Page:Headlong Hall - Peacock (1816).djvu/25

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HEADLONG HALL.
17

doubt that it will continue to grow small by degrees and lamentably less, till the whole race will vanish imperceptibly from the face of the earth."

"I cannot agree," said Mr. Foster, "in the consequences being so very disastrous: but I admit, that the use of animal food retards in some measure, though it cannot materially inhibit, the perfectibility of the species. But the use of fire was indispensably necessary, as Æschylus and Virgil expressly assert, to give being to the various arts of life, which, in their rapid and interminable progress, will finally conduct every individual of the race to the philosophic pinnacle of pure and perfect felicity."

"In the controversy concerning animal and vegetable food," said Mr. Jenkison, "there is much to be said on both sides; and the question being in equipoise, I content myself