beneficial than occasional fasting. It is extremely questionable, in particular, whether fasting be so efficient as it is sometimes supposed to be in protecting against temptation to fleshly sin. The practice has a well-ascertained tendency to excite the imagination; and in so far as it disturbs that healthy and well-balanced interaction of body and mind which is the best or at least the normal condition for the practice of virtue, it is to be deprecated rather than encouraged (Theologische Ethik, sec. 873-875).
Mahommedan Fasts.—Among the Mahommedans, the month Ramadan, in which the first part of the Koran is said to have been received, is by command of the prophet observed as a fast with extraordinary rigour. No food or drink of any kind is permitted to be taken from daybreak until the appearance of the stars at nightfall. Extending as it does over the whole “month of raging heat,” such a fast manifestly involves considerable self-denial; and it is absolutely binding upon all the faithful whether at home or abroad. Should its observance at the appointed time be interfered with by sickness or any other cause, the fast must be kept as soon afterwards as possible for a like number of days. It is the only one which Mahommedanism enjoins; but the doctors of the law recommend a considerable number of voluntary fasts, as for example on the tenth day of the month Moharram. This day, called the “Yom Ashoora,” is held sacred on many accounts:—“because it is believed to be the day on which the first meeting of Adam and Eve took place after they were cast out of paradise; and that on which Noah went out from the ark; also because several other great events are said to have happened on this day; and because the ancient Arabs, before the time of the prophet, observed it by fasting. But what, in the opinion of most modern Moslems, and especially the Persians, confers the greatest sanctity on the day of Ashoora is the fact of its being that on which El-Hoseyn, the prophet’s grandson, was slain a martyr at the battle of the plain of Karbala.” It is the practice of many Moslems to fast on this day, and some do so on the preceding day also. Mahomet himself called fasting the “gate of religion,” and forbade it only on the two great festivals, namely, on that which immediately follows Ramadan and on that which succeeds the pilgrimage. (See Lane, Modern Egyptians, chaps, iii., xxiv.)
FASTOLF, SIR JOHN (d. 1459), English soldier, has enjoyed a
more lasting reputation as in some part the prototype of Shakespeare’s
Falstaff. He was son of a Norfolk gentleman, John
Fastolf of Caister, is said to have been squire to Thomas Mowbray,
duke of Norfolk, before 1398, served with Thomas of Lancaster
in Ireland during 1405 and 1406, and in 1408 made a fortunate
marriage with Millicent, widow of Sir Stephen Scrope of Castle
Combe in Wiltshire. In 1413 he was serving in Gascony, and
took part in all the subsequent campaigns of Henry V. in France.
He must have earned a good repute as a soldier, for in 1423 he
was made governor of Maine and Anjou, and in February 1426
created a knight of the Garter. But later in this year he was
superseded in his command by John Talbot. After a visit to
England in 1428, he returned to the war, and on the 12th of
February 1429 when in charge of the convoy for the English
army before Orleans defeated the French and Scots at the
“battle of herrings.” On the 18th of June of the same year
an English force under the command of Fastolf and Talbot
suffered a serious defeat at Patay. According to the French
historian Waurin, who was present, the disaster was due to
Talbot’s rashness, and Fastolf only fled when resistance was
hopeless. Other accounts charge him with cowardice, and it is
true that John of Bedford at first deprived him of the Garter,
though after inquiry he was honourably reinstated. This
incident was made unfavourable use of by Shakespeare in Henry
VI. (pt. i. act iv. sc. i.). Fastolf continued to serve with honour
in France, and was trusted both by Bedford and by Richard of
York. He only came home finally in 1440, when past sixty years
of age. But the scandal against him continued, and during
Cade’s rebellion in 1451 he was charged with having been the
cause of the English disasters through minishing the garrisons
of Normandy. It is suggested that he had made much money
in the war by the hire of troops, and in his later days he showed
himself a grasping man of business. A servant wrote of him:—“cruel
and vengible he hath been ever, and for the most part
without pity and mercy” (Paston Letters, i. 389). Besides his
share in his wife’s property he had large estates in Norfolk and
Suffolk, and a house at Southwark, where he also owned the
Boar’s Head Inn. He died at Caister on the 5th of November
1459. There is some reason to suppose that Fastolf favoured
Lollardry, and this circumstance with the tradition of his
braggart cowardice may have suggested the use of his name for
the boon companion of Prince Hal, when Shakespeare found
it expedient to drop that of Oldcastle. In the first two folios
the name of the historical character in the first part of Henry VI.
