The moral precepts of the great master were much in advance of the conventional morality of the day. He enjoined upon his disciples, the same biographer informs us, each time they entered their houses to interrogate themselves--“How have I transgressed? What have I done? What have I left undone that I ought to have done?” He exhorted them to live in perfect harmony, to do good to their enemies and by kindness to convert them into friends. “He forbade them either to pray for themselves, seeing that they were ignorant of what was best for them; or to offer slain victims (σφαγια) as sacrifices; and taught them to respect a _bloodless_ altar only.” Cakes and fruits, and other innocent offerings were the only sacrifices he would allow. This, and the sublime commandment “Not to kill or injure any innocent animal,” are the grand distinguishing doctrines of his moral religion. So far did he carry his respect for the beautiful and beneficent in Nature, that he specially prohibited wanton injury to cultivated and useful trees and plants. By confining themselves to the innocent, pure, and spiritual dietary he promised his followers the enjoyment of health and equanimity, undisturbed and invigorating sleep, as well as a superiority of mental and moral perceptions. As for his own diet, “he was satisfied,” says Porphyry, “with honey or the honeycomb, or with bread only, and he did not taste wine from morning to night (μεθ’ἣμεραν); or his principal dish was often kitchen herbs, cooked or uncooked. Fish he ate rarely.” Humanitarianism--the extension of the sublime principles of justice and of compassion to all innocent sentient life, irrespective of nationality, creed, or species--is a very modern and even now very inadequately recognised creed; and, although there have been here and there a few, like Plutarch and Seneca, who were “splendidly false,” to the spirit of their age, the recognition of the obligation (the _practice_ has always been a very different thing) of benevolence and beneficence, so far from being extended to the non-human races, until a comparatively recent time has been limited to the narrow bounds of country and citizenship; and patriotism and internationalism are, apparently, two very opposite principles. The obligation to abstain from the flesh of animals was founded by Pythagoras on mental and spiritual rather than on humanitarian grounds. Yet that the latter were not ignored by the prophet of _akreophagy_ is evident equally by his prohibition of the infliction of pain, no less than of death, upon the lower animals, and by his injunction to abstain from the bloody sacrifices of the altar. Such was his abhorrence of the Slaughter-House, Porphyry tells us, that not only did he carefully abstain from the flesh of its victims, but that he could never bring himself to endure contact with, or even the sight of, butchers and cooks.