“What is clearer [he sums up] than that man is not furnished for hunting, much less for eating, other animals? In one word, we seem to be admirably admonished by Cicero that man was destined for other things than for seizing and cutting the throats of other animals. If you answer that ‘that may be said to be an industry ordered by Nature, by which such weapons are invented,’ then, behold! it is by the very same artificial instrument that men make weapons for mutual slaughter. Do they this at the instigation of Nature? Can a use so noxious be called _natural_? Faculty is given by Nature, but it is our own fault that we make a perverse use of it.” He, finally, refutes the popular objection about the strength-giving properties of flesh-meat, and instances Horses, Bulls, and others.[122] In his _Ethics_ (affixed to his Books on _Physics_) he quotes and endorses the opinions of Epikurus on the slaughter of innocent life:-- “There is no pretence,” he asserts, “for saying that any right has been granted us by law to kill any of those animals which are not destructive or pernicious to the human race, for there is no reason why the innocent species should be allowed to increase to so great a number as to be inconvenient to us. They may be restrained within that number which would be harmless, and useful to ourselves.”[123] With that Great Master he thus rebukes the fashionable “hospitality”:-- “I, for my part, to speak modestly of myself, lived contented with the plants of my little garden, and have pleasure in that diet, and I wish inscribed on my doors: ‘Guest, here you shall have good cheer! here the _summum bonum_ is Pleasure. The guardian of this house, _humanely_ hospitable, is ready to entertain you with pearl-barley (_polenta_), and will furnish you abundantly with water. These little gardens do not increase hunger, but extinguish it; nor do they make thirst greater by the very potations themselves, but satisfy it by a natural and gratuitous remedy.’”[124] There is one name which, in reputation, occupies a pre-eminent position in philosophy, belonging to this period--Francis Bacon. But, for ourselves, for whom true ethical and humanitarian principles have a much deeper significance than mere mental force undirected to the highest aims of truth and of justice, the name of the modern assertor of the truths of Vegetarianism will challenge greater reverence than even that of the author of the _New Instrument_.