It has been well said by one of the most eloquent of the prophets of Humane Living, that there are steps on the way to the summit of Dietetic Reform, and, if only one step be taken, yet that that single step will be not without importance and without influence in the world. The step, which leaves for ever behind it the barbarism of slaughtering our fellow-beings, the Mammals and Birds, is, it is superfluous to add, the most important and most influential of all. As for the plan of the present work, living writers and authorities--numerous and important as they are--necessarily have been excluded. Its bulk, already extended beyond the original conception of its limits, otherwise would have been swollen to a considerably larger size. For its entire execution, as well as for the collection and arrangement of the matter, the compiler alone is responsible; and, conscious that it must fall short of the completeness at which he aimed, he can pretend only to the merits of careful research and an eclectic impartiality. To the fact that the work already has appeared in the pages of the _Dietetic Reformer_, to which it has been contributed periodically during a space of time extending over five years, is owing some repetition of matter, which also, necessarily, is due to the nature of the subject. Errors of inadvertence, it is hoped, will be found to be few and inconsiderable. For the rest, he leaves the _Ethics of Diet_ to the candour of the critics and of the public. THE ETHICS OF DIET. I. HESIOD. EIGHTH CENTURY B.C. HESIOD--the poet _par excellence_ of peace and of agriculture, as Homer is of war and of the “heroic” virtues--was born at Ascra, a village in Bœotia, a part of Hellas, which, in spite of its proverbial fame for beef-eating and stupidity, gave birth to three other eminent persons--Pindar, the lyric poet, Epameinondas, the great military genius and statesman, and Plutarch, the most amiable moralist of antiquity. The little that is known of the life of Hesiod is derived from his _Works and Days_. From this celebrated poem we learn that his father was an emigrant from Æolia, the Greek portion of the north-west corner of the Lesser Asia; that his elder brother, Perses, had, by collusion with the judges, deprived him of his just inheritance; that after this he settled at Orchomenos, a neighbouring town--in the pre-historical ages a powerful and renowned city. This is all that is certainly known of the author of the _Works and Days_, and _The Theogony_. Of the genuineness of the former there has been little or no doubt; that of the latter--at least in part--has been called in question. Besides these two chief works, there is extant a piece entitled _The Shield of Herakles_, in imitation of the Homeric Shield (_Iliad_ xviii.) The _Catalogues of Women_--a poem commemorating the heroines beloved by the gods, and who were thus the ancestresses of the long line of heroes, the reputed founders of the ruling families in Hellas--is lost.