consistency with an abstract theory. I do not shut my eyes to it. The truth is, that in cookery we need some grease, and it is hard to eat dry bread without butter or cheese. Our climate does not produce the nicer oils. It is not easy to buy oil delicate enough for food; and oil (to most Englishmen) is offensive, from tasting like degenerate butter. Cheese, like nuts, is maligned as indigestible, barely because it is heaped on a full stomach. However, since most Vegetarians admit eggs and milk, I define the diet as consisting of food which is substantially the growth of the earth without animal slaughter. If you prefer to call this Brahminism, I will not object. But my friend, the late Professor Jarrett, of Cambridge, entitled our rule the V.E.M.[1] diet. I heartily applaud the convenient and truthful name.
Ibid. p. 44: Recurring to the inconsistency of milk and eggs with strict Vegetarianism, I will observe that, by the avowal of medical science, milk has none of the inflammatory properties of flesh-meat; in so far it is akin to Vegetarian food. But undoubtedly the pressure of dense population for milk is an evil, and tends to the adulteration of the milk, to a deterioration of it, by giving to the cow whatever will increase its quantity, and to an enfeebling of cows generally, by asking too much milk of them, and by breeding them too quickly. Therefore I take pains to make no increased use of milk since I am a Vegetarian, nor yet of eggs. We have not yet learned to get substitutes from oleaginous nuts. We are in a state of transition. A future age will look back on this barbarism; yet we are moving towards the higher and nobler development in becoming even thus partial Vegetarians.II.—The Vegetarians of the V. E. M. persuasion may fortify themselves by the authority of Pythagoras and Musonius; they may remember the words of Ovid:—
Ye mortall men, forbeare to franke your flesh with wicked food.
Ye have both corn and fruits of trees and grapes and herbs right good,
And though that some be harsh and hard, yet fire may make them well
Both soft and sweet. Ye may haue milke, and honey which doth smell
Of flowers of thyme. The lauish earth doth yeeld you plenteously
Most gentle food, and riches to content both mind and eie;
There needs no slaughter nor no blood to get your liuing by.
The beasts do breake their fast with flesh, and yet not all beasts either,
For horses, sheepe, and other beasts to live by grasse had leuer.
The nature of the beast that doth delight in bloody food,
Is cruell, and vnmercifull. As lions fierce of mood,
Armenian tigers, bears, and woolues. Oh what wickednes
It is to cram the maw with maw, and franke vp flesh with flesh,
And for one liuing thing to liue by killing of another.
But what have you poore sheepe misdone, a cattell meck and meeld,
Created for to mainteine man, whose fulsome dugs do yeeld
Sweete nectar, who doo clooth vs with your wooll in soft aray,
Whose life doth more vs benefite than doth your death farre way?
What trespasse hath the oxen done? a beast without all guile
- ↑ V＝vegetables, E＝eggs, M＝milk.
