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5. PHRENOLOGICAL AND MORAL.
The use of animal food tends to develop the base of the brain prematurely, and gives rise to those passional outbursts of hate and lust, which darken human life and cover the earth with the offspring of unrestrained propensity, rather than with the tokens of mutual spiritual affection. The love which flesh-eating incites is the love of self, the love which the ferocious beast feels for his victim, the desire for self gratification regardles of effects upon others. It is unquestionable that animal food stimulates. This stimulation or excitement (like that from fermented liquors), in passing from the body into the brain comes necessarily first in contact with the lower part of the brain, and there expends itself mainly. Here are located those faculties which are related especially to the bodily and selfish life; and these are inflamed, "whipped up," thrown into a state of feverish excitement; and the higher faculties, those which should always direct and control the lower, are for the time being measurably ignored, forgotten, disregarded; which throws the human into the sphere of the animal, prostrates the higher nature at the feet of the lower, ties hand and foot the spiritual impulses, unbalances, perverts and distorts the whole mental being, and draggles in the mire and slime of beastliness and sensualism the priceless gem of angelhood, implanted in every human soul.
Animal food develops the war spirit. Note the well-known ferocity of butcher's dogs, and the taming of the tiger by farinaceous food.
"The natural diet of all animals is constitutionally calculated to develop their respective natures; and as the paramount characteristic of all carnivorous animals is rapacity and ferocity, therefore animal food, eaten by man, naturally and necessarily develops a like rapacious fiercenes in him also, whereas a vegetable diet is constitutionally adapted to foster docility and goodness." O. S. Fowler, Phrenologist.