is given as “Falstaffe” not Fastolf. Other points of resemblance
between the historic Fastolf and the Falstaff of the dramatist
are to be found in their service under Thomas Mowbray, and
association with a Boar’s Head Inn. But Falstaff is in no true
sense a dramatization of the real soldier.
The facts of Fastolf’s early career are to be found chiefly in the chronicles of Monstrelet and Waurin. For his later life there is much material, including a number of his own letters, in the Paston Letters. There is a full life by W. Oldys in the Biographia Britannica (1st ed., enlarged by Gough in Kippis’s edition). See also Dawson Turner’s History of Caister Castle, Scrope’s History of Castle Combe, J. Gairdner’s essay On the Historical Element in Shakespeare’s Falstaff, ap. Studies in English History, Sidney Lee’s article in the Dictionary of National Biography, and D. W. Duthie, The Case of Sir John Fastolf and other Historical Studies (1907). (C. L. K.)
FAT (O.E. fáett; the word is common to Teutonic languages,
cf. Dutch vet, Ger. Fett, &c., and may be ultimately related to
Greek πίων and πιαρός, and Sanskrit pivan), the name given
to certain animal and vegetable products which are oily solids
at ordinary temperatures, and are chemically distinguished
as being the glyceryl esters of various fatty acids, of which the
most important are stearic, palmitic, and oleic; it is to be
noticed that they are non-nitrogenous. Fat is a normal constituent
of animal tissue, being found even before birth; it
occurs especially in the intra-muscular, the abdominal and
the subcutaneous connective tissues. In the vegetable kingdom
fats especially occur in the seeds and fruits, and sometimes in
the roots. Physiological subjects concerned with the part played
by fats in living animals are treated in the articles Connective Tissues;
Nutrition; Corpulence; Metabolic Diseases.
The fats are chemically similar to the fixed oils, from which they
are roughly distinguished by being solids and not liquids (see
Oils). While all fats have received industrial applications,
foremost importance must be accorded to the fats of the domestic
animals—the sheep, cow, ox and calf. These, which are extracted
from the bones and skins in the first operation in the manufacture
of glue, are the raw materials of the soap, candle and
glycerin industries.
FATALISM (Lat. fatum, that which is spoken, decreed),
strictly the doctrine that all things happen according to a prearranged
fate, necessity or inexorable decree. It has frequently
been confused with determinism (q.v.), which, however, differs
from it categorically in assigning a certain function to the will.
The essence of the fatalistic doctrine is that it assigns no place
at all to the initiative of the individual, or to rational sequence
of events. Thus an oriental may believe that he is fated to die
on a particular day; he believes that, whatever he does and in
spite of all precautions he may take, nothing can avert the
disaster. The idea of an omnipotent fate overruling all affairs
of men is present in various forms in practically all religious
systems. Thus Homer assumes a single fate (Μοῖρα), an
impersonal power which makes all human concerns subject to
the gods: it is not powerful over the gods, however, for Zeus
is spoken of as weighing out the fate of men (Il. xxii. 209, viii.
69). Hesiod has three Fates (Μοῖραι), daughters of Night,
Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. In Aeschylus fate is powerful
even over the gods. The Epicureans regarded fate as blind
chance, while to the Stoics everything is subject to an absolute
rational law.
The doctrine of fate appears also in what are known as the higher religions, e.g. Christianity and Mahommedanism. In the
