He then paints the picture of the “Times of Innocence” of the Past, or rather (as we must take it) of the Future:-- “_No murder clothed him, and no murder fed._ In the same temple--the resounding wood-- All vocal beings hymned their equal God. The shrine, with gore unstained, with gold undrest, Unbribed, unbloody, stood the blameless priest. Heaven’s attribute was universal care, And man’s prerogative to rule but spare. Ah, how unlike the man of times to come-- _Of half that live the butcher and the tomb_! Who, foe to Nature, hears the general groan, Murders their species, and betrays his own. But just disease to luxury succeeds, And every death its own avenger breeds: The fury-passions from that blood began, And turned on man a fiercer savage, man.” Again, depicting the growth of despotism and superstition, and speculating as to-- “Who first taught souls enslaved and realms undone The enormous faith of Many made for One?” he traces the gradual horrors of sacrifice beginning with other, and culminating in that of the human, species:-- “She [Superstition] from the rending earth and bursting skies Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise: Here fixed the dreadful, there the blest, abodes-- Fear made her devils and weak Hope her gods-- Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust-- Such as the souls of cowards might conceive, And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe. * * * * * Altars grew marble then, and reeked with gore; _Then first the Flamen tasted living food, Next his grim idol smeared with human blood_. With Heaven’s own thunders shook the earth below, And played the God an engine on his foe.” Whenever occasion arises, Pope fails not to stigmatise the barbarity of slaughtering for food; and the _sæva indignatio_ urges him to upbraid his fellows with the slaughter of-- “The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed, * * * * * Who licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.” And, again, he expresses his detestation of the selfishness of our species who-- “Destroy all creatures for their sport or gust.” That all this was no mere affectation of feeling appears from his correspondence and contributions to the periodicals of the time:-- “I cannot think it extravagant,” he writes, “to imagine that mankind are no less, in proportion, accountable for the ill use of their dominion over the lower ranks of beings, than for the exercise of tyranny over their own species. The more entirely the inferior creation is submitted to our power, the more answerable we must be for our mismanagement of them; and the rather, as the very condition of Nature renders them incapable of receiving any recompense in another life for ill-treatment in this.”[146]