It has been proved by some learned inquirers that there was a special significance about the permission by the early Christians of a fish diet during so-called "fasting." Real and complete fasting, abstention from all food, for a day or even a week, was and still is practised by some Eastern peoples as a religious exercise. It is a matter of fact that an ecstatic condition of mind is favoured by complete fasting, and conditions favourable to illusions of various kinds are so produced. But the later Christians seem to have regarded the partial fasting during Lent and on certain days of the week as a sort of protest against gluttony and excess, and there is no objection to it among Protestant Churches excepting that it must not be claimed as a merit or the equivalent of "good works." That fish were, even in the most ancient times, allowed to be eaten on fast days is curious. It is suggested by some students of this subject that the custom came from Syria, and had to do with certain pagan ceremonials and the worship of the fish-god Dagon. It is supposed that some of these early Christians managed, under the guise of a fast of the Church, to maintain an ancient pagan custom and religious rite connected with the Syrian fish-god. The Jews also eat fish on Friday evening--though in both cases the origin of the "fish-eating" was lost sight of in the early centuries of the Christian era. On the other hand, it appears that the worshippers of the fish-god (at any rate, at a remote period) were forbidden to eat fish as being sacred; hence it seems possible that the permission of a fish diet to Christians during days of fasting was given as a means of encouraging those who retained pagan superstitions to ignore and forget them. The supposition that the eating of fish on certain days is a survival of a ceremonial observance connected with fish-worship is the more probable explanation of the custom.