The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites,nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits.But put an extra condiment into your dish,and it will poison you.It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery.Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner,whether of animal or vegetable food,as is every day prepared for them by others.Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized,and,if gentlemen and ladies,are not true men and women.This certainly suggests what change is to be made.It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat.I am satisfied that it is not.Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal?True,he can and does live,in a great measure,by preying on other animals;but this is a miserable way,-as any one who will go to snaring rabbits,or slaughtering lambs,may learn,-and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet.Whatever my own practice may be,I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race,in its gradual improvement,to leave off eating animals,as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius,which are certainly true,he sees not to what extremes,or even insanity,it may lead him;and yet that way,as he grows more resolute and faithful,his road lies.The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind.No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.Though the result were bodily weakness,yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted,for these were a life in conformity to higher principles.If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy,and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs,is more elastic,more starry,more immortal,-that is your success.All nature is your congratulation,and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated.We easily come to doubt if they exist.We soon forget them.They are the highest reality.Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.It is a little star-dust caught,a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
Yet,for my part,I was never unusually squeamish;I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish,if it were necessary.I am glad to have drunk water so long,for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven.I would fain keep sober always;and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness.I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man;wine is not so noble a liquor;and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee,or of an evening with a dish of tea!Ah,how low I fall when I am tempted by them!Even music may be intoxicating.Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome,and will destroy England and America.Of all ebriosity,who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued,that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.But to tell the truth,I find myself at present somewhat less particular in these respects.I carry less religion to the table,ask no blessing;not because I am wiser than I was,but,I am obliged to confess,because,however much it is to be regretted,with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent.Perhaps these questions are entertained only in youth,as most believe of poetry.My practice is “nowhere,”my opinion is here.Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the Ved refers when it says,that “he who has true faith in the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists,”that is,is not bound to inquire what is his food,or who prepares it;and even in their case it is to be observed,as a Hindoo commentator has remarked,that the Vedant limits this privilege to “the time of distress.”
Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no share?I have been thrilled to think that I owed a mental perception to the commonly gross sense of taste,that I have been inspired through the palate,that some berries which I had eaten on a hillside had fed my genius.“The soul not being mistress of herself,”says Thseng-tseu,“one looks,and one does not see;one listens,and one does not hear;one eats,and one does not know the savor of food.”He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton;he who does not cannot be otherwise.A puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle.Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man,but the appetite with which it is eaten.It is neither the quality nor the quantity,but the devotion to sensual savors;when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal,or inspire our spiritual life,but food for the worms that possess us.If the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles,muskrats,and other such savage tidbits,the fine lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf's foot,or for sardines from over the sea,and they are even.He goes to the mill-pond,she to her preserve-pot.The wonder is how they,how you and I,can live this slimy,beastly life,eating and drinking.
